Critically examine the colonialist approach to the study of Indian society

Critically examine the colonialist approach to the study of Indian society. Indological perspectives handed generalities, propositions and frame, which surfaced from the study of Indian civilisation by different scholars. They primarily espoused a literal and relative approach. Their understanding of Indian society and its structure is largely grounded on their study of classical textbooks and literature, similar as the Vedas, Upanishads and the Puranas. Critically examine the colonialist approach to the study of Indian society. 

One View of Indian society deduced from the study of textbooks with the help of Brahman scholars and presented Indian society as fixed, stagnant and dateless and with no socio-artistic variations. Critically examine the colonialist approach to the study of Indian society. Indian society was seen as a set of rules which every Hindu followed. Critically examine the colonialist approach to the study of Indian society.

THE Social PERSPECTIVE

Critically examine the colonialist approach to the study of Indian society. N B Halhead presented first compendium of Hindu Dharamshastra (1776) William Jones, Colebrook were other scholars who did notable work on India. H H Risley under whom first tale of India (1872) took place to JH Hutton last tale manager helped latterly scholars with the data like, Morgan, McLennon, Lubbock, Tylor, Starcke and Frazer. Critically examine the colonialist approach to the study of Indian society.

Critically examine the colonialist approach to the study of Indian society. Early 19th century saw considerable literature by missionaries on Indian society like Claudius Buchanan, William Carey, William Ward, Sir John Shore who were critical of Hinduism and saw stopgap in the spread of Christianity. Critically examine the colonialist approach to the study of Indian society.

Critically examine the colonialist approach to the study of Indian society. The end of the British social interest in studying the traditional Indian society proved useful in laying the foundation for farther studies of Indian society. The emphasis of the studies was on how to govern India more Critically examine the colonialist approach to the study of Indian society. Critically examine the colonialist approach to the study of Indian society.

Critically examine the colonialist approach to the study of Indian society. Critically examine the colonialist approach to the study of Indian society. After the appearance of the British, knowledge of Indian society began to grow veritably fleetly from 1760 onwards. Critically examine the colonialist approach to the study of Indian society.

Indian frugality and polity changed extensively.

Critically examine the colonialist approach to the study of Indian society. Indian society went through numerous changes including morning of the ultramodern period with preface of diligence. Posts and telegraph, railroads and ultramodern education, growth of metropolises, new occupations,etc., Critically examine the colonialist approach to the study of Indian society. were some of the major developments leading to rapid-fire changes in Indian society. 

With the British colonialism, particular compliances can be made about the process of artistic changes and nature of social change in the Indian social systems. Critically examine the colonialist approach to the study of Indian society. BernardS. Cohn (1990) argues that society of India offered a important different situation as compared to American Indian or African colonies since eighteenth century, in India Critically examine the colonialist approach to the study of Indian society.

. there was a full-fledged agrarian frugality,

. political institution grounded on Kingship,

. a legal system grounded on incompletely written law,

.taxation,

. record keeping, and

. a set of artistic religious systems both of Hindus and Muslims.

Critically examine the colonialist approach to the study of Indian society. He argues thus that the British study of Indian languages was important to the social design of control and command.

Cohn (1970) also asserts that an arena of social power that sounded most inclined to native original influences, substantially in the field of law, in fact came responsible for the changes of noticeably British sundries about how to regulate a ‘ different’ kind of social society. It wasn't only important to have a system of knowledge of Indian society but also give rise to forms of constructing an India that could be better packaged and ruled by the social powers. Critically examine the colonialist approach to the study of Indian society.

The central problems that surfaced and had to be understood was how to develop a political-military system that would leave the day-to- day functioning of the government in Indian hands and yet arrive at a successful formula to have nonstop supervision over the Indian subjects.

