Ranaji Guha, “Colonialism in South Asia: Dominance without Hegemony and Its Historiography”
I.
Conditions for a Critique of Historiography: Dominance and its Historiographies
How the writing of history serves the ends of dominance.
Accession to Diwani in 1765. This meant that the East India Company would be in charge of revenue
collection in Bengal, a job which called for knowledge of the structure of landed property in the region.
For this purpose, the first efforts at history writing by the British in India were related to tracing of lines
of descent in landlord families. The essay is a critique of the developments in British historiography of
India from these early times to the present. The author sees the present-day school of ‘Cambridge
historians’ as continuing the traditions of British colonial historiography by cleverly trying to establish
that British rule in India had the consent of the natives. The argument of ‘dominance without hegemony’
is that British dominance was not hegemonic because it depended more on coercion than on persuasion.
Guha’s definition of hegemony (differing from Gramsci) is that dominance is hegemonic when
persuasion plays a greater role in it than coercion. He calls this the ‘organic composition’ of dominance.
When power depends on coercion more than persuasion for its survival, then dominance is said to be
‘without hegemony’.
Where there is power, there is a relation of dominace and subordination between two sections of
people: the rulers and the ruled. There are also idioms of dominance and idioms of subordination. In
colonial India, according to Guha, two sets of idioms were in operation: the British idioms of dominance
and subordination (Order, Improvement and Obedience and Rightful Dissent) and the Indian ones
(Danda, Dharma, Bhakti and Dharmic Protest). These functioned together, ‘braided together’ in
particular ways, thus making the colonial state in India a unique formation which cannot be simply
described by reference to any universal typology of political forms. This is Guha’s theory of the colonial
state. Armed with this, he sets out to demonstrate how the historians of British India and the nationalist
historians of independent India have both distorted the truth in order to serve the ends of imperialism
and bourgeois nationalism. Guha’s plea is for a historiographical practice that has freed itself from these
seductions and is able to critically (and self-critically) strive for a historical knowledge that is truly
liberating.
Summary of the paper:
The idea that existing aristocrats were ‘natural owners of land’ based on British ideas, these histories
recommend the zamindari (permanent settlement) system. Thus this totally new system was given the
false appearance of continuity with Indian tradition.
They also situated British dominion in a line of conquests starting with the Turko-Afghans, thus
legitimizing their quest for tribute. These two types of colonial historiography abetted the foundations
of the raj. British rule came to be a ‘rule of property’ as a result of the debates over empire’s relation to
the question of property that raged in the 18th century.
The next phase of colonialist historiography: more sophisticated and in pursuit of ideological control.
From James Mill to Hunter, a 70 year period of history writing, ‘to erect the [Indian] past as a pedestal
on which the triumphs and glories of the colonizers and their instrument, the colonial state, could be
displayed to best advantage.’ 2-3
A series of differences: political, rulers and ruled; ethnic, white Herrenfolk and blacks; material:
prosperous western power and poor Asian subjects; cultural: higher and lower levels of civilization;
between superior Christianity and lowly, superstition laden indigenous belief systems. An irreconcilable
difference.
The risk of such history: sacralizes the past for the subjects and turns it into an instrument for the
construction of their own identity. The contradictions remain alive today. The cultural regime of
colonialism outlived the raj. A fundamental agreement between the British and the Indian bourgeoisie
about the nature of colonialism. Agreement that ‘colonialism is an adaptation, if not quite a replication,
of the classical bourgeois culture of the West in English rendering.’
Although British and Indian bourgeoisies wrote colonialist and nationalist versions of history, this
essential agreement remained. Playing cricket: Gandhi on a ‘poor wicket’ or the administration is ‘unBritish.’ Absurd idea, yet adhered to by both sides with conviction. ‘a liberalism grafted onto colonial
conditions.’
The performance of the elite groups was at variance with their historic competence. Democracy at
home and autocracy in the colony. Intolerance of feudalism at home, tolerance of pre-capitalist values
and institutions in Indian society.’
The indigenous bourgeoisie: failure to measure up to the heroism of the European bourgeoisie, happy
accommodation with imperialism, never interested in destruction of the colonial state. A mediocre
liberalism.
Historians on both sides seem blind to this obvious paradox and explain it away in different ways. No
attempt to discern the structural fault behind this paradox.
The myth of ideological neutrality. Hayden White. Liberal historiography speaks from within the
bourgeois consciousness. Its critical faculty is made inoperative. The deficiencies of the knowledge
systems of a dominant culture are built into the optics of the dominant consciousness. 7. Examples:
Aristotle, Herodotus, Xenophon justify of slavery: no critical distance separating the intellectual from the
ruler. Anderson on slave mode of production. Kalhana’s Rajatarangini. Historian as judge, impartial,
does not spare his own king, endowed with a skeptical mind (Majumdar). How far does it go? Kalhana is
astute enough to wonder about the lack of revolts but ascribes it to the will of the gods. [This example is
weak.] Next: Montesquieu and Hegel, before and after the fall of Bastille, on slavery. One denounces
slavery in the name of natural rights, the other in the name of a universal liberty. Wage slavery. The
critique of bourgeois culture, precocious, incomplete….
