Colonial History of India

ramana · 08-30-2006, 02:40 AM

From Deccan Chronicle, News Plus Segment, 29 August 2006
QUOTEBhopalâs Bourbons could have been kings
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The Localist : By Sudhir K. Singh

Bhopal: Bourbon who, ask many. A Bourbon in Bhopal, query even those with a nodding acquaintance with the regionâs history. An advocate making the rounds of the district court? With a Dutch wife running a commonplace English medium higher secondary school in a back alley of congested Jahangirabad? And a teenaged son wanting to make films like Satyajit Ray and Akira Kurosawa? Amusing, perplexing if not altogether shocking. Talk of the perfect square peg in a round hole.

Indeed, âCâest moi,â burbles the amiable, portly, and utterly Indian Balthazar Napoleon Bourbon IV, the 40-year-old scion of Asiaâs only surviving Bourbon clan, one of the six collateral branches of Europeâs most celebrated line of royals who presided over the fortunes of France from 1610 till 1792 before the most illustrious member of the clan, Louis IV, was put to the guillotine by Robespierre and his rogues during the peak of the Terror. The Bourbon sovereignties also extended over Spain, the two Sicilies, and the duchy of Parma.

Though not quite in that enviable league, there was a time when the homegrown Bourbons, says Balthazar, owned virtually âhalf of Bhopalâ. All that remains of the jagir, he bemoans, is 60 acres of farmland, a few shops, and a respectable haveli discreetly tucked behind the school premises. âThe House of Bourbon,â as the entrance announces, was a transit point for members of the clan who came on elephants to attend the neighbouring church, Bhopalâs first. Even the coat of arms (a fleur de lis) adopted by the princely State of Bhopal was a Bourbon hand-down.

Christianity, in fact, sneaked into the royal State of Bhopal wrapped in the coat-tails of the first Bourbon resident, Salvador de Bourbon (Inayat Masih), who settled here around 1783. Both he and his son, Balthazar (great-grandfather of the present descendant) went on to become leading figures in the Bhopal court by virtue of their proximity to Wazir Mohammad Khan (great-grandson of Bhopalâs founder Dost Mohammad Khan), then the virtual ruler. It was Balthazar (Shahzad Masih) whose wife, Isabella, got the first church built in the vicinity.

A swashbuckling soldier and military strategist, the multifaceted talents of the firang were noticed, and he was appointed political counsellor to the formidable regent, Qudsia Begum, whose lover he became for some time after the death of her husband Nazar Mohammad Khan, son of Wazir. It was Balthazar de Bourbon who was singularly responsible for ushering in in 1819 the 107-year-old rule of the four Begums in a conservative Muslim society where a womanâs only place was the harem.

The deep debt of gratitude she owed Balthazar finds mention in the Hayaat-e-Qudsia. Though Balthazar was poisoned by jealous Afghan courtiers in 1829, Qudsia remained regent till 1837, and lived to see the rule of both her daughter Sikandar (1844-68) and grand-daughter Shahjahan (1868-1901) till her death in 1881. Balthazar was the first Bourbon to shake off his European trappings and become a pucca Oriental.

Hence, the smooth morph into Shahzad Masih. So well did life in Bhopal suit him that he even learned Persian and Urdu, penning verse in the latter under the nom de plume Fitrat. Wife Isabella transformed into Sarkar Dulhan, outliving her husband by over four decades. Son Sebastian (Ejaz Masih) briefly served as prime minister to Sikandar Jahan Begum. Louis Rousselet, a French traveller, has an interesting account of a meeting with Isabella in his book Indian And its Native Princes published in 1875.

The presence of the Bourbons in India, however, goes further back. The very first, Jean Philippe, landed in the court of the Emperor Akbar in 1560. A cousin of Henri IV (the first Bourbon to rule France) and son of the constable of Pau in southern France, Jean fled his country after spilling the blood of a Gascon kin in what was a duel of honour. He escaped to Portugal, was captured by Turkish pirates, sold to the Otto-man emperor Suleiman the Magnificent, and set sail for India in the company of Abyssinian Christians.

Here the enterprising Gascon secured an audience with the emperor Akbar who impressed by his adventures appointed him commander of guns and sought his help in reorganising the army. Akbar got him married to a Portuguese beauty, Juliana Mascrenhas, sister of his Christian wife Maria. Akbar granted him a large estate in Shergarh, south of Delhi, where successive generations of Bourbons till Salvador lived in luxury.

The sacking of Delhi by the Persian plunderer Nadir Shah in 1740 forced Salvador to move to Gwalior where he was made quiledar of the impregnable Gwalior Fort. And when the Fort fell to the Mahratta chieftain Mahadji Scindia, packed his bags for safe and serene Bhopal. The Bourbon fortunes plummeted soon after the ascension of Shahjahan Begum in 1868. This was largely due to the influence of her second husband and consort, Syed Saddiq Hassan, a fanatical Wahabi who virtually pauperised the Bourbons by confiscating all their jagirs granted since the days of Shahzad Masih.

This left the clan with no choice than to earn their livelihood by eking out a middle class existence as doctors, priests, nurses, or teachers. The blackballing of the Bourbons continued during the reign of Sultan Jahan Begum despite her secular mindset. Balthazar feels the Bourbons paid a heavy price for their great-grandfatherâs âaffairâ with the venerable Qudsia. Contemporaries thought it a vile conspiracy by a Christian to defile the reputation of a devout and just Muslim ruler. Around 1960, he says, they also lost possession of the Lakherapura palace in a family partition. The palace was later demolished.

Circumstances also compelled his father Salvador to earn his livelihood by taking up the legal profession into whose shoes has stepped the son.To most Bhopalis, the Bourbons remain nothing more than a slightly reclusive family (admission into their precinct wasnât easy) with a surname which closely rhymes with bon-bon. Blame it on their down to earth, unpretentious ways, unlike the des-cendants of the Nawabs.

But history, as the Pakistani diplomat Shaharyar Khan (great-grandson of Sultan Jahan Begum) once half-jokingly remarked, could have been tantalisingly different. Were it not for Balthazarâs backing, Qudsia would never have been Begum, and the East India Company might have ended up appointing Shahzad Masih nawab instead. In which case Bhopal might have been added to the list of Bourbon possessions.

09-01-2006, 08:17 AM

Constable's Hand Atlas of India By John Bartholomew and Son
1893 -

09-01-2006, 09:29 AM

British Rule and British Christianity in IndiaBy Joseph Kingsmill

read page60, 62, 65

ramana · 09-08-2006, 08:30 PM

from Pioneer, 8 Sept., 2006
QUOTEUnsung hero in a time warp

It is unfortunate that few know about the supreme sacrifice of Bagha Jatin during the freedom struggle outside Orissa and Bengal, says Rup Narayan Das

At a time when the nation is going to celebrate the 150th anniversary of First War of Independence of 1857 next year, it is propitious to remember the sacrifices of martyrs of the freedom struggle. Jatindranath Mukherjee, popularly known as Bagha Jatin whose martyrdom falls on September 10 was one of such illustrious sons of the nation.

It is an irony of history that the supreme sacrifice made by Bagha Jatin is little known outside Bengal and Orissa, although there is no dearth of well documented historical records. Much before Independence, there was an attempt under the leadership of Bagha Jatin, MN Roy, etc, in 1915, to free India through armed insurrection in cooperation with Germany. In fact, the incident can be considered as precursor of the attempt by Subash Chandra Bose in 1945.

Born in 1879 in a village called Koya in Kushtia district of undivided Bengal (presently Bangladesh), Bagha Jatin joined the Central College in Calcutta in 1895. His bravery, valour and daredevil spirit can be gauged from the fact that once in 1904, he killed a tiger in a forest which attacked one of his friends with the help of a dagger after struggling for over three hours. The incident earned him the epithet Bagha (tiger) Jatin.

Bagha Jatin was greatly influenced by ideals and ideas of Bhagavad Gita and the writings of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. He was also inspired by Aurobindo Ghosh's Bhavani Mandir and Vivekananda's Present India. The clarion call of militant nationalism forged a bonding among the restless youth of the country particularly after the partition of Bengal in 1905, who were disillusioned with the slow pace of progress and were losing faith in the efficacy of constitutional agitation. The organisation that galvanised the spirit of strident nationalism was Jugantar and its icon was Bagha Jatin.

By early 1914, the country was seething with discontentment against the British rule and what added fuel to the fire was the promise of support to the revolutionaries in India from revolutionaries fighting from abroad. By the end of the year the news reached that the Indian Revolutionary Committee in Berlin had obtained from the Germany the promise of arms and money required to declare the war. Clandestine conferences led to the formation of a revolutionary outfit, with Bagha Jatin as the Commander-in-Chief.

It was against this backdrop that MN Roy left India in April 1915. On his arrival in Batavia, he was introduced by the German Consul to Theodor Halfferich, who stated that cargo of arms and ammunitions was on its way to Karachi for Indian revolutionaries. Roy then urged the ship to be diverted to Bengal.

Meanwhile, anticipating the arrival of the arms and ammunitions and to avoid being caught by the police, especially after the Garden Reach dacoity, Bagha Jatin had left for Balasore in Orissa. He and his followers sheltered themselves in a place called Kaptipada 22 miles from Balasore.

Unfortunately, however, the entire strategy envisaged for the armed rebellion got leaked and the British Army intelligence intercepted the ship, which was on its way to India. After knowing the activities of Bagha Jatin and his associates, British police cordoned off the hide out of Bagha Jatin to prevent the escape. There was exchange of fire on September 9. One of the revolutionaries was named Chittapriya Roy Choudhury died.

Jatin Mukherjee and his associates were captured after their ammunitions were exhausted. Bagha Jatin was seriously wounded and was taken to the Government hospital in Balasore, where he succumbed to injury the next day, on September 10.

**acharya** · 09-21-2006, 08:58 AM

India Upward and Apart
By Kenneth Champeon

"To pursue schemes of conquest and extension of dominion in India are measures repugnant to the wish, the honour and the policy of this nation," Great Britain. So said Pitt's India Act of 1784. My, how times change! Or perhaps Pitt was merely continuing a long tradition of English hypocrisy, the conquest of India being a kind of unfortunate accident, like tripping down the stairs, at the foot of which is a pot of gold.

Recently I have been told that the United States also shuns conquest. Out of politeness to the deluded, I usually try to change the subject rather than recount America's numerous wars of expansion (from the Mexican War to Vietnam) as well as the some 250,000 US troops presently on foreign soil. History does indeed repeat itself. In this regard Stanley Wolpert's accomplished and accessible A New History of India has a lot to teach, not only about India but also about how a country emerges from its cocoon and takes wing as an empire.

India: the Jewel of the Crown. But did you know that England would have preferred the lucrative islands of Southeast Asia to India, but was driven out by the Dutch? So the English settled for the subcontinent, and swiftly began to import - civilization, so-called. They banned sati, or the ritual burning of widows. In 1891, in the face of strident Indian opposition, they tried to increase the age of statutory rape from 10 to 12 years. They introduced widespread private ownership of land. They rediscovered the matchless Ajanta caves as well as the Taj Mahal, and they compiled dictionaries of the principal Indian tongues. But above all they brought the train, the telegraph, and the Indian version of the penny post. And by doing all these things, the English were digging their own graves because the Indian nationalists would use their masters' tools against them, much as today's anti-Western terrorists use Western cell phones, C4 explosives, and airplanes.

Yes, the Indian nationalists were called terrorists. And aptly, for some of them used violence to attain their aims, or aim, which was to get England "off India's back" - to borrow Gandhi's phrase. We know relatively little about these terrorists, not only because Gandhi's nonviolence proved more effective than jihad ever will, but also because they may still arouse disapproval despite their just aim: men like Subhas Chandra Bose, whose Indian National Army declared war on the US and Great Britain during World War II; or Khudiram Bose, who became in 1908 the first Indian to blow up a Briton with a bomb. British reactions to which, writes Wolpert, "were predictably strident; one newspaper, the Pioneer, demanded the arrest of all 'terrorists', warning that in the future, 'ten of them would be shot for every life sacrificed.'"

Indian nationalists are apt to call the nasty events of 1857-1858 the First War of Indian Independence; the English tended to dismiss them as a mere mutiny. In any case it is interesting to note, as Wolpert does, that the war/mutiny "cost England a full year's worth of Indian revenue." Even during times of relative peace, the Government's military budget was up to 50% of annual revenue. Empires are expensive, and thus short-lived.

The industrialization and globalization of India did a great deal of harm. One striking case is that of the collapse of Bengal's textile industry, caused by the introduction of machine-made English cloth into Indian markets that had previously depended upon Bengali homespun. "Millions of Indian men and women," writes Wolpert ominously, "were thrown out of work by machines half a world away." Little surprise that Bengal would become India's bastion of Marxism, which emphasizes this mindless power of capitalism to disrupt old ways; or that Gandhi would make homespun cloth a symbol of Indian independence.

By emphasizing commercial over subsistence agriculture, the British "weaned India's peasants from their time-honored custom of storing extra grain in each village" as a protection against famine - with the expected result: starvation on an apocalyptic scale. In 1770, a famine exacerbated by British "spoliation" led to cannibalism and the death of "an estimated one-third of Bengal's peasantry."

This is something that modern-day modernizers often fail to understand. For an innovation to be bad, sometimes it is enough for it to be disruptive. People, and especially people from old, relatively stable societies like India's, can be quite slow to adapt. And though they may be better clothed, housed, entertained, and all the rest, they may also be entirely uprooted.

One innovation that the Indians did embrace, however, was the railway - much to the surprise of the English. Now one can hardly separate modern India from its massive steel backbone, even if the trains don't always run on time, or at all.

Some of the most cheering - and timely - portions of Wolpert's narrative have to do with the area now known as Afghanistan. When the army of Alexander the Great was trying to conquer India, there were rebellions against him in Kandahar. Wolpert calls the first attempt of the British to conquer Afghanistan "utterly futile", the second merely "futile". Having managed to occupy Kabul and Kandahar, they met "unrelenting opposition and hatred." There were assassinations, skirmishes between warlords, that sort of thing.

Not so cheering was the British invasion of Tibet, during which "hundreds" of monks were massacred, providing perhaps a lesson in pacification for the coming Chinese invaders. The history of what Malcolm Lowry in Under the Volcano called the "poor little" states is never pretty.

But Lowry's point was that every state is a poor little state at some point during its history, and only our ignorance of history makes us pity the poor little state of today. India the colony was once India the empire, colonizing poor little Bali and Sri Lanka and so on. Among the inventions Wolpert attributes to India are dice, chess, the weaving of cotton, the domestication of fowl. The Vedas are the oldest Indo-European literary works extant. Wolpert even argues that "drain of Roman gold" caused by trade with Asia helped bring about Rome's fall. Even Africa made its unlikely contribution: the first humans in South Asia are believed to have been migrants from African shores.

As for the poor little Muslims, they were among India's most spirited conquerors and their arid Arabian influence continues to cause the subcontinent no end of problems. "It is difficult to imagine," writes Wolpert, "two religious ways of life more different than Islam and Hinduism." Or Islam and Buddhism: Wolpert argues that Islamic persecution of Buddhism (most recently witnessed in the Taliban's pointless destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha statues) helped to drive Buddhism out of its South Asian birthplace.

Wolpert reminds us that officially Islam recognizes Moses and Jesus as predecessors of Mohammed, and thus Jews and Christians have "protected status". Not so Hindus, who were forced to convert for fear of the scimitar. Apparently Aurangzeb (d. 1707) was the Muslim emperor most hostile to the Hindu faith, and it is to the orthodox glory of his reign that some latter day fundamentalists seek a return. But on the whole the Mughals were not known for their austerity but for their voluptuousness.

A highly and diversely religious land that had been ruled by tyrants for centuries became, in 1947, two secular democratic states: India and Pakistan. To say the least, the transition has been imperfect. The two countries have fought three wars; both have endured de facto dictatorships; both have strong fundamentalist factions; both continue to suppress separatist movements. And both are still, despite admirable leaps forward, menacingly poor. According to Wolpert, "the United Nations' 1998 Human Development Report ranked India 139th out of 174 nations of the world (Pakistan was ranked 138th)".