THE MISSIONARY PERSPECTIVE

This view developed through the jottings of early Evangelical Preachers (Protestants who believed in spreading the training of Christianity through conversion by persuasion) in the late eighteenth century. Charles Grant, one of the foremost Evangelical pen, who served as a marketable functionary in Bengal in 1774-1790, wrote a leaflet in 1792‘ Compliances on the state of society among the Asiatic subjects of Great Britain particularly with respect to Great morals, and on the means of Perfecting it’.

His views on Indian society can be added up in the following citation

Upon the whole, also, we can not avoid feting in the people of Hindostan, a race of men lamentably deteriorate and base, retaining but a delicate sense of moral obligation, yet obstinate in their casualness of what they know to be right, governed by malignant and lecherous heartstrings, explosively illustrating the goods produced on society by great and general corruption of mores and sunk in misery by their vices.

What's apparent from the below statement is the view they held of Indian society as being basically undignified as compared to the British society and the only way to ameliorate is by allowing the British to do so and by following their ways. The main cause behind similar ‘degeneration’ of course was embedded in the religious system that's the base of Indian culture and the only way that Indians can the saved recover from their situation would be through the missionary juggernauts that would convert the Indian population to Christianity.

Unlike the Indologists, the attempt was to condemn Indian society and its ways by citing specific restatements from the Sanskrit textbooks. Also, some of the practices like sati, purdah, trade of children to slavery, cow deification, hero deification and the estate system were taken to be everyday exemplifications of the problems and ills, suffered by Indian society. The extremely which negative evaluation of the Indian society and estate system was deeply connected with their need to establish Christianity across the key as a feasible volition especially to those who were at thebottom-most position of the scale and felt exploited in the estate system.

Early missionaries saw estate system as an handicap to conversion to Christianity. The jottings of Abbe Dubois, a French missionary and author of an influential account in 1816 named as Description of the Characters, mores, and customs of the people of India, and of their institutions, religious, and civil noted the stranglehold of estate system on Indians.

It needs to be mentioned then that estate system was criticised because the missionaries felt that it baffled their attempts to convert the Hindus into Christians. Indeed after conversion, numerous Hindus continued to be guided by estate rules.

Interestingly however in their hunt for the evidence of a generally corrupting Hindu society, these missionaries made major benefactions to the empirical study of the Indian society. Also, the need for restatement of Bible into vernaculars led to socio-verbal study of Indian languages. This in turn gave rise to more methodical and spoken accounts of the lived realities of the different estate and occupational groups. The missionaries also helped in the spread of ultramodern education in different corridor of India. They went to work in the outermost areas, like amongst tribals in the timbers and worked with zeal and vehemence for the weak and the poor.

In their analysis still, while the missionaries agreed with the Indologists and latterly the Orientalists ( scholars of Eastern world) about the central principles of Indian society both didn't essay to fit the data of political organisation, land term, factual legal systems and marketable structure of the society into it. Orientalists and missionaries accepted and agreed that

·        Religious ideas and practices bore all social structure;

·        Supremacy of the Brahman as the maintainer of the sacred tradition through his control of the knowledge of the sacred textbook; and

·        Brahmanical proposition of the four Varnas was accepted and saw the origin of the gentries in the inter admixture through marriage of the members of the four Varnas (Cohn, 1987).

The difference lay substantially in their evaluation of Indian culture. While the Orientalists and Indologists had immense admiration of an ancient Indian civilisation and were deeply displeased by the fall of Indian society from that ideal, the missionaries were of the view that there was no noble history and it has always been filled with fooleries.

According to Cohn, the approach espoused by missionaries can also be attributed to their social backgrounds. Unlike the Indologists and Orientalists who tended to be from upper class backgrounds and better educated, the missionaries, particularly the Baptists came from lower rungs of the British society with a zeal for reforming both their own and surely the Indian society. They were determined to change the social order in favour of Christianity unlike Indologists and Orientalists who held a certain respect for Indian traditional system. Critically examine the colonialist approach to the study of Indian society.