Colonialist Historians and Their Approach

7/31/2019 Colonialist Historians and Their Approach

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History (Project)

Colonialist Historians and their approach

Submitted To: Submitted By:

Prof. (Dr.) Priya Darshini Abhishek Raj

Semester Ist

Roll No. 703


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CONTENT

1.Acknowledgement2.Introduction3.Colonialist Historians and their work4.Impact on Nationalist approach : Work and Contribution5.Impact on Indian society6.Conclusion7.Bibliography


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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I am highly elated to work on my project topic COLONIALIST HISTORIANS

AND THEIR APPROACH under the guidelines of my teacher. I am very

grateful to him for his proper guidance. I would like to enlighten my readers

with my efforts and hope that I have tried my best for bringing luminosity to

this topic.

I would also like to thank all my friends and my seniors and apart from all these

I would like to give special regard to the librarian of my university who made a

relevant effort regarding to provide the materials to my topic and also assisting

me.

Finally and most importantly I would like to thank my parents for providing me

financial and mental support and providing me necessary and important tips

whenever need so. At last, I would also like to thank the almighty for the

successful completion of this project.

Thanking you,

ABHISHEK RAJ


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INTRODUCTION

The theme of empire building in the historical works of the British naturally

gave rise to a set of ideas justifying British rule in India. In a sense colonial

history as a subject of study and colonial approach as an ideology are

interconnected.

When Bengal and Bihar fell under the rule of the East India Company in 1765,

they found it difficult to administer the Hindu Law of Inheritance. Therefore, in

1776, theManu Smriti, (The law-book of Manu), was translated into English as

A Code of Gentoo Laws.

The initial efforts to understand ancient law and customs culminated in Calcutta

in 1784 of the Asiatic Society which was setup by a civil servant of the East

India Company, Sir William Jones. Another German-born scholar F. Max

Mueller gave great impetus to Indological studies.

The revolt of 1857 also caused Britain to realize that it badly needed a deeper

knowledge of the manners and social systems of India.

The ideological dimension of colonial historiography was brought to the surface

only in the post-independence critique of earlier historiography. This critique

was launched mainly in India while, as late as 1961, C H Philips of the School

of Oriental and African Studies of London, in The Historians of India, Pakistan

and Ceylon, did not raise the issue at all in a comprehensive survey of

historiography.

The influence of Leopold von Ranke and the positivist school of history had, for

the major part of the nineteenth and twentieth century's, created a belief in the

'objectivity of the historian' and this made it difficult to perceive the possibility

of an ideological leanings in historians' discourse.


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The term 'colonial historiography' applies to: (a) the histories of the countries

colonized during their period of colonial rule, and (b) to the ideas and

approaches commonly associated with historians who were or are characterised

by a colonialist ideology. Many of the front rank colonial historians were

British officials. Today, the colonial ideology is the subject of criticism and

hence the term 'colonial historiography' has acquired a pejorative sense.


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COLONIALIST HISTORIANS: WORK AND CONTRIBUTION

Sir William JonesJones showed an early facility with languages, and before entering

Oxford University he knew Greek, Latin, Italian, Portuguese, French, and

Spanish and had taught himself the Hebrew and Arabic scripts. At

Oxford he expanded his study of Arabic while commencing Persian and

Turkish. He soon became one of the nations leading Oriental scholars,

and his first published work, a translation into French of the history of

Persian conqueror Nadir Shah, was commissioned by the King of

Denmark.

Joness following publications advanced his goals of increasing the study

of Asian languages and the printing of Asian writings. A Grammar of the

Persian Language (1771) is filled with examples that both provide a

comprehensive introduction to Persian poetry and illustrate its beauty and

sophistication. Poems, Consisting Chiefly of Translations from the

Asiatic Languages (1772) fed a burgeoning public interest in Oriental

culture and became his most popular early work.

Appended to that collection were two ground-breaking essays. In On the

Arts Commonly Called Imitative, Jones rejects Aristotles thesis that all

fine arts rest upon imitation of the natural world. Instead, he said, poetry

is a strong and animated expression of the human passionsa

declaration almost identical to Wordsworths more famous, though much

later, statement in the Preface toLyrical Ballads (1800) that good poetry

is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. Investigating these

same ideas, On the Poetry of the Eastern Nations posits that the poetry

of Asia (which Jones believed was richer and more inventive because in

Asia the passions were more freely experienced and described) could


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provide a refreshing source of inspiration for Western literature. The

work that made Joness reputation as a great classical and Oriental

scholar, however, was his treatise on aesthetics, Poeseos Asiaticae

Commentariorum Libri Sex (1774). Still untranslated from the original

Latin (and therefore virtually unknown today), this comprehensive

examination of the topics, imagery, and forms of Asian poetry also

develops Joness theories on the nature of poetrys beauty and the

emotional and imaginative sources of its inspiration.

