Nirad Chauduri and how to interpret Britain's imperial history

One of my repeated irritations at the quality of public discourse on imperialism in Britain today is its woolly, moralising and overly-sentimental nature. The discussion is so often uncritical, proposing and accepting simplicities and tropes that – when I taught – wouldn’t get past the Year 1 undergraduate historian’s door. Much of the conversation takes place without objectivity or context. I saw this last night on television when watching a friend of mine discourse (no names, to protect the guilty) on the subject of Burma in 1885. The entire message was about the country being gifted to Queen Victoria – this of course being a terrible, patronising and humiliating thing - without any understanding of the political context of this particular war and indeed, any sense that the war with Burma was undertaken by the Raj very reluctantly. To an historian this is astonishing. It’s all so tediously ignorant. I am constantly amazed that the worst culprits are those who claim to be historians, especially those who hold positions in our universities. Without irony or self-awareness, many bleat a superficial appreciation of the past that is channelled through a prism of ideology, usually Marxism in the West, though in India at present it is right-wing Hindu mythologising. A more recent approach is to see imperialism through the absurdly simplistic – and erroneous – lens of racism. Many of our impressionable young have fallen into this one-way street presumably because they are not being taught by our universities to be critical thinkers. Instead they are encouraged, so as not to be offended by history, to be clones and apostles of the zeitgeist. (Of the nature of this zeitgeist, read on).

A man who grew similarly exasperated by the intellectual pygmies discoursing sagely on this subject fifty years ago was ‘my friend’ Nirad Chaudhuri. I feel comfortable in calling him my friend (he died in 1999) because he’s become that over the last few years, after I was introduced to his works by Dr Sumantra Maitra. Thank you Sumantra! I’ve found that he is one of the few commentators and historians of imperial India who make historical sense, because he weighs the past in the light of the past rather than the present. He was an interesting man, railing both against the ignorance of Indian nationalists as against those in Britain who failed to understand what imperialism meant, instead of falling back into easy moralising or sentimentality. He’d have a field day with lazy, proselytising historians of the current age.

A brilliant description of his approach to understanding the British Empire in its Indian context can be found in his biography of Robert Clive[1] which has a superb introduction, explaining why he considered a new biography was necessary on top of all those that came before. I’ve edited it for length, but to those interested in the continuing battles of empire these words are as fine as we will get. Remember, lest we think that disputes about empire are new, this was written in 1975, nearly fifty years ago. Ecclesiastes 1:9 strikes again.

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[A] new biography of Clive may be justified on grounds other than new information. To my thinking, the inadequacy of the existing biographies of Clive is to be found not in the incomplete utilization of the sources, but in the unsatisfactory interpretation of-well-known facts. This, however, is not the fault of any particular biographer; but has been virtually forced on them by a preconditioned approach. In this respect the biographies of Clive have suffered equally with the histories of the British Empire in India. In other words, true standards of historicity Clive has not had a better deal at the hands of his biographers than the Empire has had from its historians. The fact is that, so long as it lasted, it never moved into the light of history, but remained subject to polemics, for or against. The polemical approach has not been given up, though the Empire has disappeared. Thus a genuinely historical history of that great political phenomenon was never written, and as it seems to me will not be, unless there is a radical departure from all the extant modes of thinking about it.

The polemical approach was created by the very manner in which the Empire came into existence. The British people were not prepared for it either intellectually or morally. So when they saw it emerging they not only failed to understand what was happening, but took up a hostile attitude. Chronologically, British anti-imperialism was in being before the appearance of the Empire. The great French historian and political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville, who once thought of writing about the foundation of the British Empire in India, pointed this out in his notes. Writing between 1841 and 1843, he said that an empire two-thirds the size of that of Alexander the Great was founded against the formal orders of the authorities at home. According to him, more singular was the failure of the deliberate attempts made by the East India Company, the British government of the day, and even British public opinion to arrest the growth of the Empire. Altogether, he said, the birth and growth of the Empire of India appeared to the world as an unexplained puzzle, almost as a miracle. This bewilderment lingered even as late as the middle of the nineteenth century. So Tocqueville thought it necessary to say that the time had come to dispel the clouds which hid the foundation of the Empire.

