Four Company Writers Invent Hinduism
The British presence in India began as a commercial and evangelical enterprise. The royal charter of 1600 gave the English East India Company a monopoly on trade with India. It operated through the fragmented Mughal Empire, the disintegration of which was aided and exploited by the Company. The conversion of the Company to political power was because of the actions of Robert Clive, who expanded the Company's territory, during 1748-1763. (1) From his arrival in India in 1756 to his departure five years later, he led the Company from a position of defeat at the hands of the Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah, who had recaptured Calcutta and the Company's Fort, to dominance in the sub-continent.
Clive retaliated at the battle of Plassey on 23 June
1757, and Siraj-ud-Daulah was defeated and replaced with the puppet Nawab, Mir Jafar. The Company had usurped imperial authority over the region. (2) Clive's victories were controversial and the following decade confirmed his critics' misgivings when widespread extortion
resulted in a decline in trade, as well as local famines. (3) Clive acted like a despot. (4) It was the astonishing
amounts of private wealth accumulated by Clive and his faction that brought the conditions in India to public
attention. Men associated with it acquired their own
label of 'nabob'. (5) Even those whose agenda was to downplay the events, agreed that Clive was a
real English Nabob. (6)
The legitimacy of the British presence in India became a matter for parliamentary
debate, as well as public opinion. (7) Apart from whether the
Company was constitutionally capable of holding and governing territory, the questions raised included whether it was
possible for the Company to establish a system of laws in an ancient and civilized polity like India, and, how a British government in India would increase or
decrease the despotism it had experienced under Clive. The Company agreed to pay the British Government an annual subsidy of £400,000 and
promised to correct the abuses of which it had been accused.
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| Holwell |
British philosopher and MP Edmund Burke summarised East India Company as "A State in the disguise of a Merchant', at the time of the Impeachment trial of Warren Hastings during 1788-
1795. (10) The Company had developed from a network of trading outposts to a territorial power, during the course of the 18th century. In 1765 the Company was officially granted the right to
Diwani, that is, the right to collect taxes in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. With this came
public criticism and concern for the rights of native subjects.
Religion had an important
role throughout this transformation, sometimes justifying Company policy and
sometimes providing the foundation for criticism of it. Since its inception, some had
assumed that it was the Company's moral duty to utilise its trade mission for the purpose
of evangelism. The period from 1770 onwards saw mounting pressure
from Evangelicals for the Company to pursue a missionary policy. (11) For some, religious tolerance was an important principle of enlightened government, (12) and they held on to
the belief that non-interference in native religions and institutions was the best
means of achieving stability. (13)
In the latter half of the eighteenth century, the works of four Company Writers, John Zephaniah Holwell (1711-1798), Alexander Dow (1735/36-1779), Nathaniel Halhed (1751-1830) and Charles Wilkins (1749-1836) were instrumental in constructing the ideological milieu for the
justification, as well as criticism, of Company policy and rule. They were at the forefront of European research into the region's
history, culture and religion. Their interpretation of what they termed the "Hindoo" or "Gentoo" religion was based on their
own preoccupations with European Christian religious debates, in the backdrop of the Enlightenment. They never used the terms Hindu or Hinduism.
Holwell was one of the first British Company servants to study Hinduism. (15) He came to believe that the Hindu scriptures completed and unlocked a secret meaning of the Bible. He wrote about this in the second and third volumes of his work Interesting Historical Events, Relative to the Provinces of Bengal, and the Empire of Indostan (1765–1771)
Holwell was a believer in metempsychosis (transmigration of souls). He came to the conclusion that the fundamental doctrine of the Brahmins was that God had created angelic beings but they rebelled and so were condemned to be punished, with the possibility of a return to grace by passing through a series of rebirths to regain paradise. He held the view that all animals and humans were fallen angels. According to him, metempsychosis accounted for the problem of Original sin as the Fall of Man had occurred in heaven long before the creation of Adam and Eve who were fallen angels.
He suggested that the Greeks and Egyptians took their belief in metempsychosis from the Brahmins.
Holwell was a believer in metempsychosis (transmigration of souls). He came to the conclusion that the fundamental doctrine of the Brahmins was that God had created angelic beings but they rebelled and so were condemned to be punished, with the possibility of a return to grace by passing through a series of rebirths to regain paradise. He held the view that all animals and humans were fallen angels. According to him, metempsychosis accounted for the problem of Original sin as the Fall of Man had occurred in heaven long before the creation of Adam and Eve who were fallen angels.
He suggested that the Greeks and Egyptians took their belief in metempsychosis from the Brahmins.
He stated that all religions have much in common but only the Hindu scriptures have all the truths fully articulated. He wrote that Moses's version of the creation and Fall of Man is "clogged with too many incomprehensible difficulties to gain our belief", and is only made intelligible with the Hindu doctrine that humankind is fallen angels.
As a vegetarian, he opposed the Cartesian view that animals are machines without souls. He argued that animals were not created for domination or use by man. He stated that meat and the killing of animals is a violation of man's original nature and is the cause of moral and physical evil.
In regard to Christianity, Holwell identified as a Christian deist, which was consistent with his belief in the transmigration of souls and his enthusiasm for Hinduism.
