INDIAN SOCIETY: COLONIAL DISCOURSE

CLASSICAL AND ARAB-PERSIAN ACCOUNTS

 Recorded observations on Indian society since third century BC.
 From 327 BC to 1498 AD scattered written accounts of foreigners like, Greeks,
Romans, Byzantine, Jews & Chinese.
 From 1000 AD onwards Arabs, Turks, Afghans and Persians.
 Most classical account of Indian society >> Megasthanes. Greek historian,
diplomat and Indian ethnographer. Wrote a book on India– Indica now lost but
recovered.
 Megasthenes was then an ambassador for Seleucid king Seleucus I Nicator and
to the court of the Mauryan Emperor Chandragupta Maurya in Pataliputra
(modern Patna).
 Megasthanes described Indian society being decided into seven
clases– 1. Philosophers, priests 2. Husbandmen 3. Sheferds and
hunters 4. Traders and manual labours 5. Fighting men 6.
Inspectors 7. Counselor and assessor of the king.
 Classes were endogamous.
 Occupation is fixed.
 This observation is of urban of city centered.
 No reference to Varna theory.
 Earliest Arab accounts – follows same classical view of Indian society
– seven classes.
 Al-Biruni (973-1030 AD.) – familier with Sanskrit sources – mentions
four Varna theory of caste system.
 Abu’l Fazl 'Allami – author of Ain-i- Akbari late 17th century
discription of Akbar’s court. He also mentions four Varna theory.
 But Mughals clearly distinguished ideological Varna model and kin
based functional model of caste system now as we know in 20th
century.
EARLY EUROPEAN TRAVELLERS
 The earliest direct observers of the Indian society in modern times were
Portuguese adventurers, administrators, merchants and priests.
 Malabar – cosmopolitan society – with enclaves of Arab (Moplahs),
Syrian Christian, Jews other foreign people with Indian caste system
with matrilinial and polyandrous groups.
 Duarte Barbosa naively but accurately reported major cultural features
of the caste system.
 The Desriptions were based on direct observation and as he was told.
But no reference to Varna theory.
THE ORIENTALISTS
 After battle of Plassey, few British officials started acquiring
knowledge of classical Indian languages, and the need to understand
Indian social structure for administration systematic knowledge of
Indian society began to develop very rapidly.
 Alexander Dow, East India company army officer, translated Tarikh-
i-Firistahi standard Persian history of India as The History of India in
1768-1771.
 Dow could not learn Sanskrit but he presents Brahaminical theory of
four varnas derived from parts of Brahma body.
 B N.Halhead provided first compilation and translation from the
Dharmashastra under the title A Code of Gentoo Laws published in
London in 1776.
 This view of Indian society derived from the study of early texts and
cooperation with Pundits and Shastris had several consequences.
 First, this led to consistent view that the Brahmans were dominant
group in the society. Brahman at the apex of the society.
 But it flew in the face of the evidence of the political structure of the
medieval Indian society.
 This Textual view concretised the image of Indian society as static,
timeless and spaceless.
 In this view of Indian society there was no regional variations and
no questioning of the relationship between discription of the text
and actual lived experience and behaviour of the people. Indian
society was seen as a set of rules which every Hindu followed.
THE MISSIONARIES
 Missionary view of Indian society developed later than the Orientalist view.
 Charles Grant – early Evangelicals, commercial officer in Bengal from
1774-1790 wrote a book in 1792.
 He felt that, caste system, the legal system, government and above all the
despotic rule of Brahmans who control the society are the cause of the
degraded State of Hindus.
 As the culture and society is guided and dominated by Hindu religion, it is
imparative to eliminate this degrading religion and to replace it with
Christianity.
 Early 19th century saw a considerable literature by missionaries and by
evangelicals on Indian society.
 Claudius Buchanan, Sir John Shore, William Carray and William Ward
all produced extensive works.
 Missionaries with everyday examples of the depravity of the Hindus,
sutti, purdah, sale of children in slavery, veneration of cow, worship of
idols and caste system vitriolically criticized Hindu religion.
 Criticism of caste system was on priority as it was the biggest
impediment in spread of Christianity.
 The major thrust of Missionaries is to condemn and criticize the Indian society
and culture but indirectly they contributed a lot to the empirical study of Indian
society and caste system.
 This partially came out of their need to translate Bible in vernacular languages.
 William Carray published first socio-linguistic study of Bengali language in
1801.
 William Adams, Baptist minister at Bengal published his report in 1830 on the
nature of traditional vernacular education.
 Robert Caldwell who spent fifty years of his life in south India published a
systemic account of Dravidian languages- Comparative Grammar of the
Dravidian or South Indian Family of Languages – later had considerable
indirect effects on politics of south India.
 Stephen Hislop, a missionary in central India provided some of the earliest and
most useful description on the Tribes of central India.

