86The British government in India has not only deprived: www.gktoday.in/poorna-swaraj-resolution-declaration-of-independence.
86Unrest in India was occasioned by...the contemptuous disregard: Nevinson, The New Spirit in India, p. 322.
87In historical texts, it often appears: M. B. L. Bhargava, India’s Services in the War, Allahabad: Bishambher Nath Bhargava, 1919.
90Never in the history of the world: Cited in Durant, The Case for India.
CHAPTER 3: DEMOCRACY, THE PRESS, THE PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM AND THE RULE OF LAW
94‘evangelical imperialism’: Niall Ferguson, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power, New York: Basic Books, 2003, p. 125.
94‘the most distinctive feature of the Empire’: Ibid, pp. xxiii, 56, 125.
95‘India, the world’s largest democracy’: Ibid, pp. 332, 326, 358.
95‘not only underwrites the free’: Niall Fergusson, Colossus: The Price of America’s Empire, New York: Penguin, 2004, p. 2.
101‘have i seen more deliberate attempts’: Nevinson, The New Spirit in India, p. 206 et seq.
103This is why I have repeatedly advocated a presidential system for India: See my essay on the subject in India Shastra: Reflections on the Nation in our Times, New Delhi: Aleph Book Company, 2015.
104‘they rejected it with great emphasis’: Bernard Weatherill, ‘Relations between Commonwealth Parliaments and the House of Commons’, RSA Journal, Vol. 137 No. 5399, October 1989, pp. 735–741. Published by Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.
105‘the crushing of human dignity’: Jawaharlal Nehru, A Bunch of Old Letters, Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1958, p. 236.
106‘the law that was erected can hardly be said’: Diane Kirkby and Catherine Coleborne (eds.), Law, History and Colonialism: The Reach of Empire, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001, cited in Richard Price, ‘One Big Thing: Britain, Its Empire, and Their Imperial Culture’ Journal of British Studies, Vol. 45, No. 3, July 2006, pp. 602–627. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The North American Conference on British Studies. www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/503593.
106‘a body of jurisprudence written’: Wilson, India Conquered, pp. 213–4.
107When Lord Ripon…attempted to allow Indian judges: These details may all be found in Durant, The Case for India, pp. 138–139.
107When Robert Augustus Fuller fatally assaulted his servant: Jordanna Bailkin, ‘The Boot and the Spleen: When Was Murder Possible in British India?’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 48 (2), 2006, pp. 462–93.
107Punch wrote an entire ode to ‘The Stout British Boot’: ‘The British Boot’, Punch 68, (30 January 1875), p. 50, quoted in Jordanna Bailkin, ‘The Boot and the Spleen: When Was Murder Possible in British India?’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 48 (2), 2006, pp. 462–93.
108Martin Wiener proposed an ‘export’ model: Martin Wiener, Men of Blood: Violence, Manliness and Criminal Justice in Victorian England, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 11.
109‘I will not be a party to any scandalous hushings up’: Nayana Goradia, Lord Curzon: The Last of the British Moguls, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.
110‘there is a great and dangerous gap between the people and the Courts’: Fielding-Hall, Passing of the Empire, p. 103.
110‘compelled to live permanently under a system of official surveillance’: Nevinson, The New Spirit in India, p. 204.
111women on the Malabar Coast: This is described brilliantly in Manu Pillai, The Ivory Throne, New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2015.
111The Criminal Tribes Legislation, 1911, gave authority: D. M. Peers and N. Gooptu (eds.), India and the British Empire, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
111The scholar Sanjay Nigam’s work has shown: Sanjay Nigam, 1990, ‘Disciplining and Policing the ‘Criminals by Birth’, Part 1: The Making of a Colonial Stereotype The Criminal Tribes and Castes of North India’, and ‘Part 2: the Development of a Disciplinary System, 1871–1900’, Indian Economic Social History Review, 27, p. 131–164 and 257-287.
112We declare it Our royal will and pleasure: ‘Her Majesty’s Proclamation (1858)’, India Office Records, Africa, Pacific and Asia collections, British Library, London: L/P&S/6/463 file 36, folios 215-16.
113‘Our religion is sublime, pure, and beneficent’: Quoted in Lawrence James, Raj: The Making and Unmaking of the British Empire in India, New York: St Martin’s Griffin, 1997, p. 223.
