Born into Essex landed gentry, Cox decided on military a career, graduating from Sandhurst in 1884. He joined the Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) and went to India where he quickly learned Hindustani before starting Arabic and Persian. Following a well-trodden path for imperial administrators he decided to become a ‘politico’, and was appointed temporary assistant political resident in British Somaliland Protectorate at Zeila. At this point in his life he was ‘devoted to his studies of bird life, Somali clans and conchology’ (Graves 1941: 33). In 1899 Curzon offered Cox the position of political agent and consul at Muscat. This was the making of him; he honed his diplomatic skills during a period of tension with the French in the Gulf and established an influence over the Sultan of Muscat that continued when in 1904 he was promoted to acting political resident in the Persian Gulf and consul-general for southern Persia. It was during this period that Cox, following on from earlier travellers in Oman, James Wellsted, Colonel S.B. Miles, and the Dutch missionary Samuel Zwemer, performed two journeys in the interior. On the first he started out from Abu Dhabi, reaching Muscat via the desert oasis of Buraimi and the desert side of the Jebel Akhdar. The second, from Ras al Khaimah to Buraimi, returning to Muscat by steam boat via Sohar, involved transporting a chronometer along the caravan route in order to set the latter's longitude and latitude.

Historical Background

The long reign of Nasir al-Din Shah ended with his assassination in 1896. His death at the hands of a disciple of the revolutionary agitator Jamal al-Din ‘al-Afghani’ reflected a deep popular discontent both with the monarch himself, the Qajar dynasty in general, and the overall stagnation of the country. Reform was urgently required, but the combination of arbitrary and despotic rule and Western penetration of the economy generated an unnatural opposition alliance of radicals and conservative ulama. This had manifested itself in 1891 in the popular protests against the Shah's selling of the tobacco monopoly to an Englishman and would emerge again when Muzzafar al-Din Shah was forced to grant a majlis (parliament) in December 1905. The so-called mushrutih, or Persian constitutional revolution, lasted until 1911 when Russian pressure effectively ended it. Although the British legation in Tehran had been generally sympathetic to the revolution, the British government signed a convention with Russia in 1907 partitioning the country. In allowing Russia a free hand in the north this effectively doomed Persia's experiment in modern government to failure. In the south, where Britain's influence invariably predominated, oil had been discovered and in 1901 a Briton, William Knox D'Arcy, had been granted the concession for exploration. In 1914 the British government acquired a majority of the shares in the company holding the concession.

This paper is about the nature and working of Indian rural non-farm capitalism, that part of Indian economy that consists of small towns (under 2,00,000 people) and rural areas – often referred to as ‘provincial capitalism’ (Chari, 2004) and ‘regional capitalism’ (Baru, 2000) – in which the vast majority of Indian population lives and works (Harriss-White, 2003). After the Green Revolution, this part of Indian economy has undergone a widespread industrial transition giving birth to a pattern of non-farm growth in which social structures and power relations inherited from colonial and pre-colonial past are intertwined in capitalist production relations. Rural non-farm capitalism appears to be markedly distinct from Indian corporate capitalism and is still largely unexplored.

Addressing Indian rural non-farm capitalism as a distinct section of the Indian economy, this paper contributes to the debate on contemporary capitalism within the vast literature that goes under the rubric of ‘Varieties of Capitalism’. In broad terms, this literature rejects the view that a pure capitalist system exists as a model to all countries, to explore instead ‘real’ capitalist systems, pointing out the differences among them that are seen to depend on their institutional features. Accordingly, my major aim is to show that Indian rural capitalism is based on structures and relations that are ‘institutionally embedded’, i.e. that are specific to the Indian countryside, being determined by the institutional framework that the country has inherited from her past history and culture.

Introduction

In this chapter I compare and contrast the ancient quest for longevity through the search for an elixir of life with the growth of modern medical technologies that may assist the contemporary quest for longevity. The linking theme in this comparison is the centrality of technology to human culture. By ‘technology’ I mean not only machinery and equipment, but, more importantly, the techniques by which societies discipline the body with the aim of controlling either health or moral behaviour. These techniques of behaviour we can call, following Michel Foucault, ‘the technologies of the self’. Perhaps the key issue in this chapter is that, in thinking about old age and longevity, most societies have seen health and morality as being intimately connected. Hence, the technologies of the self typically seek to prolong life through promoting good health and at the same time embracing the notion that good health and longevity are consequences of moral probity. In short, most religious traditions have regarded longevity as the beneficial mark of a moral life. Perhaps the real break, therefore, between past generations and modern society is that our guides to good health have broken, or at least weakened, the link between moral behaviour and longevity.