But they have not been dispelled. Different kinds of clouds follow one another. There was first the cloud of incomprehension; then that of hostility and moralizing; the clouds of false glorification came after that, only to be chased away by the clouds of false contrition or, less dominantly, false romanticizing.

Owing to the absence of any kind of psychological preparation to face the Empire as a political responsibility or even as a fait accompli, the establishment of British rule in India was seen intellectually and judged morally in the light of the traditional political doctrines of the British people, just as today the expansion of American power in the world is being seen in the light of the political principles created by the War of Independence, which are obsolete. So, the most notable and significant pronouncement on the Indian Empire in the first fifty years of its existence was the indictment of Warren Hastings by Burke. This was as natural as Burke's denunciation of the French Revolution.

The first history of British rule, and the only one that remains impressive by virtue of its conception and execution, appeared in 1817 when the Empire could no longer be opposed as fact. This was James Mill's History of British India. Even then Mill could not break with the old controversy. It may actually be said that he gave the first historical version of the condemnation of the Empire. His history was severely critical of the actions and methods of the founders. But he was critical in the light of English principles, not out of any regard for the character and civilization of the Indian people, for neither of which had he any respect. His history set the trend for the histories that followed for when they did not fall in with Mill's thesis they could only put forward a counter-thesis, thus maintaining the affiliation. Until the last quarter of the nineteenth century the theoretical and doctrinaire controversy about the Empire in India ran its course quite independently of the practical task of governing India, which so far as it was influenced by any political theory at all was affected only by utilitarianism, and in the moral aspect by evangelism. But in the last decades of that century a conscious pride in the Empire made its appearance. This epoch was ushered in by the proclamation of the Queen of England as the Empress of India. No less significant was the fact that the new title was assumed at the instance of Disraeli. All that was symbolic, for it preceded the rise of an imperial sentiment or at least an appearance of it. However, it is one of the ironies of history that the most effective and beneficent application of British Imperialism in India was seen when there was no imperialistic bragging. When the glorification began it produced a conceptual imperialism which was quite unworthy of the greatest empire seen in history.

Quite naturally; this imperialism influenced historical writing. But it did not make it more historical than the old moral condemnation. The new style only created an aggressive defence, often with the help of very specious arguments. The special pleading became worse and worse as the challenge of Indian nationalism grew stronger and stronger. For some time the imperialistic sentiment cornered the old radical condemnation. But after the First World War it was the turn of imperialism to be cornered, and the symbol of this transition was a novel — E. M. Forster' s A Passage to India. The two camps remained facing each other till the end of British rule in India in 1947. The histories written from both the positions were equally biased, superficial and insipid. True history went by default.

With the exception of a small number of works, all the histories of British India stand in deplorable contrast to the few pages written by Tocqueville on the rise of the Empire. They were not included in the collected edition of his writings edited by Beaumont because they were very fragmentary and were left in a confused state. But they have now been published in the new collected works issued under the direction of J.P. Mayer and sponsored by a National Commission appointed by the French Government. The pieces on India are to be found in volume III of the series.[2]

Though based on incomplete reading, these pages show a quality of historical thinking and understanding which would have made de Tocqueville's work on British India, had it been completed, a companion volume to his Democracy in America and the Ancient Regime. But a mind like Tocqueville’s was never fully brought to bear on the Empire in India. And yet as a political phenomenon it was not less significant than the United States created by the American Revolution and the Europe created by the French Revolution.

