Colonial History Of India-2

ramana · (This post was last modified: 07-01-2008, 10:27 PM by ramana.)

A very good interview on the basis of the East India Company. The movie Mangal Pandey alludes to this but Indian history books hardly menion it or gloss over it as a minor fact. It is because of this that most Chinese have lot of resentment towards India. THey know its the Brits who did it but Indina merchants and sepoys were part of the trade Note I said sepoys of the East India Company. Most of the Indian trading companies of the 19th century were prosperous because of this trade. This is a blot and needs catharisis for rapproachment with the Chinese.
I came to know this in college when a junior told us he was from Neemuch, MP and his father, a chemist, was the mgr of the govt opium factory! We wondered what was the govt doing that for and found out the history of it all. Its used for medicinal precursor products.

Pioneer, 19 June 2008
QUOTE'India was the biggest opium producing region in the world' 

Sea of Poppies, the latest novel by Amitav Ghosh based on the cultivation of poppy along the Ganga in the Bhojpur region to feed East India Company's opium factories and sustain Britain's illicit opium trade with China that left the imperial coffers in London overflowing with wealth, has just been published. It is a fascinating story that unfolds in the 1830s, centred around Deeti, and reminds us of the journey undertaken by 'girmitiyas' -- indentured workers who signed an agreement or 'girmit' -- across the forbidden kala paani to foreign shores to work in sugar plantations. It is about disinherited nobility, disempowered peasantry, caste, community and kin -- the many identities that make up the Indian identity at home and abroad. The following are excerpts from a conversation between Kanchan Gupta and the celebrated writer that took place on a rain-drenched afternoon in Delhi --

Kanchan Gupta: I am sure it feels great to have your tenth book published. Sea of Poppies has made a big entry and been received with rave reviews. The British newspapers have lavished praise on the book, especially The Times. And this is only the first of a trilogy...

Amitav Ghosh: A trilogy, yes...

KG: So, how do you plan to carry forward the story of Sea of Poppies?

AG: You know, I think my approach to it is going to be like driving a car at night. You can't see very far ahead of what you can see in your headlight. You keep driving slowly down the road so someday you will get there. I don't think that one can have a sense of what it is going to be like at the end of it. The interest and pleasure of it will really lie in the writing.

KG: But surely there's a big picture... there could be various routes to reaching the final destination. Even if you are driving at night you do know where you want to go...

AG: Yes, there are various routes, various options. But you know, two or three years down the line I may decide to take a different route... It's impossible to talk about something that's not written yet.

KG: In a recent article you have mentioned how one of your ancestors travelled from East Bengal to Chapra and although there's no conclusive evidence, most probably he was involved in the opium trade... Is that what triggered your interest or is it that you wanted to build a story up to 1857 since it is very much there in our conscience now?

AG: No, it's nothing like that. You know my interest really began while I was writing the Glass Palace. I became very interested in the whole business of indentured workers. The process of indenture and how it happened.

It's a curious thing about indenture... the children of the indentured workers, I mean the great, great grand children, you know, there are some very great writers among them... VS Naipaul, Shiva Naipaul... some of our greatest contemporary writers... and they have given us a very vivid picture of what it was for the descendents of these people to grow up wherever they happened to be.

But from our end, from the Indian end, we really never had any sense of what happened. How those processes came into being, how the indentured labourers left, what was the mechanism by which they left. And for me this had a very personal connection simply because of my family having lived in the Bhojpur region for a long time.

I wanted to write about the early years, when indenture first started, which is actually in the 1830s. Once I started looking into it and researching it, it became pretty inescapable because, I mean, it's a strange thing that we have so completely forgotten it now, but this was the biggest opium-producing region the world has ever known.

KG: Michael Binyon, in his review of Sea of Poppies in The Times, begins his article with a very telling line, "The British version of history glosses over the time when this country was the world's biggest drug pusher." That was 200 years ago...

AG: Not even 200 years, until the 1920s it was the biggest drug pusher in the world.

KG: And now you have Afghanistan growing the poppies and feeding Europe's hunger for heroin!

AG: You know, we can take no pleasure in that, this is one of those stories. The whole business of drugs is quite an incredibly grim and hideous thing. I mean, I don't think it's a pleasurable irony in that sense. You don't want this scourge inflicted upon any nation. It's good to remind ourselves of this history. You know, really it was these drugs grown in India that brought about the downfall of China.

KG: Some Indian authors have written about indentured labour, or mentioned it in their novels. Sunil Gangopadhyay...

AG: Aachchha? I didn't know about this...

KG: Why did you choose poppy cultivation and the opium trade? It could have been indigo. After all, indigo cultivation and the entire process was equally dehumanising and fed imperial coffers, it was equally devastating.

AG: Indigo and opium are not quite similar, you know. Indigo was a plantation crop, opium was not a plantation crop. There was some idea of converting opium into a plantation crop. So, we must resist the temptation of assimilating them, although they were similar in the sense of imposing a monoculture. But the mechanism was quite different.

These (poppy cultivators) were peasant farmer who basically were given advances to work on the land and it was through this mechanism of credit that things intensified.

KG: How did you think up Deeti?

AG: You know, the difference between writing history and writing novels is that history scholars are there already while in novels sometimes you just have an idea or you have an image. All my novels have begun with certain images, certain pictorial or visual images. And that's how it happened with Deeti.

As much as Deeti sees Zachary (who steers Ibis, the ship carrying indentured labourers to Mauritius, in the book) while she is standing in the Ganga, I similarly had a sense of actually being able to see her. She became for me the centre of the book around whom the story unfolds or anchors itself.

It happens like that. You know, you can't plan a book the nuts and bolts way.

I knew Deeti would be an important character right from the start -- all my characters are important -- but I didn't really expect she would become the central figure the way she has. She did become for me, how shall I say, she became the mast...

KG: She carries the book forward, linking the various strands and layers or the story...

AG: That's right.

KG: And then you built the other characters keeping her in mind or they just happened?

AG: No, no. They are completely individual and separate characters.

KG: Kalua, the 'untouchable' bullock cart driver who rescues Deeti, for instance...

AG: Kalua, too. He is a completely individual and separate character. You know what happened with Kalua (laughs) was when I went to the Mahatma Gandhi Institute in Mauritius -- which is a truly marvellous archive and they have preserved all the earliest papers of the indenture, including the immigration slips - I looked through the papers carefully and I came upon one which had this name Kalua!

It's a strange thing, a lot has been written about these indentured labourers and immigration certificates that they took, but I discovered something which I have never seen anyone comment upon. I will tell you what it is.

See the immigration slips are like this (draws a rectangle in the air) and they have a few printed lines for name, age, caste, appearance, weight. Later they began attaching photographs but on the earlier ones there were no photographs.

All of this is written in English. If you turn the thing over, in the corner it's written in Bangla, you know, little notations are written in Bangla. And that was what really caught my attention. The things that were noted on the back of the slips tell a peculiar history. Each of the notations ended with a Dafadar - for example, Ismail Dafadar, Rafiq Dafadar or Lallu Dafadar and so on.

That's one thing you would see on the back of the slips. And also in Bangla you would see a version of the name of the indentured labourer. So, clearly what happened is that these dafadars were the ones who recruited the indentured labourers and brought them to Kolkata. There he went to some gomusta or serishta, a Bengali babu, to whom he would hand over the slips and he would be told to bring his gang. The gomusta or serishta would ask for the names of those seeking indenture, scribble them on the back of the slips and then put down the dafadar's name who would be paid per head. This would be the initial notation.

The slips were then passed on to another gomusta or serishta, also a Bengali clerk, who would then translate the names into English. So, on the back of the slip in Bangla it is written 'Kalua', on the other side it is 'Colver'! When you see that piece of paper you already see such an enormous journey.

KG: In Trinidad I was told that the corruption of names took place when the indentured labourers got off their ships and English clerks entered their names in ledgers. So Basudev became Basdeo ...

AG: This is the mythology. They had to have the migration certificates before they left. The corruption of names was done by Bengalis sitting in Kolkata! That was to me a real discovery.

KG: Why Mauritius and not Trinidad? After all, Trinidad symbolises everything about indentured labour.

AG: Well, the Trinidad indenture began much later. Mauritius indenture is the first. In proportion of numbers, it's the biggest. Also, it is the only place in the world where the descendents of indentured labourers are a numerically preponderant group.

So, in many ways the Mauritius indenture is the most interesting because it establishes the patterns for all the subsequent indentures. Among the girmitya communities around the world, they look upon the Mauritians as the aristocrats!

KG: We have forgotten that Mauritius was also a penal colony where people were despatched as punishment. People only refer to Andaman islands...

AG: Yes, and prisoners would be stripped and photographed. In a way, the penal colony in Mauritius was the original Abu Ghraib. Photographing them naked was an assertion of control and served the purpose of humiliating the prisoners. It remains the metaphor of the imperial experience.

KG: You have used words that we don't come across every day... a language that was spoken during the East India Company days by the sahibs. The reviewer in The Times could not comprehend most of the stuff. He has written, "But the clothes -- zerbaft brocade, shanbaff dhoti, alliballie kurta, jooties and nayansukh -- or the ranks and offices -- dasturi, sirdar, maharir, serishtas and burkundaz -- are frankly incomprehensible. And that is Ghosh's trick: We clutch at what we can, but swaths of narrative wash over us, just as they did over those caught up in a colonial history they could neither control nor understand."

AG: It's all about assimilation of words. I have used words from the Oxford English Dictionary. Today we hear that English is more absorptive and assimilative, that it has become global. But in the 19th century the role played by Asian languages in English was much, much greater than today. In the 20th century what happened, without being stated, is a purification of English where Asian words were dropped or treated as marginal to English language.Â {Decolonization of English started in 1900s just as assimilation started with the arrival of Sir Thomas Roe in 1600s! Thats why I say the study of humanities is a strategic necessity for it gives precursor or indicators of trends!}

When you read this book, you will find many words that have crept in so completely that they are not even recognised to be foreign. But there's a category of words that even though they are English, appear in the guise of something alien. If they go and look at the Oxford English Dictionary and find these words there, what is The Times going to say? Why are these words any more foreign to English than the other words they are accustomed to? {Because the misson of England has changed. So its suitable for Times to refuse to understand these words which were earlier acquired as part of the colonization project}

We are taught there's a standard English and these are the words that can be used. So, if it's a gun, you can't call it a bandook, although it is in the Oxford English Dictionary. Take for instance balti. If you look up the Oxford English Dictionary, balti is defined as north Indian style of cooking. But actually balti is a Portuguese word which was introduced to Indian languages by the laskars, it meant a ship's bucket. Which Indian will believe balti is not an Indian word?

Languages, for me, are like water, they flow into each other and cannot be distinguished from one another.

KG: You deserve to be complimented for the effortless ease with which you introduce entire phrases and sentences in Bangla and then continue in English. Do you do this because you just take it for granted that the readers will get the hang of it, even if they do not understand Bangla?

AG: Look, when we were kids, we were reading books in English, books which had things like 'potted meat'. I had no idea what potted meat meant, but that didn't stop me from reading the book! You can't expect to understand every word of a book, and why should you? In any book that you are reading there will be things that will elude you, that are going to be outside your comprehensive understanding.

KG: It was a pleasure speaking to you.

AG: We had a very interesting conversation.



I plan to read this book to learn more about that phase of Indian history.

ramana · 07-01-2008, 10:29 PM

History of Indian Medical Service

Note its role in early days of colonization and how the doctors were able to get favors from Indian rulers.

08-10-2008, 07:19 PM

Has anybody read this paper ? How is it ?

http://www.jstor.org/pss/313159

QUOTEMacaulay and the Indian Penal Code of 1862: The Myth of the Inherent Superiority and Modernity of the English Legal System Compared to India's Legal System in the Nineteenth Century

David Skuy

Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Jul., 1998), pp. 513-557Â (article consists of 45 pages)

Published by: Cambridge University Press

ramana · 08-14-2008, 06:27 PM

From BRF
http://rs6.rapidshare.com/files/136944676/313159.pdf

08-16-2008, 10:52 AM

Apologize for making an unrelated post on this thread. But the paper mentions Motilal Chimanlal Setalvad (first attorney general ?) . Somewhere I read one Atul M Setalvad being papa of Teestaji. I wonder if "M" in Atul M Setalvad, to Motilal. That would make Motilalji the grandpa of Teestaji ?

The context in which Motilalji is mentioned in the paper.

QUOTESuch views are not restricted to western scholars. Motital Setalvad, a former Chief Justice of India, praises the introduction of British law without reservation.

----

The paper in itself was interesting altho I was hoping to get more details on how Indigenous legal systems were working at operational level. If there is some reading material regarding that aspect, kindly post only.

Bodhi · 11-04-2008, 01:07 PM

Babu English and Rudyard Kipling Insults

Among the ways in which it is common for many of the British in India to humiliate and insult the Indian people, one of the most unwarranted and galling is that of criticizing their use of English language and laughing at their mistakes. "Babu English" is a phrase of ridicule heard wherever Englishmen (not all, but certain large classes) speak of India or Indians. And singularly enough, it is applied oftenest to the Bengalis, who intellectually, and especially in linguistic attainments and ability, are not second to any Indian people, if to any people in the world. "Bengali Babu" is applied as a phrase of peculiar contempt.

The British rulers of the land insist on Indians everywhere addressing them, conversing and doing business with them, in a foreign language Â¨C the English. Suppose the tables were turned, and those same rulers were compelled to converse and write and do all their business in Bengali, the Hindustani, the Tamil or some other languages of India. Would they make fewer mistakes? Everybody knows they would make far more and worse.

There are no classes of Indians that the English so much dislike and take so much pains to insult as the educated classes. The uneducated they despise, neglect and treat almost as slaves; but they do not take the studied pains to humiliate and insult them as they do those whom they recognize as their equal in intelligence.

As Sir Henry Cotton says:

Â¡Â°The very thought of equality rankles in the EnglishmenÂ¡Â¯s minds; the more intelligent, cultured or intellectual the Indians are the more they are disliked.Â¡Â±

We have the following remarkable tribute to these despised and insulted Bengalis from Hon. G. K. Gokhale of the ViceroyÂ¡Â¯s Council (himself not a Bengali):

"The Bengalis are in many respects a most remarkable people. It is easy to speak of their faults; they lie on the surface. But they have great qualities which are sometimes lost sight of. In almost all walks of life open to Indians, the Bengalis are the most distinguished. Some of the greatest social and religious reformers of recent times, have come from their ranks. Take law, science, literature: where will you find another scientist in all India to place beside Dr. (now Sir) J.C. Bose, or Dr (now Sir) P. C. Ray or a jurist like Dr. Ghose, or a poet like Rabindranath Tagore? These men are not freaks of nature. They are the highest products of which the race is regularly capable."

