Becoming Indian: The Unfinished Revolution of Culture and Identity

by Pavan K. Varma

  It is also important to remember that sati was never as widespread or as rampant as the public campaign orchestrated against it would suggest. The British talked about numbers in the thousands, and that it was the practice among all Hindus across the subcontinent. Bentinck, in his ‘On Ritual Murder in India’, wrote, ‘I have no doubt that the conscientious belief of every order of Hindus, with few exceptions, regards [sati] as sacred …’, without of course providing any basis for his conviction. However, in records and writings of the time, there is enough evidence to the contrary, and several contemporary scholars have written about this—most notably, Anand A. Yang and Lata Mani. The incidence of sati was largely limited to certain castes, even families, and was almost unknown outside parts of eastern and northern India. Between 1815 and 1828, 63 per cent of all recorded acts of sati took place in Calcutta Division (interestingly, this was then the seat of colonial power). 16 In 1824, looking at the data compiled by the British themselves, of the 250,000 women who became widows in the Bengal Presidency, the number of those reported to have burned themselves was 600—that is, 0.2 per cent of the overall number of widows. 17 The data for Varanasi, the most holy of cities for Hindus, is even more revealing. The incidence of sati was very limited here, and ‘the Banaras magistrate noted with surprise—in an obvious ethnocentric manner—that only 125 cases had occurred in the nine years between 1820 and 1828’. 18 Clearly, sati was ‘a localized, secular phenomenon, not a universal, religious one’. 19 But the British exaggerated it enormously since it could be used to discredit the Hindu way of life and legitimize British rule. After the regulation abolishing sati was promulgated, the prominent missionary William Carey wrote: ‘… for the first time during twenty centuries … the Ganges flowed unblooded to the sea.’ 20

  A similar case of deliberate colonial exaggeration and misrepresentation was that of the so-called thugs. The thugs were ordinary dacoits, but not even a tenth as exotic or pervasive as the British made them out to be. Although largely confined to a small region of north India, they were projected as a threat of such magnitude and reach that an observer would not have been wrong in believing that all of Indian society was representative of their violence and duplicity. Plays were made on them and sensationalist novels written on their secretive and murderous activities; indeed, the word thug entered the English language. ‘The campaign against Sati,’ Metcalfe concludes, ‘reinforced notions of Indian women as helpless victims of religion, while lurid tales of the doings of the thugs powerfully reinforced the idea of Indians as treacherous and unreliable.’ 21

  Roy was probably unaware that his idealism suited so well the larger purposes of British rule. Protests against their own culture by the natives provided the moral ground on which the British sought to build their imperial edifice. They appropriated and twisted the well-intentioned and often genuinely reformist campaigns of Indian intellectuals in order to give ideological justification to their empire. The denigration of the Sanskrit language, and the culture and philosophy associated with it, devalued an entire civilizational heritage, and thus strengthened the rulers’ project of imposing their own culture and language on the ruled. There was, of course, much that was wrong at that time with the practice of Hindu religion and the social customs it sanctioned. But selective focus on the most barbaric of these was vital collateral evidence to support the colonial contention that they were dealing with a sunken civilization that only their rule could hope to salvage. Perhaps Roy cannot be blamed for being co-opted into this imperial game, but it is crucial to understand the subtext of his interaction in such matters with the British, and their selective support for his reformist initiatives.

