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Independent Study incomplete final paper

June, 2005

            If knowledge is power, who owns the truth? Who has the power to decide what is truly Indian? In Indian history, Britain claimed this role as the wise rulers from the 18th through the 20th Centuries. Who owns that power in India’s independence today? What future do the youth who will soon express their power over India see for their nation? How do they assert their political capital?

            As I write this paper, I attempt to responsibly demonstrate my relationship with the work that I have read. I stress the word relationship because I have interacted with this material academically and personally. Although I am writing about readings written by foreign authors describing distant lands and ideas, I have participated in their messages and created a new understanding for myself. Thus, this paper reflects my own reflections on the Colonial legacy in India rather than what Indians would say about their history. I cannot lump the entire nation into one notion that is true for all, as Said warned against “the attempts in the purely Western humanities to understand culture as a whole, antipositivistically, intuitively, sympathetically” (Said 258). This approach produces the ‘other’ by dissociating it from ‘us,” just as colonial powers created the borders that compose the Indian nation, and the idea of what was Indian. If I acknowledge that I cannot tell the entire story, I leave room for other ideas than what my social and academic background have led me to.

Colonial Knowledge

            Colonial conquest began the task of globalizing a world community. It has created new possibilities of political international relationships and simultaneously increased our cultural global consciousness.  Said posits that although “European and American interest in the Orient was political…[but] it was the culture that created that interest” (Said 12). Growing cultural interest in the Orient established European yearnings for more knowledge. Europeans began studying the Orient, which created the Orientalist brand of scholarship based in and for affirming European political hegemony.

            European Orientalist scholars developed a set of historical and cultural facts about the Orient that enabled Colonial conquest in the name of expanding Europe’s knowledge. Said explains the relationship between knowledge and power over the Orient: “To have such knowledge of such a thing is to dominate it, to have authority over it. And authority here means for “us” to deny autonomy to “it”-the Oriental country-since we know it and it exists, in a sense, as we know it” (Said 32). The Orientalist project established a hierarchy favoring European imperialists in India by creating a divisive collection of knowledge that asserted European facts over the Indian ‘muddle.’

            Our world has been artificially split by colonial rhetoric of which both the colonizers and the colonized have learned to adhere, though “such locales, regions, geographical sectors as “Orient” and “Occident” are man-made” (Said 5).Nevertheless, since the process of globalization began in ancient days of expansive trade networks, “a very large mass of writers, among whom are poets, novelists, philosophers, political theorists, economists, and imperial administrators, have accepted the basic distinction between East and West as the starting point for elaborate theories, epics, novels, social descriptions, and political accounts concerning the Orient” (Said 2). Said’s list of the many faces of Orientalist scholarship demonstrates its capabilities to penetrate the human psyche. If everywhere we turn we are inundated with the ‘fact’ that we are different than Indians, that is what we believe.

            The distinction between East and West becomes disastrous when humans apply values to each group. British colonizers garnered their power because of the standard notion of “European identity as a superior one in comparison with all the non-European peoples and cultures.” (Said 7). The British built this cultural strength on an idea that any Oriental intelligence had shriveled after its ‘ancient’ period of grandeur. Lord Cromer wrote of Oriental incapacity to reason in his work Modern Egypt, “Although the ancient Arabs acquired in a somewhat higher degree the science of dialectics, their descendants are singularly deficient in the logical faculty” (Said 38). The division of the East and West became a relationship of unequal responsibility: the East needed the West to compensate for its deficiencies.

            European scholars agreed that Oriental knowledge had flourished in an ancient romantic period; however European scholarship had meanwhile continued to develop as Oriental progress halted. Said speaks of the grandeur that Europeans bestowed on the ancient Orient as an incredible power maneuver considering the interrelatedness of “doctrines of European superiority, various kinds of racism, imperialism, and the like, dogmatic views of ‘the Oriental’ as a kind of ideal and unchanging abstraction” (Said 8).

