- Through what ideologies did the British seek to justify and legitimise their rule over India.
In the 18th century, Enlightenment ideas prevailed in Europe. The ideas of progress and modernity that the Enlightened Europe assigned itself necessitated the demarcation of what was not progressive or modern – it created the ‘Other’. This ‘other’ was ascribed all the characteristics that the Europeans –with regard to this essay, the British- wished to dissociate themselves with. In order to makes themselves ‘British’, and therefore ‘non Indian’, as Metcalf says, the British had to create the idea of what was ‘Indian’. This is important in the construction of ideologies which were the building blocks of the British political and administrative machinery in India.
The Battle of Plassey (1757) is widely accepted as the beginning of British dominion in India. Immediately after the battle, expediency was the guiding force behind British activity in India. At first, the British were cautious and unwilling to take governance into their own hands, preferring to work behind puppet governments. Clive’s idea of government was to mask the sovereignty of the company. This was what led to the double government in Bengal, where the British had the right to administer civil justice and collect land revenue, but administration remained in the hands of the ‘natives’.
As the pre-existing governments began to fade away, the Company felt the need to revise its policies. This was more in the light of what Eric Stokes describes as ‘Inheritors’ of an old system rather that as ‘innovators’ of a new one. The idea of despotism was now applied to Asia. ‘Oriental despotism’ implied a society where the people had no rights and laws were derived from the will and whim of the ruler, who could retract them when he wished. It was using this perspective about India that led to the British themselves asserting their own authority in India as a means of creating Public Virtue, which the indigenous people did not appear to have. As reflected in the writings of Alexander Dow and Robert Orme, the 1770s British perspective regarded India as predisposed to Oriental despotism due to the oppressive climate, which induced ‘languor’ among the people. Dow in his work also made a distinction between ‘Hindoos’ and ‘Mahommedans’. The climate had allowed the Mahommedans, a hardy people, to easily subjugate India. The work of Robert Orme and later scholars begins to take on a racial characteristic. The argument of climate receded to the background after Clive’s conquests.
There were a number of company men who resisted Anglicization. They believed that public business should be carried out in the traditional Indian manner, or the Persian form which had come to be adopted. Warren Hastings, whose term as governor-general began in 1772, discarded Clive’s sham government and instead openly asserted British sovereignty. In 1773, Lord North’s Regulating Act was introduced. It created the Calcutta Supreme Court which was to serve to protect the people of Bengal against oppression from the British. This spurred Hastings into action, for he feared that Hindu and Muslim law would be overshadowed by English law, and was bent on preserving local tradition. The period from 1772 to 1794 was the period when Orientalist knowledge was employed in the formation of the government. While the company was beginning to assume administration, at this point of time, their interests were largely commercial. For the most part, the Orientalist scholars came from amongst the ranks of the company men themselves. Their interests lay largely in preserving optimal conditions for commercial profits, in the opinion of Rosane Rocher.
These British thinkers were influenced by Enlightenment ideas. Deism was a characteristic feature of this. It should also be noted that the Enlightenment saw the perfect society as independent of time and space, which is reflected in the Orientalist fascination for ancient texts. Hastings himself was a product of the Enlightenment. He saw the study of Indian customs as a means for the ‘gain of humanity’ and also as ‘useful to the state’. Orientalism combined in it administrative convenience and scholarly curiosity. William Jones is a prime example of this. He ventured into the study of old texts in order to better perform his duty as a judge. The Asiatic Society of Bengal was started with Jones as head in 1784 under the aegis of Hastings. At one end of the spectrum, Orientalist works were produced for government purposes, on the other end, there were those that had nothing at all to do with the government. There were some works that were motivated by scholarly inquisitiveness but were employed to government means. Categorisation has been provided by Rosane Rocher.
