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Knowing the Country: Empire and Information in India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

C. A. Bayly
C. A. Bayly
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University of Cambridge
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Extract

Kingsley Martin's critique of imperialism was born out of socialist rationalism and long overseas lecture tours. But in Leonard Woolf, his friend and periodic replacement at the offices of the New Statesman, we have a confidant who had, for several years before 1914, abandoned the rarefied circles of Bloomsbury, to become a civil administrator in Ceylon. Woolf's experience of colonial government had soured him from the beginning. He came to feel that the British were eternally shut out from knowledge of the lives of the Ceylonese subjects by an almost palpable curtain of ignorance and racial prejudice. Those temples of accumulated colonial knowledge, the district offices where he worked, were ‘great monuments of official incompetence, bottlenecks of delay’. When he tried to galvanize into action these places of sacred lore, the squeals of rage, from Briton and Ceylonese alike, were louder than if he had trespassed into the holiest Buddhist shrine. Yet, for all that, Woolf remained a devout believer in the individualist myth that sustained colonial rule: the ideal of the lone colonial officer and sage, standing at the centre of a web of untainted knowledge, the man who ‘knows the country’.British rule might be saved from damnation if liberal judgement were based on pure information. The problem was that, at some level, information hadto come from a ‘native informant’, an agent, a spy, an ‘approver’ who turned King's Evidence, and, by their very nature, such agencies could not be trusted.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , February 1993 , pp. 3 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

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35 Pasobans were often Pasis, a ritually low caste in Hindustan; another village spy and the runner, associated with the patwari, who often appears in the correspondence was the goret. Runners (daurias here) of the dak in pre-colonial Benares were supposed to be Chamars, a low caste, but in the cities Chamars had apparently compounded their service and had people employed on the sums they raised (seeGoogle Scholar, Saletore, (ed.), Banaras Affairs, i, p. 88Google Scholar, reply by Ibrahim Au Khan. In Maharashtra village watchmen were Mahars who removed dead cattle, ran errands for village officers, kept watch on the village property and ‘were generally principal witnesses in disputes about boundaries of fields, etc.’ (Karve, I. and Dandekar, V., Anthropometric Measurements of Maharashtra (Poona, 1951), p. 35); this association of the lowest level of information collection with low caste, or outcaste tribal status, paralleling the role of the Brahmin at the apex, also applied to runners, see below fn. 69.Google Scholar

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56 ‘Donation to Mohamed Wauris in consequences of the losses he sustained in the performance of his duty as Dawk Moonshee of Cuttack’, Aug. 1808, 5444 BC F/4/236.

57 Examination of Mahomed Wauris, ibid.

58 Edmonstone to Elphinstone, December. 1808 encloses, Brooke, T., Benares, to Edmonstone, 20 June 1808, Home Misc. 657; Edmondstone's minute, ‘Memorandum respecting the credibility of the supposed intrigue between Raja Runjeet Singh and Amrut Row’, 28 Aug. 1808. Home Misc. 592. There were doubts whether the runner could actually have travelled these vast distances (Lahore Benares in 35 days; Kabul Agra in 38 days) in the time stated, but not that communications were still open.Google Scholar

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66 For Gentil, see Gole, Maps of Mughal India, intro.

67 Ibid., p. 4, for Bolts' role in supplying the British, Awadh and the French with information;

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75 ‘Objections to Kurreem Oollah’, 5447, BC F/4/236.

76 For the interconnections in British confidential service of descendants of the Faujdar and Kazi of Hooghly see, Secretary's Report on the examination of Mahomed, Saudik and Mirza Bauker, Bengal Pol. Cons. 4 January. 1808, 5584, BC F/4/248.Google Scholar

77 E.g., list of personnel of the intelligence department of the Delhi residency, 1814, see, Sinha, (ed.), Selections from the Ochterlony Papers, p. 89;Google Scholar for an example of a newsletter, Fisher, Michael H., A Clash of Cultures, Awadh, the British and the Mughals (New Delhi, 1987), appendix iii, pp. 261–2.Google Scholar

78 Rs 300 per month appears to have been standard for high grade writers and agents.

79 5565, BC F/4/247.

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81 See n. 76 above; another similar figure was Izatullah Khan, munshi of the Delhi residency who accompanied Moorcroft.

