British India Research Articles

The limits of the ethnographic state in British India: The case of ‘foreign Asiatic vagrants’, c. 1860–1900

This article looks afresh at the notion of the British–Indian colonial state as an ‘ethnographic state’, as formulated by Nicholas Dirks. It does so through a case study of gangs of ‘foreign Asiatic vagrants’ whose forays into British India during the last decades of the nineteenth century created panic among colonial officials and further argues that such panic was due to the difficulty of identifying the members of these gangs. Ethnography proved of little help in the process, as the people involved did not easily fit into the disciplinary grid of colonial ethnography, with its preference for settled communities neatly divided into discrete castes over semi-nomadic groups with shifting habits and habitats. The resulting uncertainties translated themselves into a kind of bureaucratic anarchy, as various officials took different views of the nature and composition of these groups. Eventually, their mobilities were controlled through police measures, with no significant contribution from ethnographic knowledge.

ЭТНОКОНФЕССИОНАЛЬНЫЙ АСПЕКТ РЕФОРМЫ МОНТЭГЮ-ЧЕЛМСФОРДА В БРИТАНСКОЙ ИНДИИ.

The article examines the main aspects of administrative and political transformations in British India at the turn of the 1910s - 1920s in the context of the processes of development of the national liberation movement, as well as ethno-political consolidation in certain Indian regions. The interwar period was marked by a significant transformation of the British colonial system, which affected, among other things, the management mechanisms of Indian possessions. Implemented on the basis of the law adopted in December 1919 . By a special legislative act of the British Parliament, the administrative and political reform, which went down in history as the Montague-Chelmsford reforms, was an attempt to modernize the management system in a key colony. At the same time, this reform, as well as the subsequent transformations carried out by the colonial administration, contributed to the formation of elements of the political culture of Indian society, and also, to a certain extent, laid the foundations of the future federal system of independent India.

The Small Spaces of Empire: Long-distance Trade, Anglo-Indian Foodways and the Bottlekhana

ABSTRACT This article is an invitation to shift the analytic focus of empire to its small spaces. Bringing one aspect of the trade history of British India – the trade in European provisions and foodstuff – in conversation with the history of colonial architecture and Anglo-Indian foodways, I argue that small spaces might reveal cultural practices and attendant structures of power that are not evident when our attention remains lodged in dominant transactions, large spaces, big events, and bulk commodities. In this article I specifically turn to the bottlekhana, a storage space in colonial buildings in India, and its role in mediating the consumption of European food. This line of inquiry takes the discussion of European imports to India to the realm of servants and women who rarely figure in trade histories of the British empire.

Printing Islamic Modernism: Arabic Texts for Arab and South Asian Muslims in the Early Twentieth Century

Abstract This article examines the relationship between Islamic modernism and Arabic print between the Mashriq and Indian subcontinent in the early twentieth century. Seeking to understand how Islamic modernists modified their message as they targeted new audiences, even as they promoted a unilingual program, this article explores the two printed publications in Arabic that emerged from the 1912 journey of Muhammad Rashid Rida (1865–1935), the founder of the Cairo-based journal al-Manar (The Lighthouse, 1898–1935), to British India. The first publication is “ʿUjala min rihlat al-Hind” (A Brief Report from the Journey to India), which Rida serially published in Cairo in 1912. The second publication is the summary of Rida’s subcontinental travels by his Iraqi-born Urdu translator, Sayyid ʿAbd al-Haqq Haqqi al-Aʿzami al-Baghdadi al-Azhari (1873–1924), which he wrote in the United Provinces town of Aligarh during 1912. Examining these two texts together, this article argues that their publication reflected the two separate concerns of their authors. While Rida sought to convey to al-Manar’s readership his experiences in British India by depicting them as analogous to the realities of the Ottoman Arab provinces and Egypt, al-Azhari sought to integrate al-Manar’s Islamic modernist enterprise into North Indian spheres of Islamic thought, practice, and print aesthetics. In so doing, this article shows how different audiences and modes of circulation enabled Islamic modernist enterprises to operate on both regional and transregional scales, reflecting the malleability of, and interconnectedness between, the worlds of Arabic and Urdu print during the period in question.

