History (Project)

Colonialist Historians and their approach

Submitted To: Prof. (Dr.) Priya Darshini

Submitted By: Abhishek Raj Semester Ist Roll No. 703

CONTENT
1. Acknowledgement 2. Introduction 3. Colonialist Historians and their work 4. Impact on Nationalist approach : Work and Contribution 5. Impact on Indian society 6. Conclusion 7. Bibliography

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I am highly elated to work on my project topic COLONIALIST HISTORIANS AND THEIR APPROACH under the guidelines of my teacher. I am very grateful to him for his proper guidance. I would like to enlighten my readers with my efforts and hope that I have tried my best for bringing luminosity to this topic. I would also like to thank all my friends and my seniors and apart from all these I would like to give special regard to the librarian of my university who made a relevant effort regarding to provide the materials to my topic and also assisting me. Finally and most importantly I would like to thank my parents for providing me financial and mental support and providing me necessary and important tips whenever need so. At last, I would also like to thank the almighty for the successful completion of this project. Thanking you, ABHISHEK RAJ

INTRODUCTION
The theme of empire building in the historical works of the British naturally gave rise to a set of ideas justifying British rule in India. In a sense colonial history as a subject of study and colonial approach as an ideology are interconnected. When Bengal and Bihar fell under the rule of the East India Company in 1765, they found it difficult to administer the Hindu Law of Inheritance. Therefore, in 1776, the Manu Smriti, (The law-book of Manu), was translated into English as A Code of Gentoo Laws. The initial efforts to understand ancient law and customs culminated in Calcutta in 1784 of the Asiatic Society which was setup by a civil servant of the East India Company, Sir William Jones. Another German-born scholar F. Max Mueller gave great impetus to Indological studies. The revolt of 1857 also caused Britain to realize that it badly needed a deeper knowledge of the manners and social systems of India. The ideological dimension of colonial historiography was brought to the surface only in the post-independence critique of earlier historiography. This critique was launched mainly in India while, as late as 1961, C H Philips of the School of Oriental and African Studies of London, in The Historians of India, Pakistan and Ceylon, did not raise the issue at all in a comprehensive survey of historiography. The influence of Leopold von Ranke and the positivist school of history had, for the major part of the nineteenth and twentieth century's, created a belief in the 'objectivity of the historian' and this made it difficult to perceive the possibility of an ideological leanings in historians' discourse.

The term 'colonial historiography' applies to: (a) the histories of the countries colonized during their period of colonial rule, and (b) to the ideas and approaches commonly associated with historians who were or are characterised by a colonialist ideology. Many of the front rank colonial historians were British officials. Today, the colonial ideology is the subject of criticism and hence the term 'colonial historiography' has acquired a pejorative sense.

COLONIALIST HISTORIANS: WORK AND CONTRIBUTION

Sir William Jones
Jones showed an early facility with languages, and before entering Oxford University he knew Greek, Latin, Italian, Portuguese, French, and Spanish and had taught himself the Hebrew and Arabic scripts. At Oxford he expanded his study of Arabic while commencing Persian and Turkish. He soon became one of the nations leading Oriental scholars, and his first published work, a translation into French of the history of Persian conqueror Nadir Shah, was commissioned by the King of Denmark. Joness following publications advanced his goals of increasing the study of Asian languages and the printing of Asian writings. A Grammar of the Persian Language (1771) is filled with examples that both provide a comprehensive introduction to Persian poetry and illustrate its beauty and sophistication. Poems, Consisting Chiefly of Translations from the Asiatic Languages (1772) fed a burgeoning public interest in Oriental culture and became his most popular early work. Appended to that collection were two ground-breaking essays. In On the Arts Commonly Called Imitative, Jones rejects Aristotles thesis that all fine arts rest upon imitation of the natural world. Instead, he said, poetry is a strong and animated expression of the human passionsa declaration almost identical to Wordsworths more famous, though much later, statement in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800) that good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. Investigating these same ideas, On the Poetry of the Eastern Nations posits that the poetry of Asia (which Jones believed was richer and more inventive because in Asia the passions were more freely experienced and described) could

