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Anthropologists and Viceroys: Colonial knowledge and policy making in India, 1871–1911*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 October 2015

C. J. FULLER
C. J. FULLER*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, London School of Economics and Political Science, United Kingdom Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

The anthropology of caste was a pivotal part of colonial knowledge in British India in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Denzil Ibbetson and Herbert Risley, then the two leading official anthropologists, both made major contributions to the study of caste, which this article discusses. Ibbetson and Risley assumed high office in the imperial government in 1902 and played important roles in policy making during the partition of Bengal (1903–5) and the Morley-Minto legislative councils reforms (1906–9); Ibbetson was also influential in deciding Punjab land policy in the 1890s. Contemporary policy documents, which this article examines, show that the two men's anthropological knowledge had limited influence on their deliberations. Moreover, caste was irrelevant to their thinking about agrarian policy, the promotion of Muslim interests, and the urban, educated middle class, whose growing nationalism was challenging British rule. No ethnographic information was collected about this class, because the scope of anthropology was restricted to ‘traditional’ rural society. At the turn of the twentieth century, colonial anthropological knowledge, especially about caste, had little value for the imperial government confronting Indian nationalism, and was less critical in constituting the Indian colonial state than it previously had been.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 1 , January 2016 , pp. 217 - 258
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

For helpful discussions and critical comments on an earlier draft of this article, I am particularly grateful to Johnny Parry, Norbert Peabody, Peter Robb, Nate Roberts, Tom Trautmann, Peter van der Veer, and participants in a seminar at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen, May 2014.

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32 Ibid., pp. 100–101.

33 Census 1881, Operations and Results in the Presidency of Bombay, including Sind, Vol. 1, Text, by J. A. Baines (Bombay, 1882). Ibbetson's evolutionist theory is discussed by Bayly, Susan, ‘Caste and “Race” in the Colonial Ethnography of India’, in Robb, Peter (ed.), The Concept of Race in South Asia (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 204–13Google Scholar. Bayly also briefly discusses Ibbetson, alongside Crooke and other advocates of the occupational theory, in her Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 138–43; see also Dirks, Castes, pp. 211–12. Most writers on colonial knowledge largely ignore Ibbetson and never mention Baines.

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35 Ibbetson, Panjab Castes, p. 3.

36 Ibid., p. 5.

37 Ibid., pp. 3–4, 9–10.

38 Ibid., p. 10.

39 Baines, Census of Bombay 1881, Text, pp. 120–23. Baines cited Auguste Comte on ‘differentiation of employments’.

40 Baines, J. A., ‘Occupation and Caste in India, as Shown in the Last Census’, Journal of the Society of Arts, 41Google Scholar, 31 March 1893, p. 466; cf. Census of India, 1891, Vol. 1, India, General Report, by J. A. Baines (London, 1893), pp. 189–90.

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43 Risley, H. H., ‘The Study of Ethnology in India’, Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 20, 1891, pp. 235–63Google Scholar; Risley, Tribes and Castes: Ethnographic, Vol. 1, esp. pp. xix–xli; Census of India, 1901, Vol. 1, India, Report, by H. H. Risley and E. A. Gait (Calcutta, 1903), esp. pp. 489–514, 546–57; Risley, H. H., The People of India (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink and Co., 1915)Google Scholar, esp. Chapters 1, 6. Chapters 1, 2, 4 (part), 5 (part) and 6 of People are the census report's long Chapter 11 (‘Caste, Tribe and Race’) and a passage on ‘animism’ in Chapter 8, which have been rearranged, but not rewritten; the rest of the book, including Chapters 3 and 7, was written after the census. Risley's writing on caste is discussed, with varying degrees of accuracy and acerbity, by almost all scholars of colonial anthropology, including: Crispin Bates, ‘Race, Caste and Tribe in Central India: The Early Origins of Indian Anthropometry’, in Robb (ed.), Concept of Race, pp. 241–9; Bayly, Caste, pp. 127–36; Cohn, ‘Census’, pp. 245–7; Dirks, Castes, pp. 49–52, 183–4, 212–27; Gottschalk, Religion, pp. 210–15, 253–65; Ronald Inden, Imagining India (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), pp. 58–66; Metcalf, Ideologies, pp. 82–3, 120–2; R. Srivatsan, ‘Native Noses and Nationalist Zoos: Debates in Early Colonial Anthropology of Castes and Tribes’, Economic and Political Weekly, 7 May 2005, pp. 1986–98; Trautmann, Thomas R., Aryans and British India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 198–204CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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45 Trautmann, Aryans, pp. 190–8.

