Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge

Book Review

Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India. Bernard S. Cohn. Princeton University Press, 1996. Xvii+189pp.

The acceptance and maintenance of colonial power in any country is not dependent only upon the military strength or the capacity to coerce the voices of masses but also on the development of knowledge to understand the subjects. The development of knowledge by the imperial power of East Indian Company and crown (after 1858) to invent the history of the colonized and see through it the ways and means of ruling and maintaining the empire was the ‘cultural’ domain of the colonial history. Bernard Cohn uses the principles of anthropology in sync with the methods of history to study colonialism and its forms of knowledge. This book consists of four essays, foreword by Nicholas Dirk and introduction to the book. These essays are written in the time period between 1950s and 1980s. In this era, the Chicago school’s method of ‘ethnosociology’ was quite famous and well appreciated by Bernard Cohn. The writing of McKimm Marriot and Ronald Inden approached a new style of writing Indian culture history by the use of ethnosociology to remove the ‘orientalist’ biasness. Using the same logical tool, Cohn tried to show the logic and illogic of colonial discourse and orientalist biasness in East Indian orientalist scholarships.

The Brahminic hegemony in Indian society relates to their control over the secret knowledge of Dharamshastras and Sanskrit scriptures and British controlled this powerful discourse in society by deciphering this control through different modalities. Cohn names these modalities as the historiographic modalities, observational/trade modality, the survey modality, the enumerative modality, the museological modality, the surveillance modality and the investigative modalities in the post colonial world. The historiographic modality being the most complex and also related to other modalities gave British the ontological formation of their subjects i.e. how the colonised Indians real social and natural worlds are formed. The control over power can be associated with monopoly over knowledge and British by ‘officialising’ established and extended its power in many areas. Knowledge of subjects defined and classified spaces like making separation between public and private spheres by recording transactions, changed most of the religious institutions into secular institutions and established a bureaucratic structures like census classified groups in society and established registration of birth and deaths, standardized languages and scripts, and fostering official beliefs through public education and its rituals.

When British came to India then they operated on the idea that everything and everyone had a ‘price’ and created many anglicized posts in the company like Dubhashi, dalal, banian, shroff, pandit and vakil. These posts were related with different specialisations and most important of them was the post of the interpreter. The persistence of different languages in India posed a very difficult situation for British and mainly translation of all letters into Persian and vice versa was the most difficult task for them considering the angle of secrecy in the communications. Cohn very eloquently showed this through Sir Thomas Roe’s account of Jahangir’s court. James Fraser, who worked in Surat establishment for 19 years, wrote a contemporary history of the court of Nadir Shah after learning Persian based on Persian account and constant correspondence between Persians and Mughals. After this, the period between 1770 and 1785 became the formative years in which British started producing grammars, dictionaries, treatise, class books, translation etc. The production of these texts and texts after this period established a discursive formation and defined an epistemological space and created a discourse which had the effect of converting Indian forms of knowledge and Indians into European subjects.

They started finding books on Mughal administration and epistolary practices of professionals to learn from the successes and failures of earlier rulers. Then in 1771, Sir William Jones published grammar of the Persian language and British Servant N.B.Halhed produced first grammar of Bengali and Sanskrit on English model. The language of Indian politics, Persian, was tried to decrypt by British to gain access of administration of different rulers.  The thrust of company administrators to educate its employees in Persian and Sanskrit was to wrest power from the munshis, akhunds, and pundits on whom they depended to mediate between the company and native princess and merchants and to provide translations of the legal and historical documents thought relevant to conducting business in India. British’s learning of Sanskrit was emphasised to understand the Hindu Law and get rid of Pundits from the Courts. They wanted to create benevolent legal pattern in the country so that people will accept the rule. David Scott in his paper “Colonial governmentality¹” also finds the same discourse of Colonial power to legitimise its rule. Later, the advent of Hindoostani as the official language of the Raj, first created by John Gilchrist turned the work in different direction. Now, the civil servants were trained in basic Hindoostani and etiquettes needed in communications with Indians. So, the shift from Persian to Hindoostani as the administrative language of the British showed linguistic strategies for British imperial domination.

