The Politics of the Urban Poor in Early Twentieth-Century India

Nandini Gooptu's magisterial 2001 history of the labouring poor in India represents a tour-de-force.

Nandini Gooptu (Author)

9780521617130, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 31 March 2005

492 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.8 cm, 0.72 kg

'Gooptu provides a sophisticated analysis … She combines this with a profound theoretical understanding of historical processes … rich empirical material … Gooptu has shown considerable intellectual skill in writing a social history of the urban … there is much we can learn from this study'. Journal of International Review of Social History

Nandini Gooptu's magisterial 2001 history of the labouring poor in India represents a tour-de-force. By focusing on the role of the poor in caste, religious and nationalistic politics, and on their contribution to the urban economy, the author demonstrates how they emerged as a major social factor in South Asia during the interwar period. The empirical material, concentrated on Uttar Pradesh, provides compelling insights into what it meant to be poor in the urban environment: exploitation in the workplace, the problems of finding housing, police harassment, social and political exclusion by the elite. Approaching the history of early twentieth-century Indian politics from this perspective, the author takes issue with current interpretations of sectarian and nationalist politics which argue the salience of community identity and the irrelevance of class in political analysis. This book will interest those concerned with urban social history, ethnic and sectarian conflict, nationalism, and the politics of poverty, labour and class relations.

List of tables
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Select glossary
1. The study and its perspectives
Part I. Changing Conditions and Experiences in Interwar North India: 2. The poor in the urban setting
3. Urban local policies and the poor
4. Urban policing and the poor
Part II. Modes of Political Action and Perception: 5. Untouchable assertion
6. Militant Hinduism
7. Resurgent Islam
8. Nationalist action
9. Congress socialist mobilisation
10. The politics of exclusion and the 'virtuous deprived'
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Politics & government [JP], Urban communities [JFSG], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], Asian history [HBJF]