The Library
The colonial city and the challenge of modernity : urban hegemonies and civic contestations in Bombay City, 1905-1925
Tools
Hazareesingh, Sandip (1999) The colonial city and the challenge of modernity : urban hegemonies and civic contestations in Bombay City, 1905-1925. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
|
PDF
WRAP_THESIS_Hazareesingh_1999.pdf - Requires a PDF viewer. Download (17Mb) |
Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b1362854~S15
Abstract
This thesis is a social history of Bombay city in the first quarter of the twentieth
century. It explores material changes in urban life consequent upon the impact of
modernity and the varied range of contestations of the colonial order which they
provoke.
The first chapter outlines the specific nature of colonial modernism and shows its
impact on the city's spatial forms and on its social relations. Representing a highly
selective, power-driven, and essentially technological manipulation of modernity, it
ensures distorted and differential outcomes within urban society. These conditions are
considerably aggravated by the sudden impact of the First World War, the subject of
the second chapter. The War increases material scarcities, worsens conditions of urban
life, widens disparities between rich and poor, and intensifies colonial repression.
At the same time, the crisis of war brings to the city the full potential of the
revolution in communications which carries a modem discourse of civic rights. In the
city, Homiman and sections of the bilingual urban intelligentsia rapidly vernacularize
this discourse and diffuse it into new social contexts. This is perceived by the local
colonial state as seriously threatening and subversive. The third chapter shows how
Gandhi's anti-modernist rejection of the city leads to his attempts to control, and in
some aspects reverse, this gathering urban momentum for an expansion in citizenship
rights.
The final chapter considers the new visions of urban citizenship expressed in the
agitation for an expansion of civil and democratic rights, and in labour protest
movements. This critical modernism looks to the future, rather than to the past, and acts
as a force to humanise the city, presenting an alternative and potentially more radical
challenge to the colonial state than the Gandhian movement.
Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Subjects: | D History General and Old World > DS Asia | ||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Mumbai (India) -- History -- 20th century, Mumbai (India) -- Social conditions -- 20th century, Colonial cities -- India | ||||
Official Date: | February 1999 | ||||
Dates: |
|
||||
Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
Theses Department: | Department of History | ||||
Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | Washbrook, D. A. | ||||
Extent: | i, 284 leaves | ||||
Language: | eng |
Request changes or add full text files to a record
Repository staff actions (login required)
View Item |
Downloads
Downloads per month over past year