In order to earn a living, Jones practiced law in his fathers native Wales

for nine years, until his legal work and continued Oriental scholarship

allowed him to realize his lifelong dream of a post in Asia. In 1783,

Jones, recently knighted and married, arrived in Calcutta as the newest

judge on the Bengal Supreme Court. There he founded the Asiatic

Society of Bengalthe first organized effort to study the history, society,

and culture of Indiaand began teach Sanskrit in order to access Muslim

and Hindu laws in their original form.InAsiatic Researchesthe journal of the Asiatic Society in which nearly

all Joness work in mythology, literature, linguistics, botany, history, and

poetry was printedJones continued his working aesthetics. Sixth

Anniversary Discourse (1790) and On the Mystical Poetry of the

Persians and Hindus (1792) expand upon what would later become an

essentially Romantic view of poetry as resulting from mysticalexperience. Jones also began extensive comparative studies of

mythology, and Romantic works such as Kublai Khan show the influence

of Joness belief in the common origins of all mythology and in a single

origin of civilization (though Coleridges poem takes this locus as

Abyssinia, while Jones proposed Iran).

Joness interest in Indian culture also spurred him to compose nine

hymns addressed to aspects of the Hindu god Vishnu. The images in


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these poems helped to shape the visions of a mystical, resplendent India

found in the works of Romantic poets such as Shelley, Byron, and

Coleridge. The most famous of the hymns is the Hymn to Narayena

(1785), whose verses, together with the prefatory argument, examines the

nature of perception and creates an analogy between the poets actor

creation and that of God. In their emphasis on personal experience,

creative imagination, spontaneity of thought, and subjectivity, these

poems are distinctly Romantic in sensibility.

Joness studies led to several other ground-breaking developments. While

learning Sanskrit he identified common grammatical roots with classical

European languages such as Latin and Greekdiscovery that marked the

beginnings of Indo-European comparative grammar and of modern

linguistics. In his study of Indian history, Jones became the first to

identify a point of correspondence between Western and Indian historical

times, enabling Western scholars to determine the chronology of Indias

past in relation to their own. His translation of the Indian dramas Sakuntaby Kalidasa (The Fatal Ring, 1799) and Gita Govinda by Jayadeva

(1789) ushered in an enthusiasm for Indian culture in Europe.

At the time of his death in India at the age of 47, William Jones had

learned nearly 30 languages and made advancements in poetic theory,

law, comparative linguistics, religious studies, and history, the full import

of which are still being realized today. His influence on futuredevelopments in the genre of poetry alone is such that any comprehensive

study of Romantic poetry should begin with his work.

F. Max MullerMax Mller, in full Friedrich Max Mller (born Dec. 6, 1823, Dessau,

duchy of Anhalt [Germany]died Oct. 28, 1900, Oxford, Eng.), German


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scholar of comparative language, religion, and mythology. Mllers

special areas of interest were Sanskrit philology and the religions of

India.

Life and chief works

The son of Wilhelm Mller, a noted poet, Max Mller was educated in

Sanskrit, the classical language of India, and other languages in Leipzig,

Berlin, and Paris. He moved to England in 1846 and settled in Oxford in

1848, where he became deputy professor of modern languages in 1850.

He was appointed professor of comparative philology in 1868 and retiredin 1875.

Mller was instrumental in editing and translating into English some of

the most ancient and revered religious and philosophical texts of Asia.

Especially noteworthy are his edition of the great collection of Sanskrit

hymns the Rigveda, Rig-Veda-samhita: The Sacred Hymns of the

Brahmans (6 vol., 184974); his work as editor of the 51-volume series

of translations The Sacred Books of the East; and his initial editing of the

series Sacred Books of the Buddhists. In addition, Mller was an

important early proponent of a discipline that he called the science of

religion; indeed, some credit him with founding that field. His most

important writings on the subject include Essays on the Science of

Religion (1869), vol. 1 of Chips from a German Workshop; Introduction

to the Science of Religion (1873); and Lectures on the Origin and Growth

of Religion (1878).