provide a refreshing source of inspiration for Western literature. The work that made Joness reputation as a great classical and Oriental scholar, however, was his treatise on aesthetics, Poeseos Asiaticae Commentariorum Libri Sex (1774). Still untranslated from the original Latin (and therefore virtually unknown today), this comprehensive examination of the topics, imagery, and forms of Asian poetry also develops Joness theories on the nature of poetrys beauty and the emotional and imaginative sources of its inspiration. In order to earn a living, Jones practiced law in his fathers native Wales for nine years, until his legal work and continued Oriental scholarship allowed him to realize his lifelong dream of a post in Asia. In 1783, Jones, recently knighted and married, arrived in Calcutta as the newest judge on the Bengal Supreme Court. There he founded the Asiatic Society of Bengalthe first organized effort to study the history, society, and culture of Indiaand began teach Sanskrit in order to access Muslim and Hindu laws in their original form. In Asiatic Researchesthe journal of the Asiatic Society in which nearly all Joness work in mythology, literature, linguistics, botany, history, and poetry was printedJones continued his working aesthetics. Sixth Anniversary Discourse (1790) and On the Mystical Poetry of the Persians and Hindus (1792) expand upon what would later become an essentially Romantic view of poetry as resulting from mystical experience. Jones also began extensive comparative studies of mythology, and Romantic works such as Kublai Khan show the influence of Joness belief in the common origins of all mythology and in a single origin of civilization (though Coleridges poem takes this locus as Abyssinia, while Jones proposed Iran). Joness interest in Indian culture also spurred him to compose nine hymns addressed to aspects of the Hindu god Vishnu. The images in

these poems helped to shape the visions of a mystical, resplendent India found in the works of Romantic poets such as Shelley, Byron, and Coleridge. The most famous of the hymns is the Hymn to Narayena (1785), whose verses, together with the prefatory argument, examines the nature of perception and creates an analogy between the poets actor creation and that of God. In their emphasis on personal experience, creative imagination, spontaneity of thought, and subjectivity, these poems are distinctly Romantic in sensibility. Joness studies led to several other ground-breaking developments. While learning Sanskrit he identified common grammatical roots with classical European languages such as Latin and Greekdiscovery that marked the beginnings of Indo-European comparative grammar and of modern linguistics. In his study of Indian history, Jones became the first to identify a point of correspondence between Western and Indian historical times, enabling Western scholars to determine the chronology of Indias past in relation to their own. His translation of the Indian dramas Sakunta by Kalidasa (The Fatal Ring, 1799) and Gita Govinda by Jayadeva (1789) ushered in an enthusiasm for Indian culture in Europe. At the time of his death in India at the age of 47, William Jones had learned nearly 30 languages and made advancements in poetic theory, law, comparative linguistics, religious studies, and history, the full import of which are still being realized today. His influence on future developments in the genre of poetry alone is such that any comprehensive study of Romantic poetry should begin with his work.

F. Max Muller
Max Mller, in full Friedrich Max Mller (born Dec. 6, 1823, Dessau, duchy of Anhalt [Germany]died Oct. 28, 1900, Oxford, Eng.), German

scholar of comparative language, religion, and mythology. Mllers special areas of interest were Sanskrit philology and the religions of India. Life and chief works The son of Wilhelm Mller, a noted poet, Max Mller was educated in Sanskrit, the classical language of India, and other languages in Leipzig, Berlin, and Paris. He moved to England in 1846 and settled in Oxford in 1848, where he became deputy professor of modern languages in 1850. He was appointed professor of comparative philology in 1868 and retired in 1875. Mller was instrumental in editing and translating into English some of the most ancient and revered religious and philosophical texts of Asia. Especially noteworthy are his edition of the great collection of Sanskrit hymns the Rigveda, Rig-Veda-samhita: The Sacred Hymns of the Brahmans (6 vol., 184974); his work as editor of the 51-volume series of translations The Sacred Books of the East; and his initial editing of the series Sacred Books of the Buddhists. In addition, Mller was an important early proponent of a discipline that he called the science of religion; indeed, some credit him with founding that field. His most important writings on the subject include Essays on the Science of Religion (1869), vol. 1 of Chips from a German Workshop; Introduction to the Science of Religion (1873); and Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion (1878). Ideas on religion Mllers views on religion were shaped by German idealism and the comparative study of language. From the former he derived the conviction that at heart religion is a consciousness of the Infinite; from

