The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c15.5

c15.5

Admittedly the story is a complex and often contradictory one, which moreover ranges over a huge and diverse subcontinent. It seems, then, a natural step to take refuge in breaking up the all-too-global picture into probably endless series of areas, sectors, groups, and instances, where confrontation and reaction did occur in different ways and with different outcomes. No doubt such case studies contribute most valuable material for our understanding of the structures and processes involved. Moreover, it is clear that the two parties to the expansion-reaction game were far from being unified blocs. Even the British Indian government and its prestigious “steel frame,” the Indian Civil Service, hardly resembled the powerfully monolithic juggernaut of popular imagination,² so that here too there is unlimited scope for fragmentation. The main trouble with this break-up, however interesting its results, is that it can only lead to ever further atomization, while a comprehensive view recedes more and more behind an impenetrable screen of monographs on unique situations and events—as indeed seems to happen too often in modern Indian historiography.