| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

Dick Kooiman. Communalism and Indian Princely States: Travancore, Baroda and Hyderabad in the 1930s. New Delhi: Manohar. 2002. Pp. 249. Rs. 500.00.
Dick Kooiman's book explores the contentious issue of communitarian politics in the 1930s in the semi-independent kingdoms of colonial South Asia, particularly the states of Travancore, Baroda, and Hyderabad. In the context of the contemporary ascendancy of vitriolic, exclusive forms of religious nationalism in the subcontinent, Kooiman broaches a subject of considerable importance.	1
The first substantive chapter provides background information of various sorts, explaining briefly the history and religious makeup of, and the educational and economic developments in, the states under consideration. Travancore, a Hindu-dominated state with a large Christian minority, and Baroda, a largely Hindu state with a sizable Muslim population, were "both far ahead of Hyderabad [a Hindu-majority state with a "Muslim dominated government"] in terms of education, rates of literacy, and, to a lesser extent, economic development" (p. 65). Travancore had an export-oriented economy and was largely dominated by foreign capital, while Baroda and Hyderabad were more conducive to investments from indigenous merchants and industry.	2
Kooiman devotes his second chapter to additional background information, here elucidating constitutional developments in British India and princely states before the 1930s. He details the effects at the all-India level of the Morley-Minto (1909) and Montagu-Chelmsford (1919) reforms, packages that promoted democratic change and separate electorates. These reforms have long been associated with communalizing the body politic of India, with some scholars arguing that separate electorates actively atomized the populace along religiously codified lines. Kooiman lays out this debate and then explains how democratic and employment reforms were or were not carried out in his three case states. Travancore and Baroda adopted legislative councils with both elected and appointed members. In the former, this resulted in the dominance of the Nayars, a Hindu upper-caste landed elite, much to the dismay of Christians, Muslims, and "lower-caste" Eshavas. In Baroda, the reforms gave strength to the Patidars, dominant Gujarati landed peasantry, with participation to a lesser extent of Brahmins and Banias, although there was overall very little resentment against other communities or against the government. Hyderabad toyed with a variety of democratic initiatives but ultimately rejected them in favor of maintaining government by monarchy.	3
The next two chapters represent the centerpiece of the book, wherein Kooiman examines communalism in the 1930s. He first compares the states of Travancore and Baroda and here makes some of the most interesting observations of his book, interrogating the ways in which both capitalist and democratic changes created regional convulsions and a competitive environment in which rivalries for power and position resulted in oppositional group identities. While neither state created separate electorates, Travancore suffered from communal tension and violence while Baroda remained largely free of such conflict. The reason for this, Kooiman demonstrates, is that Baroda effectively met the needs and demands of its dominant groups. Travancore, by contrast, suffered from forms of election and representative government that exacerbated caste and religious differences. Additionally, foreign capitalist enterprises soon came to dominate the commercial and financial terrain in the state, disinvesting the local entrepreneurial classes, primarily Eshavas and Christians—precisely the groups that felt excluded from the legislative process and bureaucratic positions in the public services. Given all of this, Kooiman concludes that "in the emergence of communalism separate electorates as well as the demand for them may have been an effect rather than a cause" (p. 164).	. . .

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