Reading Information

Bernard Cohn, “Chapter 5: Cloth, Clothes and Colonialism in the Nineteenth Century,” Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge

Overview

In this chapter Cohn shows how cloth and clothing would allow the British to create a system to dominate over the indigenous people of India. In the 19th century, clothes established “categorical separation between dark subjects and fair-skinned rulers; the search for representations of the inherent and necessary differences between rulers and ruled and as constructed by the British; and the creation of a uniform of rebellion by the Indians in the twentieth century.” (Cohn, 107) For instance, The Sikh who applied for the bus driver position could not understand why he was denied because of his unwillingness to remove his turban when thousands of Sikhs who fought and died for the British in World War II could wear theirs. The Mr. Sagar’s feeling of confusion, the employer’s “quest for power to impose rules” and “the working-class whites’ resentment of the dark-skinned, exotically dressed strangers” (106) are all rooted in the analysis of the history of the turban and its identity. The British would make Indians wear certain clothes as representations of how they would see them in society. In the military, Shikh’s wildness would be controlled by their turbans and “appear as the British idea of what Mughal troopers looked like…”(Cohn,125).

Keywords

1. Sikhism: a religious movement that grew out of syncretic tendencies in theology and worship among Hindus and Muslims in north India in the 15th century
2. Turban: a head wrap worn by Sikhs
3. Mughals: Turkic-speaking people from Central Asia who traced their descent to Ghengiz Khan and Tammerlane, based their authority on a divine relationship with God

Argument

In this chapter Cohn argues that the British constructed significance in cloth and clothing that allowed them to establish their own colonial authority in India. Cloth and clothing allowed the British to separate themselves from the colonized Indians, giving themselves a superior position in British India.

Evidence

“The dispute over Sikh’s turban can be seen as a symbolic displacement of economic, political, and cultural issues, rooted in two hundred years of tangles relationships.” (Cohn, 106)

“The current significance of the distinctive turban of the Sikhs was constructed out of the colonial context, in which British rulers sought to objectify qualities they thought appropriate to roles that various groups in India were to play.” (Cohn,110)

“The constitution of authoritative relationships, of rulership, of hierarchy in India cannot be reduced to the sociological construction of leaders and followers, patrons and clients, subordination and superordination alone. Authority is literally part of the body of those who possess it.” (Cohn, 114)

Historiographical Debate

As Professor Heath mentioned in the reflection on the Week 4 discussion, Cohn draws upon Eric Hobsbawm and Terrence Ranger’s piece called “invention of tradition.” Ranger and Hobsbawn discuss how certain groups or individuals codify practices or items that actually exist in populations. In the reflection, Professor Heath writes, “We should wonder what kind of “tradition” this really is, how long it has existed, and how the claims about “tradition” are helping to justify and advance the power of certain groups.” This is particularly the type of rational Cohn is using in his arguments of the British imposing their own meaning and value on the Shikh turban.

Contribution to Our Understanding of Colonial Rule

This chapter was particularly eye opening for me. I could never have imagined the significance that clothing could have in colonial rule. The British would use clothing to control the Indian population, allowing themselves to have the “upper hand.” In respect to the Sikh turban, the British were able to constrict significances and associations while constructing it as an essential and “traditional” symbol of Sikhness. This was particularly true of the Sikhs recruited in the army, in which such meanings and customs were used to validate the British use of Sikh armies. The British solidified the turban as the image of Sikh tradition and helped to uphold it. During this process, the British declared themselves as the authoritative figure of defining customs and traditions, imposing their own value, connotation, and understanding on an item within Indian culture. This idea of the British as arbitrators of Indian customs and culture is not novel. They had acted in a similar fashion when translating Indian laws into English, constructing a system of government that would appeal to Indian traditions while still adhering to British ideology.

Reading Information

Bernard Cohn, “Chapter 3: Laws and the Colonial State in India,” Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge

Overview

In chapter 3, Cohn analyzes how the British were able to construct a government in India. When the British conquered India they not only conquered a giant chunk of land, but also a vast cultural and intellectual “space”, very different from their own. The British had to adapt to and understand Indian culture and ideology in order to implement laws that would not induce revolt and uproar. Indian people adhered to ancient civil laws and practiced Hinduism. The British would use these civil laws in order to reshape British law to fit Indian society. Essentially, the British were trying to “sell” British civil code to the Indian population by “repackaging” and rewording it to sound more similar to Hindu laws and codes.

Keywords

1. East India Company: a major territorial power in India after the Battle of Plassey in 1757
2. Despotic government: to rule “as a master over a slave”
3. Sir William Jones (1746-1794): a classical scholar who studied Persian and Arabic at Oxford, who set out to compile ancient Indian laws and codes and to translate them into English.

Argument

Cohn’s argument in this chapter is that the British would try to conquer the epistemological space in India by applying their own ideologies and traditions to Indian culture, while maintaining the position that the Indian population would eventually “adapt.” Through the process of translating Hindu and Muslim laws, the British would slowly eliminate differences between Indian and British law by (unintentionally?) incorporating British philosophy into their translation. Through these translations the British created a way to transform Indian laws and customs into British law, eventually eliminating Hindu and Muslim civil codes and laws entirely. Cohn seems to argue that the British imposed their laws unwittingly as the British sought to find parallels between Indian civil codes and their own structures of rule.

