In development paradigms, the representation of colonized countries has either been of socio-economic-culturally backward regions in comparison to the Western countries or as the sites for resource extraction. In both of these development paradigms, which are ideologically opposed to one another, colonized countries have been denied agency.
At one end of this ideological spectrum stand theories such as, ‘The Stages of Economic Growth’, by Walt Rostow where colonized countries are conceptualized merely as ‘traditional societies’ and need an external intervention which might take them to the ‘take-off’ stage, and ultimately transform them into ‘High Mass Consumption Societies”. At the other end of the development paradigm, Immanuel Wallerstein, in his ‘world- systems analysis’, characterized the colonized world as ‘periphery’ which was used by the ‘core’ for the purpose of resource extraction. While being empathetic towards colonized countries, this world-view still does not give intellectual and moral autonomy to them to have their own development trajectories.
Even the genre of ‘post-colonial thinking’ comes as a suspect here. Its description of Indian society, her people and culture has been rooted in the intellectual premise where the Western culture is still seen as civlizationally superior. Within this framework, the contribution of colonized people is shown as ‘resistance’, as an act of self-empowerment by the colonized within the framework of colonial power. This denial of ability to the colonized, as SN Balagangadhara argues, is moral in nature.
It frames the colonized in such a manner that it does not give them any notions of moral courage to express their resistance openly so they either need the act of imitation as a subterfuge or an external intervention.
In other words, there is duplicity, deceit, and cowardice involved in this whole process of framing, and the colonized emerge out of it merely as imitators. In a way, the post-colonial thought not just endorses what the colonizer said about the colonized, it also tries to ‘justify’ this description. For SN Balagangadhara, both colonial and post-colonial thinkers agree that Indians are immoral and untrustworthy. While one calls it ‘immoral’ and criticizes it; the other calls it ‘subversive’ and celebrates it.
Consequences of such denials are catastrophic. The colonized are consistently portrayed as consumers of thoughts, ideas, knowledge, and commodities. The colonized are kept away from knowledge that might make them look confident or self-sufficient. While the colonized are forced to remember the fact that the printing press was invented in the West, and it is from there that it came to the colonized country, they are not told that countries like India had developed sophisticated cloth-printing technology, and dominated the world via trade. Countries like India clothed the world, and according to estimates made by Riello & Thirthankar Roy (2009), India accounted for roughly a quarter of the world’s textile output and almost certainly a larger proportion of the textiles traded by sea till very late in the 18th century. Lemire, who investigated the long-term impact of Indian cotton on European markets, even argued that Indian cotton not only contributed to the evolution of fashion in Europe but its entry into the European market led “the development of a new middle-class and bourgeois notion of fashion in Europe (2008).”
Before the power and knowledge matrix started favouring the British, and they became fully convinced of their moral and civilzational superiority, the company officials openly acknowledged the knowledge gains they had made while trading with Indians. Throughout the 18th century, members of the British East India Company reported their discoveries of native scientific and technological practices to the Royal Society. One Issac Pyke, who was also governor of St. Helena, admired the quality of mortar that was manufactured in Madras and found it to be surpassing any known European composition. “Stucco-work” as he wrote in his diary, “was better than the plaster of Paris… in smoothness and beauty” and was as long-lasting as “marble”. The mortar work and the knowledge around it soon became a part of the official knowledge of the Royal Society. An appropriation by dispossession in the real sense, as David Harvey would like to call it.
Some discoveries that the company officials made in India went on to help them make their stay permanent. One company official Robert Baker begged “permission to present to the Royal Society a method of manufacturing ice that was performed at Allahabad, Mootegil, and Calcutta.” This methodology, as Baker argued in the letter, “would make permanent colonial settlements a reality.”
