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Book reviewsI. B. Watson a , Susan Blackburn b , Samita Sen c , Ira Raja d , Kate Brittlebank b , AnthonyDisney d , Greg Bailey d , I. J. Catanach e , Christopher Snedden d , Linda Hemphill d , RussellHocking d , Maya Catsanis f & Vrinda Mishra ba University of New Englandb Monash Universityc Calcutta Universityd La Trobe Universitye Christchurchf Amnesty International , SydneyPublished online: 08 May 2007.

To cite this article: I. B. Watson , Susan Blackburn , Samita Sen , Ira Raja , Kate Brittlebank , Anthony Disney , Greg Bailey ,I. J. Catanach , Christopher Snedden , Linda Hemphill , Russell Hocking , Maya Catsanis & Vrinda Mishra (1999) Book reviews,South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 22:2, 177-194, DOI: 10.1080/00856409908723370

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South Asia, Vol. XXIII, no. 2 (1999), pp. 177-194

BOOK REVIEWS

Vahe Baladouni and Margaret Makepeace (eds), Armenian Merchants of the Seventeenthand Early Eighteenth Centuries: English East India Company Sources, Transactions of theAmerican Philosophical Society, Vol. 88, pt. 5 (Philadelphia, American PhilosophicalSociety, 1998), xxxvii + 294 pp. US$22.00

This is a most interesting publication for a number of reasons. Not least of these is thewelcome publication of a collection of primary source documents. The theme for thiscollection is the relationship between Armenian merchants and the English East IndiaCompany and its employees in the East. It is to the credit of the American PhilosophicalSociety that it should publish a collection such as this. This action is well worthconsideration and imitation by other academic and professional associations. It is a matterof deep regret that significant collections of documents, on all manner of humanrelationships across time and space, remain in isolated obscurity in so many archives for thewant of compilation by skilled editors and publication by commercial publishers. Evenwhere the necessary knowledge and skill exists, the economics of the exercise deterpublication.

Armenian Merchants is a source book covering the period August 1617 to January1709, the documents coming from the collections in the India Office Records. After a shortbut illuminating preface by Anthony Farrington, Deputy Director of the India OfficeCollections, where the problems of publishing documents are surveyed, ProfessorBaladouni presents a short background to the significance of Armenian merchants in pre-modern Asian history.

Baladouni regards the relationship between the EIC and the Armenian merchantsretailed in these documents as an example of 'an age of competitive partnership' (p. v). TheArmenian community in New Julfa, a suburb of Isfahan in Persia, controlled the silk andcloth markets and the consignment of goods to the European centres through the Levant.The EIC made vigorous efforts to 'break into' this trade. In June 1688, for example, theEIC entered into an agreement between the leading Armenian merchant in New Julfa,Khwaja P'anos K'alant'ar, in London at the time. In return for dealing with the EIC inIsfahan for the bulk of their silk and cloth, the Armenian merchants - and Armenians ingeneral living in Persia and India - were to be granted by the Company a number ofprivileges (pp. xxii-xxiii, 86-90). These privileges were in effect the same as those enjoyedby English merchants. Baladouni might have added that P'anos K'alant'ar was given thespecial personal privilege of the monopoly of the amethyst trade in India, and after him tohis children and descendants, on payment of a ten per cent duty.

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Naturally enough, and especially in the English private trade in India, the official linein London was often circumvented in the Asian localities. Furthermore, the New Julfamerchants saw the problem immediately: allowing the English to become the sole buyerswould inevitably depress prices and returns to the Armenians. They simply did not need theEnglish because they had the proven lines of communications and the capacity to transporttheir goods for sale anywhere. As a result the scheme did not 'take root' (p. xxiii).Nevertheless, on the whole, in practice the 'competitive partnership' between English menand Armenians held up well over time. Both groups found common necessity in India andworked cooperatively while trying to maximise their own returns where possible.

Baladouni proposes a hypothesis to explain the evident success of the Armenianmerchant communities in Asia. His brief survey of Armenian history and the Armeniandiaspora suggests that Armenians operated in a 'rare atmosphere of trust', and this led to'organisational cost savings' and 'organisational innovations' (p. v). He goes on todescribe a number of studies of Armenian commercial infrastructures and their personnel.This is most useful as a guide to prospective researchers. In the process Baladouniencourages scholars to utilise the 'big picture' ideas of Fernand Braudel and raise thequestion whether the Armenian headquarters at New Julfa or the dynamism of 'subsidiarycenters' contributed most to Armenian success.

All this is most illuminating and useful. However, Baladouni refrains fromaddressing directly the nature of the immediate relationship between the EIC and theArmenians. This appears strange in a collection of documents which deals with thisrelationship. One of the difficulties presented by this omission is illustrated by the twodocuments at pages 81 and 82. Here we find the English Council at Surat writing to factorsat Bombay regarding the treatment of an Armenian vessel in 1676. Other records show usthat the background to this incident was Gerald Aungier's energetic support for Armeniansin English settlements. On this occasion he instructed the factors to grant warehousingprivileges to the Armenians along with exemption from anchorage charges and expert helpto repair their leaking ship. The first document (Doc. 104) shows elements of this, butreveals, at this time, that the English were having trouble with Khwaja Minas in Surat andthat as a consequence the work on the ship in Bombay would be held over until furthernotice. That notice was forthcoming two months later (Doc. 105), but also states furtherproblems had arisen over the treatment of the Armenians in Bombay, and that they wereseeking restitution.

This sort of creative tension between the groups can be illustrated again elsewhere, inFort St George-Madras in 1693. The Armenian community in Madras was to beencouraged as a productive and useful element in the trade of the Coromandel Coast (Doc.163). We also know that in 1693 the Fort St George Council reported to London that itcould not maintain the representation of nationalities on the Corporation: the Armeniansalways declined to serve as aldermen. In both the Bombay and Madras examples thepublished documents reveal only parts of the stories and thus give us a distorted picture ofthe relationships. Involved transactions such as these require some explanation, at leastsome editorial comment about the contexts for the individual documents.

Armenian Merchants is a welcome addition to the generally available materials onpre-modern relationships between Europe and Asia. It is not, nor does it pretend to be, acomprehensive collection even within the time-frame selected by the editors, but despite itsobvious limitations in scope and bulk there is enough here to excite interest, stimulate

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imagination, and motivate critical reflection. The American Philosophical Society is to becongratulated for fulfilling a mission central to both good Philosophy and good History.