Such is the race and such are the individual men whom the British take particular pains to ridiculeÂ¡ÂThe Englishman has been the worst offenders against the Indian people in the ways mentioned above, or at least the one whose insults have been most galling because his writings have been so widely read, is Rudyard Kipling. The fact that Kipling was born in India and spent his earlier years there, very naturally causes his readers to take for granted that his representations are true. It is as true as a German or Russian writing about England.

Kipling seems to have cared little for the real India, the great India of the past and the present, with its history and its civilizationÂ¡Âhe seems to take pleasure in heaping ridicule upon the educated classes and in describing the Indian people generally by the use of such contemptuous expressions as Â¡Â°a lesser breed without the law. And new-caught sullen people half devil and half child.

Such of Kipling's writings as are connected with India have always stung the Indian people to the quick. Their popularity in England and the wide acceptance of their misrepresentations as true, have done more than almost any other cause to exasperate leading IndiansÂ¡Â

Professor Gilbert Murray said: Â¡Â°If ever it were my fate to put men in prison for the books they write, I should not like it, but I should know where to begin. I should first of all lock up my old friend, Rudyard Kipling, because in several stories he has used his great powers to stir up in the minds of hundreds of thousands of Englishmen a blind and savage contempt for the Bengali. You cannot cherish a savage contempt for anyone without it being quickly reciprocatedÂ¡ÂÂ¡Â±

But Kipling is not the only offender. It is hardly possible to conceive anything more galling to the Indian people than the tone of condescension with which they are nearly everywhere and always spoken of and referred to by the British, in their books, about IndiaÂ¡ÂIt is the same; they the British, are in India because they are superior (of course, they are white). They are there on a high and noble mission Â¨C the mission to Â¡Â°bear the white manÂ¡Â¯s burden.Â¡Â± Of course, the fact does not count, that for more than 3,000 years before they, the British, came, India ruled herself wholly and was one of the leading nations of the world.

Says The Democrat of Allahabad (June 5, 1921)

http://bbs.chinadaily.com.cn/viewthread.ph...able&tid=553936

**acharya** · 11-12-2008, 06:07 AM

http://www.google.com/archivesearch?q=indi...799&lnav=hist10

1600
1600 - It was the imposition of a prohibitive charge for pepper, made by the Dutch, that led to the formation, in 1600, of the " Old or" London " East India Company, and it was the absurd demands of the Hon'ble East India Company and of England, in connection with the ...It was the imposition of a prohibitive charge for pepper, made by the Dutch, that led to the formation, in 1600, of the " Old or" London " East India Company, and it was the absurd demands of the Hon'ble East India Company and of England, in connection with the American supply of tea, that originated the War of Independence (l77S-?S AD) It was the difficulties of trade with China that ultimately suggested to the East India Company the desirability of ascertaining whether ... more Read more less In brief
From A Dictionary of the Economic Products of India - Related web pages
books.google.com/books?id=jvsYAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PA216

1609
Sep 1609 - It was in September, 1609, that Henry Hudson, despatched from Holland by the Dutch East India Company to search for a northwest route to India and China, came sailing up the river which now bears his name, thinking surely that the long looked for ' passage ' was ...It was in September, 1609, that Henry Hudson, despatched from Holland by the Dutch East India Company to search for a northwest route to India and China, came sailing up the river which now bears his name, thinking surely that the long looked for ' passage ' was found at last. But arriving in the vicinity of where Hudson now stands ... more Read more less In brief
From Ocean to Ocean Or, Weekly Excursions to California... - Related web pages
books.google.com/books?id=Q_EMAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA23

1621
Jun 3, 1621 - On June 3, 1621, a twenty-four-year charter was awarded to the Dutch West India Company, a corporation modeled on its great East India predecessor. These two Dutch companies were the world's largest corporations, possessing at least ten times the capital of ...On June 3, 1621, a twenty-four-year charter was awarded to the Dutch West India Company, a corporation modeled on its great East India predecessor. These two Dutch companies were the world's largest corporations, possessing at least ten times the capital of Britain's Virginia Company. The primary purpose of the new enterprise was to expand trade for the Netherlands throughout the vast area between West Africa and Newfoundland. The company decided that a permanent settlement in ... more Read more less In brief
From New York City - Related web pages
books.google.com/books?id=_A1GDIGAyTQC&pg=PA4

1664
1664 - The French East India Company was established in 1664, and the merchants of that country were forwarding their speculations in India, while the British people were even more clamorous than at present for a " free trade," and against the monopoly of the East India ...The French East India Company was established in 1664, and the merchants of that country were forwarding their speculations in India, while the British people were even more clamorous than at present for a " free trade," and against the monopoly of the East India Companies ; there being at this time four distinct classes of merchants, all of whom were entitled to trade to India under certain conditions. However, this noisy and obstinate opposition at home for the maintenance of ... more Read more less In brief
From The Revenue and the Expenditure of the United... - Related web pages
books.google.com/books?id=L_hCAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA357

1757
Jun 23, 1757 - It was a battle that Britain invaded Bengal of India. On June 23, 1757, both sides started a decisive battle in Plassey, but Bengal troops were defeated. As a result of this battle, the British East Indian Company gained twenty-four tax precincts in Bengal ...On June 23, 1757, both sides started a decisive battle in Plassey, but Bengal troops were defeated. As a result of this battle, the British East Indian Company gained twenty-four tax precincts in Bengal and Britain controlled Bengal completely. The forces of other European countries were pushed out completely. Because Britain robbed Bengal of its lots of wealth and manpower, Britain defeated French easily in the tussle of India, and because Britain won the Plassey Battle ... more Read more less In brief
From è±è¯éè¯»æåèæ¯è¯å¸ - Related web pages
books.google.com/books?id=HunryGsK53AC&pg=PA53

1765
May 1765 - Such were the circumstances under which Lord Clive sailed for the third and last time to India. In May, 1765, he reached Calcutta; and he found the whole machine of government even more fearfully disorganized than he had anticipated. Meer Jaffier, who had some ...Such were the circumstances under which Lord Clive sailed for the third and last time to India. In May, 1765, he reached Calcutta; and he found the whole machine of government even more fearfully disorganized than he had anticipated. Meer Jaffier, who had some time before lost his eldest son Meeran, had died while Clive was on his voyage out. The English functionaries at Calcutta had already received from home strict orders not to accept presents from the native princes. more Read more less In brief
From Critical, Historical, and Miscellaneous Essays - Related web pages
books.google.com/books?id=chg1AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA270

1773
May 1773 - In May, 1773, Parliament passed an act designed to save the East India Company from bankruptcy by changing the way that British tea was sold in the colonies. Under the Tea Act, certain duties paid on tea were to be returned directly to the company. Furthermore ...In May, 1773, Parliament passed an act designed to save the East India Company from bankruptcy by changing the way that British tea was sold in the colonies. Under the Tea Act, certain duties paid on tea were to be returned directly to the company. Furthermore, tea was to be sold only by designated agents, which enabled the East India Company to avoid colonial middlemen and undersell any competitors, even smugglers. The net result was cheaper tea for American consumers. The ... more Read more less In brief
From Revolutionary America, 1763-1815 - Related web pages
books.google.com/books?id=nyI9beOy1oEC&pg=PA40

1783
Dec 1, 1783 - Previously to the above deliverance, on December 1st, 1783, when Burke was Paymaster of the Forces, he had made a great speech on the measure to regulate the Government of India, known as Fox's East India Bill, but which was of course Burke's handiwork. In this ...Previously to the above deliverance, on December 1st, 1783, when Burke was Paymaster of the Forces, he had made a great speech on the measure to regulate the Government of India, known as Fox's East India Bill, but which was of course Burke's handiwork. In this oration he criticises the constitution of the East India Company, and denies its claim to defend its malpractices on the ground of the right conferred by its parliamentary charter. more Read more less In brief
From Edmund Burke, Apostle of Justice and Liberty - Related web pages
books.google.com/books?id=p1kDAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA99

1784
Aug 13, 1784 - Mr. Pitt, who was placed at the head of the new ministry, then brought in his India Bill, on 13th August, 1784. The principal Pitt's In- provisions were, (a) the appointment of dia Bill. a Board of Commissioners, composed of six members of the Privy Council ...Mr. Pitt, who was placed at the head of the new ministry, then brought in his India Bill, on 13th August, 1784. The principal Pitt's In- provisions were, (a) the appointment of dia Bill. a Board of Commissioners, composed of six members of the Privy Council, with power to control all acts, operations and concerns relating to the revenues and civil and military government of India; (6) that all letters sent to, and received from, India, be submitted to the Board, and all ... more Read more less In brief
From Outlines of Indian history - Related web pages
books.google.com/books?id=ZIwBAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA101

1793
1793 - When the East-India Company's charter was last renewed in 1793, those vast regions were given into the hands of the Board of Controul and the Directors of the East India Company ; and though other interests were attended to, those of religion were forgotten by ...When the East-India Company's charter was last renewed in 1793, those vast regions were given into the hands of the Board of Controul and the Directors of the East India Company ; and though other interests were attended to, those of religion were forgotten by the legislature ! and the few missionaries whose zeal has prompted them within these few years, unwarranted by law, and in spite of every discouragement, to labour in the East-Indian field, not being permitted to go out in ... more Read more less In brief
From The Christian observer [afterw.] The Christian... - Related web pages
books.google.com/books?id=fRsEAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA268

dhu · (This post was last modified: 11-15-2008, 06:50 PM by dhu.)

QUOTEThe East India Company very likely evolved into the US entity:

British East India Company flag from 1707:
<img src='http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en-commons/thumb/0/08/180px-Flag_of_the_British_East_India_Company_(1707).svg.png' border='0' alt='user posted image' />

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTEGrand Union Flag 1775
<img src='http://stockholm.usembassy.gov/usflag/images/grandunion.gif' border='0' alt='user posted image' />

Also known as the Continental flag, it is the first true U.S. Flag. It combined the British King's Colours and the thirteen stripes signifying Colonial unity. George Washington liked this design so well that he chose it to be flown to celebrate the formation of the Continental Army on New Years Day, 1776. On that day the Grand Union Flag was proudly raised on Prospect Hill in Somerville, near his headquarters at Cambridge, Massachusetts

Please note that the British East India Company flag is almost identical to the first flag of the United States. Many US historians explain away the similarity as a coincidence, but it is extremely doubtful that the US rebels and "founding fathers" would copy a flag design in use since 1707 by a powerful British company. The only other explanation is that the British East India Company itself evolved or mutated into the current United States of America.

Indians must further explore these connections since the BEIC is known to have committed horrific crimes against the Indian people as well as sponsored Orientalist discourse against the Indian culture. These findings should also reinforce the fact that the Indian experience with the colonial entity closely parallels the Native American experience with the "United States". </div>

QUOTEThe so called patriots and rebels who fought for US independence were not political leaders or common people, but a cabal of English traders who did not want to pay tax without having a representation in the British Parliament. And the principal and most powerful English traders were, of course, the EIC!

The Independence of US explains why the Empire formally dissolved the EIC when opportunity presented with the 1857 incidents in India.

The EIC mutated and evolved as a stronger force.

ramana · 11-13-2008, 12:17 AM

The key is the Boston Brahmins who rule Massachusetts. Try to find their antecedents.

ramana · 11-15-2008, 12:28 AM

Book Revie from Pioneer, 14 Nov 2008

QUOTEThey came, they saw, they conquered, then, they fell in love

Sahibs Who Loved India is an interesting book for post-colonial readers, best appreciated without the legacy of the past weighing heavily on the reader's sense of history, feels Debraj Mookerjee

Sahibs Who Loved India
Author : Compiled and Edited by Khushwant Singh
Publisher Tongue

enguin Viking,
Price: Rs 325

The book under review is a compilation born out of a strange quirk of fate. Here is the story in the words of Khushwant Singh, who has compiled and edited it, "Sometime in February this year, my son Rahul, who lives in Mumbai, redirected a bound manuscript of articles I had commissioned over thirty years ago for the now defunct Illustrated Weekly of India. The man who sent it was Philip Knightley, once editor of the The Sunday Times of London. He was not sure whether or not I was still around, so he sent it to my son to do whatever he wanted with it."

Sahibs Who Loved India presents an interesting kettle of fish for the post-colonial reader. Off hand, it is a collection of personal pieces by Englishmen and women who worked in one capacity or another in the last days of the Raj. They were all, Khushwant Singh reminds us, people who "stayed away from racist clubs, went out of their way to befriend Indians and maintained contacts with them after returning to England. Some of them even lent tacit support to the freedom movement and stayed on in India ..." Nevertheless, there is solid postcolonial angst among many in India today. This constituency would choose to resists even the friendly word sent across the seas. The politics behind such a position is almost inexorable, and almost difficult to argue with. Perhaps the time has come when we can, indeed must, go beyond the narrow discourse of postcolonial engagement with the West. Only when we do so can we rightly claim to have heaved off the baggage of an unequal relationship we have carried for so long. Khushwant Singh's book is best appreciated if read without the legacy of the past weighing heavy on the reader's sense of history.

In EM Forster's Passage to India, when Aziz and Fielding take their last ride together, a rock bifurcates their path, as if to suggest Indians and Englishmen cannot ride together as friends. "Why can't we be friends now?" Aziz asks. "It's what I want. It's what you want." But India answers: "No, not yet... No, not there." Contributor Philip Crosland, who ended his India career as General Manager of the Statesman, having worked as Resident Editor earlier, captures the essence of Forster's sentiment well, though from a happier perspective: "India's freedom ... removed the last psychological impediment to uninhibited friendship between individuals of the two races and the Briton ... ceased to be a ruler and became a friend." The 22 memoirs, contributed by bureaucrats, journalists, educationalists, surveyors, engineers and soldiers are marked by the outpouring of friendship and love, for the people of India, and the country's myriad cultural and aesthetic nuances.

An interesting aspect of these narratives is the occasional reference of people and places that have a larger than life place in our consciousness today. Crosland writes about the Indian Coffee House on Chittaranjan Avenue which the staffers of Statesman frequented. Divided into the house of 'Commons' and 'Lords', the coffee house seated an assemblage of worthies: Satyajit Ray, one among a "galaxy of talent from an advertising agency ... yet to make a film, but a quarter way through making Pather Panchali. He also speaks about meeting Chidananda Das Gupta (film critic), Aparna Sen's father! Of course there are numerous meetings mentioned by other contributors where the name of Mrs Gandhi (as a child), the Mahatma and Netaji keep cropping up, but sans the reverence associated with their posthumous fame.