the latter he formed the belief that religion could only be understood through comparison. As he famously put it, He who knows one, knows none. Like many of his contemporaries, Mller believed that genuine understanding of various aspects of life, including religion, required knowledge of their origins. Accordingly, he expected the science of religion to determine how religion is possible; how human beings, such as we are, come to have any religion at all; what religion is, and how it came to be what it is. In pursuing this aim he rejected any reliance on divine revelationa move more unusual then than nowand sought to limit himself to sense perception and reason, two universally accepted sources of knowledge. As a philologist, Mller was critical of contemporaries who sought to identify the origins of religion through ethnography. His critique of the then-prevalent theory of fetishism (belief in the magical and protective powers of material objects) is remarkable both for its recognition of Africas linguistic and cultural history and diversity and for its identification of the ways in which European Christians constructed images of non-Christians and their religions. Instead of using the prevailing ethnographic approach, Mller pursued the science of religion by studying words and texts. He acknowledged that religion had developed differently in different linguistic spheres and that his training limited him to a consideration of Aryan peoplesthat is, speakers of Indo-European languages. Nevertheless, he was convinced that the Rigveda provided unparalleled access to the process by which religion arose.

Mllers account of that process was largely lexicographical. He began with words and their meanings and sought to show how the idea of gods eventually emerged from them. In his view, human beings first encountered the Infinite when they perceived and named objects that were intangible, such as the Sun, Moon, and stars, or semi tangible, such as mountains, rivers, seas, and trees. It was to such objects that the hymns of the Rigveda were addressed. These hymns were neither polytheistic nor monotheistic but henotheistic (involving worship of one god without denying the existence of other gods): they addressed one object at a time, but they never claimed that it was the only true God. In fact, Mller claimed that, although these natural phenomena provided genuine intimations of the Infinite, they were not originally regarded as gods. If they were called deva (divine), a Sanskrit word related to Latin deus (god), it was only because they shared the quality of brightness; Mller was especially fond of interpreting myths in terms of solar phenomena. Eventually, however, the objects that shared this and similar qualities were grouped together into classes, conceived of anthropomorphically, and made the subjects of mythology. In terms frequently associated with Mller, the numina (Latin: deities) were at first nomina (Latin: names); mythology was a kind of disease of language. Assessment Even during Mllers lifetime his ideas were strongly contested by scholars of religions. They found his reliance upon the Rigveda in studying the origin of religions unwarranted and his naturalizing interpretations of mythology strained. A contemporary theologian and Orientalist, R.F. Littledale, suggested that Mller, who had risen in the

east (Germany) and come to the west (England) to bring illumination, was himself a solar myth. Nevertheless, Mllers enthusiasm for the study of religions was undiminished. The Science of Religion, he wrote, may be the last of the sciences which man is destined to elaborate; but when it is elaborated, it will change the aspect of the world (Chips, xix). This enthusiasm helped to stimulate the scholarship that made Mllers own ideas obsolete. Grant: A hard-core evangelist, he authored Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of India in 1792, with the conviction that it was the divine destiny of the British rulers to bring the light of Christianity to India which was sunk in the darkness of primitive religious faiths and superstitions. This attitude is reflected in the historical writings of the British from the second decade of the nineteenth century.

James Mill: Between 1806 and 1818, James Mill wrote a series of
volumes on the history of India and this work had a formative influence on British imagination about India. The book was titled History of British India, but the first three volumes included a survey of ancient and medieval India while the last three volumes were specifically about British rule in India. This book became a great success, it was reprinted in 1820, 1826 and 1840 and it became a basic textbook for the British Indian Civil Service officers undergoing training at the East India's college at Hailey burg. Mill had never been to India and the entire work was written on the basis of his limited readings in books by English authors on India. It contained a collection of the prejudices about India and the natives of India which many British officers acquired in course of their stay in India. However, despite shortcomings from the point of view of authenticity and veracity and objectivity, the book was very influential.