I. B. WatsonUniversity of New England

Leela Dube, Women and Kinship: Comparative Perspectives on Gender in South andSouth-East Asia (Tokyo, United Nations University Press, n.d.), 214 pp., no price.

It is unusual to see an Asian anthropologist reflecting on the differences in the constructionof gender between the regions of Asia. It is especially unusual to find an Indiananthropologist seriously investigating the gender differences between her region andSoutheast Asia, a part of Asia that rarely receives attention from South Asianists. There are,of course, good reasons for such analysis, since the situation of women in Southeast Asiais markedly better than that in South Asia, not least in terms of their life expectancy andliteracy compared to men.

In her comparison of South and Southeast Asia, the veteran anthropologist LeelaDube shows her grasp of the literature of many countries concerning women. It is avirtuoso performance, ranging across variations in inheritance, management of femalesexuality and bodily processes, the seclusion of women, residence, marriage, nutrition andeducation. Each chapter draws on case studies from particular countries and ethnic andreligious groups.

Given her training, it is perhaps not surprising that in accounting for regionaldifferences Dube singles out one dominant explanatory factor: kinship. She argues that it isthe predominantly bilateral kinship system of Southeast Asia that offers women there somuch more freedom compared with the mainly patrilocal kinship characteristic of countrieslike Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, especially when the latter sets such high value by thepatrilineal joint family. In the Conclusion, she holds up the bilateral kinship system ofSoutheast Asia as a model not just for South Asia but also for the West. She argues thatWestern feminists have come to advocate bilaterality in recent times as part of their strugglefor autonomy and the solidarity of women at war with patriarchy. The gender ideology ofSoutheast Asia, on the other hand, is presented by Dube as part of a different tradition ofbilaterality in which:

Ego-centred family and kinship structures have rendered socialorganisation flexible. Women have been enabled to maintain a fairshare of control over family and community resources. Women canwork independently of men, manage their own and their spouse'sincomes, participate in trade and business, and be efficientproducers in agriculture and agro-based industries (p. 158)

It is clear that she admires the Southeast Asian model of kinship: 'If kinship acts as a bufferin this uncertain and competitive world, the flexibility and existence of choices in bilateralityseem the most promising' (p. 158).

As this language indicates, the subject of the book is one of considerable emotionalimportance to Dube. She feels strongly about the injustices of the South Asian kinshipsystem towards women. The key chapter on residence, for instance, chronicles the sorrowcaused to girls forced to break forever with their natal families on marriage, to be subjected

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to the strict discipline of their husbands' homes. I felt at times that her strong criticisms ofthe South Asian patrilineal system led her to idealise the Southeast Asian alternative. Part ofthe problem is, as Dube is well aware, that one can find ethnic groups in South Asia thatpractice bilaterality and in Southeast Asia that are patrilineal. However the point being madeis that there are different dominant kinship systems in each region, which must go someway to explaining gender differences.

There is nothing simplistic about Dube's argument: she carefully notes the cross-cutting factors of historical change, economics and geography, religious, class andurban/rural differences that must be taken into account along with kinship in explaininggender differences. But the key, in her view, is kinship. At the end, one is impressed by theforcefulness of her argument and the weight of her documentation, but the questionremains: how can a society change from a patrilineal, patrilocal kinship system to a bilateralone if that is what is needed to free women? Will urbanisation and globalisation do thetrick, or will they merely lead South Asia down the Western path instead of what Dubeseems to see as the preferable, more 'natural' Southeast Asian version of bilaterality? Iwould have liked to see Dube address these questions.

Susan BlackburnMonash University

Geraldine Forbes, Women in Modern India (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,1996, Paperback, 1999), pp. 289, $A34.95

Women in Modern India was a great success when published in 1996. Its early issue inpaperback (1999) is testimony of its popularity. It remains virtually the only comprehensivewomen's history of India within a single cover and an essential aid for teachers, students,scholars and researchers of South Asian History. In order to cover the history of thediverse women of a vast sub-continent with different political and cultural regions over aslong a period as a century and a half, the author has had to be selective. She admits as muchand offers us a justification for her selections. She has chosen to 'privilege women's ownaccounts' wherever possible. The emphasis is therefore on women as historical agents.This criterion dominates the structure of the book. It explains the focus on elite women andon the 'public domain'. Only the elite women who were literate left their own accounts andthese were primarily about the public dimension of their activities. There is, however, littleenough of a systematic history of such women and their public affairs for Forbes' efforts tobe most welcome. The author, quite rightly, argues against the tendency to dismiss theachievements of these women on the mere ground of their elite status. In the nineteenth andearly twentieth centuries, even elite women undertook intense and heroic struggles to accessthe opportunities of 'modern' education, employment and public/political activities.

Forbes undermines several commonsensical assumptions about Indian women'shistory. First, she shows that 'sources' while sparse and dispersed are not absent and thatmore comprehensive accounts of women's activities in the 19th and 20th centuries arewaiting to be written. Second, she demolishes the enormously influential thesis of a'Nationalist Resolution' of the Women's Question propounded by Partha Chatterjee.(Chatterjee, 1989) The most remarkable and original contribution of the book are chaptersthree and four on women's organisations and the movement for women's rights. Thesechapters, based on material not much known before, show that far from 'resolving' thewomen's question, nationalism raised a series of unsolvable contradictions from whichnewly educated women began to pose their own critical demands of colonial rulers and

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Indian 'nationalist' leaders. On a third count she offers a revision of received wisdom. Inchapter five on women's role in the nationalist movement, Forbes questions the roleimputed to Gandhi in drawing women into the nationalist movement. Women, she argues,were already there, involved in a plethora of public engagements. 'Feminist demands forequality with men were never fully integrated into the nationalist programme even thoughnationalism was feminised', she concludes (p. 7). This chapter can be read along with thaton the period of transition, both of which draw on original sources and a rich store ofsecondary literature. Together, they offer a specific historical understanding of the uniquelyIndian brand of 'Feminist Nationalism' and the surprisingly wide range of legal,constitutional and political rights won by women on attainment of Independence.

