SINHAS Vol 31 No 1 Catherine Warner
Toward a South Asian History of Asylum: Refuge during the Rebellion, 1857–1859
Catherine Warner
Abstract
One of the largest, if not the largest, refugee movements in 19th century South Asia occurred as the endcap to the rebellion of 1857–1859. Yet when this historical episode has made it into the historiography at all, its social complexities and contributions to the making of modern South Asia have been flattened and ignored. In order to understand how such a large displacement of approximately 100,000 rebels and non-combatants, including women and children, could nearly disappear from historical accounts, this paper foregrounds forms of governance and social control in the Tarai frontier, stretching from present-day southern Lumbini Province to Bahraich and northern Gorakhpur, which are lost in this accounting. In particular, the utilization of mobility and violence as constitutive of a regional political economy, as well as understandings regarding the basic right to life and livelihood, filled out the contours of a multifaceted theory and practice of asylum in the frontier. These closely held ideals of refuge and asylum conflicted with the foundational assumptions contained in Queen Victoria’s well-known Proclamation as well as the aspirations of the centralizing state in Nepal. This paper uses a dynamic regional analysis to make a case for recovering asylum as a historical episode and a political concept in 19th century South Asia.
Keywords: 1857 Rebellion, refugees, asylum, Tarai frontier, mobility, violence, regional political economy, 19th century South Asia, place-based history
Toward a South Asian History of Asylum: Refuge during the Rebellion, 1857–1859
Catherine Warner
Abstract
One of the largest, if not the largest, refugee movements in 19th century South Asia occurred as the endcap to the rebellion of 1857–1859. Yet when this historical episode has made it into the historiography at all, its social complexities and contributions to the making of modern South Asia have been flattened and ignored. In order to understand how such a large displacement of approximately 100,000 rebels and non-combatants, including women and children, could nearly disappear from historical accounts, this paper foregrounds forms of governance and social control in the Tarai frontier, stretching from present-day southern Lumbini Province to Bahraich and northern Gorakhpur, which are lost in this accounting. In particular, the utilization of mobility and violence as constitutive of a regional political economy, as well as understandings regarding the basic right to life and livelihood, filled out the contours of a multifaceted theory and practice of asylum in the frontier. These closely held ideals of refuge and asylum conflicted with the foundational assumptions contained in Queen Victoria’s well-known Proclamation as well as the aspirations of the centralizing state in Nepal. This paper uses a dynamic regional analysis to make a case for recovering asylum as a historical episode and a political concept in 19th century South Asia.
Keywords: 1857 Rebellion, refugees, asylum, Tarai frontier, mobility, violence, regional political economy, 19th century South Asia, place-based history