Tamiznattil aarambakaala kaalaniya arasu 1700–1835 marapuvazi samudaayamum kovilgalum  is the Tamil translation of Kanakalatha Mukund’s  The View from Below: Indigenous Society, Temples and the Early Colonial State in Tamil Nadu, 1700–1835 published by Orient BlackSwan. This Tamil translation is published under the ‘Muththamizarignar Mozhipeyarppu Thittam’ of Higher Education Translation series by Tamil Nadu Textbook and Educational Services Corporation with Orient BlackSwan for the benefit of students.

In The View from Below The author considers the ‘attitudes’ and ‘responses’ as dialogic, whereby the colonial state and indigenous society are locked in a fierce but subtle combat for attention and dominance in the Madras region.

The Tamil institution upon which author focuses her study for the most part is the temple. Moving further on from this politically crucial and socially focal site, the study covers a number of other related phenomena: the staging of sectarian and caste conflicts aimed to seize the control of the temples; the new social leadership and patterns of patronage; the construction of identity by aspiring elite groups of both parties; and the folk representations of Poligar rebellions.

This book will be valuable to historians, anthropologists and specialists on south India, and those interested in the history of Madras.

Kanakalatha Mukund is an economic historian, with special interest in pre-industrial economic organisation and social relations. She has taught at the Universities of Bombay and Bhopal. She was Fellow, Centre for Economic and Social Studies, Hyderabad.

She has authored The Trading World of the Tamil Merchant: Evolution of Merchant Capitalism in the Coromandel and the co-author of Traditional Industry in the New Market Economy: The Cotton Handlooms of Andhra Pradesh.

Chapter 1: Indigenous Society and the Colonial State: Some Perspectives
Chapter 2: The Colonial City as the Setting of Initial Interactions, 1670–1800
Chapter 3: English Forms of Justice and Indigenous Response, 1700–1800
Chapter 4: Temples: The New Social Order and the Early Colonial State
Chapter 5: Caste Disputes and Temples, 1787–1830
Chapter6: Temple Control Contested Arena: Indigenous Elite versus the Colonial Bureaucracy
Chapter 7: Dubashes and Patronage: Construction of Identity and Social Leadership under the Colonial State
Chapter 8: Indigenous Society and the Colonial State: A Retrospect

Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Glossary
Bibliography