The first two chapters are on social reform and education. These are the two mostrichly documented areas in Indian women's history. There has been considerable debatebetween an 'old' school of 'modernists' who saw reform and education as progressive andgender analysts who wish to place women's 'progress' more firmly within the frameworkof imperial dominance and question the very tropes of modernity set in place by colonialrulers. Forbes, while engaging with and drawing upon such literature, does not allow theirconcerns to dominate. While these chapters are synthesising in that they weave togetherexisting scholarship on different regions, periods and issues, maintaining the focus on'women's own voices' has given them a different and refreshing quality.

Chapters six and eight on women's work and on the women's movement afterIndependence are the weakest. She does say in the introduction that the lack of material wasmost acute on the subject of work, but it is also the case that this chapter shows much lessof the imagination and insight she brings to other social and political questions. Issues ofwork and economic change are not integrated with the larger framework of the book butkept in the 'enclave' of this chapter thereby impoverishing some of her conclusions aboutthe way consequences of social and political transition were gendered. A serious conceptualgap in the chapter is the consideration of elite women's 'work' in a wider definition. Forbeshas reinforced the conventional definition of work as paid employment and dealt only with'professional' elite women. The non-exchange activities of such women, the changingbasket of 'domestic' activities which were included in some earlier work (Borthwick) hasbeen left out. This is also the only chapter which reaches out beyond elite and literatewomen. The potential to explore the lives and experiences of labouring women - and thestrains of their 'voices' that echo through time - is not fully realised. A similar narrownessof focus characterises the last chapter. It is, perhaps of necessity, thinly sketched, offeringonly general trends over four decades in women's political activity. But the inclusion ofsuch a chapter is by itself a novelty given the Indian historians' resistance to cross thecolonial divide. The writing of a history of Indian women's movement since Independenceremains a crying need.

The book is placed firmly within the literature on 'women's history', engaging withquestions of 'feminisms' and patriarchal-imperial dominance and without the current styleor preoccupations of 'gender' as a discursive and analytical category. It is written, theauthor states, in the best tradition of social history and makes no claim to themethodological or the theoretical innovations which these days clutter many scholarlyworks on gender. It makes for clear and pleasurable reading and is useful both for teachingand research. And the book does live up to the 'best' traditions of history-writing. Thehistorical, social and cultural specificities are not once lost in the telling of this story. One ofthe central concerns of the volume is, for instance, to trace the faultlines that develop within

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the 'women's movement' in the 1940s after a heady period of unity and consensus in the1930s when a small group of politically engaged elite women sought to and were given thespace to 'speak' for all Indian women. It is an excellent example of how the term 'women'can be deployed, self-consciously and without lapsing into biologisms.

Samita SenCalcutta University

S. Irudaya Rajan, U. S. Mishra and P. Sankara Sarma, India's Elderly: Burden orChallenge? (New Delhi, Sage Publications, 1999), 356 pp., Rs475

'Burden' and 'challenge' are not necessarily opposed to each other, as the title of this bookseems to imply. The logical fallacy of this opposition, however, is not quite asdisconcerting as the other opposition presumed in the title - that between old people andsociety. According to the book's initial statement of purpose, its target audience is thepolicymaker, who upon being 'enlightened' by the authors would consider 'the needs ofthe elderly and the remedial measures that can be taken for making the aged useful.' Theelderly themselves, as the subject of this conversation between experts, appear to be mute.

Fortunately, the book does not entirely live up to this initial lack-of-promise. Writtenfrom a predominantly demographic perspective, this is a useful book in many ways. Itcontains a lot of helpful information for those interested in the disciplines of gerontology,demography, population studies, sociology, and welfare and public economies. It begins bylooking at current patterns in the aging of the Indian population and attempts a state-wiseprojection of future numbers and proportions of old people. It provides a long list of usefultables derived, where possible, from the latest census figures of 1991. On significantaspects of the study, it makes available data from past censuses, which helps facilitateevaluation and comparison of trends. Chapter two gives an exhaustive list of policies andprograms for the aged, and includes a case study of Kerala.

The two brief chapters on the perceptions and life histories of the elderly are by farthe most interesting. They report findings based on informal discussions with small groupsof elderly people. The discussions bring out how life expectations vary across class andgender and indicate the futility of trying to arrive at a universal phenomenology of aging.The chapter on revaluation of conceptual issues is also useful in that it questions widelyheld assumptions regarding calculation of dependency ratios and the stipulation ofretirement age, amongst others. The final chapter makes some valuable suggestions onmatters of social policy.

While the book is packed with useful information, it does not provide any really newinsight or conclusion. There seems to be no overarching framework, ideological orotherwise, within which the authors attempt to situate the information. The chapter onpolicies, for instance, is largely a re-hash of material discussed and presented in numerousother studies in the past. The various schemes are summarised one by one with no attemptto evaluate their relative success or the lack of it. Chapter three deals with the livingconditions of the elderly, based on the findings of the Aging Survey carried out in fourIndian states. The questionnaire is included in the book and seems fairly exhaustive. But asis true of the rest of the book, mechanical tabulation of findings is followed by descriptionsthat lack any insightful interpretations.

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Lack of imagination is not the only problem with this study. Conceptual problemsoccur as well, for instance, when the authors argue that a decline in the six and above sizedhousehold indicates a decline in the joint family. This simplistic correlation betweenhousehold size and family type is problematic in a context where joint family is notnecessarily determined by joint residence.

Interesting findings emerge from the survey, but the authors neither seek to explainthem nor explore the implications thereof. For instance, according to the findings of theNational Sample Survey, between 1986-87 the number of males living alone was twelvetimes higher than that of females. The Aging Survey carried out in 1993 registers a reversetrend: the number of females living alone is six times that of males. This curiousdiscrepancy between the findings of the two surveys, over a period of less that six years,warrants no comment from the authors. In this, as in other instances, the book does indicatefuture lines of enquiry. But evidently, there is a need to look beyond statistics and samplesurvey methodology if meaningful generalisations are to be derived from such an exercise.

Ira RajaLa Trobe University

Niels Brimnes, Constructing the Colonial Encounter: Right and Left Hand Castes in EarlyColonial South India (Richmond, Surrey, Curzon, 1999), Nordic Institute of AsianStudies, Monograph No. 81, viii + 280 pp., appendices, bibliography, index, n.p.g.

