HISTORY VI

UDAYVIR GUHA SIRCAR.

Imperial Ideologies: Orientalism, Utilitarianism,

Evangelicalism and the question of Race.

In talking about ‘colonial state and ideology’, we must look towards the
understanding of how the British viewed India. The concept of “White Man
Burden” according to Thomas Metcalf got extended to India after Britain won
the Battle of Plassey, and it was understood and agreed that “Britain must
secure the prosperity of India’s people before seeking any gain for itself.” The
questions lingering over the minds of the British however were first, how were
they to govern such a massive territory, and second, what principles could they
legitimise to assert such governance.

A stated by Shekhar Bandopadhyaya, since the conquest of Ireland in the

sixteenth century, the English gradually emerged as the “New Romans, charged
with civilizing backward peoples across the world.” They began to have a
greater importance for a territorial empire based on ideals of military
autocracy, hierarchy and racial contempt. As a result of the Enlightenment
period, the British also started defining themselves as ‘civilized’ in contrast to
the Orientals. They also put forward their own ideas of what a ‘modern’ and
‘civilized’ people should be like. The East had become a part of western
iconography. For example, Hindu Gods were depicted in western paintings as
monsters and demons. These gave the British more reason to bring in the
so-called ‘Age of Reform’. In simpler terms, British Imperial ideology was a
result of intellectual and political change in thought processes at home. Though
there were adjustments made in the functioning of the imperial ideology from
time to time, the fundamentals of the ideology remained the same.

For a number of years the East India Company government administered India,
keeping in mind the ways and traditions of the land. They recognised the
Mughal emperor, sealed coins in respect to him, administered Hindu Muslim
laws in courts, and Robert Clive himself recommended a ‘double government’
system under which the criminal justice was left in the hands of the Nawabi
officials. They followed a policy of least interference as far as possible. The
Anglicisation of the government administration began happening, but the
process was gradual. In other words, it was not a revolutionary change. In the
words of Shekhar Bandopadhyaya, the British saw themselves “as inheritors
rather than innovators, as the revivers of the decayed system.”

The view of the ‘decayed system’ of India however, emerged from a rather
philosophical construction of India’s past. The early picture imagined of India
by the West was that of past glory backed by an idea of degeneration.
However, there was a big urge to know and study Indian culture and traditions,
as seen in the efforts of scholars like Sir William Jones, who studied the Indian
languages to restore the forgotten culture to the Indians. This was the
beginning of Orientalist tradition in India that led to the founding of institutions
like the Calcutta Madrassa, the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and the Sanskrit
College in Banaras. However, it is to be noted that while discovering India
mainly by analysing ancient texts, the Orientalists were defining Indian
tradition in a way to legitimize the power of the colonial state. Scholars like
Eugene Irschick have stated that, contrary to the view of Edward Said that
Orientalism was a knowledge thrust from above through the Europeans, “it
was produced through a process of dialogue in which the colonial officials,
Indian commentators, and native informants participated in a collaborative
manner”. One could identify however, that even when the Indians participated
in this process, they hardly had any control over the final outcome. However,
Irschick does not deny the most important element, that Orientalism produced
an understanding of the past to meet the requirements of the present, i.e. to
service the needs of the colonial state.

Thomas Metcalf talks about one of the categories the British used to
comprehend India, which was the idea of ‘Oriental despotism’. Oriental
despotism had lasting implications for the emerging of the Raj in India, for it
carried with it the implication that Asian countries had no laws or property, and
hence its people had no rights. However, as the British were the inheritors of
India’s past, many of the ideas about India’s people that paved their view of the
past found a place in the colonial government. The ‘tropical climate’ of India
majorly strengthened the western ideas that India was fit for the term
‘despotism’. The ‘enervating character’ of India’s climate was accompanied by
the subjection of six centuries to Muslim rule.

