Colonialism and Resistance

Society and State in Manipur

Arambam Noni, Kangujam Sanatomba, Arambam Noni, Kangujam Sanatomba

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317270652
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Indian & South Asian History
• Index: History

Part of the 'Transition in Northeastern India' series, this volume critically explores how Northeast India, especially Manipuri society, responded to colonial rule. It studies the interplay between colonialism and resistance to provide an alternative understanding of colonialism on the one hand, and society and state formation on the other. Challenging dominant histories of the area, the essays provide significant insights into understanding colonialism and its multiple effects on economy, polity, culture, and faith system. It examines hitherto untouched areas in the study of Northeast, and discusses how social movements are augmented, constituted or sustained.

This book will be of great interest to researchers and scholars of modern history, sociology and social anthropology, particularly those concerned with Northeast India.

Part I
Framework, Administration, and Democratisation

1
Cast of Colonialism

Constructing the peculiar North East India

Arambam Noni

Pre-modern societies are considered to be marked by a barbarous fight for conquest and de facto domination. Such characteristics are considered to be the yardsticks that distinguish between pre-modern and modern. If modernity is to be understood in terms of a new-found rationalism of the Western world, the way this rationalism was experienced by the non-Western societies continues to contradict the foundations on which modernity was based. The evidence of the contradiction could be seen in the context of exploitative explorations of Western rationalism and continued construction of recipient inferiors against whom the project of hegemony was to materialise. The need for such project was heightened along with the occurrence of the Enlightenment movement in Europe, which ultimately brought Europe to a stage of economic concentration and stagnation in terms of technological benefits as well. Modernity became a stage of the world’s history when the European hegemony had begun to abundantly affect and cast the socio-economic and political lives of several peoples who were to be ultimately called as subjects. In other words, it can be said that the early modern history of non-European societies had been sweepingly marked by a vertical form of a sophisticated political and power relationship called colonialism. Consequently, colonisation became an inescapable condition with manifest self-proclaimed projects and justifications to sustain over time.

The chapter is aimed at exploring the way colonialism was unleashed on the non-Western societies so as to understand the larger cast of colonialism on economy, politics, culture, belief-systems, etc. Colonialism here is understood as subjugation of a society or country by a foreign entity having deeper objectives of economic and political control backed by military and cultural foundations. The chapter broadly employs both colonialism and imperialism interchangeably to mean politics and economy. The author is aware of the problems in treating both the concepts similarly. Put simply, colonialism came as a mixed package which brought into play self-proclaimed ideological values, civilisational claims and employed spiritual and religious sources in a strategic manner in order to realise its wholesome commercial inroads. Such a mix can be read as a strategic element of the colonial project to trim down the possibilities of rejection and resistance from the ones who were to be finally dominated. Such a packaging is regarded as a product of the early ‘frenzy of liberalism’ (Singh 1996: 89), which unleashed an unparalleled and unilaterally defined ‘superior’ West. Predominance of a similar kind of frenzy was found within several strands of liberalism, which, nevertheless, rarely questioned the characterisation or hierarchisation of races and inherent forms of exploitation. The intentions and perspective of the debates within Europe was to justify the then-existing relations of difference, that of superior and inferior, as it was considered to be rather natural.

The debates generated during the middle of the 19th century can be mentioned in this regard. James Mill (1820), while speaking on the question of wages of the plantation labour in Africa and India, argued that European hierarchy was a product of different rates of development, and not immutable laws, and thus Africans and Asians could be improved if exposed to European civilisation. What followed then was the indiscriminate conquest and manipulation of all varieties, leading several scholars to construct a popular term known as the ‘despotism of Orientalism’, which matures into a long-term hegemony. Antonio Gramsci (1992) views colonial hegemony as the cohesion spiritual and cultural supremacy as it exercises through the manipulation of civil society. Hegemonisation harps on new methods of socialisation mechanisms; it invents and coerces new institutions of hegemony such as the church, schools, press, values, culture and beliefs systems. Such a deliberate attempt to enforce new cultural directions is integral to hegemony, and in this sense it is made to become a rule by consent and ground for claiming habitual legitimacy (Parsons 1964: 33–70).

In this regard, Edward Said argues that the construction of knowledge of the ‘other’ must be seen as a crucial site for the operation of colonialism. Said argues, ‘without examining Orientalism as a discourse one cannot possibly understand the enormously systematic discipline by which European culture was able to manage – and even produce – the Orient, politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively during the post-Enlightenment period’ (Said 1973: 3). Said’s critique is one of the most considered theses on Eurocentrism. Nevertheless, his formulation has been criticised for having failed to shed enough light on the complexities within Europe. For instance, the argument of Said is reworked, rather challenged, by Aijaz Ahmad when he rejects the essentialisation of Europe as a unified historical entity.