One of the more interesting historical features of South Indian social structure is the notionof left and right hand castes. The origins of the division are debated but it can be traced asfar back as the eleventh century; by the late nineteenth century, however, its importance haddeclined. Found in Tamil-, Telugu- and Kannada-speaking areas, as the author of thishighly readable study notes it was a rather fluid distinction. It is not always clear to whichdivision a particular caste belonged: affiliation could differ between localities, allegiancescould be switched, castes could claim neutrality. Nor were relations between the twounchanging. They appear to have become increasingly disputatious from the Vijayanagaraperiod onwards, culminating in particularly violent clashes in the colonial port settlementsduring the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It is upon these later conflicts, whichusually revolved around the public display of honours, that Niels Brimnes' book focuses.

Based on the author's Cambridge University doctoral thesis, the book is an analysisof the impact of the colonial encounter on South Indian social structure and the dynamics ofthat encounter, especially in terms of the decline in significance of the left and right handdivisions. Engaging with the work of such scholars as Arjun Appadurai, Eugene Irschickand Nicholas Dirks, through six case studies of particular conflicts in the Europeansettlements of Madras, Tranquebar and Pondicherry, Brimnes argues that, rather than thedevelopment of a one-sided, hegemonic discourse, the colonial encounter was essentially adialogue between the Europeans and the indigenous inhabitants. In the creation of an imageof a 'traditional' India which was 'stable and harmonious', both parties participated.

Early interaction between the two was characterised by differing expectations. In thestudies of Madras 1700-20 and Tranquebar in the 1780s, Brimnes' view is that theconflicts were aggravated by the Indians' desire that the British and Danish act like 'littlekings' and exercise their authority in ending the disputes, while the Europeans attempted topractise a policy of non-intervention. During these conflicts, it was the caste elites who

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were the main protagonists. By the 1780s in Madras, however, the power structures hadchanged and they remained aloof, their position in local society superseded by thedubashis. From the end of the eighteenth century, rapid British territorial expansionresulted in dramatic changes in their relationships with the local Indians, with increasingbureaucratisation undermining the prevailing system of patron-client relations.

One of the strengths of this book is the use of the Danish material relating toTranquebar to provide a comparative context to the study, particularly in relation to theBritish settlement at Madras. Tranquebar remained a colonial backwater well into thenineteenth century. Consequently, as late as 1822 when a major clash between the left andright hand divisions occurred, both Danish and local Indian attitudes towards conflict hadlittle changed. Whereas the 'Indian voices' in Madras by this time had been considerablyweakened, here they were still strong enough to influence Danish responses to the dispute.In Madras Indian voices were becoming increasingly marginalised, although, as the authorpoints out, change was slower in rural areas away from the colonial centre.

While some of Brimnes' findings might be disputed, this is nonetheless a fascinatingstudy of change during the early colonial period in South India. Meticulously researchedand documented, it is well written and ultimately persuasive in its thesis. It presentscomplex issues in a straightforward style and does not obfuscate by over-emphasisingtheory - the author allows the material to speak for itself. Its accessibility is aided by aglossary and the useful appendix, 'Castes and Caste Names'. The flow of the discussion isperhaps slowed by the sole digression to British-occupied Pondicherry in 1794, but this isa minor criticism. All in all, this is a very fine study and one that is an important andwelcome addition to the steadily growing literature on both the history of caste and the earlycolonial encounter in South India.

Kate BrittlebankMonash University

Michael N Pearson, Port Cities and Intruders: The Swahili Coast, India, and Portugal inthe Early Modern Era (Baltimore and London, the John Hopkins University Press, 1998),202 pp.

Any reader who takes up this book hoping for an informed and readable introduction to therich and colourful history of the East African coast will not be disappointed. Five chapters,totalling a succinct 160 pages, successively set the parameters of the study, locate theSwahili within their maritime context, analyse the relationship first of the port cities with theAfrican interior, and of East Africa with the world economy, examine the intrusion of thePortuguese in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and finally draw together a range ofreflections and conclusions. The result is not only an illuminating portrait of early modernEast Africa, but a valuable contribution to the history of that part of the Indian Oceanbordered by Africa, Arabia, and western India, which Pearson calls the 'Afrasian Sea'.Pearson, long an acknowledged authority on the Indian Ocean trading system, andespecially western India, demonstrates here that he has now substantially mastered thehistoriography of the Swahili coast. While his scholarship is sure, it is also unpretentious -and the book is gracefully written, and highly readable.

Unlike other Africans, the early modern Swahili were urban and Muslim, and hadstrong maritime links with foreigners. But Pearson insists that, while Islam was the greatunifying force of the Swahili coast, the Swahili people themselves were not the descendants

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of Muslim colonists from overseas. They were, and are, thoroughly African - today asensitive point, given the inclination in some quarters to brand them as outsiders, with allthe political liabilities that implies. Nevertheless, in the wake of Pearson's analysis, basicand tantalising questions about the identity of the Swahili still remain. What was it thatmade them a coherent people, if indeed that is what they were ? What did being a Swahilimean to the Swahili themselves, and what did the Swahili living on the northern coast ofKenya, say, have in common with those living hundreds of miles away in Mozambique, oreven Inhambane? Perhaps these are questions for a different kind of book.

According to Pearson, the Portuguese authorities had 'vast aspirations' for theSwahili coast. They wanted to expel Muslim traders, and control the region's tradethemselves - a trade which previously had always been free. They also wanted to seize thesources of Mutapa gold production, believing erroneously that the gold came from largecentral mines, and they sought to convert the Mutapa ruler, and render him a Portuguesepuppet. Several times they attempted to plant official Portuguese colonies in theMozambique interior. But ultimately - despite a few fleeting successes, and despiteconquering or sacking at one time or another most of the coastal cities, and establishingforts at Mozambique, Sofala, and Mombasa - in all these formal objectives they eithersubstantially or entirely, (and, Pearson adds, 'fortunately'), failed. However, they did linkthe Swahili coast for the first time politically to the external world, and perhaps weakenedits links with Islam. They introduced new agricultural products, including tobacco, sweetpotatoes, pineapples — and, what was eventually to prove of huge importance (thoughPearson surprisingly does not stress it), maize. A few Portuguese penetrated deep into dieinterior, and it was in fact at the individual and informal level, at which behaviour wasusually much less aggressive, that the Portuguese achieved their greatest success.Portuguese 'transfrontiersmen' intermarried with local African women, associated withMuslim traders on a pragmatically friendly basis, and to a considerable degree acculturatedinto local society. Those adopting such an approach 'succeeded' while the attempts todominate 'failed'. In the end, the Portuguese simply fitted into this, as into other parts of theIndian Ocean trading world, like the preceding external ethnic groups - Shirazis, Jews,Armenians, etc. - and never really represented a 'more advanced civilisation'.