After having adequate knowledge in the field of languages, their main concern shifted to codify laws and to create rational basis for imparting justice. British accepted that despite having ancient and traditional culture, India had a state system and this system is on decline from medieval times and this system has to be recreated to extort land revenue from the agriculturists and the capacity to access and levy tax was related to law. Warren Hastings started a post of “collector” to control law and order and collect land revenues from the provinces and had belief that Mughal had robust system to collect land revenue and it was not based on European model rather on model based on theory and practice of Indian administration. Hastings also refuted the despotic character of state propounded by other British administrators and allowed William Jones to codify laws. William Jones with the help of pundits and some other experts started creating digest of Hindu laws and Muslim Laws. However, it completed after his death and Colebrooke completed it. William Jones through the doctrine of stare decisis and interpretations of religious texts created digests for Hindu and Muslims.

The British believed that Indians did not have history i.e. they are people without history. So, through museological and survey modalities, British categorised and objectified India. They started with different vague theories and gave different historical accounts of Indian civilisation. From the period of 1600 to 1750, the British through rational despotism found India a stable and static society with a relationship to west. Lord Wellesley first used the survey methods to classify history of Indians which can be seen in Camden’s work. Colonel Mackenzie researched to provide details about the Indian past and the religions etc especially in South India. He found the discovery of Jaina religion and its philosophy and its distinction from Buddhism, the different ancient sects of religions in the country and their subdivisions, the nature and use of the Sasanams and inscriptions on stone and copper etc. After his death, the reports of his survey were published but the work was stopped after some times.

The paucity of funds did not allow researchers to continue their projects. East India Company provided meager sum for doing researches on archaeological sites. The artefacts collected from different sites remained packed for decade because of high maintenance costs of keeping all these artefacts in some museum. However, most of the valuable and significant things were taken to Britain for display. Koh-i-Noor diamond became one of the chief attractions of British crown and Tipu’s sword and tiger were also kept in the museum. Richard Johnson’s collection of large number of paintings of Akbar time and various manuscripts of Mughal era is even today kept in India House at London. After the end of Anglo-Mysore war, the transfer of Indian artefacts to Britain stopped for some time but the revolt of 1857 radicalised the plundering. Most of the valuables plundered from the country were taken to Britain and kept in the museums.

British wanted to differentiate themselves from Indian in social, physical and cultural spheres so East India Company did not allow any officer to wear Indian dress. Fredrick John Shore was dictated to wear only gentlemen clothes in the courtroom. They related clothes with the question of honour and dignity. In Mughal Court also, the clothes were not seen as products for gaining profits but it had different meanings for Indians. The gifts of clothes and jewellery were seen as best gifts in Indian scenario at that time. Cohn through the controversy of Nayars showed the linking between status and clothes. A decree allowing Christian converts to cover themselves linked the civilising mission of Christians to the upward mobility of lower castes and the upper castes protection of their privileges, showing how “changes in dress becomes the tokens of much wider social, political and economic changes that refracted in unpredictable use, from the point of view of the principle actors in the event”. The pith-helment, sikh turban and Gandhi cap are rooted in relations of race and caste while breast-cover clothes are interwoven in the conspiracy against gender and sexuality.

The writers of the guide books which advised them not to touch one by his turban or head were correct but the logic behind this was not correct. The main cause for this relates to purity and pollution. Hand is associated with different kinds of impurity so people did not like it in their normal conversations. Also, if Indians wore shoe in front of British then it was called indiscipline but the meaning of Indian with this act is related with cosmic phenomenon. So, 17^th and 18^th Century British and Indians inhabited separate coginitive universes is a projection back in time of the historiographic bifocalism of the studies collectively. The acceptance of material in both the cultures was different and the historiographic modality of Bernard Cohn finds the changes in the clothes and jewellery associated with the power structures. In order to be different, British gave certain guidelines to the officers to carry certain clothes to India.

The substance of authority was shown through clothes in Mughal era. The king or the emperor wearing the khilat would place one of the robes to his subjects as a particular honour. This will improve the subject’s rank in the kingdom. Different forms of salutations also had different meanings and used at different purposes. Indians would place his turban at the feet of the conqueror as a sign of complete surrender. In sindh, turban was related to sovereignty. The dress of the Indian army was also transformed to meet the desires of different ethnic solders. The gorkhas wanted to wear turban and the uniform of European and Indian were made same. So, the clothes represented differen meanings for different communities. The world of signs and symbols gives importance on the clothes, jewelleries, styles of honour etc.

