Kingship and Polity on the Himalayan Borderland ― Rajput Identity During the Early Colonial Encounter

This book explores the modern transformation of state and society in the Indian Himalaya. Centred on three Rajput-led kingdoms during the transition to British rule (c. 1790-1840) and their interconnected histories, it demonstrates how border making practices engendered a modern reading of 'tradition' that informs communal identities to date. By revising the history of these mountain kings on the basis of extensive archival, textual, and ethnographic research, it offers an alternative to popular and scholarly discourses that grew with the rise of colonial knowledge. This revision ultimately points to the important contribution of borderland spaces to the fabrication of group identities.

Arik Moran (DPhil, Oxon 2010) is a member of the Department of Asian Studies at the University of Haifa, Israel. With twenty years of experience in the Western Himalaya, he combines history and anthropology to address central disciplinary questions. Among his recent publications are a study of women's agency in the early colonial Himalaya ('"The Rani of Sirmur" Revisited', Modern Asian Studies 49[2] (2014)), an historical outline of the development of theistic governance in Himachal Pradesh ('Toward a History of Devotional Vaishnavism in the West Himalayas', Indian Economic and Social History Review, 50[1], 2013), and an enquiry into the links between orality and script in highland historiography ('On the Evolution of Genealogical Narratives in the Western Himalayas', Religions of South Asia, 5[1-2], 2012).