As a vegetarian, he opposed the Cartesian view that animals are machines without souls. He argued that animals were not created for domination or use by man. He stated that meat and the killing of animals is a violation of man's original nature and is the cause of moral and physical evil.
In regard to Christianity, Holwell identified as a Christian deist, which was consistent with his belief in the transmigration of souls and his enthusiasm for Hinduism.
He returned to Britain on leave in 1768 and published in that year two translations, Tales translated from the Persian of Inatulla of Delhi and the History of Hindostan, translated from the Persian book, Tarikh -i-Firishtah, of Firishta. Both works had great success, and in the following year, Dow had a five-act tragedy on Genghis Khan, Zingis, which was a limited success at Drury Lane.
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| Dow |
He then returned to India, and was promoted lieutenant-colonel on 25 February 1769, and in 1772 published the continuation of his History of Hindostan to the death of Aurungzeb, with two dissertations, On the Origin and Nature of Despotism in Hindostan, and An Enquiry into the State of Bengal. In 1774 he again returned to England, and David Garrick produced his second tragedy in verse at Drury Lane, entitled 'Sethona', set in a mythic ancient Egypt. It was acted only for nine nights and David Erskine Baker in his Biographia Dramatica alleged to be not really by Dow at all.
Dow returned once more to India and died at Bhágalpur on 31 July 1779.
Halhed: While at Oxford he undertook oriental studies under the influence of William Jones. Accepting a writership in the service of the Company, he went out to India, and there, at the suggestion of Warren Hastings, translated the Hindu legal code from a Persian version of the original Sanskrit. This translation was published in 1776 as A Code of Gentoo Laws, the first translation of Manusmriti. In 1778 he published A Grammar of the Bengal Language, a Bengali grammar, to print and he set up the first Bengali press in India.
Wilkins: An English typographer and Orientalist, he is notable as the first translator of the Bhagavad Gita into English, and he supervised Panchanan Karmakar to create one of the first Bengali typefaces. He trained as a printer. In 1770, he went to India as a printer and writer in the Company's service. His facility with language allowed him to quickly learn Persian and Bengali. He created the first type for printing Bengali and Persian. In 1781, he was appointed as the translator of Persian and Bengali to the Commissioner of Revenue and as superintendent of the Company's press. He successfully translated a Royal inscription in Kutila characters, which were thitherto indecipherable. In 1784, Wilkins helped William Jones establish the Asiatic Society of Bengal.
The paradigm shift
The interpretations of these four Company writers instigated a paradigm shift in the way that Hinduism was understood in eighteenth-century Europe. This new paradigm moved away from characterisations of the religion according to eyewitness accounts, towards the construction of Indian religion based on the claim of British researchers that they were penetrating the "original philosophical sources" of a much maligned and ancient system of thought. This interpretation shaped European Enlightenment intellectual culture, and by the turn of the century, it firmly cemented its place in the thoughts of prominent figures such as Voltaire and Raynal and influenced the emergent German Romanticism and discourses of German idealism. (17)
Further, in two separate works commissioned by the Governor General of Bengal, Hastings, N.B. Halhed suggested that the "Gentoo" scriptures were of greater antiquity than the Bible, and Charles Wilkins described the ancient Brahmins as "Unitarians". (21) These Company writers suggested that "Hinduism" was an unjustly maligned and essentially reasonable religion, the main tenets of which were compatible with Christian moral teaching.
These authors also had their critics. Their approach to "Hinduism" was one with which Charles Grant, three terms Director of the East India Company‟s Board of Governors (1794, 1805 and 1816), did not agree. In response to Dow‟s claim that they worshipped the same "Supreme Being" he wrote:
Grant and his circle were anxious to make the opposite case to Dow, Holwell, Halhed and Wilkins. While the British were extending their influence in India, there had been no serious attempt to institute a missionary campaign, which people like Grant wanted. With the revival of Evangelical Christianity towards the latter half of the century there were more calls for what one sermon titled, The Duty of attempting the Propagation of the Gospel among our Mahometan and Gentoo Subjects. (41) In 1792, in order to convince the Company that a Christian mission in India was an immediate necessity, Grant published a lengthy document designed to prove the moral depravity of the "Hindoos". He chastised what he termed "European apologists" for presenting a skewed picture of the "Hindoo" religion(42)
The Company's military power was heavily dependent on sepoy troops for the majority of the eighteenth century. Fearing disaffection, a consideration that would foreshadow the events of the Indian Mutiny in 1857, administrators were not prepared to interfere with Indian religions. Hastings's predecessor, Lord Cornwallis, in a letter to the President of the Board of Control, stressed the need for good officers, "perfect" in the appropriate Indian language, who would give "a minute attention to the customs and religious prejudices of the sepoys", because "you need not be told how dangerous a disaffection in our native troops would be to our existence in this country". (90)
The interpretations of these four Company writers instigated a paradigm shift in the way that Hinduism was understood in eighteenth-century Europe. This new paradigm moved away from characterisations of the religion according to eyewitness accounts, towards the construction of Indian religion based on the claim of British researchers that they were penetrating the "original philosophical sources" of a much maligned and ancient system of thought. This interpretation shaped European Enlightenment intellectual culture, and by the turn of the century, it firmly cemented its place in the thoughts of prominent figures such as Voltaire and Raynal and influenced the emergent German Romanticism and discourses of German idealism. (17)
Clearly, the "invention" of the sources of Hindu religion by the Calcutta-based British servants occurred as part of an imperialist project. These authors were the unscholarly precursors to the work of
the first British Indologist, Sir William Jones (1746-1794), who was also part of the project.