Given Pearson's background as a distinguished Indianist, it is not surprising that heshould feel drawn to making comparisons between the Swahili coast and the trading worldof India, and that he should emphasise the strong links between them. Nor, given hisdeclared admiration for the ideas of Wallerstein, is it surprising that he should attempt toexamine these links in terms of World System analysis. Thus the Swahili cities are herepresented as classic 'semi-peripheries' in an Indian Ocean World System of which Indiaitself was the 'core'. Though the profits of their ivory, gold, and cloth trades were huge, therelationship was not exploitative, as trade between East Africa and India was determined byrelative values rather than comparative advantage. But Indian, and particularly Gujarati,capital and commercial expertise were the rocks on which this trade rested. They maintainedtheir importance, throughout the era of the Portuguese presence in the sixteenth century.

While there is now a growing historiography in English on Mozambique, with thework of Malyn Newitt in particular showing the way, and also a number of monographs onthe northern Swahili coast, Pearson's book is the first serious attempt in recent times towrite an overall history of the entire region - and to do so reflectively and analytically,rather than following the established chronological and descriptive approach favoured by

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most traditional histories of this region. The result is a clear, stimulating and thought-provoking work of scholarship, that may be read with both pleasure and profit.

Anthony DisneyLa Trobe University

Frank J. Korom (ed.), Constructing Tibetan Culture. Contemporary Perspectives, WorldHeritage Studies on Transnationalism and Multiculturalism (World Heritage Press, Quebec,1997), pp. viii, 230, n.p.g.

Construction and constructing, understood as intellectual practice and a defining feature ofculture as process, have been focussed upon intensely over the past twenty years as part ofthe post-modern project to define and analyse all of the codes operative in contemporaryWestern cultures. Should it be surprising that the book under review continues this projectby focussing on Tibet? Hardly, given the immense interest Westerners have shown inimaging, if not imagining, Tibet during much of the twentieth century. Accordingly, whilstthe subject of this book is Tibetan culture, it is primarily about certain Western attitudes toTibet and the commodification of Tibet over the past two decades. Korom writes 'Theaccelerated attempt to collect, study, analyse, promote, commodify, and defend Tibetanculture may be linked with what Arjuna Appadurai ... terms the "aesthetics ofdecontextualization," which provides added currency to cultural objects and ideas wrenchedfrom their original habitats only to reappear in new and often unlikely contexts' [Citing A.Appadurai, 'Commodity and the Politics of Value.' in A. Appadurai (ed.), The Social Lifeof Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, (CUP, London, 1986, p. 28)]. Whilst thiskind of decontextualisation is hardly new, there can be no doubt that the impression of itsoccurrence has been exacerbated over the last two decades due to the mania for post-modernists to find 'difference' everywhere they look. Moreover, it should be no surprisethat Tibet and its spirituality has become an object both of Western gaze and the inevitablecommodification resulting from this. Tibet, a unitary phenomenon for the subjectsdescribed in the present book, represents an intellectual and spiritual essence for all thosesouls whose alienation from their perceived materialism of the West is so profound. Nomatter that for them the actual history of Tibet over the past ten centuries, its economic andsocial organisation, preserved features that many of its present day admirers would callexploitative, or that Tibetan Buddhism was always as much ritual as meditation. For themthe vision of an unsullied Other is all important.

In part this book is about the nature of this vision. If it were just this its value wouldlie only in its capacity to chronicle certain New Age reactions to a culture that over the pastthirty-five years has been, especially through the activity of the Dalai Lama, attempting tomake selected aspects of itself known to a Western audience. However, it goes beyond thisby turning its own analytic thrust right around. The second half of the book contains threearticles dealing with how Tibetans in exile have come to terms both with their ownexperience of exile and the problems encountered in locating themselves in a hybridposition between a changed Tibetan culture and various Western cultures that hold out suchdemonstrative expectations for these Tibetans. The paradigm for the three studies in thissection are defined by Keila Diehl in the following passage where she contextualises thecultural constraints in which contemporary Tibetan rock music is staged in Dharamsala.

These concerts provide a new way for Tibetan residents ofDharamsala to come together as a community, often generating

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moments of deeply felt solidarity. However, these events have alsorevealed that maintaining the oppositional stance to 'otherness'institutionalized by the dominant Tibetan exilic paradigm of culturalpreservation and residential isolation now involves opposing oneanother, as various 'foreign' practices and ideas - such as delightin Hindi love songs - have inevitably become incorporated into thelives of most refugees (p.123, her emphasis).

She explores the tension between assimilation and 'exilic cultural preservation' thatemerges from the efforts of the Yaks, a contemporary Tibetan band, in their attempt merelyto survive as musicians in the Tibetan community in exile. In the next article Clare Harrisexplores the same theme from a different perspective: how a contemporary Tibetan artist,Gongkar Gyatso, who was trained as a painter in Lhasa and Beijing - where he was taughttechniques and style reflecting European and Chinese concerns — encounters problemsmaintaining a traditional Tibetan style when he moved to Dharmasala in 1992. Living in theTibetan community in exile he encountered pressures to conform with traditional Tibetanthangka painting as a requirement for an exilic group striving to maintain its traditionalidentity in difficult circumstances. The final essay in this section is a chronicle, by Maryvan Dyke, of a Tibetan foundation ritual for an institute for Tibetan refugees in Switzerland.

Although I personally prefer the essays in the second section, insofar as they dealwith real Tibetans, the essays in the first section do reveal an extensive knowledge ofcontemporary Western scholarly and popular writing about Tibetan culture. In their attemptto unravel the codes defining the precise Western gaze at Tibet over the past one hundredyears, they are successful. But I am still left with the nagging feeling that scholars whocentre their critique on post-modern theories of culture are themselves searching for somekind of objective truth lying behind all human fragmentation and imperfection.