Cohn in the four essays deals with different concepts and the knowledge formation in these areas. The historiographic modality is used to find the development of languages in the society, development of laws, and development and changes in the clothes. The survey modality has been used by same writer very efficiently in his essay in the book “An Anthropologists among Historians” on census. However, all these four things language, law, dress and objects are related to each other and their development and change happened at the same time but Cohn sees all these developments in four areas separately and does not relate each other. The change in official language of the administration did not change the local discourse of Hindoostani. However, Indian history of language did not develop in a linear fashion but in structure and type. Also, Indians were constituted based on the social positions unlike their western counterparts who are constituted as unique individuals so the poems and prose of Indian literature are different from western style.

In this book Cohn only dealt with the cultural dimension of colonialism but the cultural dimension of colonialism works simultaneously with repressive or imperial functionaries to rule over subjects.  The rule of colonizers is always confronted by violence from both sides. The various cultural things are forced on subjects to exploit them. Cohn does take the stand that colonialism is an illegitimate extension of power. Colonial forms of knowledge generated for the benefit of British and the indigenous forms of knowledge also developed out of practical interests. But, Cohn does not give importance to this. However, the "scientific classification" of subjects in Foucauldian term has a long and complicated genealogy but it takes place through a variety of "operations on [people's] own bodies, on their own souls, on their own thoughts, on their own conduct." These operations characteristically entail a process of self-understanding but one which is mediated by an external authority figure, be he confessor or psychoanalyst.  

Property, Labour, Money and Cultural Forms

The trajectory of the development of the concepts of Economics has varied in different forms and after the advent of complex form of market mechanisms Economics left many concepts without giving them proper meaning and definitions like property, labour, money etc. these concepts in economics are like monochrome inhibiting no resplendence. Economics, somehow, alienated human social existence from the macrocosm of economic concepts. The ‘being’ has been totally alienated from the human labour, production process and reproduction of material entity. So, the discipline which finds its root in the writings of those thinkers who were primarily students of morality and ethics like Adam Smith finds no mention of this dimension of social existence in contemporary economics. Economic Anthropology starts from this and sees the economic phenomena in totality to attach all the subjectivity and objectivity in this academic domain. Marx, On the Thefts of Wood, in Rheinische Zeitung (1842) writes that

“The representation of private interests ... abolishes all natural and spiritual distinctions by enthroning in their stead the immoral, irrational and soulless abstraction of a particular material object and a particular consciousness which is slavishly subordinated to this object.”

Capitalism was accepted as a norm for the fulfilment of desire of ‘private property’ of bourgeoisie. This changed the domain of economics and the systematic change in the meanings of labour, property, money, value, cultural forms became evident especially after Industrial revolution.

Industrial Revolution was initiated by the change in ‘means of production’ i.e. non human inputs used in the production. It changed the mode of exchange, now, based on money. Karl Marx (Economic and Philosophical Manuscript 1844) finds that “money is the procurer between man’s need and the object, between his life and his means of life. But that which mediates my life for me, also mediates the existence of other people for me. For me it is the other person”. Simmel (1978) thought of society as an ‘endless proliferating network of exchanges i.e. market. Like Marx, he finds money representing the highest level of our cognitive interaction with the world. Simmel did not believe in any objective truth or any absolute and all he found is subjective judgement. So basically, he sees truth in relativity. Of course, money is relative but the collusion of state and market which produces a symbiotic relationship between them and state as the authority to determine the value of the currency changes the real value of ‘money’ in favour of corporate forces, which can be seen through the working of ‘virtual economy’ in capital markets. This money is facilitating and perpetuating property relationship by reifying cultural norms of the society.

The relationship between economy and the culture has been examined by different theories and one concept central to this context is “economic culture”. A nation is said to have its own culture like the corporate houses and economic values are related in some ways to overall values of the nation, regions, and so on. The other concept in contrast to this remove notion of self-interest from the culture. While self-interest is seen as vital to economic analysis so culture will be seen as irrelevant. Some economic sociologists responded to this by giving culture all the importance and self-interest as irrelevant. But, a balanced approach is needed to find the way out and it can be found in Weber’s work in his discussion of ideal and material interests in his famous switchmen metaphor. He points to an alternate way of conceptualising the relationship between culture and interests. So, one can say that interests are providing the forces of action while culture is providing the direction of action. The relationship between culture and economic development can be seen in Weber’s study of religion, Tocqueville work on American economic culture in Democracy in America etc. the modern day notion of property and labour has influence on cultural forms. The concept of ‘bundle of rights’ by Maine (1861) can be used in the concept of ‘intellectual property rights’, community ownership of resources in forest areas etc.

