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A G T R: T P R S
ASIANetwork Exchange
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Spring 2013
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volume 20
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7. Strabo, Geography. (Tr. H.L. Jones), Vol. VII. London, 1930, p. 17, cited in Abdul Khair Muhammad Fa-
rooque, Roads and Communications in Mughal India (Delhi: Idarah-I Adabiyat-I Delli, 1977) p. 4.
8. K.M. Sarkar, e Grand Trunk Road in the Punjab: 1849-1886 (1927, New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers, 1986)
p. 2.
9. From as early as the eighth century, when a part of the subcontinent rst converted to Islam, non-Muslims
were categorized as dhimmi, or protected people. ey were allowed to practice their religion and have
autonomy over their jurisprudence, but they had to pay the jizya, or poll tax, levied on non-Muslims. For a
general discussion of religion in Islamic India, including the dhimmi and jizya, see Annemarie Schimmel,
e Empire of the Great Mughals: History, Art and Culture (London: Reakton Books, 2004) pp. 107-141.
During his reign, the Mughal emperor Akbar (1542-1605), whose openness to religious dierences and
celebration of diversity is legendary, revoked the jizya and allowed Hindus the opportunity to hold high
administrative posts. Amartya Sen addresses Akbar’s broad, pluralistic views at various points throughout
his book, e Argumentative Indian. For a more extended discussion see pp. 17-19. Aurangzeb Alamgir
(1608-1707), a later Mughal emperor, set out to transform India into a purely Islamic nation. He staunchly
enforced šarīʿah law and the jizya was reintroduced in 1679. See Schimmel, based on the Fatwa-yi Alamgiri,
a set of laws instituted during the time of the Aurangzeb, p. 110. Aurangzeb’s heavy-handed policies and
attempts at homogenizing the country were unsuccessful perhaps at least in part because it was antithetical
to the general acceptance of dierences and tolerance that prevailed in India.
10. Annemarie Schimmel notes that in January 1505, Babur entered the subcontinent through Kohat and
Bannu, in what is today northwest Pakistan. See Schimmel, p. 23. e Imperial Gazetteer of India indicates
that the Grand Trunk Road and nearby Kohat and Bannu formed a network of roadways in the North
West Frontier Province. See e Imperial Gazetteer of India: Vol. XIX Nayakanhatti to Parbhani (Oxford:
Claredon Press, 1908) p. 186.
11. Based on the Tarikh-i-Khan Jahani, cited in Farooque, p. 11, notes 28 and 29.
12. Basheer Ahmad Khan Matta writes that serais during Suri’s time provided separate lodgings for Hindus and
Muslims and housed mosques with an imam and a muezzin. Basheer Ahmad Khan Matta Sher Shah Suri: A
Fresh Perspective (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005) pp. 210-213.
13. For a discussion of the section of the Grand Trunk Road in present day Pakistan that formed a part of the
Silk Road, see Saifur Rahman Dar, “Caravanserais Along the Grand Trunk Road in Pakistan: A Central
Asian Legacy” in Vadime Elissee, e Silk Roads: Highways of Culture and Commerce (Oxford and New
York: Berghahn Books, 2000) pp. 12-46.
14. Valerie Hansen, e Silk Road: A New History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012) p. 5.
15. Sarkar, p. 3.
16. For more on roadways and railways during British rule in India, see Sarkar, e Grand Trunk Road in the
Punjab: 1849-1886.
17. Rudyard Kipling, Kim (1901, New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 1999) p. 59.
18. Singh, e Grand Trunk Road, p. 4.
19. For more on this, see Clark Worswick and Ainslee Embree, e Last Empire: Photography in British India,
1855-1914 (New York: Aperture Foundation, 2001) p. 2.
20. Ariela Freedman, “On the Ganges Side of Modernism: Raghubir Singh, Amitav Ghosh, and the Postcolonial
Modern” in Laura Doyle and Laura Winkiel eds., Geomodernisms: Race, Modernism, Modernity (Blooming-
ton, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2005) p. 119.
21. Singh, e Grand Trunk Road, p. 7.
22. Singh, e Grand Trunk Road, p. 72.
23. Freedman, p. 119.
24. Raghubir Singh, “River of Colour: An Indian View” introduction to e River of Colour: e India of Raghu-
bir Singh (London: Phaidon, 1998) p. 13.
25. Quoted in Bert Cardullo ed., Satyajit Ray: Interviews (Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi,
2007) p. viii.
26. For more on Singh’s work and relationship to India, see Singh, Bombay, p. 5.
27. Singh, River of Colour, p. 10.
28. Amartya Sen, “Satyajit Ray and the Art of Universalism: Our Culture, eir Culture” e New Republic
(April 1, 1996): 32. Reprinted with permission of the author and accessible at http://satyajitray.ucsc.edu/
articles/sen.html
29. See Singh, River of Colour, p. 13.
30. For a concise discussion of the rise and fall of the BJP and its political allies and ideologies, see Amartya
Sen, e Argumentative Indian, pp. 45-72.
31. See, for example, Swimmers and diver, Scindia Ghat, Benares, 1985 in Raghubir Singh, e Ganges (London:
ames and Hudson, 1992) plate 53.
32. Freedman, p. 121.
33. A large body of scholarship exists on the Ayodhya incident and the politics that surround it. For an excel-
lent introduction, see Richard Davis, “e Rise and Fall of a Sacred Place: Ayodhya Over ree Decades”
in Marc Howard Ross ed., Culture and Belonging in Divided Societies: Contestation and Symbolic Landscape
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009) pp. 25-44. Also see Ashis Nandy, Creating a National-
ity: e Ramjanmabhumi and Fear of Self (Delhi; New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).