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.
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