46 Risley mentions the distinction in Risley and Gait, Census 1901, India, p. 421; Risley, People, p. 154. On criticism of Maine, see Adam Kuper, ‘The Rise and Fall of Maine's Patriarchal Society’, in Diamond (ed.), Victorian Achievement, Chapter 6.

47 Nesfield, Brief View, pp. 3–4.

48 Ibbetson, D. C. J., ‘The Study of Anthropology in India’, Journal of the Anthropological Society of Bombay, 2, 1890, pp. 120–1Google Scholar, 132.

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51 Crooke, W., ‘The Stability of Caste and Tribal Groups in India’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 44 (2), 1914, pp. 270–280Google Scholar; ‘Introduction’, in Risley, People, pp. xvi–xxi.

52 Thurston, E. and Rangachari, K., Castes and Tribes of Southern India (Madras: Government Press, 1909)Google Scholar, Vol. 1, pp. xxxvi–lv.

53 Baines, ‘Occupation and Caste’, p. 458; J. A. Baines, Ethnography (Castes and Tribes) (Strassburg: Karl J. Trübner, 1912), p. 2.

54 Census of India, 1911, Vol. 1, India, pt. 1, Report, by E. A. Gait (Calcutta, 1913), p. 381; E. A. Gait, ‘The Indian Census of 1911: Ethnography and Occupations’, Journal of the Society of Arts, 62, 5 June 1914, p. 631.

55 Census of India, 1911, Vol. 15, United Provinces, pt. 1, Report, by E. A. H. Blunt (Allahabad, 1912), pp. 360–1; Vol. 5, Bengal, Bihar and Orissa and Sikhim, pt. 1, Report, by L. S. S. O'Malley (Calcutta, 1913), pp. 517–20. See also Blunt, E. A. H., The Caste System of Northern India (London: Oxford University Press, 1931)Google Scholar; O'Malley, L. S. S., Indian Caste Customs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932)Google Scholar.

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58 Risley and Gait, Census 1901, India, p. 538; Risley, People, p. 111.

59 Census of India, 1901, Vol. 6, Bengal, Report, by E. A. Gait (Calcutta, 1902), pp. 366–73.

60 Census of India, 1901, Vol. 16, North-Western Provinces and Oudh, Report, by R. Burn (Allahabad, 1902), p. 217; Vol. 15, Madras, Report, by W. Francis (Madras, 1902), p. 136; Vol. 13, Central Provinces, Report, by R. V. Russell (Nagpur, 1902), pp. 207–8; Vol. 9, Bombay, Report, by R. E. Enthoven (Bombay, 1902), p. 187; Vol. 18, Baroda, Report, by J. A. Dalal (Bombay, 1902), p. 484; Vol. 26, Travancore, Report, by N. Subrahmanya Aiyar (Trivandrum, 1903), pp. 257–8; Vol. 17, Punjab, Report, by H. A. Rose (Simla, 1902), pp. 337–40, 345–8.

61 Risley and Gait, Census 1901, India, p. 538; Risley, People, p. 112.

62 Risley and Gait, Census 1901, India, pp. 514–7, 543–4; Risley, People, pp. 62–8, 121–4.

63 The Warrant was published annually in The India List and India Office List (London: Harrisons and Co.).

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69 Ibid., p. 21.

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80 Risley to Chief Secretary, Government of Bengal, 3 December 1903, in ‘Papers Relating to the Reconstitution of the Provinces of Bengal and Assam’, IOR/L/PJ/6/709, File 413, ff. 37–42, India Office Records in APAC, BL.