Evidence

“[The British] also agreed that the peoples of India, unlike the Indians and slaves of the New World, had an ancient civilization and forms of local self-governance that were stable and deeply entrenched.” (Cohn, 58)

“Hastings ‘had to modify and adapt the old to fit English ideas and standards. He had to produce a piece of machinery that English officials could operate and English opinion tolerate . . . to graft Western notions and methods on to the main stem of Eastern Institutions.’” (Cohn, 61)

“Jones, and especially his successor, Colebrooke, established a European conception of the nature of Hindu law that was to influence the whole course of British and Indo-British thought and institutions dealing with the administration of justice down to the present.” (Cohn, 71)

“After the reform of the judicial system in 1864, which abolished the Hindu and Muslim law officers of the various courts of India, and after the establishment of provincial high courts, publication of authoritative decisions in English had completely transformed “Hindu law” into a form of English case law.” (Cohn, 75)

Historiographical Debate

Similar to the Introductory chapter, in this chapter, Cohn touches upon the works of British scholars, whose work he refers to “narrative genres”(6). He quotes Alexander Dow’s preface to the translation of History of Ihndostan. Cohn than analyzes this by writing, “Dow, and other English historians as well, stressed that the arbitrariness of the political order caused the salient characteristic of despotism to become the insecurity of property.” (Cohn, 63) Cohn also quotes Robert Orme, who believed “in 1752 there were ‘no digests or codes of laws existing in Indostan…’”

Contribution to Our Understanding of Colonial Rule

Jones set out to compile ancient Indian laws and codes and to translate them into English. They first were translated into Persian from Sanskrit. Then they were translated to English from Persian. (Cohn, 60) In order to keep the Indian population content, it was important for British to keep the Indian cultural and religious spirit in the laws they would implement in this newly acquired territory. In the process of translation, the laws would obviously be distorted by British interpretation. Eventually, the British were able to completely eliminate Hindu and Muslim laws.

The situation in British India was unique in the fact that the British actually tried to incorporate Indian codes, customs, and traditions in the structure of government. However, they eventually wiped out these codes. The Indian experience allows us to understand how a country like England was able to completely control such a gigantic piece of land with its own efficient government structure and set of laws and “Westernize” it in the process. They basically “repackaged” British law to make it relatable to Indian law.

Reading Information

Bernard Cohn, “Introduction,” Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge

Overview

In the introductory chapter of his book, Cohn wants the reader to understand how the British obtained information about India throughout the period of colonialism. In order to understand, classify, categorize, and essentially control the Indian population, the British used “investigative modalities.” With these modalities, the British were able to collect “facts.” In British India, the first and most important method of obtaining information was the “historiographic” modality. Cohn calls this modality the “most complex, pervasive, and powerful” underscoring that it is also an underlying element in most other investigative modalities. History held a metaphysical power in British India, inducing conventions about the “real” social and natural worlds. Cohn explains that studying the divergence of representation of specific historical events in both England and India in order to understand colonialism in British India. Cohn mentions the observation modality, which encompasses the way that British socio-political context and the Romantic period would affect they way people would observe and report these observations. The survey modality includes a “wide range of practices,” like the mapping of India, the collection of biological specimen, or recording important architectural sites.

Keywords

1. Historiographic Modality: an investigative modality used by the British, in which they tried to understand Indian history and culture in order to construct a system of government.

2. Surveillance Modality: an investigative modality used by the British to survey India and its population from a distance.

3. Observation Modality: an investigative modality that encompasses how the British observed and recorded their observations of Indian culture.

Argument

Cohn’s argument in this chapter is that the British entered India, a new and different world, trying to understand it through only their only lenses of knowing and thinking. The British used investigative modalities to obtain “facts” and the used these “facts” as a foundation for administrative power. The British obtained knowledge, trying to classify and categorize the eccentric Indian world with the end goal of (obviously) obtaining control. The investigative modalities in British India generated publications, statistical reports, histories, legal codes, artwork, maps, and even descriptions of archeological sites that were all the British understanding of the Indian world. In order to genuinely understand colonialism in British India, one must analyze the experience from both the British and Indian perspectives.

Evidence

Cohn writes, “In India the British entered a new world that they tried to comprehend using their own forms of knowing and thinking.” (4) He is trying to underscore that the British would understand the Indian state through their own bias. Additionally he writes, “What were these ‘facts’ whose collection lay at the foundation of the modern state?” (4) By putting facts in quotations, Cohn is questioning that legitimacy of the information obtained by the British. Finally, Cohn writes, “A guiding assumption in my research on the British conquest of India in the 18^th and 19^th centuries is that the metropole and the colony have to be seen a unitary field of analysis.” (4) Cohn argues that a holistic analysis is necessary in order understand colonialism or “conquest” in British India.

Historiographical Debate

Cohn touches upon the works of a few British scholars, critically examining the bias in their work. In the discussion of the Historiographic modality he refers to the historic writings, which Cohn refers to as “narrative genres”(6), of Alexander Dow, Robert Orme, Charles Grant, Mark Wilks, James Mill, and James Tod. When discussing the Survey Modality, Cohn refers to the work done by James Renell, in which he officially documented surveys of India. When discussing the Surveillance Modality, Cohn discusses the work of William Herschel, who was experimenting with the use of fingerprints to individualize documents in India and Alphonse Bertillon, who was also working on a system to accurately identify individuals. The recorded contributions of these individuals are primary sources, given that they have firsthand experience in British India.

Contribution to Our Understanding of Colonial Rule

This chapter contributes to my understanding of colonial rule by underscoring the importance of criticizing primary sources. The British observation and understanding of the Indian experience should not be held as factual information. Cohn emphasizes that the British heavily relied upon their own understanding and inferences of Indian culture, social structure, and politics to construct government and other administrative structures. We should holistically analyze both perspectives in order to get a clearer, more complete understanding of colonialism. Additionally, the information presented in this chapter made me think of the changes that conquest of India induced not only in India but also in British society.