5
what its worth, this conceptualization had a distinctly political edge, more
specifically liberal political edge. It was the lack of certain politically desirable
values in the Indian society that made the Indians unfit to be the master of their
own political destiny. The job of the Europeans was to impart those values.
However, there is an interesting shift of this discourse in the second half of the
nineteenth century, specifically after the rebellion of 1857. The rebellion was not
seen as a political opposition to the colonial rule, rather the idea amongst the
colonial administrators was that it happened because the British meddled with
the long cherished cultural practices of the Indians (Use of pork and beef fat in
the cartridges to be used by Hindu and Muslim soldiers in the British Army and
other similar issues). Following this periods, scholars like Henry Maine,
advanced the idea of the “traditional society” with certain deep-rooted
unchanging cultural values.
4
The idea was to create a sort of autonomous and
rigid sphere from the sphere of the political and statecraft. The right thing to do—
and more importantly – the smart thing to do for the empire was not to try and
change the society through interventions and enlightened projects, but to manage
it. The idea of this socio-cultural sphere itself was the result of an anthropological
understanding of “Indianness”.
5
What it led to is a social scientific model of
studying, understanding, and managing the society through what were essentially
technocratic interventions. It was no longer about reshaping the social to fit the
political rule. It was about governing the social.
4
See, Henry Maine, Ancient Law, Murray, London, 1905. For a reading of that work that is
followed in this paper, see, Mantena, ibid.
5
See, Adam Kuper, The Invention of Primitive Society: Transformations of an Illusion London,
1988.
Convention