  For his own society and religion, Roy was a scriptural non-conformist, a brave and enlightened man. In 1828 he set up the Brahmo Samaj, founded on the principles of one God and universal brotherhood beyond distinctions of caste or creed. Such an approach was nothing short of revolutionary in the times in which he lived. But in his dealings with the British, he compromised his independence and individuality, and let himself be co-opted into endorsing the vision they wanted the natives to have of themselves. ‘Rammohan Roy had an unbounded faith in the sense of justice and goodness of the British government,’ writes the historian R.C. Mazumdar, ‘and accepted the British rule as an act of Divine Providence … and glorified the role played by them for civilizing the Indians.’ On 15 December 1829, in a meeting at the Calcutta Town Hall, Roy publicly stated that ‘the greater our intercourse with European gentlemen, the greater will be our improvement in literary, social and political affairs’. He even went on to praise the British indigo planters, the effects of whose rapacious rack-renting on the lives of farmers and farm workers in Bihar and Bengal were already apparent. ‘There may be some partial injury done by the indigo planters,’ Roy said, ‘but on the whole they have performed more good to the generality of the natives of this country than any other class of Europeans whether or not out of service.’ Around this time he also wrote to the French botanist and geologist Victor Jacquemont: ‘Conquest is very rarely an evil when the conquering people are more civilized than the conquered, because the former brings to the latter the benefits of civilization. India requires many more years of English civilization so that she may not have many things to lose while she is reclaiming her political independence.’

  On 19 November 1830 Roy sailed on the Albion for England. The voyage had long been an aspiration for him. According to the Missionary Register brought out by the church at Serampore, he had expressed a desire as far back as 1814 to study at Oxford or Cambridge. But now he was going as the envoy of the Mughal emperor Akbar Shah (who conferred on him the title Raja), to petition the King of England for an increase in the indigent monarch’s annual pension. Roy arrived at Liverpool on 8 April 1832, and became, for the common man, an object of great curiosity. The Calcutta Literary Gazette recorded that ‘when this tall, well-built, handsome, aristocrat scholar-reformer passed through the streets of Liverpool, Manchester and London in his typical oriental, embroidered long gown and attractive, shining turban, huge crowds of men, women and children rushed to see him. He was cheered as the “King of Ingee” and the people shouted “Long live Tippoo Saheb”.’ The brave but ill-fated Tipu had died at British hands several decades earlier on 4 May 1799, but the common Englishman could perhaps be forgiven—given the general level of ignorance about India, the colony that kept their economy running—for mistaking him for Roy. The elite circles of London, however, made no mistake and warmly embraced him. For them he was a poster boy for the transformation they hoped they would be able to bring about in the natives.

  Roy was befriended by the Lord Chancellor and Jeremy Bentham, given dinner by the board of directors of the East India Company, and received by King William IV in audience (perhaps the first Indian to be so honoured), who also invited him to his coronation and to the opening of the London Bridge. None of these invitations were extended to him in his capacity as the ambassador of the Mughal emperor. Nor did his petition to the English king on behalf of the beleaguered sovereign at Delhi bear any results. He was welcomed because he was perceived to be an ally and a living endorsement of the kind of subjects Britain wanted to create in India. The Times made this amply clear in a piece on 13 June 1831: ‘We hail his arrival as the harbinger of those fruits which must result from the dissemination of European knowledge and literature, and of those sound principles of rule and government which is the solemn obligation of Great Britain to extend to her vast and interesting empire in the east. We have in Rammohan Roy an example of what we may expect from such an enlightened course of policy.’

  It is telling that the condescension, even though politely expressed, was not noticed by Roy. By all accounts he quite revelled in his celebrity status, and for a short while was sufficiently carried away to move into a luxurious home at Cumberland Terrace in Regent’s Park, till probably his money ran out. But his curiosity value was undiminished. The sustained level of interest in Roy was not surprisi
ng because he must have been one of the first natives to be actually seen speaking English in England. When Roy spoke at the Unitarian Chapel in English, the excitement in the crowd was, according to the Calcutta Gazette, extreme. Often this lack of knowledge about the anglicization of the natives led to rather amusing incidents. At Liverpool, Roy ran into a rather low-level British functionary, now retired from service in India, who, as Mazumdar describes it, had a look of self-satisfaction on his face, and ‘was much more gifted with good nature than good sense or good taste’. The moment this man saw Roy, he began to speak to him in ‘that elegant dialect in which Europeans … make their coup d’essai in Eastern languages. “Ucha, toom Bengali, hum Bengali, toom Bengali, well, kysa hai.” It took some time for the officer to realize that Roy could speak English better than him, although our Raja kept gracefully bowing in response. In fact, Roy’s general demeanour of deference was commented on by some of those who met him. ‘I used to feel quite overwhelmed by the reverential manner in which he behaved to me,’ recalled an English lady. ‘Had I been a queen, I could not have been approached or taken leave of with more respect.’

