• While investigating the cultural, social and political dynamics in Maharashtra, Rethinking Western India looks into the relations and processes that make up what are usually thought to be regional problems.
• The essays show how the regional must be understood in contexts that supersede the region and geographical determinism.
• The opening essays not only contextualise Maharashtrian texts as coherent wholes, but also the meanings contained within these texts, thereby addressing “the semantics of the social”.
• A focus on “the mechanics of the social”—the interface of actions that articulate societal relationships at different levels, and of different characters—is attempted by the next set of essays.
• The concluding essays emphasise how local dynamics are as much a part of forces ostensibly “beyond Maharashtra”, as they are products of dynamics within Maharashtra. There is, therefore, a deep analysis of the social and cultural referents upon which collective identities are built.

Introduction: The Semantics and Mechanics of Region—Maharashtra and its Contexts
Dušan Deák and Daniel Jasper

ONE The Semantics of the Social: The Worlds of Texts and Meanings

1. The World of Two Dhangar Ovis
Anne Feldhaus

2. Bidar in the Marathi World: Saints, Kings and Powers across the Centuries
Dušan Deák

3. A Socio-Textual Ecology of the ?gvedadasagrantha
Cezary Galewicz

4. Gender and the Freedom Struggle in Maharashtra: Contextualising Prema Kantak’s Novel Agniyaan (1942)
Meera Kosambi

TWO The Mechanics of the Social: Agents and Agencies across the Spaces and Places

5. “Bhagwangadavarun Mala Mumbai Disate Aahe”: How Caste Survives amidst Democratic Politics
Rajeshwari Deshpande

6. Of Relics and Living Traditions: Creating Heritage in Maharashtra
Daniel Jasper

7. A City of Yesterday in the World of Tomorrow: Urban Solapur and Declining Industry—Its Impact on Women
Piyul Mukherjee and Rajneesh Krishna

8. The Changing Environment of Political Protest: Construction and Contestation of Political Space in Mumbai
Aruna Pendse

9. Trade Network in Indapur Pargana under the Marathas
Michihiro Ogawa

10. The Kolis of Mumbai: The Vanishing People
Jayant Bhalchandra Bapat

THREE Beyond Maharashtra: Locating and Rewriting the Pasts

11. Ambiguity in University Autonomy: The University of Bombay in its City in the Late Nineteenth Century
Jim Masselos
12. ??? ??? ??? ???? (“Mal Khara Tol Poora”): Aspiration and Reality in the Monetary Environments of Eighteenth-Century Maharashtra
Shailendra Bhandare

13. Politics of Maharashtra and Its Environments
Suhas Palshikar