MAKING OF THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD

The British control over South Asia created social and religious tensions still seen today. The British did enter India in a time of instability created as a result from Aurangzeb’s rule where Islam was placed at a higher status than Hinduism which led to Mughal dissenters and in result let to decentralization. With the spread of orientalism, the British became interested in the history, language, and cultures of Southern Asia. Along with this was the rise of liberalism ideas to Britain’s other lands that it was invested in. Britain felt that it had a civil responsibility to help develop Southern Asia into a liberal democracy because of these ideals.

Tensions in Southern Asia grew until the Sepoy Rebellion where the British defeated the rebels and extended their control of the subcontinent from an indirect to direct rule. Britain and now the crown, with its belief of understanding South Asia’s complicated cultures and religious diversity, began to identify people mainly as Hindu or Muslim while also having the natives identify themselves in traditional cast systems. This push back to traditionalism thoughts began to raise old tensions in Southern Asia that had seemed to be declining.

South Asia saw a rapid decolonization from Britain along with a rise in nationalism and anti-modernism. This quick shift in power created social distress as seen in India. One of India’s first rulers Nehru had “never let go of the British-created colonial state and its well-oiled machinery of repression” (Mishra) as it forced individuals to keep a specific identity, making it easy to identify those who dissent. Today a rise in the Hindu Right has created social distress as they have become violent and have destroyed the Babri Masjid Mosque for example.

Outside of India, the Radcliffe line border led to mass immigration as it forced families to move from either to or from Pakistan and India to leave potential discrimination in their native counties. Also, Kashmir has been a conflict between India and Pakistan because it was never controlled by the British so both countries now claim a legitimacy to control it. The choices of Britain’s involvement in South Asia can still be seen today.

When European powers began colonizing parts of the world some of them, like Britain, saw it as a chance to build new nations loyal to the crown. It was a way to spread culture and a competition between European powers to see who’s society was greatest. In Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge by Bernard S. Cohn, it is explained that the British wanted to learn as much as they could from the subcontinent, “…establishing correspondence could make the unknown and the strange knowable”. The British wanted to use their newfound knowledge to improve their society as well as India’s, while still being under British control mind you. This all changed after the Sepoy Rebellion, and Britain would start to influence the people of the subcontinent to hate each other. Even though Indian politicians preach against the rule of the British they don’t try to fix the problems they created, in India at 70, and the Passing of Another Illusion, Mishra Pankaj states, “Nehru never let go of the British-created colonial state and its well-oiled machinery of repression”. The Cast system and a hatred towards Pakistan are two examples that still exist in India today.

The collection, organization, distribution, and analysis of data on a large scale is something we take for granted in the world today, particularly in the United States. It is something we deal with constantly—our social security numbers, our student IDs, our census data, our GPAs, our purchasing preferences, etc. are all information collected for the purpose of running large-scale organizations like the United States Government, Amazon, or even the College of Wooster. In our first reading this semester, This Fleeting World, David Christian identifies increasingly complex and powerful governments as one of the key features of the modern era; “no government of the agrarian era tried to track the births, deaths, and incomes of all the people it ruled or to impose compulsory schooling; yet many modern governments handle these colossal tasks routinely” (p. 62). His argument is that the demands of modern society, from overseeing massive populations to managing equally massive entities such as schooling and the economy, require the collection and digestion of detailed information on a scale that was previously unimaginable.

In the introduction of his book Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge, Bernard S. Cohn describes how and why Britain developed the first bureaucracy that had the capacity and desire to gather and interpret this level of information. According to Cohn, “many aspects of metropolitan documentation projects were first developed in India (by the British)” (p. 4). Regardless of British intentions—be they benevolent, malevolent, or stemming from a simple desire for understanding—the expansion of the administrative functions and processes in the British governing of India, as is the case with many innovations across history, was brought about by a desire to divide people rather than bring them together and ultimately became little more than the weaponization of information. Both Bernard Cohn and professor Bonk address the issues resulting from Britain’s attempt to understand the people of India. Through incompetence, generalizations, and oversimplifications, Britain managed to divide South Asia more thoroughly than if they had taken a massive pair of scissors and cut it down the middle (which they eventually kind of did).