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82 Dispatch from Curzon and Council to Secretary of State, 2 February 1905, with enclosure no. 5, letter from Chief Secretary, Government of Bengal to Risley, 6 April 1904, enclosing the memorials, IOR/L/PJ/6/709, File 413, ff. 106–19.

83 Ibid., ff. 131–3.

84 Ibid., ff. 124–9.

85 Ibid., ff. 135–44.

86 Enclosure no. 16, Memorial from public meeting, Calcutta, IOR/L/PJ/6/709, File 413, ff. 282–7.

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89 IOR/L/PJ/6/709, File 413, ff. 106–19.

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92 Risley's memorandum, 7 April 1904, and Ibbetson's note, 8 April 1904 (italics original), in Notes, Public-A, February 1905, CP, F111/247b.

93 IOR/L/PJ/6/709, File 413, ff. 76–86.

94 Risley, People, pp. 294–8.

95 Dirks, Castes, p. 224; Risley, ‘The Race Basis of Indian Political Movements’, The Contemporary Review, May 1890, pp. 742–59.

96 Risley, People, pp. 279, 292–4.

97 Risley's note, 6 December 1906, quoted in Johnson, Gordon, ‘Partition, Agitation and Congress: Bengal, 1904 to 1908’, Modern Asian Studies, 7 (3), 1973, p. 549CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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100 Sarkar, Swadeshi, p. 418; Johnson, ‘Partition’, p. 550.

101 Risley and Gait, Census 1901, India, pp. 543–4; Risley, People, pp. 121–3.

102 H. H. Risley, ‘Note on Muhammadan Claims to Increased Representation’, 25 May 1909, p. 84, in ‘Correspondence of 1909 Regarding Councils Reforms’, pp. 59–87, Fourth Earl of Minto Papers (hereafter MinP), MS 12616, Manuscripts Collections, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh.

103 Gait, Census 1901, Bengal, pp. 166–70, 174–6, 439.

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111 Dispatch from Minto and Council to Secretary of State, 21 March 1907, MorP, D573/32, ff. 13–31.

112 Minto to Morley, 28 March 1907, MorP, D573/11.

113 Minto to Morley, 5 March 1907, MorP, D573/11; Minto to Morley, 19 August 1908, D573/17.

114 Minto to Risley, and Risley to Minto, 30 September 1908, MinP, MS 12769.

115 Proposal in Council of India by Lee-Warner, 13 April 1907, MorP, D573/32, ff. 46–8.

116 Morley's reply to dispatch, 17 May 1907, MorP, D573/32, ff. 54–61.

117 Dispatch from Minto and Council to Secretary of State, 1 October 1908, MorP, D573/33, ff. 5–22.

118 Morley's reply to dispatch, 27 November 1908, MorP, D573/33, ff. 44–51.

119 Minto's reply to Morley, 23 December 1908, MorP, D573/33, ff. 86–96; Minto to Morley, 31 December 1908, MorP, D573/18; Rothermund, ‘Emancipation’, pp. 146–7.

120 Das, India, pp. 199–203, 260–9.

121 ‘Note on Muhammadan Claims’, MinP, MS 12616; Appendix 2, ‘Muhammadan Representation’, in confidential note on ‘The New Legislative Councils’, MorP, D573/34, ff. 96–102, D573/35, ff. 101–7.

122 Das, India, p. 53; Wolpert, Morley, pp. 130–1, 147–9.

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127 Risley, ‘Race Basis’, pp. 757–9; Risley, People, p. 300.

128 Minto to Morley, 5 June 1907, MorP, D573/12.

129 Das, India, pp. 190–1, 228–31.

130 Dispatch from Minto and Council to Secretary of State, 1 October 1908, MorP, D573/33, ff. 5–22.

131 Gilbert, Servant, p. 189.

132 Nicholas B. Dirks, ‘Foreword’, in Cohn, Colonialism, p. xiii.

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137 Dirks, Castes, pp. 235–44.

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