It is hard not to see the irony in the fact that Sir Cyril Radcliffe, the man responsible for determining the geographical boundaries of Partition, had never been to India. Had he gone, he might have thought twice about the feasibility of his task. (Gandhi called Partition "obvious suicide".) India divided itself into states largely along linguistic lines; unfortunately, India has more languages than almost any country on Earth. Meanwhile, Pakistan's main problem remains, in Wolpert's words, "how to administer a 'modern' republic without losing support of Pakistan's orthodox Islamic leadership or their mass following."

Only in recent decades has India proven that it can be ruled by anyone who is not Jawaharlal Nehru or one of his descendants - Indira Gandhi and her sons Sanjay and Rajiv - or that it can have a leader that it does not assassinate: both Indira and Rajiv suffered the same fate as their namesake.

Indira remains an intriguing contradiction. Initially a somewhat unlikely successor to her father, she came to wield more power than any other Indian ruler. She was one of the first female heads of a modern democracy, which also happens to be one of the countries where women are most degraded. She also presided over India's entry into the nuclear weapons club and a number of bloody crackdowns on her own people, most notably the Sikhs, who would ultimately have their vengeance. Indira alone perhaps refutes the claim that a world run by females would be more peaceful.

India's nuclear weapons have perplexed those who would lay the hope of the world at India's feet. True, India felt compelled to create a deterrent to nuclear China, which had already invaded India once; and subsequently a deterrent to nuclear Pakistan, possessing what has chillingly been called "the Islamic Bomb." But there is a growing sense that India, like China, wishes to restore some of its ancient stature, to make Asia once more a seat of global power. If information technology proves more than just a fad, India's widening grip on this industry may prove to be the country's ticket to modernity. But like China, India faces the challenge of assuring that all its people, and not merely a Westernized, "neocolonial" elite, share modernity's benefits. Indira's own formula for Indian uplift was relatively simple. "The 'only magic' to eradicate Poverty," she said, "is hard work."

"A Million Mutinies" was how V.S. Naipaul described India in his book by the same name, and there is reason to believe that his diagnosis will prove correct. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the era of giant, unwieldy nation-states seemed to be nearing an end. India seems to be held together less by some vague notion of hindutva, or "Hindu-ness", than by the persistence of external threats, especially that of Pakistan but also of China and the West. India is the world's largest democracy, but the spirit of democracy is never very far from the spirit of anarchy.

On January 26, 1930, the Indian nationalists provisionally declared India's independence from England. According to Wolpert, they recited a pledge that included words from the American Declaration of Independence. They spoke of "inalienable" rights, and of how "if any government deprives a people of these rights and oppresses them, the people have a further right to alter it or abolish it."

Jefferson's words are as liberating - and dangerous - now as they were in 1776. For what the nationalists intended to say to the British Empire, separatists can now say to the Centre in Delhi. Self-determination's disintegrating force can persist until each man is a state unto himself.

- The End -

Review of Stanley Wolpert's A New History of India, Oxford University Press, 2000.

**acharya** · 09-23-2006, 01:41 AM

The awareness of continent
On the way to dominating us, the West defined Asia for the Asian and continues to do so in the post-colonial era. But other than a landmass called a continent and given a name, there is nothing that binds âAsiansâ.
http://www.himalmag.com/2003/january/asia_special_5.htm

by GP Deshpande

There was once a very famous book titled Asia and Western Dominance (G Allen and Unwin, London, 1953) by the historian-diplomat KM Panikkar. The book made quite a splash when it first appeared half a century ago, but now it is nearly forgotten. While it still does find mention in PhD dissertations and books on modern Indian history, Panikkarâs work is no longer part of a living discourse either in Asia or elsewhere.

In many ways, the language that Panikkar employed appears almost forgotten. Nobody talks of Western dominance anymore. There is occasional reference to Asia, but unlike as in Panikkarâs heyday, the term is not used in any political or cultural sense. âAsiaâ is reserved for mere geographic usage. When Pannikar wrote his book, everybody was certain what Asia was and meant. Today, nobody is. The term is used more to denote a landmass which is not Europe or Africa. Indeed, was there ever a meaningful reality called Asia?

It is interesting to note that most of the Indian languages, the classical Indian tongues such as Sanskrit or Pali, or even modern languages, some of which are 1000 years old, do not have a word for Asia. At best, they have coinage such as âAshiyaâ, which is nothing but a transliteration of âAsiaâ. In other words, the Indian language world has no awareness of an Asia from pre-colonial times. I am not certain if the Chinese word for Asia, âYazhouâ, is also not merely a transliteration. A modern dictionary of Chinese gives the meaning of Yazhou merely as a word for Asia. But we do know that the classical Chinese tradition had hardly any awareness of Asia.

It is possible to argue that it was Europe which created the notion or awareness of Asia. For the Europeans, Asia constituted the world to discover and to dominate. Asia was in that sense a territory to be colonised. One can even say that historically Asia was, to use the Chinese term Ya, âinferiorâ or second in status. Europe invented Asia as an area to be occupied and exploited and, perhaps for that reason, to be celebrated. When the Suez Canal was opened in 1869, the queenâs representative spoke of connecting the two continents of Europe and Asia. Interestingly, he went on to add that the canal would also link two periods of history. In his view, Asia belonged to a historical epoch while Europe was contemporary. The dominating colonialism was modern and contemporary while the colonised and the dominated world was the dated âAsianâ world.

The world and word of Asia would have been discarded and forgotten if the phenomenon of Asia was limited to what the queenâs representative had said at the opening of the Suez Canal. The colonial powers had made the interesting connection between the civilisational greatness of the lands they were going to rule or dominate and the historical need of that dominance for the colonised lands themselves. Lord Balfour defended the British role in Egypt in these terms in 1910.

This need not be taken only as an exercise in cynicism as it no doubt also was. There was an orientalist view of the greatness of the âotherâ necessarily involved in this exercise. The orientalist scholarship of the 18th and 19th centuries, as also British and German romanticism, had invented an Asia, which the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist leadership, both political and cultural, internalised. It was comforting and even flattering to see that European scholarship was interested in âourâ cultural achievements. The paradox in all this was that the Europeans were also introducing us to our own historical past. The German poet Goetheâs apostrophe to Kalidasaâs play Shakuntalam made us aware of the greatness of the classical Sanskrit drama.
Move away from notions of landmasses, retrieve the civilisations of these landmasses

A typical Asia-Europe relationship had begun. Europe defined Asia for us. We did not like it and at the same time lapped it up. For colonising Europe, the notions of cultural and civilisational greatness were both a historical reality and an instrument of dominance. Asia as Western dominance was as much a reality as Asia and Western dominance.

The fact of the matter is that there is in reality no such entity as Asia. Even the orientalist scholarship estimated the several Asian civilisations differently. It was far more respectful of the Chinese civilisation than it was of the Hindu-Bauddha or the Islamic, respectively of the Subcontinent and the Arab-Persian world. While Edward Said has argued that the thrust of orientalist scholarship was far more dismissive of the West Asian Islamic civilisation than it was of the other civilisations, that may not be entirely correct. The Hindu-Bauddha world was as much demonised as the Islamic world was.

Perhaps the Chinese world at least partially escaped this demonisation (through simultaneous glorification) because it escaped total colonisation as a result of which there was no rupture in its political tradition. The Confucian world remained a distant world, which the Europeans were destined to only vaguely and respectfully understand. James Legge, the Jesuit missionary, translator of the Chinese classics, once wrote of the surprise many expressed at his respect for the Chinese classics. He then went on to explain his respect for those classics. No Indian classic has ever received such awe-
inspiring respect. Even the Goethe apostrophe is qualified.

Many Asias, none Asia
Europe thus not only invented Asia; it also invented many Asias. We have now to come to terms with these many partly real and partly unreal Asias. Asia is a myth. Certainly one Asia is. And this simply is why no pan-Asian movement ever succeeded. This is also the reason why Asian consciousness is on the decline if it has not already disappeared. A shared history of colonialism of barely a couple of centuries could not have made one region of many which had their own heritages going back two millennia. And indeed, it did not happen.

The modern Asian mind remains torn between an imposed cultural and civilisational unity and actual divisions on the ground, including hostilities. India and Pakistan are a good example of this phenomenon. There are no deeper hostilities and distrust than exist between the people of these two countries, even though no two peoples have as much in common. Indeed, the recent history of South Asia, extrapolated to the larger continent, is standing refutation of the notion of Asia.

There is a landmass called Asia. There are also billions of people called Asians. But these lands or these people have no common conception of Asia. Such notions of Asia as they have do not affect their daily life or their mutual relationships. âAsiansâ remain as distant from each other as possible.

The first step in the European exercise of the creation of the myth of an externally defined Asia (in order perhaps to define, in turn, a distinct European identity) was to establish the myth of Asia. The second step was to sever the historical link between Greece and West Asia. Modern Europe thus became a distinct Graeco-Roman and Judeo-Christian civilisation, which has now come to achieve a remarkable economic and political union. Asia was denied this chance of defining itself. The post-colonial dominance of Asia continues precisely because the conception of Asia as âdominanceâ persists. Whatever strength the Asian consciousness might have had during anti-colonial times, it has lost it completely during our globalised times. Europe (naturally inclusive of North America as it is but an extension of Europe) is a unified reality; Asia is a divided landmass, a myth constantly challenged by its unreality.
The myth of Asia turned the history of Asia into a myth

It is also arguable that the myth of Asia in reality weakened the more palpable realities of its civilisations. Europe needed this to happen. Europe does not wish to survive only as a strong economic and political union. It wishes to survive also as the dominating and, preferably, the only civilisation. We can think of the traditional world as made of many civilisations. Perhaps it is time to move away from the notions of landmasses and retrieve the civilisations of these landmasses. There has to be a consolidation of the sense of the Arab-Persian civilisation or the Hindu-Bauddha-Indian Islamic civilisation. The world from the Mediterranean to China has lost its civilisational perspective, which needs retrieving. That fundamentalism of one variety or the other dominates this area is in itself an indication of the amnesia that this world suffers from.

Curiously, fundamentalism is a Western invention, with the West having carefully nurtured the relevant notions and practices. The West has attacked these fundamentalist notions only when they have worked against its interests. The American tolerance of Saudi Arabian fundamentalism and its impatience with Iranian fundamentalism is a good example to prove the point. We have here a strange but interesting chain of developments. The myth of Asia also turned the history of Asia into a myth.

Fundamentalism denies historical specificity. It does not see the difference between, shall we say, the Muslims of Pakistan and those of Arabia. Nor will it recognise the difference between the Christians of the Philippines and of, say, Brazil. In the case of Europe, the totality of civilisation brings the European people together and cements them together into a prosperous union. In the case of the so-called Asian lands, faith is the only arbiter of identity and as such is used to divide the Asian people irreparably.

It would be foolhardy to deny the importance of faith. But it is not and need not be the only decisive element of identity. It is the orientalist logic, which described the Eastern (read Asian) people and traditions as essentially âspiritualâ, that has been now thoroughly internalised and has been responsible for the loss of our historical memory. The ongoing march of globalisation only worsens the amnesia.

The so-called Asian people thus live among the ruins of their civilisations. Their main battle is one of identity and where to locate it. The Islamic and the Hindu-Bauddha worlds are far from victory in this battle, if they have not already lost it. From the Taliban to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, it is a long and painful story. But it would be an error to ignore its historical and political roots. Equally, one should not forget the fact that the reconstruction of Asia under the aegis of colonising Europeans was at least partially responsible for the present denouement. The earlier we give up the myth of Asia the better it will be for the people who inhabit the continent.

China is China
China seems to have escaped this self-defeating identity crisis. It appears as if the Confucian civilisation has been eminently successful in determining who the Chinese are and, perhaps more importantly, who they are not. There is no decline of faith in China (attacks on groups such as the Falun Gong notwithstanding), and yet faith is not a sine qua non of being Chinese. The Confucian civilisation is better able to face the challenges of globalisation and Western civilisation precisely because of its historicist view of itself. It would appear that the Chinese have matched the Hegelian and historicist views of the Europeans themselves. The Persians and the Arabs or the Indians and the Pakistanis have not managed to do it, at least as yet. Indeed, vague notions of this sort do exist everywhere, but so unformed as to appear more often than not in a distorted manner. It is very instructive to see the difference between the Chinese world and, shall we say, the South Asian world. During the heyday of empire, the myth of Asia had penetrated the world of ideas within South Asia. This was the reason that ideas such as pan-Asianism or pan-Islamism held such sway in the Subcontinent. China has never shared this perspective on Asia. There has been no âAsiaâ as a decisive idea in the Chinese mind. There have only been China and the Chinese civilisation.

Does this mean that the Chinese subscribe to the idea of âclash of civilisationsâ? They do not. This is not the place to go into the thesis of âthe clash of civilisationsâ. But, we should note that the theory at least partially serves the purpose of inducing such a clash, of course, to the immeasurable and inevitable advantage of the West. The current crisis involving Iraq is a case in point. If the concept of Asia served a purpose for imperialism and colonialism at one time, the concept of âthe clash of civilisationsâ serves the same purpose today. It would appear that the Chinese leadership has grasped this fundamental truth.

We may be at the end of the period of Asia, âAsiaâ as a playground of Western dominance that is. Such âAsianâ states and people as see this clearly stand a chance of surviving the current Western drive of new initiatives at domination. If China is not alone in its undertaking and in fact is joined, for example, by the people of South Asia, we might actually see an emergence of Asia, an Asia which is neither an area of Western dominance nor merely a concept that is a part of the Western repertoire of concepts as âdominanceâ.

**acharya** · 09-23-2006, 01:46 AM

K M PANIKKAR

K.M. Panikkar was born at Kovalam in the south Indian state of Kerala in 1895. (Hence his full name, Kovalam Madhava Panikkar.) He was educated at Madras Christian College and later at Christ Church, Oxford, where he earned a First Class in History and became a Dixon Scholar. On his return to India, he joined the Aligarh Muslim University in 1919. In 1922, he gave up teaching despite an offer of a Readership in History from Calcutta University.

In 1924 Panikkar became the first editor of the Hindustan Times in Delhi. He left the paper later to join the services of the Indian Princely States as Secretary to the Chancellor of the Chamber of Princes. He served as Foreign Minister of the states of Patiala and Bikaner where he also later became Prime Minister and given the title of "Sardar". He participated in the Round Table Conference in 1930?33. After India's independence, Nehru prevailed upon him to serve as a diplomat and to evolve a pattern for Indian diplomacy. From 1948 to 1959 he held various diplomatic posts and became the chief architect of friendship between India and the People's Republic of China. He returned to education as Vice-Chancellor of Jammu & Kashmir University in 1961 and died as Vice-Chancellor of Mysore University on 11 December 1963.

Despite his forays into diverse fields, he remained essentially a scholar, publishing extensively and displaying as much interest in ancient Indian history as in more recent historical developments.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The following is a list of writings by K M Panikkar. They have been compiled from a reading of the following two biographies of K M Panikkar. Bibliographic details are mostly unavailable and need to be reconstructed. Panikkar's extensive writings in Malayalam and Sanskrit are not listed here. His autobiography in Malayalam is available in an English translation from Oxford University Press.

Since Panikkar was a Diwan for many north Indian states, he wrote a few hagiographies of his employers and also quite a bit on the legal status of these princely states under British rule. The rest of his writings, historical works in particular would be of great interest.
- Venu Govindu
Biographies of Panikkar

1. Sardar Panikkar : His Life and Times - Konniyoor R Narendranath
2. Sardar K M Panikkar : The Profile of a Historian - Tarashankar Banerjee
Books written by Panikkar [only those written in English]

1. Introduction to the Problem of Greater India (1916)
2. Imperialism
3. Asia and Western Dominance
4. Sri Harsha of Kanauj (1922)
5. The Relations of the Government of India with the Indian States [alternative title (???) : An Introduction to the study of the relations of Indian States with the Government of India.]