Printing a Transregional Ṭarīqa: Haji Imdadullah Makki (d. 1899) and Sufi Contestations from Thana Bhavan to Istanbul

Abstract This article analyzes the prominence of print in the Sufi ṭarīqa of Haji Imdadullah Muhajir Makki (d. 1899), a pre-eminent Indian Chishti-Sabri shaykh who settled in the Ottoman Hijaz after escaping North India in the aftermath of the 1857 mutiny. It explores the transregional contexts of the publication of Haji Imdadullah’s works, in the long journey of his manuscripts from Mecca to their lithographic printing in North India and their distribution through Ottoman disciples as far as Istanbul. In this study two main lines of inquiry are followed. First, how did Imdadullah participate intimately from Mecca in the editing and publication of Arabic, Urdu, and Persian books in British India, including his famed commentary and critical edition of the Masnavi-yi Maʿnavi of Jalal al-Din Rumi (d. 1273)? Second, the article follows the emergence of broader scholarly exchanges as a series of Istanbul-based Mevlevi shaykhs became invested in Imdadullah’s publications and even translated some from Persian to Ottoman Turkish. Ultimately, this article sheds light on how such Indian – Ottoman encounters in the Hijaz were catalyzed by a common investment in the Persianate disciplines of Sufi theology and classical Persian poetry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period typically seen as marking the shrinking and disintegration of the Persianate world. In so doing, the article highlights how modern Sufi discourse in Persian continued to facilitate intellectual exchange between Indian and Ottoman Sufi shaykhs through the Hijaz and formed an integral pillar of transregional Persianate print culture.

Women, blasphemy, and the religious law in Pakistan in the 1920s and 2020s

ABSTRACT Freedom of religion and the application of blasphemy laws remain critical issues in Pakistan. The issues have deep historical roots in British India, where British administrators attempted to preserve peace between and within religious communities but, faced with growing challenges, occasionally misused such laws. This article juxtaposes the Angare case from the 1920s with that of Asia Bibi in the 2020s. It attempts to illustrate that religious minorities in Pakistan remain vulnerable.

Colonialism and the Decline of the Cotton Industry in British India (1763-1863)

Before 1763, India's cotton textile industry benefited from its superior natural conditions and the wide application of sufficient labor force and production tools. However, the British first conquered the northwest, the northeast and the DecPlateau; secondly, the use of the steam engine and the establishment of the large factory system; and finally, the British exploited the Indian cotton textile industry through industrial policies on trade ban, tariffs, plantations and tax rights. This not only brought about the rise of the cotton textile industry and the vigorous development of the industrial revolution, but also made India from the center to the edge and become a vassal of Britain. The impact and plunder of colonialism are the root causes of China's chronic poverty and backwardness in India today.

The Two-Nation Theory: A Failed Solution to the Religious Divide in British India

The Indian Partition in 1947 split India into two independent nations: post-partition India was required to remain secular with a Hindu majority and post-partition Pakistan was required to remain secular with a Muslim majority. Unavoidably, the partition uprooted fifteen million people from their homes; Indians and Pakistanis scrambled to live with their respective religious groups. Although politicians intended for the split of pre-partition India to exterminate religious hatred, violence continued. Between one and two million people died – preceding and following the partition -- due to widespread religious violence, disease, and starvation. This essay will examine the progression of the Two-Nation Theory, and how it contributed to the Indian Partition. Understanding one of the main causes of partition will help to provide historical context for the everlasting religious division between Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs.

Religion in Begum Rokeya’s Literature: Resemblance with the Marxist Narrative

Against the dark background of the social exclusion of women, especially Muslim women, Begum Rokeya, the pioneer of women’s emancipation in Bengal, British India in the early 20th century, stood with her enlightenment like a beacon and pushed her way for women’s emancipation from the depths of misery. She lived in a society shrouded by blind religious beliefs and practices where women were deprived of rights and freedom, and were repressed and oppressed in the name of religion. Despite her prevailing leanings toward religious beliefs and practices, she found that a powerful obstacle to women’s freedom stemmed from the misinterpretation of culturally biased religious norms, notions and intentions. She was a strong advocate for the emancipation of the society and especially women of her time. She eloquently expressed her opinion with regard to religious rituals, prevailing sentiments and general public psyche in practice that hindered the progress and emancipation of women as well as the society. Her opinions, propositions, criticisms, and activisms in this regard surprisingly resembled to a great extent that of the predominant Marxist views. In this article, her views and opinions on the dissemination and practice of religious teachings and rituals in the context of the marginalization of women as well as society have been examined and compared with that of the Marxist thoughts, especially those on religion through textual analysis and Marxist allusions.

Nepal-India Trade: Pre and Post Globalization Comparisons

Nepal and India have trade relations since pre historic age. The pattern of trade between these two countries has not remained same from prehistoric age to the current period. Nepal and British India signed first treaty of commerce in 1st March, 1792. Nepal’s had trade surplus with British India before both the countries signed a treaty of friendship on December 21, 1923 AD. Nepal’s trade deficit with India has been increasing. Nepal introduced country-wise and commodity-wise trade diversification initiatives to raise its export to India and lessen its reliance on India in international trade. Nepal has brought several reformations in trade policies though after 1991 when it liberalized its economy for increasing export and reducing volume of trade deficit. This study compares India-Nepal trade in past before down of democracy in Nepal, in between 1950 to 1990 and after 1990 in order to analyse effects of various trade treaties and policies in Nepal-India trade. It uses historical-analytical method using secondary sources of data to carry out the study. It covers data from 1900 AD to 2020/21. The study finds that various revisions in trade treaties between Nepal and India and trade reformation policies have not been effective in increasing export of Nepal, its trade deficit and dependency in India.

