Colonial History of India

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Archaeology and identity in colonial India.
Antiquity; 9/1/2000;
LAHIRI, NAYANJOT


<b>Introduction </b>

<i>`How is it that your countrymen steal our gods?' asked a Brahmin of the Baptist missionary, John Chamberlain who noted the details of this conversation in his diary on 20 November 1817 (Davis 1997: 164): </i>

`Sir, a gentleman whose name I do not remember, came to me to let him take the image of Lukshmee away, which stood on the point where the river and rivulet meet; and he said he would give me a sum of money if I could consent to it. I told him that I could not take any money for it; that she was worshipped by all the people around, and that several times a year the people assembled from the country at a distance to see the goddess, and to bathe: at which time much was offered to her'. The gentleman persisted. He returned four or five times, offered ample remuneration and even took the brahmin by boat to see the assemblage of gods in his Calcutta house, but still the brahmin refused to sell. Finally, the gentleman `got his people together, and took away the goddess by night. There the tree stands, Sir, but the goddess is gone!'

This story, about an Indian priest and a British military officer and antiquarian Charles Stuart (1757-1828), is a useful starting point for a discourse on the theme of <b>archaeology and identity in colonial India</b> on two counts (Fisch 1985). Firstly, it is illustrative of <b>processes that were an integral part of the colonization of India</b> -- <b>the acquisition, control and attempt to alter existing structures -- either through peaceful means, when `ample remuneration' was offered, or by force or deception,</b> when `the gentleman got his people together, and took away the goddess by night'. Secondly, it reminds us that modern interest in the material paraphernalia of India's past coincided with and, in many cases, manifested itself in situations of domination and conquest.

This requires emphasis since much of the literature on the history of the discipline has treated its evolution in terms of the development of a neutral, scientific enterprise, detached from the imperial process and its politics. In sharp contrast, this essay assumes that the evolution of Indian archaeology cannot be discussed without referring to the circumstances in which this process unfolded, those of the creation and expansion of the British colonial state.

Its central argument hinges on the radically different positions occupied by the `colonizers' and the `colonized' and the impact of this on the manner in which archaeology was used by each group to construct the `other' and their own identities. To put it another way, while Charles Stuart, the subject of the above-quoted incident, has been seen by many as the most influential antiquarian of his time in the `age of discovery' of India's material past, from the perspective of the devout worshippers, whose goddess was taken away, antiquarians and things archaeological <b>could only have been the signifiers of an `epoch of loss'. </b>

<b>Connecting archaeology to Empire</b>

The affiliations of archaeology with the British administration of India were close and influenced, at various levels, the ways in which different groups of people perceived it, in relation to themselves and others. I shall highlight some of them, conceding in advance that selectivity has to be exercised in a paper of this length. <b>The first is that self-conscious, systematic surveys of sites and antiquities for the purpose of reconstructing India's historical past were intimately connected with the British need to gather and order information about their subjects in newly acquired territories. </b>

These surveys became part of the East India Company's system of governance and resource mapping under Wellesley (1798-1805), gaining in momentum after the capture of Sri Rangapattana in AD 1799, which practically completed the British conquest of India south of the Vindhya mountains. It was this political context, an unequal relationship of force, that allowed all kinds of British officials, to treat subcontinental sites as an easy hunting ground for antiquities.

Cunningham (1814-93), one of the pioneers of Indian archaeology, is an example of this. He came to India as a military engineer and served as the first Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India from AD 1861 till 1885, with a gap between 1866 and 1870 when the Survey was suspended. <b>That Cunningham regarded his field of interest as a mine which would provide trophies to be carried home is evident from his contract which allowed him a share in the antiquities that he discovered (Roy 1953: 10). </b>

Unfortunately, the bulk of his collection that included a large number of Gandharan Buddhist sculptures (c. 1st to 6th centuries AD) from northwest India, was lost in AD 1887 in a shipwreck off the coast of Sri Lanka. Many other collections, however, found their way to Great Britain and such memorabilia also included parts of old buildings. A prayer niche at the Elgin Museum in northeast Scotland, is one such case, which originally formed the central mihrab in the Sona mosque at Firozpur in Gaur but was removed by Grant, of the Bengal Civil Service, around 1842 and subsequently presented to the museum of his native place (Macdonnell 1905). Clearly, part of the identity of a `colony-returned' British gentleman was the collection of artefacts which he carried back as mementos of his Indian experience (FIGURE 1).


