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Imperial Ritual in a Local Setting: The Ceremonial Order in Surat, 1890–1939

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Douglas Haynes
Douglas Haynes
Affiliation:
Dartmouth College
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Extract

With the publication of Bernard Cohn's seminal article in the Invention of Tradition, the study of ritual in colonial India has acquired a new significance and a new respectability for South Asianists, particularly those inclined to ‘ethnohistorical’ approaches. Recently a number of essays on imperial ceremony have begun to appear with very profitable results. But those working on this subject have generally confined themselves to examining one of two problems: either they have looked at the ideological models and cultural meanings that informed the thinking of the British designers of these observances or they have explored the role of ritual in the setting of princely India. As yet scholars have developed little sense of how Indians outside the ‘native states’ conceived of their participation in durbars and other forms of public ceremony. Many materially inclined historians seem to assume that imperial ritual was a meaningless charade for Indians, that those who participated in ritual acts did so at best as a means of avoiding offence to their rulers, that the locus of ‘real’ politics lay elsewhere. A few no doubt consider the current focus on imperial display even to be a waste of time. In part this attitude issues from a nationalism that refuses to acknowledge its imperialist antecedents. In part it stems from a more general cynicism among late twentieth-century intellectuals toward ritual.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , July 1990 , pp. 493 - 527
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

An earlier draft of this essay was presented in a session at the Annual Meetings of the Association of Asian Studies, San Francisco, Mar. 1988. The author wishes to thank the panelists on this session, including Michael Fisher, Edward Haynes, Alan Trevithick, Charles Nuckolls, Nicholas Dirks, and Robert Frykenberg. Thanks are also due to Richard Fox, who submitted written comments on several of these papers, and especially to Bernard Cohn, who offered comments specifically on this paper.

1 Cohn, Bernard S., ‘Representing Authority in Victorian India’ in Hobsbawm, Eric and Ranger, Terence (eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 165–209.Google Scholar

2 Fisher, Michael H., ‘The Imperial Coronation of 1819: Awadh, the British and the Mughals’, Modern Asian Studies 19, 2 (1985), pp. 239–77;CrossRefGoogle Scholar as well as papers given by Michael Fisher, Edward Haynes, Alan Trevithick, Charles Nuckolls, and Nicholas Dirks at the Annual Meetings of the Association of Asian Studies, San Francisco, March 1988.

3 Some propositions that provided some initial theoretical inspiration for portions of this argument are found in Cohn, ‘Representing Authority in Victorian India’, esp. 207–9.

4 Haynes, Douglas E., ‘From Tribute to Philanthropy: The Politics of Gift Giving in a Western Indian City’, Journal of Asian Studies 46, 2 (05 1987) esp. pp. 345–8;CrossRefGoogle Scholar see also the author's forthcoming manuscript, Rhetoric and Ritual in a Colonial Setting: The Making of Public Culture in Surat City, Western India, 1852–1928 (in press), esp. Chapter IV.Google Scholar

5 Fryer, John, John Fryer's East India and Persia ed. Crooke, William (London, 1909), p. 242.Google Scholar

6 Surat Municipal Record 1910–11, pp. 26–30Google Scholar; I suspect this speech should be read as an effort by the collector to propagate the value of ‘loyalty’ rather than as a literal statement of his beliefs about Indian conceptions of political authority. In fact most members of the ruling group believed that their subjects perceived of the empress or emperor in very personal terms and lacked the sense of loyalty to a nation-state, the sense that marked the British as a special people.

7 Gujarat Mitra, 8 10 1911, p. 2.Google Scholar

8 The role of ritual as rhetoric is discussed in a wide range of works. For brief overviews, see, for instance, Wilentz, Sean, ‘Introduction: Teufelsdröckh's Dilemma: On Symbolism, Politics, and History’ in Wilentz, (ed.), Rites of Power: Symbolism, Ritual and Politics Since the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 1985), pp. 1–10;Google ScholarCannadine, David, ‘Introduction: The Divine Right of Kings’ in Cannadine, and Simon, Price (eds), Rituals of Royalty: Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies (Cambridge, 1987), esp. p. 3.Google Scholar

9 Quoted in Gujarat Mitra, 11 Dec. 1898, p. 1.Google Scholar One must also keep in mind Clifford Geertz's discussion of the symbolic importance of a king's travels within his kingdom: ‘Royal progresses…locate the society's center and affirm its connection with transcendent things by stamping a territory with ritual signs of dominance. When kings journey around the countryside, making appearances, attending fêptes, conferring honors, exchanging gifts, or defying rivals, they mark it, like some wolf or tiger spreading his scent through his territory, as almost physically part of them’ in ‘Centers, Kings, and Charisma: Reflections of the Symbolics of Power’ reprinted in Wilentz, (ed.), Rites of Power, p. 16.Google Scholar Thanks are due to Nicholas Dirks for this reference.

10 This argument was stimulated by comments from Bernard Cohn.

11 In 1890, The Gujarat Darpan made explicit the importance of establishing the citizenry's past ties with the British to its present interest in gaining provincial grants when it urged the councillors to include a review of this history in their address to the visiting provincial governor: ‘Let us remind him [the governor] that this city has special claims on the British Indian government as it was here that the first foot of Indian land was obtained for England through the…kindness of its citizens. How from such a small beginning a vast empire grew up is a matter of history. If you call it a sentimental claim, we are not without another…’.

12 The composite description that follows from reading reports on a number of occasions between 1890 and 1914, largely in the Gujarat Mitra.

