Sources of Indian Traditions: Modern India, Pakistan and Bangladesh

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

About the Book

Sources of Indian Traditions is an indispensable and essential selection of primary readings on the social, intellectual, and religious history of India from the decline of Mughal rule in the eighteen century to today. It details the advent of the East India Company, British colonization, the struggle for liberation, the partition of 1947, and the creation of Pakistan, Bangladesh, and contemporary India.

Divided thematically, it begins with a chapter on eighteenth-century intellectual and religious trends that set the stage for India's modern development. Nineteenth-century debates over social reform, featuring the leaders of reform and revival movements, follow. Chapters on Gandhi and his reception both nationally and abroad, and different perspectives on and approaches to partition, precede a section devoted to the drafting of the Indian constitution, the rise of nationalism, the influence of Western thought, the conflict in Kashmir, nuclear proliferation, minority religions, secularism, and the role of the Indian political left.

The last two sections portray Pakistan and its struggle for national identity, and Bangladesh and the controversies over' the fruits of freedom.

Preface

This third edition of the Sources of Indian Traditions represents a much greater departure from the second edition (published in 1988) than the second did from the first edition (published in 1958). When the second edition was initially undertaken, the ideological shifts in the study of South Asia that were brought about by postcolonial scholarship and the Subaltern Studies Collective, had not yet solidified. The second edition therefore updated the first by adding new translations, including some readings representing a non-Brahmanical standpoint, and by consulting American scholars of South Asia for input. No major rethinking of the organization of the two volumes was deemed necessary.

Since the late 1980s, mammoth changes in and enrichments of our understanding of South Asian history and historiography have occurred-some of which challenge the very conception of a "sourcebook" itself, for its privileging of certain viewpoints, assuming the primacy of texts (often religious), and perforce omitting considerations of historical context. Further criticisms of the second edition of the Sources included its implied divide between the premodern and the modern, mirrored in the distinction between the two volumes, such that religion was made to represent the premodern and politics the modern; the limited nature of some of the selections; the overrepresentation of some traditions; the underrepresentation of women, Dalits, and other marginalized voices throughout; the lack of attention to texts on ritual and pilgrimage, and the omission of sources on art, aesthetics, and scientific analysis; the lack of sufficient sources from a variety of non-Sanskritic texts; the presentation of traditions as if they were static, fixed entities, with a lack of attention given to overlapping interests, conflicts, and debates; the separating of Hindus from Muslims in both volumes, implying a "Muslim period"; the lack of documents such as council reforms, party platforms, and court cases; and the fact that the volumes stopped in the mid-iodos, without mention of Bangladesh or of all the postcolonial challenges and issues that inform the contemporary study of South Asia.

Despite these criticisms, the continued usage over the past thirty years of the Sources shows that there is nothing quite like them on the market. Instead of jettisoning the Sources, therefore, the five members of the editorial board for volume 2 of this third edition have undertaken a complete conceptual revision, rather than just an update along the lines established in the first and second editions. Nevertheless, as a team we are committed to the original vision of the Sources, as outlined in the preface to the first edition, according to which the source readings that are chosen "tell us what the peoples of India have thought about the world they lived in and the problems they faced living together. [This book] is meant to provide the general reader with an understanding of the intellectual and spiritual traditions, [as well as] the political, economic, and social thought which other surveys have generally omitted."

We followed five working principles in our revision for the third edition. We resolved to write introductions to each section that would be cognizant and reflective of recent changes in historiography and interpretation; to aim throughout for a combination of thematic, synthetic ordering and a rough chronological sequencing of chapters (the latter being retained for its usefulness in teaching); to restrict ourselves, for reasons of space, to textual materials rather than attempting to encompass or represent the arts, and to forego the temptation to include examples of South Asian transnationalism; to begin volume 2 in 1707, with the death of Aurangzeb, and to conclude it at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, three hundred years later; and to rename the volumes Sources of Indian Traditions, to reflect the plurality of cultures inhabiting the subcontinent over the ages. In spite of the fact that both Pakistan and Bangladesh are covered in the new volume 2, it was decided .not to rename the sourcebooks Sources of South Asian Traditions, because adding materials on Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, and the Maldives would make an already large book completely unwieldy. Additional features of the third edition include updated bibliographies; several new maps; an index of themes.