Moreover, since archaeology over a period of time (1861-70 AD), was transformed into a permanent arm of the British Raj, <b>its priorities in terms of research and conservation shifted backwards and forwards in relation to the needs and requirements of the Empire.</b> The discontinuance of Cunningham's field surveys in AD 1866 and the shift towards the documentation of Indian architectural and art remains illustrates the connection.

This was at the instance of the Lords of the Committee of the Council of Education in England who required that photographs, plaster casts and accurate measurements of India's ancient buildings be sent to England (Despatch 1867). This, in turn, is intimately connected to the movement for the reformation of industrial design in England, which several reformist designers -- Gottfried Semper, Owen Jones and Henry Cole, among others -- believed would be accelerated through inputs from traditional Indian ornamental design (Mitter 1977: 221). The archaeological documentation undertaken in India from 1866 until 1870 AD was related to this concern. <b>The visual invocation of India's material past, it was hoped, would prove to be an instrument in improving the inferior and uninspiring standards of design at home. </b>

Similarly, Lord Curzon, Viceroy between 1899-1905 AD, developed an agenda regarding India's historic architecture. Apart from his own deep interest in monuments, this <b>was shaped by the social context in England and by the need to make imperial governance appear more `enlightened'. </b>Historic buildings that had been pillaged or converted into dingy, governmental spaces, such as those in the forts at Delhi, Lahore and Agra which had been built in the heyday of the Mughal empire (1526-1700 AD), were encountered by Curzon across much of India and proved to be an embarrassing reminder of `a century of British vandalism and crime'. So, their restoration came to be perceived as an urgent, necessary step in promoting a more cultured image of colonial rule (Lahiri 1998: 10).

<b>The anxiety to forge such an identity even led, in one instance, to the return of cultural plunder. </b>These were the pietra dura panels in the Red Fort at Delhi, constructed by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in the 17th century AD. These panels were looted by Captain Jones during the revolt of AD 1857 and sold to the British government for 500 [pounds sterling]. Today, they form the backdrop to Shah Jahan's throne, but found their way back to India because of Curzon's initiative. This coincided with a special occasion, the AD 1903 Delhi coronation of Edward VII, so that `the background of the throne should represent to assembled spectators, by a careful restoration to its original condition, not the vandalism of an earlier generation, but the generous enlightenment of a later and more cultured age' (Curzon 1902).

<b>One must remember, too, that if one of the objectives of monument conservation was dismantling signs of colonial violence so as to lend credence to the construction of a beneficent imperial identity, a related concern was that of immortalizing the British presence as one that had suffered much at the hands of `native' violence. </b>

This concern is evident in the repairs undertaken by the Archaeological Survey Department at the Residency and Alambagh in Lucknow. These were meant to preserve, as far as possible, the damage that they had suffered during the revolt of AD 1857. As John Marshall (1908), the Director-General of Archaeology in India, put it: `there is little interest or value attaching to the architecture of any of these buildings, but a great deal attaching to their historical associations, and these associations are largely destroyed when all evidence of the damage sustained in the Mutiny has been effaced'.

Finally, an enduring image, at the heart of many archaeological tracts penned by British scholars of colonial India, was of themselves as the resurrectors of India's past, and the sharp contrast between them and the inhabitants of India. The Bhilsa Topes by General Cunningham, containing the results of his survey of Buddhist sites in the Vidisa region of central India, is a typical example. That British explorers held the keys to unlocking India's history shines through in the poem which forms the conclusion to this work (Cunningham 1997: 368):