The Company writers who turned to Hindu scriptures, had a spiritual vacuum in their backyard, after the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment's emphasis on reason shaped philosophical, political and scientific discourse from the late 17th to the early 19th century. Matthew White traces the Enlightenment back to its roots in the aftermath of the Civil War, and forward to its effects on the present day.
The Enlightenment – the ‘Age of Reason’ – is defined as the period of rigorous scientific, political and philosophical discourse that characterised European society during the ‘long’ 18th century: from the late 17th century to the ending of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. This was a period of huge change in thought and reason, which was ‘decisive in the making of modernity’. Centuries of Christian custom and tradition were brushed aside in favour of exploration, individualism, tolerance and scientific endeavour, which, in tandem with developments in industry and politics, witnessed the emergence of the ‘modern world'. Christendom lost its depth and faced a spiritual vacuum.
The Enlightenment – the ‘Age of Reason’ – is defined as the period of rigorous scientific, political and philosophical discourse that characterised European society during the ‘long’ 18th century: from the late 17th century to the ending of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. This was a period of huge change in thought and reason, which was ‘decisive in the making of modernity’. Centuries of Christian custom and tradition were brushed aside in favour of exploration, individualism, tolerance and scientific endeavour, which, in tandem with developments in industry and politics, witnessed the emergence of the ‘modern world'. Christendom lost its depth and faced a spiritual vacuum.
During the late Enlightenment period in Europe, and the vacuum in that Christianity found itself in Europe, India played an important role in filling the spiritual vacuum. Hinduism in particular came to occupy the space that Chinese
Confucianism had once held for thinkers like German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716), as an intellectual counterpart to declining European civilization. (18) With privileged access to Indian languages
and advisors, British East India Company servants became instrumental in delivering
information about "Hinduism" to European audiences. In 1767, J.Z. Holwell described the central tenets of the "Gentoo" religion as short, pure,
simple and uniform", arguing that the multiple gods associated with it were merely
figurative. (19) A year later, Alexander Dow, declared that the "Hindoo religion" was orientated towards a belief in a singular "Supreme Being". (20)
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| Halhed |
A decade before Howell's remarks, Company Servant
John Henry Grose had offered a different account of the "Gentoos". In A Voyage to the EastIndies, with Observations on Various Parts There, Grose described his experiences in Bombay and Surat, as well as offering a recent history of the Mughal empire, the Catholic missions, and a miscellany of social practices. In terms of the "Gentoo
religion," Grose thought that there was "little or nothing to add" to the impressions of
earlier travel writers and missionaries and so confined his discussion to "those particulars
of it that struck [him] the most." (22) These "particulars" were namely "their religious
toleration, their treatment of cows, and the practice of voluntary burning among
widows." (23) Grose speculated about the origins of the religion in the second
edition of A Voyage to the East Indies (1766), which described the ancient Gentoos as "descended from Shem". (24) This was a reference to the biblical notion, made popular in the
early modern period, that after the flood Noah's sons, Japheth, Shem and Ham had
repopulated the three continents of Europe, Asia and Africa. (25) After this, claimed Gross,
they were "instructed by the Greeks in the worship of the heroes of fabulous antiquity",
eventually consecrating an elephant as an idol. (26) To authors like Grose, the "Gentoo
religion" served as the idolatrous counter-point to revealed Christianity.
The difference between Grose and the four Company authors illustrates the emergence
of a new approach to the interpretation of "Hinduism" according to the newfound concerns of the Enlightenment religious culture, as opposed to the conventional biblical historical narrative. In the mid to late eighteenth century, Company
servants began to produce what they claimed most "systematical accounts of the doctrines of the Gentoos". (27) Their work advanced a
uniquely "philosophic" interpretation of "Hinduism"; and this was a result of
their engagement with heterodox religious thought. While not deviating from the evangelical approaches of
missionaries and travel writers like Grose, the interpretations of "Hinduism" advanced by
these authors focused on its theological content, not on contemporary practices, (28) in an attempt to appropriate to the masses.
The emergence
of these interpretations was in conformity with the development of the Company policy. In the
second half of the eighteenth century, the expansion of the British in India
meant that the opportunities for greater knowledge of Indian religion and culture were
mostly exploited by Company men. Holwell and Dow were pioneers, independently researching and publishing their discoveries of what they believed to be
the original religion native to India. The Company's transformation into a sovereign entity pressed the question of how it would
accommodate its non-Christian polity and prompted a deepening official engagement
with the religious history, tenets and practices of India. These were the conditions in
which the works of Halhed and Wilkins were commissioned by Hastings. Ideas about Indian religion became accommodated within the more
obvious political project of British colonialism.
