By – Poorvanshi Tyagi
Abstract
Colonialism in India, among other things, resulted in the loss of Indian knowledge and culture. British imagination of India arose as a product of philosophical developments stirring in Europe during the Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries. With the embarkation of the civilising mission, came knowledge production and modification of existing cultural practices. This article aims to look at the larger philosophical discourse and its formulation in colonial practice, highlighting the ramifications of rewriting Indian history through a Western lens.
Introduction
At the heart of the colonial legacy lies Europe’s Enlightenment project of the 17th and 18th century. The transformation of European society during the Enlightenment shifted the trajectory of European life from religious ardour to rationality and scientific progress. The larger philosophical discourse around this time emphasised human freedom and equality. Works from key Enlightenment philosophers like John Locke, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant set the gears running for revolutionary politics across Europe. Enlightenment, however, eventually used its own principles as tools of exploitation and subjugation of cultures and communities across continents. It sought to universalise European experiences, disregarding ethnic and communal differences. Growing focus on human rationality brought about a need to ‘civilise’ pre-existing cultures, which did not coincide with the European idea of life. Europe’s industrial development was seen as the epitome of modernity. Henceforth, Europeans took it upon themselves as a ‘white man’s burden’ to bring civilisation to “lesser” developed parts of the world. Subsequently, dominant philosophical ideas during this time served as a justification for colonialism. Kant claims in his work Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Perspective, “our part of the world [Europe] will probably someday give laws [Gesetze geben] to all the others [other parts of the world]”. German idealist G.W. Hegel’s work, Philosophy of World History, propounds that history is a rational process of development, leading towards the progress of consciousness of freedom. Hegel’s work provides a very Eurocentric approach to history, establishing Germanic civilisation as the epitome of rational and free society, whereas Oriental civilisation is seen as being alien to the self-realisation of freedom. For Hegel, the synthesis[ higher level of understanding] for India would be the coming of the British, bringing rational material progress to a land of mystics and spirituality.
Colonialism, thus, cannot be understood as a mere capitalist venture. It situates itself in a larger context of philosophical structures which emerged in Europe. What the Enlightenment movement proudly achieved was the erasure and consequent reconstruction of Global South history. Enlightenment gave impetus to processes of knowledge production, constructing a Eurocentric history of these nations, prevalent even today. The role of Western philosophical ideas and their interaction with the development of natural sciences provides deep insight into the blatant eradication of the existing history of colonies and its reimagination through colonial lenses.
History & Pre-colonial India
Pre-colonial India’s historiographical traditions present themselves in the writings of prose and poems of court poets and indigenous communities. Although poetry and storytelling compositions are more often than not dismissed as sources of history, these vernacular traditions provide insight into the life of the people and of the political landscape of the time. Tarikhs served as Persian accounts that recorded the succession of reigns of kings. These accounts were sensitive to the political and cultural context that unfolded around them. Similarly, South Indian history can be traced to Niti texts. Niti literature covered themes of pragmatism, politics and statesmanship. By the early 17th Century, these texts were expanded to assimilate local life. Indian historical traditions, thus, were rooted in recognition of local life with an emphasis on interconnections of life and religion. They also shed light on political, social, and economic control. Genealogical accounts are an interesting source of societal development, bringing to life the history of clans and families. The Kula Granthas of Bengal claim to have recorded the history of societal and normative developments of the Hindu brahmanical society in Bengal for over a hundred years.
With the coming of the British, Indian vernacular traditions were rejected due to the absence of rationalist positivist history writing. A product of the Enlightenment, the European standard of history was hugely distinct from that of India’s. The rejection of these texts as myth and fable gave rise to the production of ‘sources’ from within the subcontinent to later serve as and replace Indian historical traditions.
Rewriting Indian History: An Epistemological Conquest
The concept of nation-building in Britain was to be built on knowledge and categorical arrangement of the past. This Enlightenment-driven process was achieved through classification of population groups, surveys of various places, and translation as well as interpretation of ancient texts. India, for them, was an ahistorical land rooted in mystical and spiritual life. It is crucial to note that the erasure and reconstruction of history itself served as a form of epistemological colonialism– a rule characterised by power over knowledge. Gandhi famously put it as Cognitive enslavement; the idea that the British may retreat from the nation’s borders, yet they will leave remnants of their legacy in our minds.
Translation became central to the conquest of India’s historiography. British officials were encouraged to learn Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic and other vernacular languages to translate ancient texts for interpretation. Although the logic was embedded in the ruling through the history of the people, the translation of works from Sanskrit to English transformed these texts and their definitions. Guided by Enlightenment’s modernity, translation sought to erase Vedic traditions and the Vedic way of life. British officials attempted to find evidence of laws of governance in ancient texts and modify them to fit English standards. The first Governor-General of Bengal, Warren Hastings, codified Hindu and Muslim practices as laws to subject indigenous populations to. Hindu pandits were treated with suspicion, losing agency to interpret texts, further handing over influence to the British. Colonial officials also discovered existing local judiciary systems to consolidate rule. They, however, were keen on introducing English ideas of justice and resorted to modifications and adaptations of these texts to English rules.
An even more humiliating issue that influenced British understanding of Indian history comes from the writings of philosopher John Stuart Mill. Mill, in 1817, published the History Of British India. British officials were required to read Mill’s work as a framework for governing India. Mill’s book completely dismissed every facet of Indian culture, deeming it to be primitive and barbaric. Mill himself never visited India or made any effort to learn Indian languages. The importance of this book in British governance points to the extractive and discriminatory practices throughout colonial rule. The superiority Europeans acquired by virtue of the Enlightenment made any constructive level-playing interaction with the indigenous population impossible. Colonies, thus, suffered from the imposition of Western imagination, the presence of which can be witnessed today.
History continues to be influenced by various narratives. India’s current political landscape has made it such that political parties now invoke pre-colonial India as an object of nostalgia to appeal to the masses. This reimagination of India, however, is based more on mobilising certain communities than equitably representing a decolonized India. These ideological narratives continually twist and turn events, incidents, and ideas, to envision an idea of India that they deem fit, disregarding the dangerous and futile effort to return to these conceptions that no longer serve its people.
About the Author
Poorvanshi Tyagi is a freshman at O.P. Jindal Global University, currently pursuing her bachelor’s in Global Affairs. She is a published poet. Her interests lie in reading historical and philosophical literature. She wishes to explore academic writing and keeps herself open to research opportunities.
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