113‘The first, and often the only, purpose of British power in India’: Wilson, India Conquered, p. 6.
113‘there were no major changes in village society, in the caste system’: Maddison, Class Structure.
113The fact is that the British interfered with social customs: See, for example, the impassioned appeals by anti-slavery campaigners for the British government to put an end to certain traditional practices of servitude, which were of course completely ignored by Company officialdom: Wilson Anti-Slavery Collection, A Brief View of Slavery in British India, 1841, Manchester, England: The University of Manchester, John Rylands University Library. URL: www.jstor.org/stable/60228274
CHAPTER 4: DIVIDE ET IMPERA
121in the only already-white country the British colonized, Ireland: Caesar Litton Falkiner, Illustrations of Irish History and Topography, Mainly of the 17th Century. London: Longmans, Green, & Co. , 1904, p. 117.
122not only were ideas of community reified, but entire new communities: Norman G. Barrier, The Census in British India: New Perspectives, New Delhi: Manohar Publishers, 1981.
122‘Colonialism was made possible, and then sustained’: Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.
122‘In the conceptual scheme which the British created’: Bernard S. Cohn, An Anthropologist Among The Historians And Other Essays, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. See also Ranajit Guha, Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.
123The path-breaking writer and thinker on nationalism: Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd ed. London: Verso, 1991.
124‘capable of expressing, organizing, and’: Dirks, 2001.
124caste, he says, ‘was just one category among many’: Ibid.
124in Partha Chatterjee’s terms, the colonial argument for why civil society: For more details, see Partha Chatterjee, Lineages of Political Society: Studies in Postcolonial Democracy, Columbia University Press, 2011 and The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories’, Princeton University Press, 1993.
126The pandits…cited doctrinal justifications: See, for instance, Madhu Kishwar, Zealous Reformers, Deadly Laws, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2008.
126‘enumerate, categorize and assess’: Christopher Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914: Global Connections and Comparisons, London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2004, p. 275.
127The American scholar Thomas Metcalfe has shown how race ideology: Thomas Metcalfe, Ideologies of the Raj, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 89.
128the census in India was led by British: This discussion relies heavily on K. W. Jones, ‘Religious Identity and Indian Census’ in The Census in British India: New Perspectives, N. G. Barrier (ed.), New Delhi: Manohar Publishers, 1981, pp. 73–102.
128This is underscored by the scholar Sudipta Kaviraj: Sudipta Kaviraj, ‘The Imaginary Institution of India’, Subaltern Studies VII, Partha Chatterjee and Gyanendra Pandey (eds.), New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992, p. 26.
130Risley’s work helped the British use such classification both to affirm their own convictions: See E. M. Collingham, Imperial Bodies: The Physical Experience of the Raj, 1800–1947, Oxford: Polity Press, 2001; Christopher Pinney, ‘Classification and Fantasy in the Photographic Construction of Caste and Tribe’, Visual Anthropology 3, (1990), pp. 259–
284, p. 267; and Peter Gottschalk, Religion, Science and Empire: Classifying Hinduism and Islam in British India, London: Oxford University Press, 2012, p. 213.
130Such caste competition had been largely unknown in pre-British days: See M. N. Srinivas, Social Change in Modern India, Hyderabad: Orient Longman India, 1972, which describes how social change and caste mobility were practiced before the advent of the British.
130‘Nothing embraces the whole of India, nothing, nothing’: Forster, A Passage to India, p. 160.
130Both David Washbrook and David Lelyveld believe that: David Washbrook, ‘To Each a Language of His Own: Language, Culture, and Society in Colonial India’, in Language, History and Class, Penelope J. Corfield (ed.), London: Blackwell, 1991, pp. 179–203; David Lelyveld, ‘The Fate of Hindustani: Colonial Knowledge and the Project of a National Language’, in Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament, Carol A. Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer (eds.), Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993, pp. 189–214.
131the British even subsumed ancient, and not dishonourable, professions: Ratnabali Chatterjee, ‘The Queen’s Daughters: Prostitutes as an Outcast Group in Colonial India’, Chr. Michelsen Institute Report 1992: 8.
131the Hindu-Muslim divide was, as the American scholar of religion: Peter Gottschalk, Religion, Science, and Empire, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
133Gyanendra Pandey suggests that religious communalism: Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990.