Halhed
and Wilkins built on the conceptual framework already established by the
independent projects of Holwell and Dow. The basis of the framework was
contemporary European religious heterodoxy, with all four writers approaching the interpretation of "Hinduism" from a "liberal" perspective.
This philosophic interpretation of "Hinduism" was to have a lasting impact on colonialism, the work of the philosophes, and German Idealism. (29)
These protégés of Hastings were in fact the inheritors of a discourse already established by Holwell and
Dow and William Jones, and his founding of an Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784. (30) So, the Marxist scholar Edward Said
described Jones as the "undisputed founder" of Orientalism, (31) and those tending towards
a more apologetic agenda invoking Jones as the embodiment of what some have termed
the "new Orientalism". (32) All of them agreed that Holwell, Dow, Halhed and Wilkins each claimed to have delved into the
mysteries of the "Gentoo" religion to an unprecedented degree. Holwell was hailed by Moses Mendelssohn, a thinker for both the German
and Jewish Enlightenments, as the first author "to see through the eyes of a native
Brahmin". (33) Dow was highly regarded by Voltaire, who cited him as an authority
in a number of works. (34) Dow's History of Hindostan shows, that the work of Company writers was considered at the time to be a significant contribution to European knowledge. The work of Halhed and Wilkins followed in the two decades
after were hailed as the first authentic translations of Brahminical scriptures into English. (35)
Holwell was the first of the four to publish, his Interesting Historical Events, Relative
to the Provinces of Bengal and the Empire of Indostan appearing in three volumes during the
years 1765-71. (36) His position was that Hinduism, in its ancient form,
contained all of the essential truths of monotheistic belief. Dow also described the Hindoo religion as monotheistic. His work, The History of Hindostan was published in two
volumes (1768-1772) and contained several appended essays featuring a discussion of the
country's culture and religious traditions. (37) In contrast, the projects of Halhed and Wilkins fell under the direct patronage of Warren
Hastings. At the request of Hastings, Halhed produced A Code of Gentoo Laws
(1776), which was a digest of religious ordinances compiled from various sources,
rendered into Persian by a panel of pandit scholars, and subsequently by Halhed into
English. (38) Ensuring the British publication of Charles Wilkins's The Bhăgvăt-Gēētā, or
Dialogues of Krĕĕshnă and Ărjŏŏn (1785) was also the design of Hastings. (39) The
prefaces that Halhed and Wilkins prepared for these literary
contributions expressed a number of personal convictions which placed the "Hindoo" religion in the context of European religious dissent and heterodoxy.
"It is doubtless very pleasing to discover the recognition of this grand principle,
the foundation of all true religion, even under an immense mass of falsehood and
superstition; but some persons seem to have thought, that in ascertaining the
existence of this principle in the writings of the Hindoos, or in the opinions of
their learned men, they had substantially vindicated and established the religious
character of that people; making little account of their idolatry, which as practised
by the Brahmins, they represent to be no more than symbolical worship of the
divine attributes…" (40)
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| Wilkins |
An advocate of the evangelical movement, belonging both to the
Scottish Society for the Promotion of Christianity in the Highlands and Islands and the "Clapham Sect" of evangelical reformers and abolitionists, Grant saw the
Hindoos as practising nothing short of "gross idolatry". (43) In contrast, the observations of writers like Holwell, Dow, Halhed and Wilkins were only made possible, according to
Grant, because their proponents leaned to "so latitudinarian an opinion, an opinion
which falls below even the creed of deism" that such "falsities" were consistent with their
generally heterodox account of religious truth. (44)
Their religious heterodoxy became conflated with the sympathetic reading of Indian
religion advanced by William Jones, whose work was so supportive of Christian primacy
that it was welcomed by several Christian apologists. (45) The Enlightenment had identifiable religious origins in both Protestant
heterodoxy and Catholic counter-reformation movements, particularly in the formation
of theories about the social role of religion and tolerance. (46)
This view of a "religious
Enlightenment" points to how many of those figures associated with the
Enlightenment retained and argued for particular forms of faith and religious belief. French philosopher Denis Diderot's (173-1784) contribution to the 1774 edition of Histoire des deux Indes, argued that the
creation story of the "Gentoux" (Gentoos) was no less fantastical than the biblical one,
allowing the philosophes to launch an attack on revealed religion in general. Diderot's
source for this was Halhed's Code of Gentoo Laws. (47) Comparative critiques like his helped to foster an attitude whereby all religions were subject to similar historical processes, and the primacy of Christian teaching was increasingly put into question. All
four writers, Holwell, Dow, Halhed and Wilkins invoked this trend which often led them to draw out the
similarities, both sublime and vulgar, between the Christian and "Gentoo" traditions.
Among the four, there was an attempt to differentiate between the original religion of India and its "corrupt" modern
manifestations, which were a product of priest-sponsored superstition. Halhed lamented the "priest-rid mis'ry of the blinded throng", and longed for a return to
the "intellectual fire" of Bhagavad Gītā, recently translated by Wilkins, which he saw as "containing the most ancient and pure religious principles of the Hindoos." (48) While some
of these Protestant concepts were present in the works previous to theirs, what set
these authors apart were their claims to have "discovered" the original religion of the
Gentoos in the texts of the ancient Brahmins. While Holwell was
deeply concerned with theodicy, Halhed forwarded a sceptical account of
religion as a historically contingent phenomenon.