The first of the category of books for government purposes –and therefore wholly subsidised by the government- was the Code of Gentoo Laws commissioned by Hastings in 1773 and completed by N.B. Halhed in 1776. A Digest of Hindu Laws on Contract and Succession by William Jones was only completed by Cornwallis’s regime, but is an orientalist work. In the view of the Orientalist scholars, Sanskrit texts were window to the core of ‘Hinduism’. Hinduism itself was a construct of the Orientalists and one of the many binary oppositions created by the colonial government –in this case, that of Hindu and Muslim. In Hastings’ Judicial plan of 1772, he laid down that ‘Hindoos’ were subject to the law as laid down in the ‘Shaster’, while ‘Mohammedans’ were to be adjudged by the laws of the Koran (This was only for civil cases; Criminal cases would be tried according to Islamic law). In addition to not applying common law to the Indians, this Plan also called for a disregarding of local customs in favour of laws found in ancient texts. For the interpretation of Sanskrit texts, these scholars turned to the Brahmins, whom they associated with the priests of religions familiar to them. These texts were seen not only as a source of morality but also of law. Halhed completed this code of law with the help of eleven Brahmins. Therefore, the construction of Hinduism in India was a collaboration of the British and the Brahmins. It should be noted that this did not allow for regional variations in the interpretation of these texts. The British at this point of time tried to cast themselves as pro-Hindu, their way of undermining the previous dominant ruling class. In addition to this, the prime enemies at this time to British rule followed Islam – Tipu Sultan and Siraj-ud-Daula.
The Code of Gentoo Laws was therefore used to enfranchise the Hindus (Rocher) and also for propaganda purposes. It also served to overthrow the idea of Colonial despotism as it proved that laws and not the whim of the despotic ruler were prevalent in society. This was used by Hastings to counter the attempts of the home government to apply common law to India and thus disrupt the functioning of Orientalist philosophy in government. Orientalist works like the Bhagavad-Gita, which were translated in keeping with deism helped strengthen this, also making it an example of scholastic work that was used by the government. Scholarship from this period highlighted common features, and men like Jones tried to draw connections between Greek and Hindu Gods. Studies were made that focused on the common racial origin. Halhed focused on the relationship Jones drew between Greek and Latin and Sanskrit, which was engulfed by a wave of purism thanks to Orientalist scholars. Oddly enough, this search for similarity often emphasised the different turns taken by each branch. Rosane Rocher sees Orientalist scholarship being influenced by the government and vice versa. It also saw the beginnings of dichotomies in Indian society that had not existed previously in her view. According to Bernard Cohn, the study of Indian languages, literature and though produced three major projects –the project to use language and information to understand and rule better the people of Indi a, the project of rediscovery of ‘ancients’ and restoration of wisdom as had occurred in Europe with the Renaissance, and patronage to institutions and individuals to keep up the traditions of the conquered through literary and other means of transmission.
Whig political philosophy held that power was liable to abuse. In addition to this, the British people felt, not without reason, that Crown, parliament and the Company were all corrupt. The fear of the British’s own complicity in perpetuating despotism, according to Metcalf, produced attacks on the Company’s governance. Burke attacked the East India Company’s conquests under Hastings and even the Diwani of Bengal. These attacks all eventually formed part of the impeachment trial of Lord Hastings starting from 1787. Philip Francis also attacked Hastings. Burke painted a rapacious picture of Hastings who was a symbol for the Company. He was opposed to the arbitrary power exercised and also against the ‘misuse’ of funds from Bengal and the extraction of funds from native rulers like those of Benares and Bengal. According to Sara Suleri, the trial was ‘a documentation of the anxieties of oppression, where both the prisoner and the prosecutors are equally implicated in the inascribability of colonial guilt’. The trial became a public forum for Burke and the Whigs to oppose arbitrary action. In Burke’s view, legitimacy for British rule in India could only be obtained by ruling in the interests of the people of India. He argued that before profit was made, the prosperity of the native should be assured. In this vein, Philip Francis, a member of the Supreme Council at Calcutta in the 1770s and a friend of Burke’s, drew up a comprehensive plan for the rule of property. He was a physiocrat, and saw England prosperity as a result of the ‘gentleman entrepreneur’. In keeping with preserving ancient institutions, he saw the Bengal zamindars in the same light as a improving landlords on England.
Debate had raged in London as to whether or not the Company should play a role other than trade in India. Following the Pitt’s India Act of 1784, the Company became more of a governing body though it still retained its trade privileges. Mistrust between the Crown, Company and the parliament made the idea of Crown rule untenable at this point. But 1784, a Board of Control was established in Britain, at the head of which was the India Secretary. So while the Company’s ran the day to affairs, the Board of Control in England was answerable to Parliament. Lord Cornwallis was governor general of India from 1786 to 1793. Eric Stokes sees his term as the second wave of Anglicization in India. Despite the Regulating Act and the Supreme court, abuses of power continued amongst the officials of the Company in India. Cornwallis set store by English Constitutional Principles, which he subjected not just individuals but the entire system to. Cornwallis embodied the Whig political view, which derived from John Locke’s theory of separation of powers of the judicial, executive and legislature. This stemmed from the Whig belief that political power corrupted. The Whigs also saw property as the basis of the self ordered society, for which the government existed only to administer justice.