 This difference in development enabled the Orientalist to “conceive of the difference between cultures, first, as creating a battlefront that separates them, and second, as inviting the West to control, contain, and otherwise govern (through superior knowledge and accommodating power) the Other” (Said 48). Conquest, therefore, arrived under the guise of ‘development,’ beginning in Napoleon’s mission in Egypt to “ offer a useful European example to the Orient, and finally also to make the inhabitants’ lives more pleasant, as well as procure for them all the advantages of a perfected civilization” (Said 85). Scholars established a supreme European knowledge that called for more investigation and authority to ‘help’ remove the Orient from its backward state.

            The British understood that the key to transforming the Orient into a modern state lay in government. British scholars theorized over the historical categorization of Indian governance in an effort to establish a modern Indian law. To the British Orientalists, Indian laws were rooted in India’s religious traditions, which could not be erased. The religious codes were locked in Sanskrit or Arabic, which only a small portion of the Indian elite could access. Language became an important aspect of Indian culture that the British penetrated to combat the ‘Brahmanical plot’:  “the language and its creators, the Brahmans, used their knowledge to enslave the Hindu populations of India” (Cohn 38). If Indian rulers could not be trusted to govern the Indian people equitably with their knowledge of the ancient scripts, the British were ready to step in.

            Language training became an essential component of British power in India. Some fluency in the language allowed the British to take charge of the situation as they could not if they remained beholden to translators. Afraid to lose authority in the eyes of Indians, colonialists feared that “without the knowledge of languages, the European is delivered into a “helpless and dependent thralldom” of a native assistant” (Cohn 41). The British realized that learning the language maintained their superiority over the Indian population.

            When the British began to feel more comfortable in their language skills, they could access vast power over Indians. In 1786 Sir William Jones began translating Sanskrit from pandits’ interpretations of Hindu laws to “check upon the natives” (Cohn). By learning Sanskrit himself, Jones targeted the ‘Brahmanical plot’ and announced his translations as the true and uncorrupted version. Though he may have truly intended to help the Indian people emerge from shackles of Brahmanical domination, he exemplified the British notion that “our power in India rests on the general opinion of the natives of our comparative superiority in good faith, wisdom, and strength, to their own rulers” (Cohn 41). Once the British gained authority over the ancient texts, political power transferred from the pandits to the British.

            Warren Hastings led the movement towards an equitable India, which he saw as a divided India. He believed in abiding by Indian traditional laws, which meant separating Hindu from Muslim governance. Hindus “had been in possession of laws which continued unchanged, from remotest antiquity,” just as Muslims had their own civil code dictated in the Qu’ran (Cohn 26). Thus, according to Hastings, the stage was set for “two codes, one Hindu and the other Muslim,” a distinction that Hastings believed necessary to appease the Indians, though absent in Indian history (Cohn 27). The British used their growing language capabilities to distinguish the two separate laws in order to maintain Indian tradition (which the Indians could not do for themselves).

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Hinduism vs. Islam?

            On what grounds did Colonial knowledge distinguish Hinduism and Islam? The religions themselves have significant distinctions, yet from an outsider’s perspective, they have qualities that seem unifying. A strong devotion to the written text in both Islam and Hinduism (the Qu’ran and Shari’a, and the four Vedas) dictate an essential pure lifestyle for followers in each religion, in their daily practices and in their commitment to the beyond. Despite religious similarities, the two religious communities became so entrenched in ideas of difference that they could not negotiate a common shared state when Independence drew near.

            The sharp contrast between Indian Hindus and Muslims began in their pre-colonial historic relationship. Islam introduced itself into the Indian subcontinent in a mood of conquest, thus “Indian Muslims are defined as a social group that is not indigenous, but of foreign origin to the subcontinent” (Cynthia Talbot 84). A Hindu Sanskrit text entitled the puranas included the history of India, “Because political power would increasingly pass into the hands of foreigners and non-royal Indians, the puranas prophesied a terrible future” (Talbot 88). When Islam penetrated India, Brahmans who knew the words of the puranas represented the Muslim “as being like the demons of ancient myth who engaged in endless battle against the forces of good” (Talbot 89). During Islam’s original phase of colonization between 1300 and 1420, Hindu Indians held this defensive aggression towards Islam.

