Book review: Farhat Hasan,Paper,Performance,and the State: Social Change and Political Culture in Mughal India

Spread over six chapters, Hasan’s book explores the changing sociocultural world in early modern South Asia from the perspective of the Mughal state. Though each of the chapters is magisterial in its own sense, together they weave a fascinating story of the role of the Mughal state in shaping and re-shaping the social and cultural realms of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Hasan pays particular attention to the expansion in the use of elements such as ink, paper and pen during this period to investigate how the relationship between literary, performative and oral cultural traditions developed. Hasan highlights that these developments were important as they marked the beginning of new avenues of social communication during this period which, in turn, shaped public spaces and eventually public opinion in South Asia. Hasan highlights upfront that in line with the state-in-society approach, his primary aim is ‘to see how social life and cultural practices were constituted and re-shaped by the state’s participation in social spaces’ (p. 2).

In the succinctly written introduction (Chapter 1) Hasan provides an overview of the book and at the same time clearly indicates what the book is not about. He emphasises that his study does not perceive the Mughal state ‘as a set of institutions and structural attributes’ (p. 1). Distinguishing his work from other studies about this period Hasan explains that he focuses on the formation of the Mughal state from below rather than analysing it through ‘top-down perspectives that focus on the kings, high nobles and the bureaucracy, the harem and the imperial court’ (p. 1). In this endeavour, Hasan’s work carefully scrutinises important sites of sociability such as tea stalls, markets and coffee houses and provides fascinating insights into the changing, often contested understandings of the state. These perspectives remain unique because they emerged primarily from the phenomenon of the ‘performative public sphere’, a much-discussed term in this book. Hasan explains that to him it means ‘not only a space marked by theatricality and excess, but also one that was closely identified with public politics, and the “normative public sphere”’ (p. 126), including the legal order.

In Chapter 2, Hasan deliberates at length on the role of the interactions between the Mughal state and society in ‘re-shaping property relations’ (p. 13). A critical study of this social facet helps us not only to understand property-related conflicts and communications of that period but also to get an insight into the ‘dynamic processes of state formation’ (p. 13) that occurred during the Mughal era. Without situating property merely within the framework of wealth and economy, he argues that the set of practices surrounding property ownership, transfer and possession ‘served to structure and reconfigure social relations’ (p. 38) through the affirmation, contestation and reproduction of social identities. In the process, tools like pens and paper played a crucial role, enabling the creation of a social space where social relations of power were reproduced as well as challenged.

Chapter 3 retains the focus on property but shifts its gaze from courtroom performances to property laws. Hasan highlights that like property, law too was a form of contested communication (p. 39). According to him, laws formed a sociocultural site where state law and traditions were defined and re-defined. It was a space in which ‘social actors engaged with each other’s norms and values, experiences and aspirations’ (p. 39), enabling the concept of justice to evolve through the lens of both the elites and the common people. He presses the importance of studying concepts of law, order and justice in spaces beyond the imperial courts. He poignantly notes how a consistent line of communication developed between the ‘state and the non-state legal units in reproducing the legal order’ (p. 66) during the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Citing examples of local assemblies and bodies, he argues that the Mughal period was unique insofar as the co-existence of legal pluralism and normative cosmopolitanism was concerned. It is in this period, he feels, that South Asia’s contemporary manifestations of legal pluralism developed through the interactions of different legal orders, including the colonial state (p. 66).

One of the most interesting chapters of the book, Chapter 4, brings together a critique of the ruling elites through narratives about the functioning of the imperial court as they developed in popular literature and theatrical acts and occurred in spaces such as marketplaces and the assemblies of poets. While deliberating upon the nature of criticism reflected in the poems and theatrical acts, Hasan notes that poets and directors of this period tended to represent the state’s indifference and excesses in ‘somatic, sexualized terms’ (p. 91). The detailed study of the popular discourse underscores that the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed the development of an early modern public sphere in South Asia. This, he adds, occurred simultaneously also in Europe, and particularly in England, along the same timeline.

In Chapter 5, Hasan explores how the Mughal state made its presence felt in the localities. He conducts this examination through a close study of imperial orders and petitions. While discussing the imperial orders, the chapter outlines the fascinating details of the multiple processes through which such orders were received. Focusing on the role of scribes, the chapter simultaneously analyses a connected issue of growth in literacy in this period. Entwined with the social lifeworld, ‘scribal literacy’ (p. 105) was an important phenomenon that evolved during these centuries and over a period of time. Scribal literacy was appropriated by both the Mughal state and social actors, such as caste groups, community heads and ordinary subjects. While the state used it as an instrument of coerciveness and to frame the rules of the region, the non-ruling class employed it to ‘modify, constrain, and redefine the rule structure’ (p. 105).

Written in a language bereft of jargon, Hasan’s book is an important academic intervention. Through a study of the rich cache of archival sources, yet unlike traditional historiography, Hasan adopts a state-in-society approach and, at the same time, repositions the state within its social field. The book is likely to be of interest to students of law, anthropology and sociology, as much as to historians and South Asianists.