At the Margins: Discourses of Development, Democracy, and Regionalism in Odisha

410 Pages·2014·6.768 MB·English

by  Jayanta Sengupta

Title Pages
At the Margins: Discourses of Development,
Democracy, and Regionalism in Orissa
Jayanta Sengupta
Print publication date: 2015
Print ISBN-13: 9780198099154
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2015
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198099154.001.0001
Title Pages
(p.i) At the Margins (p.ii)
(p.iii) At the Margins
(p.iv)
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Dedication
At the Margins: Discourses of Development,
Democracy, and Regionalism in Orissa
Jayanta Sengupta
Print publication date: 2015
Print ISBN-13: 9780198099154
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2015
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198099154.001.0001
Dedication
(p.v)
For my father
(p.vi)
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Acknowledgements
At the Margins: Discourses of Development,
Democracy, and Regionalism in Orissa
Jayanta Sengupta
Print publication date: 2015
Print ISBN-13: 9780198099154
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2015
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198099154.001.0001
(p.ix) Acknowledgements
To borrow a phrase from an iconic historian with slight modifications, this book,
like the proverbial Indian elephant and the Permanent Settlement, has had a
long gestation. In writing it, I have incurred many debts. The research that has
gone into it was originally funded by a Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Scholarship awarded by the British Council, which enabled me to complete a
doctoral dissertation in the University of Cambridge in the 1990s. Back then, I
was also generously assisted by the Smuts Memorial Fund, the Prince Consort
and Thirlwall Fund, the Charles Wallace India Trust, the Sir Ernest Cassel
Educational Trust, and Clare Hall, Cambridge, who all funded my fieldwork trips
to India and shored up the crumbling life of a poor research student in various
other ways. More recently, the completion of this book project has been
facilitated by two Fulbright grants at the University of Pennsylvania and Utah
State University, a Baden-Württemberg Visiting Fellowship at the South Asia
Institute of the University of Heidelberg, a UGC Visiting Fellowship in the
University of Calcutta, and a very generous research grant from the University
of Notre Dame.
I wish to record my gratitude for the kind assistance of the librarians and staff of
the India Office Library in London, the Cambridge University Library, the Centre
of South Asian Studies, Cambridge, the Orissa State Archives and the Orissa
Legislative Assembly Library in (p.x) Bhubaneswar, the Orissa Board of
Revenue Library in Cuttack, the National Archives of India and the Nehru
Memorial Museum and Library in New Delhi, the National Library and the West
Bengal State Archives in Kolkata, the Library of the South Asia Institute in
Heidelberg, and the libraries of the University of Pennsylvania and the
University of Notre Dame in the United States. I am especially indebted to Dr
M.P. Dash of the Orissa State Archives and to Dr D.G. Panda of the Orissa
Legislative Assembly Library for producing documents at very short notice.
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Acknowledgements
The origins of this book go back to the late-1980s when I had brief stints as a
research student in the University of Calcutta and the Centre for Studies in
Social Sciences, Kolkata. Binay Chaudhuri initiated me into the complexities of
Orissa’s history and society, and the late Barun De helped me pose my first
questions about them. Since then, I have benefited immensely from many
discussions with Partha Chatterjee, Rajat Kanta Ray, the late Hitesranjan Sanyal,
the late Surajit Sinha, Subrata Mitra, Rudrangshu Mukherjee, Hari Vasudevan,
Himadri Banerjee, Sir Christopher Bayly, Gordon Johnson, David Washbrook,
Anthony Low, Joya Chatterji, Biswamoy Pati, Basanta Kumar Mallik, Sudha Pai,
Niraja Gopal Jayal, Hermann Kulke, Gita Dharampal-Frick, Georg Berkemer, and
Angelika Malinar. Subhas Bhattacharya and Gautam Bhadra have taught me in
the classroom, but they have taught me much more by just being the persons
they are.
My greatest debt is to my Supervisor, the late Rajnarayan Chandavarkar, who for
more than a decade—till his untimely death in 2005—gave me unsparingly his
time, patience, and encouragement. It is still hard for me to reconcile with a
world without Raj. He enlivened many typically gloomy and blustery Cambridge
days with new ideas and suggestions, and sought to energize my gingerly
approach to research with occasional admonishments served up with a
ruthlessly sardonic flair. Over the years he became a friend, with a piece of
advice for all occasions, seasoned with acerbic wit and spicy bits of
intercontinental academic gossip. It’s only now, when he is no longer around,
that I realize how deep his influence has run, shaping the ways in which I think
and speak and write.
Research can sometimes be a tedious, even frustrating, business. I could have
scarcely made any progress in it without the convivial and supportive friendship
of my many colleagues, friends, and mentors in (p.xi) different parts of the
world. For my former colleagues and students in the Department of History,
Jadavpur University—where I taught for nearly two decades—I have a deep
sense of gratitude for providing me with the collegiality and support that have
shaped my personal growth. During the last few years, I found a hospitable
home and stimulating intellectual climate in the Department of History,
University of Notre Dame, where many of the foundational ideas of this book
took their final shape. I must especially thank Jim Turner, Julia Thomas, Patrick