Philip Knightley, who collected and despatched these 22 pieces to Khushwant Singh through his son, contributes a lively piece. He landed in India en route to Australia. Instead, he married an Indian girl and stayed on, learning to alter his 'cycle of life', as it were, upon the advice of his physician, Dr Massa, "a spiritual Easterner who, by mistake, was born in the West." In general terms, Knightley writes, "Westerners eat and drink too much, take their work too seriously and think sleeping in the afternoon is decadent." He himself chose to eat "nothing for breakfast, dal and a chapatti or two for lunch, and a light dinner. I bought a motor scooter, took up tennis, cut my living allowance to Rs 10 a day and never felt better in my life." In tenor and sentiment, Knightley's confession mirrors what many of the contributors continually stress -- that India demands both an effort at learning (about its infinitesimal details) and, perhaps, a greater effort at unlearning (the historical baggage that is brought along from the home country).

Sahibs Who Loved India is a book born out of love. It is the leitmotif of the book. Every writer prefaces his or her piece with the untiring love and affection felt for India and Indians. A cynical mind might interpret this as the patronising tilt of a humble master. Sometimes it is easier to love and be emotional, than to be rational and respectful. Your innate humanity can make you love the beggar on the street for a split second, but you wouldn't think of having him over for dinner, would you?

These pieces were written some thirty or more years back. The terms of engagement between free India and the West were still being defined back then. Today, many an Englishman settled here, as bankers or project engineers, would be chary of overstating their 'love' for the country; it would almost be politically incorrect to do so. In defence of those who have written these 22 pieces, India perhaps presented to them a conundrum that was best understood through love and affection. Many of them state their desire to be reborn here. Should their wish come true, they might find some other vocabulary to express their feelings for India.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

dhu · 11-15-2008, 06:54 PM

QUOTE(ramana @ Nov 15 2008, 12:28 AM)They came, they saw, they conquered, then, they fell in love

Sahibs Who Loved India
Author : Compiled and Edited by Khushwant Singh
[right][snapback]90149[/snapback][/right]


Orientalist love and liberal paternalism mirrors the way in which the pedophile loves the little child. It is a form of fetishistic possession and donning the clothes of the defeated native.

**acharya** · 11-17-2008, 12:21 PM

QUOTE(dhu @ Nov 15 2008, 01:24 AM)<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(ramana @ Nov 15 2008, 12:28 AM)They came, they saw, they conquered, then, they fell in love

Sahibs Who Loved India
Author : Compiled and Edited by Khushwant Singh
[right][snapback]90149[/snapback][/right]


Orientalist love and liberal paternalism mirrors the way in which the pedophile loves the little child. It is a form of fetishistic possession and donning the clothes of the defeated native.
[right][snapback]90191[/snapback][/right]
</div>
They consider Indians as sissy and whoozies.
They look at Indians as playful people to be played and manipulated as required.

**acharya** · 11-19-2008, 10:31 AM

*

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01-26-2009, 12:59 AM

Evangelicalism, Masculinity, and the Making of Imperial Missionaries in Late Georgian Britain, 1795-1820
by William C. Barnhart

And whither can the fainting eye of human misery turn, but to this

Quote: great Protestant Empire, which God appears to have aggrandized, at
the present momentous period, with the design of employing her as
the herald of mercy to mankind? (1)

THIS QUOTE FROM Daniel Wilson, evangelical cleric and future Anglican bishop of Calcutta, reflects several ways in which religion and imperial interests were connected in the early nineteenth century evangelical propaganda in support of foreign missions. According to Wilson, Britain enjoyed a unique status as God's chosen nation, whose great Protestant religion was an important component of its growing overseas empire. For Wilson and other evangelicals, the "signs of times" suggested that it was Britain's divinely ordained mission to rescue indigenous peoples by extending to them the benefits of civilization and true Christianity. To support such a project, the evangelical press highlighted the mutually beneficial relationship between evangelization and the furtherance of imperial interests, and also constructed an image of a missionary hero who embodied all of the qualities necessary to carry out such an important task. How do we explain this connection between empire and foreign missions in evangelical propaganda? As the historian Andrew Porter recently pointed out, the formative era of the new evangelical missionary societies was a difficult one, and this may partly explain the convergence of religious and imperial interests in evangelical discourse. Plagued by a lack of suitable missionary candidates, lack of funding, a degree of public suspicion of missions, and sometimes the hostility of colonial and military authorities, missionary societies were compelled to highlight the imperial benefits of evangelization to sustain their cause. (2) This was especially true regarding India, where commercial officials remained cautious in their support of missions in order to avoid upsetting indigenous religious sensibilities. (3) It should also be noted, however, that the evangelical ideas of the empire were closely tied to late eighteenth century discussions of class, race, gender, politics, and nationhood, themes that have been explored in several important works. (4) This article will examine both those points in missionary propaganda when evangelicals positioned themselves as committed imperialists, and how this imperial spirit related to ideas of British nationhood. By employing numerous references to imperial affairs and the role evangelicals were assigned in the "sanctifying" of imperial conquests, missionary propaganda appealed to the religious and martial sensibilities of the public, while simultaneously cultivating an idea of nationhood, which stressed Protestant Britain's national mission to save the world, as well as ideas of British cultural, intellectual, and political supremacy. This article will also explore the ways in which notions of masculinity combined with imperial themes in the evangelical press to construct an image of the missionary as a type of national hero. Between 1795 and 1820, the evangelicals promoted foreign missionary service as a particularly masculine pursuit. Embodying the physical and moral virtues necessary for evangelization in a foreign climate, the evangelical missionaries were glorified as heroes on a par with scientists and explorers, such as Captain Cook, who were also identified with imperial progress.

By 1763 and the end of the Seven Years War, the British Empire had changed. Although conceived in conquest, the prewar empire was perceived as mainly informal and commercial in nature, centering on the mostly white and Protestant North American colonies. As a result of victory in the Seven Years War, however, the empire grew to contain a much larger number of non-white people and non-Christian inhabitants, especially in India and the Caribbean, who were unable to enjoy the rights of freeborn Englishmen. (5) This growing "Empire of Conquest," as Kathleen Wilson observed, provoked new concerns as it encompassed tremendous racial and religious diversity and seemed to legitimize more authoritarian types of governance. (6) For certain sectors of the British public, political hegemony entailed a greater degree of responsibility for the moral and spiritual well-being of the indigenous subjects as anxieties about the growing number of imperial subjects and allegations of corruption and abuse of power among East India Company officials in India helped to stimulate a humanitarian impulse in evangelical Protestant circles. (7) There were concerns among contemporaries that the greed, vice, and misrule that allegedly characterized colonial rule in India might also have a damaging effect on Britain itself by threatening traditional liberties and the moral health of the nation. (8)

During the 1780s, evangelicals of all denominations mobilized to delegate themselves as those most qualified to oversee the moral health of both the nation and the empire, claiming that their organizations were the best vehicles not only to reform the homefront, but also to spread true (i.e., Protestant) religion and civilization across the globe. This sense of national mission and belief in Britain's status as a chosen nation, whose providential task was to Christianize and civilize the "heathen" across the globe, were key elements in ideas of nationhood in the late eighteenth century. (9) For example, according to Reginald Heber, second Anglican bishop of Calcutta, Britain's commercial success, overseas discoveries, and great empire, were indications of her special mission to promote the gospel, and because they were blessed with such an empire, the public was urged to "sanctify" their political privileges by supporting foreign missions. (10) Missionary work was portrayed as essential to the moral cleansing of the nation and would complement scientific and commercial advances, as the following hymn demonstrates:

Quote: Shall science distant lands explore,
Commerce her wealth convey,
Shall sin extend from shore to shore
Its desolating sway?
And shall there not be Christians found,
Who will for Christ appear,
To make a stand on Heathen ground,
And preach salvation there?
Shall Britain to remotest climes
Transmit her guilt alone,
And not (with her infectious crimes)
Make her great Saviour known? (11)

In promoting Christian civilization, the Britons might disprove their image as a "horde of merchants, who, instigated only by base thirst of gain, fatten on the spoils of pillaged provinces" and refute Napoleon's claim that Britain was nothing more than a nation of shopkeepers. (12) Thus, the British nation was still unconverted, and global evangelization would aid in its moral recovery and help complete the reformation process begun in the sixteenth century. (13) The loss of the American colonies, the unsavory behavior of the East India Company as publicized by the Hastings' trial, native idolatry, and slavery were all issues that provoked the ire of a broad spectrum of evangelical opinion. (14) For the evangelicals, the twin causes of abolition of the slave trade and overseas evangelization were crucial to the nation's moral recovery. For example, one scholar of the British antislavery movement views the American Revolution as a crucial event in the mobilization of public opinion against slavery. The defeat at the hands of the Americans led to a reevaluation of imperial interests and calls for political and religious reforms. Britain now had to atone for the national sin of going to war against fellow Protestants, and abolition of the slave trade could be a kind of repentance. (15) Through such activities, the evangelical abolitionists and missionary supporters believed Britain would usher in a new age of universal enlightenment and an "eventual time of jubilee world-wide." (16) The Reverend Thomas Raffles, a Congregationalist minister affiliated with the London Missionary Society, proclaimed that a new era had begun with the missionary movement. Not only was Britain a world leader in arts and arms, but also in the expansion of Christianity:

Quote: But Britain is awakening now to justice; the debt which she has been
accumulating for ages, she is about to pay; she is preparing to
balance with the world her vast account: and whilst she dispenses
justice to those to whom the mighty sum is due, she stretched forth
the liberal hand of her spontaneous bounty to millions who never
heard her name. (17)

In this sense, eschatological expectations figured heavily in evangelical ideas of nationhood, and the missionary awakening occupied a central position in millennial thought. Missionary millennialism, given shape during the Revolutionary Era, called for the conversion of the heathen, Jews and Catholics, that would usher in the Second Coming. (18) According to Thomas Raffles, as God's chosen nation, Great Britain was best suited to fulfill biblical prophecy because of its evangelizing spirit and libertarian heritage:

Quote: Who has not turned with rapture to Great Britain, the missionary,
the Bible society, the Instructress of the globe, the ark of
freedom, the Asylum of liberty, the couch on which outcast monarchs
may recline at ease? Who does not cherish the delightful hope that
God is about to make Great Britain, by her Bibles and her
missionaries, the herald to prepare the way for the second coming
and universal reign of the messiah? (19)

In a letter to The Times in 1818, the Reverend Daniel Wilson enumerated additional signs of the approaching millennium, such as:

Quote: Our immense Indian Empire, our increasing commerce, the reviving
piety which seemed to descend from Heaven all around, the example
of other religious communities, the warning hand of Divine
Providence in the commotion of the European states, the long
reproach which had rested on the church for her remissness in
this labor, the comparatively small exertions of the only two
societies within her pale which had any concern with
missions.... (20)

Along with millennial expectations, Wilson's remarks highlight the frustration felt among Anglican evangelicals who saw the Church of England falling behind in the establishment of foreign missions as dissenting evangelicals launched the new foreign missionary organizations of the 1790s. Prior to the 1790s, the earliest evangelical foreign missionary efforts were those of continental Protestants such as the Moravians. (21) In 1792, however, the Baptist Missionary Society (BMS) was formed in England through the efforts of William Carey, a cobbler from Nottingham who later went on to celebrated missionary work in India. Inspired by the records of Cook's voyages and the formation of the BMS, the ecumenical but later Congregationalist-dominated London Missionary Society (LMS) was established in 1795 to focus on evangelization in Africa and the Pacific Islands. The Anglican evangelicals finally responded with the formation of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in 1799 to improve upon earlier missionary efforts made by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG). Because the older SPG failed to keep pace with the rapid expansion of the empire beyond North America, the CMS reflected shifting imperial interests after the American Revolution, and targeted Africa and Asia as spheres of activity. Overall the Anglican evangelicals brought a new missionary energy to the established church that was on the decline toward the end of the eighteenth century. (22) Thus, by 1800, the evangelicals of various denominations were synonymous with the foreign missionary movement in England to the extent that some even used the label "evangelical" to describe only those clerics who supported the foreign missionary cause. (23) That the foreign missionary movement in Britain emerged during a period of war with France and continued overseas expansion was a consideration not lost on its supporters who used both the wartime and imperial contexts to underscore the providential nature and durability of their cause. (24) Even in the midst of war, the evangelicals boasted, Britain remained committed to freedom and justice: "A friend of the oppressed--with a naval superiority unequaled in the history of the world and with an ardent zeal glowing in the hearts of multitudes to communicate their religious advantages, by means of this naval power, to other nations." (25) Because the British were such a "great maritime and commercial people," they had the power to extend their advantages, especially the Gospel, to millions in India. (26) The Protestant missionary enterprises, then, also went hand-in-hand with British naval expansion. (27) Indeed, the French Wars provided an effective backdrop for missionary propaganda, as they not only demonstrated Britain's military prowess but also gave the missionary project a heightened sense of urgency and optimism. A poem commemorating the anniversary of the LMS conveys this theme:

Quote: Oh! happy days--Oh! highly favored hour,
When patriot-passions beat in every vein;
When every bosom owns compassion's power.
And weeps the wide extent of Satan's reign.
Yes, we deplore--but not devoid of hope
Our prospects brighten as the scene expands;
We hail the era that gives ample scope
To all the energy of Britain's hands.
Urged on by love, her hands can never withdraw
Till every nation learn Jehovah's law. (28)

An 1804 hymn sung at the departure of the Baptist missionaries from Bristol to Serampore, India, celebrated the nobler aspects of their efforts during a time of war:

Quote: Farewell to the Missionaries.
From Indian plains, on albion's shore
See gold, and gems, and fragrance smile;
But Britain, in a richer store,
Returns it from our native isle.
Lo! with the gospel's glorious prize,
With truths irradiant as the sun,
In vain the sparkling treasure vies;
We sent the pearl of price unknown.
The nations feel the pangs of war,
And wrath with boundless tumult reigns;
And Gallic fury raves from far,
And British heroes fill the plains:
But Zion's gentler hosts engage,
Impatient for nobler fight,
Through every land the war to wage,
And put confederate worlds to flight. (29)

In the above hymn, the gospel is considered more valuable than any luxury item from Asia, and missionary work assumes a martial character that was fairly typical of evangelical missionary propaganda. Similarly, Melville Horne, a principal founder of the LMS, called for a missionary spirit equal to the zeal of British sailors and soldiers. He wanted missionary stations set up in all the major cities of the British Empire, just as the Apostles created churches in Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome. (30) In a letter to The Times in 1813, one missionary apologist predicted that

Quote: Future ages will tell with astonishment, that in the midst of a most
awful and perilous war, while infidelity was triumphant abroad, and
kingdoms were crumbling around us, Britain should rise in the
greatness of her strength, and the majesty of her benevolence, with
one hand to dash in pieces the chains of the oppressor, and with the
other to hold out the everlasting gospel to the inhabitants of every
region under heaven. (31)