13 Gujarat Mitra, 23 Sept. 1900, pp. 2–3.Google Scholar

14 Gujarat Mitra, 8 Aug. 1901, p. 2.Google Scholar

15 Gujarat Mitra, 2 Nov. 1902, p. 10.Google Scholar

16 Gujarat Mitra, 12 Oct. 1913, p. 2.Google Scholar

17 Gujarat Mitra, 2 Nov. 1902, p. 11.Google Scholar

18 Gujarat Mitra, 12 July 1894, pp. 1–2.Google Scholar

19 Gujarat Mitra, 4 Mar. 1900, p. 1; 11 03 1900, p. 2.Google Scholar

20 Gujarat Mitra, 19 May 1901, pp. 8–11.Google Scholar

21 Maharastra State Archives [hereafter M.S.A.], General Department [hereafter G.D.] 1901, vol. XIV, comp. 633, pp. 111–13. This last argument was stimulated by comments from Bernard Cohn.

22 M.S.A., G.D. 1901, vol. XIV, comp. 633, p. 113.Google Scholar

23 M.S.A., G.D. 1901, vol. XIV, comp. 633, p. 127Google Scholar, letter of Weir to Secty to Governor, G.D., Bombay 29 July 1901.

24 Desai, Ishwarlal Iccharam, Muktinun Parodh (Surat, 1974).Google Scholar

25 For instance, Gujarat Mitra, 9 Jan. 1898, p. 2; 8 Jan. 1899, p. 2; 14 Jan. 1900, p. 2.

26 Gujarat Mitra, 27 June 1909, pp. 12–12b.Google Scholar

27 Gujarat Mitra, 15 May 1910, pp. 13–18.Google Scholar

28 Cohn, , ‘Representing Authority in Victorian India’, esp. 166–7.Google Scholar

29 For such efforts outside the realm of ritual, see Haynes, Rhetoric and Ritual in a Colonial Setting, Chapter VII.

30 Gujarat Mitra, 9 Jan. 1898, p. 2.Google Scholar

31 Gujarat Mitra, 8 Jan. 1899, p. 2.Google Scholar

32 Gujarat Mitra, 5 Mar. 1911, p. 2.Google Scholar

33 Gujarat Mitra, 27 Oct. 1912, pp. 2–3, 5–7, 9–12Google Scholar as well as accounts on the annual durbars in the same newspaper after 1912.

34 Bombay Chronicle, 29 Mar. 1918, p. 1.Google Scholar

35 Bombay Chronicle, 19 July 1917, p. 6.Google Scholar

36 Surat Municipal Proceedings 1919–1920, pp. 201–2.Google Scholar

37 Surat Municipal Record 1919–1920, pp. 144–9.Google Scholar

38 Actually local members of the Congress had presented addresses to Dadabhai Naoroji and Alexander Octavian Hume during the 1890s, but ritual visits of great Congress leaders did not become regular parts of local political life until World War I.

39 Gujarat Mitra, 11 Nov. 1917, pp. 13–16.Google Scholar

40 Bombay Secret Police Abstracts 1919, para 1566(a), p. 1055.

41 Gujarat Mitra, 14 Dec. 1919, pp. 13–14Google Scholar; Bombay Chronicle, 20 Dec. 1919, p. 15; 24 Dec. 1919, p. 14; 30 12 1919, p. 5.Google Scholar

42 Bombay Secret Police Abstracts 1919, para 1520(a), p. 1029.

43 Bombay Secret Police Abstracts 1920, para. 643(b), p. 557.

44 Bombay Secret Police Abstracts 1921, para. 128(4), p. 115.

45 Gujarat Mitra, 23 Jan. 1921, p. 23.Google Scholar

46 Gujarat Mitra, 8 May 1921, pp. 16–17.Google Scholar

47 For a far more extensive treatment of the Gandhian political idiom and its mode of accomplishing political persuasion, see Haynes, Rhetoric and Ritual in a Colonial Setting, Chapter VIII.

48 Gujarat Mitra, 8 May 1921, p. 16.Google Scholar

49 See Gujarat Mitra late March 1921 to early May 1921 for documents relating to Gandhi's visit. Also Bombay Chronicle, 21 April 1921, p. 8; 23 April 1921, p. 14.

50 Bombay Chronicle, 21 April 1921, p. 8.Google Scholar

51 Gujarat Mitra, 10 Dec. p. 2; 12 May 1935, pp. 22–8.Google Scholar

52 Surat Municipality, Proceedings (unpublished), 2 Oct. 1925; 9 Oct. 1925.

53 Surat Municipality, Proceedings (unpublished), 18 Jan. 1926.

54 Gujarat Mitra, 15 Nov. 1925, p. 1.Google Scholar

55 Gujarat Mitra, 7 Feb. 1926, pp. 1–2; pp. 8.1–16, 19–22.Google Scholar

56 Gujarat Mitra, 19 Sept. 1937, p. 3; 3 Oct. 1937, p. 3.Google Scholar

57 Gujarat Mitra, 17 Oct. 1937, p. 31; 29 Jan. 1939, p. 3.Google Scholar

58 Desai, Morarji, The Story of My Life (Delhi, 1974), vol. I, pp. 144–54 passim.Google Scholar

59 Home Dept. (Special), File no. 869 A. of 1938, entire.

60 The phrase is Desai's, Morarji in Story of My Life, vol. I, p. 148.Google Scholar