            Cynthia Talbot defines the aggression as a unifying force among Hindu Indians in her example of the formation of the Telugu identity. During war times, a community unites to defend against the enemy, yet by reliving the memories Talbot asserts that “this emergence of a shared history most clearly justifies calling the medieval Telugu sense of self an ethnic identity” (Talbot 102). In relation to the demonic Other, Hindus formed a united front that bound them together in a new group identity.

             By the second and third phases of Muslim conquest, however, this dramatic distinction lost relevance. A shared history against the foreign invaders hardly could maintain its claims as Islam existed in India by conversion rather than continued migration. The second and third phases lasting from 1420 to British rule harkened a sense of camaraderie between the two religions. First “greater appreciation of Turkic culture [was] expressed in Hindu literature” (Talbot 94). Likewise, Muslim scholars such as al-Buruni wrote of religious complicity between the two religions worshipping the same Allah, only with different titles and earthly rituals (Friedman 54). Once Islamic and Hindu ideologies became more collective, in the third phase Islam penetrated India politically and materially. Indian architecture, warfare, dress, and law all were affected by the Islamic presence.

            By the time the British began their colonizing mission in the 17th century, how prevalent was the distinction between the two communities? Given Hinduism’s flexible boundaries, could a line be drawn distinguishing Hindus from Muslims after the first stage of Islamic conquest? Both religions rely on a shared history of the community of believers, encompassing much more than just the religious beliefs. When Hindus practiced some Muslim traditions as well as Hindu, which community did they belong to? These questions seem only to arise when a foreign entity becomes entangled, forcing the community to decide on an identity to differentiate ‘us’ from ‘them’.

            Hastings introduced the notion to Indians of choosing to which religion they aligned. By separating the laws that applied to each population he separated the population itself. Nation-state governance itself relies on categorizing and counting groups of people to inform the state of its people. Orientalist knowledge thus introduced the European notion of a segmented nation into India’s ‘muddle.’ When India found itself building an independent state in the mid twentieth century, the Orientalist task of

 “linking the discourse of the nation irretrievably to the politics of biologically based group difference, Orientalist discourse made it impossible to evolve a postcolonial language of politics in which the essence of Indian unity was not the master problem” (Carol Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer 12).

The religious separatism of British colonial knowledge and government outlasted British domain over the subcontinent.

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Partition

            In the eve of Independence, the British notion of separating Hindu from Muslim law seemed justified in the actions of the high politicians. From fear of the Hindu majority gaining supreme authority under representative democracy, socially powerful Muslims formed the Muslim League under the leadership of Jinnah. The League represented a political division premised on “The idea that political alignments are essentially communal in nature and therefore permanently defined” (Hasan 89). The fierce distinction they drew between Muslim and Hindu politics lay in the belief that “the conduct and practices of Islam required relatively independent areas where its adherents could abide by the tenets of their faith”  (Hasan 91). Britain as the ‘neutral authority’ was leaving a division between politicians that it had contributed to during Colonial rule by granting independence to India.

            Britain’s introduction of the nation-state itself contributed to the political division between the two religions. The Muslim League premised their argument on the assumption that Indian Muslims formed a separate nation from Hindus. According to Jinnah “To yoke together two such ‘nations’ under a single State ‘would lead to growing dis-content, and the final destruction of any fabric that may be so built up for the government of such a State’” (Hasan 26). The structure of the democratic nation-state begot the demise of the Indian nation because it demands representation of a distinct group. The question of who could represent Muslims implies a distinction between Muslims and Hindus. Yet the Muslim League fought democracy’s individual representation not for pitting it against Hinduism, but from fear of “the institutionalization of politics on the basis that Congress could not represent Indian Muslims” (Hasan 100). Did this question of representation only surface in the Indian elite?