Thus evangelization did not merely follow in the wake of military expansion, but both encouraged and played an active role in the creation of an overseas empire. (32) Of all Britain's imperial holdings, India held out the most promise for evangelical missionary energies. Closely identified with the prosperity and imperial supremacy of Britain, India was deemed strategically, economically, and politically of vital importance. In evangelical missionary propaganda, it was essential that India be protected from the political ambitions of France and the Catholic missionaries. In 1813, one commentator in The Times noted that the hundreds of petitions to both houses of Parliament in favor of wider missionary work on the subcontinent reflected the concern that India might come under the sway of the Papacy and France. (33) In an article he wrote while a student at Cambridge, Hugh Pearson, Claudius Buchanan's biographer, suggested that to combat the potential dangers of Roman Catholicism, the scriptures had to be translated into the vernacular throughout India. (34) Likewise, his mentor, Buchanan, in an 1810 commencement sermon, called for a Protestant establishment in India to counter the Franco-Papal threat. (35)

To further their cause, the evangelicals claimed that missionary expansion in India provided Britain with political, economic, and military advantages in the region. Influential Anglican evangelicals, such as Charles Grant, highlighted the political expediency of missions in India with their argument that the introduction of Protestant missions contributed to stability throughout the Asian empire. (36) To their critics who warned that missions might subvert the empire by upsetting Indian religious sensibilities, the evangelicals, such as Horne, replied that missionaries "abhorred every doctrine that disturbs the peace of society." He promoted missionary work as a stabilizing force in India and added that the general character of the Indians was such that rebellion was highly unlikely. (37) The missionary Joshua Marshman found it difficult to separate his desire, politically, to strengthen the empire, and his desire to convert the Indians to Christianity. He concluded that the best way to safeguard the empire was the propagation of Christianity. (38) In this line of argument, a strong missionary presence in India would ensure both commercial and military stability, and as the Indians became more civilized, they would demand more disposable commodities from Britain, thus greatly expanding the market. (39) Military and strategic advantages would be secured by forming a "brotherhood" of Christians in India loyal to the British crown, thereby minimizing the threat of rebellion and deterring Britain's enemies from attacking India with such a potentially fierce and loyal Christian community. (40)

In part, this proimperial rhetoric stemmed from the East India Company's rather cool attitude toward the missionary work in India, especially in the aftermath of the Vellore Mutiny of 1806 when the Sepoys killed 200 Europeans. The evangelical leaders were forced into a kind of defensive posture and espousing the imperial benefits of missionary projects helped to legitimize their cause. Not only were missionary projects tainted by their identification with evangelical "enthusiasm" and the influence of dissenting religious bodies, but there was also a concern among East India Company officials that if evangelization went unchecked, both Hindus and Muslims alike would mistakenly associate religious conversion with official government policy in India. Following the events in Vellore, the "India question" gained much publicity, prompting William Tennant to remark that there was perhaps "no other subject on which information is more generally wanted." Both supporters and critics of the missions in India prepared to do battle in the press in the years leading up to 1813, when the East India Company's charter was up for renewal. (41)

To supplement their growing influence in government circles, the evangelicals publicized their various causes through the expanded medium of print and extraparliamentary activities such as local and national meetings sponsored by various missionary societies. In this regard, missionary publicists took advantage of an effective organizational framework created by antislavery societies, with whom they forged a close affiliation. Like their abolitionist colleagues, missionary supporters circulated petitions, artifacts, and prints; presented magic-lantern shows; formed local auxiliary networks; and called annual meetings in London to discuss news, elect officers, and hear sermons. (42) The decisions concerning how and from whom to solicit contributions were usually made by the elected committees of the LMS and CMS at regular meetings in London. The importance of London as the epicenter of the missionary movement and antislavery efforts cannot be overstated: it was the headquarters of Anglican evangelicalism, most notably at Clapham, and a main site of middle class influence both within and outside Parliament. (43) Various tracts, pamphlets, sermons, and periodicals were printed in London and distributed to localities throughout England. Ministers who attended missionary meetings in London returned to their provincial churches and formed local auxiliaries for the collection of voluntary contributions.

Both the annual meetings in London and the auxiliary meetings in the provinces reportedly drew crowds ranging anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand people, and were designed to elicit attention to missionary projects from all ranks of society. (44) Of the LMS's first general meeting in 1795, the Reverend Rowland Hill's biographer wrote:


There were present about two hundred ministers of various
denominations, forming a most impressive and animating spectacle,
which has been repeated for many years on the second Wednesday in
May, in the same place. The missionary day at Surrey Chapel was,
to its devoted pastor, in the brightest sense, a gala. (45)



While contributions and subscriptions for missionary projects were solicited from all quarters of the British public, children were often singled out as primary marketing targets for promoters of the new missionary societies. A more rational view of children and childhood emerged in the eighteenth century that placed more confidence in their ability to understand moral precepts and act in a civilized manner. As a result, children overall were deemed potential consumers of new toys, books, and other goods enjoyed for both pleasure and instruction. This new appreciation of a child's moral capacity also found expression in children's literature, which often contained themes designed to entertain and teach children about a variety of moral evils such as the slave trade and degraded condition of indigenous peoples. (46) Similarly, to encourage a missionary spirit among the young, the CMS sponsored such games as "Missionary Outposts" and "Missionary Lotto," and in 1812, the first Juvenile Auxiliary Missionary Society was formed in Bristol with others following in Hull and in London. (47) The LMS-affiliated Evangelical Magazine included a "Juvenile Department" replete with descriptions of native practices designed to shock young readers, such as the ways in which natives tried to gain pardon for "sins":

Quote: One makes a vow to keep his fist clenched till the nails go through
the back of his hand; another hangs himself by the middle of the
body upon an iron hook. Many offer up their children to a river,
which they worship as a god, by putting the poor little creatures
into baskets, and throwing them into the water to be devoured by
crocodiles. Not a few burn widows alive along with the corpses of
their departed husbands. Some bring their poor aged sick parents to
the banks of a river at low water, and leave them there, that
when the tide rises it may wash them away; but others even eat them,
and choose that time of the year when limes and salt are cheap,
because they use them to season the flesh of their parents and make
it palatable. (48)

Young readers were also told of the poor financial state of the CMS and that they too could help. Instead of spending their pocket money on "toys, fruit, gingerbread, or pastry"--things that were bad for them--children were urged to put some of that money toward a collection for the missionary society in the hopes that someday, they, too, might become missionaries. (49) These young readers, especially males, targeted by the evangelicals as not only consumers, but also as potential missionaries, had to be persuaded that missionary service was among the most noble and honorable occupations, one that would test the limits of their manhood and all but guarantee them a spot in the ranks of imperial heroes. Missionary work was thus celebrated by the evangelicals as a manly pursuit, not to be undertaken by the faint of heart or those considered too "soft." (50) The ideal of foreign missionary service provided a bridge between competing notions of manliness in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The older ideas of manhood associated with the landed gentry included values, such as physical strength, that could be demonstrated through military skill or hunting and riding, along with social activities such as drinking and gambling. The new ideal of Christian manliness, as defined by the evangelical middle class, stressed the refinement of one's moral character through prayer, hard work, self-discipline, and more godly pursuits. According to Davidoff and Hall, the evangelical and other voluntary societies "provided alternative structures to the social calendar of the aristocracy and gentry with their hunts and race meetings linked to the agricultural seasons, and to the clubs and coffee houses frequented by middle class men in the eighteenth century." (51) Images of missionaries, as constructed in the evangelical press, appropriated the more physical attributes of aristocratic manliness and combined them with newer, evangelical notions of masculinity that stressed such moral and religious virtues as charity and sacrifice. Thus, as well as personal piety, missionary service required physical stamina and endurance in order to survive the rigors of a foreign climate.

Indeed, Anglican evangelicals saw expanded missionary efforts as a way to inject new life into a national church that, in their view, was plagued by both an entrenched complacency and clerics who neglected their spiritual duties. The country "squarson," who spent most of his time in leisurely pursuits while ignoring his parish duties, was a favorite target for middle class evangelicals who demanded a more active parish in which "vital" Christianity could be promulgated. (52) In 1797, William Wilberforce explained that the need to promote "vital" Christianity stemmed from an increase in the number of "nominal" as opposed to "real" or "practical" Christians. With new wealth generated by industrialization, more citizens were lulled into religious complacency and were thus more susceptible to the irreligion of the French. (53) Too many clergymen, it was argued, undertook the "employments of the country gentleman" and mingled with the "landed interest in almost every kind of secular business." (54) Melville Home criticized the "soft pulpits and well-dressed congregations, snug livings and quiet cures, good food and decent clothes" of Anglican clergy. He suggested they get out and do the dirty work of Christian missionaries who were men of "discipline and self-command" and whose characters were "divested of sloth, effeminacy, and indulgence." (55) Another interpretation held that because the British men prospered in a secure, tranquil environment, there was a tendency to "nourish a softness of mind, and to produce an indisposition for encountering the hardships to which a residence in Africa might be subject." (56) In short, aristocratic pleasure seeking had infiltrated the religious sphere and threatened to undermine the martial aspect of Protestant evangelization that was such an important component of imperial expansion.

To counter such tendencies, the evangelical propaganda glorified missionary service as a courageous and masculine occupation to which all young men should aspire, and urged sincere Christian parents never to dissuade their sons from careers as foreign missionaries. Because a minister's place at home could easily be taken over by another, missionary work in foreign lands was promoted as more important, if not superior to, service in Britain. Young men were invited to join the ranks of famous missionaries such as David Brainerd, whose work in North America was often invoked to give missionary service a heroic quality, and after returning home from missionary service among the "heathen," the potential recruits were promised an honorable reception in England. (57) In a letter to The Times in 1818, the Reverend Daniel Wilson declared that foreign missionary service was the highest form of heroism:

Quote: What is so heroic as to quit the comforts of our native land, and
cheerfully to encounter the danger of a foreign climate, and all the
labors and sufferings incidental to missionary undertakings? Surely
there treads not on this earth a man so truly magnanimous as the
faithful missionary! (58)

The Baptist Robert Hall commented that those best able to extend the gospel were Protestant missionaries who carried out their work with a "manly and heroic prudence." (59) The implication here is that evangelical missionaries, who represented both the masculinity and Protestant sensibilities of the nation, would rescue indigenous peoples, especially the Indians, from their backward, effeminate cultures:

Quote: Anxious to learn, and capable of learning, they will advance with
accelerated speed in the paths of science and religion. The
advantages of British refinement, and the blessings of Protestant
Christianity, will open on their view. From our commerce they will
obtain affluence, from our manners civilization and from our
instruction manliness and independence. (60)

The South Seas provided another important site for the interplay of missionary manliness and imperial sentiment in the evangelical press. Much interest was generated in the Pacific region in the mid-eighteenth century because of the efforts of scholars, traders and explorers. As Peter Marshall and Glynder Williams note, "Between the ending of the Seven Years War in 1763 and the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars thirty years later, Britain and France in particular experienced a 'Pacific Craze,' in which a new type of national hero emerged in the shape of naval explorers and itinerant scientists." (61) The evangelicals added Protestant missionaries to the list of national heroes associated with the British Empire in the Pacific. For the LMS, who sent their first missionaries to Tahiti in 1797, it was imperative that evangelical Christians took advantage of Captain Cook's discoveries of the 1770s. (62) Thomas Haweis, one of the first promoters of the LMS, believed the Pacific held out special promise for missionary work. The islands contained fertile soil, a healthy climate, uncivilized natives that were no match for the Europeans, and a commercial interest in the region that would foster civilization. (63) Of Cook's discoveries, the Reverend James Johnston claimed that missionaries were "making an improvement which to the mere geographer could never have occurred." (64) For the evangelicals, the "improvement" to which Johnston referred was Britain's civilizing mission in the Pacific, and the missionary press offered the British public an alternative image of Polynesians that was in direct contrast to the idea of the "noble savage" celebrated by previous observers of South Seas' societies. (65) For example, the Reverend James Johnston deplored the celebrated image of Pacific Islanders in vogue in literary circles by the late eighteenth century:

Quote: Looking to man with an eye distorted by 'philosophy and science
falsely so called,' they form the most unjust notions of what is
the most proper state and situation for a reasonable being. They
seem to consider that to be the more perfect state of man, which
is farthest from civilization. They paint the manners of the rude
heathen in such glowing colors, as if they proposed them for
patterns to the rest of the species. (66)

The evangelical press through sermons, periodicals, and official reports, highlighted the degraded state of the Polynesians with sensational reports of sexual promiscuity, nudity, human sacrifice, and infanticide. To eliminate such practices and transplant true Christianity to the South Seas would necessitate a degree of personal faith, diligence, self-sacrifice, and sense of duty, which only the evangelical missionaries enjoyed. Additionally, the missionary projects in the Pacific, as those in India, would secure for the Britons a sense of moral superiority that was in stark contrast to the French imperial ambitions in the regions But what of the appropriate social origins and qualifications of the new missionary hero articulated by evangelicals to best represent the nation? While missionary societies were established, managed, and publicized by the middle class elites, the actual missionaries in the field were initially men of lower middle class origins who, because they were less susceptible to aristocratic excess and frivolity, were held up as those hearty enough to uphold the national honor. Thus, during the early years of the foreign missionary movement, there was a socioeconomic division between the organizers of the new foreign missionary societies and the actual missionaries in the field.6s As much as the evangelical leaders heralded missionary service as a manly pursuit, in reality they had some early difficulty in recruiting missionaries from the ranks of the upper middle class. For example, early on, the CMS was forced to recruit its first missionaries from German Lutheran seminaries because no suitable English candidates came forward. Perhaps out of necessity, leaders of the new evangelical missionary societies argued that not all missionaries needed a classical education, because it was the industrious and artisans among them who were best equipped to foster civilization among the indigenous peoples. For example, prospective LMS missionaries to the South Pacific were to be men "of a missionary spirit ... and approved as faithful. Men of a meek and lowly mind, willing to fill the plate allotted to them without murmuring or envy, ready to endure difficulties and sacrifice indulgences." (69) Early on, some within the organization hoped that prominent individuals would come forth as missionaries and a division emerged between those who supported learned men for missionary posts and those who wanted men trained in the "mechanic arts." Judging by the occupations of the earliest LMS missionaries in the Pacific Islands, the latter group eventually held sway. Of the thirty men selected to comprise the first mission to Tahiti, twenty-six were artisans and tradesmen, while only four were ordained clerics. (70)

An example of this connection between the lower classes and missionary work, as well as the more general association of evangelicalism with missions, can be found in an anonymous pamphlet entitled The Village in an Uproar. In this story Tom, a humble thresher, experiences a religious conversion after attending a missionary meeting in London and subsequently becomes a missionary himself:

Quote: Mr. Wealthy: 'why, Trusty's man [Tom], who formerly lived with me,
whom I turned off for his insolence, has been to London, to what
they term the missionary meeting, and I understand it has not only
produced strange effects upon himself, but by his whispering to
some, and talking to others, many are affected with his
enthusiastic nonsense. (71)

The missionaries from the BMS and LMS were thus described by contemporaries as hailing from the "mechanic" class, as many were carpenters, wheelwrights, sawyers, and shoemakers. Indeed, one observer of the LMS' efforts in the Pacific Islands asked how "tailors, shoemakers, carpenters, tinmen, butchers, weavers, and coopers" could "convert an entire people?" (72) Being skilled in the "practical" arts, such men entered missionary service as a way of elevating their standing in the social community and gaining respectability in the eyes of the public, and God. These "godly mechanics" were expected to teach the Maori, for example, certain skills to promote civilization and pave the way for Christianity. Not until the late 1830s did more missionaries emerge from the professional classes, coming from backgrounds as factory managers and teachers. (73) Although they emerged from a variety of evangelical groups both within and outside the established church, the foreign missionary agencies celebrated their common devotion to Protestantism and the growth and stability of the empire. After the American Revolution, the evangelicals were in the vanguard of a movement to reform the British nation through the sanctification of imperial projects in India, the Pacific, and later in Africa. It is true that proselytism and religious activism were fundamental components of Evangelicalism that were transnational in scope, finding expression in continental European, North American, and British evangelical writings. (74) But during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the formative period in modern British missions, evangelical rhetoric often celebrated the important links between political and religious expansion and tied missionary work to ideas of nationhood. Evangelization would confirm Britain's status as a "chosen" nation, and serve to highlight the cultural and moral supremacy of Britons and the degraded state of the heathen abroad, thus reinforcing hierarchies of difference that were crucial to imperial expansion. (75) Missionary publicity combined a serious commitment to carry out God's order to evangelize with a desire to further Britain's imperial ambitions, and also reflected the more practical problems of missionary recruitment and fund-raising.

