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A British Indian Circumambulation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2011

D.H.A. Kolff
D.H.A. Kolff
Affiliation:
(University of Leiden)
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Extract

The motto I wrote at the top of this address and that I quoted just now is quite ordinary. But what else would a British civil servant, unmarried, note in his diary at a quiet post at the foot of the Himalayas? What fascinating details for that matter does one expect to find in the papers left behind about British Indian colonial relations in this century and the last? What indeed should a newly appointed professor tell you about them which is more than just curious or half exotic, and which, buried in the past as they have been for decades, would moreover only be appropriate at a Dutch university that refuses to withdraw into a hedgehog position called ‘Europe’?

Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , July 1992 , pp. 85 - 100
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 1992

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References

Notes

1 OR (India Office Records, London), MSS EUR E 307, Frederick Shore Collection (hence-forth FSC), Diary, August 1825.

2 FSC Letters to his father, 3 January 1827 and 1 April 1828. David Stewart (1772–1829) published his book on the Scottish Highlanders in 1822. The professor was William Buckland (1784–1856).

3 FSC, Letter to Charlotte Shore, Dehra Dun, 15 December 1827. John Latham (1740–1837) published his studies between 1781 and 1828. The first volume of John Gould's great work on the birds of Europe appeared in 1832; in that same year A Century of Birds from the Himalayan Mountains was published.

4 FSC, Letter to Charles Shore, 19–26 July 1824.

5 FSC, To the same, Pauri, 17 September 1827. Apparently, Shore had read the book of Basil Hall (1788–1844), a naval officer who travelled in Chile, Peru and Mexico in 1820–22.

6 FSC, To his father. Camp Amoli, Tehri, 5–7 June 1826. Diary, 7 June 1826.

7 Quoted from Stokes, Eric, The English Utilitarians and India (Oxford 1959) 25.Google Scholar

8 Stokes, Eric, The Peasant and the Raj: Studies in agrarian society and peasant rebellion in colonial India (Cambridge 1978) 30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 In his letters Shore referred to these books; FSC, Letters to Charles Shore, Fatehgarh, 7 January 1833, and Fatehgarh, 7 April 1833.

10 IOR, MSS EUR F 132/1, Lyall Collection, J.E. Lyall to George Lyall, Calcutta, 10 June 1844, and Same to Same, Calcutta, 14 July 1844.

11 FSC, Diary, 18 March 1827.

12 Idem, 27 December 1828.

13 Shore, Frederick John, Notes on Indian Affairs II (London 1837) 526–27Google Scholar. In these volumes, Shore published the essays he wrote in the period 1832–35.

14 Essay no. 18 in: Ibidem I, 181–210.

15 Holt Mackenzie, since his memorandum of 1 July 1819, dominated the discussion of land revenue issues in Bengal. See Selections from the Revenue Records of the North-West Provinces, 1818–1820 (Calcutta 1866) 9–155.Google Scholar

16 FSC. Letter to Charles Shore, 16 May 1834.

17 FSC, To Same, Pauri, 22 August 1828 and Jabalpur, 19 August 1835.

18 FSC, To Same, Fatehgarh, 7 September 1834.

19 Mannoni, O., Prospero and Caliban: the Psychology of Colonization (New York and Washington 1956Google Scholar; the first, French, edition, was published in 1950). Fanon, Frantz, Peau Noire, Masques Blancs (Paris 1952)Google Scholar. Memmi, Albert, Tke Colonizer and the Colonized (Boston 1967)Google Scholar (originally 1957). Kakar, Sudhir, The Inner World: A Psychoanalytic Study of Childhood and Society in India (Delhi 1981)Google Scholar. Nandy, Ashis, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under Colonialism (Delhi 1983).Google Scholar

20 E.g. Lacan, Jacques, Ecrits (Paris 1966)Google Scholar. Mooij, Antoine, Taal en Verlangen: Lacans Theorie van de Psychoanalyse (Meppel 1975)Google Scholar. Levinas, Emmanuel, Tolalité et Infini: Essay sur l'Extêriorite (The Hague 1961)Google Scholar. Also, e.g., same author, Het Menselijk Gelaat: Essays van Emmanuel Levinas (Baarn 1969).Google Scholar

21 Shore, Notes II, 520.

22 Breman, J.C., Imperial Monkey Business (Amsterdam 1990) 89–152Google Scholar; and same author, ‘Civilisatie en Racisme: een Staat van Terreur: Kongo rond de Eeuwwisseling’, De Gids 154 (1991) 448–493.Google Scholar

23 This and the next paragraph are largely based on Lutgendorf, Philip, “The View from the Ghats: Traditional Exegesis of a Hindu Epic’, The fournal of Asian Studies 48 (1989) 272–288CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the advice given to Britishers in India to read Tulsidas, see Philip Lutgendorf, ‘Ram's Story in Shiva's City: Public Arenas and Private Patronage’, in Freitag, Sandria B. ed., Culture and Power in Banaras (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1989) 45Google Scholar. The socalled ‘grand recil’, here contrasted to Tulsidas' four versions, is taken of course from Lyotard's, J.F. terminology; see his IM Condition Postmodeme: Rapport sur le savoir (Paris 1979).Google Scholar

24 FSC, Diary, 1 June 1827.

25 Shore, Notes, 1 4–9, 119. FSC, Letter to Charles Shore, 18 May 1828.

26 FSC, Letters to Charles Shore, 19–26 July 1824; to his father, 14 September 1825, 24 July 1826, 10–15 July 1828.

27 Mundy, Godfrey Charles, Pen and Pencil Sketches in India: Journal of a Tour in India (3rd ed.; London 1858) 88.Google Scholar

28 In using the words ‘face’ and ‘totalitarian’, I think of Levinas' work, see note 20.