6. History of Kerala series

1. Malabar and the Portugese (1929)
2. Malabar and the Dutch (1931)
3. Mysorean Invasion of Kerala

7. India and the Indian Ocean : An essay on the influence of seapower(1945)
8. The Working of Dyarchy in India (1928) [under pen-name "Kerala Putra"]
9. The British Crown and the Indian States (with Austin Robinson)
10. The State and the Citizen
11. British Policy towards Indian States
12. Founding of the Kashmir State - A Biography of Maharajah Gulab Singh 1792-1858
13. The Foundations of New India
14. Federal India (1930) [with Col. ?? Haksar]
15. Inter Statal Law (1934) [Madras Univ]
16. Indian Princes in Council (1936)
17. His Highness the Maharaja of Bikaner (1937)
18. The Origin and Evolution of Kinship in India (1938)
19. The Evolution of British Policy Towards Indian States (1774-1858)
20. Buddha (1968)
21. The Future of South-East Asia : An Indian View (1943)
22. Indian States - no. 4 (1942) [OUP Pamphlets]
23. Mandela Settlement

[need to verify authorship]
24. The Basis of an Indo-British Treaty
25. The Afro-Asian States and their Problems
26. Indian Revolution (1951) [under pen-name "Chanakya"]
27. In Two Chinas : Memoirs of a Diplomat
28. The Principles and Practice of Democracy (1952)
29. Geographical Factors in Indian History
30. India and China : A study of cultural relations
31. Cultural Contact between India and the West
32. Voice of Freedom [edited speeches of Motilal Nehru; with A Pershad]
33. The Determining Periods of Indian History
34. In Defence of Liberalism
35. The Himalayas in Indian Life (1963)
36. Studies in Indian History
37. Indian States and the Government of India (1932)
38. Educational Reconstruction of India (1920)
39. Survey of Indian History (1947)
40. Hindu Society at Crossroads
41. Commonsense about India
42. History of Mankind, Cultural & Scientific Development Vol. 6: The Twentieth Century [Ware, Caroline, Panikkar, K. M. and Romein, J. M.]

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**acharya** · 09-23-2006, 05:39 AM

European expansion since 1763

William Woodruff, Impact of Western Man: A Study of Europe's Role in the World Economy, 1750â1960 (1967, reprinted 1982), remains a good introduction. E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire, 1875â1914 (1987), is a highly readable account of rising European nationalism and the resultant focus on empire as a reaction to the dramatic changes undergone in European economies and social structures at the turn of the century. V.G. Kiernan, From Conquest to Collapse: European Empires from 1815 to 1960 (1982), describes the many bloody wars that comprised the conquests involved in European expansion. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (1987), is an interesting though narrowly materialist account of the rise and fall of empires. D.K. Fieldhouse, The Colonial Empires, 2nd ed. (1982), and Colonialism, 1870â1945 (1981), are useful general surveys of the growth and decline of empires from the 18th and 19th centuries. Daniel R. Headrick, The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century (1981), and The Tentacles of Progress: Technology Transfer in the Age of Imperialism, 1850â1940 (1988), study technological innovations and their role in maintaining European dominance.

The Cambridge History of the British Empire, especially vol. 2, The Growth of the New Empire, 1783â1870 (1961), and vol. 3, The Empire-Commonwealth, 1870â1919 (1959, reissued 1967), is the best source on the British Empire. A view which suggests that, in England, economic pressure groups did not have much impact is presented in Ronald Hyam, Britain's Imperial Century, 1815â1914, 2nd ed. (1993). Lance E. Davis and Robert A. Huttenback, Mammon and the Pursuit of Empire: The Political Economy of British Imperialism, 1860â1912 (1986), shows that empire dramatically benefited a few but was not an unequivocal economic advantage for Britain. Henri Brunschwig, French Colonialism, 1871â1914 (1966; originally published in French, 1960), presents the case against the economic interpretation of French colonialism. Winfried Baumgart, Imperialism: The Idea and Reality of British and French Colonial Expansion, 1880â1914, rev. ed. (1982; originally published in German, 1975), discusses the different perspectives used to explain European expansion. Christopher M. Andrew and A.S. Kanya-Forstner, The Climax of French Imperial Expansion, 1914â1924 (1981), gives an example of the political machinations that paved the way for home governments to accept expansionism. William Roger Louis, The British Empire in the Middle East, 1945â1951: Arab Nationalism, the United States, and Postwar Imperialism (1984), is a diplomatic history of Britain's failed attempt to maintain informal empire in the Middle East after World War II.

On the growth of empire in East Asia, Michael Edwardes, Asia in the European Age, 1498â1955 (1962), should be consulted; this history is examined by an Asian in K.M. Panikkar, Asia and Western Dominance, new ed. (1959, reissued 1969). David Gillard, The Struggle for Asia, 1828â1961: A Study in British and Russian Imperialism (1977), describes the Anglo-Russian rivalry for control of Asia. An illuminating comparative study of colonial policies is contained in J.S. Furnivall, Colonial Policy and Practice: A Comparative Study of Burma and Netherlands India (1948, reissued 1956). Imran Ali, The Punjab Under Imperialism, 1885â1947 (1988), a case study, looks at the ways in which Britain redefined the nature of the local authority through which they maintained informal empire.

Jean Suret-Canale, French Colonialism in Tropical Africa, 1900â1945 (1971; originally published in French, 1964), is a sociological study of how French colonialism operated. Prosser Gifford and William Roger Louis (eds.), Britain and Germany in Africa (1967), and France and Britain in Africa (1971), contain useful collections of essays on British, German, and French colonialism. The scramble for Africa viewed as part of Britain's striving for security in the Mediterranean and the East is forcefully argued in Ronald Robinson, John Gallagher, and Alice Denny, Africa and the Victorians, 2nd ed. (1981). Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa: White Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912 (1991), gives a good overview of the sudden European rivalry over the control of Africa. Charles Van Onselen, Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand, 1886â1914, 2 vol. (1982), is an excellent analysis of the Afrikaners, a distinct group resulting from European expansion in southern Africa.

A Marxist view of the impact of colonialism as related to the problems of economic development of the former colonies is found in Paul A. Baran, The Political Economy of Growth, 2nd ed. (1962). Herbert Feis, Europe, the World's Banker, 1870â1914 (1930, reprinted 1974), is a useful reference work on the connection between world finance and diplomacy before World War I. Marcello De Cecco, Money and Empire: The International Gold Standard, 1890â1914 (1974), is an excellent discussion of how Britain's monetary system collapsed under the weight of changes in the European economy, especially those resulting from overseas expansion. A standard, detailed diplomatic history of the new imperialism is found in William L. Langer, The Diplomacy of Imperialism, 1890â1902, 2nd ed. (1951, reissued 1972).

The psychological impact of colonialism is explored from an African perspective in Frantz Fanon, The Damned (1963; also published as The Wretched of the Earth, 1963, reissued 1991; originally published in French, 1961). Donald Denoon, Settler Capitalism: The Dynamics of Dependent Development in the Southern Hemisphere (1983), is an economic analysis of the backwardness resulting from European expansion and control. The case against the continuation of Western domination in the period of decolonization is found in Kwame Nkrumah, Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism (1965, reissued 1973). JÃ¶rg Fisch, Die europÃ¤ische Expansion und das VÃ¶lkerrecht: Die Auseinandersetzungen um den Status der Ã¼berseeischen Gebiete vom 15. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart (1984), argues that international law was developed in Europe, was imposed on the rest of the world, and has continued functioning since decolonization. Roy MacLeod and Milton Lewis (eds.), Disease, Medicine, and Empire: Perspectives on Western Medicine and the Experience of European Expansion (1988), is a collection of essays on the impact of European medical sciences on the colonies. An impassioned view of the ills that energy-hungry Europe imposed on world culture is found in Kirkpatrick Sale, The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy (1990). Geoffrey Stoakes, Hitler and the Quest for World Dominion (1986); and Woodruff D. Smith, The Ideological Origins of Nazi Imperialism (1986), examine the reasoning and casuistry of Hitler's geopolitical designs. A. Glenn Mower, Jr., The European Community and Latin America: A Case Study in Global Role Expansion (1982), contains information on contemporary strategies for economic expansion by the European Economic Community. Lewis Feuer, Imperialism and the Anti-Imperialist Mind (1986), argues that modern empires retreated when the creative impulse to build civilizations was eclipsed by the realization that neither egalitarian relations with the colonies nor aggressive domination were acceptable to the home nations.

ramana · 10-06-2006, 10:53 PM

Book Review Telegraph, 6 Oct., 2006

Link: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1061006/asp/...ory_6831879.asp
QUOTESEARCH BEHIND THE SCREENÂ

Reading The East India Company, 1720-1840: Colonial Currencies of Gender By Betty Joseph, Orient Longman, Rs 250

Tracking the figure of the woman through the disregarded paths and by-alleys of the East India Companyâs official records is a sleuthing exercise that promises few rewards. Yet Betty Josephâs unrelenting search has yielded âtracesâ that plot a tale made up, paradoxically, of ruptures and ripples, that bear witness both to the unavoidable presence of women within the shadows of the colonial narrative and the efforts of the narrative to inconspicuously erase them out of the text.

Josephâs strategy is one of comparison, or parallel readings. Although her focus is the pile of records, reports, letters and registers generated by the expanding operations of the Company in India and its interaction with the board of control in London, she moves laterally into readings of contemporary novels â from Defoeâs Roxana to the âIndiaâ novels such as Hartly House, Calcutta by Phebe Gibbes â as well as of other kinds of writing such as memoirs and guidebooks. The strategy, which presumes a tireless and penetrating scholarship, turns representations of women and of gradually changing ideologies inside out, peeling away the carefully disguised distances between historical âfactâ and historical representation. The keyword âarchiveâ, Joseph says, is used in two ways in her text: as âthe intended repository of the official historical record of British colonialism in Indiaâ and âin the Foucauldian senseâ of an âenumerative field...through which British India emerges, exists, and disappearsâ. Thus the archive is enlarged through the parallels growing out of official archival practices geared towards producing âtruth-effectsâ and the practices of memory-recording and fiction-writing.

The theoretical richness of the introduction underpins the close readings of the following five chapters, as Joseph searches for ways in which the subaltern can âspeakâ. The sudden appearance, for example, of a Mrs Carey in Holwellâs account of the Black Hole tragedy not only signals an unexplored or partially explored dimension of the narrative, but also uncovers the possibilities of the many hidden agendas that determine the writing of history and of setting down the âevidenceâ of memory. From the unnamed âBashwar womanâ of the earlier records to Bishnukumari, the Rani of Burdwan, in the later ones, the trails of the woman lead to unexpected insights into the ways in which the private and the public, the governed, the governable and the ungovernable, the ânativeâ, the white and the biracial, the elite and the underprivileged, the Englishwoman and Indian women, class and gender were being configured and reconfigured in changing colonial discourse. The exclusion of the female in mercantile and militaristic rhetoric turns out to be a ruse disguising the constitutive role of gender and class in the strategies of governance. What can be contained is as important as what cannot, such as sexuality, reproduction, the need for a âhomeâ in an âalienâ land or the claims of a family. The professional and the social are always undercut by the unsocial and the figure of the woman often signals the contradictions within the colonial project, exposing contortions within the apparently smooth narrative of governance.

It is possible to go in one or more of the many directions referred to in the book. It is a precisely written history of ideologies and their change, as well as a feminist reading of historical representation. Josephâs agenda is to ask why history is written in one way and not in another. As a post-colonial reader, she inaugurates many histories and many literatures.

BHASWATI CHAKRAVORTY


Wouldbe interesting to read and the technique might yield more insights into the Colonial experience.

ramana · 10-16-2006, 09:23 PM

Book review from Pioneer, 15 Oct., 2006
QUOTEStink in the aroma

Shalini Saksena

Leaves of Blood, Samares Mazumdar; Wordhouse, Rs 290

All of us have read history and are familiar with the humiliation the Indians had to face at the hands of the British, especially in their fight for Independence. Several books have been written on the condition of Indians during the British era and Samares Mazumdar's Leaves of Blood is one of them. This book leaves me angry not because there is anything wrong in it, but because it unfolds before you the undiluted atrocities in 1885 on tea garden labourers, who toiled from dawn to dusk to fill the coffers of the White aristocracy.

The detail with which the writer deals with the subject is worthy of applause. Engagingly enough, the story ties a knot with common man and keeps you on a boil between pages.

The book is a translation of Mazumdar's Bengali novel written in 2003, Utsharitho Alo. The author has won the Sahitya Akademi award and is one of the finest Bengali writers today. He is also the recipient of the prestigious Ananda award.

The pace is sluggish in the beginning. It keeps talking about how the villagers had been for months struggling to survive under harsh conditions, with no food and water. But it gradually picks up as the story unfolds - the wife of the village head, separated from her husband, lives like a queen in the gora saheb's house, though the reality is that she is just a play thing for him; or, the fact that the main protagonist who rebels against the gora saheb by marrying a woman from another plantation.

It talks about how the villagers, lured by promises of a land of food and water, leave the village of their forefathers, with dreams of making money. But soon reality sets in. The goras are not so kind; in fact, they are downright cruel. Some of their acts are so cruel that at one such point, it almost becomes impossible to go further without getting a feeling of helplessness and anger: How can a human be so cruel to another and yet not feel anything and go on about their work, as if nothing heinous or criminal has happened right in front of their eyes.

The USP of the book is its simple language and no-clutter build-up. No fancy words are used to describe the pathos of the characters that continue to live in much the same conditions even today, albeit under indigenous masters. The reader feels their pain and anguish through graphic instances the writer gives - for instance, when a child is swept away by a river, or when labourers become food for wild animals.

The book is inspired by the author's childhood days which he spent at the tea gardens of the Dooars. A real life incident finds a mention in the novel. The incident which took place during the British era when a White man had raped a woman, the other women came out in protest. So much was their hatred that they smashed the rapist's head with spades, killing him. The situation had gone so bad then that troops had to be called in from Kolkata.

Even though the storyline of Leaves of Blood becomes predictable as it unfolds, this one is quite a page turner.

10-25-2006, 09:40 AM

Google - download book
Letters from India; describing a journey in India, Tibet, Lahore and Cashmere, during the years 1828, 1829, 1830, 1831
Author(s): Victor Jacquemont
Publication Date: 1834

10-25-2006, 11:28 AM

Link
QUOTEA whole chapter of Panchatantra is about overcoming by deceit and Hitopadesa is equally objectionable.
One of the most beneficial effects of English education in India is, that it is creating a higher standard of truthfulness.
.....................

The Indian Mirror says that a Bengali "never makes an engagement in the sense which an Englishman attaches to the word. He does not feel that his engagement impose upon him any moral obligations which he is bound to fulfil as a gentaleman. If he says, 'I will go' he means, 'I may or may not go' There is another form of untruthfulness to which attention should be drawn.
...........
page 125
Under Native rule in India, bribery was almost universal. Government salaries were low and ofter paid irregularly. At present , the allowances are sufficiant to enable officers to live upon their pay without having recourse to dishonest practices.Â <!--emo& Big Grin

--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' />



I am not sure why Romilla Thappar missed above from her history chapter. I hope West Bengal communist government will add above in state and NCERT books.

11-18-2006, 09:27 PM

Concession & Repression: British Rule in India 1857-1919
Robert Carr Assesses the Nature of British Rule in India during a Key, Transitional Phase.
by Robert Carr

In 1882 Britain occupied and administered Egypt. In 1898 the British effectively did the same with the Sudan. Such colonialism was not so much a positive 'Scramble for Africa' but a means of protecting the Suez canal and the Nile, as these waterways were thought crucial in securing access to, and control of, the Jewel in the Crown. Above all, it was the Indian Empire--the Raj--which captured the British imagination. 

India had long excited both exotic and romantic notions of the Orient--evidenced, not least, by Coleridge's famed poem Kubla Khan. Tales of tigers and elephants and the works of Rudyard Kipling ensured the Raj had a special place in the British psyche. More than that, however, India offered valuable raw materials to newly industrialised Britain and was a lucrative export market. Besides its economic significance, India was of profound military importance. Indeed Lord Salisbury termed India 'an English barracks in the Oriental seas'. The subcontinent was a great source of manpower for wider British foreign policy. 

In 1876 Prime Minister Disraeli exemplified the Raj's place in British affections by declaring Queen Victoria as Empress of India. Less than a decade later, the Indian National Congress was set up, under British auspices, as a political forum for educated Indians {this in addition to divide and rule tactis, a creation of vested interest class to marginalize nationalism}. Similarly, the 1892 Indian Councils Act permitted local comment and criticism upon provincial legislation. Although Indians had no decision-making role, they were not entirely excluded from the political sphere. In practical terms, British rule contributed modernisation in the form of railways and irrigation projects.

If the above bathe the late nineteenth-century Raj in a light of kindness, it is certainly possible to present British rule as coercive and repressive. 