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->    Nought but the Tope themselves remain to mock 
    Time's ceaseless efforts; yet they proudly stand 
    Silent and lasting up their parent rock, 
    And still as cities under magic's wand; 
    Till curious Saxons, from a distant land, 
    Unlock'd the treasure of two thousand years, 
    And the lone scene is peopled ...  <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Yet a very different leitmotif was used by Cunningham for representing indigenous people. <b>One encounters `bigoted Musalmans', `avaracious zamindars' (landlords) and destructively rancorous `fiery Saivas' (devotees of the Hindu god Shiva) and they are all represented as vandals. </b>This was a common enough metaphor in archaeological writings and one is reminded here of <b>James Fergusson's (1876: 53) description of the `ruthless Moslim' [sic] and the `careless Hindu' who were supposed to have thoroughly obliterated all traces of ancient cultures in the Ganga valley! </b>

Two issues may be kept in mind as we attempt to interpret these discourses. One is that such stereotyping helped in justifying certain kinds of policies (Chakrabarti 1997: 111).

For one thing, <b>because the `natives' were characterized as unworthy of their ancient material past, unlike the `curious Saxons' who were discovering it, this provided a justification for the physical removal of structural remains and antiquities from their original settings. </b>

The second is that <b>information concerning the interactions between Indians and British officers constantly challenge such stereotypes.</b> For example, most of Jacob's recommendations for restoring the `Tower of Fame', a 15th-century AD monument at Chittorgarh, were those that had already been proposed by the 'native' mason there (Jacob 1903). Again, the restoration of Mughal buildings in the Red Fort at Delhi were based upon a pre-Mutiny work penned by a `native', Syed Ahmed Khan's AtharaI-Sanadid, and translated from the original for John Marshall by another `native' -- his assistant, Maulvi Nur Baksh (Marshall 1902).

<b>So, representations of the irreducible differences between British researchers and Indian inhabitants are best viewed as ideological reformulations of a more general colonial stereotype in which Indians were characterized in terms of unchangeable essences which helped to confirm British power. </b>More importantly, these could not be sustained at the practical level of archaeological research and conservation where the British relied upon local knowledge.

<b>
The Indian perspective: perceptions and resistance </b>

A useful entry point for addressing the question of indigenous identities would be India's living heritage (made up of religious shrines, family memorials and ancestral forts) since this was the cultural ground where `archaeology' and its resonances most deeply affected Indians. It is unlikely that archaeology was viewed as an intellectual pursuit concerned with unravelling India's material past by the average Indian who happened to come in contact with its practitioners.

Instead, archaeologists were generally regarded as persons who were part of the British Sarkar or government. As Vogel (1902), an archaeological surveyor noted, for the `natives', `Sahibs' are `identical to the Sarkar'. This was with good reason since the actual work of conservation and the procurement of antiquities was, on the advice of officers of the Archaeological Survey, executed by government engineers and local administrative officials. We can also see the way in which the world of monuments and artefacts was dovetailed with the domain of government from the fact that they were the agency to which various appeals concerning such issues were directed.

The request, by a section of the Muslim community at Agra, for the restitution of the Mubarak Manzil, a building that was apparently built by the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb (1658-1707 AD) (The Observer 1904); and the appeal by the Jain Digambar Prantik Sabha for custody of 15th-century AD Jain images discovered in Rajputana (Jain Digambar Prantik Sabha 1903), are two such instances. At the same time, government machinery did not merely intervene when appeals like those mentioned above were directed towards it.

<b>On the contrary, religious structures of all kinds were documented, measured, studied and conserved as a part of the general archaeological policy of the British Raj. Consequently, a very real fear came to be increasingly articulated about archaeological work being a government strategy for encroaching into the religious sphere. </b>For instance, the adhikaris (caretakers) of the Radha Ballabha temple in Brindaban petitioned the government in 1902 asking whether the plans and photographs of the temple which were being prepared meant that the government wished to make a claim to its title or possession (Gale 1902).
<b>
That such fears were not entirely unfounded is evident </b>from the case of the Mahabodhi temple in Bihar, which stands close to where Sidhartha Gautama, the historical founder of Buddhism attained enlightenment. Between AD 1876 and 1884, the British government in India spent 200,000 rupees for the purpose of its architectural restoration.<b> More importantly, they believed that by thus repairing it, they had acquired rights over the shrine. </b>

