Evolution of Imperial Ideologies in

Colonial India

TERM PAPER

HISTORY HONOURS, CC12

SEMESTER 5, 2022

NAME: ZOYA NAWSHAD

ROLL NO: BA 79

COLLEGE: SRI SHIKSHAYATAN

CU REG NO: 034-1211-0143-20

CU ROLL NO: 202034-11-0121

 Imperialism was a sentiment rather than a policy; its foundations were moral
rather than intellectual.
-D.C. SOMERVELL (cited in Nandy)

The British, as they extended their rule across the face of India during the late 18 th century
and early 19th century were not only confronted with the problem of governance, but were faced with
the larger problem of justifying their own governance to themselves. How could the British, with
their high ideals of nationalism at home extend their authority over this other distant land? Plassey
and the events thereafter reiterated in the British mind, as it was voiced by Edmund Burke, that
Britain must secure the ‘prosperity’ of India’s people before seeking any gain itself (Metcalf). Thus,
it was through just governance that they could justify their rule in India. But how was this
governance to be secured and what principles would give the English a claim upon such legitimacy?
In this paper we shall look into the ideological foundations on which stood the edifice of British
Empire in India.

To shape a coherent administrative system and to justify their rule, the British had to devise a
vision at once of India’s past and future. Thus, they curated the idea of past glory in India’s ancient
times followed by a general degeneration. In this context, they hailed themselves as the “revivors of
a decayed system”. This was followed by a newfound interest in learning about India’s culture and
tradition manifest in endeavours of Sir William Jones who studied the Indian languages to restore to
the Indians their own forgotten culture. In establishing a linguistic connection between Sanskrit,
Greek and Latin, he equated India’s antiquity with that of the classical West. This was the beginning
of the ‘Orientalist tradition’ which led to the founding of institutions like the Calcutta Madrassa
(1781), the Asiatic Society of Bengal (1784), the Sanskrit College in Banaras (1794) in order to
promote the study of Indian languages and scriptures. The Orientalists exhibited a sympathy with
and desire to rule through indigenous languages and cultural forms.

The aim of Orientalism was to produce a knowledge of the past to meet the requirements of
the present i.e., to serve the needs of the colonial state. It was adopted as an official policy partly out
of expediency and caution and partly out of an emergent political sense that an efficient Indian
administration rested on an understanding of Indian culture and was based on the ruling of the
conquered by their own laws. As Javed Majeed says, British rule had to “legitimise itself in an Indian
idiom” (22). Underlying Orientalism was a policy of ‘reverse acculturation’ as Gauri Viswanathan
calls it, by which British administrators and civil servants were trained to fit into the culture of the
ruled and to assimilate them thoroughly into the native way of life. It was with this political vision
that Fort William College was established at Calcutta in 1800. Thomas Trautmann locates another
motive in the oriental discourse – emphasis on the idea of kinship between British and Indian
classical past was made to bind the latter to colonial rule through a rhetoric of love (17). Yet the
scholars not only highlighted the classical glory of India’s past but also emphasised its subsequent
degeneration thereby legitimising authoritarian rule that would rescue India from its self-created
predicament so as to lead it on the path of greatness.

Opposing Orientalism was the policy of Anglicism which gained ascendancy in the 1830s. It
grew as an expression of discontent with the policy of promoting Oriental language and learning in
support for Western education. Thus, Hastings policy of orientalism was replaced by Cornwallis who
went for a greater Anglicisation of the administration and imposition of Whig principles of the
British government. The basis of this policy which gained the support of Wellesly was a consistent
disdain for “oriental despotism” from which India needed to be emancipated (Bandhopadhyaya68).
Despotism to them was what described the organisation of ‘Oriental’ states; it was also what set apart
the ‘Europeans’ enriched with the ideas of Enlightenment, from the ‘Asians’ who voluntarily
submitted to absolutism (Metcalf6). It also justified the “paternalism of the Raj”. This paternalist
attitude was exemplified by men like William Jones in whose ideology Majeed sees a gradual
evolution of a conservative ideology in place of a contradiction.

An important aspect of British rule in India was that events in the metropole shaped those in
the sub-continent. Thus, the coming of Industrial Revolution in 1800s necessitated the development
of Indian markets for manufactured goods while the birth of new intellectual currents in Britain
pushed for reform. Where the pressure of free trade lobby at home called for the abolition of
Company’s monopoly over India’s trade, Evangelicalism and Utilitarianism brought about
fundamental change in the nature of Company’s administration in India. These schools of thought
asserted that the conquest of India was sinful but instead of advocating for its abolition they
clamoured for reform so that the benefits of a good government incorporating the “best ideas of their
age” could be reaped by the Indians. Evangelicalism emerged as against India’s primitive barbarism;
it advocated the permanence of British rule with the aim to change the very “nature of Hindostan”.
Missionaries of Srirampur near Calcutta were its major exponents in India while Charles Grant
typified it in Britain. According to him, the dissemination of Christian light could effectively
eradicate such religious ideas in India that perpetuated the ignorance of its people. This was the
noble mission of British rule in India. His ideas received greater publicity by William Wilberforce in
the Parliament before the passage of the Charter Act of 1813. The idea of improvement and change
was being advocated by the free trade merchants who believed that the India would be a good market
for British goods and a supplier of raw materials if only the Company shifted from being a trader to
the ruler.