From the Mutiny to Curzon 

Like much of British imperial expansion, taking formal control of India was not intentional. Instead when British lives and trading interests (represented by the East India Company) were threatened by violent reaction to encroaching westernisation, London felt obligated to step in to take control of both the situation and the country. In Ahmed Ali's Twilight in India a character relates the events of September 1857, explaining how 'ruthlessly Delhi had been looted by them [the British] at the time of the "Mutiny", and then the Mussalmans [Muslims] had been turned out of their city, their houses demolished and destroyed and their property looted and usurped'.

Having quashed the Indian Mutiny, British rule was embodied by the new position of Viceroy. One such viceroy (1869-72) was General Mayo who informed his colonial colleagues: 'Teach your subordinates that we are all British gentlemen engaged in the magnificent work of governing an inferior race'. 

At the very least there existed the feeling that Indian interests were being subordinated to those of Britain. The imposition of a five per cent excise duty on Indian cotton goods in 1895 was such a case in point; broader allegations included the apparent drain of money to Britain without adequate return and the failure to encourage Indian industry (instead resources fed Britain's interests). Despite such causes for concern, the Indian National Congress cooperated with, rather than challenged, British rule. All this was to change from 1898 with the accession of George Curzon as Viceroy.

Curzon had an ambitious programme designed to keep the British in India 'for at least another hundred years'. Two measures in particular riled sections of Indian society; namely Curzon's Universities Act and his subsequent Partition of the Bengal province. 

The 1904 Universities Act increased British controls over private colleges and university bodies. Higher education was something close to the heart of the new middle class; it had given them opportunities and they largely controlled it. 

Curzon's partition of Bengal, however, caused even more offence. Out of Bengal he created a new, largely Muslim, province of East Bengal and Assam. In all certainty the Viceroy divided the Bengal people because of their political activity and raised the backward Muslims of East Bengal as a counterpoise. Curzon did not consult Indian opinion about the partition and his act blatantly ignored respect for regional loyalties. Congress led protests through demonstrations, a boycott of British manufactured goods and the burning of Lancashire cotton in particular.

Curzon had created something of a crisis in the Raj--not least because partition can be seen as turning Congress into a full-blown nationalist movement; furthermore, active opposition to British rule now had another outlet with the formation of the Muslim League.

Reforms 

Following the landslide election victory of 1906, the new Liberal government sought to soothe Indian nerves. Curzon was quickly replaced: Gilbert Minto was appointed Viceroy and John Morley became Secretary of State for India. In an unprecedented move, Congress leader G.K. Gokhale was brought into consultation with Morley and Minto. The result of such discussions was the Indian Councils Act of 1909 (the Morley-Minto reforms). The way was now open for Indian membership of the provincial executive councils (besides the Viceroy's executive council as before); the Imperial Legislative Council was enlarged from 25 to 60 members and separate communal representation for Muslims was established (in response to recent Muslim political organisation). Overall, the act was a clear step towards representative and responsible government.

Lord Hardinge succeeded Minto and in 1911 presided over the reversal of the Bengal partition and the removal of the capital to the centre--Delhi. The two Bengals were reunited. The transfer of the capital enraged Calcutta's Europeans but pleased Indian sentiment as a whole. Hardinge secured Gokhale's appointment to the Islington Commission, which recommended a larger Indian share in appointments to the services (civil and military).

The Watershed 

Such Anglo-Indian cooperation and progress were effectively pushed aside when World War I engulfed Europe. The war proved a profound turning point for the Raj: India was affected not only by the conflict itself but also by its international ramifications.

International events, in the form of the overthrow of Tsardom and the ascendancy of the USA, helped raise the ambitions of Indians. For India, the Russian Revolution signalled both the collapse of an autocratic European power and a population throwing off its reactionary rulers. The arrival of the Americans on the world stage meant a new, alternative international power which rejected colonialism. President Wilson's famous Fourteen Points were a response to five years of world war: he demanded the right of national self-government.

Of more local significance was the fact that 36,000 Indians lost their lives fighting for Britain; thousands of others were wounded or maimed in action on the Western Front, in North Africa and the Middle East. Consider too that India donated 100 million [pounds sterling] outright to Britain's war budget and provided a further 20-30 million [pounds sterling] annually. Besides those bereaved or maimed during the war, Muslim loyalties in India were strained by conflict with the Ottoman Sultan who served as a religious figurehead, the Islamic Caliph.

Perhaps what most hurt was the experience of returning soldiers. The 800,000 Indian combatants were no longer regarded as invaluable allies; instead they reverted immediately to the status of second-class 'natives'. 

There was, however, some recognition that a debt was owed to India: in August 1917 the new Secretary of State for India, Edwin Montagu, acknowledged the need for 'the gradual development of self-governing institutions, with a view to the progressive realization of responsible government in India'. The government, then, envisaged India having 'home rule' as already enjoyed by the white dominions.

What emerged was 1919's Government of India Act, a move towards double government or 'dyarchy'. The Act created 11 self-governing provinces of British India, and Indian ministers were given 'safe' portfolios including control over public health, education and agriculture. Power was still firmly where it had always been: British ministers controlled justice, foreign policy and the economy; moreover, the Viceroy could veto legislation, suspend provincial councils and if necessary rule as an autocrat. While making apparent concessions, the British also applied coercion in the form of the Rowlatt Acts.

For many, the end to the Raj could not come soon enough. World War I had brought India a shortage of goods, rising prices and even civil restrictions. Moreover, India expected self-government for its war-time assistance to Britain. As a consequence there was anti-British agitation across the country. The government appointed a committee, headed by Mr Justice Rowlatt, to find a solution.

The resulting legislation extended wartime emergency measures--judges could try political cases without juries and provincial governments could assert the power of internment without trial. The manner in which the Rowlatt Acts were passed caused further offence by ignoring the unanimous opposition of the Legislative Council's Indian members.

Such repression constituted British treachery and heralded the emergence of a certain Congress member called Mohandas K. Gandhi. He called upon his countrymen to disobey the acts and, instead, protest through inactivity (known as hartal). While Gandhi was an advocate of non-violence, agitation was evident in the Punjab in particular. When nationalist 'troublemakers' <!--emo& Big Grin

--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /> were deported from the region, rioting broke out in protest in Amritsar city, British banks were set ablaze and seven Englishmen killed. The local commander, General Dyer, took it upon himself to break up a prohibited (albeit peaceful) meeting at Jallianwallah Garden. Dyer's methods saw almost 2,000 rounds fired, without warning, on a crowd of 10,000 men, women and children. No fewer than 379 were killed and the 1,200 wounded were left without medical attention.

Rather than being a civilising influence on India, the British were guilty of utter barbarism at Amritsar. The issue didn't stop there, however. Although General Dyer was retired by the military following the massacre, the Indians were appalled to learn of a vote in his favour in the House of Lords and the raising of a heavily subscribed fund in appreciation of his services.

Beginning of the End 

Any positive steps intended by Montagu or the India Act were utterly undone by the punitive and callous nature of Rowlatt's legislation and by the Amritsar massacre. Undoubtedly, Britain had lost the moral authority to govern India. Any vestige of local support for the Raj was also surely lost. In August 1919 Gandhi carried the Congress with him in launching a non-cooperation movement. This included the boycott of impending council elections, resignations from government offices, and withdrawal from government schools and colleges. The movement caught the imagination of the country and gained a unique all-India character by drawing on both Hindu and Muslim support.

A year later, on the death of B.G. Tilak, Gandhi became undisputed head of the Congress movement. In seeking independence, Gandhi's peaceful satyagraha ('soul force') contrasted sharply with British rule from 1857 to 1919 and, indeed, thereafter.

Just as the Mutiny of 1857 was a reaction to westernisation, India had found, in Gandhi, a leader who rejected Western ideas. By spinning cotton and advocating the ashram, Gandhi promoted Indian traditions and institutions. <img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/dry.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='dry.gif' />

Conclusion 

The period 1857-1919 in the British Raj can be seen as one of concession and repression. Arguably, the reforms highlighted above may well have disguised a determination to hang on to India for as long as possible. Just how could the British have remained a further generation following the events of 1919? For every Morley, Minto or Montagu, there was a Mayo, Curzon or Dyer. Certainly, the Raj was characterised by both reformists and reactionaries. Perhaps more than any other domain, external policy is victim to politicians' personal attitudes, ambitions and arrogance.

Further Reading 

P. Spear, The Oxford History of Modern India 1740-1947 (OUP, 1965) Denis Judd, Empire: The British Imperial Experience from 1765 to the Present (Fontana, 1996)

Frank McDonough, The British Empire 1815-1914 (Hodder, 1994)

Robert Carr lectures in history at Spelthorne College and is a research supervisor in international relations at the American University in London.

11-25-2006, 12:03 AM

Comrade sir, You'll have to change your name here - Admin

ramana · (This post was last modified: 12-20-2006, 11:39 PM by ramana.)

Sorry. Very long post.

Gresham College Lectures:
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/event.asp?PageI...ventId=420

QUOTEINDIA: THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN

Professor Kathleen Burk

PICTURE 1: TITLE - My intention during my three years as Professor of Rhetoric has been to give an overview of British external relations. During my first year, I concentrated on Anglo-American relations; last year I focused on Anglo-European relations; and for my final year, I want to look at Britain and her Empire, beginning this evening with India.The perception of many Britons of the place of India in the Empire is coloured by the peaceful withdrawal of British authority and by the structures of politics and government left behind: a semi-representative political system, a trained civil service and a university system in which to train an Ã©lite to run the country. But the story is darker than such a summary implies. One shorthand might be greed, violence, despotism, adaptation, weakness and scuttle. Alternatively, it might be trade and commerce, defence and expansion, economic development, political development, and gradual withdrawal, leaving a former colony well able to govern itself and to develop successfully. The fact that the story ended more or less successfully can mask the fact that the first century and a half of British involvement in India was dominated by violence and despotism. The Great Mutiny of 1857, or the Great Rebellion, or the First War of Independence - all names by which this event is known - was a watershed, forcing changes in the manner in which the British governed India. The subsequent century saw the development of forces for change in both India and Great Britain which climaxed in 1947 and the independence of India - and Pakistan.

PICTURE 2: MAP OF THE MUGHAL EMPIRE - From 1526 until the British took hold, the territory of India was dominated by the Mughal Empire. â India â as such did not exist: rather, the empire was split up into what were effectively regions, such as Bengal, each of which was ruled by a subordinate ruler, a nawab or viceroy, or perhaps a nizam or prince. Thus when the East India Company began establishing trade links on the sub-continent, it did so primarily with individual rulers. PICTURE 3: TEA CLIPPERS AT THE EAST INDIA DOCKS AT DEPTFORD - This is a picture of tea clippers at the East India Docks at Deptford. The East India Company was the great overseas trading company which dominated British trade with India until the mid-19th century. From the beginning of the 17th century, it held a monopoly of English trade east of the Cape of Good Hope at the tip of Africa. By the end of the 17th century, its most important settlements were on the coast of India. PICTURE 4: MAP OF INDIA IN 1765 - It owned the island of Bombay outright, whilst at Madras and Calcutta, Indian rulers had given the English grants of territory that included growing towns. Although during the earliest years of trading the main focus had been pepper and spices, during the 17th century it was textiles: Indian cotton goods were desired through Europe, and there was a lively re-export market in the Americas and along the West African coast. At the beginning of the 18th century, the English operated out of the great Mughal port of Surat on the west and Madras on the east. Calcutta in Bengal in the north had been largely founded by the British; by this time, they had built a fort there and exercised control over the town. Bengal was very rich, and from the 1720s, the shipments from Calcutta usually amounted to at least one-half of all East India Company cargoes from India.

The 1720s are important for another reason, which is that from that period, the French East India Company was also trading on a considerable scale in Asia. Their headquarters were in Pondicherry, close to Madras. Anglo-French conflict is an important reason for the abrupt change in British activities in the sub-continent from largely peaceful trading in a period of stability to wars and conquests: the need to fight the French increased the size of the Companyâs arm, thereby massively increasing the Companyâs need for revenue. This would have repercussions in due course. Meanwhile, in 1744, fighting broke out between the British and French at sea, a reflection of the fact that a Franco-Spanish alliance had declared war on Great Britain. The French retaliated against the British seizures at sea by attacking and taking Madras in 1746. In 1746, hostilities began on land in south-east India in the territories claimed by the Nawabs of Arcot and later those of the Nizams of Hyderabad. The British and French fought out their own rivalries in part as allies of contestants for the succession in both regions of Indian âcountry powersâ. War ebbed and flowed across southern India with little break between 1746 and 1761: in 1760, the British won a decisive victory at Wandiwash and the French stronghold of Pondicherry surrendered the following year. Arcot became a client state of Great Britain. Under British protection, a Carnatic state was gradually built up which the Company was formally to annex at the end of the 18th century.

PICTURE 5: SIRAJ-UD-DAULAH - Meanwhile, however, in 1756, relations between the Company and the Nawab of Bengal exploded into violence. This is a picture of the Nawab of Bengal, Siraj-ud-daulah. The Nawab, as had rulers in other parts of India, maintained the outward forms of rule by the Mughal Emperor in Delhi, but he was essentially the independent ruler of Bengal. The British presence was becoming too intrusive for an ambitious ruler to leave unregulated, and Nawab feared that he was losing control of part of his territory. He tried to impose constraints on the Company, which the Company, contemptuous of the fighting qualities of the Bengalis, rejected. As a result, he attacked and on 20 June 1756 took control of the British centre, Calcutta. The British who surrendered the fort were well treated, but later that night, some European soldiers got drunk and assaulted the native guards who, in their turn, sought justice from the Nawab. He ordered the confinement of those soldiers who had misbehaved. They were put in a room of 18 feet by 14 feet 10 inches, with only one window. The morning after that hot night, many were found to have died from suffocation. PICTURE 6: PUTATIVE PICTURE OF THE BLACK HOLE OF CALCUTTA -The incident gave rise to a huge outcry in England, primarily due to an exaggerated report by the defender of Calcutta, John Holwell: he claimed that 146 died, but modern historians consider that it was more likely 50 [Marshall], and that the Nawab did not intend it to happen.

PICTURE 7: ROBERT CLIVE, OR CLIVE OF INDIA - For the Company, it was vital that Bengal be grabbed from the Nawab. The hero was Robert Clive, known to his later admirers as âthe conqueror of India â. He first went out to India in 1743 as a civil servant for the Company, but soon transfered to the military service; he returned to England in 1753, where he lived, shall we say, in an ostentatious manner. However, he was summoned to return to India when the troubles in Bengal erupted, and he arrived in Madras in 1756, immediately securing the British forces there. He then moved to Calcutta, and in early 1757 he captured Bengal. On the 23rd of June, at the Battle of Plassey, the forces of the East India Company under Clive defeated the army of Siraj-ud-daulah. The battle lasted only a few hours - indeed, the outcome had been decided long beforre swords were drawn. There was another Bengali, Mir Jafar, who wanted the Nawabâs throne; he was persuaded to throw in his lot with Clive. In addition, the majority of the Nawabâs soldiers were bribed to throw away their weapons, surrender prematurely, or even to turn their weapons against their own army. In short, the Battle of Plassey was won by bribes rather than by bravery. PICTURE 8: CLIVE OF INDIA - Nevertheless, as demonstrated by this rather bad picture, Cliveâs reputation in Great Britain did not suffer thereby.

The new Nawab, Mir Jafar, refused to make what the Company considered would be an adequate grant of funds, and he was deposed in favour of another ruler. Finally, in 1765, Clive took the decision to demand the diwani, the right to rule, from the Mughal Emperor: he had decided that only direct control of the whole resources of Bengal would give the Company the funds it required - maintaining an army was an expensive business. PICTURE 9: MAP OF INDIA IN 1765 - Therefore, by 1765, the East India Company had become the outright ruler of small areas in the south and of the whole of the great province of Bengal; it held the Nawab of Arcot in a tight grip, which gave it effective control over the Carnatic territories of the south-east; and it had taken the Wazir of Oudh under its protection and was maintaining garrisons in his dominions. In short, the Company had become an Indian territorial power. However, it is probably the case that in 1765, British supremacy over the whole of the sub-continent was envisaged by few.

During the second half of the 18th century, the balance of Great Britain âs imperial interests began to shift from the west to the east, a swing which was greatly encouraged by the loss in 1783 of most of her American colonies. When the stimulus was perceived as commerce, no one objected; however, as the British political class gradually realised the form the Companyâs activities were taking beyond trade, there was increasing unease. Conquest disturbed them, for a number of reasons. First of all, the resources devoted to military conquest would be better spent on developing commercial links; secondly, the reports of greed and corruption aroused fears that these forces might eat away at traditional British liberties and virtues; and thirdly, following from that, was the question as to whether the Company was the appropriate vehicle for British commercial and administrative activity in India. What began as limited governmental investigations into Company affairs and activities in India ended in 1813 by the British government assuming some responsibility for the Indian Empire.

