In this chapter, the contrast between two models of expatriate masculinity developed earlier is brought to a head, with a fresh twist on the history of masculine identity. In retirement William Cooper indulged his passion for global wanderlust at the expense of his family, whereas Edgar Wilson happily abandoned his expatriate frustrations for a conventional model of settled suburban domesticity with his wife in England, spurning the mobile attractions of the cosmopolitanism they had long nurtured, but with Winifred continuing to exercise her public activism and independence. Ironically, the domestic model, rather than William’s continuing mobility, was most closely associated with the lower middle class, recalling Edgar’s origins and early white-collar labours. The disparity is underlined by a tragic account of William’s last years, interned by the Nazis in wartime Paris after an ill-advised excursion across France. Wartime domesticity for Edgar and Winifred was a struggle, only relieved by a comfortable inheritance from William. Winifred’s Will reflected her long commitment to chosen causes like the Mothers’ Union, a statement of her lifetime priorities.

This chapter explores a further aspect of colonial sedentarization, focusing upon the state's attempts to settle and agrarianize the agropastoral economy of southern Panjab. It does so by studying, as in the previous chapters, how conflicting financial, political, and moral calculations shaped these efforts. The most significant positive measures taken in this direction, as opposed to measures that impeded itinerant subsistence, pertained to irrigation. This chapter therefore begins by tracing the history of one of the oldest canalization projects undertaken by the colonial state in northern India, the repair and extension of the Delhi and Feruz Shahi canals, or, as they together came to be known, the Western Jumna Canal (WJC). The following pages highlight some of the challenges that the state encountered in the WJC's construction, the unintended effects it had upon the land and the health of rural populations, and the system of revenue assessment with which it was bound up. If in the short term, the WJC did lead to an agrarian expansion, this upward trend already began to stagnate by mid-century, even as its disadvantages became apparent.1 Its reliance upon canals in southern Panjab, where the viability of this form of irrigation was limited by the lack of perennial sources of water, underscores the narrow policy framework that in fact underpinned the colonial state's rhetoric of agrarian expansion.

The latter half of the chapter then considers patterns of agropastoral subsistence outside the tracts that benefitted from canals. It demonstrates that in the arid interior of southern Panjab, settled cultivation variously advanced and retreated over the course of the nineteenth century.

Gurdwara Sisganj in Delhi is one of the holiest Sikh shrines in India. It stands prominently on Chandni Chowk, the main street in the former Mughal capital of Shahjahanabad (now popularly referred to as purani Dilli, or old Delhi). The site of Sisganj is immensely significant for its association with the martyrdom of the ninth Sikh Guru, Tegh Bahadur (1621–75), and also for its location, very close to the Red Fort, the seat of the Mughals. Sikh tradition2 informs us that Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb (1618–1707) was forcing a group of Kashmiri brahmins to convert to Islam, and they approached Guru Tegh Bahadur for help. The Guru declared that if Aurangzeb could convert him, everyone else would convert; if not, the emperor must leave them alone. The Guru, along with three of his disciples, Bhai Mati Das, Bhai Sati Das and Bhai Dyala, was imprisoned at the Mughal kotwali (prison) in Chandni Chowk. The three Sikhs were tortured in the Guru's presence to scare him into converting to Islam. It is said that Bhai Mati Das was sawn in half, Bhai Sati Das was wrapped in cotton and burnt and Bhai Dyala was boiled alive. Even after witnessing the torture and death of his followers, the Guru refused to convert.

