Middle Eastern mutiny

Robert Kaplan draws a comparison in the NYT between this blog’s namesake revolt and the war in Iraq. He argues that rather than evangelizing instant democracy, the U.S. should temper its ambitions:

… Iraq has turned out like the Indian mutiny against the British in 1857 and 1858, when the attempts of Evangelical and Utilitarian reformers in London to modernize and Christianize India – to make it more like England – were met with a violent revolt against imperial rule… The bloody debacle… did signal a transition: away from an ad hoc imperium fired by an intemperate lust to impose domestic values abroad, and toward a calmer, more pragmatic empire built on international trade and technology.

Kaplan’s description of the British Empire pre-Sepoy Rebellion is oddly enervated. Modernize India? Methinks the evangelicals were mainly interested in conversion. To them, heathen Hindus were the sub-Saharan Africans of the 19th century, a teeming continent of raw material for Christianity. Alexander Pope chastised Hindu beliefs in his ‘Essay on Man’:

Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor’d mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
His soul proud Science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or milky way;
Yet simple nature to his hope has giv’n,
Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler Heav’n,
Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,
Some happier island in the wat’ry waste,
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.
To be, contents his natural desire;
He asks no Angel’s wing, no Seraph’s fire;
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.

Similarly, Utilitarian icon John Stuart Mill was a lifer in the British East India Company…

… although he is often regarded as a champion of liberty and one of the greatest nineteenth-century Western philosophers, he spent most of his career serving an administration that exercised authoritarian rule over a culture that modern scholars might describe as the epitome of “the Other.”

… although he had redeeming qualities:

Governor-General Bentinck, influenced in part by Macaulay’s now-infamous “Minute on Indian Education“, where the languages and literatures of India are summarily dismissed as worthless, scarcely worthy of the attention of even children, ruled in favor of the Anglicists… Mill decried the attempt to denigrate Indian learning and demean the integrity and knowledge of the country’s traditional intelligentsia.

And the ‘more pragmatic’ British empire Kaplan refers to was one focused more purely on strip-mining its colonies of assets. At arm’s length, it was strictly business once again.

Like Kaplan, Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria also draws a parallel between Iraq and colonial India.

3 thoughts on “Middle Eastern mutiny

  1. I was under the impression that the british missionaries and Company colonizers were essentially two different forces that worked separately and didn’t necessarily see eye to eye. I forget where i read that (i think it was in one of William Dalrymple’s books). So it is interesting to read that the EI company was interested in christianizing India. I’m not sure what the truth of the situation is but i suspect that there were some members of the company who saw India as Pope did, and others who were more positively disposed to the culture.

    Still, i see the close relationships between imperialists/colonists and evangelists/missionaries as a stain on the history of western christianity.

  2. you are speaking of white mughals-which notes that many members of the british east india company before 1800 actually converted to islam or hinduism. missionary activities were considered ‘bad for business’ and so until the raging evangelical further forced the hand of the company they discouraged christianizing of the native peoples because it increased the overhead. for a relatively positive angle on the utilitarian & to a lesser extent christian interest in ‘civilizing’ india see How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe’s Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It. i think it is probably true that some of the utilitarian philosopher’s disdain for indian culture was driven by contempt, but some of it was likely driven by humanitarian concerns about certain indian practices like suttee. remember, this is a case where liberals wanted to change south asian culture, while conservatives like edmund burke argued that indian culture should be allowed to develop in its own organic fashion. and christianization hasn’t been all bad for india, it has given some of the dalits powerful allies, and don’t elite indians still send their kids to ‘convent schools.’

  3. Yes White Mughals is the book. The other book sounds very interesting. Of the top of my head, i can think of one example of the Scottish stamp on the british empire in my part of the country — the old church in madras(chennai) is, to this day, called “The Kirk” (Scots for Church).

    Speaking of the effects of christianization on traditionally marginalized groups in India. The american christian music group Caedmon’s Call has partnered with the Dalit Freedom Network on their latest tour and album. I was wondering at the irony of (stereo-typically) republican-leaning, anti-affirmative-action fans of CC, supporting a (presumably) pro-“reservation” group in India. Still, the cause of Dalit discrimination can do with more publicity.

    Another example is the north-eastern separatist movements. I watched a documentary ( “If God Be With Us”) about the Naga separatist movement in which it is evident what a big role Christianity (introduced by mostly american baptist missionaries) plays in uniting the different Naga sub-groups. Interesting stuff.