Table Of ContentCivilizing Missions in Colonial
and Postcolonial South Asia
Civilizing Missions in Colonial
and Postcolonial South Asia
From Improvement to Development
Edited by
Carey A. Watt and Michael Mann
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com
This edition fi rst published in UK and USA 2011
by ANTHEM PRESS
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© 2011 Carey A. Watt and Michael Mann editorial matter and selection;
individual chapters © individual contributors
The moral right of the authors has been asserted.
Cover image: A full-page advertisement for ‘Pears’ soap,
taken from the 1929 edition of The Times of India Annual.
The illustration depicts an Indian woman, seated inside
an open lotus fl ower holding a baby and a sceptre. India, 1929.
© Images of Empire, British Empire & Commonwealth Museum, UK
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,
no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means
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without the prior written permission of both the copyright
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Civilizing missions in colonial and postcolonial South Asia :
from improvement to development / edited by Carey A. Watt and Michael Mann.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-84331-864-4 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-84331-864-4 (hardback)
1. India–History–British occupation, 1765-1947. 2. Great Britain–Colonies–Asia–Social
policy. 3. India–Civilization–British infl uences. 4. India–Colonial infl uence. I. Watt, Carey
Anthony. II. Mann, Michael, 1959-
DS463.C553 2011
954.03–dc22
2011003908
ISBN-13: 978 1 84331 864 4 (Hbk)
ISBN-10: 1 84331 864 4 (Hbk)
This title is also available as an eBook.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: The Relevance and Complexity of Civilizing
Missions c. 1800–2010 1
Carey A. Watt
Part One. The Raj’s Reforms and Improvements:
Aspects of the British Civilizing Mission 35
1. Conjecturing Rudeness: James Mill’s Utilitarian Philosophy
of History and the British Civilizing Mission 37
Adam Knowles
2. Art, Artefacts and Architecture: Lord Curzon, the Delhi Arts
Exhibition of 1902–03 and the Improvement of India’s Aesthetics 65
Michael Mann
Part Two. Colonialism, Indians and Nongovernmental
Associations: The Ambiguity and Complexity
of ‘Improvement’ 91
3. Incorporation and Differentiation: Popular Education and the
Imperial Civilizing Mission in Early Nineteenth Century India 93
Jana Tschurenev
4. Reclaiming Savages in ‘Darkest England’ and ‘Darkest India’: The
Salvation Army as Transnational Agent of the Civilizing Mission 125
Harald Fischer-Tiné
5. Mediating Modernity: Colonial State, Indian Nationalism
and the Renegotiation of the ‘Civilizing Mission’ in the
Indian Child Marriage Debate of 1927–1932 165
Andrea Major
vi CIVILIZING MISSIONS IN COLONIAL AND POSTCOLONIAL SOUTH ASIA
Part Three. Indian ‘Self-Civilizing’ Efforts c. 1900–1930 191
6. ‘Civilizing Sisters’: Writings on How to Save Women, Men,
Society and the Nation in Late Colonial India 193
Shobna Nijhawan
7. From ‘Social Reform’ to ‘Social Service’: Indian Civic Activism
and the Civilizing Mission in Colonial Bombay c. 1900–20 217
Prashant Kidambi
Part Four. Transcending 1947: Colonial and Postcolonial
Continuities 241
8. Female Infanticide and the Civilizing Mission in Postcolonial
India: A Case Study from Tamil Nadu c. 1980–2006 243
Shahid Perwez
9. Philanthropy and Civilizing Missions in India c. 1820–1960:
States, NGOs and Development 271
Carey A. Watt
Afterword: Improvement, Progress and Development 317
Michael Mann
List of Contributors 329
Index 331
Introduction
THE RELEVANCE AND COMPLEXITY
OF CIVILIZING MISSIONS . 1800–20101
C
Carey A. Watt
Hearing the phrase ‘civilizing mission’ usually conjures up the idea of
European colonialism, so it seems to be a rather dated nineteenth-century
expression. In the nineteenth- and twentieth-century era of imperialism the
civilizing mission was an ever-shifting set of ideas and practices that was
used to justify and legitimize the establishment and continuation of overseas
colonies, both to subject peoples and to citizens or subjects in the homeland.