133the colonialists’ efforts to catalogue, classify and categorize the Indians: Ibid, 204.
134a temple in South Arcot, Tamil Nadu, hosts a deity: Muttaal Ravuttan can be found in Virapatti, Tirukoyilur Taluk, South Arcot, Tamil Nadu. See Alf Hiltebeitel, ‘Draupadi’s Two Guardians: Buffalo King & Muslim Devotee’ in Criminal Gods and Demon Devotees: Essays on the Guardians of Popular Hinduism, Binghamton, NY: SUNY Press, 1989, p. 338 et seq.
134The Mughal court, she points out: Romila Thapar, On Nationalism, New Delhi: Aleph Book Company, 2016, pp. 14–15.
134Hindu generals in Mughal courts, or of Hindu and Muslim ministers in the Sikh ruler Ranjit Singh’s entourage: Gyanendra Pandey, Construction of Communalism.
135the colonial state loosened the bonds that had held them together: Romila Thapar, On Nationalism.
135large-scale conflicts between Hindus and Muslims…only began under colonial rule: See Sandria Freitag, Collective Action and Community: Public Arenas and the Emergence of Communalism in North India, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.
135Hindu or Muslim identity existed in any meaningful sense: C. A. Bayly, ‘The Pre-History of ‘Communalism’? Religious Conflict in India, 1700–1860’, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 19(2), 1985, p. 202.
136The portrayal of Muslims as Islamist idol-breakers…is far from the truth: Richard M. Eaton, ‘Temple Desecration and the Image of the Holy Warrior in Indo-Muslim Historiography’, (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, Boston, April 1994), cited by Cynthia Talbot, ‘Inscribing the Other, Inscribing the Self: Hindu- Muslim Identities in Pre-Colonial India’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 37 (4), 1995, p. 718.
137Cynthia Talbot observed that since a majority of medieval South India’s: Talbot, ‘Inscribing the Other’, pp. 692–722. Also see H. K. Sherwani, ‘Cultural Synthesis in Medieval India,’ Journal of Indian History, 41, 1963, pp. 239–59; W. H. Siddiqi, ‘Religious Tolerance as Gleaned from Medieval Inscriptions’, in Proceedings of Seminar on Medieval Inscriptions, Aligarh: Centre of Advanced Study, Dept. of History, Aligarh Muslim University, 1974, pp. 50–58.
139‘a new religious feud was established’: Nevinson, The New Spirit in India, p. 192-193.
139I have almost invariably found: Ibid, p. 202.
140it is striking that…the Aga Khan articulated a vision of India: The Aga Khan, India in Transition: A Study in Political Evolution, (Philip Lee Warner for the Medici Society, London, 1918); see particularly Chapter I, pp. 1–15, for his civilizational theories; Chapter XIII, ‘India’s Claim to East Africa’; pp. 123–132, and Chapter XV on Islam, pp. 156–161.
141‘to counteract the forces of Hindu agitation’: Dr B. R. Ambedkar, Thoughts on Pakistan, Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1941, p. 89.
142‘predominant bias in British officialdom’: Durant, The Case for India, pp. 137–138.
143‘By 1905, religious rhetoric between Shias and Sunnis’: Keith Hjortshoj, ‘Shi’i Identity and the Significance of Muharram in Lucknow, India’, in Martin Kramer (ed.), Shi’ism, Resistance and Revolution, Boulder: Westview Press, 1987, p. 234.
144Muslims have been together with the Hindus since they moved: Maulana Husain Ahmad Madani, quoted in Venkat Dhulipala, Creating a New Medina, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016, pp. 449–450.
146‘The British are not a spiritual people’: Lala Lajpat Rai, ‘The Swadeshi Movement’, 1905, quoted in Nevinson, p. 301.
148‘We are different beings,’ he declared: Cited in Nisid Hajari, Midnight’s Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India’s Partition, New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015, p. 9.