  On 14 July 1832, Roy was given the privilege to speak at the Select Committee of the House of Commons. In his remarks, he strongly argued for the settlement of Europeans in India. This would, he emphasized, lead to the cultivation of the English language throughout the country. In addition, it would introduce superior modes of cultivating the soil, deliver the natives from superstition and prejudice, improve the legal and judicial system, protect the natives from the oppression of their native landlords, prevent invasion, and put the connection between Great Britain and India on a solid and permanent footing. But that was not all. Roy actually went so far as to advocate a ‘mixed community of India’, mixed with European stock, so that there would be ‘no disposition to cut off its connection with England, which may be preserved with so much mutual benefit to both countries’. His further request to the British Parliament was that ‘educated persons of character and capital should now be permitted and encouraged to settle in India, without any restriction of locality or liability to banishment, at the discretion of the government; and the result of this experiment may serve as a guide in any future legislation on this subject’.

  The next year, Roy went to Bristol at the invitation of Lant Carpenter, the head of the Unitarian Church. He stayed as the guest of a Mrs Castle at Beech House in Stapleton Grove. Ten days after his arrival he fell ill with meningitis, and died on 27 September 1833. British law did not allow for cremation in those days, so he was buried. A decade later his remains were re-interred at the Arnos Vale cemetery in a tomb designed by the architect William Prinsep and paid for by the zamindar and entrepreneur Dwarkanath Tagore—grandfather of Rabindranath Tagore—who had famously declared that ‘the happiness of India is best secured by her connection with England’.

  In August 2005, my wife and I journeyed to Bristol to pay our respects to this brilliant man who wanted to do so much for his countrymen but ended up passionately arguing in the highest public forum of Great Britain for the continuation and strengthening of colonial rule. We were met at the Arnos Vale cemetery by Carla Carpenter, a spirited English lady. Carla is married to an Indian from a distinguished Parsi family, and had lived in India for many years. But when she and her husband came to settle down in Bristol some years ago, her life’s mission became to resurrect and preserve the memory of Rammohan Roy. When she had returned, the memorial built for him at the cemetery was in disrepair. The owner of the cemetery, a certain Mr Tony Towner, wanted to dispose of it for more lucrative construction projects, and none of the Indians in Bristol knew that someone of the eminence of Roy was buried in their town. The petite and articulate Carla went about changing all this. With the help of the local town council she fought off Mr Towner, raised funds for the upkeep and maintenance of the memorial, and lobbied with the municipal authorities and the Indian High Commission to do more in Bristol in the Raja’s memory. Every year on 25 August she organized a meeting at the memorial to invoke his name, and more often than not the Indian High Commissioner came down from London to attend it.

  The tomb, as Carla agreed with me, was far from aesthetic. Prinsep had made several drawings, but the one chosen tried, typically, to combine both British and Indian architectural motifs, and ended up doing justice to neither. Octagonal in shape, the monument has a cluster of three pillars in four corners, and a rather awkward chhatri perched on top. The roof is painted a jarring purple, while the pillars and niches and the chhatri are green. The sun was high in the sky when we visited the tomb, but it was pleasant in the shade and a cool breeze rustled the maple trees. As Carla talked on about Roy and her campaign in Bristol, I stood silently by his tomb, my mind trying to grapple with the contradictions in the life of this complex, sincere and talented person, who was born in a village in Bengal but found his final resting place in a city he hardly knew, thousands of miles away from home. The British looked upon him benignly, as their creation, and he did not let them down. The City Museum in Bristol commissioned a life-size portrait of Roy towards the end of the nineteenth century, soon after Max Mueller gave a lecture there on the Raja. Done by Henry Bricks, who later became Queen Victoria’s chief portrait painter, it is tucked away on the third floor, between dwarfing replicas of dinosaurs and an antique piano. The Raja looks imposing in black tunic and yellow turban, with a jamewar shawl over his shoulder and a book in his hand. In the background one can make out a temple and a mosque. The label on the portrait describes him as the first Hindu reformer. The British did not have to say any more. The need for reform presupposed a decadent and backward society, and the fact that he was portrayed as the first reformer made him an example of their civilizing intervention.