It is fair to say that this decision was not taken quickly or lightly. The state hardly had the expertise or indeed the resources to deal with the problems of India. However, once Clive had taken Bengal, large territorial revenues poured into the coffers of the Company; this transformed the London view of India, and acted as a spur to those, such as the Prime Minister William Pitt the Elder, who believed that the state had a ârightâ to a share of the revenues, not least because the state had provided military and naval assistance to the Company in time of need. It took several years for this to be agreed - many in the Commons believed that the Government was illegitimately stealing private wealth - but by 1767, the government established its entitlement to Â£400,000 a year from the Company. Unfortunately for the Company, even beyond the loss of a proportion of its revenue, they became subject to parliamentary enquiries into its shortcomings: the collapse of the Companyâs finances in 1772 threatened the stream of revenue from Bengal to Westminster, and acrid reports about greed and corruption refused to go away.

PICTURE 10: WARREN HASTINGS - The great set piece of this crisis was the parliamentary impeachment of Warren Hastings, charged with tyranny, rapacity and corruption while the first Governor-General of India from 1774 to 1785. In Bengal, Hastings did not pretend, as Clive had done, that the Nawab remained sovereign; rather, he stripped him of his powers. He required loans from Indian bankers, whether they would or no: essentially, it was claimed at his trial, he extorted money from them. However, he also created an efficient and economical system for collecting the land revenue, the main source of the Companyâs financial stability. PICTURE 11: POLITICAL CARTOON ATTACKING THE EAST INDIA COMPANY - What he did not do was what virtually every other official in India did: trade on his own account, and extract what funds he could from the Indians, a habit greatly facilitated by conquest - as one Company official pointed out, it was a question of âwhether it should go into a blackmanâs pocket or mineâ. The picture shows the reaction of one cartoonist to the activities of the Company and its servants. The approach of the Company to the payment of its employees was small salary and large perquisites; Hastings, rather, expended much of his princely salary on institutions in Bengal and on purchasing Mughal manuscripts and works of art. When he returned to England, he carried back a modest Â£80,000 - he later claimed that he was astonished at his own moderation. But he was dogged by implacable enemies from his days in India, and although he was acquitted of all charges, the ten-year ordeal destroyed his financial resources. Fortunately, the Company came to his rescue, and he was able to live out his years in some comfort. But he refused a peerage.

One outcome of the political fighting was the passage of the India Act of 1784, again under William Pitt. One real problem of the Companyâs activities in India was the mixing up together of its commercial activities and its revenue-collecting activities. If it was primarily a company, why was it collecting taxes? If it was a government, why was it involved in trade? What this act required was that the government should review and if necessary revise the Companyâs despatches sending out instructions to India. Because of the confusion of activities, the government began to interfere in commercial matters, causing a great deal of tension. However, it now had the upper hand, a power made manifest in 1813 with the renewal of the Companyâs charter, which underlined the Crownâs âundoubted sovereigntyâ over all of the East India Companyâs territories.

The years after the passage of this act saw a social transformation in India. Under what was called the âPermanent Settlementâ, tax levels on the land in Bengal were fixed âfor everâ, but at a very high level, and rights to land were thereby created that could be bought and sold. Many of the old landowners, unable to pay the taxes, sold out, whilst tens of thousands of high-caste Bengali Hindus consolidated their position within the framework of the Permanent Settlement. Thousands of them entered the world of service and trade in what was now the pre-eminent town of Calcutta ; many of them were especially keen to have a liberal English education. A new Ã©lite was gradually created, one which had perforce to support the British. The members of this Ã©lite were vastly more influential with the British than were the Mughal noblemen and former Rajas: the hierarchy was truly turned upside down.

During the period of the late 18th century to the mid-19th century, the imposition of despotism, a terrible economic depression, and the displacement of Indians from leading offices of wealth and power all took place. The first of these stemmed from the change in ideas as to how to govern India. Whilst the earlier imperialists had notions about basing governance on English principles, those now in charge moved to the idea of Oriental despotism: they were primarily military commanders, and preferred to have all law and power centralised in the hands of the Company. Military power was to be used both for external defence and for the consolidation of power. Roughly two million armed men were wandering around the provinces looking for military jobs, and the countryside was also infested with bandits; the Company determined that these threats had to be eliminated. The problem here was that military justice clashed with ideas of the rule of law. As the military frontier made headroads into civil society, army commanders were inclined to suspend civil justice and enforce martial law, executing men on the slightest of pretexts. In other words, the rulers considered themselves above the law.

{Here are the begining seeds of the trend in TSP for despotism couched as dictatorship}

At the same time, changes instituted by the Company stimulated a terrible economic depression which lasted for over twenty years. For one thing, the sweeping away of native courts and soldiers eliminated their purchasing power; unfortunately, the new rulers bought Western, not local, goods, in addition to which wealth became increasingly concentrated in the main colonial centres. As well, much less money flowed into India in payment for Indian exports, which meant less domestic purchasing power. It did not help that the Company no longer used Indian commercial and banking systems, but ran its own. In short, demand contracted, unemployment rose, and millions descended into poverty.

This combination of despotic rule and economic depression was the context within which Indian society was forced into what the British thought of as their traditional way of life. Many of those who had been artisans, soldiers and servants now became peasants tied by heavy taxes to the land; the movement of travellers was restricted; and those who worked for the Company and its governing structures, whilst gaining privileges thereby, were nevertheless prevented from rising above a certain level: the soldier never became an officer, a business employee never a director. These privileged soldiers and servants were selected according to criteria of caste and race and blood, thereby emphasising their importance in a way never before prescribed, and freezing these attributes as marks of status. Privilege and power amongst the Indians themselves became frozen.

PICTURE 12: LORD DALHOUSIE - It was the British themselves who shook the aedifice. This is a picture of Lord Dalhousie, Governor-General from 1846 to 1856. Dalhousie had a strong belief in the superiority of British principles and procedures. It followed that British rule was more beneficial to the Indians than that of their own princes, and he therefore annexed teritories whenever he could. He fought the second Sikh War in 1848-49 and annexed the Punjab. He introduced the Doctrine of Lapse: formerly, when the ruling family of a state lacked a direct heir, they adopted one; Dalhousie now forbade the right of adoption, and if a ruling family lacked a natural heir, Dalhousie annexed the state. In this manner, six formerly independent states were added to the Indian Empire.

He made changes to the system. He re-organised the administration; he laid down the main lines of development of the railway system, set up telegraphs and reformed the postal system; public works projects, such as the construction of roads and bridges, were undertaken. He promoted mass education and laid plans for the first universities (the Universities of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras were opened in 1857 after his departure). But he also encouraged Anglican missionaries, which threatened Hindu and Muslim religious leaders, whose authority had been enhanced by the earlier withdrawal of state authority over them; he attacked native customs, including suttee or the burning of widows; he spurned the new âaristocracyâ, repudiated caste and threatened their status and economic privileges; and, most dangerous of all, he tried to produce a more disciplined, European-style, Bengal army, thereby threatening the status and privileges of the soldiers, not least that of avoiding flogging. He failed to restrain the blatant greed for land and money which drove the Briton in India, especially those of the lower middle class, which greatly offended Indians of rank, who were still looked up to by most Indians as their natural leaders. The combination of simmering discontent, economic depression and the mutiny of many of the Bengal soldiers sparked off the Great Rebellion of 1857, which threatened to destroy a substantial portion of the Indian Empire.

PICTURE 13: MAP OF THE REBELLION - This map shows the main areas of conflict. On the 10th of May 1857, sepoys or Indian soldiers, drawn mainly from Muslim units from Bengal, mutinied in Meerut. The rebels marched to Delhi and offered their services to the Mughal emperor; for the next year much of north and central India were in revolt against the British. Some of the long- and medium-term causes of the insurrection have already been indicated; the immediate cause was rifle cartridges. There was a very convincing rumour that the cartridges had been greased by a combination of pig and cow fat, offensive to the religious beliefs of both Hindu and Muslim; because the sepoy had to bite off the end of the cartridge, he had either to taste the fat or be flogged. Under threat by their British officers, the soldiers mutinied. The revolt of the Bengal Army neutralised British power in the central Ganges valley and opened the way for widespread attacks by the civilians as well, who attacked Company institutions such as courts and revenue treasuries, which had strengthened the rights of the new landlords against the peasants; they also attacked Europeans, both male and female.

PICTURE 14: THE MUTINY - Here is a contemporary picture of the fighting. One point which emerges is that sepoys fought on both sides - indeed, the majority sided with the British. The Punjab remained loyal, and provided a stready stream of Sikh and Pathan recruits; the Madras and Bombay armies remained loyal; and most of the princely states remained untouched. In the areas of fighting in the north and in central India, it was effectively a civil war. The unprepared British were terrified; however, the prompt arrival of British troops re-directed from duties in China and the Persian Gulf enabled them to neutralise Bengal and most of Bihar. As they regained strength, they attacked the rebels with a savagery which was matched by that of their enemies. For the British both in India and in Great Britain itself, the slaughter at Kanpur was convincing evidence of the essential barbarity of the Indian. The Nana Sahib, with some reluctance, became leader of the rebels in that area and, after a three-week siege, took the surrender of the 400 British in Kanpur, to whom he gave a safe-conduct. As they boarded boats to take them downriver to Allahabad, many were massacred. Passions were running high, because reports had arrived of vicious British reprisals at Varanasi, followed by the news of a line of gibbets along the road to Allahabad. However, the Nana Sahib, far from ordering the massacre, organised the rescue of some British women who had been abducted during the chaos. They, along with other surviving women and children, perhaps 200 in all, were lodged under his protection. With the avenging British advancing rapidly from Allahabad, the idea seems to have been to use them as hostages. But they were not. As the insurgent commanders discussed escape, the order was given to kill them all. The soldiers did not wish to do it, so five men, two of whom were actually butchers, were recruited from the baszaar, and they proceeded to hack them to death. As one historian has noted, âfor sheer barbarity this âmassacre of the innocentsâ was rivalled only by the disgusting deaths devised for dozens of equally innocent Indians by way of British reprisal.â [Keay] PICTURE 15: ANOTHER PICTURE OF THE MUTINY - The last major sepoy rebels surrendered on the 21st of June 1858 at Gwalior, one of the principal centres of the revolt, but the fighting continued until the 21st of May 1859, when the final battle was fought at Sirwa Pass, and the defeated rebels fled into Nepal.

This rebellion or civil war was a turning point. In May 1858, the British exiled the Mughal Emperor to Burma, which they also controlled, thus formally ending the Mughal Empire. PICTURE 16: CARTOON SHOWING THE DEMISE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY - But, as this cartoon showing the blowing-up of the East India Company illustrates, it too was abolished, and the British government established direct rule under the British Crown. Queen Victoria was now Queen of India and, as in Great Britain itself, her position was buttressed by an hierarchy of hereditary nobles and the award of honours. The Star of India, a royal order of Indian knights, was introduced in 1861, and the first tour by a member of the royal family took place in 1869. The position of Secretary of State for India was established, and he would be represented in India by a viceroy with his headquarters in Calcutta, which now replaced Delhi as the capital. A major Indian grievance was eliminated by the renunciation in 1858 of the âdoctrine of lapseâ. About 40% of Indian territory and 20-25% of the population remained under the control of 562 princes of diverse religions and ethnicity. Their love of ceremonial pomp became proverbial, while their domains lagged behind the British-controlled territory in terms of social and political transformation. The composition of the Indian Army was modified: whereas before the mutiny the proportion of Indian soldiers to British was 9:1, afterwards it was 2:1. And, because colonial rulers regarded Dalhousieâs attacks on religious customs and traditions as a primary cause of the rebellion, they were stopped, and Hindu and Muslim priests regained British recognition and support of their sanctity.

PICTURE 17: BENJAMIN DISRAELI - The Conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli was a strong supporter of the Empire, and he believed it needed a strong symbol which would tie it to the affections of the British people. PICTURE 18: QUEEN VICTORIA AS EMPRESS OF INDIA - In 1876, on his advice, the Queen announced to Parliament that, satisfied that her Indian subjects were, as she said, âhappy under My rule and loyal to My throne,â it was now appropriate for her to assume a new title. It was later revealed that she was now the Empress of India, and in January 1877, âin a vast tented city around the Ridge whence British forces had recaptured Delhi some twenty years earlier, the new imperium was solemnised at an Imperial Assemblageâ, with an attendance of 84,000. [Keay]

PICTURE 19: LORD AND LADY CURZON AT A DURBAR - Over the following decades, the British relationship with India developed in different ways. The panoply of British power developed. This picture shows the Viceroy Lord Curzon and Lady Curzon in a formal moment, PICTURE 20: THE TIGER HUNT - while this one shows them at play - or at least Lord Curzon at play, since Lady Curzon looks less than thrilled with her position. At the same time, the barriers went up against the Indians, even those loyal and educated Indians of rank. British attitudes shifted from relative openness to dislike and distrust, and even racial xenophobia. British families and their servants lived in cantonments at a distance from Indian settlements, and male social clubs became symbols of exclusivity and snobbery. Their children were sent back to Great Britain to be educated. The strict subordination to the British of both Indians and those of mixed race was strongly enforced by the memsahibs. In short, analogies with the relationship of American whites to their former slaves easily come to mind.

More positively, there was a gradual development of opportunities for Indians to take part in government. The Indian National Congress was founded in 1885 with the object of obtaining a greater share in government for educated Indians, but, it must be said, the Congress was considerably more influential after the First World War than it was in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The drive for political change came from the British themselves, in particular from Liberal Party politicans. The first steps towards self-government were taken in the late 19th century with the appointment of Indian councelors to advise the viceroy and the establishment of provincial councils with Indian members; participation in legislative councils was subsequently widened with the Indian Councils Act of 1892. PICTURE 21: JOHN MORLEY AND LORD MINTO - These two pictures are of John Morley, Secretary of State for India, and Lord Minto, his Viceroy in India. Their Government of India Act of 1909 gave Indians limited roles in the central and provincial legislatures, or councils. Where once they had been appointed, some were now to be elected. The Government also granted separate electorates and communal representation for Muslims and Hindus, a move welcomed by the Muslim League, which felt threatened by the vast preponderance of Hindus, but opposed by Congress. This particular decision, which entrenched these positions, was perhaps unwise.

However, the Morley-Minto reforms were a milestone, because, step by step, the elective principle was introduced into membership of Indian legislative councils, even though the electrorate was limited in the first instance to a small group of upper-class Indians. Communal electorates were later extended to other communities and made group identification through religion a factor in Indian politics. PICTURE 22: INDIAN SOLDIERS IN WORLD WAR I - The claims of Indians for self-government were strengthened by their participation in the First World War, when 1.5 million Britons and Indians left India to fight. India also contributed over Â£146 million towards the war, and suffered both inflation and shortages of essentials. [Brown] Their contribution was substantial and crucial. The picture shows the cover of a popular song entitled âIndia Repliesâ, in this case to the call for the help of the Empire. PICTURE 23: THE IMPERIAL WAR CABINET -

Indeed, by 1917 their contribution was such that India had native representation in the Imperial War Cabinet, as demonstrated by the two gentlemen at the left in the second row.

This crucial contribution, and the repeated statements by the Western allies that the war was being fought for democracy and the rights of nations, raised Indian aspirations for greater self-government. In August 1917 the British government formally announced a policy of âincreasing association of Indians in every branch of the administrration and the gradual development of self-governing institutions with a view to the progressive realization of responsible government in India as an integral part of the British Empire.â Embodied in the Government of India Act of 1919, these reforms were the maximum concessions the British were prepared to make. The franchise was extended and increased authority was given to centre and provincial legislative councils, but the viceroy remained responsible to London, not to an Indian-based legislative body.