The catalogue of gardens that comes after the description of Paradise in Book 4 (ll.268–85) of Paradise Lost has been viewed as something of a rhetorical topos. Alastair Fowler cites a comparable passage from Spenser (The Faerie Queene, II.xii.52). The catalogue may be seen as a special form of what Ernst Curtius described as the topos of outdoing, in which ‘on the basis of a comparison with famous examples provided by tradition, the superiority, even the uniqueness, of the person or thing to be praised is established’. Curtius notes that this rhetorical device was used to suggest the beauty of landscape. Milton's point here is to emphasize the singularity of Eden, and to set it apart from history, myth and legend. As such the catalogue serves a functional end rather than purely a descriptive one. A closer look at its positioning in the narrative is instructive, and a proper view of its place requires us to look back, however briefly, at the description of the garden.

The garden may well be regarded as the most strenuous achievement of Paradise Lost. The inalienable otherness of the garden, its existence outside the known human world, is so critical and difficult to convey because, unlike Hell or Heaven, it is nonetheless a human dwelling-place. It is easier for Milton to convince us of the otherness of hell and heaven than to demonstrate the singularity of the garden, for the garden necessarily involves a human perspective. Its proportions and features are amenable to human sense.

South Asia is the largest democratic region of the world. It has been the biggest theatre of struggles for democratic development in contemporary times. Countries of the region have passed through variegated political experiences, including attempts to establish authoritarian rule, struggles to restore democracy, violent conflicts and efforts to resolve differences and divisions through negotiation. But, most countries of the region have sustained democracy for most of the time, although they are economically less developed and culturally highly diverse. While structural factors might be important to explain the dynamics of democracy in the region, the attitude of the people towards democracy is no less important in the success stories and the setbacks to democracy. Since we cannot view people as an undifferentiated mass, it may be useful to examine the attitudes of the elites and the masses separately to find similarities and dissimilarities between them. As the elites in any society play a crucial role in sustaining the political system, it is appropriate to know whether the elites of South Asia have favourable attitudes towards democracy, whether the elite and mass attitudes in this regard cohere with each other, and whether the elite–mass differentials are a cause for concern.

What does democracy mean to the elites and the masses? Why do they prefer democracy and how much do they support it? How participative or indifferent are they in the political process?

About the opening scene of Act III of Prometheus Unbound, there is general agreement that it “is an example of irony in the classical sense in which everything the speaker says is true, but in a way that he does not comprehend” (NS 256). The “fatal child” of Jupiter's eager anticipation will be fatal to him, not for him. Drunk with power and sexually aroused, Jupiter calls for Idaean Ganymede to “fill the daedal cups” and for a “wide voice” of exultation to rise up circling into a full-throated plenum of song and celebration. But in reality this tyrant of the world is on the brink of an annihilation toward which he will plunge with the “Ai! Ai!” (III.i.79) of Prometheus's pain and Apollo's written grief on his lips. What Jupiter has brought forth will not dynastically seal his sovereignty as the only potent begetter; instead, its advent will put an end to him just as he previously put an end to Saturn. All this is true enough. The enthroned tyrant of heaven does incarnate the old story of pride running before a fall.

The spatial concentration of communities, with transformations over time has been a neglected theme in academic research on Indian cities. Thus, when I was asked to present a broad overview of the organization of minority communities in the city space of Calcutta, a number of questions immediately came to my mind. First, how would one define ‘minorities’? Second, has there been any change in the concentration/dispersal of minorities over space? Can one identify the factors behind such changes? Third, can one identify the major phases in the development of minority settlements in Calcutta?

The decennial census, the only source of a consistent time-series demographic data, provides us with figures on the two broad groupings into which minorities are generally classified: religious and linguistic. The limitation of this database, however, is that the census authorities have discontinued the publication of either religious or linguistic categories at the level of the municipal wards, since 1961. Yet, one cannot make meaningful spatial analysis unless such micro-level figures are made available. The existing ward-level data prior to 1961, though not fully comparable over time, due either to changes in the method or subject of enumeration, gives a broad indication of the transformations, if any, in the organization of minorities over space.