Considering their work as the product of European religious discourses necessarily leads us
to consider the existing debate as to whether "Hinduism" is a construct, the foundations
of which were laid out in the work of European orientalists. (49) The term "Hinduism", although adopted and adapted by "Hindus", was
nevertheless rooted in a Western concept of "religion". (50) All the authors mentioned here have been recognised by some as having a
degree of influence on the development of the term "Hinduism", as a signifier of a unified religion that is native to India. (51) But, as Lorenzen has pointed out, the Hindu
religion as expressed in the theological and devotional practices surrounding the Bhagavad
Gītā and other texts acquired a sharper self-conscious identity much earlier. (52) The
eighteenth-century terms were, "Hindoo‟ and "Gentoo", rather than "Hindu" and "Hinduism".
Along with the argument that the image of "the religion of the Gentoos" painted by these
authors was the product of idiosyncratic intellectual mythologies, there was also the
claim that these and other European Orientalists "invented" the modern concept of "Hinduism." The actual degree of "invention" in their
work, ranges from misreading to deliberate forgery. Holwell's claim to have been
translating original manuscripts was dubious. Dow's supposed translation of original manuscripts is built on similarly suspect claims.
Although Halhed and Wilkins worked more closely with a few pundits, the stages of
reinterpretation that these went through also betray a certain degree of invention. If we assess them on the basis of Indology, the fabrications contained in their work would have a devastating impact. (53) Yet, all four authors intentionally presented a version of
Indian religion that spoke to European intellectual culture and debate, after the spiritual vacuum in Christianity, brought about by Scientism in Europe.
The change in British policy
In the two decades that the work of these writers appeared (1760-1790), the East India
Company underwent a transformation from a commercial enterprise to an
administrative government. The period contains two broad epochs in
the evolution of the British presence in India. The first is the conflict and resolution
surrounding the 1757 battle of Plassey. The decisive encounter had been waged and won
in response to the resistance of the Mughal governor of Bengal, Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah,
who had attacked and captured the Company's base in Calcutta. Having asserted itself
militarily, the Company colluded with and installed as the new nawab, the demoted army
leader, Mir Jafar. Robert Clive, the Colonel credited with the victory at Plassey, went on
to institute the system described as "dual government" whereby the Company
secured fiscal dominance but was able to abandon administrative responsibilities to the
Nawab. (54) The following decade was a time of crisis in British Bengal. Extorting revenues
resulted in a general decline in trade, as well as a devastating set of local famines. (55) It is
against this backdrop that the work of Holwell and Dow was produced.
They were both critical of these developments but from different perspectives.
Both Halhed and Wilkins were directly engaged in the business of
legitimising the new administration. It was on a tide of hostile public opinion that the question of the British presence in India became a matter for parliamentary debate. (56) The
resulting Regulating Act of 1773 resolved that both the British government and the
Company's Board of Directors would together appoint a governor-general, and a
Council of Bengal, which had exclusive authority over all British territory in India. It was
incumbent on this post to ensure that the Company's operations were to the benefit of
Britain, and the Company‟s stakeholders. It was into this role that Warren Hastings
stepped, keen to affirm his commitment to ending the abuses that had both drained the
Company‟s profits, and ruined its public image. How he chose to legitimise this project
involved Halhed and Wilkins, whose work was commissioned by Hastings.
The obscure and ad hoc productions of Holwell and Dow served in shaping contemporary
attitudes towards Indian religion, in the eyes of Europe. As well as belonging to
Hastings‟s administrative project, the personal conjectures expressed within the work of
Halhed and Wilkins were much more closely related to the ideas expressed in Holwell
and Dow's work than has previously been recognised. As East India Company employees
they placed their discussion directly in the context of the Enlightenment grappling with
empire. Hence, they were grouped together, with extracts of
their work appearing in an anthology introduced by P.J Marshall in The British Discovery of
Hinduism in the Eighteenth Century (1970). (57) Marshall, in his introduction, rightly pointed out that Holwell, Dow, Halhed and Wilkins were united in protecting colonialism.
Hasting's misrule found him facing impeachment before the British Parliament. As Burke‟s assertion that the Company was "a State in disguise as a Merchant" suggested, it was not just Hastings but the Company itself that was under scrutiny at the time of his trial. The proceedings became a sensation and newspaper columns were
crowded with transcripts of the various speeches, as well as with letters submitted by a
scandalised public. (58) At the heart of the affair was the question of legitimacy. The gradual
conquest of Bengal produced a set of circumstances beyond the Company's original
capacity and remit. As the anonymous author of the pamphlet Reflections on the Present State
of our Indian Affairs (1764) pointed out to the public: the East India Company had "been
changed contrary to the intention of its institution". Rather than "living like merchants
under the protection of the prince in whose dominions they resided" they had become "sovereigns of those very princes" to the extent that "they hold in more absolute vassalage,
than ever did the monarch of France the meanest of his feudatories." (59) While for some, these conquests were a positive affirmation of Britain‟s global
significance, (60) for others it raised important moral and ethical questions about the role of
the Company in India and the impact of its returning wealthy plunders on the political
culture of Britain. (61)
Holwell and Dow both had a complex relationship with these developments, much of
which was aired through the pages of various publications, reviews and replies. They
were intimately involved in the political aspirations of the Company, but they were
also its critics. In contrast, Halhed and Wilkins were Hastings‟s protégés. The production of their work on Indian religion was the defining condition of their involvement in the
politics of the Company.