154Clement Attlee persuaded his colleagues: The entire section on the events leading to Partition (including the pages that follow) is based on the following books: Phillips Talbot, An American Witness to India’s Partition, New Delhi: Sage Books, 2007; Leonard Gordon, Brothers Against the Raj, New York: Columbia University Press, 1990; Penderel Moon, Mark Tully and Tapan Raychaudhuri, Divide and Quit, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998; Sugata Bose, His Majesty’s Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India’s Struggle Against Empire, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011; Maulana Abul Azad Khan, India Wins Freedom, New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2004; Durga Das, India: From Curzon to Nehru and After, New Delhi: Rupa Publications, 1967; Bipan Chandra, India’s Struggle for Independence, New Delhi: Viking, 1988; Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India, New Delhi: Viking, 2013; Sarvepalli Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vols. I & II, New Delhi: Vintage, 2005; Nisid Hajari, Midnight’s Furies; Tunzelmann, Indian Summer; Alan Campbell-Johnson, Mission with Mountbatten, London: Macmillan, 1985; Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, Mountbatten and the Partition of India, New Delhi: Vikas, 1975; Michael Brecher, Nehru: A Political Biography, London: Beacon Press, 1962; Stanley Wolpert, Nehru: A Tryst with Destiny, New York: Oxford University Press, 1995; M. J. Akbar, Nehru, New Delhi: Viking, 1988; H. V. Hodson, The Great Divide, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997; Yasmin Khan, The Great Partition, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008; Louis Fischer, The Life of Mahatma Gandhi, New York: Harper Collins, 1997; Nicholas Mansergh, The Transfer of Power 1942-47, London: HM Stationery Office, 1983; and Lord Archibald Wavell, Viceroy’s Journal (ed.), Penderel Moon, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973. For a short account, see also my own Nehru: The Invention of India, New York: Arcade Books, 2003.
155‘It is alarming and nauseating to see Mr Gandhi’: Ramachandra Guha, ‘Statues in a Square’, The Telegraph, 21 March 2015.
155‘He put himself at the head of a movement’: Boris Johnson, The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History, New York: Riverhead Books, 2014, p. 178.
157‘bound hand and foot at the gates of Delhi’: Alex Von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer: The Secret History Of The End Of An Empire, New York: Henry Holt & Company, 2007.
157‘he represents a minority’: Hajari, Midnight’s Furies, p. 41.
157its membership swelled from 112,000 in 1941 to over 2 million: Ibid, p. 42.
159‘are only technically a minority’: For the opposite view, marshalling various sources of evidence for the idea that Muslim separatist consciousness had deep roots in society and religion, see Venkat Dhulipala, Creating a New Medina: State Power, Islam and the Quest for Pakistan in Colonial North India, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
159The latter was serious, affecting seventy-eight ships and twenty shore establishments: Srinath Raghavan, India’s
War: The Making of Modern South Asia 1939–1945, London: Penguin, 2016.
161Wavell’s astonishingly candid diaries reveal his distaste for,: Lord Archibald Wavell, Viceroy’s Journal (ed.), Penderel Moon, p. 283.
166‘I’ve never met anyone more in need of front-wheel brakes’: Hajari, Midnight’s Furies, p. 102.
172‘The British Empire did not decline, it simply fell’: Tunzelmann, Indian Summer, 2007.
172‘stands testament to the follies of empire’: Yasmin Khan, The Great Partition, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.
173Far from introducing democracy to a country mired in despotism: This argument is laid out in convincing detail in Amartya Sen, The Argumentative Indian, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005.
CHAPTER 5: THE MYTH OF ENLIGHTENED DESPOTISM
177there has never been a famine in a democracy with a free press: Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlements and Deprivation, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982.
177The fatality figures are horrifying: Durant, The Case for India.
179‘it was common economic wisdom that government intervention’: Dinyar Patel, ‘How Britain Let One Million Indians Die in Famine,’ BBC News, 11 June 2016. www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-36339524.
179‘If I were to attempt to do this, I should consider myself no better’: Ibid.
179‘complex economic crises induced by the market’: Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World, London; New York: Verso Books, 2001, p. 19.
180‘We have criticized the Government of Bengal for their failure to control the famine’: Famine Inquiry Commission Final Report, Famine Inquiry Commission, (John Woodhead, Chairman), India, 1945, pp. 105–106.
180‘Behind all these as the fundamental source of the terrible famines’: Durant, The Case for India, pp. 36–37.
182‘There is to be no interference of any kind’: Davis, 2001, pp. 31, 52.
182Lytton’s pronouncements were noteworthy: Ibid.
An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India Page 35