            Historians generally attribute the Partition to these influential figures who “roused Muslim passions against the Congress and the Hindus through ceaseless propaganda and ‘cleaver distortion of facts’” (Fazul Haq quoted in Hasan 6 ). Granting this notion accuracy, where would politicians develop the idea to introduce this debate? Blaming either the politicians or the peasantry for sectarian strife leading to Partition implies another divide in Indian society that draws “a sharp line between elite and mass mentalities, manners, and politics” (Pandey 1990, 19). The two social strata cannot be separated in their joint contribution to the “new cohesion [that] developed around existing foci of loyalty, such as caste, language and religious community” arising from the “‘modern’ (colonial) and ‘medieval’ (colonial as well as pre-colonial) modes of domination and exploitation” (Pandey 1990, 3).

            The Subaltern Studies Collective authors evidence in their writings that the problems facing India lie in the unwillingness of the bourgeoisie to work towards uniting with the peasantry to overcome the obstacles of Independence. Spivak blames

“the bourgeoisies’ interested refusal to recognize the importance of, and to ally themselves with, a politicized peasantry accounted for the failure of the discursive displacement that operated the peasants’ politicization”(Spivak 6).

As the rift maintained between the peasantry and the bourgeoisie, “The working class was still not sufficiently mature in the objective conditions of its social being…nor was it firmly allied yet with the peasantry,” so that it could not provide a middle ground where the two far classes could engage (Guha 42). Without the entire Indian community involved in defining a united nation, could Partition have been avoided?

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Economy and Politics

            Although claiming that Britain created the economic dichotomy in India would cast India in a positive light, this contention offers the imperial power deceptively excessive influence. Pre-colonial India relied on a system of divisions formed by Hinduism and Indian village life. Indian villages survived on the jajmani system of exchange “whereby landholding families received from families of occupational specialists and others…certain specified services and renumerated these with certain specified quantities of grain or portions of land” (Stern 53). This exclusively Indian, not Hindu, jati (“Literally, breed; the village-based, face-to-face unit of caste.” Stern xv) system determined the roles and actors as “men have their breeds, and, of course, these have different and unequally important capabilities and potentialities” (Stern 61). As unfair as this structure appears, did Britain truly offer an escape as Orientalists of the age claim?

            Enlightenment may have sparked ideas in Indians’ minds to expect more from their lives, yet it also introduced a new type of domination with no restrictions. The jati system in India depended on Hinduism’s relationship between dharma and karma. “The dharma, the sacred order of things, [was] maintained” through the jajmani system of specific groups performing their assigned tasks based in heredity (Stern 30). Kharma kept this order in check by maintaining that “Whatever a man sows, that shall he reap” Ghandi quoted in Stern 61). Reincarnation served as the mechanism of reaping what the person sowed in a previous lifetime; it offered social mobility to be born into a higher or lower caste. This was seen as “Our gift from Him [God]…the capacity to determine our own fate: to make choices, to sow according to our will” (Stern 61). Thus while dharma could destroy one’s life opportunities, kharma leant lower castes the ability to dream, and higher castes humility.

            Britain commandeered the highest level in this jati hierarchy; however they acted without Hindu kharma dictating their actions. After 1833 the British East India Company introduced a land revenue system to “exact 2/3 of the economic rental value of the soil, and settlement officers were instructed to discover examples of genuine free will competitive rents in order to frame so-called rent rates” (Stokes 130). As outsiders who had no relation to the people or traditions of India, one might question the ethical motivation of these officers to offer fair rent rates to Indian farmers. After peasants lashed out against this possible inequity in the 1857 Rebellion, “post-Mutiny successors made no secret of their astonishment at the gross over-assessment which had been practiced” in the Delhi region (Stokes 135). This example of economic self-interest overruling social responsibility undermines the previously mentioned notion of British neutral authority offering equality.

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Is there a middle ground between blaming Britain for India’s political division and recognizing problems inherent in the diversity of Indian culture? It seems like the only way to get around this problem is to bypass the question in light of asking how the people have dealt with the divisions since Partition. This strategy, however, does not fulfill the desires of understanding the problems in current Indian politics. What is the best question for addressing this dilemma? (back)

Does this make up for the social stigma Dalits faced during their lifetimes due to their impurity? Although it made people feel responsible for their actions, could kharma also make people less socially responsible for those born into lower castes after committing sins in a previous lifetime?