Holwell's political involvement in the Company was particularly fraught. Despite
his position as chief surgeon of the Company‟s hospital in Calcutta he actively sought an
appointment in the administration of the Company, by persuading the Board of
Directors that his plans for reform would raise funds. He was eventually
appointed zamindar in 1752 (a revenue-collecting role that had existed in the company
since 1698) and was placed twelfth in the Fort William council, with the stipulation that
he rises no higher. Holwell duly raised revenues and the restriction on his promotion was
removed. (62) Disaster would soon follow, however, when in June 1756 the Nawab Sirajud-Daulah, attacked Fort William. Senior officials abandoned the Fort, leaving Holwell in
charge. What followed was to be the subject of Holwell's literary debut, A Genuine
Narrative of the Deplorable Deaths of the English Gentlemen, and Others, who were suffocated in the
BLACK-HOLE (1758). (63) This highly fraudulent narrative described the imprisonment
and death of those who were taken captive once the Fort finally fell. The fake narrative helped make the Black Hole an important
symbol of the barbarity of the Muslim Mughal regime against the British and remained
so until it was finally eclipsed by the 1857 “Sepoy Mutiny”. (64)
After Clive recaptured Calcutta in January 1757, a small faction gathered around
Holwell, which included the Chairman of the Company, and he was appointed to fourth
place in the council and governor by fourfold rotation. (65) The election of directors in April 1758 meant that his supporters lost power and
Holwell was reduced to ninth place in the council. When Clive resigned the governorship
in January 1760 Holwell succeeded him for just six months, during which time he was
involved in an intrigue that aimed to persuade the new and unpopular Nawab, Mir Jafar,
to surrender power to his son-in-law, Mir Kasim, while retaining his title. The scheme
was implemented by Holwell's successor, Henry Vansittart, in October 1760 with the
result that Mir Jafar resigned completely and Mir Kasim became Nawab. (66) Many
regarded Holwell's role in this coup to be financially motivated, to the extent that he felt
it necessary to publish a defence of his conduct in India, titled An address to the proprietors
of East India Stock. This was published alongside friends' letters and his account of the
Black Hole, in a collection titled India Tracts (1764). (67) In fact,
throughout the account of Black Hole, Holwell invoked the same principles of
contemplation and detachment that he later praises in the Gentoo religion, as a superior
moral status. (68)
Dow's career was in the Company's military, though he too had political
ambitions. In 1766, at the rank of Captain, he participated in the officers'
association to protest against Clive's measure to abolish the double field allowance.
Probably as a consequence of his involvement in this affair, Dow found himself relieved
of duty and back in Britain in 1768. In March 1772 the Directors, after cleaning the slates
of many other officers involved in the officers' protest, decided to restore Dow to the
rank he would have held in Bengal (Lieutenant-Colonel), had he never participated. In
1775 he was appointed Commissary-General, an administrative post taking care of the
military stores of all the factories and stations of the Company's Bengal establishment. His subsequent ambitions for promotion were short-lived as his health deteriorated and
on 31 July 1779, Dow died at Bhagalpur, aged forty-three. (69)
Dow's History of Hindostan was widely seen as a direct attack on Clive (70), especially
when, in the third volume of 1772, it included the additional dissertation, An enquiry into
the state of Bengal; With a Plan for restoring that Kingdom to its former Prosperity and Splendor. (71) Yet, the crime of the Company under Clive was not, according to Dow, to presume
dominion, but rather to have pursued it in such a way that "in the space of six years, half the
great cities of an opulent kingdom were rendered desolate". (72) Dow was an open advocate
of the conquest of India, suggesting even that British control could be won "by right of arms" and by just "a handful of regular troops". (73) Dow was explicit in distancing himself from "some of [his]
countrymen", claiming himself to be among those "roused into attention, with regard to a
subject that concerns the welfare of the state" and therefore was addressing his
suggestions for the restoration of Bengal to those who "shew an inclination to be
informed, as well as a willingness to correct mistakes and redress grievances". (74) Part of the
answer he supplied to these grievances was a policy of religious tolerance, which
emulated the Golden Age of the Mughal government under Akbar, whom he described
as an enlightened ruler owing to his dual system of laws for Muslim and Hindoo
subjects. (75)
Unlike 'Holwell and Dow, whose works were
composed at times when their position in the Company was out of favour, both Halhed's
Code and Wilkins‟s Gěětă were products of the direct patronage of Hastings and
were composed in support of his governorship. (76) This relationship with their patron was
loyal and long-lasting. Wilkins left India and the Company directly
because of the departure of Hastings, only returning in 1800 as a librarian, an office
established for the care of its collection of manuscripts. (77) The relationship between the
Company and the works produced by these writers cannot, therefore, be explained
without exploring the role of Hastings as Governor-General and his self-consciously "orientalist" policies. (78)
The 1698 charter that was granted to the
new East India Company contained a clause that the ministers of each garrison "were to
learn the Portuguese and Hindoo languages, to enable them to instruct the Gentoos &c
in the Christian religion". (79) Roughly a century later (1793) William Wilberforce attempted
to introduce a "pious clause" into the Company's Charter, a measure that he regarded as
essential to promoting "the Interests and Happiness of the Inhabitants of the British
domains in India". (80) Despite this continuity of intention from one faction, more influential members of the Company pursued an opposite policy. For
many, it was imperative that the Company should avoid both the trouble and the costs
that Christianization would incur. Despite the 1698 Clause, the Court of Directors did
not write despatches to India regarding the Christian terms of the charter until 1712.
