Nomadic Narratives
A History of Mobility and Identity in the Great Indian Desert

Nomadic Narratives explores long-term relationships between mobility, martiality, memory and identity in the desert expanses of the Thar.

Tanuja Kothiyal (Author)

9781107080317, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 March 2016

312 pages
23.6 x 15.9 x 2.4 cm, 0.56 kg

The Thar Desert, which is today divided by an international boundary, has historically been a frontier region connecting Punjab, Multan, Sindh, Gujarat and Rajasthan. This book looks at the Desert as an historical region shaped through the mobility of its inhabitants - warriors, pastoralists, traders, ascetics and bards, often in overlapping capacities. It challenges the frames of Mughal-Rajput relationships generally employed to explore the histories of the Thar, arguing that Rajputana remains an inadequate category to explore polities located in this frontier region, where along with Rajputs, a range of groups, such as Charans, Bhils, Meenas, Soomras and Pathans controlled circulation, and with whom the Rajput states had to constantly negotiate. Sifting through a wide range of Rajasthani written and oral narratives, travelogues of British administrators, and vernacular as well as English records, the book explores long-term relationships between mobility, martiality, memory and identity in the desert expanses of the Thar.

List of tables
List of abbreviations
Preface
Acknowledgements
Glossary
Note on transliteration, translation and dates
Contemporary place names and their nineteenth-century spellings
Introduction
1. Geographical imagination and narratives of a region
2. Mobility, polity, territory
3. Itinerants of the Thar: mobility and circulation
4. Expanding state contracting space: the Thar in the nineteenth century
5. Narratives of mobility and mobility of narratives
Conclusions: nomadic narratives in the frontiers
Bibliography
Appendix 1. Jodhpur King list
Appendix 2. Bikaner King list
Appendix 3. Jaisalmer King list
Index.

Subject Areas: Middle Eastern history [HBJF1], History [HB]