Recently, Indian government enacted a law naming Forest Rights Act to give tribal people right over minor forest produce. Basically, tribal people’s economy is based on common ownership and redistribution of the produce but after the liberalisation of Indian economy in 1991, in the name of development Multi National companies started searching for mineral resources and they started displacing tribal people in the name of development. The growing discontent among tribal people and failure of Land Reforms in other parts of the country was one of the prime reasons for the rise of Naxal movements in the country. So, government acknowledged the property rights of indigenous people and gave them ‘some’ rights. Displacement in the disguise of development is turning tribal men into destitute and tribal women into prostitute. This simple example shows how the quest for better growth through adamant strategy is changing the property relationship in the hinterland of country and the effect of changing property relationship can be seen on the cultural forms and labour of the indigenous people. So, in Keebet Von Benda-Beckmann terms the change in the ‘cultural-ideological’ layer is bringing the change in the layers of ‘Legal-Institutional Layer’, ‘social relations’ of property and the layer of ‘practices’. Also, in some of the tribal groups ‘diverging devolution’ is still evident and which is different from the Indian legal System. The effect of privatisation can also be seen on the degradation of environment in different parts of world.

The rapid change in the ‘cycle of catastrophe’ and other environmental factors like El-Nino is showing the intense exploitation of environment by private organisation where corporate houses from the developed world are in majority. Anthropologists, however, shown that the degeneration of environment can be controlled by the use of traditional knowledge and community ownership of the property (Chris Hann). Also, it is changing the social dynamics by increasing class difference and resource mobilization in the favour of some. The use of nuclear power plant for the generation of electricity without the consultation of local populace and growing demographic pressure in urban centres have strong effects on the quality of life observed by the masses. Resources in the contemporary society are managed on the basis of power relationships and the entire context of embededdeness (Ostrom 2002). The language of capitalism has been made so complex that the participation of masses has become almost impossible in the labour market. The recent malice of the process of globalisation has turned the dynamism of market in favour of bourgeoisie. In Globalisation and its Discontent, Stiglitz (2002) showed how the religion of ‘market fundamentalism’ is working in the market. Any alternate form of system is being destroyed at its birth by coalition of market forces and the state. Profit is being accumulated by different methods and it is now very complex. Marx, Eric Wolf, and Hornberg’s theory of finding the modes of accumulation of profit is not adequate. It can be seen through the recent scams in the capital markets and appropriation of the public money in the name of corporate subsidy.

Disparate Power relationship between groups in market, through control over means of production, is reproducing inequality in the social domain. This inequality is now more intense than other ‘modes of production’. The feminist movement can be quoted in this case because there is no parallel way in which the state can be “male” (Wendy Brown 1992). The capitalist economy guarantees private ownership of property, which in turn establishes the dominance of male in the household. So, first this mode of economy created differentiation between ‘public’ and ‘private’ spheres and established the rule of patriarchy in the society. Any attempt to change the established norms of the society gives rise to hysteric response from bourgeoisie, which can be seen in case of movements against homosexuals. Various Presidents of United States did not motivated research in the field of AIDS because it was seemed as the disease of homosexuals or more appropriately “Gay Plague” and the deceased from this disease were ‘Black’ Africans. The whole bourgeoisie society wanted to remove every homosexual from the civilised world. The whole bogey of Civil Rights Groups worked as a part of the “Ideological State Apparatus” (Althusser). The famous work of Foucault over the history of sexuality was termed an illusionary approach of seeing the delinquent and state was busy in saving the bourgeoisie ideology. Education is one of the prominent tools for creating a certain kind of ideology and submission of people’s value towards that ideology.

The capitalist system created a certain kind of ‘language’ in the education sectors which is necessary to be learnt by the individuals to enter the labour market. The system of education has been made so complex that one cannot understand this without going through the systems of education created by the bourgeoisie. This education system is against the traditional cultural forms. The education system is one of the prime factors for creating social inequality. In this type of labour market, different strategies are created to control over resources of different nations. China imports raw materials from poverty ridden Africa and leads in the manufacturing sector. Developed countries are not so much interested in primary sectors of economy because it does not create industries of very high profit and it is also capital intensive and polluting. The various conferences of parties on climate change however gave certain guidelines to decrease environmental degradation and also to restore the climate. But, United States of America and Canada withdrew from Kyoto Protocol because they do not want to transfer technologies to developing world and they showed their concern about the intellectual property rights. An intellectual property right is like ‘bundle of rights’. The inventor gets the income from his/her invention for a period of time and also the monopoly to sell the product. Also, the act of sanction by developed countries successfully attempts to run the policy of different economy like the sanctions over Iran.

