Nitin Sinha
Biographic Data
| ID | 1247155 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nitin Sinha |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nitin |
| FAMILY NAME | Sinha |
| SIGNATURE | SINHA N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8094-4084 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 48 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Introduction: Time, temporalities, and social practices in South Asia
Against the Fetishisation of Plural Time: Rethinking Ways of Doing a Social History of Time
From the viewpoint of social history, is time itself a plural entity or are there multiple forms of engagement in and with it? Pivoted around this question, Sinha attempts to rethink the current theory and practice of history writing by pointing the pitfalls of the growing fetishisation of plurality and the ‘plural time’ framework. Engaging a range of studies in History, Anthropology, and Sociology, Sinha provides a critical assessment of some of…
Against the Fetishization of Plural Time: Rethinking Ways of Doing a Social History of Time
Chapter 2 Social-time and Natural-time: Towards Intermeshed Histories
Tracing Historical Forms of Servitude: Introductory Remarks and Elementary Reflections
History of domestic service in South Asia is beginning to attract scholars but a rich historiography around it is still distant and difficult. The forms of servitude are different across different times, places and contexts. The sources available to scholars for specific sites and moments in history are marked by extreme diversity of language, genre, concerns, and vantage points. Studies based on exploration of particular kinds of texts across di…
Domestic Servants and Master-Servant Regulations in Colonial Calcutta, 1750s-1810s
In the Indian historiography of law and labour, master-servant regulations are an under-explored subject. Based on English precedents, these regulations acquired a specifically colonial nature when applied to control labour in the growing city of Calcutta. Questioning the assumed associations of domestic servants with privacy and informality, this article shows that in fact they were unambiguously one of the earliest groups to be regulated. It ap…
Histories of transport and communication in South Asia: A first review
History of transport and communication has surely entered an exciting phase of research in South Asia. The authors of the select titles as well as others working on related fields have been exploring different facets of, what could broadly be labelled as, “transport and communication” history of South Asia. This review article looks at some of the recent writings in the fields of technology, transport, and railways to map the newness in South Asi…
Genealogies of “Verification”: Policing the Master–Servant Relationship in Colonial and Postcolonial India
Police verification of domestic servants has become standard practice in many cities in contemporary India. However, the regularization of work, which brings domestic servants under protective labour laws, is still a work in progress. Examining a long timespan, this article shows how policing of the servant, through practices of identification and verification, came to be institutionalized. It looks at the history of registration within the large…
Who Is (Not) a Servant, Anyway? Domestic servants and service in early colonial India
The article deals with one of the under-researched themes of Indian history, which is the history of domestic servants. Thinking about servants raises two fundamental questions: who were they and what did domestic service mean? The identities of a servant as a contract wage earner or a person either belonging as a member or tied to the family through fictive/constructed claims of kinship were not mutually exclusive. Servants' identity existed in …
The Idea of Home in a World of Circulation: Steam, Women and Migration through Bhojpuri Folksongs
The historical juncture of the 1840s to 1860s witnessed three developments: first, the introduction of the new means of communication (steamships and railways); second, new industrial and plantation investments in and outside of India, creating demand for labour; and third, the expansion of a print culture that went beyond the urban elite domain to reflect the world of small towns and villages. In this constellation of social, economic, and techn…
Steamboats on the Indus: The Limits of Western Technological Superiority in South Asia, by Clive Dewey
The history of technology and transport in South Asia has followed a set pattern of received wisdom. Western technology, particularly that based on steam—such as steamboats and railways—is automatically considered to be superior. Introduced in the empire, from the start these technologies are presented as instruments of radical institutional change in the fields of economy and culture. As the author of the current book succinctly remarks, ‘[h]ist…
Infrastructural governance and social history: Roads in colonial and postcolonial India
This essay combines historiographical overview and reflections on possible future themes to argue that roads are not just physical pathways but are part of social, economic, and political discourses of the time. The relationship between infrastructure and governance and the possibility of writing the social have been shown here by creating a dialogue between the past and present, thus bringing colonial and postcolonial times of South Asia into on…