Greg BaileyLa Trobe University

Oliver Mendelsohn and Marika Vicziany, The Untouchables: Subordination, Poverty andthe State in Modern India (Cambridge University Press, Contemporary South Asia series,no. 4, 1998), 289 pp., npg

This study, Oliver Mendelsohn and Marika Vicziany tell us, did not begin with thephenomenon of the 'Untouchables'. (They argue in favour of the continuing use of theword.) Their enquiry began, rather, with the problem of agrarian violence in Bihar. 'Aparticular problem', we are told, 'led backwards and sideways.' Finally a book has emerged.It is a book in which the path, while cutting through a great deal of material, sometimestakes unexpected turns. But this study displays the wide-ranging interests and above all theempathy of its authors extremely well, and its judgments are nuanced and almost alwaysconvincing.

The problem 'led backwards': Mendelsohn and Vicziany are perceptive on, forexample, the 'Orientalising' activities of British Census officials and others in connectionwith the Untouchables, on the 'highly defined moment' of the Poona Pact of 1932, and onthe personality of Dr Ambedkar. But our authors seem to this historian-reviewer to beinclined towards over-simplification when, near the beginning of the book, they speak of'the incursion of the "Aryans" who migrated from Europe'. It is a pity, too, that the writers

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apparently could not take account of the newish work of Nandini Gooptu and SekharBandyopadhyay on the earlier twentieth century.

On the more recent decades Mendelsohn and Vicziany have certainly moved'sideways', well beyond Bihar. They have done fieldwork in, amongst other places, Kerala,Karnataka and the Faridabad stone quarries near Delhi. They have burrowed deeply andremarkably fruitfully in the Reports of the Commissioner for Scheduled Castes andScheduled Tribes. And they have conducted a series of very telling interviews with the newbreed of Dalit state-level leaders who, at least in the North, have in the nineties done muchto change the face of Indian politics. Apparently no female Dalit politician could beinterviewed. In fact, there is not a great deal on modern Dalit women in this volume. Yeteven in the 1960s there were hints in some of the work of Pauline Kolenda that, when itcame to life and death matters, Untouchable women had views that were both differentfrom those of caste Hindus and different from those of some of their own menfolk.

So far, the ruthlessly-calculating, UP-based, Untouchable politician, Kanshi Ram, hasnot been especially successful in making the Indian politician's version of a 'sideways'move across state borders. Mendelsohn and Vicziany find that in West Bengal Kanshi Ram'failed to cut into the prevailing ideology constructed out of class.' Yet caste has not reallybeen forgotten in Marxist West Bengal; land reform there has not been allowed greatly toalleviate the lot of the landless labourers, of whom many are Untouchable. Together withRoss Mallick, our authors remind us of the many ambivalences of Jyoti Basu'sgovernment.

Mendelsohn and Vicziany believe, in fact, that throughout India ambivalence hasbeen the mark of most moves since Independence in respect of the Untouchables. In anexceptionally strong final chapter, and elsewhere in the book, the authors make it clear that,so far as Untouchability is concerned, 'the new civic culture is pragmatic and superficialrather than transformational'. That is certainly not to say that nothing has been achieved:teachers now generally see to it that children are not segregated in school, andcompensatory discrimination has given Untouchables university places and governmentjobs. The authors paint a memorable picture of an Untouchable boatman in Kerala, readinghis newspaper while waiting for custom. Let nobody make the mistake of treating him asless than an 'ordinary person': he is a 'citizen of a modern democracy'. But Untouchablesoften still have some difficulty in holding their own in the IAS; in the towns they still havegreat trouble obtaining employment in the higher levels of the private sector. Moregenerally, there is still the perception in India that many Untouchables, especially in thevillages, are dirty, drunken, lacking in ambition and - to quote one of our authors'informants, himself a member of the new Untouchable elite - frequently attached to 'somenon-veg god'.

Paradoxically, it often seems that Untouchables in contemporary India meet with themost objections when they take the initiative and attempt to remove the material basis forsuch a stereotype. Mendelsohn and Vicziany are clear that 'much of the violence sufferedby Untouchables represents a bitter outpouring of cumulative resentment' by caste Hindusagainst the growth of Untouchable 'resistance'. Sometimes, of course, this Untouchable'resistance' is itself violent; more often, electoral politicians such as Ms Mayawati in UPmake it seem, at least for a time, 'as if the world was stood on its head1. But one suspectsthat amongst caste Hindus, especially in the rural areas, resentment against Untouchables ispart of a broader malaise, well captured by Susan Wadley in a fairly recent anthropological

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study: so many of the old 'cultural blueprints' are going, and people do not like it. Is itpossible, one must ask, that even in the villages such a malaise might at times be as easilydirected against Muslims as it is against Untouchables? We are back, at least to someextent, with the 'big' problem - the problem of agrarian violence - with which Mendelsohnand Vicziany started out in this most thought-provoking book.

I. J. CatanachChristchurch

Ijaz Hussain, Kashmir Dispute. An International Law Perspective (Islamabad, NationalInstitute of Pakistan Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University, Pakistan, 1998), 309 pp. Price:US$25, Pakistan Rs450.

In the Introduction to this book, Ijaz Hussain states that while there have been a number ofpolitical and historical studies of the Kashmir dispute, the legal perspective has largely beenignored. His book, he claims, ' ... attempts to fill this huge gap by approaching theperspective in a professional, dispassionate and exhaustive manner' (p. 1).

The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993)defines dispassionate as '[fjree from the influence or effect of strong emotion; calm;impartial' (p. 952). Hussain's book is certainly unemotional and calm. However, it is notimpartial. Hussain either puts the case for Pakistan as to why India's stance in the Kashmirdispute is legally wrong or he attempts to debunk India's existing case. As a result, India'sarguments get only a cursory 'hearing', something surprising for an author so seeminglywell versed in the law and, presumably, the concept of a fair trial.

Despite this major shortcoming, Hussain does shed some legal 'light' on the Kashmirdispute in the form of various related judgements and opinions. He does this by discussingfour 'Questions': the Question of Accession (Chapter II), the Question of Aggression(Chapter III), the Question of Self-Determination (Chapter IV) and the Question of theUnited Nations Resolutions (Chapter V). These follow his first chapter which puts TheDispute in Historical Context'. The book concludes by discussing the question of whetheror not the dispute ' ... can be approached from a juridical angle for conflict resolution' (p.234). Hussain concludes that it should be submitted ' ... to the World Court for judicialsettlement or for arbitration by an arbitral body (p. 234)'. But, as Hussain indicates, neitherIndia nor Pakistan, for various reasons, want this to happen.

