|
Abstract:
|
"One of the hallmarks of British rule in India was the attempt to base colonial administrative rule on Indian customary laws. The requisite colonial knowledge for this was sought through the codification of Indian social customs, practices, and law. From the tenure of Warren Hastings, the first Governor General of India, through to the last colonial census of India in the twentieth century, British rule in India was characterized by exhaustive efforts at cataloguing, classifying, and codifying what some Indians said about who they were and what they did. As many scholars have ably demonstrated, the project of gathering colonialist knowledge about 'authentic' Indian traditions was fraught with insurmountable challenges, not the least of which included the plurality and changing nature of Indian customs, the inherent relations of domination and subordination which characterized colonial interactions with Indians, the strategic or pragmatic decisions Indians made about how to represent themselves to colonial rulers, and the British tendency to reify ideas rooted in European social philosophy as Indian tradition."
|