  The Brahmo Samaj, which was a creation of Roy, also kept to this brief. The original plaque at the tomb had simply stated: ‘Rammohan Roy, died Stapleton, 1833.’ In 1870, the Samaj added a new plaque that, recalling his scholarship and belief in the unity of godhead, concluded: ‘His unwearied labours to promote the social, moral and physical condition of the people of India, his earnest endeavours to suppress idolatry, and the rite of suttee, and his constant zealous advocacy of whatever tended to advance the glory of God and the welfare of man live in the grateful remembrance of his countrymen.’ The emphasis here is again only on his reformist profile, which draws attention afresh to the moral degeneration of the natives. The tribute is sanitized of all other elements, for anything else, least of all anything that approximated an objective assessment, would have brought in aspects of the process of imperial subversion which would be uncomfortable both to the British and to Roy’s followers. Over a hundred years later, the amnesia induced by colonial rule made the leaders of free India perpetuate this selective assessment. In the foyer of the Bristol Council House is a bust of Roy that was gifted on 27 April 1995 by the then chief minister of West Bengal, Jyoti Basu. Carla remarked that many residents of Bristol still ask why you need a bust of an Indian in the foyer of their city council. Two years later a larger-than-life bronze statue was installed in the very heart of Bristol, next to the Cathedral and the City Library. As in his portrait, the Raja is shown standing, a long tunic over his trousers, a shawl across his shoulders and a book in one hand. The statue was presented by the then Indian High Commissioner Dr L.M. Singhvi. The plaque simply states: ‘Philosopher, Reformer, Patriot, Scholar.’

  Many of the contradictions that colonialism creates are mirrored vividly in the life of the Raja. He was a scholar of Hindu thought and philosophy, yet publicly ridiculed its contents. A master of the Sanskrit language, he openly condemned its learning and teaching—and yet, when attacked by the missionaries for his thoughts on the Gospel, he was forced to defend himself by citing examples from the Vedanta, whose legacy he had otherwise dismissed. His stated aim was to revive the fortunes of his countrymen; yet he made a declaration at the House of Commons on the need for Indians to be ruled in perpetuity by the British. An arden
t believer in the civilizing role of British rule, he was forced to protest against the uncivilized behaviour of British officials. While he paid open tribute to the justice and liberality of British laws, his appeal against the arbitrary censorship imposed by them, or their unjust treatment of the Mughal emperor in Delhi, never elicited a response.

  In his personal life, the Raja was caught in the not unfamiliar existential dilemma of the colonized. It is said that he had two houses in Calcutta, one in which everything was western except him, and the other in which everything was Indian except himself. A man committed to reform in Hindu society, he dedicated his petition against sati to Lady Hastings. He made it his mission to oppose the blind orthodoxies of the Hindu religion, yet took along Hindu servants to cook his food, and two cows to provide him pure milk, on the voyage to England. Eager to fulfil his long-standing desire to visit England, a country he so openly admired, he was greatly inconvenienced on the ship when he could not find an open fire on which his meals could be made in accordance with Brahmanical notions of purity. While he was immensely gratified to have been received in audience by the English king, and, indeed, argued for India to have a mixed community enriched by European stock, he objected to being attended by English nurses during his last days in Bristol. On his deathbed, he expressed a wish not to be buried in a cemetery or with Christian rites, yet he was buried and not cremated. His memorial was designed by a Britisher, but its costs were defrayed by an Indian who did not, however, think it necessary to have anything inscribed on the monument in Bengali or Sanskrit, the two languages Roy knew better than any other.