On the basis of certain criteria, some currencies are treated as hard currency. United state’s Dollar, Japanese Yen, British pond, Europe’s Euro and IMF’s SDR(Special Drawing Rights) are treated as hard currencies and it can only be used for international trade. Trade between two nations in different currencies than these five is treated as ‘barter’. Countries minting these currencies can successfully put sanction on other countries. Due to sanctions on Iran, it cannot trade in these currencies because banks will not provide access of these currencies to Iran. So, the business between Iran and India is now based on gold and Rupees. Iran gets the Rupee from Indian and then it uses the Rupee to buy Indian goods from the market. So, the international trade is skewed in favour of Developed countries. The role of international organisation is also very important in case of the recent trend of globalisation. When any country finds itself in Balance of Payment crisis then it can go to IMF for loans but these loans are given on the basis of some commitments like that country will take austerity measures, liberalise and privatise economy, enable acts of safeguarding intellectual property rights and so on. So, basically an act of economic form of colonialism is manifested by IMF, which always has chief from European countries. The voting share in decision making is also based on the amount of contributions countries make in the central fund. Increase in the contributions of any country cannot be done by the country itself but it will be approved by central committee where these developing countries have more votes. Similar cases can be seen in World Trade Organization, where in the name of competition the concept of equality is used where concept of ‘equity’ is the only humane option.

Patent and copyright laws have commodified the traditional knowledge base. Earlier these were available to everyone for use. Now, the American company gets the patent of Basmati rice and the folk music of Bangladesh. The discovery which can cure millions of people of world has the sole motive of profit generation. After the end of patent, these corporate houses in collusion with state renew their patent commonly known as “evergreening”. In the Novartis case, Supreme Court of India said that your product is not a result of scientific innovation but an innovation of Lawyers through the use of legal language. But, Novartis have the patent of anti-cancer drug ‘Glivec’ in rest of the world except India. The arrogance of medical companies and corporate houses can be seen through the recent statement by Bayer’s CEO, who said that they are developing drugs for rich westerners not for poor Indians. These pharmaceutical companies are not running with any logic except the logic of accumulating profit and for this if they have to make people sick or kill, they will. These companies are run by strong advertisement campaigns. In these campaigns, the ideology is created among the masses.

In the contemporary society, it has become almost impossible for people to preserve their consciousness or defend their consciousness. The marketing holocaust is contaminating the minds of people by seducing them through the old and emerging forms of communication. Women are main victims of this marketing holocaust. Woman is commodified to increase or change the consumption pattern among women. New forms of technologies are created to attract more women towards the new definition of ‘beauty’. Mushrooming of beauty parlours, plastic surgery hospitals, breast implant techniques etc. is a clear sign of a new consciousness formed by corporate houses which is not genuinely questioned by people who use it. ‘Pink collar jobs’ are created for women and they are shown as ‘showpiece’ in news channels. Songs, films and other things are being produced to defame and degrade women. Classical forms of music, dance and films are being seen as archetypal. One can find the madness in the consumer, who is not accepting the madness of his or world around him. Virtue ethics of Aristotle is being replaced by consumer ‘ethics’ of modern capitalism. The whole society has become ‘one dimensional’. All forms of domination are converted into one form. Some people say that industries are in shambles but ironically I find society in shambles, craving for its existence. The process of homogenization by the suspicious method of globalisation is killing the basic soul of social world. Oneness of mind is creating dullness of mind which in turn is bringing death to the scholarship.

Therefore, the discourses on property, money, labour and cultural forms should be seen in different perspectives and state should be reformed to create judicious society. The ‘hegemony’ created by capitalist forces can only lead to destruction of the ‘total social world’ whose preview one can see through the internationalization of financial crisis’ in 2007-08. The regulated and accountable economic system is the option through which these problems can be tackled. The system where any company will not sell drug at the price of $69,000 Per Year for a person dying of cancer and the state will not become a mute spectator of all these. A more humane kind of economy is needed to run the market.