82 For the historyof Kader Khan see ‘Conduct of Molavee Abdool Kader in accepting from the late Nabob Vizier a jaghier whilst confidentially employed by the Resident at His Excellency's court’, 5585, BC F/4/248; Wood to Fagan, 21 January. 1815, encloses minute by Abdul Kader Khan on the Terai, Home Misc. 649; his report on trade in Nepal, Benares Agency Records, 22 Jan. 1796, U.P. Records Office, Allahabad.

83 Hodson, G. H., Twelve Years of a Soldier's Life in India; being Extracts from the Letters of Major S. W. R. Hodson, B.A. (London, 1859), p. 197.Google Scholar

84 Amir Ali was an official of the Patna court; his family was rewarded with a substantial zamindari.

85 E.g., the attempts by Thomas, Rutherfurd, Superintendent of the Postal and Intelligence Department, to use the hill Brahmin connections in intelligence activity against Nepal, 1814–1816, Home Misc. 644–53.Google Scholar

86 Marika, Vicziany, ‘Imperialism, Botany and Statistics in Early Nineteenth Century India. The Surveys of Francis Buchanan (1762–1829)’, Modern Asian Studies 20, 4 (1986), 625–61.Google Scholar

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88 Editor of Encyclopedia of India and Southern Asia (repr. Madras, 1873).Google Scholar

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95 Bengal Gazette, 21 April 1781; Chanda, M. K., History of the English Press in Bengal (Calcutta, 1987), pp. 1–4.Google Scholar

96 Bayly, C. A., Imperial Meridian. The British Empire and the World, 1780–1830 (London, 1989).Google Scholar

97 Circular by Agnew, P. A., December. 1799, Home Misc. 457, p. 176.Google Scholar

98 See, e.g., Natarajan, J., History of Indian Journalism (New Delhi, 1955);Google ScholarSen, S. P. (ed.), The Indian Press (Calcutta, 1967);Google ScholarBarrier, N. G., Banned. Controversial Literature and Political Control in British India, 1907–47 (New Delhi, 1976)Google Scholar, intro. For the liberalization of the press see Kaye, J. W. (ed.), Selections from the Papers of Lord Metcalfe (London, 1855), p. 197. Minute of 16 May 1835;Google Scholar

for connection of government servants with the press, Minute of 29 Dec. 1829, ibid., p. 311.

99 ‘New arrangements of the Governor-General's Private Office and of the Secretary's Office of the Political Department’, 2375, BC F/4/128.

100 See, e.g., Sen, A. G., The Post Office of India, or a Historical Review of its Rise, Progress, Regulation and General Administration (Calcutta, 1875).Google Scholar

101 Magt, Actg, Mirzapur to Postmaster General, Calcutta, 11 October 1810, Mirzapur Judicial Records issued vol. 74, U.P. Central Records Office, Allahabad. The report said that an ancient and effective dak existed in Awadh; six people in Mirzapur alone ran postal services for merchants and others and retained ‘cossidars’.Google Scholar

102 Benares Recorder, 8 January. 1846, comments on heavy postage on indigenous newspapers.

103 Cherry to Shore, 11 August. 1795, Home Misc. 577.

104 Palmer to Mornington, 10, 31 December. 1798, Home Misc. 574.Google Scholar

105 Clive to Wellesley, 11 August. 1801, Home Misc. 464; for futna cf. ‘treason’ see, Wink, A., Land and Sovereignty in India (Cambridge, 1986).Google Scholar

106 Remarks of Nana Farnavis reported in Palmer to Mornington, 2 July 1799, Home Misc. 574.

107 I am indebted to Joanna Innes for information on this issue and also to her unpublished paper ‘The Collection and Use of Information by Government [in England] circa 1690–1800.’

108 See, e.g., Home Misc. 556, 557, 577, ‘Notes on Europeans and Asiatics’, and other similar personal intelligence files used both in London and Calcutta; Cf. The Asiatick Annual Register, or a View of the History of Hindostan for 1799 (London, 1800).Google Scholar

109 Persian works such as the Ain-i-Akbari, or Dabistan which devotes much of their text to Hindu practices, or even topologies such as the ‘Yadgar-i-Bahaduri’ deploy ‘sociological’ information as part of a discourse of rule.Google Scholar

110 For Rennell's methods see his Memoir of a Map of Hindoostan, or the Moguls Empire (2nd edn, London, 1785), pp. i–viii.Google Scholar

111 Gole, , Maps of Mughal India.Google Scholar

112 Phillimore, R. H., Historical Records of the Survey of India, iv vols (Dehra Dun, 1945–1958), i, 23;Google Scholar

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113 Hickey, Thomas, ‘Colonel Cohn Mackenzie and his assistant’, OIOR.Google Scholar

114 Deutsch, K., Nationalism and Social Communication (Cambridge, Mass., 1966).Google Scholar

115 This point has been made by Seema Alavi; the ‘invalid thana’ which she discusses below was evidently also useful as an intelligence gathering institution.