This was the age of liberalism in India. A liberal agenda for the emancipation of India
through active governance was set when Thomas Macaulay laid forth his vision that the main motive
of the British administrators was to civilise and not conquer. This was best visualised by C.E.
Trevelyan in 1838 – “Trained by us to happiness an independence and endowed with our learning
and political institutions, India will remain the proudest monument of British benevolence” (cited in
Bandhopadhyay). Yet, Liberalism was by no means a coherent doctrine. As Richard Bellamy states,
it is a ‘notoriously elusive notion’ (1). What defined liberal thought was the belief that all human
nature was intrinsically the same everywhere and it could be totally and completely transformed by
the workings of law or education. It was in this atmosphere of British liberalism that Utilitarianism
with all its distinctive authoritarian tendencies took birth. John Bentham, the leading exponent
preached that the ideal of human civilisation was to achieve the greatest happiness of the greatest
number. Good laws, efficient and enlightened administration was the most effective agenda of
change in his views while the idea of rule of law was a necessary precondition for improvement.

The liberal view of Indian society found its fullest expression in James Mill’s classic ‘History
of British India’ published in 1818. For Mill, following Bentham, the criterion of utility formed the
measure of social progress. After scrutinising Indian art, culture, religion and laws, he disputed
Jones’ claims and came to the conclusion that the Hindus never had possessed ‘a high state of
civilisation’ (Metcalf30). Indian society to him was hideous, far inferior even to England’s feudal
past. The remedy he proposed in his book was to be achieved through ‘light taxes and good laws’.
What India required according to him, was an effective schoolmaster or a wise government
promulgating good legislation. This was thus the Age of Reform in India. It was due to his efforts
that a Law Commission was appointed under Lord Macaulay in 1833 that drew up an Indian Penal
Code in 1835 on the Benthamite model of centrally, logically and coherently formulated code
evolving from “disinterested philosophic intelligence.”

Though there existed significant differences between the Utilitarians and the Liberals, a key
point of difference lay in regard to the question of Anglicisation and the nature of education in India.
The liberals favoured English education – Lord Macaulay’s famous Education Minute (1835)
presented a strong case for the introduction of English education. It sought to transform an Indian
into an Englishman, "English in taste, in opinions, in moral and in intellect". Utilitarians such as
James Mill on the other hand saw vernacular as more suited to Indian needs. Thry rejected the liberal
conception of separation of powers and wanted to make the legislature as the sovereign body with
the judiciary and executive as mere executants of its will. The Utilitarian idea that happiness and not
liberty was the end of government, and that happiness was promoted solely by protection of
individual in his person and property, suited the colonial establishment. It found expression in the'
maxim that good government and laws were a substitute for self-government. While they believed
that the means to ensure good government was representative democracy, they would not accept it in
Indian conditions.

Thus, we see multiple strands of imperial ideology converged to justify and legitimate the
British rule in India. Edward Said calls this collective ideological formation ‘Orientalism’. To him,
the various western techniques of representation that make the 'orient' visible and subordinate it to
the west had some common features despite subtle variations. The way the 'orient' was created, it
encompassed a complex phenomenon of power, domination, and varying degrees of hegemony. The
'orient' was created as a kind of collective abstraction, which was unequal with the west, and endured
without existential human-identities. Therefore, a reassessment of the 'others' was crucial to define
their own western identities and hence to sustain the empire. Yet, the justification of the colonial
rule was not sought in monolithic, unitary terms but found expression in multiple ideological
discourses.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

WORKS CITED

Bandyopadhyay, Sekhar. From Plassey to Partition. Orient BlackSwan, 2004.

Bellamy, Richard Paul, ed. Victorian Liberalism: Nineteenth Century Political Thought and
Practice. Routledge, 1990.

Majeed, Javed. "Ungoverned imaginings: James Mill's The History of British India and Orientalism."
(1992).

Metcalf, Thomas R. Ideologies of the Raj. Vol. 4. Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Nandy, Ashis. "The psychology of colonialism: Sex, age, and ideology in British
India." Psychiatry 45.3 (1982): 197-219.Somervell, David Churchill. "English thought in the
nineteenth century." (1929).

(https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=E6F93912473C933D1E75E1F4398BBCEB)

Trautmann, Thomas R. "The Racial Theory of Indian Civilization." Aryans and British India.
University of California Press, 1997. 190-216.

Viswanathan, Gauri. "Masks of Conquest: Literary." Study and British Rule in India (1989).