Pirate Modernity

A city of Order: the Masterplan and Media Urbanism (Page 52-106)

In 1959 a significant gathering of India’s architects took place in Delhi to discuss the future of Indian cities and urban forms and Charles Correa in this gathering criticised Corbusier’s Chandigarh project as  ‘savage’ but the patronage of Nehru to Chandigarh project created  confusions in the minds of present architects about the future of Indian cities. Ravi Sundaram discusses about the MARG’s role in planning, Hume Report of 1930, G.D. Birla Committee Report and the epidemic of 1955 to find the trajectories of the development of Masterplan of Delhi. 

The launch of Masterplan in 1962 was inaugurated with many responses from the media, Town Planning Organization and various other groups for the need of ‘urban psyche’ for the transformation of Delhi into well integrated city. This urban psyche was defined as the specific practices of living; work and community organisations and these social systems were to be nurtured through planning practices and technologies of control and management. This gave rise to the concept of zoning, social typologies and regional dispersion. The planners found the absence of urban psyche primarily in slum dwellers and it was related with health, sanitation and moral welfare. In the postcolonial arena, slums were represented as the decay of urbanism and postcolonial shame. The Birla Committee gave primary task of removing the slums from the city as the first task of future Masterplan. TPO booklet on slums and urban renewal of 1958 also talked about the ‘pre-urban’ ways of slum dwellers main cause for aggravating the problems of insanitation and congestion which is getting more intensified by the strong-solidarity of slum dwellers or brotherhood ties causing migration in the city. The moral questions were enshrined by defining these slums as the centre of “gambling-drinking-prostitution” which is connected with the negative dimensions of citizenships. So, TPO wanted to add three things in the Masterplan urban renewal, community development and healthy neighbourhood. Bharat Sevak Samaj Survey Report of 1958 revised upward official estimates of the slums and congestion was less an issue for slum dwellers. It gave a national-therapeutic model, where slum justice would prepare the residents for proper citizenship. It gave the mixture of economic analysis and moral categories. Samaj called for the removal of cattle and obnoxious trades from the city and advocated for a strict-licensing system. 

Albert Mayer in an unpublished note listed the various characteristics of a Delhi slum and wrote that the slums does not have minimum humane conditions for the living and ‘village like habits of in-migrants’ were the cause for the prevailing conditions of Delhi slums. In 1960, Hindustan Times article announcing the Masterplan in 1960 cheerfully told its readers that the planning will relieve urban Delhi of those members having rural way of life. It was a nationalistic-modernist discourse. Douglas Ensminger also suggested that Indian cities lacked urban sensibilities that had developed in the west. He talked about the absence of ‘neighbourhood consciousness’ and the presence of caste based groupings or interactions among the urban people of Delhi. Therefore, Ford India gave emphasis on urban community programmes to be carried out in conjunction with Masterplan. Self-help, participation and group action in the form of an urban Community Programme would go a long way to solving mutual problems. Ford India wanted to adopt the methods from the successes of the US because both the countries having differences in character shares the issue of “social integration”. They thought that social mixing would produce a organic community and Mayer talked about the spiritual orientation of rural people towards mohallas.

 However, Mayer’s neighbourhood model was western in its essence but he connected it with mohallah and to allude to only the ‘spiritual aspects’. In formal urban planning term, it was closer to cellular models of early regionalist/New Town designs and was close to Park’s community model developed in USA. It was seen by Planners as a western implant for democratic urban life of Delhi, but faced possible failure in the context of weak urban secular consciousness that was inadequately linked to territory. So, a pilot project was started to generate genuine civic consciousness. In 1959, first pilot community project began following a year of training and planning social workers with MA degree who would act as organizers. Six Vikas Mandals were initiated in six totally distinct areas of the city and women and lower caste people were encouraged to join this. The campaigns for sanitations, self-help, problem solving and civic actions were launched. This project had emphasis on behaviour modification, a favourite of sociological theories at that time and it played a generative role in producing a model of general welfare for the public through community action. It worked to manage and understand the city in the context of class and caste differences.

 The survey conducted by Bombay based sociologist Bopegamage noted a sharp segregation in New Delhi where one part of the city was unaware of another part of the city. This distance was disturbing the ‘social health’ of the society given the context of centuries of “caste-segregation”. This was highly dangerous for any city after seeing the US experience of race. The neighbourhood model was to be a model of non segregated urban citizenship which will define the limits of the expansion of the city. The border demarcated by this principle will define the division between urban and non urban areas. Through technocratic designs, optimum size of the city was defined and the main zone would be a model for normative urban form and social justice. So, this took three forms all of which were integral to liberal model of planning. The slum was to be tackled by a mixture of conservation of existing areas, relaxing building standards in some areas and increasing support, and removing some areas where slum dwellers with alternative forms of accommodation. These areas were not to be segregated but be made integral part of the city.