It cannot be said in extenuation that the raw material for a great history of the Indian empire was not available. The British administrators were continuously discussing the problem of ruling India empirically, and embodying their ideas and opinions not only in public papers but also in books. A large synthesis could be constructed from these. But the histography of the Empire and the practical thinking and writing on it ran along different channels. The Empire has now disappeared, but the prospects for its history have not improved. If anything they are worse today. There is no longer any practical motive for any effectual application of the intellect to it. The emotional urge, too, is not only weak, but of a kind which is likely to make those who still want to write about it unjust to it. The fact is that some people in Britain need consolation for the loss of the Empire, and the natural impulse is to find it by representing it as something less than what it was. This is behind the current talk of cutting everybody down to size, which means nothing more than cutting the great men of the past to the size of an inferior generation.

There are others who have adopted a definitely hostile attitude to the Empire. This is part of a general rancour against every form of British greatness. The greatness was almost exclusively the creation of a class, and the hatreds that are so marked in Britain today are bound to extend to the achievements of the upper classes.

Both British administrators and historians had a bad conscience about the acquisitions in India. This was given expression in a far-fetched pun attributed to Napier about his conquest of Sind. He is said to -have sent the message: 'Peccavi' (= 'I have sinned'). This tendency has become strengthened, and it is trying to pass as historical justice.

Owing to all these emotional pressures a sort of revisionism has already appeared even among the established historians of British lndia. Some of them seem to consider the Empire only as the seed-bed of the Indian nationalist movement, and not as a political phenomenon in its own right. Therefore, many writers are pulled by a gravitation which makes them toe the line with Indian historians and their views, not only In respect of the Empire, but even about ancient Indian civilization. And it must be said that Indian historians even at their most scholarly are, with -very rare exceptions, propagandists in disguise.

The only corrective to the dubious revisionism which can be seen is the immense amount of academic research on Indian subjects. This research is providing a good deal of new information but it is often directed towards relatively unimportant aspects of the government of India. What is more serious is the unreality of some of the work, Most of the researchers are young men, who are not affiliated to any tradition formed by the Empire -as a reality,  and without some such relationship, however collateral, historical reconstruction and interpretation are go astray.

These conditions that affect the writing of a new history of the Empire in India are bound to influence the biographies of the founders as well. In fact, in the historiography of British India, the current ran in the opposite direction. That is to say, the lives of the founders as lived, and afterwards as written, influenced the writing of the general histories. It was the controversies raised by the activities of the two founders, Clive and Warren Hastings, and the parliamentary Inquiries into their conduct, which set the pattern of writing of the histories of British India. The men as microcosms determined the treatment of the macrocosm — the Empire. The moral issues raised by these two men in the sphere of practical politics were carried into the biographies, and from the biographies into the histories, so that it maybe said-that Clive and Warren Hastings cast their shadows on the entire historiography of British India. Moral criticism and appraisement became the main purpose of both history and biography.

This is best illustrated by the two essays on Clive and Hastings written by Macaulay after his return from India, where he held the appointment of a member of the Governor-General's Council. These essays, published in 1840 and 1841, were not apologetic about the Empire as such, for Macaulay had taken part in the government of India. On the contrary they revealed him to be as much of an imperialist as it was possible for him to be. He gave expression to his pride in the Empire in his well- known introduction to the essay on Clive. In it he chided Englishmen for knowing less about their own empire in India than about the Spanish Empire in America:

Every—schoolboy knows who imprisoned Montezuma and who strangled Atahualpa. But we doubt whether one in ten, even among English gentlemen of highly cultivated -minds, can tell who won the battle of Buxar, who perpetrated the massacre of Patna, whether, Shuja Dowla ruled in Oude or in Travancore, or whether Holkar was a Hindoo or a Mussalman.

Nevertheless, he was also a good Whig and heir to the most liberal traditions in English politics and ethics. So he could not ignore the moral issues raised by the doings of Clive and Hastings, and delivered his moral judgements without reserve. In passing them he was led to set down contradictory opinions about the same moral question: he condemned Clive for forging the signature of Admiral Watson or being a party to it; on the other hand, he condemned Hastings for getting Nuncomar (Nanda Kumar) hanged for forgery. In doing so Macaulay applied the English standard to Clive and the Bengali standard to Hastings. Forgery, he considered, was a crime in an Englishman in all circumstances, whereas it was natural in a Bengali, whose character he summed up in a very famous passage:

What the horns are to the buffalo, what the paw is to the tiger, what the sting is to the bee, what beauty, according to the old Greek song, is to woman, deceit is to the Bengalee: large promises, smooth excuses, elaborate tissues of circumstantial falsehood, chicanery, perjury, forgery, are the weapons, offensive and defensive, of the people of the Lower Ganges.

