Podcast Episode Summary

Podcast: New Books Network

Host: Prashanto Mukherjee
Guest: Dr. Subha Dayal
Episode: "Between Household and State: The Mughal Frontier and the Politics of Circulation in Peninsular India"
Publisher: University of California Press, 2024
Date: September 30, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode features Dr. Subha Dayal discussing her groundbreaking work, Between Household and State: The Mughal Frontier and the Politics of Circulation in Peninsular India. The conversation centers on Dr. Dayal’s innovative approach to Mughal history, which shifts the focus from dynastic and imperial narratives to the interplay between elite households (ghar) and the Mughal state—particularly in shaping frontiers and facilitating circulation across early modern India. The dialogue explores methodological interventions, archival sources, and how redefining basic social categories challenges dominant paradigms in South Asian history.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Moving Beyond Dynastic Narratives (03:05)

• Dr. Dayal advocates for examining the Mughal Empire not as a static institution centered around Delhi and its emperors but as a mobile, dynamic formation shaped by its interactions with ordinary subjects and elite households.
  • Quote:

    “This portrait moves away from viewing the empire as a stationary or a fixed thing to say, centered only in Delhi or the northern Indian plains… In the book, the stratigraphy of this empire on the move emerges from various types of South Asian and European sources that evoke the central concept of ghar.”
    — Dr. Subha Dayal (04:19)

2. Defining ‘Ghar’ and Its Significance (04:19)

• ‘Ghar’ is not merely a household but a continuum of relationships, privilege, and belonging at the intersection of kinship, social hierarchy, and political power.
  • The concept of ghar operates both vertically (within hierarchies) and horizontally (across households), linking it intrinsically to issues of caste and inequality.
  • Quote:

    “I define ghar as a continuum of relations not just limited to sociological kin nor bound to space or territory… Belonging within the vertical hierarchy of aghar was a form of privilege, and it works in tandem with the ties that elite households forge with each other horizontally.”
    — Dr. Subha Dayal (04:19)

3. Challenging Conventional State vs. Society Models

• The study moves away from seeing the ‘state’ as a monolithic entity and instead interrogates how frontier zones and processes of circulation between household and state redefine imperial and local power (10:31).
  • The ‘Mughal frontier’ is not a rigid border but a moving, negotiated zone of interaction.
  • Quote:

    “I decided on the latter [frontier] to capture the central theme of circulation across the peninsula. Again, not as a fixed blank slate, simply that's replaced by all things imperial, but as a dynamic and complex set of processes.”
    — Dr. Subha Dayal (12:29)

4. Circulation as a Framework (16:25)

• Circulation, rather than mere ‘mobility,’ more accurately describes the reciprocal, repeated flows of people, goods, and ideas. It shifts focus from ‘influence’ or ‘invasion’ to the interconnectedness of sites and actors.
  • Circulation contests nationalist narratives of unyielding northern versus southern Indian difference, illustrating how frontiers served as fusing grounds for practices, identities, and power.
  • Quote:

    “Circulation is something that more accurately captures how pre modern actors… move back and forth… The sites develop overlaps or similarities and codependencies.”
    — Dr. Subha Dayal (16:25)

5. Transformation and Reconstitution of Ghar (21:13)

• The interaction between circulation and the household both generates and transforms forms of belonging and exclusion:
  • Households anchor mobility but are themselves reshaped by new alliances, economic pressures, and social negotiation, particularly in frontier or coastal areas.
  • Quote:

    “The household itself is transformed by the choices that these patriarchal heads have to make, which are often motivated by the contingencies on the ground of controlling types of resources and economic and political networks.”
    — Dr. Subha Dayal (21:13)

6. Innovative Use of Archival Sources (23:05)

• Dr. Dayal integrates a diverse range of archives: Persian administrative documents, vernacular narrative poems, and the Dutch East India Company’s records. This allows vertical (across classes) and horizontal (across regions and languages) readings that disrupt the artificial court/street divide.
  • She affirms the “radical equality” of literary and non-literary sources and counters the tendency to privilege, for instance, European trading archives over indigenous ones.
  • Quote:

