Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T23:30:50.920Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Colonial Knowledge and the Fate of Hindustani

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

David Lelyveld
David Lelyveld
Affiliation:
Columbia University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Towards the end of Paul Scott's A Division of the Spoils, the final novel of The Raj Quartet, and in the television series as well, Indian people make an appearance and commit acts of unmotivated and horrible violence. The British heroine comments, “Such a damn, bloody, senseless mess … the mess the raj had never been able to sort out.” Making sense, sorting out, was supposed to be the special vocation of British rule, yet here were all the seething, primordial conflicts rising to the surface again in the Hindu versus Muslim partition of India in 1947.

Type
The Identity of Language
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 35 , Issue 4 , October 1993 , pp. 665 - 682
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

An earlier version of this essay was presented in July 1989 at a conference on “Culture, Consciousness and the Colonial State,” at the Isle of Thorns Conference Center, University of Sussex, sponsored by the South Asia Committee of the Social Science Research Council, which also funded some of the research with the American Institute of Indian Studies. I am particularly indebted to Bernard S. Cohn, Shahid Amin, Carol A. Breckenridge, and Sandria Freitag for their comments and encouragement.

1 Scott, Paul, A Division of the Spoils (New York: Avon Books, 1979), 616Google Scholar.

2 The manifesto of the “conceptual systems” project was by Szanton, David L., “South and Southeast Asia: New Concerns of the Council,” Items [newsletter of the Social Science Research Council], vol. 30:2 (05 1976), 13–17Google Scholar.

3 Said, Edward, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978)Google Scholar; Spivak, Gayatri Chakravarty, “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, Nelson, Cary and Grossberg, Lawrence, eds. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 271–313CrossRefGoogle Scholar;cf. Parry, Benita, “Problems in Current Theories of Colonial Discourse,” Oxford Literary Review, vol. 9:27–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Important full-length studies of colonial discourse in the South Asian context are Viswantahn, Gauri, Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989)Google Scholar; and Inden, Ronald, Imagining India (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990)Google Scholar. Sara Suleri argues that there is a powerful Indian presence that infiltrates and subverts even the most hegemonic British texts. See her book, The Rhetoric of English India (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992)Google ScholarPubMed.

4 For example, Robinson, Francis, “Islam and Muslim Society in South Asia,” Contributions to Indian Sociology, 17 (1983), 185–203CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and his “Islam and Muslim Separatism” in Political Identity in South Asia, Taylor, David and Yapp, Malcolm, eds. (London: Curzon Press, 1979), 78–112Google Scholar.

5 See Brass, Paul R.'s contribution to “the Robinson-Brass debate” in his “Elite Groups, Symbol Manipulation and Ethnic Identity among the Muslims of South Asia,” in Taylor and Yapp, Political Identity, 35–77Google Scholar, and his major work, Religion, Language and Politics in Northern India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974)Google Scholar. See also Seal, Anil, The Emergence of Indian Nationalism: Competition and Collaboration in the Later Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, the initial work of what was briefly known as “the Cambridge school” of South Asian history.

6 See Thomason, Sarah Grey and Kaufman, Terrence, Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 1–109Google Scholar.

7 Weinreich, Uriel, Labov, William, and Herzog, Marvin, “Empirical Foundations for a Theory of Language Change,” in Directions for Historical Linguistics, Lehman, W. and Malkiel, Y., eds. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968), 97–195Google Scholar; Sankoff, Gillian, The Social Life of Language (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1980), 29–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 For my first attempts in this direction, see “Urdu as a Public Language,” in Systems of Communication and Interaction, Gaeffke, Peter and Oleksiw, Susan, eds. (Philadelphia: South Asia Regional Studies, University of Pennsylvania, 1981)Google Scholar; and “Eloquence and Authority in Urdu: Poetry, Oratory and Film,” in Shari at and Ambiguity in South Asian Islam, Ewing, Katherine, ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

9 Gandhi, M. K., Our Language Problem, Hingorani, A. T., ed. (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, n.d.)Google Scholar

10 This was pointed out by Mitra, Rajendralala in “On the Origins of the Hindvi Language and its Relation to the Urdu Dialect,” Journal of the Asiatic Society, vol. 33 (1865), 513–18Google Scholar. See Shulman, David, “Muslim Popular Literature in Tamil: the Tamimancari Malai,” in Islam in Asia, Friedmann, Yohanan, ed. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1984), 174–207Google Scholar; Roy, Asim, The Islamic Syncretist Tradition in Bengal (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 8–15Google Scholar.

11 (Reprint ed. Mentson, England: The Scolar Press, 1967).

12 See Bhatia, Tej K., A History of the Hindi Grammatical Tradition (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1987), 16–77Google Scholar.

13 Cohn, Bernard, “The Command of Language and the Language of Command,” in Guha, Ranajit, ed., Subaltern Studies IV (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985), 276–329Google Scholar.I am of course heavily indebted to Cohn, but I will briefly go over the same ground to make some additional points.

14 See Foucault, Michel, The Order of Things (New York: Vintage, 1973), 294–300Google Scholar.

15 This is part of the lengthy subtitle of Gilchrist, , The Stranger's Infallible East-Indian Guide, third ed. (London: Kingsbury, Parbury, and Allen, 1820)Google Scholar.

16 Quoted in Siddiqi, M. Atique, Origins of Modern Hindustani Literature (Aligarh: Naya Kitab Garh, 1963), 49Google Scholar. See also Kidwai, Sadiq-ur-Rahman, Gilchrist and the “Language of Hindoostan” (New Delhi: Rachna Prakashan, 1972), 37–43Google Scholar.