But the moralist in Macaulay could never suppress the historian in him, so as to make him incapable of giving a dramatic and colourful reconstruction of the past. As the two essays on Clive and Warren Hastings influenced all subsequent writing on them and even the writing of general histories of British rule in India, it is as well to take note of the special quality of Macaulay as historian. This can be best done by quoting de Tocqueville's opinion of him.

After reading the concluding volumes of History of England he wrote to his friend Beaumont: 'It is almost as superficial as, but more interesting than, a novel.... And even when I say superficial, I speak of the depth of mind which brings out, transcending the particular passions of the times and countries, the general character of an epoch and the march of the human spirit.’

Apart from this, de Tocqueville wrote: The work is not superficial as to the particular facts of which the author speaks the which are well examined by him.'

As to the impression left by Macaulay’s history, as a whole de Tocqueville made this penetrating remark: 'It should be read to see how underlying honesty, good sense, moderation, and virtue which are to be found in a people, and the sound institutions which these qualities have created or allowed to remain, can fight against the vices of those who lead them. I do not think there were in any country statesmen who were more dishonest than those of whom Macaulay speaks in this part of his history, just as there never was a society which was greater than that which finally emerged out of their hands.'

And Tocqueville drew a final historical moral: ‘'There are among nations as among individuals certain dispositions which fight not only against the maladies but also against the physicians.'

Tocqueville called all these remarks 'cat immense bavardage'. But his chitchat is more profound than the pretentious holding forth of many historians, and his remarks apply equally to the small-scale essays of Macaulay as they do to the large history. His essays showed that a basically great historical phenomenon could arise out of very corrupt conditions and high-handed or dubious actions. If there was to be any moralizing on the life of Clive it should have been at this level, accompanied by a forceful and vivid presentation of the realities of politics and history.

But the moralizing that became a general feature of the lives of Clive and Hastings remained throughout on a lower level, as if the historians were dealing with dishonest officials or tradesmen. The moralizing was not unnatural as long as the Empire lasted, for during that time everything that Clive and Hastings did remained a live moral and political issue. The challenge from Indian nationalism made their actions even more compelling ones, and the actions in respect of which doubts were raised had either to be extenuated or condemned. So the historian was driven to be a prosecuting or a defending counsel.

The confrontation between the new imperialistic historians and Indian nationalists gave another twist to the moralizing. It became very difficult for these historians to admit that anything done either by Clive or by Warren Hastings could be wrong, and on all heads of the condemnation they spun out specious justifications. This apology has ceased, but the moralizing tradition has not been given up, though the disappearance of the Empire has made it wholly out of date.

It is this tradition of writing about Clive that gives scope for a new presentation of his life. A truly historical biography of Clive today should exclude criticism or apology altogether, and present him as he was, and his age, too, as it was. The story must be told as if the writer was watching the events as realities present before his eyes, but with a detachment which the passing away of the Empire should make possible.

In regard to the topics included in the biography it will be found that there is a good deal that is not about Clive, and would seem at first sight to belong to history rather than to biography. But these had to be brought in because in this period Clive and British India coincided. The historical situations furnished the setting in which Clive worked and rose to power. His was a dormant nature which was roused and brought to life by India. Without describing all that was happening there, it is impossible to explain him.

