The Idea of India

An Indian-American friend of mine recently asked me: 

How did Indians themselves refer to India during the Raj? Did they call it "India"? I mean back then, it had independent state-like entities or "protectorates", with kings and other legislative bodies, as well as what are now Pakistan and Bangladesh. So how did people talk about the whole thing? Or did they much? How, for that matter, did the British refer to it? And did Indians use the same words as the British did?

 

Today I thought of putting up here my [expanded] email response to him: 

The British referred to most of South Asia as India (recall East India Company) but the idea of "India" among South Asians arose only in the second half of British rule. I mean India as a single country or nation. Indian nationalism, a response to British rule, created that sense among the locals. Until then, allegiances and identities were mainly local (still true in some regions, though to a lesser extent in most cases). The Mutiny of 1857 was just that – a mutiny, not the First War of Indian Independence that many today like to call it (as portrayed in the atrocious movie Mangal Pandey).

 

That said, it is also true that most South Asians had a larger sense of being part of Hindu culture, belonging to Hindustan (with its natural geographic boundaries). Sort of like how medieval Europeans had the sense of being part of Christian culture, belonging to Christendom, even as there was a French nation and a German nation who were frequently at each others throats.

 

Churchill, befuddled by the diversity and the lack of sufficiently unifying criteria for a nation in India, said: "India is no more a political personality than Europe. India is a geographical term. It is no more a united nation than the Equator."

 

So, I'd say that in large swathes of South Asia in the Company era, there was only a loose sense of a Hindu-land/Hindustan, and lots of dominant regional identities (Marathas, Tamils, Bengalis, Gurkhas, Sindhis, Punjabis, etc.). Racially at least, the British saw them as more similar than different, and their colonial encounter eventually led to a convenient embrace of the word "Indian" by the locals (discarded later in Pakistan and Bangladesh when their Islamic identity grew dominant).

 

After 1947, Nehru cemented the idea of India further, as did (in no particular order) TV and the serialization of the epics, Bollywood, Pakistan, the BJP (their nationalism centered on a narrow view of Hinduism), nukes, beauty queens, IT industry, the language of middleclass consumerism, etc. Indeed, the newly resurgent nationalism and cultural pride among Indians (esp. NRIs, but also in urban middleclass India) has dramatically magnified their blindness, innocence of facts, and lack of moral self-awareness.

Comments

[vp]

A few bones to pick:

1. The idea of a nation was a 19th century European construct, applied to what we tend to refer to as a nation-state today. Its application to large entities such as India was dubious at that time.

2. Churchill, as always, was being the boneheaded imperialist regarding this as well. He knew that if there was a case for nationhood based on civilizational continuity, India (and China) qualified far better than did Britain.

3. What happened in 1857 was not merely a "mutiny", but a full-fledged rebellion. It was explicitly directed against all the British and not merely against harsh army superiors. If it were only a "Sepoy Mutiny" it would have been restricted to the Bengal Army, with no action in Kalpi, Jhansi etc.

Calling it the "First War of Independence" is only about as much of an exaggeration as calling the rebellion of the American colonies the "Revolutionary War".

[Shunya]

VP:
Many thanks for your note. You're the first to comment on my new blog!

I agree with 1) but sense contradictions between 1) and 2). A boneheaded imperialist Churchill was, but he did occasionally come out sounding right, even if by accident. ;-)

As for 3), is "rebellion" that different from "mutiny"? I’m not arguing about the scale. My point is that those rebelling in 1857 were not united in their sense as "Indians". They were not fighting for an independent nation (like the 20th century nationalists) but were trying to protect their own princely turfs and had their own separate gripes and agendas against the British. It was a convenient alliance of disparate interests. Besides, not everyone was united against the British. The Sikhs and the Gurkhas joined ranks with the British because local issues were far more important than any overarching idea of "India", "Indians", or "nation". I submit that these ideas began gathering steam only under the Crown (after 1858).

[vp]

I agree that the notion of India as a unified entity was far from the minds of the rebels and was certainly not a motivating factor in 1857.

Nevertheless, the word "mutiny" was used by the British to minimize the scope of the resistance. The word conveys the sense of violent reaction against oppressive superior offices (think "Mutiny on the Bounty").

European thought in the 19th century believed in the existence of nations such as Britain, France, Germany and Italy, but did not acknowledge nationalist aspirations among subject peoples in the empires. I feel that Churchill's specious reasoning was basically designed to deny Indian nationalist aspirations (inchoate though they were). I have generally found it extremely difficult to ascribe any decent motives to that pompous, self-promoting windbag.