17 Siddiqi, Origins, 49–50.

18 Siddiqi, Origins, 63.

19 Gilchrist, , The Stranger's Infallible East-Indian Guide, xiii–xivGoogle Scholar.

20 Siddiqi, Origins, 155.

21 Ibid., 154.

22 Quoted in Kidwai, , Gilchrist, 90–91Google Scholar.

23 Kidwai, , Gilchrist, 89–96Google Scholar; Siddiqi, , Origins, 153–55Google Scholar; Das, Sisir Kumar, Sahibs and Munshis: An Account of the College at Fort William (New Delhi: Orion, 1978), 65, 82–84Google Scholar.

24 Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1983)Google Scholar; Febvre, Lucien and Martin, Henri-Jean, The Coming of the Book (London: New Left Books, 1976)Google Scholar.

25 There is considerable controversy about the influence and popularity of the Fort William College publications. See Pritchett, Frances W., Marvelous Encounters: Folk Romance in Urdu and Hindi (New Delhi: Manohar, 1985), 21–22Google Scholar.

26 Gilchrist, John Borthwick, Parliamentary Reform, on Constitutional Principles (Glasgow: W. Lang, 1815)Google Scholar; see also Kidwai, , Gilchrist, 57Google Scholar.

27 Aarsleff, Hans, The Study of Language in England, 1780–1860 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), 44–72Google Scholar; Smith, Olivia, The Politics of Language, 1791–1819 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 110–53Google Scholar.

28 In addition to Stokes, Eric, The English Utilitarians and India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959)Google Scholar; see Zastoupil, Lynn B., John Stuart Mill and India (Stanford: Stanford University Press, forthcoming)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 (London: Wm. H. Allen and Co.)

30 Rolland King, Christopher, “The Nāgarī Prachārinī Sabha (Society for the Promotion of the Nagari Script and Language) of Benares, 1893–1914: A Study in the Social and Political History of the Hindi Language” (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1974)Google Scholar.

31 GOI Home/Political 311–329, 1887; reprinted in Singh, R. A., “Inquiries into the Spoken Languages, of India, from Early Times to the Census of 1901,” Census of India (1961), vol. I, pt. XI–C(i)Google Scholar.

32 GOI Home/Public A, 43–54, 1886, in Singh, R. A., Inquiries, 126Google Scholar; see also 267–71.

33 GOI, Finance and Commerce/Bonuses and Honorariums 143, 1887, in Singh, , Inquiries, 133Google Scholar.

34 GOI Home/Public, 253–279 (KW N.P.), in Singh, , Inquiries, 178–81Google Scholar.

35 Linguistic Survey of India, vol. IX, Pt. I (Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing, 1916), 42–56Google Scholar. For a critique of the methodology of the LSI, see Gumperz, John J., Language in Social Groups (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971), 1–11Google Scholar.

36 Singh, , Inquiries, 107–14Google Scholar.

37 See Grierson, , The Linguistic Survey of India and the Census of 1911 (Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing, 1919)Google Scholar; and his Index of Language Names (Calcutta: Superintendent of Printing, 1920)Google Scholar and the General Reports in the 1901, 1911, and 1921 censuses.

38 Baines, J. A., “General Report,” Census of India, 1891 in Singh, Inquiries, 319–20Google Scholar.

39 Risley, , The People of India (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink and Co., 1915), 8–10Google Scholar.

40 Middleton, L. and Jacob, S. M., Report: Punjab and Delhi, Census of India, 1921, vol. XV, pt. I (Lahore: Civil and Military Gazette Press, 1923), 310–2Google Scholar; Conn, Bernard S., “The Census, Social Structure and Objectification in South Asia” [1970], in his An Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987), 250Google Scholar; see also my Aligarh's First Generation, 9–16.

41 Das, Durga, ed., Sardar Patel's Correspondence, 1945–50, vol. IV (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1972), 60–91Google Scholar.

42 Ibid., 68–71.

43 The relevant records are in the archives of All-India Radio, New Delhi; see also Luthra, H. R., Indian Broadcasting (New Delhi: Publications Division), 255–73Google Scholar. I have discussed this at greater length in “Transmitters and Culture: The Colonial Roots of Indian Broadcasting,” South Asia Research, 10:1 (05 1990), 41–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 See correspondence between Bukhari and S. N. Agganval of the Hindustani Prachar Sabha, Wardha, in P(l)2–5/45, 1945 (AIR Archives). See also Richards, and Ogden, C. K., The Meaning of Meaning, 10th ed. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1966)Google Scholar and numerous other works; for Firth, see Terrence Langendoen, D., The London School of Linguistics: A Study of the Linguistic Theories of B. Malinowski and J. R. Firth (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1968), 37–48Google Scholar. Bukhari, 's essays are collected in Patras ke Muzāmīn (Lahore: Maktaba-i Urdū-i Adab, n.d.)Google Scholar; see also his brother's autobiography, Alī Bukhārī, Ẕulfiqār, Sarguzisht (Karachi: Maarif, 1966)Google Scholar.

45 A. I. R. Lexicon (New Delhi: All-India Radio, 1946) [Library of Congress]Google Scholar; PZ–3/42 (Coll I), 1942; P(l)Z–2/46–II, 1946 (AIR Archives); interview with Vatsyayan in Bombay, 1982.

46 Directorate-General, All India Radio, “Basic Plan for the Development of Broadcasting in India” (first draft, November 1944; revised, September 1945) in Home-Public 179/1946 (National Archives of India).

47 See Cohn, Bernard S., “Regions Subjective and Objective: Their Relation to the Study of Modern Indian History” [1967], in his Anthropologist Among the Historians, 100–35Google Scholar.

48 See Ahmad, Aijaz, “Some Reflections on Urdu,” Seminar (No. 359), “Literature and Society” (07 1989), 23–29Google Scholar.