In short, I will say that I have only tried to show Clive as he was and his age as it was without feeling called upon to pronounce any judgement for or against. But I am not insensible to the fact that the reader might think that I have projected a view of Clive that comes very close to the imperialistic, though with neither boastfulness nor apology. I would not excuse myself for that, for if the view seems to be imperialistic it has been forced on me by the nature of the subject. It is not possible to write about the foundation of an empire without seeming to be imperialistic. For myself, I only claim freedom from preconceptions about Clive and the British Empire, not because I did not have them, but because I have outgrown them.

I feel I ought to explain this. I was born early enough — in 1897, the year of the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria — to become familiar with the view that educated and thoughtful Indians held about British rule in India before nationalist agitation began as an active and widespread movement in 1905. These men were not reconciled to subjection, and emotionally they were anti-British, but intellectually not one of them denied that British rule had rescued India from anarchy and brought peace and prosperity to the Indian people.

This attitude wholly disappeared with the nationalist movement. Henceforth the same men thought of the rule as one of oppression and exploitation, and the climax of this attitude was seen when Mahatma Gandhi called British rule in India satanic. Naturally, in my young days I shared this antipathy and even hatred.[3]

Moreover, to Indian nationalists, both Clive and Warren Hastings became symbols of British usurpation and oppression, and they, together with the battle of Plassey, passed into the literature of nationalism. Something about this will be said in the body of the book. Here I would give a personal detail. I myself as a boy of ten took the part of one of the Jagat Seths in the scene of conspiracy against Siraj-ud-daula from a Bengali epic poem which we acted out on the home stage; my elder brother lay flat on it and declaimed the dying speech put into the mouth of Mohanlal, who did not die in the battle of Plassey.

But in my university days I was a student of history, and as I gave considerable attention to methodology I became a staunch believer in the ideal of objectivity in history. I did not give up my nationalism, but I learned to keep my historical views independent of it. At the same time, I found the apologias of the British historians of the day to be both superficial and influenced by considerations of national self-interest. Thus it happened that by the time British rule was ending I had arrived at a neutral position.

Even so, I do not claim that I have written this biography without involvement in the present and future of my country. The ideal of objectivity does not require that. If the historian or biographer does not impose the present on his interpretation of the past, it is perfectly legitimate for him to go to the past so that as citizen he might understand the present. I shall give an instance to explain what I mean. In a speech in the House of Commons delivered on March 30 1772, Clive observed:

Indostan was always an absolute despotic Government. The inhabitants, especially of Bengal, in inferior stations, are servile, mean, submissive and humble. In superior stations, they are luxurious, effeminate, tyrannical, treacherous, venal, cruel.

Anyone who reads this and does not see its relevance to the conditions in both Bengals today, or does not realize how the old Roman motto for imperialism — parcere subjectis et debellare superbos[4] — took on new meaning for the British conquerors, might go to history for any other purpose, but not for that which is the most urgent. That is to orient oneself in time. For the historian or the biographer this is far more important, because he will constantly be led to pronounce judgements on the past under the influence of unexamined opinions absorbed from the present unless he is able to see the similarities and the dissimilarities between the past and the present with equal clearness. I would say for myself that I have been particularly careful in defining my position in writing this biography. Nonetheless, I realize that this may not affect its reception. It is not simply that hagiography may chime in with the mood of one age, and debunking with another; even historical truth set down with the most rigorous honesty may be acceptable and unacceptable according to the moral and intellectual fashions of an epoch. It is not readily admitted even by those who write history that there can be neither a Marxist interpretation of history nor a Christian, neither an imperialistic interpretation nor another that is anti-imperialistic — the only legitimate interpretation is the historical one.

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[1]Clive of India: A Political and Psychological Essay (London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1975).

[2] Alexis de Tocqueville, Oeuvres Completes: definitive edition published  under the direction of J.-P. Mayer. Volume Ill: 'Ecrits et Discours politiques'. Text edited and annotated by André Jardin. Introduction by J.J. Chavalier and André Jardin (Gallimard, Paris 1962), pp. 441—553.

[3] Nirad spent some time as the secretary to the Bengali politician Subhas Chandra Bose.

[4] ‘To spare the humble and to subdue the proud.’