Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge

Book Review

Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India. Bernard S. Cohn. Princeton University Press, 1996. Xvii+189pp.

The acceptance and maintenance of colonial power in any country is not dependent only upon the military strength or the capacity to coerce the voices of masses but also on the development of knowledge to understand the subjects. The development of knowledge by the imperial power of East Indian Company and crown (after 1858) to invent the history of the colonized and see through it the ways and means of ruling and maintaining the empire was the ‘cultural’ domain of the colonial history. Bernard Cohn uses the principles of anthropology in sync with the methods of history to study colonialism and its forms of knowledge. This book consists of four essays, foreword by Nicholas Dirk and introduction to the book. These essays are written in the time period between 1950s and 1980s. In this era, the Chicago school’s method of ‘ethnosociology’ was quite famous and well appreciated by Bernard Cohn. The writing of McKimm Marriot and Ronald Inden approached a new style of writing Indian culture history by the use of ethnosociology to remove the ‘orientalist’ biasness. Using the same logical tool, Cohn tried to show the logic and illogic of colonial discourse and orientalist biasness in East Indian orientalist scholarships.

The Brahminic hegemony in Indian society relates to their control over the secret knowledge of Dharamshastras and Sanskrit scriptures and British controlled this powerful discourse in society by deciphering this control through different modalities. Cohn names these modalities as the historiographic modalities, observational/trade modality, the survey modality, the enumerative modality, the museological modality, the surveillance modality and the investigative modalities in the post colonial world. The historiographic modality being the most complex and also related to other modalities gave British the ontological formation of their subjects i.e. how the colonised Indians real social and natural worlds are formed. The control over power can be associated with monopoly over knowledge and British by ‘officialising’ established and extended its power in many areas. Knowledge of subjects defined and classified spaces like making separation between public and private spheres by recording transactions, changed most of the religious institutions into secular institutions and established a bureaucratic structures like census classified groups in society and established registration of birth and deaths, standardized languages and scripts, and fostering official beliefs through public education and its rituals.

When British came to India then they operated on the idea that everything and everyone had a ‘price’ and created many anglicized posts in the company like Dubhashi, dalal, banian, shroff, pandit and vakil. These posts were related with different specialisations and most important of them was the post of the interpreter. The persistence of different languages in India posed a very difficult situation for British and mainly translation of all letters into Persian and vice versa was the most difficult task for them considering the angle of secrecy in the communications. Cohn very eloquently showed this through Sir Thomas Roe’s account of Jahangir’s court. James Fraser, who worked in Surat establishment for 19 years, wrote a contemporary history of the court of Nadir Shah after learning Persian based on Persian account and constant correspondence between Persians and Mughals. After this, the period between 1770 and 1785 became the formative years in which British started producing grammars, dictionaries, treatise, class books, translation etc. The production of these texts and texts after this period established a discursive formation and defined an epistemological space and created a discourse which had the effect of converting Indian forms of knowledge and Indians into European subjects.

They started finding books on Mughal administration and epistolary practices of professionals to learn from the successes and failures of earlier rulers. Then in 1771, Sir William Jones published grammar of the Persian language and British Servant N.B.Halhed produced first grammar of Bengali and Sanskrit on English model. The language of Indian politics, Persian, was tried to decrypt by British to gain access of administration of different rulers.  The thrust of company administrators to educate its employees in Persian and Sanskrit was to wrest power from the munshis, akhunds, and pundits on whom they depended to mediate between the company and native princess and merchants and to provide translations of the legal and historical documents thought relevant to conducting business in India. British’s learning of Sanskrit was emphasised to understand the Hindu Law and get rid of Pundits from the Courts. They wanted to create benevolent legal pattern in the country so that people will accept the rule. David Scott in his paper “Colonial governmentality¹” also finds the same discourse of Colonial power to legitimise its rule. Later, the advent of Hindoostani as the official language of the Raj, first created by John Gilchrist turned the work in different direction. Now, the civil servants were trained in basic Hindoostani and etiquettes needed in communications with Indians. So, the shift from Persian to Hindoostani as the administrative language of the British showed linguistic strategies for British imperial domination.

After having adequate knowledge in the field of languages, their main concern shifted to codify laws and to create rational basis for imparting justice. British accepted that despite having ancient and traditional culture, India had a state system and this system is on decline from medieval times and this system has to be recreated to extort land revenue from the agriculturists and the capacity to access and levy tax was related to law. Warren Hastings started a post of “collector” to control law and order and collect land revenues from the provinces and had belief that Mughal had robust system to collect land revenue and it was not based on European model rather on model based on theory and practice of Indian administration. Hastings also refuted the despotic character of state propounded by other British administrators and allowed William Jones to codify laws. William Jones with the help of pundits and some other experts started creating digest of Hindu laws and Muslim Laws. However, it completed after his death and Colebrooke completed it. William Jones through the doctrine of stare decisis and interpretations of religious texts created digests for Hindu and Muslims.