Fluvial Landscape and the State: Property and the Gangetic Diaras in Colonial India, 1790s-1890s
Looking at the interplay of law and revenue as a means of understanding colonial practices and policies towards diaras, this paper addresses a relatively neglected field in the agrarian-ecological history of South Asia. The constant formation and disappearance of lands due to river shifts raised several issues. Among the most important from the viewpoint of the colonial state were secure revenue extraction and the fixation of proprietorial rights…
Contract, Work, and Resistance: Boatmen in Early Colonial Eastern India, 1760s–1850s
In the period between the 1760s and the 1850s boatmen were the most important transport workers in early colonial eastern India, at least numerically. Unfortunately, they have received little scholarly attention so far. By looking at the regime of work, which surprisingly had strong bases in the notion of contract from as early as the 1770s, this article explores the nature of work, work organization, and resistance by boatmen. It argues that alt…
Entering the Black Hole: Between ‘mini-England’ and ‘smell-like rotten potato’, the railway workshop town of Jamalpur, 1860s–1940s
Jamalpur came into existence as a railway town in 1862 when India's first locomotive workshops were established there. By studying its history until the 1940s, this article provides a description of a small industrial town that arose from colonial capitalist necessity, but which shared many of the features of colonial urban governmentality. Therefore, a call for greater small town studies, as this article modestly makes, is not based on challengi…
Mobility, control and criminality in early colonial India, 1760s–1850s
The article looks into the ways certain mobile groups like the banjaras, gosains, fakirs and sanyasis were ‘criminalised’ by the colonial state between the periods of the 1760s and 1850s. Historiographically, the article argues for looking at the early colonial period more closely than has hitherto been done to understand the changing material and circulatory regimes in which these peripatetic groups operated. Unlike the current historiographical…
The World of Workers' Politics: Some Issues of Railway Workers in Colonial India, 1918-1922
This paper uses a study of strikes of railway workers in Bihar and Bengal from 1918 to 1922 to set out and examine the complexities of workers' politics. Three broad themes related with workers' politics,viz.racial ideology, actual 'event' of striking and the related activities of workers, and techniques of mobilization have been covered in this paper. In each of these cases, it has been argued that rigid categories like racialism or nationalism …
Mobility, control and criminality in early colonial India, 1760s–1850s
The article looks into the ways certain mobile groups like the banjaras, gosains, fakirs and sanyasis were ‘criminalised’ by the colonial state between the periods of the 1760s and 1850s. Historiographically, the article argues for looking at the early colonial period more closely than has hitherto been done to understand the changing material and circulatory regimes in which these peripatetic groups operated. Unlike the current historiographical…
Who Is (Not) a Servant, Anyway? Domestic servants and service in early colonial India
The article deals with one of the under-researched themes of Indian history, which is the history of domestic servants. Thinking about servants raises two fundamental questions: who were they and what did domestic service mean? The identities of a servant as a contract wage earner or a person either belonging as a member or tied to the family through fictive/constructed claims of kinship were not mutually exclusive. Servants' identity existed in …
The Idea of Home in a World of Circulation: Steam, Women and Migration through Bhojpuri Folksongs
The historical juncture of the 1840s to 1860s witnessed three developments: first, the introduction of the new means of communication (steamships and railways); second, new industrial and plantation investments in and outside of India, creating demand for labour; and third, the expansion of a print culture that went beyond the urban elite domain to reflect the world of small towns and villages. In this constellation of social, economic, and techn…
Fluvial Landscape and the State: Property and the Gangetic Diaras in Colonial India, 1790s-1890s
Looking at the interplay of law and revenue as a means of understanding colonial practices and policies towards diaras, this paper addresses a relatively neglected field in the agrarian-ecological history of South Asia. The constant formation and disappearance of lands due to river shifts raised several issues. Among the most important from the viewpoint of the colonial state were secure revenue extraction and the fixation of proprietorial rights…
Contract, Work, and Resistance: Boatmen in Early Colonial Eastern India, 1760s–1850s
In the period between the 1760s and the 1850s boatmen were the most important transport workers in early colonial eastern India, at least numerically. Unfortunately, they have received little scholarly attention so far. By looking at the regime of work, which surprisingly had strong bases in the notion of contract from as early as the 1770s, this article explores the nature of work, work organization, and resistance by boatmen. It argues that alt…