The plain fact is that whatever Homer or Aeschylus might have had to say about the Persians or Asia, it simply is not a reflection of a ‘West’ or of ‘Europe’ as a civilizational entity, in a recognizably modern sense, and no modern discourse can be traced back to that origin, because the civilizational map and geographical imagination of antiquity were fundamentally different from those that came to be fabricated in post-Renaissance Europe.

(Ahmad 2001: 275)

Ahmad further explains by suggesting that there have historically been of all sorts of processes – connected with class and gender, ethnicity and religion, xenophobia and bigotry – which have unfortunately been at work in all human societies, both European and non-European. Therefore, the ideologically full-blown racism and other forms of devastations of Eurocentrism came into eminent existence in the wake of colonial capitalism (ibid.: 276). To be precise, the debate is the need to locate Eurocentrism and colonialism as a consequence of post-Renaissance fabrication. The failure of locating a resisting subject is missing in Said, and consideration of a heterogeneous Europe as put forth by Ahmad is significant as long as it questions colonialism.

Contextualising the North East

The idea of North East began to first appear in the European colonial map of the 19th century. To recall, the initial journey of the European empire into non-European societies began as trading commercial enterprises. The case of North East India is not an exception. The two most evident reasons that heightened the British expansion in the region were its mercantile interests and strategic necessity to mobilise areas in the North East to restrict Burmese expansion and threats and misgivings caused by the French presence in Burma. Towards the first quarter of the 19th century, the British mercantile interest began to make inroads into the North East, where the prospect of tea cultivation was confirmed, a highly coveted and capital-spinning article of international commerce. On the other hand, there was a prolonged military tussle between the Burmese and the native kingdoms, with logistic backup extended by the British, which was only to be replaced by a new apparatus of British imperialism. With the signing of the Treaty of Yandaboo, 1826, the British fully consolidated their domination over the North East. Once the region was brought under British control, it was only a matter of time before the subordination of the turbulent hill people. Subsequently, by 1833, industrial capital gained ascendancy over mercantile capital, which resulted in the absolute colonisation of Assam (Guha 1969: 569–622 ). By 1871, the wastelands in Assam were settled with tea planters. In addition, the Empire took full advantage of the political unrest to consolidate its sway in the region such as the then-existing inter-kingdom wars, faction-ridden nobility, internal insurrections, dynastic feuds, frequent Burmese raids, etc.

Typical of capitalism, the wholesome economic impact was that, like in Europe, the subsistence farming in the North East was discouraged and no substantial attempt was made towards industrialisation as the thrust was given to tea plantation aimed at surplus and exploitation of cheap labour. Similar perspectives were maintained in other aspects of colonial policies as it was manifested in the case of construction of roads and transportation. The colonial power was prepared to make it ‘to be simple, cost effective and only to the extent it was required’ (The Calcutta Gazette 1866: 1965). In other words, a restrained and pre-determined policy outlook was the main hallmark of colonial exploitation.

Consolidation of political hegemony

The dissolution of the East India Company can be said to have marked a beginning of a newer economic and political subordination of the people in the North East. Thus, the political history of the North East witnessed maturing of a mercantile enterprise into a permanent political subjection. The subjection was to rather rigorously pursue capitalist exploitation of the region’s cotton, minerals, wild rubber, petroleum and wild tea (Chaube 1973: 6). Transformation of mercantilism to total political hegemony was seeded through the region mainly on two grounds. The initial mercantile journey spread all over and made crucial inroads as apolitical business groups. And, second, it was complemented by rigorous pursuit of ‘institutionalising’ of a colonial administration, through military expeditions, proselytisation, conquests and treatises. Hence, it became imminent in the practice of the Empire to emphasise the need for a moderate display of physical force to bring the hill tracts and the plains into order. For obvious reasons, the conciliatory approach of the Empire was in fact corrupt in its perspective as the local leaders were bribed to make them comply with the colonial interests. If in case bribery was to prove ineffective in expanding the colonial outreach, ‘punitive measures’ were officially carried out.

The thriving framework of the imperialist was dependent on ‘conciliation, backed by display of force when it could be effectively applied’ (Bhuyan 1949: 33–34). As a result, buffer zones and semi-independent states were created or uprooted as imperial strategic necessity dictated. The core of imperial response to peoples’ resistance ranged from moderate display of force to severe punishment, and from bribing to luring of local chiefs, which consequently led to the formulation of a forward policy, the idea of the North East region as a strategic, wild and savage frontier came into being. The spread of the tea gardens from the middle of the 19th century strengthened the case for a ‘forward policy’ in the North East (Chaube 1999: 7) thereby inducing not only a policy of coercion and contemptuous devastation from the beginning, as it has sometimes been erroneously described, but also a firm and policy of defence and conciliation (Mackenzie 1999: 55).