Cornwallis chose to consolidate British rule in India by creating a new foundation for this rule. He reduced the participation of the government to minimum involvement, that is, only to ensure the security of person and property. The Permanent Settlement of Bengal (1793) was a product of this thought. It fixed the revenue received by the state. Once the revenue had been fixed, the collectors would no longer have judicial powers as their duty would be only the collection of public dues. The executive would no longer have discretionary powers to abuse and would instead be subject to the rule of law administered by a separate judiciary. The separation of the collector and the district magistrate embodied the principle of ‘dual government’ in a way. The District judge was also given control of the police forces and had a superior salary to that of the collector.
Lord Wellesley followed Cornwallis as governor-general in India. His term, from 1798 to 1805, and saw his work as a continuation of Cornwallis’s. The Court of Sadr Diwani and Nizam Adalat were created to separate judicial power from that of the Governor General’s Council. It should be remembered that though this phase of Anglicization was based on entirely English principles, it did not seek to revolutionize Indian society but rather limit the participation of government. It hinged on private property was defined by the Western World.
The idea of applying English principles to the Indian administration was met with some resistance. This came from among Wellesley’s officers. Chief among them were Munro, Elphinstone, Metcalfe and Malcolm. They were influence by Romanticism, which had taken root in Europe in the early part of the 19th century and this school was dominant prior to liberalism taking root in 1818 in India. In keeping with Romanticism, they focused on history, emotion and individual introspection and were against abstract learning. They saw the Cornwallis school as abstract principles that led to an ‘impersonal bureaucracy’ of the office rather than the personal, paternalistic government that they favoured. They emphasised the existing personal government of the Indian states. The ryotwari system was the most tangible outcome of this thought. It was first applied to the Madras presidency under Thomas Munro. Elphinstone, who had been given charge of the Bombay presidency also adopted it , and this system was maintained by his successor John Malcolm. Metcalfe , who was first Resident of Delhi and then a member of the Governor General’s council, made great efforts to prevent the spread of the Cornwallis system to what were later to be known as the North West Frontier Provinces , where village communities instead became the mode of administration.
By these principles, peasant society needed paternal authority that provided a simple form of justice and government, according to Eric Stokes. This authority was to be personal and would provide a focus for loyalties. To the ryot of this system, instead of the complexity of multiple officers and many forms, a single officer was to be reported to who would administer duties of executive , judiciary and legislative without the delay that accompanied the Western processes. The government was to be the ma-bap of the peasantry. It did away with intermediaries and created a direct relationship between the government and the peasantry. While they had a lot in common, from doing away with the separation of powers to the attention paid to survey and detail, and the vesting of rights with the ryot, the Romantic though was rather similar to the Utilitarians in all but spirit, which for the Romantics was patient and paternal. The utilitarians on the other hand favoured legislation.
In response to the industrial revolution, a new morality and the upcoming middle class, the Evangelical revival found foothold towards the end of the eighteenth century. It is widely believed to be the moral force behind Victorian ‘respectability’, countering the individualism and anarchy of the Industrial revolution. Men like Sharp and Grant who had lived in India went on to become part of the Clapham Sect which provided leadership to Evangelical opinions. The Clapham sect was concerned with sending missionaries to India, which was allowed by the Charter Act of 1813. According to them, Work was itself an end, and emphasised industry and perseverance and also necessary as it provided the material means to further the kingdom of heaven on earth. The evangelicals also believed in basic education for the common man to be able to read the Bible. The three most important beliefs were intense individualism, the sudden and total transformation of human character and need for an education with regard to Indian situation according to Stokes. It would liberate Indians from the Tyranny of priests, according to Grant. The taste of the Indian’s and their poverty were the barriers to India being a market for the British. Evangelical opinion was that this could be remedied by introducing education and Christianity. Therefore, they argued for the ‘principle of assimilation’. This was in complete opposition to the Company’s policy of non interference.