Despite what happened in South Asia, this characteristic of governance has become absolutely critical to the functioning of any large organization existing in the current world climate. The identification and classification of people and entities is far too convenient for both the organizations and the people that interact with them. The information gathered informs decisions and policies and provides benefits to the people classified. Imagine what paying taxes would be like if the government did not know who anyone was, what their income looked like, how many dependents they had, etc.; it would be hectic. The mistake of the British in India was not that they collected information and classified people; it was how they interpreted that information, the way the classified those people, and the fact that they used these to inform policy. Fundamentally, the disaster in South Asia was a result of the ruling body acting without understanding the situation and making uninformed decisions.

From this past week, there was emphasis on South Asian countries, mainly India after WWI- where there were major themes of anti-colonialism and traditionalism. Anti-colonialism, led to many revolts and the dislike of colonial rulers. One of these revolts was the Sepoy Mutiny of 1856, when Indian troops found out that the British were using animal fat for a certain part of their guns that had to be bitten off. It is against Hindu’s religious beliefs to touch, let alone ingest the animal fat that was used in their guns, so this was seen as disrespectful/offensive to their religion. Their dislike grew of the British and they wanted to stop this offense from continuing to happen so this fueled their rebellion. This rebellion led to the failure of liberalism and caused a rule change, where India returned to traditionalism, buttressed by scientific discourse.

Mahatma Gandhi was an anti-colonial nationalist who fueled Indian’s desire to become an independent, religious and anti-modern nation. For India to be a religious nation, they had to have a traditionalism style of rule. Through this traditional style emerged a socialism style that was very similar and focused of the people’s needs and desires.   From the reading,  India at 70 and the Passing of Another Illusion, “Gandhi had intimately experienced how Western imperialists and capitalists blended economic inequalities with racial hierarchies, entrenching, as Du Bois wrote, “a new industrial slavery of black and brown and yellow workers in Africa and Asia.”” Gandhi witnessed these racial hierarchies in India and knew that they were unfair and unequal so he wanted to change them. Similar to the Sepoy Mutiny, Gandhi disliked British rule and instead of a physical rebellion he led many peaceful protests and movements. These movements did not instantly cause change but they helped that change occur and eventually led to an independent Indian nation.

 

This past week, we learned about Britain’s imperial rule in South Asia, specifically Pakistan and India. In the reading, India at 70, the author discusses the promises and the failure to meet them 70 years after India gained independence from Britain. They talk about W.E.B. DuBois and how he believed India could become a “superior alternative” to the other world powers in the West. But that hope never came to fruition according to this author, specifically noting the rise of hate crimes against Africans in India. This article dealt mainly with the hopes for a better India, better than the world powers of the time. But India did not reach that level, instead perpetrating violence against Africans in India, to the extent of 40 African nations calling out India and the United Nations beginning an investigation.

In Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge, the author discusses British rule in India in modalities: historiographic, observational, survey, enumerative, museological, and surveillance. These different modalities were used by Britain to collect extensive data and use that data to administer the region and push the population towards hatred; pinning religious groups against each other. Dividing the population and pinning religious groups against each other aided Britain in maintaining the populations focus away from them and their taking of resources in India, as well as their oppressive rule. The tension that the British started in India created a lot of violence within the nation.

Based on this weeks readings and lectures, one major thing stuck  out and interested me. That  was the fact that the way that Britain  controlled India was not necessarily  by putting excessive force into ruling, but rather using stereotypes to help fuel a class divide and make Indians  rule themselves.

I think that Cohn in “Colonialism and its forms of Government” very well explains the  reasonings behind liberalism fell in India. This was due to the fact that British forces attempted to change long-standing traditions and ideals in Indian society, which led to revolts such as the Sepoy massacre, which ended in bloodshed. I found it interesting that once the massacre occurred, the British saw it as a failure  in leadership and changed their entire scheme, now focussing on ruling based off Orientalism and Traditionalism. In class, I found it ironic that the rigid caste system that the British used was also used by the Indian society to their advantage as they could identify  themselves on a higher caste and  progress in life.

Finally,  I would like to recognize the theme that I have seen in class. This is the theme of colonized/imperialized areas and the turmoil that follows their imperialization. In the Gilmartin reading, we can see this turmoil through the partition of India and Pakistan and the current violence that is happening on the boarder. He discusses that because of British rule, there  was an  increase in divide between Muslims and Hindus which caused and still  causes a lot of religious based violence today.

Overall, I think that South  Asia is a very interesting region to look at because of the way in which it was colonized. It would be interesting to see what the outcomes would be if there was a continued and more direct rule on the part of Britain.