To stimulate more interest in missions and gain potential recruits, the evangelicals constructed an image of the missionary as a kind of national hero who exhibited the noblest features of evangelical manliness. The evangelical press ranked missionaries with explorers, soldiers, and traders as those best able to carry the imperial banner to the "dark" corners of the globe. In some ways, however, the missionaries were promoted as superior to other imperial heroes. Acquiring wealth or scientific knowledge was viewed by the evangelicals as ultimately inferior to the nobler mission of spreading the gospel abroad. As described by the evangelicals, the successful missionary would have to combine physical courage and moral virtue to sustain activity in an unfamiliar climate and be a model of piety to indigenous peoples. Disciplined and rugged but also sensitive and humble, Protestant missionaries were advertised as the ideal purveyors of the best Britain had to offer the uncivilized world, and thus became valuable symbols of imperial culture. Missionary manliness, with its stress on both physical and moral attributes, prefigured the male image found in Victorian writings on masculinity that emphasized similar qualities. (76)

By 1830 missionary societies enjoyed a higher number of recruits and increased funding through voluntary subscriptions. (77) Missionary work and humanitarianism, in general, remained important components of British national and imperial identity into the 1830s and 1840s. (78) Despite the enormous popularity of David Livingstone's Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, a lack of confidence in the civilizing mission emerged after the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the same year Livingstone's work was published. In part, this "crisis in confidence" could also be explained by the advent of "scientific racism" and social Darwinism. In a recent article, however, Andrew Bank located this shift in attitudes toward indigenous peoples at an earlier point. As early as the 1840s, with the British-Xhosa wars on the Cape, missionaries and colonial administrators became disillusioned as to the capacity of black South Africans for genuine advancement. With the deterioration of the "Liberal ideal" on the Cape, more emphasis was placed on outright conquest rather than accommodation. (79) This attitude and approach to indigenous societies remained in place going into the "high" imperial era of the 1870s and 1880s. However, such cynicism was not a permanent fixture in humanitarian circles. For, by the early twentieth century, we see another shift in attitudes, one in which missionary interests, informed by anthropology, advocated a more positive view of native peoples that could often be at odds with colonial administrative machinery. (80) As a result, the missionary movement became more international in scope, and was defined less by its connection to national interests and more by the evangelizing goals and strategies it shared with missionary societies worldwide. Another consequence was a deeper commitment to acquire a better understanding of indigenous religions. Taken together, such shifts in attitudes reveal the complex and ever changing relationship between religious ideas and British imperial interests. (81)

Quote:(1.) Daniel Wilson, A Defense of the Church Missionary Society Against the Objections of the Reverend Josiah Thomas, M.A. Archdeacon of Bath (London: G. Wilson, 1818), 37.

(2.) Andrew Porter, Religion Versus Empire? British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, 1700-1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), chapters 2-3.

(3.) Penelope Carson, "An Imperial Dilemma: The Propagation of Christianity in Early Colonial India," Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 18 (1990): 169-90.

(4.) Susan Thorne, Congregational Missions and the Making of an Imperial Culture in Nineteenth Century England (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999); Kathleen Wilson, The Island Race: Englishness, Empire and Gender in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Routledge, 2003); Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992).

(5.) Peter Marshall, "Empire and Authority in the Later Eighteenth Century," Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 15 (1987): 105-22; "Imperial Britain," ibid., 23 (1995): 385; Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 102.

(6.) Kathleen Wilson, "Citizenship, Empire and Modernity in the Provinces, c. 1720-1790," Eighteenth Century Studies 29 (1995): 86.

(7.) Peter Marshall, "Britain Without America--A Second Empire?" The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Eighteenth Century, ed. Peter Marshall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 392.

(8.) Wilson, "Citizenship, Empire and Modernity in the Provinces," 86; H. V. Bowen, "British India, 1765-1813: The Metropolitan Context" The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Eighteenth Century, 530-52.

(9.) Tony Claydon and Ian McBride, "The Trials of the Chosen Peoples: Recent Interpretations of Protestantism and National Identity in Britain and Ireland," in Protestantism and National Identity: Britain and Ireland c. 1650-1850, eds. Claydon and McBride (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 10-11; Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 18-55.

(10.) Reginald Heber, "The Conversion of the Heathen. A Sermon Preached for the Church Missionary Society, at Whittington, Salop, April 16, 1820," Sermons Preached in England. By the Late Right Reverend Reginald Heber (New York: E. Bliss, 1829), 203-04; George Chapman, Tracts on East India Affairs; or Collegium Bengalese, a Latin Poem, with an English Translation; and a Dissertation on the Best Means of Civilizing the Subjects of the British Empire in India, and of Dispensing the Light of the Christian Religion Through the Eastern World (Edinburgh: n.p., 1804), 10-11.

(11.) "Obligations of Britons to Promote the Gospel" Missionary Hymns (London: T. Williams, 1810), 57-58.

(12.) John Mitchell, An Essay on the Best Means of Civilizing the Subjects of the British Empire in India, and of Diffusing the Light of the Christian Religion Throughout the Eastern World (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1805), 6-7; Church Missionary Society (CMS) Proceedings (1806): 38.

(13.) Claydon and McBride, "The Trials of the Chosen Peoples," 27-28;Wilson, The Island Race, 80-84; Thorne, Congregational Missions and the Making of an Imperial Culture, 42.

(14.) From 1773 to 1785, Warren Hastings was the governor general of India. Led by Edmund Burke, the Parliament impeached Hastings for extortion in a much-publicized trial. He was eventually acquitted in 1795.

(15.) J. R. Oldfield, Popular Politics and British Anti-Slavery (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), 33, 117-18; Ainslie Embree, Charles Grant and British Rule in India (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), 8-10.

(16.) David Turley, The Culture of English Anti-Slavery, 1780-1860 (New York: Routledge, 1991), 229.

(17.) Thomas Raffles, Missions to the Heathen Vindicated from the Charge of Enthusiasm. A Sermon Delivered at the Tabernacle, Moorfields, Before the Missionary Society, May 11, 1814 (Liverpool: Sunday School Press, 1814), 19.

(18.) W. H. Oliver, Prophets and Millennialists: The Uses of Biblical Prophecy in England From the 1790s to the 1840s (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1978), 85-90.

(19.) Raffles, Missions to the Heathen Vindicated, 31-32.

(20.) Reverend Daniel Wilson's letter to The Times 8 January 1818; Charles Buck, "The Close of the Eighteenth Century Improved: A Sermon Preached ... December 28, 1800"; in Which the Most Remarkable Religious Events of the Last Hundred Years Are Considered (London: n.p., 1801), 35.

(21.) Porter, Religion Versus Empire?, 11, 15.

(22.) John Walsh and Stephen Taylor, eds., The Church of England c. 1689-1833: From Toleration to Tractariansim (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 14.

(23.) David Hopkins, The Dangers of British India From French Invasion and Missionary Establishments ... Some Account of the Countries Between the Caspian Sea and the Ganges ... and a Few Hints Respecting the Defense of British Frontiers in Hindostan. By a Late Resident at Bhagulpore (London: Black, Parry and Kingsbury, 1808), 22.

(24.) The Times, 20 September 1813; Evangelical Magazine 8 (1800): 252.

(25.) CMS Proceedings (1810): 86, emphasis mine.

(26.) "Paulinus," Christian Observer 16 (1817): 370.

(27.) For another example from an LMS-affiliated publication, see Evangelical Magazine 16 (1808): 408.

(28.) Ibid., 20 (1812): 327-28.

(29.) Printed in Evangelical Intelligencer 1 (1805): 360.

(30.) Melville Home, Letters on Missions Addressed to the Protestant Ministers of the British Churches (Andover: Flagg & Gould, 1815), 40.

(31.) The Times, 20 September 1813.

(32.) See also, Reginald Heber, "The Conversion of the Heathen," 203-4.

(33.) The Times, 5 June 1813.

(34.) Hugh Pearson, A Dissertation on the Propagation of Christianity in Asia (Oxford: n.p., 1808), 128-29, 125.

(35.) Claudius Buchanan, Commencement Sermon, Preached Before the University of Cambridge, on Sunday Morning, July 1, 1810 (Boston: Armstrong, 1811), 39.

(36.) Embree, 8-10, 118-20, 141-57.

(37.) Horne, 92-94.

(38.) Joshua Marshman, Advantages of Christianity in Promoting the Establishment and Prosperity of the British Government in India (London: Smith's, 1813), 6.

(39.) Pearson, A Dissertation on the Propagation of Christianity in Asia, 211; Report of Speeches at a Meeting of the Inhabitants of Kingston Upon Hull, Called to Consider the Duty of Petitioning Parliament for the Toleration of the Preaching and Profession of the Christian Religion in British India (Edinburgh: n.p., 1813), 43.

(40.) William Tennant, Thoughts on the Effects of the British Government on the State of India ... With Hints Concerning the Means of Conveying Civil and Religious Instruction to the Natives of that Country (Edinburgh: n.p., 1807), 38-39; William Dealtry, Duty and Policy of Propagating Christianity; A Discourse Delivered Before the Church Missionary Society for Africa and the East, May 4, 1813 (London: Whittingham and Rowland, 1813), 23.

(41.) Ibid., 66; The missionary debates of 1813 have received much scholarly attention. Carson, "An Imperial Dilemma," 168-75; Karen Chancey, "The Star in the East: The Controversy Over Christian Missions to India, 1805-1813," The Historian 60 (1998): 507-22; Jorg Fisch, "A Pamphlet War on Christian Missions in India 1807-9," Journal of Asian History 19-20 (1985-86): 22-70; Allan Davidson, Evangelicals and Attitudes To India, 1786-1813: Missionary Publicity and Claudius Buchanan (Abingdon: Sutton Courtenay, 1992).

(42.) C. Duncan Rice, "The Missionary Context of the British Anti-Slavery Movement," in Slavery and British Society 1776-1846, ed. James Walvin (London: Macmillan, 1982), 159; Thorne, Congregational Missions and the Making of an Imperial Culture, 7.

(43.) David Spring, "The Clapham Sect: Some Social and Political Aspects," Victorian Studies 5 (1961): 35-49; Ernest Howse, Saints in Politics: The Clapham Sect and the Growth of Freedom (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1971); Catherine Hall, White, Male and Middle Class: Explorations in Feminism and History (New York: Routledge, 1992), 80-81.

(44.) The Times, 22 December 1813; Eugene Stock, The History of the Church Missionary Society (London: CMS, 1899), I: 114; Thorne, Congregational Missions and the Making of an Imperial Culture, 4.

(45.) Quoted in Edwin Sidney, The Life of the Reverend Rowland Hill A.M. (New York: Robert Carter, 1848), 172-73. Hill gave the first annual missionary sermon.

(46.) Roy Porter, English Society in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Penguin, 1983), 284-86; Oldfield, Popular Politics and British Anti-Slavery, 16-19, 146-48.

(47.) Bradley, The Call to Seriousness, 74-78; Evangelical Magazine 20 (1812): 306-07.

(48.) Ibid.

(49.) Ibid.

(50.) Hall, White, Male and Middle Class, 219.

(51.) Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, 109-11, 81-83; Charles Smyth, "The Evangelical Movement in Perspective," Cambridge Historical Journal 7 (1941-43): 69.

(52.) Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, 100.

(53.) William Wilberforce, A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians in the Higher and Middle Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity (London: T. Cadell, jun. & W. Davies, 1797), 109-10.

(54.) Eclectic Review I (1805): 69; James Bean, A Charge Addressed to the Clergy of Any Diocese in the Kingdom (n.p., 1792), 9-10.

(55.) Horne, 100-101, 116, 51.

(56.) Christian Observer I (1802): 540.

(57.) Evangelical Magazine 9 (1801): 476; Horne, Letters on Missions, 29; Missionary Magazine 2 (1797): 29, 32.

(58.) Reverend Daniel Wilson's letter to The Times, 8 January 1818.

(59.) Robert Hall, "An Address to the Public, On an Important Subject, Connected with the Renewal of the Charter of the East India Company" Entire Works of the Reverend Robert Hall, 6 vols (London: Holdsworth and Ball, 1831-32), 1: 293.

(60.) Francis Wrangham, A Dissertation on the Best Means of Civilizing the Subjects of the British Empire in India, and of Diffusing the Light of the Christian Religion Throughout the Eastern World (n.p., 1805), 20. On the importance of individual autonomy as a manly trait, see David Alderson, Mansex Fine: Religion, Manliness and Imperialism in Nineteenth Century British Culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 14-15. On the concept of effeminacy in colonial India, see Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity, The 'Manly Englishman' and the 'Effeminate Bengali' in the Late Nineteenth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), 18-22.