The book also deals with the most recent international aspect of the Kashmir dispute:the UN Security Council's attempt in 1996 to permanently delete Kashmir from itsAgenda. On this matter, the author makes a startling prediction that"... once the item onJammu and Kashmir is deleted, it may become quite difficult to put it on the Council'sagenda, particularly once India gets the seat on the UN Security Council as a permanentmember' (p. 219). Does Hussain know something we don't know?

There are a number of minor problems with this book. For example, not allquotations are sourced (p. 12); some of them vary in their punctuation (compare the samequotes on p. 10 and p. 253); Hussain cannot decide whether India's Prime Minister wasPundit or Pandit Nehru. Two of the book's good points, however, are its extensivebibliography and the 14 appendixes it contains. These range from the Pakistan-KashmirStandstill Agreement of August 1947 to the Kashmir Accord of February 1975 betweenIndira Gandhi and Sheikh Abdullah.

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Another problem the book has is its lack of a glossary of legal terms. In hisIntroduction, Hussain says his book ' ... targets a wide variety of people, particularlyacademics, diplomats and intelligent laymen' (p. 1). But let the book buyer beware!Hussain's concept of 'wide' is limited to those people with a great grip of Latin and Frenchlegal terms, with which the book is freely laced. Few explanations for these terms aregiven.

Overall, the book is as a useful guide to how Pakistan could debunk India's variouslegal positions on the complex, long running and emotive Kashmir dispute which ' ... eventoday rouses unbridled passions' (p. 118). But, given its major bias, it may only interestadversarial subcontinental advocates, international lawyers and those learned in Latinlegalese.

Christopher SneddenLa Trobe University

The Lethbridge Collection Preliminary Catalog. Satyajit Ray Film and Study Collection atUniversity of California, Santa Cruz (Santa Cruz, University of California, 1999), 53 pp.

Not long before his death in 1992 Satyajit Ray spoke in support of Professor Dilip Basu'sidea for a Ray Film and Study Collection (FASC), part of the brief of which would be torestore Ray's films. The twelve member advisory council for the Ray FASC now includesSonia Gandhi, Professor Tapan Raychaudhuri and Martin Scorsese. In May this year theRay FASC co-sponsored Sarira, a conference held at University of California, SantaCruz, during which Sandip Ray, Satyajit's son welcomed the addition to the collection of agift from Australian Mr. Cuthbert Lethbridge of Melbourne.

In his preface to The Lethbridge Collection Preliminary Catalogue, Professor Basudescribes this gift as 'the most comprehensive collection that exists on Satyajit Ray' (p.2). Indeed this valuable resource contains over 1000 items of books, journals and audiovisual materials as well as ephemera and miscellaneous items of interest to any Rayenthusiast or researcher.

As the catalogue to the collection develops from its present preliminary stage it willincorporate the fifty-odd books in the related books area into other parts. These include asection on English publications on or by Ray or including pieces on or by him numberingone hundred and fifty as well as reprints and new editions. The section on books publishedin Bengali contains roughly one hundred volumes. Then there are over sixty volumespublished in Gujurati, Hindi, Malayalam, Marathi, Finnish, French, German, Italian,Spanish, Japanese and Sinhalese. The collection truly reflects the world interest in the filmsand writings of Satyajit Ray.

Journals in which Ray wrote or was featured in come from Australia, Britain,Canada, Holland, France, Hong Kong and India. These total over 600 and the earliest isdated 1956, a year after Ray made his first film Pother Panchali. As well there are dozensof film festival programmes, film society publications, exhibition booklets and tributes fromall over the world. It is perhaps a pity that newspaper clippings are saved in scrapbooksrather than preserved in complete newspapers which would have given an absorbingglimpse into the wider concerns of society at the time, for example when Ray made his visit

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to Australia in the mid '60s. However, considering the size of the collection space musthave been at a premium.

The collection holds over three dozen cassettes, CDs, records and videos. There arealso albums of film stills and film posters including an enormous French one for LaGrande Ville (Mahanagar) which oddly has Anil Chatterjee's head scowling in theforeground while the lovely Madhabi Mukherjee stands small in the background. Includedin the collection are valuable lists of holdings on Ray in libraries and other collectionsaround the world. There are also first day stamp covers celebrating Ray and one designedby Ray. Other ephemera are cards signed by Ray. The 1989 letter from Ray to Mr.Lethbridge was possibly the hardest piece with which to part.

This valuable collection was eagerly sought by University of California at Santa Cruzand obtained for a peppercorn consideration after Lethbridge was unable to find anAustralian University prepared to devote the necessary catalogue and storage resources.The loss is a sad blow for Indian studies in Australia although there are plans to makeavailable select items on the internet in the future.

Linda HemphillLa Trobe University

Arthur G. Rubinoff, The Construction of a Political Community: Integration and Identity inGoa (New Delhi, Sage Publications, 1998), 174 pp. Rs295 (Cloth)

In an age where the fracturing of states under the pressure of ethnic conflicts has againbecome common place, Professor Rubinoff s monograph is a timely reassessment of theprocess by which the ex-Portuguese enclave of Goa was successfully integrated into theIndian Union. Integration, according to Rubinoff, is the process by which actors fromdistinct political systems are 'expected to shift their loyalties, expectations, and politicalactivities towards a new centre whose institutions demand or possess jurisdiction over thepre-existing units' (p. 20). However, in many of the post-colonial states that process ismade difficult by the existence of numerous social cleavages that threaten to undermine'national' integration. By examining Goa's incorporation into the Indian Union, Rubinoffseeks to illuminate the factors that facilitate the successful integration of culturally diversesegments into a larger political entity.

After discussing the patterns of integration between India and Goa prior to 1961 andthe events leading up to India's military takeover of the colony in December of that year,Rubinoff goes on to consider the pattern of politics that emerges in the region. He arguesthat in the initial stages, after the annexation by India, Goan electoral politics took on acommunal character. Each of the two regional political parties drew its support from one ofthe two major religious communities, and the secularism of Congress found little support inthe ex-colony. According to Rubinoff, it was not until issues of regional importance hadbeen largely resolved, in particular whether Goa would be merged into the adjoining stateof Maharashtra or retain its separate identity within the Indian federation, that issues ofgovernment policy and performance began to take precedence over communal identity inthe region's politics. It was only then, he argues, that Congress was able to make inroadsinto the region and further national integration.