The Indian Muslim Salariat and The Moral and Political Economies of Usury Laws in Colonial India, 1855–1914

Abstract This article examines the long-term response of the Indian Muslim salariat to the lifting of usury laws in British India in 1855. The salariat were a group of urban professionals and landed gentry in north India who emerged after the uprising of 1857. They espoused a self-conscious brand of Islamic modernism, a central feature of which was a reinterpretation of Islamic traditions pertaining to ‘rent on money’ (interest/usury). Hitherto, Islamic legal rules authorizing interest/usury transactions had been context-dependent, but, motivated by the colonial state’s abrogation of usury caps and a critique of prevailing Islamic legal norms, the salariat articulated a context-free interpretation of interest/usury in which the two were made distinct. Henceforth, interest transactions among Muslims were acceptable, but ‘usurious’ moneylending, conflated with ‘Hindu’ moneylending, was condemned. This pro-interest, anti-usury programme frequently fused Islamic exegesis with readings from European political economy. In turn, the salariat crafted a vernacular political-cum-moral economy that they sought to propagate among the Muslim masses. Nevertheless, by 1914 the salariat had largely disavowed this programme, convinced that the colonial state’s revocation of usury laws had produced a Hindu–Muslim wealth gap. Now a new conception of an ‘Islamic’ economy, in which all interest was anathema, materialized.

War and Control: A Study of Chinese Migrants in Assam in the Late Colonial Period

World War II (WWII) directly impacted the lives of Chinese migrants living in Assam, the Northeastern frontier of British India. The major wars that impacted the lives of Chinese migrants in Assam were the Sino-Indian War of 1962 and WWII. Most of the literature focuses on the Sino-Indian War of 1962, its impact, internment and sociopolitical and cultural aspect of the community afterwards. This study shifts its attention to WWII and its effect on the community. This article investigates the relationship between the colonial state and the migrants. While the state tried to control the population, the community found many ways to negotiate with these control mechanisms, though they were vulnerable. It argues that the community’s experience during WWII is central to understanding their experience during the Sino-Indian War of 1962. The control mechanism, like registration, provided them with legal status in Assam but did not ensure legal activities. Sometimes, these activities can be seen as reacting to the control mechanisms.

Ruth Morgan on "Health, Hearth, and Empire: Climate, Race, and Reproduction in British India and Western Australia


 
 
 In this interview, Ruth Morgan discusses her article, “Health, Hearth and Empire: Climate, Race and Reproduction in British India and Western Australia,” which was first published by Environment and History in 2021.
 
 

Postcolonial Bangladesh and neocolonial assimilative literacy practices: the case of private schools and English language programmes

This paper explores the ways in which neocolonial and assimilative literacy practices colonise the psyche of students through private schools and English language teaching programs in Bangladesh. Colonialist education in British India was designed to produce collaborators and not critical thinkers and to create a new breed of Indians who were Brown in the skin but British in the mind. This paper attempts to understand the impact of neocolonial literacy practices in the psychic colonisation of present-day Bangladeshi students. The research involved conducting a critical discourse analysis of pedagogic materials like syllabi, the Norwood Report of 1943 (a key policy document of British colonial educational policy), and seven institutional websites involved with current literacy practices in Bangladesh. This paper shows that schools following British curricula are creating eclectic identities of students whereby they are compelled to contend simultaneously with an embodied ‘superior’ English cultural capital against an ethno-national ‘Brown’ and ‘inferior’ Bangladeshi ethos. Suggesting possibilities for resistance, the paper thus exposes the colonial elements embedded in literacy practices and developing English language proficiency among Bangladeshis.

Partition at 75: reflections on migrant memories in the British South Asian diaspora

ABSTRACT In 2017, the 70th anniversary of the Partition of British India was widely discussed in the UK, not only within academic and cultural circles, but also in popular culture. Five years later, on the 75th anniversary of Partition, the scholarly, cultural and community interest in the events of 1947 intersected with the commemorations of the 50th anniversary of the expulsion of the South Asian population from Uganda, and the 70th anniversary of the Language Movement that led towards Bangladesh independence in 1971 - the 50th anniversary of which was celebrated just the year before. Based on the work of the Migrant Memory and the Postcolonial Imagination research project (Loughborough University) this article will explore the entanglement of the memories of these events within the South Asian diaspora, and how their transmission and communication shape the construction of contemporary diasporic identity and concepts of community, belonging and ‘home.’

