Articles by Gail Omvedt

While the growth of non-Brahman, and later Congress, organisation in the districts was to change this, Poona until 1930 was the political and symbolic centre of Maharashtra; it was also a centre that represented both militant nationalism and socially orthodox Brahmanism, Inevitably, non-Brahman politics began to develop a centre here as well But when the non-Brahman challenge was mounted in oona it took on forms that were highly conditioned by the themes of Brahman cultural dominance. Non-Brahmans entered and attempted to control the Ganpati festival, which was founded by Tilak himself with a view to turning a religious occasion into public nationalist propaganda. They engaged in a virulent war of pamphlets and newspapers by cm entry into the arena of Brahman literary dominance; they focused their attack not so much on questions of land and Brahman priestly or bureaucratic dominance that troubled the peasantry, but on symbolic issues involving Brahman claims to moral and political leadership. They took up themes that Brahmans had pioneered

Class Structure, 1818 to 1931 AFTER the completion of British conquest in Maharashtra in 1818, the class structure that developed was one typical of the colonial model We shall describe here the process of the creation of this class structure out of the elements of traditional Indian society, the position of the various castes within it, and the relation of this structure to the forms which nationalism and the non-Brahman movement took in Maharashtra. We shall begin with the commercial bourgeoisie, an element that is often overlooked in descriptions of the new elites of colonial society.

This paper studies the radical working class movement which emerged in Bombay in the late 1920s and which brought together, in curious fashion, an emerging communist leadership with the leaders of the largely peasant-based non-Brahman movement. The ambiguities and outcome of these contacts and conflicts were decisive not only for the development of social radicalism but also for the direction of the nationalist movement in Maharashtra.