The British believed that Indians did not have history i.e. they are people without history. So, through museological and survey modalities, British categorised and objectified India. They started with different vague theories and gave different historical accounts of Indian civilisation. From the period of 1600 to 1750, the British through rational despotism found India a stable and static society with a relationship to west. Lord Wellesley first used the survey methods to classify history of Indians which can be seen in Camden’s work. Colonel Mackenzie researched to provide details about the Indian past and the religions etc especially in South India. He found the discovery of Jaina religion and its philosophy and its distinction from Buddhism, the different ancient sects of religions in the country and their subdivisions, the nature and use of the Sasanams and inscriptions on stone and copper etc. After his death, the reports of his survey were published but the work was stopped after some times.

The paucity of funds did not allow researchers to continue their projects. East India Company provided meager sum for doing researches on archaeological sites. The artefacts collected from different sites remained packed for decade because of high maintenance costs of keeping all these artefacts in some museum. However, most of the valuable and significant things were taken to Britain for display. Koh-i-Noor diamond became one of the chief attractions of British crown and Tipu’s sword and tiger were also kept in the museum. Richard Johnson’s collection of large number of paintings of Akbar time and various manuscripts of Mughal era is even today kept in India House at London. After the end of Anglo-Mysore war, the transfer of Indian artefacts to Britain stopped for some time but the revolt of 1857 radicalised the plundering. Most of the valuables plundered from the country were taken to Britain and kept in the museums.

British wanted to differentiate themselves from Indian in social, physical and cultural spheres so East India Company did not allow any officer to wear Indian dress. Fredrick John Shore was dictated to wear only gentlemen clothes in the courtroom. They related clothes with the question of honour and dignity. In Mughal Court also, the clothes were not seen as products for gaining profits but it had different meanings for Indians. The gifts of clothes and jewellery were seen as best gifts in Indian scenario at that time. Cohn through the controversy of Nayars showed the linking between status and clothes. A decree allowing Christian converts to cover themselves linked the civilising mission of Christians to the upward mobility of lower castes and the upper castes protection of their privileges, showing how “changes in dress becomes the tokens of much wider social, political and economic changes that refracted in unpredictable use, from the point of view of the principle actors in the event”. The pith-helment, sikh turban and Gandhi cap are rooted in relations of race and caste while breast-cover clothes are interwoven in the conspiracy against gender and sexuality.

The writers of the guide books which advised them not to touch one by his turban or head were correct but the logic behind this was not correct. The main cause for this relates to purity and pollution. Hand is associated with different kinds of impurity so people did not like it in their normal conversations. Also, if Indians wore shoe in front of British then it was called indiscipline but the meaning of Indian with this act is related with cosmic phenomenon. So, 17^th and 18^th Century British and Indians inhabited separate coginitive universes is a projection back in time of the historiographic bifocalism of the studies collectively. The acceptance of material in both the cultures was different and the historiographic modality of Bernard Cohn finds the changes in the clothes and jewellery associated with the power structures. In order to be different, British gave certain guidelines to the officers to carry certain clothes to India.

The substance of authority was shown through clothes in Mughal era. The king or the emperor wearing the khilat would place one of the robes to his subjects as a particular honour. This will improve the subject’s rank in the kingdom. Different forms of salutations also had different meanings and used at different purposes. Indians would place his turban at the feet of the conqueror as a sign of complete surrender. In sindh, turban was related to sovereignty. The dress of the Indian army was also transformed to meet the desires of different ethnic solders. The gorkhas wanted to wear turban and the uniform of European and Indian were made same. So, the clothes represented differen meanings for different communities. The world of signs and symbols gives importance on the clothes, jewelleries, styles of honour etc.

Cohn in the four essays deals with different concepts and the knowledge formation in these areas. The historiographic modality is used to find the development of languages in the society, development of laws, and development and changes in the clothes. The survey modality has been used by same writer very efficiently in his essay in the book “An Anthropologists among Historians” on census. However, all these four things language, law, dress and objects are related to each other and their development and change happened at the same time but Cohn sees all these developments in four areas separately and does not relate each other. The change in official language of the administration did not change the local discourse of Hindoostani. However, Indian history of language did not develop in a linear fashion but in structure and type. Also, Indians were constituted based on the social positions unlike their western counterparts who are constituted as unique individuals so the poems and prose of Indian literature are different from western style.

In this book Cohn only dealt with the cultural dimension of colonialism but the cultural dimension of colonialism works simultaneously with repressive or imperial functionaries to rule over subjects.  The rule of colonizers is always confronted by violence from both sides. The various cultural things are forced on subjects to exploit them. Cohn does take the stand that colonialism is an illegitimate extension of power. Colonial forms of knowledge generated for the benefit of British and the indigenous forms of knowledge also developed out of practical interests. But, Cohn does not give importance to this. However, the "scientific classification" of subjects in Foucauldian term has a long and complicated genealogy but it takes place through a variety of "operations on [people's] own bodies, on their own souls, on their own thoughts, on their own conduct." These operations characteristically entail a process of self-understanding but one which is mediated by an external authority figure, be he confessor or psychoanalyst.