Colonialism, Culture and Resistance (Collected Essays)

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The essays selected for this volume reflect the changes in my research concerns, thematically and theoretically, over a period of time. I had started my doctoral work in early 1960s when the methods of colonial conquest and administrative consolidation were the most popular themes of research. My teacher, Dr V. P. S. Raghuvanshi, introduced me, through his fascinating lectures on modern Indian history, to the system of political control the English East India Company had brought into being, to ensure its paramount authority over the Indian states. My doctoral dissertation on the working of the Residency system was the result of the interest thus imbibed in me. The focus of my research then was mainly the manner in which the British officials posted at Indian courts as residents and agents interpreted and implemented the imperial policy in relation to the Indian states. A critical reading of the voluminous reports of these functionaries indicated how the working of British paramountcy at the 'local' level had unsettled the equation within the court nobility and drew different responses from them. In the British officialease these responses were characterized as 'intrigues' by sections of disgruntled nobles. These 'intrigues' were often expressions of power struggles within the courts, but in many cases had the undercurrent of resentment against interference by the British in the affairs of Indian states. Such resentment led to a fairly large number of armed uprisings in which the displaced aristocracy, officials of Indian states and peasants took a leading role. These revolts can be considered a precursor to the great upsurge of 1857. My early interest in this aspect of colonial history was reinforced by the opportunity to teach the political history of British colonization to the postgraduate students of the University of Delhi. I tried to reorient the course as the history of Indian resistance.

The political history, however, did not hold my interest for long. Not because economic and social history was then the reigning rage. I was attracted to an area which had not yet found a niche in the discipline in India, intellectual-cultural history, of which there were already several outstanding practitioners in Europe, particularly in France and Italy, and in North America. Intellectual history, it is said, is located at the intersection of social and cultural history. It is not intelligible either when divorced from the economic and the political.

The articles brought together in this volume broadly deal with how the Indians tried to cope up with colonial subjection and its consequences. The two inter- related issues in colonial history are the modes in which domination was established and perpetuated and the various forms of resistance it engendered. either implicitly or explicitly. For about two hundred years in Indian history. colonial domination and resistance occupied the centre stage of historical experience, however much colonialism is sought to be wished away in some sections of recent historiography. The process of colonization, particularly its military, political, and administrative engagements, has found detailed documentation and interpretation. Built into the early narratives of conquest by colonial administrators and ideologues-most of them deformed by racial prejudices had the underpinnings of rationalization and legitimation of colonialism. They are histories seen through the eyes of the conqueror and written in his interest. Any attempt to recover the voice of the vanquished would naturally attract attention to the innumerable ways in which resistance was articulated. Such resistance was not confined to well-known instances of political opposition or social protest alone, but found expression in several realms of social existence. The articulation of resistance, however, was a complex phenomenon, assuming different forms and adopting different methods, influenced partly by the way power was exercised by the colonizer. The resistance to colonialism in India, therefore, manifested in armed revolts, social protests, cultural assertions, and intellectual dissent. Underlying all these different forms of resistance was a common thread: to construct an alternative to the existing conditions in political, cultural, and ideological realms. As such the intellectual and cultural engagements which strove to transgress the limits of colonial modernity and to construct an alternative were ways of challenging and resisting colonial domination. The focus of the essays in this volume is on such incidence of resistance and its implications for the formation of political and cultural consciousness.