Entering the Black Hole: Between ‘mini-England’ and ‘smell-like rotten potato’, the railway workshop town of Jamalpur, 1860s–1940s
Jamalpur came into existence as a railway town in 1862 when India's first locomotive workshops were established there. By studying its history until the 1940s, this article provides a description of a small industrial town that arose from colonial capitalist necessity, but which shared many of the features of colonial urban governmentality. Therefore, a call for greater small town studies, as this article modestly makes, is not based on challengi…
The World of Workers' Politics: Some Issues of Railway Workers in Colonial India, 1918-1922
This paper uses a study of strikes of railway workers in Bihar and Bengal from 1918 to 1922 to set out and examine the complexities of workers' politics. Three broad themes related with workers' politics,viz.racial ideology, actual 'event' of striking and the related activities of workers, and techniques of mobilization have been covered in this paper. In each of these cases, it has been argued that rigid categories like racialism or nationalism …
Genealogies of “Verification”: Policing the Master–Servant Relationship in Colonial and Postcolonial India
Police verification of domestic servants has become standard practice in many cities in contemporary India. However, the regularization of work, which brings domestic servants under protective labour laws, is still a work in progress. Examining a long timespan, this article shows how policing of the servant, through practices of identification and verification, came to be institutionalized. It looks at the history of registration within the large…
Infrastructural governance and social history: Roads in colonial and postcolonial India
This essay combines historiographical overview and reflections on possible future themes to argue that roads are not just physical pathways but are part of social, economic, and political discourses of the time. The relationship between infrastructure and governance and the possibility of writing the social have been shown here by creating a dialogue between the past and present, thus bringing colonial and postcolonial times of South Asia into on…
Tracing Historical Forms of Servitude: Introductory Remarks and Elementary Reflections
History of domestic service in South Asia is beginning to attract scholars but a rich historiography around it is still distant and difficult. The forms of servitude are different across different times, places and contexts. The sources available to scholars for specific sites and moments in history are marked by extreme diversity of language, genre, concerns, and vantage points. Studies based on exploration of particular kinds of texts across di…
Mobility, control and criminality in early colonial India, 1760s–1850s
The article looks into the ways certain mobile groups like the banjaras, gosains, fakirs and sanyasis were ‘criminalised’ by the colonial state between the periods of the 1760s and 1850s. Historiographically, the article argues for looking at the early colonial period more closely than has hitherto been done to understand the changing material and circulatory regimes in which these peripatetic groups operated. Unlike the current historiographical…
The World of Workers' Politics: Some Issues of Railway Workers in Colonial India, 1918-1922
This paper uses a study of strikes of railway workers in Bihar and Bengal from 1918 to 1922 to set out and examine the complexities of workers' politics. Three broad themes related with workers' politics,viz.racial ideology, actual 'event' of striking and the related activities of workers, and techniques of mobilization have been covered in this paper. In each of these cases, it has been argued that rigid categories like racialism or nationalism …
Entering the Black Hole: Between ‘mini-England’ and ‘smell-like rotten potato’, the railway workshop town of Jamalpur, 1860s–1940s
Jamalpur came into existence as a railway town in 1862 when India's first locomotive workshops were established there. By studying its history until the 1940s, this article provides a description of a small industrial town that arose from colonial capitalist necessity, but which shared many of the features of colonial urban governmentality. Therefore, a call for greater small town studies, as this article modestly makes, is not based on challengi…
Fluvial Landscape and the State: Property and the Gangetic Diaras in Colonial India, 1790s-1890s
Looking at the interplay of law and revenue as a means of understanding colonial practices and policies towards diaras, this paper addresses a relatively neglected field in the agrarian-ecological history of South Asia. The constant formation and disappearance of lands due to river shifts raised several issues. Among the most important from the viewpoint of the colonial state were secure revenue extraction and the fixation of proprietorial rights…
Contract, Work, and Resistance: Boatmen in Early Colonial Eastern India, 1760s–1850s
In the period between the 1760s and the 1850s boatmen were the most important transport workers in early colonial eastern India, at least numerically. Unfortunately, they have received little scholarly attention so far. By looking at the regime of work, which surprisingly had strong bases in the notion of contract from as early as the 1770s, this article explores the nature of work, work organization, and resistance by boatmen. It argues that alt…