 A decade after the 1962 Delhi Masterplan, a major review was taken by Town and Country Planning Organisation and it was headed by Sayed Shafi and TPO members of the planning team for 1962 masterplan. After praising Masterplan for being the first comprehensive plan for Delhi, it damned the implementation of the project. The report revealed that not a single “flatted factory” was build to accommodate small enterprises and the segregation between industry, home and commerce has not converted into reality. The widespread presence of “non-conforming industries” and “unauthorized colonies” are showing the plan as and utopian dream of the planners. The 1973 document by same committee showed the four fold increase in land values of the city between 1958 and 1973 due to monopoly of DDA over land grants. This Masterplan created a distinction between old and new forms of city and turned old cities into despair and darkness as is the case of Sahajehanabad.

 In 1980s the city of delhi entered its own “very special delirium” and this was not novel to this city but other rapidly growing cities of that long decade went through like Mexico, Karachi, Lagos, and many others.  The turbulent expansion of the cities in the south gave a new genre to this discipline which can be best called “urban crisis” writings.  Mike Davis in his book Planet of Slums awaits a fetid, violent urbanism in the periphery of the urban centre in modern capitalism and says that there will be retreat of secular and state forms. Welfare and self help will not be provided by the state but by the religious groups.  Rem Koolhaas takes a different view and finds a self organized rhythm of urban life, markets, traffic, network innovations that render its very “dysfunctionality” productive. But the mediation of Koolhaas fails in Delhi as the city had converted into dead in 1980s. The proliferation of informality in delhi in illegal manner emerged as the definition of urban crisis in the city. The administration and governance of these areas are managed by local politicians, state employees and petty criminals. Illegal lotteries and chit funds are used to finance low cost constructions.  It also developed internal inequalities of work and gender. It emerged from smaller political and academic debates of 1970s to urban way of life at the end of the century.

 

By 1990s, a large chunk of Delhi population were living in the unauthorized and non-legal neighborhood ranging from working class settlements to elite usurpation of public spaces. Various new discourses entered into the city life like liberal environmentalists gave call for removal of polluting industries, security forces settled in large numbers after insurgencies in Delhi and Punjab, and people called for grafting of political claims by local populations known as “Political Society” in terms of Partha Chaterjee.  Middle class civic-environmental groups sought help from High Court and Supreme Court and they declared some companies as “non-conforming” and brought the purview of life in conformity or against the law. The campaign by media and other advocacy groups egged the courts to appoint special committees spread over every aspects of civic life. The Masterplan gave a model where only those individuals could live in the city that fit in the urban life styles. Among the urban bureaucracies, there was a developmental modernist wing around Jagmohan, that found some parts of the city dead and these parts developed as the grounds for crime and disease. Unauthorised colonies were flourishing in Delhi and people were settling over agricultural lands as DDA had the monopoly over land use. These unauthorised colonies were settled with rudimentary infrastructures and changed slowly through negotiations with local politicians and state employees. NCAER survey showed a rapid growth in industries in Delhi and most of them were in non-conforming areas i.e. outside the legal framework of the plan. 

Slum demolitions, resettlements and drive to clean up the cities were started by some bureaucratic elites in 1970s. However, the first demolition was done in 1967 and these slum dwellers were dumped in eastern part of the Delhi. In the period of emergency, the authority violently taken this programme to relocate them to the periphery and the tool of sterilisation was used to regularise the colonies. Through the use of police terror and force, hundreds of thousands were forcibly relocated. After thirty years, one can see the inauguration of the long processes of the shift of post-colonial Delhi away from the classic image of the capital subordinated to the political power and excess. By significantly expanding the physical forms of the city through brutal resettlement, the emergency developed new frontiers and settlements in Delhi. However, after the decision of Bombay high court and giving “right to livelihood” a fundamental right to the citizens of India stopped or slowed the pace of eviction of people from their spaces. In the post emergency period, the assassination of Indira Gandhi, anti-Sikh riot of 1984, the era of Rajiv Gandhi, terrorism and counter-terrorism initiatives created “pirate modernity” in the city. Neighborhoods, small factories, financing networks, new workplaces in homes, markets and roof spreads all over the city, particularly in Trans-Yamuna regions and parts of west and north Delhi. Every rule setup by Masterplan were violated or infringed and between 1980 and 1986 created boom in the development of hectic places.  By the time in 1990s, when court judgement came for the eviction the city turned into metropolis with its own catalog of urban crisis and conflict.

  The slow erosion of control models propounded by Masterplan and national sovereign control by globalisation increased the fluidity of the workers or the business men in and around the countries. The searches for markets were now not only regional but it was national and international. Small industries proliferated in the urban spaces and networks of sales agents between pirate factories increased. The industries were lacking proper infrastructures and Benjamin calls these industrialists “Suitcase entrepreneurs”.  These suitcase enterprises did not come from Bania background only but people from different backgrounds were active participants of this capitalistic phenomenon.  Some have mapped this phenomenon of rapid scramble for urban spaces on to a broader context of a “Splintering urbanism” in the wake of post-Fordist urban planning, where recent privatisation of urban services transforms the very nature of urban life against much of 20^th century writing had measured itself. 

 The mass disenchantment of the government of 1970s and social unrest became the daily life of the people of this country. Indira Gandhi saw 1982 game a platform to unite the country through a common network by organising national television spectacle.  This provided the first series of technological modernity and most powerful vehicle for this transition. The technological modernity was used by the state to strengthen the weaken sovereignty in virtual world. Asiad 82 is seen as the first significant media event heralding the growing gesture of politics to television. It is also said to contain the prehistory of globalisation where consumption and advertising were given a boost by media cultures emerging after mass television.

‘Liveliness’ of event created enormous pressure on the government and Doordarshan were given complete autonomy to execute the programmes successfully. The advent of VCR, colour televisions and other kits for proper broadcast of shows provided a boom in the market. The colour televisions were imported from abroad so that it will be able to meet the demands of the market during Asiad. Other means of fulfilling the demand were loosened like smuggling from other countries and assembling of television sets in urban spaces. Between 1984 and 1990, television set rose nine times in the country and production of low cost audio cassettes increased highly. This created a ‘consumption culture’ in the country. The pressures of IMF and World Bank for removing older import substitution regime radicalised this as now multi-national companies entered in the market especially in Rajiv Gandhi era. National Informatics Centre was established to connect all districts, states to provide an impetus to e-governance in the country. Video libraries and video centres emerged in every geographical area of the country and decentralisation of it provided its spread like wildfire all over the country. The speed generally associated with Mumbai entered in the life of Delhi. The use of various sound amplifiers in weddings, religious functions and so on started which increased the ambient levels of sounds in the city. From mosque to temples to car horns to jargons everywhere these low priced sound system began to be used.

 The decade witnessed different incidents like political instability, anti-Sikh pogrom, political and military conflicts in Punjab and Kashmir, military intervention in Sri Lanka and Babri Masjid demolition. Also, the preoccupation of media with political instability in country created a different set of norms. The declining acceptance of INC after the rise of media urbanism can be seen through the production of virtual space. These virtual spaces became the ground for the debates of secular forces and communal forces, parties in power and in opposition and there was no such control over this new media. Then in 90s, the government differentiated between carriage and content and content were sent to censor board for prior approval for broadcast. The local bazzars and markets were planned to be regularised in the Masterplan. Braudel finds a difference between capitalistic organization and bazaars. Capitalists were non specialised and mobile while the market was specialized and local. This non specialisation and mobility provided capitalists to increase their power and monopoly. Various groups and especially Jan Sangh and BJP which was the parties of post-partition traders call for regularisation of market. But the new topography of urbanism emerged in 1980s created a network of sales agents, linked media markets, parallel production centres and neighbourhood entirely dominated by small commerce and industries made it almost impossible to regulate. These were across the caste spectrum.

All the three media markets Lajpat Rai market, Nehru Place and Palika bazaar were post-colonial development. Now the markets were not ruled by traditional traders of Mughal times but the large number of Hindu and Sikh communities came from post-partition pakistan were part of it. The department of rehabilitation quickly set-up sixty three markets for them. These were established as temporary structures but later they converted into permanent. These markets produced, repaired and assembled every type of products in the market. The notoriety of the market created huge encroachment which can be seen in the survey of MCD’s Land and estate Department. It claimed that 95% of the market were marked by large scale unauthorised construction and encroachments. They successfully protested against any attempt to demolish the structures by civic authorities and asserted their own version of “splintering urbanism”.