Universalizing tendency of capital. World market, annihilation of space by time. (Marx). Distorted
reading of Marx’s writings on India. Limitations that capital cannot overcome. Marx did not subscribe to
the illusion that liberalism would be victorious and bring great benefits to mankind. He was aware of the
uneven character of material development, the anomalies and inconsistencies of bourgeois thought,
tolerance for feudalism in bourgeois thought. Germany’s weak revolution contrasted with the French in
Marx’s writings. P 18. The German bourgeoisie betrays its own people, the peasantry, and helps
perpetuate feudal rights. Relevance of this critique to the study of colonialism.
But both colonialist and nationalist histories of the raj promote the illusion about the power of capital
and its universalist pretensions. An abstract universalism.
A serious misrepresentation of the power relations of colonialism in historical discourse. Dominance
erroneously endowed with hegemony. To make British rule appear as based on the consent of the
subject population (ie hegemonic). Parallel: dominance of Indian bourgeoisie as political effect of a
consensus representing all of the will of the people (ie hegemonic).
Critique of historiography must first situate itself outside the universe of liberal discourse.
GENERAL CONFIGURATION OF POWER IN COLONIAL INDIA
Where there is power, there is the pair Dominance and Subordination.
D and S imply each other logically.
Dominance consists of two elements, Coercion and Persuasion.
Subordination consists of two elements, Collaboration and Resistance.
Both C and P and C* and R imply each other contingently.
Every situation of power breaks down into the component parts D and S. Where there is power, there
are D and S.
In C and P and C* and R however, ‘human passion’ mediates the concept of power and turns it into a
history of dominance and subordination.
Every concrete situation of power will have its own specific combination of C and P and C* and R, a
historical situation that cannot be logically derived. ‘no body politic, however authoritarian, can manage
to shake off’ this historical contingency.
Historiography’s material derives from the specificities of event and experience generated by the
interplay of the universal and the contingent.
The organic composition of D and S.
Hegemony is defined here as ‘a condition of Dominance (D), such that, in the organic composition of D,
Persuation (P) outweighs Coercion ©.
A dynamic concept. Always open to resistance. In Gramsci: dominance and hegemony are antinomies. In
Guha, they are elements in a relation of derivation.
II.
Paradoxes of Power: Idioms of Dominance and Subordination
[Taking the specific case of India as a colonial state]
A principle of differentiation between two idioms is at work within each of the four constituents of D
and S. Two distinct paradigms, British and Indian. These two coalesce and diverge to give the colonial
state its distinctive character.
Order and Danda are the two idioms of Coercion.
The early idiom of conquest is replaced by the idiom of Order.
Order is enforced by the coercive apparatus of the State. In the colonial state, Order is extended to
areas like public health, sanitation etc. Order used to mobilize free labour, coercion of labour. Road
works, tea plantations, recruitment to army.
Danda, central to indigenous notions of dominance. Feudal armies, levies, caste and territorial
panchayats, caste sanctions, landlords’ jurisdiction over peasantry, patriarchal moral codes, elite
violence.
Danda not only punishment. An ensemble of ‘power, authority and punishment’ (Gonda). Force and fear
as the fundamental principles of politics. Arthashastra. Laws of Manu. Landlord as maharaj.
Improvement and Dharma are the two idioms of persuasion.
Improvement includes Western education, English, cultural patronage, missionary efforts among low
castes and tribes; heritage projects; constitutionalism with safeguards, standardization of weights and
measures, factory laws, inquiries into labour, caste, gender and other issues.
Landlords as trustees, improvements made in the lands under their control; Cornwallis, followed by
Bentinck. An improving landlord. Liberal imperialism. Elite attachment to the raj. The peace between
rulers and ruled was mediated…by the indigenous elite. 34.
Dharma rajadharma, the obligation to protect, foster, etc. swadeshi politics employed Dharma. Basis of
Indian nationalism as conceived by Hindu leadership. Gandhism’s recourse to concept of Dharma.
The ruler’s duty, according to Gandhi, ‘to serve his people’. Dharmaraj(ya), Ramrajya. Gandhi did not try
to conceal the fact that this idiom was being used in opposition to the socialist theory and in defence of
landlordism. Gandhi’s ‘model zamindar’. Appeals to the capitalist class to read the signs of the times and
voluntarily surrender its wealth. G. Birla responds and takes Gandhi’s message to his own kind. The
Vaishya of Hindu sociology is the capitalist of today.