PICTURE 24: AMRITSA R - To the surprise of the British, some of whom mumbled about ingratitude, the 1919 reforms did not satisfy Indian political demands. The British repressed opposition, and reimposed restrictions on movement and on the press. Nevertheless, there were mass protests across the subcontinent, instigated by the Indian National Congress. In April 1919 a peaceful demonstration in Amritsar quickly descended into violence. In response to arson attacks on British banks, Government offices and private property, and the general loss of control in the city, the British Governor of the Punjab, Sir Michael OâDwyer, declared martial law. Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer took over control of the city. His instructions stated that âNo gatherings of persons nor processions of any sort will be allowed. All gatherings will be fired on.â On 12 April Dyer issued a proclamation declaring âall meetings and gatheringsâ of more than 5 people forbidden. On 13 April, thousands of Indians were gathered in the Jallianwala Bagh or Park in the heart of Amritsar city; this was the day when Sikhs celebrated the beginning of the harvest by coming together in community fairs. The gathering was in defiance of the proclamation. British and Gurkha troops marched to the Bagh and at the command of General Dyer opened fire, concentrating on the areas where the crowd was thickest. The firing lasted for about 10 minutes. The only way out of the park was manned by the troops, and so people could not escape. When the firing ended, hundreds had been killed, including a 7-week-old baby, and thousands injured. Back in his headquarters, Dyer reported to his superiors that he had been âconfronted by a revolutionary army,â and had been obliged âto teach a moral lesson to the Punjab.â He was supported by the Governor. In the storm of outrage which followed, Dyer was promoted to major-general and retired. Although the event was condemned worldwide, he had significant support at home, but it made the army extremely nervous about again policing civil disobedience.

PICTURE 25: MAHATMA GANDHI - Most importantly, the massacre provided very great impetus for the movement for freedom and paved the way for Gandhiâs Non-Cooperation Movement in 1920 and 1921. Gandhi was a member of Congress, and he led it in a general campaign of nonviolent noncooperation during the 1920s and 1930s. At the 10-year review of the 1919 Act, prospects of further reforms encouraged greater agitation and showers of demands from various groups. The Simon Commission, whose duty it was to take evidence and make recommendations, recommended further constitutional change, but it was not until 1935 that a new Government of India Act was passed. What was at issue was whether or not there would be a continuation of separate electorates.

PICTURE 26: JAWAHARLAL NEHRU AND MUHAMMAD ALI JINNAH - You will probably recognise these two pictures, as you recognised Gandhi. On the left is Jawaharlal Nehru, the leader with Gandhi of the Congress Party. On the right is Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League. The Congress Party insisted on a unified electorate; given the minority status of Muslims, Jinnah not surprisingly insisted on the continuation of separate electorates: his argument was that Muslims and Hindus were two separate nations. The decision of the Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald was that the system of separate electorates at both central and provincial levels would continue.

At the outset of the Second World War, Great Britain made India a belligerent without consulting Indian elected councils. This angered Indian officials, and led Congress to declare that India would not support the war effort until it had been granted complete independence. Agreement was therefore reached between them that India would be granted full independence once the Axis powers were defeated, if India gave her full co-operation during the war.

In the winter of 1945-46, the British worked with Congress and the Muslim League to devise a governmental structure for the soon-to-be independent state. However, Congress and the League could not agree, and by mid-August 1946 a frenzy of rioting ensued between Hindus and Muslims. PICTURE 27: VICEROY THE LORD MOUNTBATTEN, LADY MOUNTBATTEN AND GANDHI - In March 1947, Lord Mountbatten was sent to India as Viceroy: this is a picture of him, Lady Mountbatten and Gandhi. Mountbatten feared the forced evacuation of British troops. He suggested the partition of the Punjab and Bengal in the face of raging civil war, but Gandhi and Nehru both refused: Gandhi suggested that Mountbatten offer Jinnah the leadership of a united India, but Nehru would not agree. In July 1947, Parliament passed the Indian Independence Act, which set a deadline of midnight on August 14-15 for âdemarcation of the dominions of India â into India and East and West Pakistan. PICTURE 28: MAP OF PARTITION - This map shows the Partition, as a result of which 10 million Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs fled their homes to seek sanctuary across the line. As you can see, the Punjab was caught in the middle, and Sikhs bore the brunt of the suffering. PICTURES 29-30: FLIGHT - These next two pictures show the flight of those caught on the wrong side. PICTURE 31: DEATH - This picture shows the fate of those who failed to escape.

PICTURE 32: INDIA TODAY - This map of India today reflects the history of British relations with India. Three of the four largest cities, Madras, Bombay and Calcutta, owe their early leap into wealth and power to the East India Company. Lucknow and Kanpur, Allahabad and Amritsar, hold deep memories of terror and slaughter. Pakistan and Bangladesh reflect the early insistence of the British on treating the two religious communities as though a deep crevass separated them - and by 1947, one did. After 1783, India increasingly became the major imperial concern of the British, who saw parts of the rest of the Empire in geopolitical relation to India - the control of the Suez Canal is one obvious example. Their negotiations with the representatives of Indian political pressure groups were driven not by the desire to one day give India her independence: rather, it was to find some way to keep her within the Empire and under some control - her army was needed, and in general she was the most important part of the Empire. But by the beginning of the Second World War - and certainly by its end - India âs independence was assured. The Labour Government had backed independence from the late 1920s and wished to free India as soon as possible. But it is also true to say that Great Britain no longer had the resources, the strength or the will to restrain India from embarking on the path she wished to take. India now received her independence without embarking on war with the imperial centre - unlike the case with the Dutch and French Empires. Great Britain left behind some appalling historical memories, but she also bequeathed a democratic political system, a trained civil service, an educational system, a transport system of some magnitude - India had the 4th largest railway system in the world - and the English language. All of these still remain. It is not such a contemptible legacy.

Â© Professor Kathleen Burk, Gresham College, 10 October 2005


A recent strand in British historiography of India is to ensure that the British period is not seen by new Indians in bad light for they dont know how a backlash will turn out.

Pictures slide show ppt file:
http://www.gresham.ac.uk/uploads/jewelinthecrown(1).ppt

This lecture is remarkable for it anwers many questions in this forum:
How did the TSP turn to despotism?
When did the modern India start?
What caused the misery of the Indian pesantry?
How did the Indian society class structure atrophy?

I am not sorry for posting this after all!

**acharya** · 12-23-2006, 02:47 AM

This is a very nice graphical depiction of the changes that have taken place in the Middle East over the last 5000 Years.

Who Has Controlled the Middle East over the last 5000 Years

This graphic shows the History of Religion over the last 5000 Years.

History of Religion

12-29-2006, 08:48 AM

PM debated diamond's ownership

--------------
According to the archives, the then Pakistan prime minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto wrote to Jim Callaghan asking politely for the diamond's return.
Mr Bhutto said there was a "sense of cultural deprivation or historical disinheritance" caused by Britain hanging on to precious objects collected around the British Empire.
-----------------------
The prime minister consulted the Queen. However, her exact reply is not known as a note from Martin Charteris, her private secretary, to the PM remains secret.

But one Foreign Official, CO Hunt, was rather annoyed at all the time and energy being expended on the issue.

"I can work up no enthusiasm whatsoever about the historical legal minutiae... nor do I think we need to," he said.

"The stark facts are these: we have the Koh-i-Noor diamond, whether or not our possession of it is legally justified. We have made it clear that we are keeping the diamond, adducing the best arguments to support our contention."

In other words - tough luck. The prime minister replied to Mr Bhutto with a polite "No".

The Koh-i-noor Diamond
---------------
Conflicting Claims

In October 1997, Queen Elizabeth II made a State Visit to India and Pakistan to mark the 50th anniversary of Independence. Many Sikhs in India and Britain used the occasion to demand the return of the Koh-i-noor diamond, which had been won from the Sikhs (whose ruler was Duleep Singh, a young boy at the time) after a fierce battle. But the Sikhs had surrendered, and one of the terms of the surrender was that they hand over the diamond. A simple Punjabi farmer in his 70s, Beant Singh Sandhawalia, has claimed to be the last surviving descendant of Duleep Singh, through adoption. He wrote to Buckingham Palace and to Prime Minister Tony Blair asking for the return of the Koh-i-noor. Sandhawalia says he doesn't want the Koh-i-noor for himself, but will give it to the museum at the Golden Temple of Amritsar, the holiest Sikh shrine.

The Sikhs, however, are not the only people who want the diamond. In November 2000 the Taleban regime demanded the return of the Koh-i-noor diamond to Afghanistan, saying that the British should hand the gem back to them as soon as possible. They have claimed that it is the property of Afghanistan, and that history shows that it went to India from Afghanistan and therefore the Afghans have a stronger claim than the Indians. While an Indian parliamentary committee has insisted that the gem be sent back to New Delhi, the Taleban have claimed that Maharajah Ranjit Singh (the father of Duleep Singh) stole it from Afghanistan while he was ruler of the Punjab.

British officials take the view that the multiplicity of competing claims makes it impossible to establish the gem's former ownership. Thus, for now, at least, it looks likely to remain one of the jewels in the British Crown.

ramana · 12-31-2006, 12:59 AM

A British look at South Asia

Six chapter book recording the views of the British who worked in India.

01-27-2007, 08:01 PM

The hidden roots of Wahhabism in British India 
From: World Policy Journal
Date: June 22, 2005
Author: Allen, Charles

Three generations ago a great deal was known about Muslim extremism in India, and with good cause--indeed, one of my great-grandfathers was standing beside the viceroy when he was knifed to death by an alleged Wahhabi assassin in 1871.

But by my grandfathers' time that experience was fast being forgotten, and by my father's generation it had been buried in the archives. Had this present generation been more aware of the true history of Indian Wahhabism, our governments might perhaps have been more wary of engaging in war by proxy following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. And if we are ever to come to terms with why so many young men have given and continue to give their lives to jihad in what the British knew as the North-West Frontier, and why so many cling to the belief that this same region is a dar-ul-Islam or "domain of the faith" second only to Mecca and Medina, then we have to understand what Wahhabism accomplished there, not only in the 1980s and 1990s but a full century and a half earlier.

I must admit that until very recently I shared this general ignorance. I can remember traveling from Swat to Hazara in the late 1990s and being absolutely baffled when a local khan told me to be sure, as I crossed the Indus at the Tarbela Dam, to look out for the site of what he called the Hindustani Camp, "which you British called the Fanatic Camp."

So let me begin by examining what we mean by Wahhabism: the reformist theology first expounded by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1702/3-91) in Nejd in the 1740s, espoused by the local chieftan Muhammad ibn Saud, and subsequently applied by these two houses--the al-Saud and the aal as-Sheikh (as the descendents of Sheikh Abd-al-Wahhab are known) in interdependent alliance until Wahhabism became the established form of Islam in the state bearing the name of Emir ibn Saud since the 1920s.

Ever since Wahhabism took root in Indian soil its adherents have consistently denied being Wahhabis. Their dissembling was aided by the inability of the British authorities to recognize that the scores of uprisings and assassinations that marred the Pax Britannica of India's North-West Frontier from the 1840s onward were anything more than local troubles stirred up by "mad mullahs."

This misrepresentation was subsequently compounded by the distortions of nationalist historians writing after independence, who represented Wahhabi rebels as freedom fighters. As a result, our understanding of the forces that gave rise to Islamist fundamentalism on the Indian subcontinent has been seriously distorted. 

The man credited with importing Wahhabism into India is Syed Ahmad of Rae Bareili (1786-1831), who returned from pilgrimage in Mecca in 1824 to begin a holy war against the Sikhs aimed at restoring the Punjab to Muslim rule. But the argument that Syed Ahmad picked up his ideas of Wahhabi intolerance and jihad while in Arabia is untenable. The reality is that he had already accepted the basic tenets of Wahhabism long before sailing to Arabia, as a student of the Madrassa-i-Ramiyya religious seminary in Delhi and as a pupil of its leader, Shah Abdul Aziz, son of the reformer Shah Waliullah of Delhi. 

Shah Waliullah is the key figure here--a man as much admired within Sunni Islam as a great modernizer (the historian Aziz Ahmad rightly describes him as "the bridge between medieval and modern Islam in India") as Abd al-Wahhab is reviled. The one, after all, was a follower of the tolerant, inclusive Hanafi school of jurisprudence and a Naqshbandi Sufi initiate, while the other belonged to the intolerant, exclusive Hanbali school, was viciously anti-Sufi and anti-Shia, and deeply indebted in his prejudices to the notorious fourteenth-century jurist of Damascus, Ibn Taymiyya--the ideologue whose reinterpretations of militant jihad are today cited by every Islamist. Yet these two key figures have far more in common than their respective admirers are willing to accept. Not only were they exact contemporaries, they almost certainly studied in Medina at the same period--and had at least one teacher in common. 

Shah Waliullah came to Mecca on hajj in 1730, when he was 27, and then spent 14 months studying in Medina. First among his teachers was Shaikh Abu Tahir Muhammad ibn Ibrahim al-Kurani al-Madani, a renowned teacher of Hadith (the statements and examples of conduct of the Prophet gathered into a corpus to become, together with the Koran, the basis of sharia--the divinely ordained laws governing all aspects of behavior) in whose library the young Shah Waliullah studied the works of Ibn Taymiyya.

In the case of Abd al-Wahhab the facts are not quite so well documented, but we know that he studied Hadith in Medina in his late twenties under the Indian Muhammad Hayat al-Sindi, a Naqshbandi sufi and a Shaft jurist who was an admirer of Ibn Taymiyya and a student of Ibrahim al-Kurani--the teacher who taught Hadith to Shah Waliullah and introduced him to the ideas of Ibn Taymiyya.

So we have the intriguing possibility that the two greatest Sunni reformers of their age not only sat at the feet of the same teachers but may even have sat in the same classes. We can also be confident that some of these teachers encouraged their students to follow Ibn Taymiyya's hard line and to regard militant jihad as a prime religious duty--which is what both Abd al-Wahhab and Shah Waliullah then went home to implement.

On his return to India, Shah Waliullah preached the oneness of God and called a return to the basics. Just as Ibn Taymiyya had done, he defied custom by setting himself up as a mujtahid (one who makes his own interpretations of established religious law by virtue of informed reasoning), and indulging in independent reasoning (ijtihad). In central Arabia, Abd al-Wahhab did likewise --the only major difference between the two being that Abd al-Wahhab succeeded in imposing his reading of Islam on his countrymen while Shah Waliullah failed, for lack of a strong champion.

With the British takeover of the Mughal capital of Delhi in 1803 and the humiliating demotion of the emperor to the status of a pensioner, Shah Waliullah's eldest son and successor, Shah Abdul Azziz, issued a fatwa, or religious judgment, that Delhi had been enslaved by kuffr (paganism). He declared Hindustan to be a dar al-harb or "domain of enmity" and that it was now incumbent on all Muslims to strive to restore India to Islam. This was no more than a gesture, but it set a goal that his student Syed Ahmad did not forget.

After a murky period as a mercenary, Syed Ahmad returned to his religious studies, to reemerge in his early thirties as a visionary revivalist and preacher. He very soon acquired disciples, of whom the first two were the nephew and son-in-law of his former teacher. Many Sunnis now saw him as the inheritor of the mantle of the Shah Waliullah and hundreds flocked to join his cause, among them a young man called Wilayat Ali, who deserves special mention not only because he became an important leader of the Wahhabi movement but because of his antecedents. It seems to have been overlooked--by historians determined to distance Syed Ahmad's movement and Arabian Wahhabism--that Wilayat Ali was initially a student of Ghulam Rasul of Benares. The significance of Ghulam Rasul is that he spent many years in Arabia--not in Mecca or Medina but in the remote province of Nejd, the seat of Wahhabism.

When he returned to Benares he took the name of Hajji Abdul Haq and became known as the Nejdi Sheikh. He also brought with him a radical version of Islam that we can confidently label as "Wahhabism," which means that it was already established in India before Syed Ahmad began his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1821.

The Five Articles of Faith

Syed Ahmad's teachings were now based on five main articles of faith (as summarized by T. E. Ravenshaw in his Historical Memorandum on the Sect of the Wahabees, 1864): "Reliance on one Supreme Being [tawhid]; repudiation of all forms, ceremonies, and observances of the modern Mahomedan religion, retaining only such as are considered the pure doctrines of the Koran [bidat]; the duty of holy war for the faith [jihad] against infidels generally; blind and implicit obedience to their spiritual guides; expectation of an Imam who will lead all true believers to victory over infidels." The first four of these articles accorded with the teachings of Abd al-Wahhab, but the last was the quintessential Shia belief that at the end of days a messiah-figure known as the Imam Mahdi, or the "expected one," would come to the rescue of Islam. Divisions now began to appear between Syed Ahmad's more hardline followers in Patna, who saw themselves as Wahhabis in all but name, and those in Delhi, led by the grandson of Shah Waliullah, Shah Muhammad Ishaq (hereafter referred to as the "Delhi-ites").