 Mount Stuart Elphistone:

A resourceful civil servant in India served here for the greater part of his working life; Elphinstone was far better equipped and better informed than Mill to write a history of India. His work History of Hindu and Mohammedan India (1841) became a standard text in Indian universities (founded from 1857) onwards and was reprinted up to the early years of the next century. Elphinstone followed this up with History of British Power in the East, a book that traced fairly systematically the expansion and consolidation of British rule till Hastings' administration. The periodization of Indian history into ancient and medieval period corresponding to 'Hindu' period and 'Muslim' period was established as a convention in Indian historiography as a result of the lasting influence of Elphinstone's approach to the issue.

J. Talboys Wheeler: He wrote a comprehensive History of India in five

volumes published between 1867 and 1876, and followed it up with a survey of India under British Rule (1886).

Vincent Smith:
Vincent Smith stands nearly at the end of a long series of British Indian civil servant historians. In 1911, Vincent Smith's comprehensive history, building upon his own earlier research in ancient Indian history, came out. The rise of the nationalist movement since 1885 and the intensification of political agitation since the Partition of Bengal in 1905 may have influenced his judgments about the course of history in India. The disintegration and decline experienced in ancient and medieval times at the end of great empire suggested an obvious lesson to the Indian

reader, viz. it was only the iron hand of imperial Britain which kept India on the path of stability with progress, and if the British Indian empire ceased to be there would be the deluge which will reverse all progress attained under British rule.

Edward Thompson and G.T. Garrat:

They wrote Rise and Fulfilment of British Rule in India from a liberal point of view, which was sympathetic to Indian national aspirations to a great extent. The authors Edward Thompson was a Missionary and good friend of Rabindranath Tagore, while G.T Garratt was a civil servant and Labour Party politician in England. Despite criticism from Conservative British opinion leaders, the book is a landmark indicating the reorientation in thinking in the more progressive and liberal circles among the British. From James Mill to Thompson and Garratt, historiography had travelled forward a great distance. This period, spanning the beginning of the 19th century to the last years of British rule in India, saw the evolution from a Euro-centric and disparaging approach to India towards a more liberal and less ethno-centric approach.

IMPACT ON NATIONALIST APPROACH: WORK AND CONTRIBUTION

Nationalist approach to Indian history may be described as one which tends tocontribute to the growth of nationalist feeling and to unify people in the face of religious, caste, or linguistic differences or class differentiation. This may, as pointed out earlier, sometimes be irrespective of the intentions of the author. Initially, in the 19th century, Indian historians followed in the footsteps of colonial historiography, considering history as scientific based on fact-finding, with emphasis on political history and that too of ruling dynasties. Colonial writers and historians, who began to write the history of India from late 18th and easily 19th century, in a way created all India history, just as they were creating an all-India empire. Simultaneously, just as the colonial rulers followed a political policy of divide and rule on the basis of region and religion, so did colonial historians stress division of Indians on the basis of region and religion throughout much of Indian history. Nationalist historians too wrote history as either of India as a whole or of rulers, who ruled different parts of India, with emphasis on their religion or caste or linguistic affiliation. But as colonial historical narrative became negative or took a negative view of India's political and social development, and, in contrast, a justificatory view of colonialism, a nationalist reaction by Indian historians came. Colonial historians now increasingly, day by day, threw colonial stereotypes at Indians. Basic texts in this respect were James Mill's work on Ancient India and Elliot and Dawson's work on Medieval India. Indian nationalist historians set out to create counterstereotypes, often explicitly designed to oppose colonial stereotypes thrown at them day after day.

Just as the Indian nationalist movement developed to oppose colonialism, so did nationalist historiography develop as a response to and in confrontation with colonial historiography and as an effort to build national self-respect in the face of colonial denigration of Indian people and their historical record. Both sides appealed to history in their every day speech and writing. Even when dealing with most obtuse or obscure historical subjects, Indians often relied in their reply on earlier European interpretations. Many colonial historians also held that it was in the very nature of India, like other countries of the East, to be ruled by despots or at least by autocratic rulers. This was the reason of British rule in India was and had to be autocratic. This view came to be widely known as the theory of Oriental Despotism. Furthermore, these writers argued that the notion that the aim of any ruler being the welfare of the ruled was absent in India. In fact, the traditional political regimes in India were 'monstrously cruel' by nature. In contrast, the British, even though autocratic, were just and benevolent and worked for the welfare of the people. In contrast with the cruel Oriental Despotism of the past, British rule was benevolent though autocratic. The colonial writers also held that Indians had, in contrast to Europeans, always lacked a feeling of nationality and therefore of national unity - Indians had always been divided. Indians, they said, had also lacked a democratic tradition. While Europeans had enjoyed the democratic heritage of ancient Greece and Rome, the heritage of Indians - in fact of all people of the Orient or East - was that of despotism. Indians also lacked the quality of innovation and creativity. Consequently most good things - .institutions, customs, arts and crafts, etc. - had come from outside.

