sorzri20%8 Man's Letters on India: The Intersection of Historicism and Orientalism — Arianna Planey’s Blog Arrianna Planey's Blog Perspectives in 1000 Words or Less Marx’s Letters on India: The Intersection of Historicism and Orientalism [ 13. May 20097. October 2010 / Asia, Europe, History, Race Mary's Letters on India: The Intersection of Historicism and Orientalism arriannaplaney (Karl Marx Karl Marx 11-05-2009 Monday History 103 Marx’s Letters on India: Privileging British Agency While making the British the sole actors in the historical project of politicizing the proletarian class of India, Karl Marx also eliminates the possibility of choice. The British are to be “the unconscious tools of history.”1 The question then concerns whether the British have any agency if regardless of their actions, the historical project will be carried out in India; British colonial involvement in India would serve as a catalyst for socio-economic change. Adding another variable- that of the Indian peoples- British agency is clearly privileged. While the nascent proletarian class of India is the product of this global project, Marx's focus is actually the British militia. Writing these letters from London, Marx depended on media reports and military dispatches to formulate the situation in India. He also employs some of the tropes of Orientalism to construct India’s history (or lack thereof) and people. ‘The necessity of differentiating the ‘Occidental’ power (Britain) from ‘Oriental’ India is quite apparent when reports of brutalities and massacres at the hands of British forces break out. The result is Marx's criticism of Britain’s conduct in India. Historicism and Orientalism hitps:ariannaplaney.wordpress.com/2009/06!13imarxstettes-onndla-the-intesection-ot istorcism-and-orientalism! 18sorzri20%8 Man’s Letters on India: The Intersection of Histoicism and Orientalism — Avrianna Planey’s Blog Embedded in Karl Marx’s works also is the assumption that social development is “caused by characteristics internal to society.”2. Central to Marx's ideas of global social progress is a belief in the unitary essence of human nature.3 Logically, it follows that the essence of nations and civilizations is unitary also. Karl Marx assumed this, thus enabling and legitimizing the assumed universality of his models of progress. This assumption betrays the privilege espoused by Western thinkers like Marx. The assumption of universality also entails a certain entitlement, an presumption that those perceived as. lagging behind European (Western) progress must be made to change. British imperialism in India would bring modernity, destroying the past traditions, making the “sensuous... dehumanizing worship” of the Hindus a thing of the past. Modernity would bring technology, secularism, and the awareness necessary for the formation and politicization of a proletarian class. The British will have then brought about “the greatest and, to speak the truth, the only social revolution ever heard of in Asia.”4 Ayaz Achmed argues in his article, Between Orientalism and Historicism, that Orientalism is “a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinctness between ‘the Orient’ and (most of the time) ‘the Occident.”’5 Rather than standing on its own realities and history, the ‘Orient’ stands in comparison, and in contrast to the ‘Occident. Marx’s Letters on India demonstrate that he employed some of the tropes of Orientalism. When discussing agricultural practices (irrigation), Marx employed the similar refrain, “like all Oriental peoples...” as if this geo- political construct of the Orient assured homogeneity in practice.6 Furthermore, Marx’s description of Hinduism as “a religion of sensualist exuberance and a religion of self- torturing asceticism” raises fundamental questions of difference that are implicit in Orientalism.7 The necessity of differentiating the ‘Occidental’ power (Britain) from ‘Oriental’ India is quite apparent when reports of brutalities and massacres at the hands of British forces break out. The result is Marx's criticism of Britain’s conduct. The crisis is both moral and epistemological; the British cannot fall into the patterns of retaliatory and indiscriminate killings, losing their moral leverage. Nor can the British ‘occupy the same epistemological sphere as the Indians. If the British soldiers did engage in brutal and unnecessarily forceful violence, what separates them from the “Asiatic princes” who lived in “blessed anarchy?” For this reason, Marx stated that the British were the “first conquerers superior, and therefore, inaccessible to Hindoo civilization.” Before the British, there were the “Arabs, Turks, Tartars, Moguls” (all of whom would be classified as ‘Orientals’) who “soon became Hindooized.” Denying the possibility of reciprocal influence between the British and India, Marx explained this by citing “an eternal law of history,” whereby “the barbarian conquerers” were “conquered themselves by the superior civilization of their subjects.”8 Privileging British Agency The British possess a certain privileged position because their actions are the ones that warrant the most, notice. By contrast, India is constructed as static and unresisting. In Marx's August 8, 1853 letter to the New York Daily Tribune titled “The Future Results of British Rule in India,” Marx contended that: “Indian society has no history at all, at least no known history. What we call its history is but the history of the successive intruders who founded their empires on the passive basis of that unresisting and unchanging society.”9 Iitps:variannaplaney.wordpress.com/2009(06!13imarxstettes-on ndia-the-intersection-ot istorclsm-and-orientalism! 