Ideas on religion

Mllers views on religion were shaped by German idealism and the

comparative study of language. From the former he derived the

conviction that at heart religion is a consciousness of the Infinite; from


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the latter he formed the belief that religion could only be understood

through comparison. As he famously put it, He who knows one, knows

none.

Like many of his contemporaries, Mller believed that genuine

understanding of various aspects of life, including religion, required

knowledge of their origins. Accordingly, he expected the science of

religion to determine how religion is possible; how human beings, such

as we are, come to have any religion at all; what religion is, and how it

came to be what it is. In pursuing this aim he rejected any reliance on

divine revelationa move more unusual then than nowand sought to

limit himself to sense perception and reason, two universally accepted

sources of knowledge.

As a philologist, Mller was critical of contemporaries who sought to

identify the origins of religion through ethnography. His critique of the

then-prevalent theory of fetishism (belief in the magical and protectivepowers of material objects) is remarkable both for its recognition of

Africas linguistic and cultural history and diversity and for its

identification of the ways in which European Christians constructed

images of non-Christians and their religions. Instead of using the

prevailing ethnographic approach, Mller pursued the science of religion

by studying words and texts. He acknowledged that religion had

developed differently in different linguistic spheres and that his training

limited him to a consideration of Aryan peoplesthat is, speakers of

Indo-European languages. Nevertheless, he was convinced that the

Rigveda provided unparalleled access to the process by which religion

arose.


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Mllers account of that process was largely lexicographical. He began

with words and their meanings and sought to show how the idea of gods

eventually emerged from them. In his view, human beings first

encountered the Infinite when they perceived and named objects that

were intangible, such as the Sun, Moon, and stars, or semi tangible, such

as mountains, rivers, seas, and trees.

It was to such objects that the hymns of the Rigveda were addressed.

These hymns were neither polytheistic nor monotheistic but henotheistic

(involving worship of one god without denying the existence of other

gods): they addressed one object at a time, but they never claimed that it

was the only true God. In fact, Mller claimed that, although these

natural phenomena provided genuine intimations of the Infinite, they

were not originally regarded as gods. If they were called deva (divine),

a Sanskrit word related to Latin deus (god), it was only because they

shared the quality of brightness; Mller was especially fond of

interpreting myths in terms of solar phenomena. Eventually, however, the

objects that shared this and similar qualities were grouped together into

classes, conceived of anthropomorphically, and made the subjects of

mythology. In terms frequently associated with Mller, the numina

(Latin: deities) were at first nomina (Latin: names); mythology was a

kind of disease of language.

Assessment

Even during Mllers lifetime his ideas were strongly contested by

scholars of religions. They found his reliance upon the Rigveda in

studying the origin of religions unwarranted and his naturalizing

interpretations of mythology strained. A contemporary theologian and

Orientalist, R.F. Littledale, suggested that Mller, who had risen in the


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east (Germany) and come to the west (England) to bring illumination,

was himself a solar myth. Nevertheless, Mllers enthusiasm for the

study of religions was undiminished. The Science of Religion, he

wrote, may be the last of the sciences which man is destined to

elaborate; but when it is elaborated, it will change the aspect of the

world (Chips, xix). This enthusiasm helped to stimulate the scholarship

that made Mllers own ideas obsolete.

Grant: A hard-core evangelist, he authored Observations on the State ofSociety among the Asiatic Subjects of India in 1792, with the conviction

that it was the divine destiny of the British rulers to bring the light of

Christianity to India which was sunk in the darkness of primitive

religious faiths and superstitions. This attitude is reflected in the historical

writings of the British from the second decade of the nineteenth century.

James Mill: Between 1806 and 1818, James Mill wrote a series ofvolumes on the history of India and this work had a formative influence

on British imagination about India. The book was titled History of British

India, but the first three volumes included a survey of ancient and

medieval India while the last three volumes were specifically about

British rule in India. This book became a great success, it was reprinted in

1820, 1826 and 1840 and it became a basic textbook for the British Indian

Civil Service officers undergoing training at the East India's college at

Hailey burg. Mill had never been to India and the entire work was written

on the basis of his limited readings in books by English authors on India.

It contained a collection of the prejudices about India and the natives of

India which many British officers acquired in course of their stay in

India. However, despite shortcomings from the point of view of

authenticity and veracity and objectivity, the book was very influential.