They had also successfully altered its wording to better suit their interests by replacing
the demand that all Gentoos be instructed in Christianity with one that called for the instruction of only those Gentoos that were "servants or slaves of the Company's". (81) The
Company also utilised its power to refuse licenses to reside in its territories to effectively
disbar missionaries. (82) When the Company reached a position whereby it had effectively
seized control of the region, these differences in approach required much more explicit
justification.
Wilberforce‟s presentation of the matter as a question of public "happiness" was
not unique. (83) In this period the concept of public happiness became central to debates
over who best represented the welfare of Britain's colonial subjects. (84) The 1781 Select
Committee, set up to enquire into the affairs of the Company, included in its remit a
consideration of "how the British Possessions in The East Indies may be held and
governed with the greatest Security and Advantage to this Country, and by what Means
the Happiness of the Native Inhabitants may best be promoted". (85) Evangelicals like
Wilberforce regarded the eternal happiness of the immortal soul as a priority over material
happiness. For others, though, happiness meant leaving Indian institutions intact as far as
possible. (86) Holwell represented an early formulation of this thinking. In the dedication to
the second volume of his Interesting Historical Events, Holwell states his intention in writing
about the customs of the Gentoos was to "rescue the originally untainted manners and
religious worship of a very ancient people from gross misrepresentation." (87) That this
misrepresentation resulted in practical miscarriages of justice is expressed later in the
volume (1767), when Holwell describes the rescuing of women from the controversial
practice of what he terms "voluntary sacrifice" (the self-immolation of widows on the
funeral pyres of their husbands-Sati) as an "outrage" and recounts how the Gentoos considered
it "an atrocious, and wicked violation of their sacred rights and privileges." (88) Roughly a
decade later, Edmund Burke echoed a similar sentiment when he and William
Jones drafted a bill which included the stipulation that the British Government ensure for the inhabitants of India, "enjoyment
of all their ancient laws, usages, rights and privileges". (89)
 |
| Wikins' translation of Gita |
The Company's military power was heavily dependent on sepoy troops for the majority of the eighteenth century. Fearing disaffection, a consideration that would foreshadow the events of the Indian Mutiny in 1857, administrators were not prepared to interfere with Indian religions. Hastings's predecessor, Lord Cornwallis, in a letter to the President of the Board of Control, stressed the need for good officers, "perfect" in the appropriate Indian language, who would give "a minute attention to the customs and religious prejudices of the sepoys", because "you need not be told how dangerous a disaffection in our native troops would be to our existence in this country". (90)
This approach was a moment in the Company‟s history, at the height of which
was the "Orientalist" policies of Hastings. Hastings' administrative ideology was
essentially underpinned by the French philosopher Montesquieu's legal geography, dictating that only where the
demands of natural justice were at odds with custom should indigenous practice
(including religious law) be overruled. (91) This principle was most clearly articulated in
Clause XXIII of Hastings's new 1772 regulations, which stipulated that "the Laws of the
Koran with respect to the Mahometans, and those of the Shaster with respect to the
Gentoos shall be invariably adhered to". (92)
The Hindu-Muslim divide
The historical separation between the Islam of the Mughals and Hinduism of India's majority people was thus the central feature of a British administrative system which regarded all non-Muslims as Hindoo. (93) There were various unforeseen outcomes of this policy. It
alienated and extracted Indian Christians from the system of native laws. There was criticism that subsuming
all other religions under the non-Muslim category also made the "Gentoo" majority larger. (94) The most significant and intended impact of the
Judicial Plan was to discontinue the official monopoly that Muslim law had in the civil
courts. (95) The reason for eighteenth-century British sympathies aligning on
the side of "Hindoos", as a category apart from Muslims, was in part political: the great villain in the Company‟s recent history was the Muslim ruler Siraj-udDaulah, who had attacked and captured Fort William. (96) Although there were alternative depictions of the Muslims in the Enlightenment, the
Ottoman Turk often stood as the archetypical Mohammedan, and the Ottoman Empire was the
seat of tyranny and barbarism. (97)
The anti-muslim sentiment was based on a certain set of
assumptions about Islam that pervaded the intellectual and political culture of the period.
