Week 4

The readings for the week focuses on the increasing integration of EIC into the subcontinent
as a formal infrastructure of power. Not only does the EIC begin to formalize systems of
education, administration (in law, revenue and cultural jurisdiction), militarization through
the recruitment of local militarized races becomes a point of integration as much as
contention between the British and the subcontinent.

Banerjee-Dubes reading details Indias transition under Charter Act of 1813 when East India
Companys rule in India was transferred to the Crown. Accompanying this change in
governance was a fundamental change in governing ideologies as well. After the
impeachment of Hastings in the late 18th century, earlier orientalists were replaced utilitarian
and evangelistic thinkers such as Adam Smith and James and John Stuart Mill. Primarily, the
British policy in the subcontinent became one of a civilizing mission to remove the
influence of Eastern despotism, as well as the oppression extant in traditional customs and
traditions. In certain ways, this shift can also be seen as an appropriation of local customs
and practices into a conceivable British or Western cosmopolitan form for greater ease in
governance. Among other policies, a slew of reforms in socio-economic policies were
implemented. Examples include the 1835 Macaulay Minute on Education/ English Education
Act to implement English education as a standard curriculum besides traditional Hindu/
Muslim education. Otherwise, the abolition of sati in 1829 was also perceived as an
eradication of tyrannical barbarity of local traditional practices. The reading ends with an
analysis of reasons behind the 1857 Mutiny that resulted in the GOI Act of 1858.

In Alavi's The Sepoy and the Company: Tradition and Transition in Northern India, the history
of incorporating traditionally militarized castes into the modern structure of the Companys
Bengal Army was detailed. The move to recruit established militarized castes as sepoys into
The Bengal Army served as a political intervention on the EICs part since it essentially
consolidated its military might in the subcontinent by co-opting Indian social constructs of
power and status. The preservation of caste roles in society allowed to the Company to
express an interest in respecting local culture but also to exercise a degree of control over
the Indian population. The adoption of local military bands into the folds of imperial
bureaucracy also increases the stability of rule: through offering monthly pay, pension
benefits, system of honors, alongside other lifestyle needs (prostitution, religious
observances), the imperial/ colonial structure became attractive to the originally rogue
peasants. Leniency in allowing sepoys to observe their religious beliefs in exchange for their
service alleviated discontent but might have also set down causes for the Mutiny in 1857.
The encouragement of kinship groups and diet created a social atmosphere and community
around serving the colonial state. These practices preserved caste structures as well as
cultivating new inter-caste rivalries as checks and balances that protected British interests.