Hindu city and just empire: Banaras and India in Ali Ibrahim Khan's legal imagination

publication-status: Publishedtypes: ArticleThis article examines the career and ideas of a late Mughal administrator, a Shi‘a Muslim called Ali Ibrahim Khan, who was appointed magistrate of the north Indian city of Banaras after its conquest by the East India Company in 1781, and remained in that position until his death in 1792. Engaging with recent research on legal pluralism on the one hand, and on legal and cultural intermediaries on the other, this paper examines the imagination of imperial, religious and legal spaces by this prolific historian, poet and legal ethnographer, an under-studied protagonist of the process of transition to colonialism in India. Using a range of Persian-language manuscript sources in addition to archival and published material in Urdu and English, the article reveals the principles of Ali Ibrahim Khan's pragmatic but principled efforts to reconcile recognisably Islamic legal principles and procedures with the demands of the emerging colonial situation, and his systematic reference to locality and custom in order to do so

English law, Brahmo marriage, and the problem of religious difference: civil marriage laws in Britain and India

Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2010On the face of it, civil marriage represents both the most typical and most anodyne aspect of modern law. One might say that by instituting civil marriage, a bureaucratic, enumerative, and secularized state permits its subjects absolute individual choice of marital partners, and concurrently, by refusing to take into account the religious affiliation of any party, grants total freedom of religious faith. As such, it may be seen as a quintessentially modern phenomenon, connected through the adjective “civil” with other distinctively modern concepts such as civil society, all of which point to a notion of individual liberty, predicated upon a modern state guaranteeing the autonomy of large arenas of social life

Images of Islam: a murder in colonial Calcutta

The published version of this article is deposited with the kind permission of the publisher.No abstract available

Poverty and Inequality in urban India with special reference to West Bengal

Abstract : In recent times rapid growth in urban population in the developing nations has been accompanied by a parallel growth in the incidence of urban poverty. The objective of the paper is to estimate the incidence of poverty and inequality in urban India during the last three decades using Parameterized Lorenz curve methods. Then using panel regression the study examine how the incidence of urban poverty is being affected by various socio economics factors in urban West Bengal, a state located in eastern India. The study is based on the unit level consumption expenditure data of different rounds of National Sample Survey Organisation(NSSO). The study reveals that the incidence of urban poverty have been quite high for the states of India during the earlier periods as compared to the latter periods. In case of West Bengal the decline in urban poverty is associated with a faster pace of urbanization, small size of the household, decline in urban inequality, growth in per capita industrial income and rise in per capita public expenditure on education and health. Finally the study tries to propose some appropriate policies for reducing urban poverty in the state

Assessment of free radical scavenging potential and oxidative DNA damage preventive activity of Trachyspermum ammi L. (carom) and Foeniculum vulgare Mill. (fennel) seed extracts. Biomed Res Int

Oxidation of biomolecules such as carbohydrates, proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids results in generation of free radicals in an organism which is the major cause of onset of various degenerative diseases. Antioxidants scavenge these free radicals, thereby protecting the cell from damage. The present study was designed to examine the free radical scavenging potential and oxidative DNA damage preventive activity of traditionally used spices Trachyspermum ammi L. (carom) and Foeniculum vulgare Mill. (fennel). The aqueous, methanolic, and acetonic extracts of T. ammi and F. vulgare seeds were prepared using soxhlet extraction assembly and subjected to qualitative and quantitative estimation of phytochemical constituents. Free radical scavenging potential was investigated using standard methods, namely, DPPH radical scavenging assay and ferric reducing antioxidant power assay along with the protection against oxidative DNA damage. The results stated that acetonic seed extracts (AAcSE and FAcSE) of both the spices possessed comparatively high amount of total phenolics whereas methanolic seed extracts (AMSE and FMSE) were found to have highest amount of total flavonoids. At 1 mg/mL concentration, highest DPPH radical scavenging activity was shown by FMSE (96.2%), AAcSE was recorded with highest FRAP value (2270.27 ± 0.005 mol/L), and all the seed extracts have been shown to mitigate the damage induced by Fenton reaction on calf thymus DNA. Therefore, the study suggests that T. ammi and F. vulgare seed extracts could contribute as a highly significant bioresource of antioxidants to be used in our day-to-day life and in food and pharmaceutical industry

Poverty and Inequality in urban India with special reference to West Bengal

Abstract : In recent times rapid growth in urban population in the developing nations has been accompanied by a parallel growth in the incidence of urban poverty. The objective of the paper is to estimate the incidence of poverty and inequality in urban India during the last three decades using Parameterized Lorenz curve methods. Then using panel regression the study examine how the incidence of urban poverty is being affected by various socio economics factors in urban West Bengal, a state located in eastern India. The study is based on the unit level consumption expenditure data of different rounds of National Sample Survey Organisation(NSSO). The study reveals that the incidence of urban poverty have been quite high for the states of India during the earlier periods as compared to the latter periods. In case of West Bengal the decline in urban poverty is associated with a faster pace of urbanization, small size of the household, decline in urban inequality, growth in per capita industrial income and rise in per capita public expenditure on education and health. Finally the study tries to propose some appropriate policies for reducing urban poverty in the state

Myositis and immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome in an immuno compromised patient: A therapeutic conundrum

Microsporidia are ubiquitous fungi that may infect animals, fish, insects as well as humans. Human infection is uncommon and only seen in the immunocompromised individual. Here, we report the case of a 40-year-old known AIDS patient presented with severe myalgia and inability to walk. Investigations revealed microsporidial myositis. Her treatment was further complicated by the development of acute inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (AIDP) 2 weeks later. However, treating human immunodeficiency virus, microsporidiosis, and AIDP as a consequence of immune reconstitution inflammatory syndromeconcomitantly led to clinical improvement