Paper, Performance, and the State

Social Change and Political Culture in Mughal India

Farhat Hasan

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781316516812
• eBook ISBN:
  9781009032445
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Indian & South Asian History
• Index: History

This book explores the changing socio–cultural world in early modern South Asia, and locates the agency of the Mughal state therein. The development of literacy and new forms of engagement between literacy and performance prompted the opening up of new spaces of social communication, and led to the development of a performative (and somatic) public sphere in South Asia. The work highlights the significance of legal spaces, along with the markets and coffeehouses, in shaping the emergent public sphere. While defending the case for legal pluralism, it argues that the Mughal state endured and enhanced the diversity in the legal order. Focusing on the socially embedded attributes of the state, it looks at how the state's relations with the local powers impinged on, and reproduced community identities, identity conflicts, legal pluralism, property relations, and different forms of social communication.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Paper, Performance, and the State
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• A Note on Transliteration
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Property and Social Relations: Litigations and Disputes at the Qāzi’s Court
• 3. Law as Contested Communication: Literacy, Performativity, and the Legal Order
• 4. Embodiment, Sensoriality, and the Public Sphere: Shifting Popular Perceptions of the State
• 5. State Formation from Below: Authority and Culture in Micro-Spaces
• 6. Towards a Conclusion: The Project of the Nation-State and the Mughal Historian
• Bibliography
• Index