(61.) Peter Marshall and Glynder Williams, The Great Map of Mankind: Perceptions of New Worlds in the Age of Enlightenment (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), 258.

(62.) Jane Samson, Imperial Benevolence: Making British Authority in the Pacific Islands (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998), 7-23; Richard Lovett, The History of the London Missionary Society, 1795-1895 2 vols. (London: Henry Froude, 1899), 1:20; Charles Horne, The Story of the London Missionary Society (London: LMS, 1908), 11; Melville Horne, Letters on Missions, 102-3.

(63.) Thomas Haweis, An Impartial and Succinct History of the Revival and Progress of the Church of Christ; From the Reformation to the Present Time (Worcester: Greenleaf, 1803), 379-80.

(64.) James Johnston, The Pastoral Care of Jesus Over the Heathen: Illustrated in a Sermon Preached Before the Dundee Society for Propagating the Gospel Among the Heathen, at Their First General Meeting, 18th October 1796 (Dundee: T. Colvill, 1796), 24.

(65.) Marshall and Williams, Great Map of Mankind, 293-95; Bernard Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985).

(66.) Johnston, The Pastoral Care of Jesus Over the Heathen, 5.

(67.) Wilson, The Island Race, 80-84.

(68.) Elizabeth Isichei, A History of Christianity in Africa: From Antiquity to the Present (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdman's, 1995), 77.

(69.) Thomas Haweis, An Impartial and Succinct History of the Revival and Progress of the Church of Christ, 393-94; Evangelical Magazine 8 (1800): 473, 36.

(70.) Cecil Northcott, Glorious Company: One Hundred and Fifty Years Life and Work of the London Missionary Society, 1795-1945 (London: LMS, 1945), 31-32.

(71.) Anonymous, The Village in an Uproar, or The Thresher's Visit to the Missionary Meeting in London, May 1814. Containing Among a Variety of Other Particulars, the Thresher's Account of the African Friend's Report of His Mission Among the Wild People (London: Williams and Son, 1814), 19.

(72.) New London Review 2 (1800): 146.

(73.) Niel Gunson, Messengers of Grace: Evangelical Missionaries in the South Seas, 1797-1860 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1978), 31-36, 41; Hall, White, Male and Middle Class, 225; John Comaroff, "Images of Empire, Contests of Conscience: Models of Colonial Domination in South Africa," in Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, eds. Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 176-78.

(74.) See Mark Noll, David Bebbington, and George Rawlyk, eds., Evangelicalism: Comparative Studies of Popular Protestantism in North America, The British Isles, and Beyond (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 6.

(75.) Wilson, The Island Race, 80-84.

(76.) See J. A. Mangan and James Walvin, eds., Manliness and Morality: Middle Class Masculinity in Britain and America 1800-1940 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987), 1-7.

(77.) Porter, Religion Versus Empire?, 91.

(78.) Andrew Porter, "Trusteeship, Anti-Slavery, and Humanitarianism," in The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Nineteenth Century, ed. Andrew Porter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 198.

(79.) Andrew Bank, "Losing Faith in the Civilizing Mission: the Premature Decline of Humanitarian Liberalism at the Cape, 1840-60," in Empire and Others: British Encounters With Indigenous Peoples, 1600-1850, eds. Martin Daunton and Rick Halpern (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 364-73.

(80.) Porter, "Trusteeship, Anti-Slavery, and Humanitarianism," 198.

(81.) Porter, Religion Versus Empire?, 314-15.

William C. Barnhart is associate professor of history at Caldwell College.

Bodhi · 03-03-2009, 08:57 AM

The New Nationalist Movement in India
Author: Jabez T. Sutherland
Publication: The Atlantic
Date: October 1908

The Nationalist Movement in India may well interest Americans. Lovers of
progress and humanity cannot become acquainted with it without
discovering that it has large significance, not only to India and Great
Britain, but to the world. That the movement is attracting much
attention in England (as well as awakening some anxiety there, because
of England's connection with India) is well known to all who read the
British periodical press, or follow the debates of Parliament, or note
the public utterances from time to time of Mr. John Morley (now Lord
Morley), the British Secretary of State for India.

What is this new Indian movement? What has brought it into existence?
What is its justification, if it has a justification? What does it
portend as to the future of India, and the future relations between
India and Great Britain?

In order to find answers to these questions we must first of all get
clearly in mind the fact that India is a subject land. She is a
dependency of Great Britain, not a colony. Britain has both colonies and
dependencies. Many persons suppose them to be identical; but they are
not. Britain's free colonies, like Canada and Australia, though
nominally governed by the mother country, are really self-ruling in
everything except their relations to foreign powers. Not so with
dependencies like India. These are granted no self-government, no
representation; they are ruled absolutely by Great Britain, which is not
their "mother" country, but their conqueror and master.

As the result of a pretty wide acquaintance in England, and a residence
of some years in Canada, I am disposed to believe that nowhere in the
world can be found governments that are more free, that better embody
the intelligent will of their people, or that better serve their
people's many-sided interests and wants, than those of the self-ruling
colonies of Great Britain. I do not see but that these colonies are in
every essential way as free as if they were full republics. Probably
they are not any more free than the people of the United States, but it
is no exaggeration to say that they are as free. Their connection with
England, their mother country, is not one of coercion; it is one of
choice; it is one of reverence and affection. That the British
Government insures such liberty in its colonies, is a matter for
congratulation and honorable pride. In this respect it stands on a moral
elevation certainly equal to that of any government in the world.

Turn now from Britain's colonies to her dependencies. Here we find
something for which there does not seem to be a natural place among
British political institutions. Britons call their flag the flag of
freedom. They speak of the British Constitution, largely unwritten
though it is, as a constitution which guarantees freedom to every
British subject in the world. Magna Charta meant self-government for the
English people. Cromwell wrote on the statute books of the English
Parliament, "All just powers under God are derived from the consent of
the people." Since Cromwell's day this principle has been fundamental,
central, undisputed, in British home politics. It took a little longer
to get it recognized in colonial matters. The American Colonies in 1776
took their stand upon it. "Just government must be based on the consent
of the governed." "There should be no taxation without representation."
These were their affirmations. Burke and Pitt and Fox and the
broaderminded leaders of public opinion in England were in sympathy with
their American brethren. If Britain had been true to her principle of
freedom and self-rule she would have kept her American colonies. But she
was not true to it, and so she lost them. Later she came very near
losing Canada in the same way. But her eyes were opened in time, and she
gave Canada freedom and self-government. This prevented revolt, and
fastened Canada to her with hooks of steel. Since this experience with
Canada it has been a settled principle in connection with British
colonial as well as home politics, that there is no just power except
that which is based upon the consent of the governed.

But what are we to do with this principle when we come to dependencies?
Is another and different principle to be adopted here? Are there peoples
whom it is just to rule without their consent? Is justice one thing in
England and Canada,and another in India? It was the belief that what is
justice in England and Canada is justice everywhere that made Froude
declare, "Free nations cannot govern subject provinces."

Why is England in India at all? Why did she go there at first, and why
does she remain? If India had been a comparatively empty land, as
America was when it was discovered, so that Englishmen had wanted to
settle there and make homes, the reason would have been plain. But it
was a full land; and, as a fact, no British emigrants have ever gone to
India to settle and make homes. If the Indian people had been savages or
barbarians, there might have seemed more reason for England's conquering
and ruling them. But they were peoples with highly organized governments
far older than that of Great Britain, and with a civilization that had
risen to a splendid height before England's was born. Said Lord Curzon,
the late Viceroy of India, in an address delivered at the great Delhi
Durbar in 1901: "Powerful Empires existed and flourished here [in India]
while Englishmen were still wandering painted in the woods, and while
the British Colonies were a wilderness and a jungle. India has left a
deeper mark upon the history, the philosophy, and the religion of
mankind, than any other terrestrial unit in the universe." It is such a
land that England has conquered and is holding as a dependency. It is
such a people that she is ruling without giving them any voice whatever
in the shaping of their own destiny. The honored Canadian Premier, Sir
Wilfred Laurier, at the Colonial Conference held in London in connection
with the coronation of King Edward, declared, "The Empire of Rome was
composed of slave states; the British Empire is a galaxy of free
nations." But is India a free nation? At that London Colonial Conference
which was called together for consultation about the interests of the
entire Empire, was any representative invited to be present from India ?
Not one. Yet Lord Curzon declared in his Durbar address in Delhi, that
the "principal condition of the strength of the British throne is the
possession of the Indian Empire, and the faithful attachment and service
of the Indian people." British statesmen never tire of boasting of "our
Indian Empire," and of speaking of India as "the brightest jewel in the
British crown." Do they reflect that it is virtually a slave empire of
which they are so proud; and that this so-called brightest jewel
reflects no light of political freedom?

Perhaps there is nothing so dangerous, or so evil in its effects, as
irresponsible power. That is what Great Britain exercises in connection
with India-absolute power, with no one to call her to account. I do not
think any nation is able to endure such an ordeal better than Britain,
but it is an ordeal to which neither rulers of nations nor private men
should ever be subjected; the risks are too great. England avoids it in
connection with her own rulers by making them strictly responsible to
the English people. Canada avoids it in connection with hers by making
them responsible to the Canadian people. Every free nation safeguards
alike its people and its rulers by making its rulers in everything
answerable to those whom they govern. Here is the anomaly of the British
rule of India. Britain through her Indian government rules India, but
she does not acknowledge responsibility in any degree whatever to the
Indian people.

What is the result? Are the interests and the rights of India protected?
Is it possible for the rights of any people to be protected without
self-rule? I invite my readers to go with me to India and see. What we
find will go far toward furnishing us a key to the meaning of the
present Indian Nationalist Movement.

Crossing over from this side to London, we sail from there to India in a
magnificent steamer. On board is a most interesting company of people,
made up of merchants, travelers, and especially Englishmen who are
either officials connected with the Indian Government or officers in the
Indian army, who have been home on furlough with their families and are
now returning. We land in Bombay, a city that reminds us of Paris or
London or New York or Washington. Our hotel is conducted in English
style. We go to the railway station, one of the most magnificent
buildings of the kind in the world, to take the train for Calcutta, the
capital, some fifteen hundred miles away. Arrived at Calcutta we hear it
called the City of Palaces; nor do we wonder at the name. Who owns the
steamship line by which we came to India? The British. Who built that
splendid railway station in Bombay? The British. Who built the railway
on which we rode to Calcutta? The British.

To whom do these palatial buildings belong? Mostly to the British. We
find that Calcutta and Bombay have a large commerce. To whom does it
belong? Mainly to the British. We find that the Indian Government, that
is, British rule in India, has directly or indirectly built in the land
some 29,000 miles of railway; has created good postal and telegraph
systems, reaching nearly everywhere; has established or assisted in
establishing many schools, colleges, hospitals, and other institutions
of public benefit; has promoted sanitation, founded law courts after the
English pattern, and done much else to bring India into line with the
civilization of Europe. It is not strange if we soon begin to exclaim,
"How much are the British doing for India! How great a benefit to the
Indian people is British rule!" And in an important degree we are right
in what we say. British rule has done much for India, and much for which
India itself is profoundly grateful.

But have we seen all? Is there no other side? Have we discovered the
deepest and most important that exists? If there are signs of
prosperity, is it the prosperity of the Indian people, or only of their
English masters? If the English are living in ease and luxury, how are
the people of the land living? If there are railways and splendid
buildings, who pay for them? and who get profits out of them? Have we
been away from the beaten tracks of travel ? Have we been out among the
Indian people themselves, in country as well as in city? Nearly
nine-tenths of the people are ryots, or small farmers, who derive their
sustenance directly from the land. Have we found out how they live? Do
we know whether they are growing better off, or poorer? Especially have
we looked into the causes of those famines, the most terrible known to
the modern world, which have swept like a besom of death over the land
year after year, and which drag after them another scourge scarcely less
dreadful, the plague, their black shadow, their hideous child? Here is a
side of India which we must acquaint ourselves with, as well as the
other, if we would understand the real Indian situation.

The great, disturbing, portentous, all-overshadowing fact connected with
the history of India in recent years is the succession of famines. What
do these famines mean ? Here is a picture from a recent book, written by
a distinguished British civilian who has had long service in India and
knows the Indian situation from the inside. Since he is an Englishman we
may safely count upon his prejudices, if he has any, being not upon the
side of the Indian people, but upon that of his own countrymen. Mr. W.
S. Lilly, in his India and Its Problems,writes as follows:-

"During the first eighty years of the nineteenth century, 18,000,000 of
people perished of famine. In one year alone-the year when her late
Majesty assumed the title of Empress-5,000,000 of the people in Southern
India were starved to death. In the District of Bellary, with which I am
personally acquainted,-a region twice the size of Wales,-one-fourth of
the population perished in the famine of 1816-77. I shall never forget
my own famine experiences: how, as I rode out on horseback, morning
after morning, I passed crowds of wandering skeletons, and saw human
corpses by the roadside, unburied, uncared for, and half devoured by
dogs and vultures; how, sadder sight still, children, 'the joy of the
world,' as the old Greeks deemed, had become its ineffable sorrow, and
were forsaken by the very women who had borne them, wolfish hunger
killing even the maternal instinct. Those children, their bright eyes
shining from hollow sockets, their nesh utterly wasted away, and only
gristle and sinew and cold shivering skin remaining, their heads mere
skulls, their puny frames full of loathsome diseases, engendered by the
starvation in which they had been conceived and born and nurtured-they
haunt me still." Every one who has gone much about India in famine times
knows how true to life is this picture.

Mr. Lilly estimates the number of deaths in the first eight decades of
the last century at 18,000,000. This is nothing less than
appalling,-within a little more than two generations as many persons
perishing by starvation in a single country as the whole population of
Canada, New England, and the city and state of New York, or nearly half
as many as the total population of France! But the most startling aspect
of the case appears in the fact that the famines increased in number and
severity as the century went on. Suppose we divide the past century into
quarters, or periods of twenty-five years each. In the first quarter
there were five famines, with an estimated loss of life of 1,000,000.
During the second quarter of the century there were two famines, with an
estimated mortality of 500,000. During the third quarter there were six
famines, with a recorded loss of life of 5,000,000. During the last
quarter of the century, what? Eighteen famines, with an estimated
mortality reaching the awful totals of from 15,000,000 to 26,000,000.
And this does not include the many more millions (over 6,000,000 in a
single year) barely kept alive by government doles.