“Once upon a time, there was a freedom fighter called Amma.” Mothers and grandmothers of Rajputana and the Indian freedom movement

The stronghold of patriarchal and feudal restrictions in Rajputana made participation in Indian freedom struggle more difficult for women than in British India. This paper draws from an intimate recollection of varied associations of the author's great-grandmother, Kalavati Devi, with the movement to scrutinize the lack of recognition to women in the history of Indian freedom movement. The paper argues for an intertwined understanding of public participation and domestic roles of women in the light of their nationalist consciousness. The narrative of Kalavati documents her contribution to the nationalist cause beyond her public role to explore whether her role as a wife and a mother can be viewed as part of the nationalist movement. The paper also makes a case for using family memories, oral narratives, and non-formal sources to document political activism of women and bring attention to the domestic sphere in the history of the freedom movement.

“That ancient and modern wonder”: Giraffes, imperialism, and the making of the American menagerie, 1830–1840

ABSTRACT Throughout the 1830s, American menagerie proprietors launched a systematic campaign to capture, transport, and display the giraffe. This article draws on the records of merchants, naturalists, diplomats, and showmen to examine the forces that rendered the world’s tallest animal a commodity. Tracing three American attempts to transport the giraffe – through British India, the Cape of Good Hope, and North Africa – it highlights the central role of imperial networks, Indigenous knowledge, and the slave trade in early zoological collecting. These efforts reveal the heightened levels of risk, failure, and exploitation behind the display of living animals, exposing imperial desires that continue to shape the giraffe’s endangerment today.

‘Cheek by jowl’: education as a bridge between Muslims and the British in colonial India

AbstractMuslims’ education in British India is treated in the literature as something encompassing resistance, reaction, and hence emancipation from putatively exploitative British policies. This article focuses on the patterns of Muslims’ emergent knowledge traditions in British India in response to the British government's involvement in the educational matters of the Indian subcontinent. Data findings reveal that Indian Muslims’ responses to the growing trend towards ‘modern’ education in the Indian subcontinent evolved gradually through discursive interactions leading to divergent reformist tendencies in favour of or against adopting Western education. The British government's decision to make ‘special’ arrangements for Muslims’ educational uplift had left legacies of mutual admiration, fear, and sometimes resentment between Muslims and the British government in the subcontinent. Amid ambivalent relations between the British and Muslims, it was not difficult to find apt illustrations of what Francis Robinson calls a ‘cheek by jowl’ relationship.

Colonial Trauma and Its Existential Shattering Impact on Colonizing Subjects in Kipling's Kim: A Postcolonial Perspective

This study reads colonial trauma in Rudyard Kipling's Kim from a postcolonial perspective. It employs Edward Said's colonial discourse theory to trace how the English novel represented colonial trauma during the modern colonial era. This research visualises Kim as a traumatised and existentially shattered colonising subject upon witnessing a traumatic event during his teenage years at the hands of colonial masters in British India. Therefore, Kim's identity crisis is studied here as a post-traumatic consequence of colonial trauma on his existence. In addition, this article delineates the hidden obstacles to reaching a compromise on Kim’s crisis, ascribing it to his oscillating will to align with colonial power. The study concludes that Kim’s inability to transcend his trauma embodied in his identity conflict is because his newly grown will to power is disturbed by bifurcated loyalties: willingly nurtured commitment towards the Indian culture and people, and unwillingly undertaken loyalty towards the Empire, imposed on him in the name of patriotism. Thus what hinders and complicates the healing of Kim’s colonial trauma seems to be the simultaneous loyalty to binary polar powers that keep clashing within him.

Corpse Politics and the Traveling Bones of Jamaluddin al-Afghani

Abstract Forty-seven years after his death, Jamaluddin al-Afghani was reburied in Kabul. Amid the chaos of World War II, Afghanistan had enlisted the governments of British India, Turkey, and Iraq in a scheme to bring the bones of this nineteenth-century intellectual and Pan-Islamist out of exile in Istanbul, where they had lain buried since 1897. The subsequent exhumation, transnational corpse transfer, and reinterment in Kabul provoked the ire of the Iranian state, which contested Afghanistan's claim to be Jamaluddin's natal state. The significance of Jamaluddin's corpse was inseparable from certain aspects of his self-curated hagiography as a consummate wanderer and anti-imperial Pan-Islamist. Consequently, the two states competed for custody of his remains. This transregional case study engages multidisciplinary scholarship on commemoration of the dead and remaking nationalist spaces. The article proposes that the physical location of the dead conjoined with individual hagiographies is key to disrupting or reifying nationalist narratives.