The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c15.s1.43

c15.s1.43

However, not only the rules of the game, but the game itself had changed. One might say that the traditional game was the balance of the inner frontier, which demanded "horizontal" involvement and dispersion; the new one, on the other hand, involved an equally precarious balance, but now between "vertical" involvement and withdrawal. Or, more plainly, where the Mughal was concerned with nobles, chiefs, "malefactors," and "non-chiefs" in their comprehensive capacities as leaders of men controlling local networks, the British Indian government only recognized them as isolated individuals holding narrowly defined legal rights of land ownership. With the Mughals they had been little kings and partners in empire, in the eyes of the English they were simply landowners, albeit sometimes big ones. Even when the Great Rebellion of 1857—in fact, not a reaction, but a chaotic resurgence of the sprawling inner frontier—had dramatically demonstrated the need to give them special consideration, the English could do no better than to classify them arbitrarily as landholders whose estates paid 5,000 rupees and upward per year in land revenue, and the modern association that was meant to give substance to this category never really came to life.⁴⁸