What is the cause of these famines, and this appalling increase in their
number and destructiveness? The common answer is, the failure of the
rains. But there seems to be no evidence that the rains fail worse now
than they did a hundred years ago. Moreover, why should failure of rains
bring famine? The rains have never failed over areas so extensive as to
prevent the raising of enough food in the land to supply the needs of
the entire population. Why then have people starved? Not because there
was lack of food. Not because there was lack of food in the famine
areas, brought by railways or otherwise within easy reach of all. There
has always been plenty of food, even in the worst famine years, for
those who have had money to buy it with, and generally food at moderate
prices. Why, then, have all these millions of people perished? Because
they were so indescribably poor. All candid and thorough investigation
into the causes of the famines of India has shown that the chief and
fundamental cause has been and is the poverty of the people,-a poverty
so severe and terrible that it keeps the majority of the entire
population on the very verge of starvation even in years of greatest
plenty, prevents them from laying up anything against times of
extremity, and hence leaves them, when their crops fail, absolutely
undone-with nothing between them and death, unless some form of charity
comes to their aid. Says Sir Charles Elliott long the Chief Commissioner
of Assam, "Half the agricultural population do not know from one
halfyear's end to another what it is to have a full meal." Says the
Honorable G. K. Gokhale, of the Viceroy's Council,"From 60,000,000 to
70,000,000 of the people of India do not know what it is to have their
hunger satisfied even once in a year."

And the people are growing poorer and poorer. The late Mr. William
Digby, of London, long an Indian resident, in his recent book entitled
"Prosperous" India,shows from official estimates and Parliamentary and
Indian Blue Books, that, whereas the average daily income of the people
of India in the year 1850 was estimated as four cents per person (a
pittance on which one wonders that any human being can live), in 1882 it
had fallen to three cents per person, and in 1900 actually to less than
two cents per person. Is it any wonder that people reduced to such
extremities as this can lay up nothing? Is it any wonder that when the
rains do not come, and the crops of a single season fail, they are lost?
And where is this to end? If the impoverishment of the people is to go
on, what is there before them but growing hardship, multiplying famines,
and increasing loss of life?

Here we get a glimpse of the real India. It is not the India which the
traveler sees, following the usual routes of travel, stopping at the
leading hotels conducted after the manner of London or Paris, and
mingling with the English lords of the country. It is not the India
which the British "point to with pride," and tell us about in their
books of description and their official reports. This is India from the
inside, the India of the people, of the men, women, and children, who
were born there and die there, who bear the burdens and pay the taxes,
and support the costly government carried on by foreigners, and do the
starving when the famines come.

What causes this awful and growing impoverishment of the Indian people?
Said John Bright, "If a country be found possessing a most fertile soil,
and capable of bearing every variety of production, and,
notwithstanding, the people are in a state of extreme destitution and
suffering, the chances are there is some fundamental error in the
government of that country."

One cause of India's impoverishment is heavy taxation. Taxation in
England and Scotland is high, so high that Englishmen and Scotchmen
complain bitterly. But the people of India are taxed more than twice as
heavily as the people of England and three times as heavily as those of
Scotland. According to the latest statistics at hand, those of 1905, the
annual average income per person in India is about $6.00, and the annual
tax per person about $2.00. Think of taxing the American people to the
extent of one-third their total income! Yet such taxation here,
unbearable as it would be, would not create a tithe of the suffering
that it does in India, because incomes here are so immensely larger than
there. Here it would cause great hardship, there it creates starvation.

Notice the single item of salt-taxation. Salt is an absolute necessity
to the people, to the very poorest; they must have it or die. But the
tax upon it which for many years they have been compelled to pay has
been much greater than the cost value of the salt. Under this taxation
the quantity of salt consumed has been reduced actually to one-half the
quantity declared by medical authorities to be absolutely necessary for
health. The mere suggestion in England of a tax on wheat sufficient to
raise the price of bread by even a half-penny on the loaf, creates such
a protest as to threaten the overthrow of ministries. Lately the
salt-tax in India has been reduced, but it still remains well-nigh
prohibitive to the poorer classes. With such facts as these before us,
we do not wonder at Herbert Spencer's indignant protest against the
"grievous salt-monopoly" of the Indian Government, and "the pitiless
taxation which wrings from poor ryob nearly half the products of the
soil."

Another cause of India's impoverishment is the destruction of her
manufactures, as the result of British rule. When the British first
appeared on the scene, India was one of the richest countries of the
world; indeed it was her great riches that attracted the British to her
shores. The source of her wealth was largely her splendid manufactures.
Her cotton goods, silk goods, shawls, muslins of Dacca, brocades of
Ahmedabad, rugs, pottery of Scind, jewelry, metal work, lapidary work,
were famed not only all over Asia but in all the leading markets of
Northern Africa and of Europe. What has become of those manufactures?
For the most part they are gone, destroyed. Hundreds of villages and
towns of India in which they were carried on are now largely or wholly
depopulated, and millions of the people who were supported by them have
been scattered and driven back on the land, to share the already too
scanty living of the poor ryot. What is the explanation? Great Britain
wanted India's markets. She could not find entrance for British
manufactures so long as India was supplied with manufactures of her own.
So those of India must be sacrificed. England had all power in her
hands, and so she proceeded to pass tariff and excise laws that ruined
the manufactures of India and secured the market for her own goods.
India would have protected herself if she had been able, by enacting
tariff laws favorable to Indian interests, but she had no power, she was
at the mercy of her conqueror.

A third cause of India's impoverishment is the enormous and wholly
unnecessary cost of her government. Writers in discussing the financial
situation in India have often pointed out the fact that her government
is the most expensive in the world. Of course the reason why is plain:
it is because it is a government carried on not by the people of the
soil, but by men from a distant country. These foreigners, having all
power in their own hands, including power to create such offices as they
choose and to attach to them such salaries and pensions as they see fit,
naturally do not err on the side of making the offices too few or the
salaries and pensions too small. Nearly all the higher officials
throughout India are British. To be sure, the Civil Service is nominally
open to Indians. But it is hedged about with so many restrictions (among
others, Indian young men being required to make the journey of seven
thousand miles from India to London to take their examinations) that
they are able for the most part to secure only the lowest and poorest
places. The amount of money which the Indian people are required to pay
as salaries to this great army of foreign civil servants and appointed
higher officials, and then, later, as pensions for the same, after they
have served a given number of years in India, is very large. That in
three-fourths if not nine-tenths of the positions quite as good service
could be obtained for the government at a fraction of the present cost,
by employing educated and competent Indians, who much better understand
the wants of the country, is quite true. But that would not serve the
purpose of England, who wants these lucrative offices for her sons.
Hence poor Indian ryots must sweat and go hungry, and if need be starve,
that an ever-growing army of foreign officials may have large salaries
and fat pensions. And of course much of the money paid for these
salaries, and practically all paid for the pensions, goes permanently
out of India.

Another burden upon the people of India which they ought not to be
compelled to bear, and which does much to increase their poverty, is the
enormously heavy military expenses of the government. I am not
complaining of the maintenance of such an army as may be necessary for
the defense of the country. But the Indian army is kept at a strength
much beyond what the defense of the country requires. India is made a
sort of general rendezvous and training camp for the Empire, from which
soldiers may at any time be drawn for service in distant lands. If such
an imperial training camp and rendezvous is needed, a part at least of
the heavy expense of it ought to come out of the Imperial Treasury. But
no, India is helpless, she can be compelled to pay it, she is compelled
to pay it. Many English statesmen recognize this as wrong, and condemn
it; yet it goes right on. Said the late Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman:
"Justice demands that England should pay a portion of the cost of the
great Indian army maintained in India for Imperial rather than Indian
purposes. This has not yet been done, and famine-stricken India is being
bled for the maintenance of England's worldwide empire." But there is
still worse than this. Numerous wars and campaigns are carried on
outside of India, the expenses of which, wholly or in part, India is
compelled to bear. For such foreign wars and campaigns-campaigns and
wars in which the Indian pcople had no concern, and for which they
received no benefit, the aim of which was solely conquest and the
extension of British power-India was required to pay during the last
century the enormous total of more than $460,000,000. How many such
burdens as these can the millions of India, who live on the average
income of $6 a year, bear without being crushed?

Perhaps the greatest of all the causes of the impoverishment of the
Indian people is the steady and enormous drain of wealth from India to
England, which has been going on ever since the East India Company first
set foot in the land, three hundred years ago, and is going on still
with steadily increasing volume. England claims that India pays her no
"tribute." Technically, this is true; but, really, it is very far from
true. In the form of salaries spent in England, pensions sent to
England, interest drawn in England on investments made in India,
business profits made in India and sent to England, and various kinds of
exploitation carried on in India for England's benefit, a vast stream of
wealth ("tribute" in effect) is constantly pouring into England from
India. Says Mr. R. C. Dutt, author of the Economic History of India(and
there is no higher authority), "A sum reckoned at twenty millions of
English money, or a hundred millions of American money [some other
authorities put it much higher], which it should be borne in mind is
equal to half the net revenues of India, is remitted annually from this
country [India] to England, without a direct equivalent. Think of it!
One-half of what we [in India] pay as taxes goes out of the country, and
does not come back to the people. No other country on earth suffers like
this at the present day; and no country on earth could bear such an
annual drain without increasing impoverishment and repeated famines. We
denounce ancient Rome for impoverishing Gaul and Egypt, Sicily and
Palestine, to enrich herself. We denounce Spain for robbing the New
World and the Netherlands to amass wealth. England is following exactly
the same practice in India. Is it strange that she is converting India
into a land of poverty and famine?"

But it is only a part of the wrong done to India that she is
impoverished. Quite as great an injustice is her loss of liberty,-the
fact that she is allowed no part in shaping her own political destiny.
As we have seen, Canada and Australia are free and self-governing. India
is kept in absolute subjection. Yet her people are largely of Aryan
blood, the finest race in Asia. There are not wanting men among them,
men in numbers, who are the equals of their British masters, in
knowledge, in ability, in trustworthiness, in every high quality. It is
not strange that many Englishmen are waking up to the fact that such
treatment of such a people, of any people, is tyranny: it is a violation
of those ideals of freedom and justice which have been England's
greatest glory. It is also short-sighted as regards Britain's own
interests. It is the kind of policy which cost her her American
Colonies, and later came near costing her Canada. If persisted in, it
may cost her India.

What is the remedy for the evils and burdens under which the Indian
people are suffering? How may the people be relieved from their abject
and growing poverty? How can they be given prosperity, happiness, and
content?

Many answers are suggested. One is, make the taxes lighter. This is
doubtless important. But how can it be effected so long as the people
have no voice in their own government? Another is, enact such
legislation and set on foot such measures as may be found necessary to
restore as far as possible the native industries which have been
destroyed. This is good; but will an alien government, and one which has
itself destroyed these industries for its own advantage, ever do this?
Another is, reduce the unnecessary and illegitimate military expenses.
This is easy to say, and it is most reasonable. But how can it be
brought about, so long as the government favors such expenses, and the
people have no power? Another thing urged is, stop the drain of wealth
to England. But what steps can be taken looking in this direction so
long ns India has no power to protect herself? It all comes back to
this: the fundamental difficulty, the fundamental evil, the fundamental
wrong, lies in the fact that the Indian people are permitted to have no
voice in their own government. Thus they are unable to guard their own
interests, unable to protect themselves against unjust laws, unable to
inaugurate those measures for their own advancement which must always
come from those immediately concerned.

It is hard to conceive of a government farther removed from the people
in spirit or sympathy than is that of India. There has been a marked
change for the worse in this respect within the past twenty-five years,
since the vice-regal term of Lord Ripon. The whole spirit of the
government has become reactionary, increasingly so, reaching its
culmination in the recent administration of Lord Curzon. The present
Indian Secretary, Lord Morley, has promised improvement; but, so far,
the promise has had no realization. Instead of improvement, the
situation has been made in important respects worse. There have been
tyrannies within the past two years, within the past three months, which
even Lord Curzon would have shrunk from. There is no space here to
enumerate them.

Fifty years ago the people were consulted and conciliated in ways that
would not now be thought of. Then the government did not hesitate to
hold before the people the ideal of increasing political privileges,
responsibilities, and advantages. It was freely given out that the
purpose of the government was to prepare the people for self-rule. Now
no promise or intimation of anything of the kind is ever heard from any
one in authority. Everywhere in India one finds Englishmen-officials and
others-with few exceptions-regarding this kind of talk as little better
than treason. The Civil Service of India is reasonably efficient, and to
a gratifying degree free from peculation and corruption. But the
government is as complete a bureaucracy as that of Russia. Indeed it is
no exaggeration to say that, as a bureaucracy, it is as autocratic, as
arbitrary in its methods, as reactionary in its spirit, as far removed
from sympathy with the people, as determined to keep all power in its
own hands, as unwilling to consult the popular wishes, or to listen to
the voice of the most enlightened portion of the nation, even when
expressed through the great and widely representative Indian National
Congress, as is the Russian bureaucracy. Proof of this can be furnished
to any amount.

It is said that India is incapable of ruling herself. If so, what an
indictment is this against England! She was not incapable of ruling
herself before England came. Have one hundred and fifty years of English
tutelage produced in her such deterioration? As we have seen, she was
possessed of a high civilization and of developed governments long
before England or any part of Europe had emerged from barbarism. For
three thousand years before England's arrival, Indian kingdoms and
empires had held leading places in Asia. Some of the ablest rulers,
statesmen, and financiers of the world have been of India's production.
How is it, then, that she loses her ability to govern herself as soon as
England appears upon the scene? To be sure, at that time she was in a
peculiarly disorganized and unsettled state; for it should be remembered
that the Mogul Empire was just breaking up, and new political
adjustments were everywhere just being made,-a fact which accounts for
England's being able to gain a political foothold in India. But
everything indicates that if India had not been interfered with by
European powers, she would soon have been under competent governments of
her own again.

A further answer to the assertion that India cannot govern herself-and
surely one that should be conclusive-is the fact that, in parts, she is
governing herself now, and governing herself well. It is notorious that
the very best government in India to-day is not that carried on by the
British, but that of several of the native states, notably Baroda and
Mysore. In these states, particularly Baroda, the people are more free,
more prosperous, more contented, and are making more progress, than in
any other part of India. Note the superiority of both these states in
the important matter of popular education. Mysore is spending on
education more than three times as much per capita as is British India,
while Baroda has made her education free and compulsory. Both of these
states, but especially Baroda, which has thus placed herself in line
with the leading nations of Europe and America by making provision for
the education of all her children, may well be contrasted with British
India, which provides education, even of the poorest kind, for only one
boy in ten and one girl in one hundred and forty-four.

The truth is, not one single fact can be cited that goes to show that
India cannot govern herself,-reasonably well at first, excellently well
later,-if only given a chance. It would not be difficult to form an
Indian Parliament to-day, composed of men as able and of as high
character as those that constitute the fine Parliament of Japan, or as
those that will be certain to constitute the not less able national
Parliament of China when the new constitutional government of that
nation comes into operation. This is only another way of saying that
among the leaders in the various states and provinces of India there is
abundance of material to form an Indian National Parliament not inferior
in intellectual ability or in moral worth to the parliaments of the
Western world.