Very few sources exist, apart from demographic data mentioned above, that could provide some clue as to the concentration of communities over space in the city of Calcutta, historically.

Historical Background

Arabia entered the twentieth century still a relatively unknown, backward and inhospitable region. However the spread of the telegraph and railway enabled the Ottoman Empire to reassert its claim of sovereignty over parts of the peninsula. Construction of the Hijaz railway from Damascus to Medina (opened 1908) meant the Ottoman government was able to exercise ‘more direct control’ over the Sherif of Mecca and ‘restore its direct presence in Yemen’ (Hourani 1991: 280). In Central Arabia though, the pro-Ottoman Ibn Rashid were eclipsed by the rising Sultan Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, while British agreements entered into with rulers of the Gulf sheykhdoms at the end of the nineteenth century prevented Turkish expansion in that area.

Turkey's late decision to join the Axis powers on the eve of the First World War meant she would be fighting against her old ally Britain in the Middle East. Serious British reverses at Gallipoli and in Mesopotamia were offset by the Sherif of Mecca's decision to open up a front against Turkey in the Hijaz. The Arab Revolt (1916–1918) led eventually not only to the removal of the Turks from the Hijaz but also to the Arab tribes' conquest of Syria. However Arab nationalist aspirations were dashed when after the war, the Allies acted on the Sykes–Picot agreement and divided Greater Syria. French armies ejected Faysal's supporters from Damascus in 1920, while Faysal's father, the embittered King Husayn, who expecting to rule over a much larger swathe of Arab territory had declared himself ‘King of the Arabs’, was confined to the Hijaz.

Although not as well-known a figure within English travel literature as he should be, to the researcher into Middle East societies of the inter-war years such as Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, or Yemen, the writings of Ameen Rihani constitute a valued and authoritative source. Born in Freike a small village in Lebanon in 1876, Rihani migrated to New York as a boy of 12. As a young man the United States gave him the freedom to develop himself as an individual, and as a person of Middle Eastern ethnicity to research into and choose his own identity. Moving beyond the narrow sectarian Maronite Lebanese background into which he had been born, Rihani found, as he later claimed, a larger Arab allegiance through reading the travel writing of Doughty and Burton in the New York public libraries. Returning to Syria in the first decade of the twentieth century, Rihani tapped into an emerging Arab nationalist discourse, while back in the United States he carved out a niche for himself as an exotic writer and reporter on Arabian culture. It was, however, when this novelty value wore off on the American public and he found it difficult to place his work that he decided to travel in Arabia. From late 1922 through 1923 he journeyed to the main cities and through the great deserts of the Arabian Peninsula, meeting rival Arab kings, emirs, sultans, and imams, and trying to enlist them in the cause of peace and Pan-Arabism.

Martineau's life represents a triumph over early adversity. Overcoming poverty and ill health in childhood, and despite advancing deafness as an adult, she supported her siblings and established a career by writing for the Daily News and the Edinburgh Review. Born into a Unitarian family her radicalism – especially her antislavery principles and concern for the conditions of women – is incorporated into her travel writing, beginning with Society in America (1837), an account of a tour of both the southern and northern states of the USA. Martineau even went so far as to produce a manual for travellers, How to Observe Morals and Manners (1838). Her write up of her journeys in Egypt and Palestine of 1846–47, Eastern Life, Present and Past, appeared in 1848. As an observer of the East her Victorian social reformist principles and espousal of the ‘higher criticism’ of religion appeared to leave little room for her to connect with local people and their customs. She saw the world of the Middle East ‘as frozen in biblical history’ (Harper DLB/166: 255). Pointing out that only five of the twenty-four chapters of Eastern Life are concerned with ‘modern’ Egyptians, Billie Melman dubs Martineau as belonging to the ‘mythopically ethnocentric’ type of traveller: ‘Time and again she discloses her total lack of interest in the Muslim Orient and in contemporary Egypt’ (Melman 1992: 63, 242).

Christine Lutringer is a researcher and teaching assistant at the Centre for Asian Studies of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva (Switzerland).

