In the Time of Trees and Sorrows: Nature, Power, and Memory in Rajasthan

Ann Grodzins Gold; Bhoju Ram Gujar

Published by Duke University Press 2002

In the Time of Trees and Sorrows

Nature, Power, and Memory in Rajasthan

Ann Grodzins Gold and Bhoju Ram Gujar

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822383475

Overview
Contents

About this book

In the Time of Trees and Sorrows showcases peasants’ memories of everyday life in North India under royal rule and their musings on the contrast between the old days and the unprecedented shifts that a half century of Indian Independence has wrought. It is an oral history of the former Kingdom of Sawar in the modern state of Rajasthan as it was from the 1930s to the 1950s.
Based on testimonies from the 1990s, this book stands as a polyvocal account of the radical political and environmental changes the region and its people have faced in the twentieth century. Not just the story of modernity from the perspective of a rural village, these interviews and author commentaries narrate this small rural community’s relatively sudden transformation from subjection to a local despot and to a remote colonial power to citizenship in a modern postcolonial democracy. Unlike other recent studies of Rajasthan, the current study gives voice exclusively to former subjects who endured the double oppression of colonial and regional rulers. Gold and Gujar thus place subjective subaltern experiences of daily routines, manifestations of power relations, and sweeping changes to the environment (after the fall of kings) that turned lush forests into a barren landscape on equal footing with historical “fact” and archival sources. Ambiguous, complex, and culturally laden as it is in Western thought, the concept of nature is queried in this ethnographic text. For persons in Sawar the environment is not only a means of sustenance, its deterioration is linked to human morality and to power, both royal and divine. The framing questions of this South Asian history revealed through memories are: what was it like in the time of kings and what happened to the trees?

Author / Editor information

Ann Grodzins Gold is Professor of Religion and Anthropology at Syracuse University. She is the author of several books, including Fruitful Journeys: The Ways of Rajasthani Pilgrims.

Bhoju Ram Gujar is Headmaster at Government Middle School in Maganpura village, Rajasthan, India, and lives in Ghatiyali, in the former kingdom of Sawar.

Reviews

“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 History

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Note on Language Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Preface: ‘‘There Are No Princes Now’’ Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xxi
1. The Past of Nature and the Nature of the Past Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2. Voice Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	30
3. Place Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	53
4. Memory Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	78
5. Shoes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	105
6. Court Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	126
7. Homes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	162
8. Fields Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	211
9. Jungle Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	241
10. Imports Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	277
Appendix: Selected Trees and Plants Mentioned in Interviews Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	325
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	327
Glossary Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	369
References Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	373
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	397

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Pages
- Main content: 432
Illustrations
- Other: 32 b&w photos, 2 figures

eBook

Published: March 1, 2002
ISBN: 9780822383475