Description
Book SynopsisShowcases peasants' memories of everyday life in North India under royal rule before Indian Independence and their musings on the contrast between the old days and the unprecedented shifts that a half century has wrought.
Trade Review“A unique, densely textured historical and ethnographic account. Engaging scholarship on memory, environmental history, oral history, South Asian studies, and ethnographic experimentation, this book works on multiple registers. The authors’ observations about the sweat, dust, tears, and delights of fieldwork are also remarkable in their evocative force.”—Kirin Narayan, author of
Mondays on the Dark Night of the Moon: Himalayan Foothill Folktales“This is an extraordinary history of postcolonial India as told through the lives of peasants and pastoralists, artisans and housewives. Drawing on many years of research, Gold and Gujar explore changing relations between state and subject, changing structures of production and consumption and, most innovatively, changes in the natural world in rural Rajasthan. Their research is rich, their analyses subtle and empathetic, their writing uncommonly evocative. This landmark study is at once a major contribution to environmental history, political anthropology, and folklore.”—Ramachandra Guha, author of
The Unquiet Woods and
Environmentalism: A Global HistoryTable of ContentsNote on Language ix
Preface: "There Are No Princes Now" xi
Acknowledgments xxi
1. The Past of Nature and the Nature of the Past 1
2. Voice 30
3. Place 53
4. Memory 78
5. Shoes 105
6. Court 126
7. Homes 162
8. Fields 211
9. Jungle 241
10. Imports 277
Appendix: Selected Trees and Plants Mentioned in Interviews 325
Notes 327
Glossary 369
References 373
Index 397