Rubinoffs narrative account of post annexation politics draws heavily onmodernisation theories that posit the attenuation of ethnic identity, as 'modern' political

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institutions foster new forms of political identity and behaviour. According to his account,the introduction of competitive democratic politics to Goa politicised existing socialcleavages in the short term, but their significance, was gradually muted through thedemocratic accommodation of cultural difference in the federal structures of the IndianUnion. As such, 'national polities', measured by the electoral presence of Congress, waseventually able to displace the sectarian politics of the early period. In theory, Goa hadmade the transition to a 'modern' political system and was well on its way to beingsuccessfully integrated into the Indian Union.

However, Rubinoff s account, like the theory on which it is based, is too limited togive an adequate understanding of contemporary Goan politics. Even in his own account,there is much to suggest that the transformation from 'communal' to 'modern', or 'national',politics has not been as straight forward or as complete as he asserts. For example, hischaracterisation of initial post-annexation politics as sectarian overstates the case. Votingpatterns in the first assembly contest reveal no direct correlation between caste or religiousidentity and party support; the Indian National Congress, supposedly the party of BrahminHindus, received 16.72 per cent of the vote (p. 90) even though Brahmin Hindusconstituted only approximately 6 per cent of the population, (pp. 36-7) It is also possible toargue that the eventual electoral success of Congress in the region had less to do with theinstitutional accommodation of cultural diversity, than with the collapse of the United GoanParty and the ability of Congress to draw former UGP leaders and their supporters into theorganisation.

In general, Rubinoff relies too heavily on the sociological theory of modernisation heseeks to investigate. Too little attention is given to the effect that political leaders andorganisations have on the prevailing pattern of politics. The growth of Congress support inGoa should not be interpreted as the triumph of 'national' politics over its 'communal' rival,and the transition to a 'modern' politics in which ethnicity is no longer salient. Ethnicidentity, even in the 'modern' world, remains a valuable political resource. Indian politicians,including Congress ones, realise its utility in mobilising electoral support. It may have beenlargely absent from Goan elections in recent times, but the decisions and strategies ofpolitical leaders could easily reverse that trend. Indeed, given the effect that integration intoIndia has had on Goa and Goan identity in recent years, it may not be long before issues ofidentity are once again at the forefront of the region's politics.

Russell HockingLa Trobe University

Children in South Asia: securing their rights (Amnesty International, Sydney, 1998), 53pp., $A5, Index no. ASA 04/01/98

This report highlights the human rights abuses suffered by one-fifth of the world's children— the children of South Asia. Like all of Amnesty International's reports, it was publishedto accompany a global campaign to stop the pattern of violation and impunity. Theresounding message of the report is that respect for the human rights of children is vital toany society's future health and prosperity, and the region can expect a grim future if theabuse is allowed to continue.

The report does not claim to be a comprehensive account of the human rights abusesof children in South Asia but it does stretch the boundaries of Amnesty International's

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mandate by going beyond civil and political rights to discuss issues such as child labourand sexual slavery.

The first chapter discusses children in custody; torture, unfair trials, corporalpunishment and the death penalty. Not only do security officials torture children in custody,the system in which they work rarely holds them accountable and too often justice is notserved. This occurs despite the fact that many countries in South Asia have ratified theConvention on the Rights of the Child that set standards for the treatment of children incustody.

The second chapter touches on the more familiar South Asian human rights issues ofbonded labour, child trafficking and sexual slavery. The third chapter ventures into the areaof children in armed conflict with such issues as the recruitment of children into the LTTEand landmines.

Predictably, Amnesty International's conclusion rests on a set of recommendations togovernments, armed opposition groups, SAARC, and the international community. Theorganisation advocates awareness and pressure for change from all sides for the future ofchildren in South Asia.

From the outset, there is a distinctly emotional tone to the report - something that israrely found in an Amnesty International publication. The researchers who put this reporttogether have delivered the cold hard facts while at the same time sending out a broadermessage about the future of the region.

Maya CatsanisAmnesty International, Sydney

John Robert Shotton, Learning and Freedom : Policy, Pedagogy and Paradigms in IndianEducation and Schooling (New Delhi, Sage Publications, 1998), 209 pp., Rs295 (cloth),Rs175 (paper)

This book constitutes an examination of the failures of educational policy in India, andargues for new directions in educational thinking. In his preface Shotton explores the keyaspects of these failures, which he identifies as the excessive government funding to highereducation, the inequality in the educational structure in terms of opportunity anddevelopment and the absence of a learning system that encourages the development ofpersonal and collective freedom in India.

The book is divided into four chapters. The first chapter contains a detaileddiscussion on what education really stands for and what its benefits are. He then goes on tomake extensive use of statistical data to reveal that despite the increase in the literacy ratefrom 19.7 per cent in 1951 to 52.1 per cent in 1991, the number of total illiterates in thecountry has actually increased and that the traditionally disadvantaged sections of thepopulation - women, minorities, scheduled castes and scheduled tribes - are still, by andlarge, deprived of education. He argues that this problem can be remedied only by arethinking of existing paradigms for educational development.

In the second chapter he offers a critical analysis of educational discourse in Indiaranging from the Guru Shishya Parammpara in the Vedic Age to the present times andsuggests a new educational paradigm where the entire concept of education is de-

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institutionalised and a fresh curriculum devised with new components such as sexeducation and political education. He pleads for a new 'community based' approach toeducation with the increasing use of media as a transmitter of knowledge and theestablishment of alternative or unconventional schools which are open to anyone and for asmuch time in a day as is possible.

In chapter three, he looks into the working of a number of successful educationalmodels and projects both in India and in other developing countries like Tanzania andPapua New Guinea in order to examine how common concerns and issues are tackled indifferent developing societies. The purpose of this exercise is to obtain working models forthe new educational approach suggested earlier.

In his final chapter the author concludes optimistically that the structural changestaking place in the Indian economy are bound to have a positive impact on educationalpolicy. He also describes the factors that he believes will force this change.

The book is important in that it not only provides a detailed and comprehensiveanalysis of the ills that plague the educational system in India but also suggests measuresto remedy it. It is a well argued book and more importantly, an optimistic one. It is a worthyaddition to the growing collection of books on the educational system in India. It willinterest those in the field of education, development studies and pedagogy.

Vrinda MishraMonash University

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