Long-standing racialised stereotypes of Bengalis in the eastern wing of the country fed into the narrative surrounding the community in West Pakistan. The stereotypes drew inspiration from Orientalist narratives, which were reinforced by the growing political tensions in the post-colonial state. Successive West Pakistani governments were accustomed to branding everything as seditious, treacherous or disloyal. Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, the future founder of Bangladesh, was the lightning rod of the labels ‘anti-Pakistan’, ‘anti-state’ and ‘disloyal’ because of his view that East Pakistan had been treated as ‘a colony’ by the ruling class and because of his demand for parity between the two wings. The Daily Situation Report (DSR) for Mujib's file, named ‘P.F. 606-48’, reveals that from 1950 to 1971, he was regularly monitored and detained on various charges ranging from sedition to treason. In July 1971, Major Nazir Baig, the commander in Faridpur district during the Pakistani army crackdown in East Pakistan, told an American journalist:

Major Baig's racial slur echoes essentialist colonial stereotypes of the Bengali population based on their ethnicity and geographical location. This chapter investigates this figure of the Bengali in Pakistan before and during the wartime while posing some critical questions. Did the West Pakistani authorities’ long-standing racialised narratives about Bengalis give Major Baig the mandate to label them as disloyal co-religionists?

On 23 May 1944, Lord Keynes asked at the House of Lords, ‘Was it not I, when many of today's iconoclasts were still worshippers of the cult, who wrote that “Gold is a barbarous relic”?’ He was referring to his first book, Indian Currency and Finance, published before he joined the Royal Commission on Indian Currency and Finance, headed by Austen Chamberlain, where he wrote: ‘A preference for a tangible gold currency is no longer more than a relic of a time when Governments were less trustworthy….’ (Keynes 1913: 73).

Keynes's observation reminds us of an era when national currencies required the backing of gold to gain trust and legitimacy. Even after currencies ceased to be convertible to gold, the latter has remained a store of value to which one turned in times of financial distress. The centrality of gold to Indian social, cultural and religious life goes back centuries, as the quote from the ancient Rig Veda (1500–1200 BCE) shows. Similarly, Kautilya's description in Arthashastra (c. 321–296 BCE) of the types of theft and fraud to guard against while dealing with gold underlines its connection with crime as well as its importance to Indian economy and trade (Kangle 1969: Parts 2.12–2.14, pp. 105–121). Over a century after Keynes called it a barbarous relic, gold remains of great cultural significance – as this volume shows. The links of gold with crime, especially in money laundering, have also endured.

This concise and interpretative book digs under the surface events of the Wars of the Roses to explore the underlying dynamics of a typical civil war. Beginning with a demonstration of why the well-worn storylines of the Wars are so misleading, it moves on to expose the pressure for reform that animated the conflict and helped to shape its outcomes. It continues by looking at the logics of division and the reasons why the Wars, once started, were so hard to resolve. It concludes by returning to debates long discussed by historians: the role of the economy in the conflict, and the interaction between English affairs and the politics of the British Isles and the near continent. Throughout, a central concern is to emphasise the fluidity and uncertainty of these civil wars: once authority broke down, anything could happen.

Hailed as a model state for its performance on the human development index, the state of Kerala somewhat paradoxically enjoys a robust reputation for its extreme affinity for gold jewellery. As an object of prestation and counterprestation from birth to death, gold is ubiquitous and indispensable in Malayali life. We focus on the role of gold as an object of gendered consumption among the Muslims of the Malabar region in Kerala. Gold is worn and displayed on the body as a form of adornment; it creates a distinct public presence, including status claims, notions of self and modes of identification. Moreover, gold has long been regarded as a safe form of investment, even safer than liquid cash and modern financial instruments. We show how, among the Muslims of Malabar, gold holds a special economic significance where religious censure confines their participation in modern banking and financial institutions.

In this context, gold jewellery binds together what are typically viewed as separate fields: the realms of investment and economic security, on the one hand, and aesthetics, family linkages, concepts of self and modes of belonging, on the other (Moors 1994).

This concise and interpretative book digs under the surface events of the Wars of the Roses to explore the underlying dynamics of a typical civil war. Beginning with a demonstration of why the well-worn storylines of the Wars are so misleading, it moves on to expose the pressure for reform that animated the conflict and helped to shape its outcomes. It continues by looking at the logics of division and the reasons why the Wars, once started, were so hard to resolve. It concludes by returning to debates long discussed by historians: the role of the economy in the conflict, and the interaction between English affairs and the politics of the British Isles and the near continent. Throughout, a central concern is to emphasise the fluidity and uncertainty of these civil wars: once authority broke down, anything could happen.