Obedience and bhakti are the idioms of collaboration.
Obedience elaborated in the 19th century, by writers like Samuel Smiles. A preference for Hume’s notion
of authority over Locke’s contract theory. ‘obedience to duty is the very essence of the highest civilized
life.’ Duty over right. Criticism of suffragette movement as ‘the outcries of women who protest against
their womanhood….’ Class divide and the principle of guardianship. In India, this principle is still at work.
Army epitomizes the ideal life: where obedience is the supreme virtue. Gandhi’s record during the Boer
War. The Indian Ambulance Corps. Gandhi’s offer to help the British, to show the loyalty of Indians to
the Empire; 43-44; ‘how the colonial subject constitutes himself in a loyalist discourse.’ The readiness to
‘identify himself with the inferior term in D/S’. It is thanks to such attachment [to the Queen as mother]
that the servant, in a state of extreme alienation, can regard the master’s success as his own….’ 45.
It speaks up because it wants to be noticed. But there was also, in Gandhi’s proposal, the reference to
rights: ‘because they were British subjects, and as such demanded rights.’ By mentioning rights, Gandhi
was ‘almost in spite of himself’ qualifying his loyalty to the Crown. After Jalianwalabagh, Gandhi moved
from loyalism to opposition, but Obedience remained an active element.
Bhakti promotes collaboration. The rasas of the bhakti tradition: dasya, santa, sakhya, vatsalya, sringara.
The devotee is figured as a servant. Rituals of overt servility. Services rendered to Rama by Guha, Sabari,
Hanuman. Jnanabhakti regarded as lowest. The passivity of the female, the devotee as beloved, ‘a
change of sex in male devotees.’ The Gopi’s is not an active desire, but is intended to provide pleasure
to the divine Krishna. The exception is Kubja, who wants to be an active partner and is denounced. ‘an
ideology of subordination par excellence.’ 49
Palaka/palya; prabhu/dasa; lalaka/lalya. (Jiva Goswami’s reworking of the rasa theory).
Bhakti’s 19th century propagator: Bankim; 20th C: Gandhi. In his theory, Bankim makes modifications
such as mutual bhakti of husband and wife; but in his novels the older idea prevails. Mother Victoria, an
object of Bhakti.
Rightful Dissent and Dharmic Protest are the idioms of resistance.
Rightful dissent in labour struggles, unionization, fight for civil liberties, mobilization of the subaltern by
Congress etc. These were mostly peaceful activities, staying within imposed limits. This ‘rightful dissent’
has no Indian precedent, derives from English liberalism, the theory of natural rights, Locke. In a
peaceable form, it was the idiom of liberal politics from Naoroji to Gandhi. ‘They had taken the “sacred”
English idiom of Rightful Dissent too seriously for the regime’s comfort.” 57.
Dharmic protest, the Indian idiom of Resistance. Hool, dhing, bidroha, hangama, fituri, dharna,
dharmaghat, jat mara, danga. All derive from a precolonial tradition. There is no notion of right in this
idiom. ‘It derives from the righteousness of the defence of Dharma…or the morality of struggle against
adharma.’ 58. Plastic and volatile. Attempts to blend it with western notions of right: Bankim’s
anusilandharma. Gandhi’s satyagraha. Gandhi’s idea succeeded because of its eclecticism and
inconsistency. Both Bankim and Gandhi ‘took fright’ at the manifestation of authentic dharmic
resistance.
III.
Dominance without Hegemony: The Colonialist Moment. Overdeterminations.
[Resume: two different paradigms of political culture together contribute to the D/S relation in India. It
is a relation between two matrices [Order, Improvement, Obedience, Rightful Dissent] and [Danda,
Dharma, Bhakti, Dharmic Protest]
The discursive ordering is different from the actual practice of politics where these idioms get braided
together in specific ways. The positing of two matrices should not lead to a mechanicist understanding
of the process. Not a simple aggregation. What emerges is ‘an original compound, a new entity.’
An ensemble of overdetermining effects constituted by what Lacan calls ‘double meaning’: a conflict
long lead and a present conflict. A tissue of paradoxes. The past is moribund, but not defunct, the
contemporary element remains shallow. Parliament (British) happily presides over ‘a state without
citizenship’; improvement works with feudal landlordism; liberal education is designed to perpetuate
loyalty to autocratic regime;
On the indigenous side, emerging capitalist class pretends to trusteeship; bourgeois political leadership
defends landlordism; social reformists adopt feudal values in private; liberals defend sanatan Hinduism;
critics of the raj avow loyalty to colonial regime; nationalist leadership conceives future nation-state in
terms of ramrajya etc.
There are paradoxes on the subaltern side as well: the peasant rebel’s vision of God as white man who
writes like a court clerk; lower caste emulations of upper caste conservatism; working class struggles
defined as satagraha; revolts against pre-capitalist relations which end up perpetuating those very
relations.
