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Anurag Shukla

@Anuraag_Shukla

27 Feb

The people of India most accessible to the Europeans were their domestic servants. Most newcomers to India commented on the large number of servants which even a modest European household contained.

#history #lessons #education #decolonization

Captain Thomas Williamson, the author of the first British guide book for India, The East Indian Vade Mecum, London, 1810, explained a large number of servants largely due to “the division of Indians into sects, called by us castes.” #history #lessons #education #decolonization

Williamson lists 31 kinds of servants that a gentleman would need for his home and office, depending on his occupation and status. The servants described Willamson were divisible into an upper and lower category.

#history #lessons #education #decolonization

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Anurag Shukla

@Anuraag_Shukla

18 Feb

Throughout the 18th century, members of the British East India Company reported their discoveries of native scientific and technological practices to the Royal Society. Here, listing out some of those discoveries (in their own words). 1/5

Issac Pyke, governor of St. Helena, writes on the manufacturing of mortar in Madras that forms a “stucco-work” surpassing any known European composition, particularly “Plaster of Paris...in smoothness and beauty” and it is as durable as “marble”. 2/5

Robert Coult, a doctor in Calcutta, describes a method of smallpox inoculation practiced by Bengali Brahmins at least a century before Lady Mary Wortley Montague pleaded with British doctors to adopt this practice (and almost two centuries before Edward Jenner). 3/5

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Anurag Shukla

@Anuraag_Shukla

8 Feb

This paper, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, examines how a wealthy class of farmers that is increasingly involved in urban business uses a combination of party connections, cash, & coercion to capture & maintain power at the expense of SCs in Punjab.

epw.in/journal/2015/5…

The SCs may not be capturing political power, but they are often asserting their cultural distinctiveness in a variety of ways and resisting Jat dominance in panchayats and in gurdwara management committees.

It is not uncommon to see cars with stickers proudly proclaiming their owner to be the son of a Chamar, and many SCs are flocking to religious institutions known as Deras that promise the equality and inclusion that the Jat-dominated Sikh Panth has reportedly failed to foster.

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Anurag Shukla

@Anuraag_Shukla

7 Feb

This [⬇️] inscription over the arched entrance to the North block quotes British writer Charles Caleb Colton:

“Liberty will not descend to a people. A people must raise themselves to liberty. It is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed.”

Peter van der Veer writes, how, the British, convinced of their moral/intellectual superiority, conceptualized 'liberty' not as a modern political idea, but as an ancient British concept deeply rooted in history. #History

This British claim to antiquity was challenged by the comparative/competitive antiquity of Indian civilization. For example, this remark by VS Sukthankar, "Britain is a small, young nation, compared to India, and our love of knowledge, literature, and scripture is greater."

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Anurag Shukla

@Anuraag_Shukla

29 Jan

When Governor-General Bentinck abolished Sati (Suttee, as Britishers called it), he had a larger-than-life statue commissioned showing him dramatically rescuing and Indian women from the funeral pyre. (It can still be seen in the compounds of Victoria museum). #history

Thomas Metcalf writes how despite infrequent occurrences of it, the British were quite fascinated with the act of Sati. With its immolation of a living woman in a raging fire, Sati, even more than the public execution, catered to the English obsession with death as spectacle.

The scene on this statue evokes a salacious mixture of sex and violence. It represents the Indian woman as a helpless victim of a blood-thirsty and superstitious faith, placed on the curved pedestal at the center of the composition, while Bentinck presides majestically above.

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Anurag Shukla

@Anuraag_Shukla

21 Jan

Gandhi’s arrival on the Indian political scene & his challenge to British rule saw some sharp responses from contemporary Western academia & media. One of the most sensational responses was from Katherine Mayo. (now we know that she was encouraged by the CIA to write the book).

While Mayo laid claim to the academic objectivity, her account was so unremittingly negative that even the people in the US & Britain objected to her muckraking & one-sided portrayal. Her ‘objective’ account drew a portrait of India as a country, not yet ready for Independence.

The book was a journalistic coup. Not only more than 50 books and pamphlets were published in response to it, but it also led to a Broadway play and even made it to the movies. It profoundly affected the American and British perception of India.

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