216sover20v0 an’ Leterson India: The Intersection of Histalsm and Oxenalism— Arianna Plane’ Blog Rather than defending Britain’s right to conquer and colonize India, Marx outlines Britain’s dual mission in India: to annihilate ‘old Asiatic society’ and to lay the tracks of Western society in Asia. The fulfillment of this dual mission is a thrust to modernity- the laying of a railway system that is expected to “dissolve the hereditary divisions of labour, upon which rest the Indian castes.” Thus, the necessary process of destroying ‘Asiatic’ society and modes of production would then be carried out, pushing India beyond stagnancy to modemnity and preventing the inevitable decline of Indian socicty. If Indian society is characterized by a certain laxity, and the “historical development of a society is either evolutionary progress or a gradual decline,” then British colonial intervention is key to preventing the decline of Indian society.10 British rule in India would not only consolidate political unity through force and technology (the railroad and the telegraph), it would also bring with it the free press, a major instrument of the reconstruction of Indian society. In Marx's formulation of social progress in India, the regeneration of what has been destroyed is partly a product of the its destruction. Like a phoenix, after the purging fire, India would ascend above the ashes of its backward past. The British railway, having made “hereditary divisions of labour” obsolete, would end the fragmented nature of India’s working class and enable the formation of the proletarian classes. Not surprisingly, the caste system, a form of societal organization, is typified by Marx as a “decisive impediment to Indian progress and Indian power.”11 Ronald Inden asserted in his 1986 article ‘Orientalist Conceptions of India’ that “caste, conceived in this way as India’s essential institution, has been both the cause and effect of India’s low level of political and economic ‘development’ and its repeated failure to prevent its conquest by outsiders.”12 For this same reason, the razing of the caste system was necessary for the modernization of India. The emphasis on the aggressor, the hegemonic colonizers is similar to Edward Said’s focus on power dynamics and the system of knowledge and discourse that characterized the Orient.13 The disregard for the bottom- up aspect of the insurrection is a rejection of the idea that local populations participated in shaping the knowledge and discourse that governed their laws and actions. However, the news reports regarding the insurrection undercut Marx's initial characterization of India as ” unresisting and unchanging society.’14 Karl Marx's analysis of Indian society is subsequently contradicted when upheaval and insurgency are reported in Delhi. If a static, unresisting and unchanging society (even a particular subset) launches an offensive against its aggressors, it surely defies its label. Even in his reports on the Indian insurrection, those joining the rebel troops remain nameless and unnumbered (undoubtedly outnumbering Britain’s on- ground troops) but rhetorically minor in comparison to those 12,000 men under General Barnard (at least the 5,000 “faithful” natives who comprise the British forces are mentioned).15 In his September 18, 1857 letter to the New York Daily Tribune, entitled “The Indian Revolt,” Marx prefaces the article, castigating the Indian sepoys’ violence as “appalling, hideous, ineffable.”16 Excluding the possibility of legitimate self-defense, he asserts that “it is only the reflex, in concentrated form, of England’s own conduct in the Eastern Empire,” citing the “rule of historical retribution.” Again stripping the Indian sepoys of agency, Marx attributes their actions (which he had previously deemed impossible) to the laws of history. He goes on to note that English soldiers “committed abominations for the mere fun of it,” Recording a litany of misdeeds, Karl Marx remarked that officers’ logs are “redolent with malignity.” In another, an officer in the civil service noted that “We have the power of life and death in our hands and we assure you we spare not.”17 In their own records, soldiers reported the rapes and murders of Indian women and children, and “the roasting of entire villages,” which were “mere wanton sports.” Another report, alluding to the hanging of a large group of indigenous Indians wrote “then our fun commenced.”18 With a modicum of irony, Marx remarked that despite this, “the outrages of the natives, shocking as they are, are still deliberately exaggerated.’19 While lending some credence Iitps:variannaplaney.wordpress.com/2009(06!13imarxstettes-on ndia-the-intersection-ot istorclsm-and-orientalism! 36