From the 1770’s however, a deeper understanding of India was undertaken,

and the Company moved their attention from climatic determinism to
understanding the cultural and racial characteristics of its people. Governor
General Warren Hastings stated that the Hindus “had been in possession of
laws which continued unchanged from the remotest antiquity”. In his eyes, the
British would only be able to effectively govern India by mastering these laws
and the Sanskrit language in which they were enclosed. It was with this vision
that Fort William College at Calcutta was founded in 1800 to train civil servants
in Indian language and tradition. However, the rejection of Orientalism began
to take effect, as slowly the orientalists began paving a way to glorifying the
Indian past, linking its Aryan origins with the Europeans. Hastings’ policy was
therefore abandoned by Lord Cornwallis, and he went on to aim for greater
Anglicisation of administration and imposition of the Whig principles of British
government. The company tried to curb the influence of Rajas and Zamindars.
They began a policy of aiming to make the people believe that they were being
liberated from their corrupt feudal lords. One purpose of Fort William College
was to prevent the ideas of the French revolution from spreading. This
conservatism was related to the domestic politics in England, which were facing
the threat of Jacobinism. The process of Anglicisation and regulative
administration under Cornwallis and Wellesley reflected this conservatism.
The Industrial Revolution in Britain around 1800 created a need to develop and
incorporate the Indian markets for manufactured goods and ensure a secured
supply of raw materials. This needed a more effective administration and the
lining of the colony to the economy of the mainland. Thus there were several
measures pushed to reform both the mainland and India. It was Evangelicalism
and Utilitarianism, brought forward a fundamental change in the nature of the
Company’s administration in India.

The Evangelists resented the early compromise of not disturbing the way of
Indian society, and went on a sort of Crusade, as shown in the struggle of the
Sreerampore missionaries, who wanted to get on with the task of reforming
the current degeneration of Indian society. Missionaries like Charles Grant were
openly hostile to ‘Indian Barbarism’. This hostility, a trademark of
evangelicalism, was combined with a desire to ‘civilize’ India. This attitude went
hand in hand with the face of British Liberalism. The merchant community
supported this; firstly, because since they would benefit from the civilizing
mission's laws to acquire property etc. in India, and then, under "free trade'
they could work out the problems of creating a market for British goods
amongst the Indians. Under a good government the Indian peasants could
again experience improvement to become consumers of British products.

There was also present an age of Liberalism. Thomas Macaulay had a liberal
vision that the British administrators’ task was to civilise rather than conquer. It
was in this atmosphere of liberalism of the British that Utilitarianism emerged.
The utilitarian ideas were to have a fundamental influence in moulding the
British attitudes towards India. The question of law as an instrument of change
was suggested under Bentinck. It was possible, he believed, for judiciary or law
to be the instrument of changing Indian practices like Sati and female
infanticide. With the arrival of James Mill to the East India Company's London
office, a efficient utilitarian attempt was made to combat the Orientalists. A
total vision of political reform on the philosophical grounds of' utilitarianism
was sought to be given a concrete shape. We see a series of laws and penal
codes enacted under the Benthamite principle of a centrally logically and
coherently evolved system which would go down to the grassroots. In the
process it would give the direction to the Indian government to function 'with a
united purpose.'
In terms of the question of Racial Superiority, we can look back to the late
eighteenth century, where Lord Cornwallis began maintaining separation
between the rulers and the ruled. British soldiers were forbidden to have
sexual relations with Indian women, and were kept in army cantonments
where they were away from ‘infectious Oriental diseases’. Civil servants were
discouraged from having Indian mistresses, and were urged to have British
wives. Physical segregation was quite evident in every way in Calcutta during
the eighteenth century. All this worked in a setting of Dualism (a feature of all
colonial cities, between a White town and a Black town). This phenomenon of
dualism reflected on the one hand, the conquerors' concern for defence and
security, but on the other, their racial pride and exclusivism.

Thus to conclude, we have seen the different ideologies of the British and how
over time the visions and views of the Company changed in order to suit the
needs for proper British administration. The years between the late eighteenth
century and early nineteenth century saw conflicting views between competing
visions for the ‘Raj’. At no time, however, did these internal tensions ever call
into question the fundamental British vision of India as a land lost in the past.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

● Shekhar Bandopadhyaya; ‘From Plassey to Partition: A History of

Modern India’; Orient Longman Pvt Ltd.
● Thomas R. Metcalf; ‘The New Cambridge History of India: Ideologies of
the Raj’; Cambridge University Press.
● C.A. Bayly; ‘Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire’;
Cambridge University Press.