Reconfiguring colonial hierarchies

Examining the ‘European versus native wrestling’ debate in the late nineteenth-century India

Bibliographic Data

ID8960899
AuthorsAjay Jacob Thomas (Department of History, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of DelhiThe Indian Economic and Social History Review, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume59
Issue2
Pages171-198
Publication date2022-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Indian Economic & Social History Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0019-4646 • E-ISSN: 0973-0893
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/00194646221085367
OpenAlexW4226441396
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited45

The ‘empire’ as a project has always been fraught with tensions across several dimensions. And that tension is evident in the relationship between the ‘coloniser’ and the ‘colonised’ throughout the social, political and economic spectrum. At times, many of these tensions spill over in interesting ways at the most unexpected moments revealing lesser-known dimensions of the colonial relations. The 1891 wrestling match between the English Champion wrestler Tom Cannon and the Maharajah of Jodhpur’s court wrestler, Karim Bux in Calcutta, the British Indian capital, was one such moment. This article is an attempt to demonstrate how wrestling matches between a European and a native could become a flash point that it became, among other things, an occasion for the natives to question the ‘superiority’ of Europeans

Ancient history · British Empire · Capital (architecture · Champion · Colonialism · Empire · Genealogy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · History · Law · Philippine History and Culture · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts · Sports, Gender, and Society

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