Provincial Metropolis - 9781009510837

Provincial MetropolisIntellectuals and the Hinterland in Colonial India\nAuthor(s): David Boyk\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9781009510837, 978-1009510837\nSynopsis\nThis book tells the story of Patna, in the north Indian region of Bihar, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A century and more earlier, Patna had been an important and populous city, but it came to be seen by many-and is still seen today-as merely part of the mofussil, the provincial hinterland. Despite Patna's real decline, it continued to nurture a vibrant intellectual culture that linked it with cities and towns across northern India and beyond. Urdu literary gatherings and other Islamicate traditions inherited from Mughal times helped animate the networks sustaining institutions like scholarly libraries and satirical newspapers. Meanwhile, English-educated lawyers sought to bring new prominence to their city a.