This principle of assimilation was taken forward by free trade merchants, who argued against the company when the matter of the Charter of 1813 was being discussed. Commercially, India was important in terms of the China tea trade. The revenues from Bengal were a source of tribute. By this point of time, it was in their best interests for India to be a market for British good, rather than as a trade monopoly. For the free traders, law and order and light taxes would give the Indians the means to buy goods manufactured by the British.
The meeting of commercial and missionary opinion created the idea of liberalism in the colonies. In the 1820s, Lancashire textiles displaced Indian textiles. For the successful reversal of the balance of trade, measures to increase the purchasing power of the Indian people would have to be undertaken. The Crawfurd report of 1832 called for ‘efficient administration of justice’. The government should also step forward as a strong English government to provide stimulus to the Indian. Great emphasis was placed on English education as a civilising influence It essentially called upon the Indian people to abandon the ‘barbarism’ of their own society and to instead allow English institutions to take their place – private property, the rule of law, the liberty of the individual, and education in Western knowledge. According to Macauley, even if political ties withered away, the most important conquest made would be that of the mind . He said that the political tie with India was impermanent due to the brittle nature of human society and that constant adaptation was key.
With the coming of Lord William Bentinck to India in 1828, the Age of reform was was ushered in. The idea to ‘improve’ India had taken root in the minds of several thinkers, evangelical, utilitarian and free traders. There existed many kinds of liberals, but what was common amongst them was the belief in the total transformation of society.Unlike in Britian, according to Thomas Metcalf, in India, the conquered people could not protest the change that was being introduced, and so India became something a laboratory for the ideas of the liberals. In India, unlike in Britian, for the most part the utilitarians, free traders, law reformers and evangelicals worked together.
The best example of the liberals’ take on India is James Mill’s History of India (1818). Mill was of the utilitarian bent of mind like Jeremy Bentham. He measured social progress based on utility. On analysing Indian society, he concluded that its civilisation was of very little value, and like Jones saw Indian society as unchanging from ancient times. In order to ‘improve’ India and set her on the road to progress, Mill prescribed ‘Light taxes and good laws’. For Mill, liberty was not necessary. Happiness of the people was prime, and this was to be based on protection of property and rights. John Stuart Mill did not differ much from the perspective of his father, though he placed emphasis on liberty, but only for the ideal best polity. The mills were tickseed for advocating representative government at home and the opposite in India. Mill advocated that foreign dominance in India would carry it through several stages of progress.
There are many similarities between the Utilitarians and the Evangelicals. They were both forms of individualism and both sought to lift tyranny of the priests and overcome tradition. However, for the Utilitarians . law and legislature was the basis of good government as they would help men avoid harmful accts by punishing them. The Evangelicals on the other hand emphasised English education, which Macauley emphasised in his eventually successful Education Minute of 1835. He wanted to create a class that was Indian by blood, but which would help the British to rule as it would be ‘English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect’. While Public opinion and education featured in Utilitarian theory, they did not match up to the power of law. Also, Mill believed greater success would be achieved through vernacular education rather than English education. He also did not believe in including the Indians in the government. His solution was simply to reform the government, not reward the people by education them and admitting them to administrative ranks. The Ryotwari system was better than Cornwallis’s system . It brought the peasant and sate in direct contact. Taxation too occupied Mill’s mind. He felt that the State should not withdraw from being the universal landlord. It could collect revenue as long as the rents did not exceed a limit. This way, progress would also not be harmed.
According to Erik Stoke, the Utilitarian influence in India was split into two – one branch that sought to further Cornwallis’s reforms by an aggressive application of the rule of law. The other school, prevalent in Punjab, the North West Frontier Provinces and in Bombay were carrying forth the ideas of Munro and company. Indian administration was finally strengthened under the rule of law , and by the 1860s, a uniform government influenced by the ideas of James Mill had emerged.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Metcalf, Thomas, The New Cambridge History of India, Volume 3, Part 4, Ideologies of the Raj, Cambridge Histories Online, Cambridge University Press 2008
Rocher, Rosane, British Orientalism in the Eighteenth Century: The Dialectics of Knowledge and Government in Carol Breckenridge and Peter Van Der Veer Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament : Perspectives On South Asia New Cultural Studies, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993
Cohn, Bernard S., Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1996
Stokes, Eric, The English Utilitarians and India, Oxford University Press, 1989