We have now before us the data for understanding, at least in a measure,
the meaning of the "New National Movement in India." It is the awakening
and the protest of a subject people. It is the effort of a nation, once
illustrious, and still conscious of its inherent superiority, to rise
from the dust, to stand once more on its feet, to shake off fetters
which have become unendurable. It is the effort of the Indian people to
get for themselves again a country which shall be in some true sense
their own, instead of remaining, as for a century and a half it has
been, a mere preserve of a foreign power,-in John Stuart Mill's words,
England's "cattle farm." The people of India want the freedom which is
their right,-freedom to shape their own institutions, their own
industries, their own national life. This does not necessarily mean
separation from Great Britain; but it does mean, if retaining a
connection with the British Empire, becoming citizens,and not remaining
forever helpless subjects in the hands of irresponsible masters. It does
mean a demand that India shall be given a place in the Empire
essentially like that of Canada or Australia,with such autonomy and home
rule as are enjoyed by these free, self-governing colonies. Is not this
demand just? Not only the people of India, but many of the best
Englishmen, answer unequivocally, Yes! In the arduous struggle upon
which India has entered to attain this end (arduous indeed her struggle
must be, for holders of autocratic and irresponsible power seldom in
this world surrender their power without being compelled) surely she
should have the sympathy of the enlightened and liberty-loving men and
women of all nations.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/190810/nationalist-india

dhu · (This post was last modified: 03-03-2009, 11:18 PM by dhu.)

QUOTE(ramana @ Nov 13 2008, 12:17 AM)The key is the Boston Brahmins who rule Massachusetts. Try to find their antecedents.
[right][snapback]90062[/snapback][/right]


So Amreeka was settled by rugged individualists and freedom seekers while India was settled by Company soldiers and Company missionaries. the cross transplanted ones like eliyu yale became "liberal" elite of Rugged massa land.

Look at all the corporate shills holding "tea parties" in US currently.

**acharya** · 03-17-2009, 10:06 AM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HgSz6EHb-g

what is the connection between US and India

**acharya** · 04-01-2009, 01:24 AM

From another forum
QUOTEThere are many kinds of defence.

There is the defence of ideas, and the defence of traditions or practices. There is the defence of communities or families or individuals.

Defending one's right to be a Hindu and follow a particular set of practices, or defend a a particular intellectual framework is not necessarily the same thing as organised political and physical defence of an Indian nation-state.

Unlike China or the West, or the Islamic world, there just wasnt the same civilisational urge to build a civilisation-state, because civilisational commonality wasnt seen as the same thing as mutual political obligation and unity.

Modernity provided the ideological, organisational and technological tools to mobilise the vast majority of the subcontinent and its people, and built a working state spanning that has succesfully defended itself against all external assaults. However although it amounted to a civilisation-state, it did not define itself after MK Gandhi's death (pehaps the biggest difference between Nehru and Gandhi).

But how is that state to be defined? Is its purpose to guarantee the material well being and political freedom of its citizens (ie political and physical defence), or is it meant to promote and defend intellectual frameworks and practices of Indian civilisation?

Gandhi, Godse, and Nehru all represented different but overlapping ideas of how nation, religion and civilisation should intersect in India. Gandhi and Godse both believed in Indian civilisation, Godse and Nehru both believed in the nation-state; Nehru and Gandhi both believed majoritarianism was the main source of violent civilisational conflict.

I quite intensely admire the work of Dr. Balagangadhara and those around him for examining the civilisational underpinnings of modernity (although like many he gives Christianity too much credit, and pre-Christian European cultures too little), which form the basis of the organisation of nationalism and the nation state.

As he perceptively notes, both secularism *and* much of Hindutva (eg demand for a uniform civil code) are the product of competing strands of modernity.

Although Ashis Nandy as a neo-Gandhian may not be much liked here, like Balagangadhara they have pointed out a fundamental issue; there is a tension between a modern political movement that seeks to advance the interests and rights of Hindus, and actually intellectualising and preserving pre-disruption Hindu civilisation. A pan-Hindu political movement seeking a civilisation-state is itself a break from tradition, and while it may preserve particular parts of tradition, its ultimate outcome will be transformation, not preservation, which is why they seem to argue that saving or preserving the intellectual continuity of Hindu/Indian civilisation is a cultural and academic, rather than political task.

In fact I'd say that is the fundamental reason India-Forum had to spin off BRF, more than any underlying *political* (left-right) or cultural (Proud Hindu vs. Macaulyite) differences.

G.Subramaniam · 04-27-2009, 06:15 AM

http://www.newstatesman.com/asia/2009/04/i...sh-raj-pakistan

Legacy of the Raj

Mihir Bose

Published 23 April 2009

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Born in Mumbai, Mihir Bose has won numerous awards for his wide-ranging journalism over four decades. Now the BBCâs sports editor, he reflects here on democracy in India â and asks if the British really wanted their former colony to survive

As last viceroy, Lord Mountbatten (in white dress uniform, centre right) handed over to Jawaharlal Nehru (far right). It was Nehruâs work that made secular democracy thrive in India

At one point during the recent general election campaign in India, the leader of the BJP opposition, L K Advani, accused the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, of being âweakâ. Singh and his colleagues reacted with fury. This was an abusive term, they said, that insulted both the office of the prime minister and the country itself. Not to be outdone, Advani reacted by claiming he was âhurtâ by the attacks on his record, and for good measure then failed to attend an all-party dinner in honour of the departing speaker of the Indian parliament.

Such exchanges suggest that levels of debate in the Indian political class are not particularly elevated. But to be fair to the participants, they have not been helped by the historical inheritance the new state received at its birth. It may be hard to credit now, as 700 million voters go to the polls in the worldâs biggest elections, but back in the 1940s the wise men of the British Raj predicted that while Pakistan would prosper, India would soon be Balkanised. Pakistan, it was thought, would become a vibrant Muslim state, a bulwark against Soviet communism. Indiaâs predominantly Hindu population, however, was presumed to be a source of weakness and instability.

Nobody expressed this view more forcefully than Lieutenant-General Sir Francis Tucker who, as General Officer Commanding of the British Indian Eastern Command, had been in charge of large parts of the country. His memoirs, While Memory Serves, published in 1950, the year India became a republic, reflected the view of many of the departing British.

Hindu India was entering its most difficult phase of its whole existence. Its religion, which is to a great extent superstition and formalism, is breaking down. If the precedents of history mean anything . . . then we may well expect, in the material world of today, that a material philosophy such as Communism will fill the void left by the Hindu religion.

Tucker was hardly alone among Raj officials. By then, it was almost an orthodoxy to believe that Hinduism was, if not an evil force, at least spent and worthless. Islam, on the other hand, was a religion the west could understand and with whose political leaders it could do business.

Rudyard Kipling, the great chronicler of the Raj, had long made clear his fondness for Muslims and his distrust of Hindus. He was appalled by the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the two great Hindu classics, and repulsed by the jumble of the faithâs beliefs. In contrast, Kipling claimed that he had never met an Englishman who hated Islam and its people, for âwhere there are Muslims there is a comprehensive civilisationâ.

The British had seized power in the subcontinent mainly from Muslim rulers, and the crushing of the 1857 revolt, after which the last Mughal emperor was removed, put paid to any chance of Muslim revival. By the beginning of the 20th century, however, the Muslims had become the allies of the Raj as it struggled to quell the agitation for freedom led by the Indian National Congress. The Raj encouraged the formation of the Muslim League and determinedly portrayed the INC as a Hindu party, despite its constant promotion of its secular credentials and advertisement of its Muslim leaders. (True, the party was mostly made up of Hindus; but as India was overwhelmingly Hindu, this was hardly surprising. The Raj just could not believe that a party made up largely of Hindus could be truly secular.)

Such was the hatred for the Hindus, particularly Brahmins, that the Raj could not be shaken from this fixation â even when the Congress Party had political victories in diehard Muslim provinces, the most remarkable of which was in the North-West Frontier Province. Today, parts of the province (which voted to join Pakistan in 1947) are adopting sharia law, but in the 1930s a secular Muslim movement had grown up there, led by Ghaffar Khan and his brother Khan Sahib. They joined the Congress Party and won successive election victories from 1937 onwards, defeating established Muslim parties.

But the Raj pictured these secular Muslims as dupes of the wily Hindus. The only consolation for Sir Olaf Caroe, considered to be the supreme Raj expert on the local Pashtuns, was that they would soon come to their senses, âIt is hard to see how the Pathan [Pashtun] tradition could reconcile itself for long to Hindu leadership, by so many regarded as smooth-faced, pharisaical and double-dealing . . . How then could he [the Pathan] have associated himself with a party under Indian, even Brahmin, inspiration . . .â

What would the west not give now for such secular Muslims to return to power in this playground of the Taliban and al-Qaeda â even if under the spell of âpharisaical Brahminsâ?

Such caricatures of Hindus were not uncommon (featuring, for instance, in Evelyn Waughâs Scoop), but it was when this view was espoused by major politicians such as Winston Churchill that it became truly dangerous. When Churchill argued vehemently against Indian independence in the 1930s, his fire was directed mainly at the Hindus (in contrast, he praised Muslims, whose valour and virility he admired). As the Second World War neared its close, the British prime minister was so consumed by hatred of the Hindus that he told his private secretary John Colville that he wanted extraordinary destruction visited upon them. Colvilleâs The Fringes of Power records the extreme nature of his masterâs feelings in February 1945, just Âafter his return from Yalta:

"The PM said the Hindus were a foul race âprotected by their mere pullulation from the doom that is dueâ and he wished Bert [Bomber] Harris could send some of his surplus bombers to destroy them."

Clement Attlee, who came to power within months, did not share Churchillâs Hindu-phobia. There were also historic ties between Labour and Congress. Yet his government nevertheless agreed that a separate Pakistan was vital to Britainâs global interests. By early 1947, British policymakers realised they had to withdraw from the subcontinent, but still wanted a military presence there: to protect Britainâs position in the century-long Great Game with Russia, and to protect the sea routes to Arabian oil wells. Partition, the foreign secretary Ernest Bevin told the Labour party conference that year, âwould help to consolidate Britain in the Middle Eastâ.

British strategy was also shaped by Pakistanâs wish to remain in the Commonwealth, while India wanted out. By the end of the war, what little love there had been between the Raj and Congress had long evaporated, as most of the partyâs leaders spent much of the war inside British jails. They had refused to co-operate with the war effort unless their masters promised freedom when peace came. Regarding this as blackmail during the empireâs âdarkest hourâ, the British made mass arrests and banned the party. In such circumstances, it was understandable that the pleas of both Churchill and Attlee that the king-emperor should remain as head of state were ignored.

British hopes for the country that emerged were not high. Just before he left India in 1943, the Viceroy of India, Lord Linlithgow, forecast that it would take Indians at least 50 years to learn how to practise parliamentary democracy. Even then, he felt it would require much tutoring from the British and other Europeans, whom he thought could be tempted to the subcontinent by the arrival of air-conditioning. (Once they didnât have to worry about the heat, he reasoned, some six million Britons could be persuaded to settle in India to take on the task.)

That democracy took root so quickly and successfully owes much to Jawaharlal Nehru, the first and longest-serving prime minister of India, who was in office from 1947-64. So well did the system embed itself that when his daughter Indira imposed emergency rule in the 1970s â the closest India has come to a dictatorship â it was ended not by tanks rolling down the streets of Delhi, but through the ballot box. That election showed, as have many since then, that ordinary Indians, many of them poor and illiterate, value their vote (perhaps even more than the rich, who feel money can buy them influence). They queue for hours in the baking heat to cast their ballots.

Before the Second World War, the Rajâs relationship with India was like a father promising to allow his stepson to come into his inheritance at some unspecified date in the distant future. It never quite believed that there could ever be a time that this brown person would be capable of managing the estate.

This general election campaign may have exposed just how fractured the political classes are today, with numerous caste, religious and communal groups competing and doing deals with each other. The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance may have completed its five-year term of office, but many of its allies, including cabinet ministers, are opposing Congress at local level. Some of them make no secret that they aspire to the prime ministership, and all of them are aware that, as the Times of India put it: âOpportunistic post-poll equations will be more important than the pre-poll pitch of the parties.â

Yet the patchwork quilt that is made up of British India and the hundreds of princely states united and survived, and still manages to do so despite all the challenges that could have led to that Balkanisation predicted by old Raj hands. The likes of Tucker, Churchill and Kipling were proved wrong: constructing the new nation of India was not, after all, beyond the Indians.

Mihir Bose will be reporting on India for âNewsnightâ on 23 April (BBC2) and for BBC World and BBC News in early May

**acharya** · 04-28-2009, 10:32 PM

QUOTE("Airavat")<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE("surinder")Johann,

For some ill-informed Hindus an argument I have heard quite commonly is that "Gee thanks for the British, for they got us rid of the Mughals".Â Which again is patently not true.Â If the British had never set foot on India, Indian had already taken care of the Mughal rule.

The real story in pre-British India is the decline in military power of the Muslims. Horse-archery which had previously set them apart from the indigenous powers lay in the dustbin of history, while regular cavalry was mauled by increasingly accurate artillery and lethal infantry fire, and was useful only for plundering.

The Muslim rulers in the Gangetic plains: Nawab of Bengal-Bihar, Nawab of Awadh, and the Muslim rulers in the south: Nizam of Hyderabad and Nawab of Carnatic, all depended on indigenous infantry officered by Europeans for their power.

The decline in the effectiveness of cavalry also affected the indigenous powers like the Rajputs, Marathas, Sikhs; and even when the latter two adopted infantry formations and artillery organized on European lines, the officer class that controlled these were foreigners. But the biggest change brought about by the new system of war was EDUCATION. Our traditional warrior classes utterly despised education and book learning, while the control of munitions, increasing diversification of the artillery arm, managing a salaried class of soldiers, required officers well-educated or at least well-informed on the latest developments in science and mathematics.

By contrast our traditional warrior classes learned their military skills: riding horses, wielding sword and lance, and even using firearms, in hunting and war. Military service was paid for by grants of estates, which had to be physically occupied by the grantee, in order to collect revenue and feed himself and his followers. When the indigenous power failed to provide for its warrior class, they mounted their horses and engaged in plunder, or formed into groups that fought to dominate the failed central government. And this failure and turmoil was apparent in both the Muslim as well as the indigenous powers, which is why the 18th century in India is called the period of The Great Anarchy.

British occupation ended this anarchy, ensured internal peace, and orderly administration. The military and economic exploitation of India by the new rulers is of course well-documented but the fight against them was led by the new educated middle-class and not by the old order.</div>

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