Infrastructural governance and social history: Roads in colonial and postcolonial India
This essay combines historiographical overview and reflections on possible future themes to argue that roads are not just physical pathways but are part of social, economic, and political discourses of the time. The relationship between infrastructure and governance and the possibility of writing the social have been shown here by creating a dialogue between the past and present, thus bringing colonial and postcolonial times of South Asia into on…
The Idea of Home in a World of Circulation: Steam, Women and Migration through Bhojpuri Folksongs
The historical juncture of the 1840s to 1860s witnessed three developments: first, the introduction of the new means of communication (steamships and railways); second, new industrial and plantation investments in and outside of India, creating demand for labour; and third, the expansion of a print culture that went beyond the urban elite domain to reflect the world of small towns and villages. In this constellation of social, economic, and techn…
Steamboats on the Indus: The Limits of Western Technological Superiority in South Asia, by Clive Dewey
The history of technology and transport in South Asia has followed a set pattern of received wisdom. Western technology, particularly that based on steam—such as steamboats and railways—is automatically considered to be superior. Introduced in the empire, from the start these technologies are presented as instruments of radical institutional change in the fields of economy and culture. As the author of the current book succinctly remarks, ‘[h]ist…
Histories of transport and communication in South Asia: A first review
History of transport and communication has surely entered an exciting phase of research in South Asia. The authors of the select titles as well as others working on related fields have been exploring different facets of, what could broadly be labelled as, “transport and communication” history of South Asia. This review article looks at some of the recent writings in the fields of technology, transport, and railways to map the newness in South Asi…
Genealogies of “Verification”: Policing the Master–Servant Relationship in Colonial and Postcolonial India
Police verification of domestic servants has become standard practice in many cities in contemporary India. However, the regularization of work, which brings domestic servants under protective labour laws, is still a work in progress. Examining a long timespan, this article shows how policing of the servant, through practices of identification and verification, came to be institutionalized. It looks at the history of registration within the large…
Who Is (Not) a Servant, Anyway? Domestic servants and service in early colonial India
The article deals with one of the under-researched themes of Indian history, which is the history of domestic servants. Thinking about servants raises two fundamental questions: who were they and what did domestic service mean? The identities of a servant as a contract wage earner or a person either belonging as a member or tied to the family through fictive/constructed claims of kinship were not mutually exclusive. Servants' identity existed in …
Tracing Historical Forms of Servitude: Introductory Remarks and Elementary Reflections
History of domestic service in South Asia is beginning to attract scholars but a rich historiography around it is still distant and difficult. The forms of servitude are different across different times, places and contexts. The sources available to scholars for specific sites and moments in history are marked by extreme diversity of language, genre, concerns, and vantage points. Studies based on exploration of particular kinds of texts across di…
Domestic Servants and Master-Servant Regulations in Colonial Calcutta, 1750s-1810s
In the Indian historiography of law and labour, master-servant regulations are an under-explored subject. Based on English precedents, these regulations acquired a specifically colonial nature when applied to control labour in the growing city of Calcutta. Questioning the assumed associations of domestic servants with privacy and informality, this article shows that in fact they were unambiguously one of the earliest groups to be regulated. It ap…
Against the Fetishisation of Plural Time: Rethinking Ways of Doing a Social History of Time
From the viewpoint of social history, is time itself a plural entity or are there multiple forms of engagement in and with it? Pivoted around this question, Sinha attempts to rethink the current theory and practice of history writing by pointing the pitfalls of the growing fetishisation of plurality and the ‘plural time’ framework. Engaging a range of studies in History, Anthropology, and Sociology, Sinha provides a critical assessment of some of…
Against the Fetishization of Plural Time: Rethinking Ways of Doing a Social History of Time
Chapter 2 Social-time and Natural-time: Towards Intermeshed Histories
Introduction: Time, temporalities, and social practices in South Asia
Law (13 works) · Political science (13 works) · Law (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · History (10 works) · Colonialism (9 works) · History (7 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (6 works) · Colonial History and Postcolonial Studies (6 works) · Economics (6 works)