The Vanishing Indian Upper Class: Life History of Raza Mohammed Khan

This book concerns issues of gender, the role of women, inheritance, male privilege, ruling elites, marriage, the caste system, poverty, greed and familial betrayal.The idea of betrayal-one of the central tenets of the human condition-is much on display in this text. At the core of the book is a fundamental question: to what extent does the chicanery involving a family inheritance tell a much larger story about modern Indian culture from the perspective of an Indian Muslim and the nation as a whole. The story is about the family of Raza Muhammad Khan and its legacy of honor, compassion, love, sacrifice, betrayal and dividing up land. This is an engaging family history intertwined with the story of one person’s life and memories. As interlocutor I know a true-life history involves more than conversations and the material here provides other forms of personal documentations: letters, e-mails, photographs, illustrations, notes, poems, stories and accounts written by different family members, limited life histories, autobiographical accounts, and court records all as a source of knowledge. Oscar Lewis related similar sentiments when he wrote about The in Mexico and sociologists William Thomas and Florian Znaniecki’s did the same in The The most important early life history documents in sociology William Thomas and Florian Znaniecski. (1918). which was part of the early Chicago School tradition. Psychologist Gordon Allport argued that of the three main forms of life history writing: the comprehensive; the topical; the edited, with the former being the most difficult to pull off. And there are many studies of significance purported to be life histories. Clifford Shaw. (1930). The University of Chicago Press; Edwin Sutherland. (1937) . University of Chicago Press; The best life histories in the social science tradition; Oscar Lewis. (1963) . Vintage Books; Theodore Rosengarten. (1974) . University of Chicago Press; Sidney Mintz. (1974) . W.W. Norton Company; Leo Simmons. (1970) . Yale UniversityPress.