 The Orientalist and Missionaries were polar opposite in their assessment of

Indian culture and society, but we’re in accord as to what the central principles
and institutions of the society were.
 They agreed on primacy of Brahman in maintaining the sacred tradition by
controlling the religious knowledge, language and sacred texts.
 They accepted the Brahaminical theory of four varnas and saw the origin of
castes as the product of intermixture through marriages among four varnas.
 Neither group related what they have learnt from ancient texts
and Brahmans to the actual lived reality of Indian society and
culture by examining and observing actual political organization
and structure, land owning and tenure system, actual functioning
of the legal system or comercial structure into their texual view.
 Both Orientalist and Missionaries were agreed that, Hinduism
was filled with superstition and abuses.
 The Orientalist to arrive on this conclusion believed that the
ancient Indian society with great tradition and philosophy had
fallen from that golden civilization.
 On the other hand the Missionaries believed that, the Indian society
have always been corrupt and pernicious and filled with
absurdities.
 These basic differences in the perspectives of the Orientalist and
Missionaries were because of their social background and
occupational roles in India.
 The Orientalist were well educated and from upper classes of Great
Britain.
THE ADMINISTRATIVE PERSPECTIVE
 The period of 1757 to 1785 was a time in which the officials of the East IndiaCompany in Bengal had to
develop an administrative system capable of maintaining law and order and producing in a regular manner
income to support the administrative, military and commercial activities of the company and alsoprovide a
profit.
 The interpretation of Indian society by the administrators, trained in British universities and indoctrinated by
utilitarian rationalism was more pragmatic and more matter-of-fact.
 Their purpose was to understand it Indian Society in order to exploit its resources.
 The administrators sought to develop categories that would help them in orderingtheir ideas and actions
relating to the life of the natives of India avoiding theenormous complexities characterizing it.
 For example, B. H. Baden- Powells’ three volumes of The Land System of British India (1892) were not
just acompilation of data but had a series of arguments about the nature of Indian village and its resources in
relation to the state and its demand over these resources.
 They assert in their turn varying degrees of control or ownership possession right over land and its produce.
 British scholarly administrators posted in different parts of India, for example, Risley,
Dalton and O’Malley in East India, Crooks in Northern India, wrote encyclopedic
inventories about the tribes and castes of India, which even today provide the basic
information about the life and culture of the people of therespective regions.
 The purpose of these studies was to familiarise the governmentofficials and private
persons with classified descriptions about castes and tribes in India with a view to
ensuring effective colonial administration.
 The contribution of great British Indologist Sir William Jones was immense ashe
began the study of Sanskrit and Indology and is also quite well known forestablishing
the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1787. The Laws of Manu was translated by Jones in
1794.
 In addition, some British, official and non-official,out of interest and
curiosity began to study and write on Indian society fromfirst-hand
observation in somewhat objective fashion. For example,
WilliamTenant, a military chaplain in his two volume work.
 In short, using the classic anthropological techniques available at the
time,i.e. observations and interviews with key native/local
informants. This particular document and others like H.T.
Colebrook’s Remarks on the Husbandry and Internal Commerce of
Bengal provide detailed and careful description of rural society
CENSUS AND SURVEYS
 As East India Company’s territory rapidly increased and the British became aware of the baffling variety of peoples,
histories, political forms, systems of land tenure and religious practices. They realised that the relatively haphazard
reporting of sociological information must be more systematised and supported by field surveys the goal of which
was acquisition of better and more accurate information.
 One of the earliest and famous of these was contribution of Dr. Francis Buchanan. He carried out an extensive
survey in 1807 that was never completely published, but in many ways was the forerunner of a continuing effort
undertaken by the British to collect, collate and publish official and scholarly information about all aspects of Indian
society.
 It is in these attempts that we find the emergence of sociological entity of India. For instance, the ‘official’ view of
caste treated it as an empirical category, a ‘thing’ concrete and measurable and above all had definable characteristics
such as:
 Endogamy (marriage within ones own caste and/ or sub-caste),
 Commensality (eating together) rules,
 Fixed occupation,
 Common ritual practices.