ABSTRACT

This book looks at movements of communities which formed the lower and middle rungs of society in medieval and early colonial India. It presents migration, mobility and memories from a specifically Indian perspective, breaking away from previous Eurocentric studies. The essays in the volume focus on labour, peasant and craft migrations, and in fleshing out the causes and trajectories taken by these communities, they speak to each other by addressing similar issues as well as documenting varying responses to analogous situations.A fascinating history of migrations ofpeople from below the volume adopts a trans-disciplinary approach and uses inscriptions, official records, and literary texts along with community narratives and folk tradition. This will be of great interest to scholars and students of migration and diaspora studies, medieval and modern South Asian history, social anthropology and subaltern studies.

chapter |15 pages

Introduction

part 1|1 pages

Peasant Migrations

chapter 1|25 pages

Migration and Mobility

The social memory of Kongu Vellalar peasantry of South India

chapter 3|22 pages

Rethinking Mobility

The story of the Gujars

chapter 4|40 pages

Migration, Mobility and Memories

Meos in the processes of peasantisation and Islamisation in the medieval period

part 2|1 pages

Artisanal and Merchant Migrations

chapter 5|36 pages

Pirla Panduga

Muharram practices of the Deccan weavers, their migrations, songs and memories

chapter 7|32 pages

From Marwar to Malwa and Back

Artisanal mobility and circulation during the eighteenth century

chapter 8|33 pages

Many Madanpuras

Memories and histories of migrant weavers of northern India during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries*