Although Vincent Smith was not the most distinguished imperial historian of India, he was probably the most widely known in India because of the success of his textbooks on Indian history. In 1919, Smith published a rejoinder to the Montagu-Chelmsford constitutional proposals seeking to placate nationalist demands by conceding a certain measure of “responsible government” to Indians. The proposals, Smith said, were based on two propositions: “(1) that a policy, assumed to have been successful in Western communities, can be applied to India; and (2) that such a policy ought to be applied to India, even at the request of an admittedly small body of Indians, because Englishmen believe it to be intrinsically the best.5 His argument was that both propositions were false.
The policy of responsible and democratic government, “supposed to be of universal application,” could not be applied to India because it went against “a deep stream of Indian tradition which has been flowing for thousands of years. . . . The ordinary men and women of India do not understand impersonal government. . . . They crave for government by a person to whom they can render loyal homage.” The reason for the legitimacy of British rule in India lay in the fact that the King-Emperor was regarded by the Indian people as “the successor of Rama, Asoka and Akbar. Their heartfelt loyalty should not be quenched by the cold water of democratic theory.”6 In terms of social divisions, “India has been the battle-ground of races and religions from time immemorial,” and the anticipation of a common political identity was “not justified either by the facts of history or by observation of present conditions.” The fundamental principle of social organization in India was caste, which was incompatible with any form of democratic government. More importantly, the spread of modern institutions or technologies had not weakened the hold of caste in any way.
The necessities of cheap railway travelling compel people to crowd into carriages and touch one another closely for many hours. . . . The immense practical advantages of a copious supply of good water from stand-pipes in the larger towns are permitted to outweigh the ceremonial pollution which undoubtedly takes place. . . . But such merely superficial modifications of caste regulations . . . do not touch the essence of the institution. . . . The Brahman who rides in a third-class carnage or drinks pipe-water does not think any better of his low-caste neighbour than when he travelled on foot and drank from a dirty well. . . . So long as Hindus continue to be Hindus, caste cannot be destroyed or even materially modified.7
Smith then went on to argue that contrary to the plea of the reformers, the policy of promoting responsible government in India was bad even as a practical strategy of power. It would produce not consent for authority but its very opposite.
Contentment, so far as it exists, is to be deliberately disturbed by the rulers of India in order to promote the ideal of Indian nationhood, the formation of a genuine electorate, and the development of the faculty of self-help. Do the high officials charged with the government of India, who propose deliberately to disturb the contentment of three hundred millions of Asiatic people, mostly ignorant, superstitious, fanatical, and intensely suspicious, realize what they are doing? Have they counted the cost? Once the disturbance of content has been fairly started among the untutored masses, no man can tell how far the fire may spread. Discontent will not be directed to the political objects so dear to Mr. Montagu and Mr. Curtis. It will be turned fiercely upon the casteless, impure foreigner, and, inflamed by the cry of “religion in danger,” will attract every disorderly element and renew the horrors of 1857 or the great anarchy of the eighteenth century. The lesson of history cannot be mistaken.8
Our reaction today would be to dismiss these arguments as coming from a diehard conservative imperialist putting up what was even then a quixotic defense of old-style paternalistic colonialism. Yet Smith’s rejection of the claims to universality of the modern institutions of self-government raises, I think, an important question.
Let me put this plainly, even at the risk of oversimplification. If the principal justification for the modern regime of power is that by making social regulations an aspect of the self-disciplining of normalized individuals, power is made more productive, effective, and humane, then there are three possible positions with regard to the universality of this argument. One is that this must apply in principle to all societies irrespective of historical or cultural specificities. The second is that the principle is inescapably tied to the specific history and culture of Western societies and cannot be exported elsewhere; this implies a rejection of the universality of the principle. The third is that the historical and cultural differences, although an impediment in the beginning, can be eventually overcome by a suitable process of training and education. The third position, therefore, while admitting the objection raised by the second, nevertheless seeks to restore the universality of the principle.
While these three positions have been associated with distinct ideological formations, they are produced, however, in the same discursive field. My argument is, first, that all three remain available today; second, that it is possible easily to slide from one to the other, because, third, all three adopt the same tactic of employing what I will call the rule of colonial difference. The implication of this argument is that if a rule of colonial difference is part of a common strategy for the deployment of the modern forms of disciplinary power, then the history of the colonial state, far from being incidental, is of crucial interest to the study of the past, present, and future of the modern state. (My emphasis, N.M.)
Source: The Nation and Fragments by Partha Chatterjee, 1993, ebook version, pp. 39-41.
Reference
5, 6, 7 and 8. Vincent A. Smith, Indian Constitutional Reform Viewed in the Light of History(London: Humphrey Milford, 1919), p. 78.
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