For example, it was colonial rule which had brought to India law and order, equality before law, economic' development, and modernization of society based on the ideas of social equality. All these colonial notions not only hurt the pride of Indian historians and other intellectuals but also implied that the growing demand of the Indian intellectuals for self-government, democracy, legislative reform, etc., was unrealistic precisely because of Indians' past history. After all, democracy was alien to their historical character and therefore not suitable to them.

IMPACT ON INDIAN SOCIETY

Colonial Historiography had its gross impact on the polity of Indian Society and its legal system. Due to the deeper understanding of local culture, customs and laws, the British started enforcing laws to control the Indian society as per their expectations. Pandits were associated with British judges to administer Hindu civil law and maulvis to administer that of Muslims. The initial efforts to understand ancient laws and customs, which continued largely until the eighteenth century, culminated in the establishment in Calcutta in 1784 of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. It was a set up by Sir William Jones, a civil servant of East India Company. Christian missionaries became more active to convince the minds of Indian people for justification of colonial rule thereby strengthening the British Empire. All this naturally came as a great challenge to Indian scholars, particularly to those who had received western education. They were upset by the colonial distortions of their past history and at the same time distressed by the contrast between the decaying feudal society of India and the progressive capitalist society of Britain. They diligently studied polity and political history to demonstrate that India did have a political history and that the Indians possessed expertise in administration. The activities by the Colonialist and the Nationalist historians inspired other historians to some extensive research on the glorious Ancient India. They started studying the non-political history of ancient India. Hence, in the interpretation of history, there was a continuing struggle between colonialism and nationalism. Now the situation has undergone a change. The struggle is now between communalism and irrationalism, on the one hand, and rationalism and professionalism, on the other.

Under the circumstances, historians wedded to objective and scientific criteria have to be alert and adhere to reason and long established historical standards.

CONCLUSION
The colonialist historians tried to justify the colonial rule by giving their views in the form of books and research work. They stated that the ancient Indians lacked a sense of history, especially of the element of time and chronology. They added that Indians were accustomed to despotic rule, and also natives were so engrossed in the problems of spiritualism or of the next world that they felt no concern about the problems. The western scholars stressed that Indians had experienced neither a sense of nationhood nor any form of self-government. The Christian missionaries sought to uncover the vulnerabilities in the Hindu religion to win converts and strengthen the British Empire. To meet these needs, ancient scriptures were translated on a massive scale. Most of the historians approach was pro-imperialist. For example, V.A. Smith emphasised on the role of foreigners in ancient India. He observed: Autocracy is substantially the only form of government with which the historian of India is concerned. To summarise, we can say that British interpretations of Indian History served to denigrate the Indian character and achievements, and justify colonial rule. A few of these observations appeared to have some validity. Generalizations made by and large either false or grossly exaggerated, but served as good propaganda material for the perpetuations of the despotic British rule. Their emphasis on the Indian tradition of one-man rule could justify the system which vested all powers in the hands of viceroy. Similarly, they justified that the British colonial masters had no other option but to look after their life in this world. All we can summarise by these generalizations is that they tried to lay down the thought in Indian minds that they were incapable of governing themselves.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOOKS: o Sharma, R.S., Indias Ancient Past, New Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 2012.

INTERNET SOURCE:
o http://www.kamat.com/kalranga/people/pioneers/w-jones.htm o http://archive.org/details/TheEarlyHistoryOfIndia o http://www.preservearticles.com/2012031627564/what-are-thespecific-features-of-nationalist-historiography-concerning-ancientindia.html