In December 1825, the fortress of Bharatpur was taken with great slaughter--a further demonstration of the ascendancy of the British. "Fate has been so kind to the accursed Nazarenes and the mischievous polytheists," Syed Ahmad wrote to a friend. "My heart is filled with shame at this religious degradation and my head contains but one thought, how to organize jihad." He decided the time had come to emulate the Prophet, who had preceded his Islamic conquest by making a retreat (hegira) from the land of enmity of Mecca and migrating to the land of faith of Medina. Syed Ahmad arranged that Patna should serve as his movement's main base in Hindustan. However, his fighting base had to be a domain of the faith, ideally Afghanistan. 

In January 1826, he commenced his retreat along with some 400 armed mujahidin ("strivers for the faith"). At the same time, he wrote to Muslim rulers such as the emir of Bokhara, exhorting them to support his jihad--not against British imperialism, as it is so often portrayed, but to purge Hindustan of "the impurities of polytheism and the filth of dissonance." The response was lukewarm and when Syed Ahmad's army eventually reached Kabul by way of the Bolan Pass they found themselves unwanted. With their numbers greatly reduced they finally emerged from the Khyber Pass onto the Vale of Peshawar, occupied by Pathans of Afghan origin but then ruled over by the Sikhs. Here they were received as liberators and a sanctuary was provided for them at Sittana in the massif known as the Mahabun Mountain, jutting into the plains from the hills of Swat and Buner.

 This had long been regarded as a land of saints and now became the Wahhabis' dar al-Islam. Astonishingly, it remained the Wahhabi stronghold, or what the British called the Fanatic Camp, to the end of the nineteenth century. 

In fall 1826, Syed Ahmad summoned all Muslims to join his holy war. The Pathans rallied to his cause and he was formally chosen as the movement's imam and commander of the faithful, echoing the titles of the early caliphs. His war began in spring 1827, initially with a military disaster but then with a series of victories against the Sikh armies that culminated in the capture of Peshawar in 1830. To mark this great victory, Syed Ahmad declared himself badshah, or king of kings, possibly as a preliminary to presenting himself as the longed-for Imam Mahdi. He also imposed strict Wahhabi rules on Peshawar and the surrounding country. After two months the locals rebelled and every Hindustani jihadist found in the Vale was dragged from his prayers and put to the sword. Syed Ahmad and his companions survived the massacre and fled across the Indus River into Hazara, only to be cornered by a Sikh army. On May 8, 1831, Syed Ahmad, his two closest disciples, and some 1,300 Hindustanis made their last stand and died bravely.

That should have ended the fundamentalist movement. But led by Wilayat Ali, the original Wahhabi convert, the Wahhabis in the plains regrouped. Wilayat Ali lacked charisma but was a brilliant propagandist, confecting the story that Syed Ahmad was not really dead but merely waiting in the mountains to resume the jihad, thus reshaping Wahhabism into a cult centered on its hidden imam. A secret network based on Patna was established by which funds, supplies, and weapons were sent along a covert caravan trail to the Mahabun Mountain, along with volunteers to be trained as mujahidin. Finally, in spring 1851, Wilayat Ali and his younger brother, Inayat Ali, with hundreds of armed men, made their hegira from the plains to the Punjab frontier, with the aim of recommencing the jihad in the winter of 1853-54. 

All this went largely unnoticed by the British authorities, until August 1852, when a bundle of "treasonable correspondence" was seized that revealed the existence of a sect of fanatic Muslims in Patna. A raid on the Wahhabis' base was carried out, but after a stand-off the governor general concluded that the troublemakers in the mountains should be left alone "since they are insignificant."

In the event, the commissioner of Peshawar, Frederick Mackeson, chose not to leave the Hindustani Fanatics alone. In January 1853, in response to an appeal from a local chief, he launched a raid on the Hindustani camp at Sittana, driving its inhabitants further into the mountains. But he failed to follow up; a decision that probably cost him his life, since in the following September he was knifed to death in his bungalow by a tribesman from Swat. Nevertheless, the raid forced the Hindustanis to put off their jihad, which was rescheduled for the summer of 1857. 

Wahhabism Survives 

The events of the great Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 are well known, but the part played by the Wahhabis deserves closer examination. All the evidence suggests that the Wahhabis refused to align themselves with the non-Wahhabi rebels, in part because they regarded the king of Delhi, Bahadur Shah, as a heretic due to his religious tolerance, but also because they had their own plans. The main fighting arm of the Wahhabis were the Hindustani Fanatics up at Sittana, but they too remained inactive until several hundred mutinous soldiers arrived in their camp. Wilayat Ali had died of a fever a year earlier so it was his younger and more intemperate brother, Inayat Ali, who responded by launching a raid into the plains, apparently believing that he would be joined by mujahidin sent up from Patna. Instead, the Hindustanis were subjected to a series of assaults that forced them to retreat even deeper into the mountains.

In April 1858 the British military commander in Peshawar led a three-pronged assault on the Mahabun Mountain to wipe out the Hindustani Fanatics once and for all. Inayat Ali had just died of fever, and the Wahhabis were again taken by surprise. The mujahidin were surrounded and all but wiped out, yet somehow Wilayat Ali's eldest son, Abdullah Ali, escaped to fight another day. The survivors moved to an abandoned settlement named Malka, where they were entirely dependent on the charity of their neighbors. Amazingly, the Wahhabis bounced back, again thanks to official indifference. They rebuilt their organization and reopened their underground trail to the North-West Frontier. The outcome was a series of arrests in the plains, and a disastrous campaign, mounted at huge cost to destroy the Fanatic Camp at Malka, so clumsily executed that it achieved nothing beyond uniting the Pathan tribes against the British and raising the Wahhabis' prestige as champions of Islam.

By beating detainees to extract confessions and using "approvers" to turn Queen's evidence, the Wahhabi organization in plains India was broken up, leading to a series of high-profile trials in the 1860s and 1870s. One curious feature of these trials was that those convicted, besides being shackled in irons, were dressed in orange overalls (a color code replicated at the U.S. base at Guantanamo). A number of leaders were condemned to death, subsequently commuted to transportation for life on the Andaman Islands, and others sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. A special commission was then set up to examine the extent of the threat posed by the sect, producing the first detailed report on the Wahhabi movement--Ravenshaw's memorandum. This documented for the first time its extraordinary sophistication and its long history of armed jihad. 

Then, in 1871, the whole issue came back to a fresh boil with the murder of the British chief justice, John Norman, on his way into court to preside over a Wahhabi trial in Calcutta. He was stabbed to death by a Pathan who went to the gallows without giving a coherent account of his motives. This was followed five months later by the unprecedented assassination of a viceroy, Lord Mayo, while on tour in the Andaman Islands. His attacker, also a Pathan, had served as orderly to a number of British political officers in Peshawar. The British in India united in concluding that the Wahhabis were behind the assassination, but no evidence was found to support this belief. Yet two possibly unconnected events remain unexplained: a grandson of Wilayat Ali was found to have visited the Andaman Islands shortly before Lord Mayo's arrival, and a person or persons unknown had given a great feast for the killer on the night before the murder.

Remarkably, the Wahhabis on the Mahabun Mountain survived the purges. Under the leadership of Abdallah Ali, they moved from one hideout to another, harassed in turn by the local tribes and the British authorities. In 1873, Abdullah Ali's youngest brother in Patna appealed for an official pardon, rejected on the grounds that the Hindustani Fanatics would eventually be forced to give up. But the government was, as often before, indulging in wishful thinking. The Hindustanis clung on, kept alive by handouts from the Pathan tribes.

When a British journalist came to write about the North-West Frontier in 1890, he noted that the Hindustanis were widely admired among the tribes for their "fierce fanaticism." Their colony was celebrated locally as the Kila Mujahidin, or "the Fortress of the Holy Warriors," wherein they "devoted their time to drill, giving the words of command in Arabic, firing salutes with cannon made of leather, and blustering about the destruction of the infidel power of the British." It was said that they were still awaiting the return of Syed Ahmad, their Hidden Imam.

Then came the great frontier uprising of 1897-98, beginning in Swat and spreading like the proverbial wildfire south through tribal country, and requiring an army of 40,000 to reduce them to submission. It is worth examining the source from which the mullah who incited the uprising drew his ideas. Known to the British as the "Mad Fakir," Mullah Sadullah was a 60-year-old native of Buner who reappeared in his homeland after many years' absence to proclaim that he had been visited by Syed Ahmad the Martyr and had been ordered by him to turn the British out of Swat and the Vale of Peshawar. He had with him a 13-year-old boy named Shah Sikander (Alexander) who claimed to be the legitimate heir to the throne of Delhi. Unfortunately for the mullahs, British bullets did not turn to water as he had predicted, and the boy was among the many tribesmen killed in the fighting.

Three Legacies 

Many young Wahhabis, easily identified by their distinctive black waistcoats and dark blue robes, fought and died in the uprising. We can now see that two great legacies of Syed Ahmad on the frontier were, first, the "jihadization" of the Pathans; and, second, the reinforcement of the belief that the border region was a domain of the faith, to be defended at all costs. 

But there was a third, more potent, legacy. The Wahhabi trials and assassinations led to discussions in the vernacular newspapers and in the mosques as to where a Muslim's first loyalties lay. Convocations of muftis and other jurists met in Calcutta and Delhi and, after much agonizing, produced differing declarations.

In Calcutta, they decreed British India to be domain of the faith, wherein religious rebellion was unlawful. In Delhi, however, they found the country to be a domain of enmity--but went on to state that rebellion was nevertheless uncalled for. At the same time, many ordinary Muslims, despite their misgivings about Wahhabi dogma, interpreted the trials as victimization of fellow Muslims. A number of historians have cited this as explaining the decline of Muslims in government employ from this time onward. The sadder reality is that this decline was part of a wider pattern of withdrawal from public life as the Muslim community began a retreat into the past.

Spearheading the great leap backward were two groups of mullahs, both with Wahhabi associations, both linked to the path of Islamic revivalism originally initiated in Delhi by Shah Waliullah. The more extreme of the two set up a politico-religious organization known as Jamaat Ahl-i-Hadith, the Party of the Tradition of the Prophet. One of its founders was Sayyid Nazir Husain Muhaddith Dihlawi, the leader of the Wahhabi "Delhi-ites." The Ahl-i-Hadith movement's many critics were quick to label it "Wahhabi," and to this day it continues to be described and denounced as such. In Pakistan today it has over 400 madrassas and has sponsored a number of militant organizations linked to terrorism.

A second group of clerics was led by two students of Sayyid Nazir Husain who, in 1857, had attempted to set up their own domain of the faith north of Delhi: Muhammad Qasim Nanautawi and Rashid Ahmed Gangohi. In May 1866, they founded their own madrassa at Deoband, a hundred miles north of Delhi. They drew their students from the peasantry and refused government funding. Boys as young as five were accepted and often remained there until adulthood, so that many came to identify with the madrassa as their main home and the teacher as a surrogate parent.

Although modeled on the university, the ethos of Deoband was that of the seminary. English was prohibited, Urdu served as the lingua franca, and all students began their studies by learning the Koran by heart in the original Arabic.

The theology taught at Deoband was an uncompromising fundamentalism mirroring that of Wahhabism. It denounced the worship of saints, the adorning of tombs, and such activities as music and dancing; it waged a ceaseless war of words against Shias, Hindus, and Christian missionaries; it distanced itself from all that was progressive in Indian society; and it retained militant jihad as a central pillar of faith but focused this jihad on the promotion of Islamic revival. 

At the same time, Deoband exploited modern technology, especially in the dissemination of fatwas on every issue brought before its muftis. By this means Deoband gained the support of the masses, providing Muslims with a new sense of identity and an alternative to the British model. In 1879, the institution assumed the additional name of Dar ul-Ulum, the Abode of Islamic Learning. By then it was already becoming renowned throughout the Islamic world as a center of religious study second only to Al-Aqsa in Cairo, producing an ever growing cadre of graduates who formed a class of reformist clerics not unlike the Jesuits of the Catholic Counter-Reformation: a politicized group who could compete against all other clerics to advantage and, above all, disseminate the teachings of Deoband in their own madrassas.

The first of these graduates, Mahmood ul-Hasan, duly became rector of Dar ul-Ulum Deoband and in 1915 set up his own clandestine mujahidin army in an attempt to replicate Syed Ahmad--a bid that ended in disaster, with the imprisonment of its leader and over 200 followers. By 1900, Dar ul-Ulum Deoband had founded over two dozen allied madrassas in northern India. Today that figure stands, remarkably, at over 30,000 worldwide. The consequences for Islam have been profound, resulting in a seismic shift within Sunni Islam in South Asia, which became increasingly conservative and introverted, less tolerant and more inclined to look for political leadership from the madrassas and the madrassa-trained politician.

It also gave new force to an old ideal: that a Muslim's first duty was to his religion and that he had an absolute obligation to defend Islam wherever it was under attack. Nowhere has this new force made more impact than in Pakistan, where the Deobandi-led politico-religious party known as Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam (JUI), the "Party of Scholars of Islam," has widespread support in the Pathan tribal areas. Pakistan now has well over 7,000 JUI, Deobandi, or Ahl-i-Hadith madrasas. It was here in the 1980s and 1990s that the Taliban's leaders and many of its rank-and-file were educated and jihadized. And it is here, in this frontier region, that Osama bin Laden most surely confounds a superpower's efforts to find him, dead or alive. 

This essay is drawn from a lecture given at the Royal Society for Asian Affairs at Canning House in London on February 23, 2005.

Charles Allen is a historian of the British colonial period in South Asia. His recent publications include Soldier Sahibs: The Men Who Made the North-West Frontier and The Buddha and the Sahibs: The British Discovery of Buddhism. He recently received the Sir Percy Sykes Memorial Medal for his work in "stimulating public interest in Britain's imperial encounter with Asia." His history of Wahhabism will be published in Britain later this year.

COPYRIGHT 2005 World Policy Institute

**Hauma Hamiddha** · 03-13-2007, 01:29 AM

Speech of William Jones

GENTLEMEN

IF the Deity of the Hindus, by whom all their just requests are believed to be granted with singular indulgence, had proposed last year to gratify my warmest wishes, I could have desired nothing more ardently than the success of your institution; because I can desire nothing in preference to the general good, which your plan seems calculated to promote, by bringing to light many useful and interesting tracts, which being too shorts for separate publication, might lie many years concealed, or, perhaps, irrecoverably perish: my wishes are accomplished, without an invocation to CÃMADHÃNU; and your Society, having already passed its infant state, is advancing to maturity with every marks of a healthy and robust constitution. When I reflect, indeed, on the variety of subjects, which have been discussed before you, concerning the history [11], laws, manners, arts, and antiquities of Asia, I am unable to decide whether my pleasure or my surprise be the greater; for I will not dissemble, that your progress has far exceeded my expectations; and, though we must seriously deplore the loss of those excellent men, who have lately departed from this Capital, yet there is a prospect still of large contributions to your stock of Asiatick learning, which, I am persuaded, will continually increase. My late journey to Benares has enabled me to assure you, that many of your members, who reside at a distance, employ a part of their leisure in preparing additions to your archives; and, unless I am too sanguine, you will soon receive light from them on Several topicks entirely new in the republick of letters.

It was principally with a design to open sources of such information, that I long had meditated an expedition up the Ganges during the suspension of my business; but, although I had the satisfaction of visiting two ancient seats of Hindu superstition and literature, yet, illness having detained me a considerable time in the way, it was not in my power to continue in them long enough to pursue my inquiries; and I left them, as ÃNEAS is feigned to have left the shades, when his guide made him recollect the swift flight of irrevocable tine, with a curiosity [12] raised to the height, and a regret not easy to be described.