This knowledge appropriation or theft was not limited to just one or two areas. Company officials made huge knowledge gains in the medical field, too. At least two centuries before Edward Jenner invented vaccination, Lady Mary Wortley Montague pleaded with British doctors to adopt the method which the Bengali Brahmins practised for smallpox inoculation. Explaining what she saw during her visit to India, she wrote; “A mysterious sect of Brahmins wandered up and down the Gangetic plain to popularize the practice of ṭīka, which involved taking matter from a smallpox patient’s pustule and applying it to the pricked skin of an uninfected person.” Another company doctor posted in Bombay, Helenus Scott, wrote to Joseph Banks of the Royal Society that “he would include in the next bill of lading a sample of caute, a surgical cement that putatively reattached severed limbs.”
A lot of the company’s officials were so inspired by assimilative Indian knowledge that it even influenced their daily routines, such as how often they showered and how immaculate their homes were kept. By looking at how company officials bathed and kept themselves clean, we might infer the extent to which the profound influence India had on the British who settled here led to the adoption of Indian customs. Before their exposure to the practice of daily bathing in India, a daily spray of water on the face and hands was considered perfectly sufficient among the middle classes in Britain. Writing in 1801, a British doctor commented in a medical journal that “most men and ladies in London neglect washing their bodies from year to year.” Even the necessity of washing the entire body was frequently questioned, as one Richard Reece stated in a journal called Medical Companion that “washing hands and faces daily was sufficient enough to keep one’s body healthy.”
The British started taking baths as a regular part of their regimen as a direct result of the influence that came from the Orient. Even bathing was included in the array of therapies that company surgeons tried to use in an effort to halt the flood of tropical diseases. In 1806, it was decided in Madras that due to the “great value of baths in many ailments of climate,” they should be erected in all European hospitals in the Madras Presidency. This decision was made because of the “great utility of baths in many disorders of climate.” In addition, the first shower bath was set up in the mental asylum that was located in Fort St. George. In fact, it was Sheikh Mohammed of Patna, an Indian, who introduced the vapour bath to the British. It is generally agreed that he was the one who brought the practice of shampooing to Britain. He is credited with doing so initially in Basil Cochrane’s baths in London and subsequently at his own business in Brighton, which he opened in 1814 after moving there. British physicians began linking baths with “prophylactic means of strengthening the body’s constitution,” which piqued their interest in the preventive measures that baths offered. One physician, named James Johnson, made the observation that “the British may learn much from the practices of the Indians.” In the 1830s, every business official’s bungalow in India was well-equipped with bathtubs, washstands, basins, soaps, and commodes.
In Britain, on the other hand, bathrooms did not become a common element of middle-class dwellings until the late 19th century.
Colonization should be understood as both a process and an event, as SN Balagangadhara argues in his book titled “What Does It Mean to Be ‘Indian’?” The svayaṃbodha that emerges from such a realization would make us understand how colonization was not just about the subordination of people and their traditions or the colonization of land and resources, but also about colonizing people’s knowledge, their daily experiences, and collective imaginations. A realization of this kind would demand not only that we decolonize ourselves from many of the essentialist framings that have emerged from orientalist interpretations, but also that we develop and resuscitate our own knowledge frames, that help us with recounting our stories, and then articulating them to others.
Endnotes:
- Vigarello, G., & Birrell, J. (1988). Concepts of cleanliness: Changing attitudes in France since the Middle Ages. Cambridge University Press.
- Balfour, A. (1921). Personal hygiene in the tropics. The Practice of Medicine in the Tropics, 1, 2.
- Douglas, M. (2003). Purity and danger: An analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. Routledge.
- Youé, C. P. (1988). Dane Kennedy. Islands of White: Settler Society and Culture in Kenya and Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1939. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 1987. Pp. 271. Albion, 20(1), 151-152.
- Sudan, R. (2016). The Alchemy of Empire: Abject materials and the technologies of colonialism. Fordham Univ Press.
- How Does the Coronavirus Behave Inside a Patient?
- Rostow, W. W., & Rostow, W. W. (1990). The stages of economic growth: A non-communist manifesto. Cambridge university press.
- Wallerstein, I. (2004). World systems theory. End of Capitalism Garner & Hancock, 611-616.
- Balagangadhara, B. (2012). Reconceptualizing India Studies.
- Balagangadhara, S. N. (2021). Cultures Differ Differently: Selected Essays of SN Balagangadhara. Taylor & Francis.