Curzon stated this with more candour than most when he said, that the acts of restoration at Mahabodhi 'seem to involve the gradual assertion of a co-ordinate authority, with power, if not to dispose of the shrine or to expropriate the Mahanth, at least to superintend his superintendence and to control his control' (Lahiri 1999: 37). Shrine guardians and devotees, therefore, frequently regarded archaeological work as something that places of worship had to be protected from lest they altered existing rights. A good example of how this was done comes from the restorations undertaken in the first decade of this century at the Dilwara temples in Abu which were built in the 12th and 13th centuries AD. In July 1904, Seth Lalbhai Dalpatbhai, acting president of the Jain Committee, in his discussion with the Agent to the Governor-General of Rajputana, was categorical in stating that whilst the entire Jain community was anxious to have their temples restored, and were most grateful for the counsel and advice of European officials, it was their express wish and desire that the work should be left entirely under their management and control, and should not be considered in any way government work.

A system was thus evolved by which money was raised entirely by the community, whilst the Jain Committee controlled and managed the work of conservation. The Archaeological Survey and its officers were neither closely nor directly involved because, the Jain Committee seemed to fear that the `Government are trying to get the temples into their own hands, and that these repairs are the thin edge of the wedge' (Cousens 1905).

It is improbable that Indians perceived any distinction between antiquity collectors and archaeologists. Both took away antiquities, including objects of worship, and paid money for them. That several of the images which were removed to museums were under active worship is worth remembering. These ranged from Pala, c. 8th-12th centuries AD, Buddhist statues from Bishenpur in Bihar (Bloch 1904) to Kushana, c. 1st-3rd centuries AD, images from shrines in Mathura (Vogel 1908).

At the same time, these cultural practices also resulted in occasions of resistance, and in circumstances where officers of the Archaeological Survey were required to consider themselves, not simply as persons who treated places of worship as a means of enriching museum collections, but as representatives <b>of a system that encroached upon the integrity of indigenous forms of worship. This is powerfully captured in the 1907 agitation around the Neelichhatri temple at Delhi.</b>

Its genesis can be traced to Marshall's desire to acquire rare Mughal tiles, `green and yellow and red with a wonderful variety of designs -- some of the finest perhaps that exist in India' (Marshall 1907) -- which formed part of the roof of this small Hindu shrine. These, Marshall hoped, could be taken down and put as exhibits in the Naubat Khana Museum. However, as the work of dismantling began, a spontaneous agitation broke out and eventually succeeded, through an appeal to Delhi's Deputy Commissioner, in getting the removal suspended. In this incident, the government was seen to be vandalizing religious structures through its archaeological practices (FIGURE 2), with resistant subjects positioned against such <b>`official vandalism'. </b>

Interestingly enough, <b>here the `colonized' do not appear as marginal voices but as people who, cutting across community lines, could successfully resist such incursions into their religious terrain.</b>

A final related point, though, may be made. This incident should not suggest that Indians only appeared as defenders of their heritage in situations of confrontation.

We know from various British reports that historic structures of various kinds used to be repaired by `native' rulers in their own states, and also through endowments by individuals and groups. The instances cited by Cole, Curator of Ancient Monuments (1880-83), range from historic forts and palaces in the Rajputana states at one end of the spectrum and South Indian temples, at the other end (Curator 1882). One does not have the space here to go into detail, but the point is that the fate of structures with which the annals of their ancestry and their traditions were intermingled, were a matter of concern for various groups of people. These, of course, were maintained through traditional systems of conservation although the Indian people, in such cases, did not use the language or concepts of archaeology as it is understood by us today. <b>Yet, they were involved in preserving their material past or those parts of it that gave them a sense of identity, as good rulers and as devout worshippers. </b>



<b>References </b>

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1908. Letter of 3rd March to John Marshall, File No. 96, Serial Nos. 1-49, March 1907. New Delhi: Archaeological Survey of India. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

NAYANJOT LAHIRI, Department of History, University of Delhi (South Campus), Benito Juarez Road, New Delhi 110-021, India. nlahiri@ndf.vsnl.net.in

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