On the one hand were critiques of the religion itself: both its doctrines and its historical
manifestations. (98) On the other, was the theoretical alignment of Islamic polities with the
concept of Asian despotism. (99) Though none of the four writers discusses this sentiment overtly, Dow elaborated his view of Islam more,
when in his 1772 Dissertation Considering the Origin and Nature of Despotism in Hindostan, he considers those elements of the Quran that encouraged "voluptuousness". (100) This was more a consideration of the Quran as a legal document, the assumptions behind which formed the basis of the theory that Muslim polities are necessarily despotic. In the first direct translation of the Quran into English (1734), the description that its translator, George Sale, attributes to Muhammad most frequently is that of "legislator". (101) Dow similarly refers to Muhammad as "the legislator". (102)
Both Holwell and Dow question this relationship between Islam and
despotism in relation to the Mughal empire, both emphasising the degree to which Gentoo
laws were left intact under their government. (103) Halhed and Wilkins enlist these tropes of Asian despotism in support of Hastings, so as to make a claim
for the comparative enlightened quality of the British government in the region. A striking
example of this appears in Halhed's 1773 poem, The Bramin and the Ganges, in which the
river goddess urges a melancholy Brahmin, suffering under Muslim tyranny, to embrace
the enlightened rule of the British. (104) Halhead, who had learnt Persian at Oxford had even sought the help of a Muslim to translate Manusmriti, from Persian.
Accurate information about Islam had
percolated into Europe via translations of the Quran into European languages. After
Latin, the first translation was into French in 1647, which was then translated into
English in 1649. The Quran
was then directly translated into English from Arabic, by George Sale, in 1734. (105)
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, one of the most common approaches to Islam revolved around
the idea that the prophet Mohammed was an imposter. (106) This is most clearly expressed in
Voltaire's play, Le Fanatisme ou Mahomet le prophète (1742), which was later translated into
English as Mahomet, The Imposter (1744). In it, Voltaire cast the religious leader as a
charlatan, who incited his town into revolt and subjugated it by the sword, on a ruthless
quest for dominion. (107) Voltaire's engagement with
Islam was in unison with his criticism of religious dogmatism and
intolerance. In a dedicatory letter to Frederick the Great, Voltaire acknowledged that
the play Le Fanatisme ou Mahomet le prophète was not an accurate historical representation
of the prophet's life, but an artistic invention which allowed him to represent the most
awful actions of fanaticism on the stage. (108)
This equation of Islam with religious fanaticism served to support the idea that Islam was a historical mechanism by which
despotism came to be the dominant political model in the Middle East. Though it has
much older roots, (109) in the eighteenth century, Montesquieu's thesis, that despotism was
the essential characteristic of all Asian governments, had set the paradigm for the
debate, which both Hegel and Marx reflected in their essays. (110) In Britain, Gibbon painted a portrait of Islam that was intolerant and conducive to despotism. He emphasised the perceived luxury and sensuality
of its Eastern kingdoms. (111)
These foundations would form the starting points for the discussions
advanced by Holwell, Dow, Halhed and Wilkins. The principle of enlightened toleration
was the basic assumption that underlined their approach to "the religion of the Gentoos".
Similarly, the conceptual separation between the native "Hindoos" and their Muslim rulers
in terms of religion would provide the framework for their understanding of ancient
versus contemporary "Hinduism‟. Dow greatly admired the Mughal
government and saw within it a blueprint for enlightened treatment of the "Hindoo religion", which in fact was a platitude. In contrast, Halhed depicted a true narrative of it in which the morally
virtuous "Gentoos" had suffered under their Mohammedan oppressors.
___________________________________
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4. Anna Clark, Scandal: The Sexual Politics of British Constitution, Princeton University Press, p.86.
5. Joseph Price, The saddle put on the right horse; or, An enquiry into the reason why certain persons have been
denominated nabobs; With an arrangement of those gentlemen into their proper classes, of real, spurious, reputed, or
mushroom, nabob (London, 1783), p.1.
6. ibid, pp.21-22
7. Nicholas B. Dirks, The Scandal of Empire; India and the Creation of Imperial Britain (Cambridge MA: Harvard
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8. Jack. P. Greene, Evaluating Empire and Confronting Colonialism in Enlightenment Britain, (Cambridge:
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9. Jessica Patterson, Enlightenment, Empire and Deism: interpretations of the 'Hindoo religion' in the work of East India ‘Company Men’, 1760-1790, University of Manchester (2017) p 36
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10. Edmund Burke, Trial of Warren Hastings Esq: Third Day, 15th February 1788, in The Works of the Right
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12. Dow, “Plan for Restoring Bengal” in The History of Hindostan, (London, 1779), p.cxxviii.
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16. "The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004.
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19. John Zephaniah Holwell, Interesting Historical Event Relative to the Province of Bengal, vol. ii (London,1767),
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20. Alexander Dow, “A Dissertation Concerning the Customs, Manners, Language, Religion and Philosophy
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pxliv; Charles Wilkins, The Bhăgvăt-Gēētā, or Dialogues of Krĕĕshnă and Ărjŏŏn, (London, 1785), p.24.
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24. ibid, p.327
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© Ramachandran