Visitors to Patna in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were invariably impressed with what they found there. As “the chefest marte towne of all Bengala,” Patna was among the largest cities in India.1 It struck travelers as “a very sweet city and honoured place … a place of perpetual spring, … [among] the best of the cities of Hind” and a fitting home for “many traders and comfort-loving men.”2 By the end of the nineteenth century, though, it had become a dilapidated provincial town, merely one among several middling, semiagrarian cities lining the Ganges. In this chapter, I show what Patna's decline meant for the city and its people. Patna's shifting fortunes were molded by its place within the wider region, and they shaped every aspect of the city's geography. As Patna became increasingly provincial in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many of the consequences were felt most strongly in the older part of the city. The city's social landscape was restructured amid political contestations over health and sanitation, challenges to the nature of elite patronage and neighborhood leadership, and efforts—ultimately unsuccessful—to redirect the spatial changes taking place.

Nineteenth-century Patna was organized around two poles. In the east lay the historic Patna, built in the sixteenth century and renamed Azimabad in the early 1700s.

This chapter takes a specific example from the museum's narrative—the story of Baghel Singh's conquest of Delhi—to show the use of history paintings and the museum's narrative in contemporary heritage politics. The choice of this episode is relevant for several reasons. Bhai Mati Das Museum has four paintings dedicated to this story, and the event it describes unfolds at a site very close to the Gurdwara Sisganj and the museum, the Red Fort. Similar paintings on Baghel Singh appear in other Sikh museums too, including the Central Sikh Museum, Amritsar. Another prominent Sikh museum in Delhi, the Baba Baghel Singh Sikh Heritage Multimedia Museum (Baba Baghel Singh Sikh Virasat Multimedia Ajaibghar) at Gurdwara Bangla Sahib, not only includes this story but is also named after its main protagonist. Also, Dilli Fateh, or the Sikh conquest of Delhi, is a popularly known story and remembered with great pride in the Sikh community. And, in recent years, the story of Baghel Singh's victory over Delhi through his occupation of the Red Fort has acquired tremendous relevance in heritage politics. It is widely invoked and celebrated in prominent events (such as the Fateh Diwas celebrations at the Red Fort which began in 2014, and the historic Farmers’ Protests in Delhi in 2020–21). This claim and its symbolism are important to understand heritage politics in India today. This chapter includes a discussion of the different ways in which stories of the Sikh tradition are invoked. These ways of producing and consuming Sikh history offer insights into not only what the Sikhs think of their past but also what the Sikhs think of themselves today, of their place in contemporary India.

In India, the gold and jewellery market, already valued at USD 44 billion in 2023, is expected to streak ahead at a faster pace than other sectors of the economy to reach USD 134 billion by 2030 (Maximise Market Research 2024). As this volume shows, the gold sector remains largely dominated by small and medium-sized businesses. This is as true of trade as it is of industrial production.

Although it is difficult to estimate the number of jewel and gold traders in India due to the sector's fragmented and unregistered nature, trade groups estimate there to be 500,000–600,000 units, of which, according to the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council, 86,000 are registered for tax purposes (WGC 2022). But in many cases in the gold economy, production and trade are hard to distinguish in practice: gold traders may themselves be producers or directly in control of production, or they may commission production from others, and the gold sector remains dominated by small, independent shops and workshops. Many of the latter are ‘unorganised’ and not registered with the state, though they may be known to local business associations. In West Bengal alone, for instance, a knowledgeable member of the Swarna Shilpo Bachao Committee, a local trade association for goldsmiths and gold jewellery merchants, reported that the association had approximately 10,000 members. Gold ornament trading is going through rapid differentiation, however. A World Gold Council (WGC) study published in 2022 showed that while in 2017 fewer than 10 per cent of retail stores operated as registered, organised and large-scale facilities, by 2022 they had grown rapidly to 15–20 per cent (WGC 2022).