000			02080nas a2200193Ia 4500
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022			_a0019-4646
100			_aChakravartty, Aryendra _9119282
245		3	_aAn elusive quest for a region: Darbhanga Raj, caste and language in late colonial India
260			_bThe Indian Economic & Social History Review
260			_c2024
300			_a5-31
520			_aThis essay is an exploration of the contingent nature of identity formation in late colonial India. In the wake of the 1912 separation of Bihar and Orissa from Bengal, two distinct conceptions of the region of Mithila and Maithila identity gained prominence. First, the Darbhanga Maharaja viewed Mithila as a bastion of brahmanical orthodoxy, and this underpinned the claims for Mithila to be converted to a native state with its own ruling chief. Second, by the 1930s we see the consolidation of a movement which proposed the Maithili language as the marker of a Maithila people, one that did not make brahmanical orthodoxy or Hinduism a prerequisite to belonging. Both these discourses accepted the mythic conception of Mithila, and its traditional puranic geography, yet the Darbhanga Maharaja embraced all-India markers of belonging by emphasising Hinduism and presenting himself as the leader of brahmanical orthodoxy in India. The local, in this discourse, found validation by embracing national markers, even as the nation itself remained colonised. On the other hand, the Maithili language movement, which gained momentum in the twilight of colonial rule and in post-independence India, emphasised and embraced the local. This essay therefore charts the gradual shift in the conception of Maithila identity where language displaces religion and brahmanical orthodoxy, as championed by the Darbhanga Maharaja, to become the marker of local identity.
650			_a Colonial History _956513
650			_a Darbhanga Raj _9119283
650			_a Social Hierarchy _953729
650			_aSociolinguistics _92129
856			_uhttps://doi.org/10.1177/00194646231220703
999			_c133408 _d133408