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Mount Stuart Elphistone:A resourceful civil servant in India served here for the greater part of his

working life; Elphinstone was far better equipped and better informed

than Mill to write a history of India. His work History of Hindu and

Mohammedan India (1841) became a standard text in Indian universities

(founded from 1857) onwards and was reprinted up to the early years of

the next century. Elphinstone followed this up with History of British

Power in the East, a book that traced fairly systematically the expansion

and consolidation of British rule till Hastings' administration. The

periodization of Indian history into ancient and medieval period

corresponding to 'Hindu' period and 'Muslim' period was established as a

convention in Indian historiography as a result of the lasting influence of

Elphinstone's approach to the issue.

J. Talboys Wheeler: He wrote a comprehensive History of India in fivevolumes published between 1867 and 1876, and followed it up with a

survey of India under British Rule (1886).

Vincent Smith:Vincent Smith stands nearly at the end of a long series of British Indian

civil servant historians. In 1911, Vincent Smith's comprehensive history,

building upon his own earlier research in ancient Indian history, came

out. The rise of the nationalist movement since 1885 and the

intensification of political agitation since the Partition of Bengal in 1905

may have influenced his judgments about the course of history in India.

The disintegration and decline experienced in ancient and medieval times

at the end of great empire suggested an obvious lesson to the Indian


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reader, viz. it was only the iron hand of imperial Britain which kept India

on the path of stability with progress, and if the British Indian empire

ceased to be there would be the deluge which will reverse all progress

attained under British rule.

Edward Thompson and G.T. Garrat:They wrote Rise and Fulfilment of British Rule in India from a liberal

point of view, which was sympathetic to Indian national aspirations to a

great extent. The authors Edward Thompson was a Missionary and good

friend of Rabindranath Tagore, while G.T Garratt was a civil servant and

Labour Party politician in England. Despite criticism from Conservative

British opinion leaders, the book is a landmark indicating the

reorientation in thinking in the more progressive and liberal circles

among the British.

From James Mill to Thompson and Garratt, historiography had travelled

forward a great distance. This period, spanning the beginning of the 19th

century to the last years of British rule in India, saw the evolution from a

Euro-centric and disparaging approach to India towards a more liberal

and less ethno-centric approach.


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IMPACT ON NATIONALIST APPROACH: WORK AND

CONTRIBUTION

Nationalist approach to Indian history may be described as one which tends to-

contribute to the growth of nationalist feeling and to unify people in the face of

religious, caste, or linguistic differences or class differentiation. This may, as

pointed out earlier, sometimes be irrespective of the intentions of the author.

Initially, in the 19th century, Indian historians followed in the footsteps of

colonial historiography, considering history as scientific based on fact-finding,

with emphasis on political history and that too of ruling dynasties. Colonial

writers and historians, who began to write the history of India from late 18th

and easily 19th century, in a way created all India history, just as they were

creating an all-India empire.

Simultaneously, just as the colonial rulers followed a political policy of divide

and rule on the basis of region and religion, so did colonial historians stress

division of Indians on the basis of region and religion throughout much of

Indian history. Nationalist historians too wrote history as either of India as a

whole or of rulers, who ruled different parts of India, with emphasis on their

religion or caste or linguistic affiliation.

But as colonial historical narrative became negative or took a negative view of

India's political and social development, and, in contrast, a justificatory view of

colonialism, a nationalist reaction by Indian historians came. Colonial historians

now increasingly, day by day, threw colonial stereotypes at Indians. Basic texts

in this respect were James Mill's work on Ancient India and Elliot and Dawson's

work on Medieval India. Indian nationalist historians set out to create counter-

stereotypes, often explicitly designed to oppose colonial stereotypes thrown at

them day after day.


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Just as the Indian nationalist movement developed to oppose colonialism, so did

nationalist historiography develop as a response to and in confrontation with

colonial historiography and as an effort to build national self-respect in the face

of colonial denigration of Indian people and their historical record. Both sides

appealed to history in their every day speech and writing. Even when dealing

with most obtuse or obscure historical subjects, Indians often relied in their

reply on earlier European interpretations.

Many colonial historians also held that it was in the very nature of India, like

other countries of the East, to be ruled by despots or at least by autocratic rulers.

This was the reason of British rule in India was and had to be autocratic. This

view came to be widely known as the theory of Oriental Despotism.

Furthermore, these writers argued that the notion that the aim of any ruler being

the welfare of the ruled was absent in India. In fact, the traditional political

regimes in India were 'monstrously cruel' by nature.