The following statement is reflexive of the political drive of the imperialists to hasten their hegemony over the region, ‘Fate seems determined to prove that there shall be no rest for the English in India till they stand forth as governors or advisors of each tribe and people in the land’ (ibid.: 369).

What is of the utmost importance in dealing with uncivilized tribes is patience. No one supposes that their civilization is to be effected in a few years, and no one expects that in endeavouring to conciliate them the Government will not meet with occasional disappointment, but the policy is none the less on this account sound and intelligible.

(ibid.: 54–55)

The cunningness of the imperialists embarked on a combined policy of direct and distanced interference. The invoking of the Inner Line Regulation system in 1873 reflects the distanced interference as manifested in the following quote:

The active control of the district officer need not necessarily extend up to the boundary, but it must, under no circumstances, be carried further. Beyond this line the tribes are left to manage their own affairs with only such interference on the part of the frontier officers in their political capacity as may be considered advisable with the view to establishing a personal influence for good among the chiefs and the tribes.

(The Calcutta Gazette 1871: 89–90)

The proclaimed rationale of the regulation was that there was a pressing necessity of bringing the region under more stringent control for a smoother commercial jurisdiction. In the words of Mackenzie: ‘There was a pressing necessity of bringing under more stringent control the commercial relations of our subjects with the frontier tribes living on the borders of our jurisdiction’ (Mackenzie 1999: 55). The Inner Line Permit system was to consolidate and sustain the spreading revenue areas that had enormous resources such as rubber forests, tea gardens, etc. The regulation gave power to the lieutenant governor to prescribe a line in each and every district affected beyond which no British subject of certain classes or foreign resident could pass without a licence. Moreover, the ever-spreading tea cultivation had faced strong resistance from the hitherto unoccupied tribes. According to Mackenzie, while the policy of permanent occupation and direct management had been successfully carried out in the Naga, Garo, Khasi, Jaintia and Chittagong Hill Tracts, annexation of the Abor Hills in the same way was not possible as it would ‘bring us into contact with tribes still wilder and less known, nor should we find a resting place for the foot of annexation till we planted it on the plateau of High Asia; perhaps not even them’ (Mackenzie 1999: 5).

The varying circumstances in which the British authority was extended over eastern India may explain different forms of the same (authority) over different areas. To start with, Sikkim and Bhutan were never annexed to the British Raj, presumably because of their international significance, nor were they reduced to the status of native states. Technically speaking, the native states were vassals of the British Indian Government which exercised considerable authority in the internal affairs of the principalities (Chaube 1973: 24). The other trajectory of the colonial administration was that it opted for the politics of engagement and disengagement as and when the situation demanded. For example, engagement and conciliation was opted for when it came to territoriality and administration, which was linked to imperial political economy. There was disengagement when it came to social customs in order to avoid immediate reactions and unnecessary backlashes. The Empire was always clear in this regard as it felt

a main principle to be adopted in dealing with these people when they have been made to understand and feel the power of the government through a simple plan of government suitable to their present condition and circumstance, and interfering as little as possible with existing institutions’ through the extension of intercourse with them and endeavour to introduce among them civilization and order.

(Mackenzie 1999: 242)

The gesture of ‘direct’ and ‘distanced’ engagement was a strategic policy to ensure an unprovoked consolidation of the Empire as it was to prove cost-effective. Put simply, effective norms were set up to encompass a wide range of differences, based on the assumption that Europeans were superior to the rest. This assumption became a crucial basis for marking cultural and racial classification of societies all over the world. The Asians and Africans remain at the bottom of this hierarchised relationship. In the words of Frantz Fanon:

Colonialism… has never ceased to maintain that the Negro is a savage; and for the colonist, the Negro was neither an Angolan nor a Nigerian, for he simply spoke of “the Negro”. For colonialism, this vast continent was the haunt of savages, a country riddled with superstitions and fanaticism, destined for contempt, weighed down by the curse of God, a country of cannibals – in short, the Negro’s country.

(Fanon 1963: 170)

The colonies underwent a hegemonic deployment of cultural supremacy in order to validate the subsequent consolidation of the Empire that inevitably promoted racial and military oppression. Though the policy of conciliation and not a policy of repression or devastation was emphasised, on the contrary the actions of the local authorities were e...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Notes on contributors
• Introduction
• Part I Framework, administration, and democratisation
• Part II Literature, popular culture, and religion
• Part III Imperial strategies and distinct political histories
• Part IV Post-Empire Manipur, organisational politics, and frontier
• Glossary
• Index