Ep 31: The (Un)governable City: Productive Failure in the Making of Colonial Delhi- Guftagu with Dr Raghav Kishore

India Colonised

Dr Raghav Kishore is a historian of Modern South Asia and his research has primarily focused on the transformation of urban governance under colonial rule in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The (Un)governable City: Productive Failure in the Making of Colonial Delhi, 1857-1911, examines the production of urban space and its relation to colonial governance in Delhi in the aftermath of the Great Rebellion of 1857 until the transfer of the colonial capital to the city in 1911. Contesting the popular view that the aftermath of the rebellion was a period of political stability, the author creatively demonstrates how the tensions, contradictions and failures of colonial policies were responsible for the unintended development of state capacity and also provided opportunities for Delhi’s residents and social groups to assert their claims to city spaces. This volume brings to scrutiny Delhi’s cultural, economic and political transitions and the relationships between local, regional and imperial governments during this period.

Demonstrating how conflicting agendas of urban policy could stifle specific state initiatives, Raghav further argues that such misadventures or failures should be seen as productive– on the one hand by providing a language of new legal codes for the population with which to assail the state and on the other, by enlarging the latter’s bureaucracy and regulatory capabilities.

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