In contrast, the British, even though autocratic, were just and benevolent andworked for the welfare of the people. In contrast with the cruel Oriental

Despotism of the past, British rule was benevolent though autocratic. The

colonial writers also held that Indians had, in contrast to Europeans, always

lacked a feeling of nationality and therefore of national unity - Indians had

always been divided.

Indians, they said, had also lacked a democratic tradition. While Europeans had

enjoyed the democratic heritage of ancient Greece and Rome, the heritage of

Indians - in fact of all people of the Orient or East - was that of despotism.

Indians also lacked the quality of innovation and creativity. Consequently most

good things - .institutions, customs, arts and crafts, etc. - had come from

outside.


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For example, it was colonial rule which had brought to India law and order,

equality before law, economic' development, and modernization of society

based on the ideas of social equality. All these colonial notions not only hurt the

pride of Indian historians and other intellectuals but also implied that the

growing demand of the Indian intellectuals for self-government, democracy,

legislative reform, etc., was unrealistic precisely because of Indians' past

history. After all, democracy was alien to their historical character and therefore

not suitable to them.


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IMPACT ON INDIAN SOCIETY

Colonial Historiography had its gross impact on the polity of Indian Society and

its legal system. Due to the deeper understanding of local culture, customs and

laws, the British started enforcing laws to control the Indian society as per their

expectations. Pandits were associated with British judges to administer Hindu

civil law and maulvis to administer that of Muslims. The initial efforts to

understand ancient laws and customs, which continued largely until the

eighteenth century, culminated in the establishment in Calcutta in 1784 of the

Asiatic Society of Bengal. It was a set up by Sir William Jones, a civil servant

of East India Company. Christian missionaries became more active to convince

the minds of Indian people for justification of colonial rule thereby

strengthening the British Empire.

All this naturally came as a great challenge to Indian scholars, particularly to

those who had received western education. They were upset by the colonial

distortions of their past history and at the same time distressed by the contrast

between the decaying feudal society of India and the progressive capitalist

society of Britain. They diligently studied polity and political history to

demonstrate that India did have a political history and that the Indians possessed

expertise in administration.

The activities by the Colonialist and the Nationalist historians inspired other

historians to some extensive research on the glorious Ancient India. They

started studying the non-political history of ancient India.

Hence, in the interpretation of history, there was a continuing struggle between

colonialism and nationalism. Now the situation has undergone a change. The

struggle is now between communalism and irrationalism, on the one hand, and

rationalism and professionalism, on the other.


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Under the circumstances, historians wedded to objective and scientific criteria

have to be alert and adhere to reason and long established historical standards.


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CONCLUSION

The colonialist historians tried to justify the colonial rule by giving their views

in the form of books and research work. They stated that the ancient Indians

lacked a sense of history, especially of the element of time and chronology.

They added that Indians were accustomed to despotic rule, and also natives

were so engrossed in the problems of spiritualism or of the next world that they

felt no concern about the problems. The western scholars stressed that Indians

had experienced neither a sense of nationhood nor any form of self-government.

The Christian missionaries sought to uncover the vulnerabilities in the Hindu

religion to win converts and strengthen the British Empire. To meet these needs,

ancient scriptures were translated on a massive scale.

Most of the historians approach was pro-imperialist. For example, V.A. Smith

emphasised on the role of foreigners in ancient India. He observed: Autocracy

is substantially the only form of government with which the historian of India isconcerned.

To summarise, we can say that British interpretations of Indian History served

to denigrate the Indian character and achievements, and justify colonial rule. A

few of these observations appeared to have some validity. Generalizations made

by and large either false or grossly exaggerated, but served as good propaganda

material for the perpetuations of the despotic British rule. Their emphasis on the

Indian tradition of one-man rule could justify the system which vested all

powers in the hands of viceroy. Similarly, they justified that the British colonial

masters had no other option but to look after their life in this world. All we can

summarise by these generalizations is that they tried to lay down the thought in

Indian minds that they were incapable of governing themselves.


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BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOOKS:o Sharma, R.S.,Indias Ancient Past, New Delhi: Oxford University

Press, 2012.

INTERNET SOURCE:o http://www.kamat.com/kalranga/people/pioneers/w-jones.htmo http://archive.org/details/TheEarlyHistoryOfIndiao http://www.preservearticles.com/2012031627564/what-are-the-

specific-features-of-nationalist-historiography-concerning-ancient-

india.html

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Colonialist Historians and Their Approach