Griffin, Tom Kselman, Mikolaj Kunicki, Tom Noble, Alex Martin, Dan Graff, Asher
Kaufman, Karen Graubart, Chris Hamlin, Dian Murray, and Mike Westrate for
the friendship that nurtured this book. At the University of Pennsylvania, Rosane
and Ludo Rocher were wonderful hosts and mentors, as were Carolyn Rhodes,
Peter Mentzel and David Goetze at Utah State University. At Heidelberg, Mala
al-Farooq took me under her capacious wings. Abhijit, Amaresh, Anil, Anjan and
Gargi, Damayanti, Debashis and Samita, Dwaipayan, Kushal, Rajiv, Ravi,
Satyajit, Somak, Subho and Mallika, Sudeep and Alaka, Sudit and Mita, Sugata
and Sarmistha, Supratim, and many others have provided friendship, and
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Acknowledgements
contributed to this book in more ways than they would give themselves credit
for. Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Gayatri Chakravorty-Spivak, Suman Chattopadhyay,
Suranjan Das, Geraldine Forbes, Sudipta Sen, and Jawhar Sircar have unfailingly
provided support and encouragement on the countless instances I have drawn
upon them. Anit and Sudeshna Bhattacharya, Amit and Shyamali Das, D.G. and
Flora Dutta, Alpana and Amit Dutta-Ray, Krishna and the late Sukhamoy Lahiri,
Amitava and Harolyn Dutt, Srilata Ganguly, and Basudeb Biswas have provided
homes away from home in Cambridge, Kolkata, London, South Bend,
Philadelphia, and Logan. My special debt is to Dilip and Sima Chakrabarty, who
have provided not only unstinting generosity and friendship, but also rescued us
from the dubious experience of ‘homelessness’ during the last stages of my
doctoral research.
Over the past year or so, this book has been finally brought out of incubation by
people who have shown to it a dedication and commitment that I wish I could
count among my own attributes. Two anonymous referees have provided
invaluable suggestions that have helped me recalibrate my own critical
questions. I am forever grateful to the editorial team of Oxford University Press,
New Delhi, for shepherding (p.xii) this project with so much care and interest.
If there is anything to like in this book, it is because of them. The responsibility
for any and all errors that may have remained is of course mine alone.
One should, in the end, look back to one’s roots. Without the many sacrifices
made by my parents, the late Shyamal Sengupta and Gita Sengupta, this book
could never have been written. My parents-in-law, Amit Ranjan Dasgupta and
the late Santi Dasgupta were always keenly supportive of my academic pursuits,
and it saddens me to think that my mother-in-law passed away even before I
finished my doctoral dissertation. It will be my lasting regret that my father, who
made a huge investment of energy and emotion in my education, and taught me
through his life and thought, did not live to see this book. I can never repay his
debt, but I dedicate this book to his memory.
The comforting experience of being surrounded by one’s family has taken a lot of
stress and tedium away from research. This book would never have seen the
light of day without Aparajita, who is the reason why I chose to be an academic.
She has been a constant motivator through thick and thin, and it is her nagging
insistence that kept the candle constantly burning under my chair, and
eventually teased the book out of a reticent writer. Rik has now spent almost all
of his life with this book in various stages of its making. He has not only been a
delightful distraction in its formative stages, but a most supportive presence all
along. I hope one day he will read this book to find out what the fuss all these
years was about.
Kolkata, October 2014
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Abbreviations
At the Margins: Discourses of Development,
Democracy, and Regionalism in Orissa
Jayanta Sengupta
Print publication date: 2015
Print ISBN-13: 9780198099154
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2015
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198099154.001.0001
(p.xiii) Abbreviations
ABVPA
Akhil Bhartiya Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram
AICC
All India Congress Committee
AICWC
All India Congress Working Committee
AISPC
All India States’ Peoples Conference
APCC
Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee
BJD
Biju Janata Dal
BJP
Bharatiya Janata Party
CLP
Congress Legislature Party
CPI
Communist Party of India
CRR
Crown Representative Record
CWMG
Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi
DCC
District Congress Committee
DMK
Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam
FRBO
Fortnightly Report for the province of Bihar and Orissa
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Abbreviations
FRO
Fortnightly Report for the province of Orissa
GP
Ganatantra Parishad
GP-SRC
Ganatrantra Parishad’s Memorandum submitted to the States
Reorganization Commission
ICR
India Conciliation Group
IDRF
India Development and Relief Fund
(p.xiv) IOR
India Office Records (London)
JD
Janata Dal
MLA
Member of Legislative Assembly
NAI
National Archives of India
NDA
National Democratic Alliance
NMML
Nehru Memorial Museum and Library
OBC
Other Backward Class
OBOR
Orissa Board of Revenue
OSA
Orissa State Archive
OSPC
Orissa States’ People’s Conference
PJP
Praja Socialist Party
RABO
Report on the Administration of Bihar and Orissa
RSS
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh
SC
Scheduled Caste
ST
Scheduled Tribe
SIUK
Sewa International United Kingdom
TDP
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Abbreviations
Telugu Desam Party
UPCC
Utkal Provincial Congress Committee
UUC
Utkal Union Conference
UUC-SRC
Utkal Union Conference memorandum submitted to the States
Reorganization Commission
VHP
Vishwa Hindu Parishad
WBSA
West Bengal State Archive
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