Colonialism represents the failure of a Universalist Project
Why did British paramountcy fail to overcome the resistance of indigenous culture? Why did the
bourgeoisie not perform its historic role?
Answer: for colonialism to continue as a relation of power, the colonizing bourgeoisie had to fail,
because of the nature of the state it had brought into being. The colonial state did not originate from
the activity of Indian society itself. Its internal dynamics played no part in its emergence. “In other words,
the alienation which, in the career of a noncolonial state, comes after its emergence from civil society
and is expressed in its separation from that society in order to stand above it, was already there – a
foreign intrusion into theindegenous society – at the very inception of the British-Indian colonial state.
The latter was thus doubly alienated – in becoming as well as in being.
Colonial state: an absolute externality, structured like a despotism, no space provided for transactions
wbetween the will of the rulers and that of the ruled. Immediacy: lack of mediation. The immediacy that
characterized the relations in the medieval polity described by Montesquieu is reproduced in the
colonial state (‘long after its time’), ‘to inform a historic decalage’: the world’s most dynamic power and
a world still living in the past were brought together, constituting ‘an anachronism’: the most dynamic
power of the world inserted into a world still living in the past. A regression from the universalist drive,
compromise with precapitalist particularisms.
Thus Dominance without hegemony.
Order more decisive than improvement.
Claims of rule of law belied: 66-7.
The universalist illusion: some Indian liberals did not buy it. Tagore and Gandhi.68-71.
A spurious hegemony: fabricated with the aid of historiography. James Mill, ‘the first historian of India”.
This obscures not only the more frank mercantilist histories of an earlier period but also all Indian
histories. Mill’s anti-Indian prejudices. Guha reads the two ‘denunciatory chapters’ on Hinduism as
symptomatic of a deeper design. Unlike the mercantalisit historian whose perspective was that of a
conquistador, Mill the utilitarian was writing from the perspective of a legislator. Mill needed a tabula
rasa on which to inscribe his ‘principles of legislation’. Since unlike America, there was no ‘void’, a void
had to be created. This is the purpose of the denunciation of Hindu culture. The Islamic component is
then made into an accomplice of colonialism.
This new history represented the history of India as ‘no more than a moment in the career of the
metropolitan state.’ 80
“James Mill & Sons have been pretending to write the history of India while writing, in fact, the history
of Britain in its South Asian career.” 80
The Bad Faith of Historiography
One idiom of bad faith tries to ‘document and display the record of colonial rule as a civilizing force. The
Raj, it argues, introjected liberal Western values and helped thereby to promote social reform, combat
superstition and generally raise the level of indigenous culture.’
But the civilizing mission lost credibility. Emphasis now shifts to education.
Educating Indians in ‘new political conceptions’ etc.
Critique of the ‘Cambridge school’ of historians. Anil Seal and David Washbrook.
Seal puts education at the centre, as ‘one of the chief determinants of these politics’.
Second idiom of bad faith: government.
Education and government as creating the ground for Indian politics.
Washbrook’s claim that administration is a neglected topic in colonial history questioned.
The stimulus response model. Two stimuli: education and government.
The Cambridge approach seeks ‘to represent the colonized subject’s relation to the colonizer as one in
which Collaboration triumphed effectively over Resistance’, thus to characterize ‘colonialism as a
hegemonic dominance.’86.
Collaboration is supposed to happen through competition and representation. Competing for
opportunities, resources, etc. As they bargain, haggle, they become part of the system. Intrusion of the
vocabulary of political economy.
This entire thesis is shown to be false. All this competition was restricted to a tiny minority.
Representation too is similarly foregrounded as a hegemonizing instrument. But Guha shows how small
and insignificant the representative system in colonial India was. Initially restricted to 3 pc of the
population, it expanded to 14 percent by 1935.
A negative device was also in play (apart from the competition-representation idea of collaboration).
This was to deny the political character of uprisings.
Two vanishing tricks: horizontal solidarity is spirited away, an upward-looking competitive population
which had no interest in horizontal alliances, only vertical ones, ie, with those of higher rank. Guha then
provides the counter-evidence.
Second vanishing trick: People were moved by interests rather than by ideas. Indians were not drawn to
political ideologies! Guha counterposes the idiom of communal politics. Also cites inter-caste conflicts.
93.
Preamble to an Autocritique
The problems of British historians are their problems to solve.
Indian historians need to introspect. Call for self-criticism. Complicity with colonialist historiography.
The successor regime too (ie independent India) is a dominance without hegemony.
The nature of dominance and its discourses. The questions to be taken up. 97.
An autonomous historiography of colonial India.
Why is self-critique needed? Because of the relations of affinity and opposition that Indian
historiography has borne to its colonial precursors.