    “By working across these two types of sources, the book tries to collapse this divide between the court and the state… My book is the first to make sense of a fraction of a very enormous documentary deposit of low level Persian administrative materials produced by this moving Mughal frontier.”
    — Dr. Subha Dayal (23:05)

7. Translating Ghar Across Archives and Languages (28:43)

• The term ghar persists across different genres and languages, sometimes under analogous terms like the Dutch 'househaden', signifying the recognition of such forms of organization by foreign actors as well.
  • Quote:

    “Househaden is the word that the Dutch often use to identify these independent households that are moving from the Deccan into the coastal areas of the southern Coromandel.”
    — Dr. Subha Dayal (29:51)

8. European Actors and Frontier Fuzziness (32:00)

• VOC and other European sources demonstrate their confusion and negotiation with the frontier’s social complexity—especially notable during conflicts and political intrigues in Bijapur.
  • The Dutch attempt to map alliances and rivalries, reflecting how even colonial actors were caught up in the flux of the Mughal frontier.

9. Methodological Implications and Future Directions (33:26)

• Dr. Dayal’s next project extends her method, focusing on Islamic port cities (Bandar Abbas, Surat, Masulipatnam) as key nodes in translating land–sea connectivity, scribal practice, and imperial regulation before colonial dominance.
  • Links the history of Mughal and Safavid port cities to the emergence of Orientalism, via the study of bilingual bureaucratic materials and the interplay of indigenous and European archival forms.
  • Quote:

    “My next book actually writes the Islamic port city into global history. It's a comparative study of the bureaucratic cultures and scribal cultures of three Mughal and Safwid port cities...”
    — Dr. Subha Dayal (33:26)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Ghar has two well known meanings… one is home or household… [and] a slot or a single cell or receptacle… But in the pre national works examined in the book, I define ghar as a continuum of relations not just limited to sociological kin nor bound to space or territory.” (04:19)
• “Belonging within the vertical hierarchy of aghar was a form of privilege, and it works in tandem with the ties that elite households forge with each other horizontally.” (04:19)
• “The internal politics of a ghar compelled these household heads to seek alliances, sometimes across religious divides or kin divides, but also sometimes to enforce boundaries of status and caste.” (08:18)
• “The term [frontier] is also partly an homage to and a reversal of… ’The Deccan Frontier in Mughal Expansion’… in the book I show the opposite vantage point: how the Mughals look from the perspective of the region.” (12:29)
• “You see anonymous scribes translating and working across two distinct writing cultures… reproducing seals and attestations and archival practices.” (35:10)

Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment Description | |------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 03:05 | Dr. Dayal explains the book’s central intervention, moving beyond dynastic Mughal narratives | | 04:19 | The significance and polysemy of the concept ghar | | 10:31 | The "frontier" concept and its application in Mughal historiography | | 16:25 | Politics of circulation: conceptual framework and implications | | 21:13 | Circulation’s transformative impact on concepts of ghar and social belonging | | 23:05 | Use and significance of diverse archives and source types | | 28:43 | Bridging genre, language, and archive—reproducing ghar across Persian and Dutch documents | | 29:51 | Dutch recognition and record of ghar (‘househaden’) | | 32:00 | Dutch East India Company’s efforts to interpret political allegiances on the Mughal frontier | | 33:26 | Dr. Dayal’s forthcoming work on Islamic port cities and land–sea linkages |

Conclusion

This episode offers a sweeping reconsideration of Mughal and South Asian early modern history, challenging received wisdom that centers imperial genius or fixed borders. Dr. Dayal's work places the politics of everyday households and the fluidity of boundaries at the core of imperial experience, using a remarkable range of sources to illuminate both mobility and the structures anchoring it. Whether you are a historian, student, or an interested listener, this rich conversation pushes you to rethink fundamental categories in the study of early modern South Asia.