Volume 2 has been considerably expanded and deepened, with a new organizing framework and different pedagogical concerns. An added chapter on the eighteenth century opens the volume; it offers a wealth of Indian and East India Company perspectives on Indian society of the time, and draws upon the latest scholarly thinking on the dynamism of the post-Aurangzeb period. A few selections from the end of volume 1, in its second edition, have been imported here. The readings in chapters 2 and 3 focus on the status of Western education, social reform, Christianity, women, and debates over the uprising of 1858. Changes include the frequent incorporation of selections used in the first edition but dropped in the second, and the addition of new voices (some of them women), new translations of old selections, and new selections entirely.

Chapters 4 through 7 are organized more tightly around single themes: (4) the early development of liberal social and political thought, as well as of Indian nationalism, including the first decade of .the Indian National Congress; (5) the politicized use of religion, especially in the Swadeshi movement following the fir t partition of Bengal, and the nationalization of art; (6) Gandhi and his contemporaries' views of his politics; and (7) the road to Partition. Each of the e chapters incorporates much new material, from Congress presidential addresses, patriotic poems, sources on language controversies, and very short stories, to a completely revamped section on Gandhi and his critics and a discussion of Partition that reflects nearly every conceivable angle.

Chapter 8 is, again, almost entirely new, and tries to bring the Sources up to date, chronologically as well as theoretically, by the inclusion of sources spanning the post-Independence period, viewpoints representative of recent scholarship, and opinion pieces on developments in the teaching and presentation of Indian history. Chapter 9, on Pakistan, brings in new themes and readings, updating the 1988 edition, and chapter 10, on Bangladesh, is entirely new (the second edition of volume 2, even though published seventeen years after the founding of Bangladesh, mentioned the country' name only once in the entire text).

Of note in the fact that chapter 5 of the second edition, "Leaders of Islamic Revival, Reform, and Nationalism in Pre-Independence India" (essentially the "Muslim chapter") has been eliminated entirely, with the material therein, plus -, much more, being dispersed throughout the other, thematically arranged chapters here. This avoids the pitfall of segregating Muslim authors and failing to integrate them properly into the organization of the book.

Overall, many but not all of the special challenges of reconceptualizing the Sources reflect the fact that, whether the volume is utilized in North America, Europe, or South Asia, our intended audience is students, of all ages, who may know little about the history of the subcontinent before their exposure to the text. Hence we cannot produce a sourcebook whose organization would be confusing to a beginner.

The issue of representation has also proven difficult. Is the Sources supposed to offer writings recognized as significant in their own milieus, or are we aiming for coverage across ideological, social, or gender boundaries? To take chapter 6 of volume 2 as an example, while no one would quibble with the importance of the responses to Gandhi of Nehru, Ambedkar, or Sarojini Naidu, on what grounds does one justify the inclusion of Godse's "May It Please Your Honor," from Godse's trial, since the document was not well known at the time? A related question concerns the "primary text." What makes a text "primary," in the modern context? Chapter 8 of volume 2 is full of texts authored by living Indians such as Amartya Sen, Jagdish Bhagwati, Madhu Kishwar, and Partha Chatterjee. Normally, one would class their work as a secondary resource. Why, then, are they part of our sourcebook?

In most cases, field-governed principles have dictated our decisions on issues such as the above. For the sake of informing students about the commitments and methodologies of economists, women's activists, and authors of subaltern and postcolonial studies, we have chosen to include samples of their scholarship and Indian voices reflective of their positions. Likewise, in the main we consider it an important corrective to prior history to include writings by little known figures-women, members of disadvantaged groups of society, or representatives of sectors not usually recognized as representative or seminal. One cannot imagine a sourcebook published in 2014 in New York that excludes female, Dalit, and other non-elite writings merely because they did not have the scope, in their own times, for popular broadcast.

We join the editors of the first and second editions, from 1958 and 1988, in feeling gratitude for and pleasure in this project, as originally spearheaded by Columbia University and continually supported by Columbia University Press. We hope that, with this third edition, continuing generations of students will find in the two volumes evidence for the greatness of Indian-and now Pakistani and Bangladeshi-civilizations.

Contents