Talk by William R Pinch- 8 August- 2 PM

[niharika]

 

William R Pinch
8 August 2012 at 2:00 pm
History Dept./faculty of Social Sciences
University of Delhi

 

Poets and Politics:  Man Kavi, Padmakar, and the Gosains of Bundelkhand, 1792-1806 

 

Abstract

Anupgiri and Umraogiri were orphaned brothers from Bundelkhand who rose to prominence in the latter half of the eighteenth century as "gosain" warrior-commanders. Though they worked for or alongside nearly every major north Indian power of their day, including the Marathas, Afghans, and Awadh--and by extension, the Mughal emperors--and though Anupgiri paved the way for the British conquest of Bundelkhand in the lead up to the second Anglo-Maratha war, we know surprisingly little about either man. Usually (and not surprisingly) they were reviled as "faithless" and addicted to "intrigue", as men with "a foot in two boats, ready to abandon the one that was sinking."  Building on new collaborative translations of two Hindi poems that celebrate the life and career of Anupgiri, Pinch's paper offers some glimpses of how these warlords were perceived (and, from Anupgiri's perspective, wished to be perceived) by those closest to them.