116 One Guzra Bye, royal midwife, in Baroda supplied A. Walker with an account of female infanticide there, c. 1804, Walker of Bowland Mss 13651, National Library of Scotland (I am indebted to Dr Dilip Menon for this reference), but generally speaking, the British appear to have relied on reports from inferior police in their attack on infanticide.

117 There were, however, a few cases where British residents retained intimate contacts with Indian women formed in the course of official surveillance, see, e.g., the case of Kirkpatrick, J., Home Misc. 464.Google Scholar

118 Parliamentary Papers on Hindoo Widows and Voluntary Immolations, xviii, 1821, pp. 335ff;Google Scholar for the rising power of darogas and their informers, see McLane, J. R., ‘Bengali Bandits, Police and Landlords after the Permanent Settlement’, in Yang, (ed.), Crime and Criminality, pp. 42–3.Google Scholar

119 Home, Pol., July 1907, 24.D, National Archives of India; the fear of Mutiny, cow protection, the old enemy the Holkar dynasty of Indore and Brahmins all gells into a nightmare here.Google Scholar

120 Valentine, Chirol, Indian Unrest (London, 1910), pp. 18, 27, 102, 103, 345–6.Google Scholar

121 See Hodson, , Twelve Years of a Soldier's Life; Kaye and Malleson, History, ii, 136; iv, 55, 205, 207, 208.Google Scholar

122 Popplewell, R., ‘The surveillance of Indian Revolutionaries in Great Britain and on the Continent’, Intelligence and National Security 3, 01. 1988, 56–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

123 Official debates about drink always appeared to have shown a dual aspect. Under the Mughals drinking was an infraction of moral law and an assault on the emperor's authority; Wellesley's campaign about illicit stills was connected with fears for revenue, but expressed in the language of evangelicalism; by the 1870s, the language was of moral purity, but an underlying concern was discipline among plantation workers. In each case surveillance systems displayed both moral and practical applications and could slip easily between these concerns.Google Scholar

124 Kipling, R., ‘Pig’, Plain Talesfrom the Hills (London, 1911 ).Google Scholar

125 Cited in Dilks, D., Curzon in India, i, Achievement (London, 1969), pp. 221–48.Google Scholar

126 Benares Recorder, 30 April 1847.

127 A. Stirling to Bentinck, encl, in Bentinck's Minute on the press, 6 Jan. 1829, Philips, C.H. (ed.), The Correspondence of Lord William Cavendish Bentinck (Oxford, 1977), i, 139 there was a need to ‘diffuse knowledge and excit [e] a spirit of enquiry and reflection among the natives of India’;Google Scholar cf.Metcalfe's minute of 16 May 1835, Kaye, J. W. (ed.), Selectionsfrom the Papers of Lord Metcalfe (London, 1855), p. 197.Google Scholar

128 See, e.g., ‘Khattriyon ki Utpatti’, Bhartendu Granthavali (Benares, 1964), iii, 247–9, where he refers to ‘Sherring’, ‘John Muir’, Guru Gobind Singh, Vedic and Muslim sources all within a few pages.Google Scholar

129 Ibid., pp. 3–20, ‘Agrawalon ki Utpatti’ which is based upon oral tradition, vanshawalis and literary sources British and traditional. Much of his knowledge of the history of Benares and its temples was built up by simply talking to priests, pandas and gosains.

130 For a recent example of a social study based on the concept of communication see, Steele, Ian K., The English Atlantic 1675–1740 (New York, 1986).Google ScholarMy attention has also been drawn to Habib, I., ‘Postal Communications in Mughal India’, Procs Ind. Hist. Congress, 46th Session, pp. 236–52;Google ScholarSiddiqi, M. Z., ‘The Intelligence Service under the Mughals’, Medieval India, a Miscellany, 2 (London, 1972), pp. 54ff.Google Scholar