Claudio Cecchi (PhD in City and Regional Planning, Cardiff University) is Professor of Rural Development at the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’.

Elisabetta Basile is Professor of Development Studies at the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’.

Fabio Sabatini (PhD in Economics, University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’) is research and teaching assistant at the University of Siena (Italy).

Ishita Mukhopadhyay is a faculty in Department of Economics, University of Calcutta. She specializes in Economic methodology, Labour economics, Gender and development economics.

Luca Molinas (PhD in South Asian Studies, University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’) is a research fellow at SPES – Development Studies Research Centre at the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’.

Marco Cavalcante (PhD in South Asian Studies, University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’) is works at the Policy, Strategy and Planning Division of the United Nations World Food Programme.

Mario Prayer (PhD in South Asian Studies, University of Cagliari) is Associate Professor of Modern Indian History at the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’.

Rabindranath Mukhopadhyay is a faculty in Department of Economics in University of Calcutta. His area of specialization is Economics of education and human rights.

Raj Sekhar Basu is a faculty in Department of Modern History in University of Calcutta.

With clergymen for father and maternal grandfather, and a navy tradition to boot, Doughty's family background seemed to predetermine him to a life of patriotic service and religious earnestness. But while these influences would leave their imprint on his life, other contingencies arose to conflict with them. He was an orphan by the age of six, developed a stammer, and his faith was confronted by doubts raised by his study of geology. The speech impediment barred him from a naval career and despite graduating from Cambridge with a natural science degree in 1865 this was not good enough for him to take his scientific work further. After literary study in England and travel in Europe, during which he laid the foundations for his later preoccupation with a literary style purged of modern adulteration, Doughty spent the period 1874–78 in the East. Having prepared himself by studying Arabic, he set off from Damascus in November 1876 with the intention of being the first European scholar to describe the carved monuments of Madain Salih. He accompanied the hajj as far as its vicinity, viewed and made notes on the site, but then instead of returning determined to continue his wanderings in Central Arabia. Attaching himself initially to the Fukara Bedouin, he went on to Ha'il, where he met Muhammad ibn Rashid, and thence to Khaybar, before turning back towards the Hijaz. Not far from Mecca he came perilously close to being murdered by a fanatic, but eventually arrived in Jeddah in August 1878.

On the whole an undistinguished family, the Curzons of Keddleston Hall, an imposing eighteenth-century mansion in Derbyshire, traced their aristocratic lineage back to the Norman Conquest. George Curzon was however considered exceptional by his prep school headmaster and he lived up to his early promise at Eton and Balliol (though unaccountably he left Oxford without a first class degree). Already tipped for high office he made the tour of Greece and the Holy Land in 1883, then four years later, between 1887 and 1894, started a series of journeys, one round the world, and all taking in the East. Curzon had been from his schooldays an ardent imperialist and these travels had a political purpose. In 1891 he was briefly under-secretary at the India Office in Salisbury's short-lived government. At the same period the aspiring politician was busy writing letters to the Times about Britain's foreign policy in the East. There followed three books each mixing travel narration with observations on the political and strategic issues raised by the different areas through which the author had travelled. Both Russia in Central Asia (1889) and Persia and the Persian Question (1892) focus on the ‘Great Game’, or Britain and Russia's clash of interests in the East with the defence of India the core concern. Problems of the Far East (1894) surveyed Britain's possessions in the Far East and the growing threat of Japan.

Everyone remembers that dizzying passage in King Lear when Edgar recounts to his father the effects of leaning over a non-existent cliff. What we recall is the stupendous clarity of the visualization, heralded by that line which ‘haunted’ Keats, ‘Hark, do you hear the sea?’ Edgar speaks of the fear of falling but, as commentators since Johnson have noticed, ‘diffuses his attention to distinct objects’:

John Bayley picks up Johnson's comment, ‘the crows impede your fall’, and argues that what the imagination is doing here is not plummeting to a depth but soaring into a different universe in its exhilarating observation of particulars, so characteristic of the liberating force of Shakespeare's poetry: crows, choughs, samphire-gatherer, the mice-like fishers and ‘diminished’ bark are points marking a free flight rather than free fall. Should the lines have been ‘all precipice, – all vacuum’ as Johnson believed? His own critical deprecation was full of zestful substantives: