QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced] Author: Keyword(s): Year:  Vol:  Page:
Home | Help | Feedback | Subscriptions | Archive | Search | Table of Contents

This Article Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Rao, V. N. Articles by Subrahmanyam, S. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                   What's this?

AN ELEGY FOR NTI

Politics as a Secular Discursive Field in the Indian Old Régime

The essay reflects in an elegiac mode on a now largely forgotten (or effaced) body of literature from precolonial India regarding the art and business of politics. This body, known as nti, has classical roots in Sanskrit but came in particular to be popular in peninsular India between the thirteenth and the eighteenth centuries in vernacular languages such as Telugu, Kannada, and Marathi. Secular and this-worldly in orientation, it can be broadly contrasted to the far better known body of texts on dharma, which are concerned to preserve a normative, ritually and religiously sanctioned, order based on strict adherence to caste and gender roles. We first trace the classical roots of the tension between dharma and nti and then set out how these two bodies of texts came to play distinct and evolving roles in medieval and early modern south India. We argue further that under the early phase of colonial rule, East India Company officials misunderstood the nature of nti texts and that this has led to a persistently erroneous view of their role and content. We conclude by noting, however, that some astute modern observers of and participants in Indian politics, such as B. R. Ambedkar, have understood the part that nti might play for the development of a secular language of politics in modern India.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?