The Centre de Sciences Humaines is pleased to invite you to the CSH Seminar

by

Girija JOSHI

(Centre d’études  sud-asiatiques et himalayennes)

on

Resilient Communities

A street scene in the village of Raniya. In the foreground a young woman sits spinning, a child beside her and other women around her. In the background between the houses and giant jars are cattle, camels and numerous other figures going about their business, Opaque watercolour.

Followed by a discussion with Tanuja Kothiyal (Dr. B. R. Ambedkar University Delhi)

On

Wednesday, 27 May 2026, from 5:00 pm to 6:30 pm IST

At

Centre de Sciences Humaines

IFI-CSH conference room (ground floor)

2 Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam Road, New Delhi – 110011

Registration TBA

Abstract:

Resilient Communities offers a historical perspective on the relationship between  community, subsistence, and governance in north-western India. Focusing on Panjab, it explores the continuities in kinship and caste practices of rural Panjabi populations from the mid-eighteenth to late nineteenth centuries. Working from the household outwards, it studies how agropastoral lineages formed, and how some of these managed during the eighteenth century to establish autonomous states or riyasats of their own. From the early nineteenth century onwards, this riyasati order was  systematically dismantled by the colonial state. Nevertheless, this book  suggests that colonial attempts to settle and reform rural society, by changing both its relationship to the environment and by imposing new definitions of ‘community’ upon it were met with uneven success. Colonial subjects in rural Panjab continued to forge bonds of kinship beyond the legal limits imposed by the state.

Speaker: 

Girija Joshi received her doctorate in History from Leiden University in  2021. Her PhD thesis explored the sociopolitical and ecological  transformation of the region that today falls within Haryana and eastern Punjab, between the mid-eighteenth and late-nineteenth centuries. Having completed her doctorate, Girija moved to the Centre d’études  sud-asiatiques et himalayennes (Paris) for a postdoctoral project centred upon a corpus of Persianate histories that she had first used for her PhD. Her current research, funded by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung, extends this investigation by focusing upon the Persianate household archives of  landholding lineages across the Indus Plains and the Thar Desert between the eighteenth to twentieth centuries. Her most recent research was published in the Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient.

For more info contact:

joel[dot]cabalion[at]csh-delhi[dot]com

co[dot]lefevre[at]csh-delhi[dot]com

CSH Seminars are in hybrid mode. Please pre-register for offline and online registration before Monday, 15 December, 2:00 p.m. IST.

To attend at the venue: Please note the room capacity is limited. Seats will be reserved on a first-come first-served basis. Kindly bring ID proof to be granted access to the venue.