Whoever travels in Asia, especially if he be conversant with the literature of the countries through which he passes, must naturally remark the superiority of European talents: the observation, indeed, is at least as old as ALEXANDER; and, though we cannot agree with the sage preceptor of that ambitious Prince, that "the Asiaticks are born to be slaves", yet the Athenian poet seems perfectly in the right, when he represents Europe as a sovereign Princess, and Asia as her Handmaid: but, if the mistress be transcendently majestick, it cannot be denied that the attendant has many beauties, and some advantages peculiar to herself. The ancients were accustomed to pronounce panegyricks on their own countrymen at the expense of all other nations, with a political view, perhaps, of stimulating them by praise, and exciting them to still greater exertions; but such arts are here unnecessary; nor would they, indeed, become a society, who seek nothing but truth unadorned by rhetorick; and, although we must be conscious of our superior advancement in all kinds of useful knowledge, yet we ought not therefore to contemn the people of Asia, from whose researches into nature, works of art, and inventions of fancy, many valuable hints may be derived [13] for our own improvement and advantage. If that, indeed, were not the principal object of your institution, little else could arise from it but the mere gratification of curiosity; and I should not receive so much delight from the humble share, which you have allowed me to take, in promoting it.

To form an exact parallel between the works and actions of the Western and Eastern worlds, would require a trade of no inconsiderable length; but we may decide on the whole, that reason and taste are the grand prerogatives of European minds, while the Asiaticks have soared to loftier heights in the sphere of imagination. The civil history of their vast empires, and of India in particular, must be highly interesting to our common country; but we have a still nearer interest in knowing all former modes of ruling these inestimable provinces, on the prosperity of which so much of our national welfare, and individual benefit, seems to depend. A minute geographical knowledge, not only of Bengal and Bahar, but, for evident reasons, of all the kingdoms bordering on them, is closely connected with an account of their many revolutions: but the natural productions of these territories, especially in the vegetable and mineral systems, are momentous objects of research to an imperial, [14] but, which is a character of equal dignity, a commercial, people.

If Botany may be described by metaphors drawn from the science itself, we may justly pronounce a minute acquaintance with plants, their classes, orders, kinds, and species, to be its flowers, which can only produce fruit by an application of that knowledge to the purposes of life, particularly to diet, by which diseases may be avoided, and to medicine, by which they may be remedied: for the improvement of the left mentioned art, than which none surely can be more beneficial to mankind, the virtues of minerals also should be accurately known. So highly has medical skill been prized by the ancient Indians, that one of the fourteen Retnaâs, or precious things, which their Gods are believed to have produced by churning the ocean with the mountain Mandara, was a learned physician. What their old books contain on this subject, we ought certainly to discover, and that without loss of time; lest the venerable but abstruse language, in which they are composed, should cease to be perfectly intelligible, even to the best educated natives, through a want of powerful invitation to study it. BERNIER (1), who was himself of the Faculty, mentions approved medical books in Sanscrit, and cites a few aphorisms, [15] which appear judicious and rational; but we can expect nothing so important from the works of Hindu or Muselman physicians, as the knowledge, which experience must have given them, of simple medicines. I have seen an Indian prescription of fifty-four, and another of sixty-six, ingredients; but such compositions are always to be suspected, since the effect of one ingredient may destroy that of another; and it were better to find certain accounts of a single leaf or berry, than to be acquainted with the most elaborate compounds, unless they too have been proved by a multitude of successful experiments. The noble deobstruent oil, extracted from the Eranda nut, the whole family of Balsams, the incomparable stomachick root from Columbo, the fine astringent ridiculously called Japan earth, but in truth produced by the decoction of an Indian plant, have long been used in Asia; and who can foretel what glorious discoveries of other oils, roots, and salutary juices, may be made by your society? If it be doubtful whether the Peruvian bark be always efficacious in this country, its place may, perhaps, be supplied by some indigenous vegetable equally antiseptick, and more congenial to the climate. Whether any treatises on Agriculture have been written by experienced natives of these provinces, I am not informed; but since the court of Spain expect to find useful remarks in an Arabick tract preserved in the Escurial, on the cultivation of land in that kingdom, we should inquire for similar compositions, and examine the contents of such as we can procure.

The sublime science of Chymistry, which I was on the point of calling divine, must be added, as a key to the richest treasuries of nature; and it is impossible to foresee how greatly it may improve our manufactures, especially if it can fix those brilliant dyes, which want nothing of perfect beauty but a longer continuance of their splendour; or how far it may lead to new methods of fluxing and compounding metals, which the Indians, as well as the Chinese, are thought to have practised in higher perfection than ourselves.

In those elegant arts, which are called fine and liberal, though of less general utility than the labours of the mechanick, it is really wonderful how much a single nation has excelled the whole world: I mean the ancient Greeks, whose Sculpture, of which we have exquisite remains both on gems and in marble, no modern tool can equal; whose Architecture we can only imitate at a servile distance, but are unable to make one addition to it, without destroying its graceful simplicity; whose Poetry still delights us in youth, and amuses us at a maturer age; and of [17] whose Painting and Musick we have the concurrent relations of so many grave authors, that it would be strange incredulity to doubt their excellence. Painting, as an art belonging to the powers of the imagination, or what is commonly called Genius, appears to be yet in its infancy among the people of the East: but the Hindu system of musick has, I believe, been formed on truer principles than our own; and all the skill of the native composers is directed to the great object of their art, the natural expression of strong patrons, to which melody, indeed, is often sacrificed: though some of their tunes are pleasing even to an European ear. Nearly the same may be truly asserted of the Arabian or Persian system; and, by a correct explanation of the best books on that subject, much of the old Grecian theory may probably be recovered.

The poetical works of the Arabs and Persians, which differ surprisingly in their style and form, are here pretty generally known; and, though tastes, concerning which there can be no disputing, are divided in regard to their merit, yet we may safely say of them, what ABULFAZL (2) pronounces of the MahÃ¡bhÃ¡rat, that, "although they abound with extravagant images and descriptions, they are in the highest degree entertaining and instructive". Poets of the greatest genius, PINDAR, ÃSCHYLUS, DANTE, PETRARCA [18], SHAKESPEARE, SPENSER, have most abounded in images not far from the brink of absurdity; but, if their luxuriant fancies, or those of ABULOLA, FIRDAUSI, NIZÃMI (3), were pruned away at the hazard of their strength and majesty, we should lose many pleasures by the amputation. If we may form a just opinion of the Sanscrit poetry from the specimens already exhibited, (though we can only judge perfectly by consulting the originals), we cannot but thirst for the whole work of VYÃSA (4), with which a member of our Society, whose presence deters me from saying more of him, will in due time gratify the publick. The poetry of MathurÃ which is the Parnassian land of the Hindus, has a softer and less elevated strain; but, since the inhabitants of the districts near Agra, and principally of the Duab, are said to surpass all other Indians in eloquence, and to have composed many agreeable tales and lovefongs, which are still extant, the BhÃ¡shÃ¡, or vernacular idiom of Vraja, in which they are written, would not be neglected. No specimens of genuine Oratory can be expected from nations, among whom the form of government precludes even the idea of popular eloquence; but the art of writing, in elegant and modulated periods, has been cultivated in Asia from the earliest ages: the VÃ¨daâs, as well as the Alcoran, are written in measured [19] prose; and the compositions of ISOCRATES are not more highly policed than those of the best Arabian and Persian authors.

Of the Hindu and Muselman architecture there are yet many noble remains in Bahar, and some in the vicinity of Malda; nor am I unwilling to believe, that even those ruins, of which you will, I trust, be presented with correct delineations, may furnish our own architects with new ideas of beauty and sublimity.

Permit me now to add a few words on the Sciences, properly so named; in which it must be admitted, that the Asiaticks, if compared with our Western nations, are mere children. One of the most sagacious men in this age, who continues, I hope, to improve and adorn it, SAMUEL JOHNSON (5), remarked in my hearing, that, "if NEWTON had flourished in ancient Greece, he would have been worshipped as a divinity": how zealously then would he be adored in Hindustan, if his incomparable writings could be read and comprehended by the Pandits of CashmÃr or Benares ! I have seen a mathematical book in Sanskrit of the highest antiquity; but soon perceived from the diagrams, that it contained only simple elements: there may, indeed, have been, in the favourable atmosphere of Asia, some diligent observer of the celestial bodies, and such observations, as are [20] recorded, should indisputably be made publick; but let us not expect any new methods, or the analysis of new curves, from the geometricians of Iran, Turkistan, or India. Could the works of ARCHIMEDES, the NEWTON of Sicily, be restored to their genuine purity by the help of Arabick versions, we might then have reason to triumph on the success of our scientifical inquiries; or could the successive improvements and various rules of Algebra be traced through Arabian channels, to which CARDAN boasted that he had access, the modern history of Mathematicks would receive considerable illustration.

The Jurisprudence of the Hindus and Muselmans will produce more immediate advantage; and, if some standard law-tracts were accurately translated from the Sanscrit and Arabick, we might hope in time to see so complete a Digest of Indian Laws, that all disputes among the natives might be decided without uncertainty, which is in truth a disgrace, though satirically called a glory, to the forensick science.

All these objects of inquiry must appear to you, Gentlemen, in so strong a light, that bare intimations of them will be sufficient; nor is it necessary to make use of emulation as an incentive to an ardent pursuit of them: yet I cannot forbear expressing a wish, that the activity of the French in the same pursuits may not be superior [21] to ours, and that the researches of M. SONNERAT (6), whom the court of Versailles employed for seven years in these climates, merely to collect such materials as we are seeking, may kindle, instead of abating, our own curiosity and zeal. If you assent, as I flatter myself you do, to these opinions, you will also concur in promoting the object of them; and a few ideas having presented themselves to my mind, I presume to lay them before you, with an entire submission to your judgement.

No contributions, except those of the literary kind, will be requisite for the support of the society; but, if each of us were occasionally to contribute a succinct description of such manuscripts as he had perused or inspected, with their dates and the names of their owners, and to propose for solution such questions as had occurred to him concerning Asiatick Art, Science, and History, natural or civil, we should possess without labour, and almost by imperceptible degrees, a fuller catalogue of Oriental books, than has hitherto been exhibited, and our correspondents would be apprised of those points, to which we chiefly direct our investigations. Much may, I am confident, be expected from the communications of learned natives (7), whether lawyers, physicians, or private scholars, who would eagerly, on the first invitation, send us their MekÃ¡mÃ¡t [22] and RisÃ¡lahs on a variety of subjects; some for the sake of advancing general knowledge, but most of them from a desire, neither uncommon nor unreasonable, of attracting notice, and recommending themselves to favour. With a view to avail ourselves of this disposition, and to bring their latent science under our inspection, it might be advisable to print and circulate a short memorial, in Persian and Hindi, setting forth, in a style accommodated to their own habits and prejudices, the design of our institution; nor would it be impossible hereafter, to give a medal annually, with inscriptions in Persian and Hindi on one side, and on the reverse in Sanscrit, as the prize of merit, to the writer of the best essay or dissertation. To instruct others is the prescribed duty of learned Brahmans, and, if they be men of substance, without reward; but they would all be flattered with an honorary mark of distinction; and the Mahomedans have not only the permission, but the positive command, of their law-giver, to search for learning even in the remotest parts of the globe. It were superfluous to suggest, with how much correctness and facility their compositions might be translated for our use, since their languages are now more generally and perfectly understood than they have ever been by any nation of Europe.

I have detained you, I fear, too long by this [23] address, though it has been my endeavour to reconcile comprehensiveness with brevity: the subjects, which I have lightly sketched, would be found, if minutely examined, to be inexhaustible; and, since no limits can be set to your researches but the boundaries of Asia itself, I may not improperly conclude with wishing for your society, what the Commentator on the Laws (8), prays for the constitution, of our country, that IT MAY BE PERPETUAL.
Notes
Editorial Note

Jones's second anniversary discourse (1785) was first printed in the Asiatick Researches, vol. I, 1784, pp. 405-15. We have used the text contained in The Works of Sir William Jones. With a Life of the Author, by Lord Teignmouth [John Shore], London, printed for John Stockdale and John Walker, 1807, 13 vols. in-8Â°, vol. III, pp. 11-23 [copy preserved in the Library of the Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, shelfmark: 138.407-419]. We have retained the original ortographical and typographycal conventions. Page numbers in bold characters in brackets are those of the above cited edition. Annotations is by the Editor. This edition is part of an initiative tending to produce a large electronic publication of the most important works by the eminent English orientalist and lawyer sir William Jones, founder of the Asiatick Society of Bengal (1784). It springs from the wish to propose some of the outstanding documents of the European reflection on non-European civilisations as impelled by XVIIth-XVIIIth century commercial, colonial and imperial expansion in Asia.

(1) FranÃ§ois Bernier (1620-1688) was a French physician, philosopher (friend and disciple of Gassendi, of whose thought he compiled a synthesis, AbrÃ©gÃ© de la philosophie de Gassendi, 1674) and traveller, who resided at the Mughal court of Aurangzeb between 1659 and 1669. He is author of Histoire de la derniÃ¨re rÃ©volution des Etats du Grand Mogol, Paris, 1670, and of Suite des MÃ©moires du sieur Bernier sur l'empire du Grand Mogol, Paris, 1671.

(2) Abu'l Fadl Allami (1551-1602) was historian and ideologue of the Mughal emperor Akbar the Great. Presented to the Mughal emperor in 1574, he soon became his intimate friend and advisor and helped him both to build the ideological foundation of his claim to a sivine sanction of his authority and to promote the emperor's view of Mughal India as a multiconfessional imperial society. His major works are pervaded by this ideological bias: the Akbar Nama, containing the annals of Akbar's reign to 1602, with an account of his predecessors and genealogy; and the hird part of this work, called Ain-i-Akbar (or The Customs of Akbar), describing the religious views of the emperor, the principles of household administration, the court ceremonials, official ranks and salaries, revenue administration. Abu'l Fadl was murdered at the instigaton of Akbar's heri, Jahangir.

(3) Firdausi, or Ferdowsi, according to the modern European spelling, pseudonym of Abu Ol-qasem Mansur, (b. c. 935-d. c. 1020-26) is the Persian poet author of Shah namah, or Book of the Kings, the Persian national epic, whose earlier prose versions he transformed in a codified text. Nizami, in full Elyas Yusuf Nezami Gan-Javi (b. c. 1141-d. 1209) is considered the greatest romantic epic poet in Persian literature and spent his life under the Seljuchid kings of Persia. His reputation rests on his Kamseh, a pentology of didactic and epic poems totalling 30,000 couplets. The fifth poem of the collection is the Sikandar or Eskander namah, a philosophical portrait of Alexander the Great.

(4) Sanskrit: "Arranger" or "Compiler", also called Krsna Dvaipayana (fl. 1500 BC ?), Vyasa is a legendary figure of Indian sage, traditionally deemed the author of the Mahabharata, a collection of legends and didactic poetry worked around a central heroic narrative. According to legend, Vyasa was the son of the ascetic Parasara and of the Princess Satyasvati and was taught the Vedas by the hermits of the forests where he grew up. He became a teacher himself and a priest and gathered a large group of disciples. He is said to have lived late in life in a cave in the Himalayas, where he would have divided the Vedas, composed Puranas, and dictated the famous poem Mahabharata to his scriba, Ganesa, the elephant god.

(5) Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) is the famous English man of letter, lexicographer and biographer, in whose intimacy Jones entered in 1773, as a member of the Literary Club, of which Johnson was president. It was Johnson that brought Jones's work in the field of Oriental poetry to the knowledge of Warren Hastings, thus contributing directly to the future orientalist's Indian career.

(6) Pierre Sonnerat is a French naturalist, author of an influential Voyage aux Indes orientales et Ã la Chine, suivi d'observation sur le Cap de Bonne-EspÃ©rance, les isles de France et de Bourbon, fait par ordre du Roi dans les annÃ©es 1774-1781, Paris, 1782, 2 vols.

(7) See on this specific point the recent essay Rosan Rocher, Â«Weaving Knowledge: Sir William Jonesand Indian PanditsÂ», in Objects of Enquiry. The Life, Contributions and Influences of Sir William Jones (1746-1794),eds. Garland Cannon and Kevin R. Brine, New York, New York University Press, 1995, pp. 51-79.

(8) Jones is here referring to the famous English lawyer sir William Blackstone (1723-1780), the author of Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-69, 4 vols.). Jones had known Blackstone's work very well, also because of his legal training (he probably attended his lectures at Oxford): he had admiredand recommended it as a reading to his pupils. Jones had though many point of dissent with the opinions of the great English jurist, especially as far the origins of the law is concerned, as the command of final, supreme Hobbesian power for Blackstone, as the product of the aggregate will of the people, the true supreme authority in a Lockean and Rousseauian perspective for Jones. (see on this S. N. Mukherjee, Sir William Jones. A Study in Eighteenth-Century British Attitudes to India, Cambridge, 1968, pp. 56-58)

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