For the British Raj in India the civilizing mission meant many things, including
bringing the benefits of British culture to the subcontinent in the form of free
trade and capitalism as well as law, order and good government. British rule
was supposed to bring an end to a supposed condition of chronic warfare,
violence, disorder and despotic rule in India, and it would institute peace and
order in the form of Pax Britannica. At its core, the civilizing mission was
about morally and materially ‘uplifting’, ‘improving’ and later ‘developing’
the supposedly ‘backward’ or ‘rude’ people of India to make them more
civilized and more modern. A fundamental difference between colonial subjects
in India and their British overlords was posited, with Indians and other subject
peoples placed at lower or ‘inferior’ positions in new ‘scales of civilization’,
and the British (and Europeans generally) at the top.2 Indians were thereby
condemned to continually try to catch up to their British rulers and ‘European
civilization’, which claimed to be – and was widely accepted as – the universal
or ‘silent referent’.3
Civilizing Missions Today?
Since 2003, however, the civilizing mission phrase has gained traction once
again. The Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq has encouraged
a renewed, twenty-first-century consideration of civilizing missions. Though
2 CIVILIZING MISSIONS IN COLONIAL AND POSTCOLONIAL SOUTH ASIA
there has been much speculation that British and American motives were
primarily about ensuring access to oil, and thus related to strategic and
economic interests, justifications of the March 2003 attack rested on
depictions of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein as an Oriental despot. He was
allegedly a cruel, barbaric, inhumane and fanatical or irrational dictator who
was preparing to use ‘weapons of mass destruction’ (WMD) against civilized
members of ‘the international community’. Attempts were also made to link
the Iraqi leader to the nefarious Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, and thereby
to the ‘fanatical’ and ‘barbaric’ forces of Islamic terrorism that became the
focus of the American ‘War on Terror’ after 9/11 (the terrorist attacks on the
United States of 11 September 2001).4
Self-proclaimed civilized peoples in states such as Britain and America
declared that they needed to be protected while the people of Iraq and
neighbouring states needed to be liberated from a dictatorial and dangerously
uncivilized regime. Americans and Britons were to be welcomed with open
arms as liberators, according to former US Defence Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld, and America and Britain (and the ‘Coalition of the Willing’)
would bring peace, good government, democracy and capitalist modernity
to Iraqis. The invasion and occupation was also supposed to ‘remake the
Middle East’ by spreading democracy and modernity to other allegedly
backward Arab or Muslim states and peoples in the region.5 Former British
Prime Minister Tony Blair (1997–2007) initially justified the Iraq war on
the basis of the imminent threat of Saddam Hussein using his hidden
arsenal of WMD, but by 2006 he reframed his justification for war with new
assertions that the invasion was part of a struggle between ‘democracy and
violence’, and a battle about ‘modernity’ and ‘civilization’.6 The irony is
that the benefits of enlightened Western civilization and liberal democracy
were ‘given’ to Iraq and Iraqis through violence and coercion, by means of
a ‘shock and awe’ military campaign. As Michael Adas has noted, however,
technological superiority in military affairs has also been deployed as a
prominent marker of civilizational supremacy and a justification for colonial
civilizing initiatives.7
Similar civilizing mission arguments have been used to justify and legitimize
the war in Afghanistan. Afghanistan became the epicentre of the global ‘War on
Terror’ immediately after 9/11, because it was ruled by the Taliban – a group
of ‘fundamentalist Muslims’ that was hosting Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda.
Over forty countries currently have troops in Afghanistan and operations
have been sanctioned by the United Nations (UN), but the International
Security Assistance Force – Afghanistan (ISAF) is led and dominated by the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in conjunction with the United
States and its efforts to fight terrorism through Operation Enduring Freedom.
THE RELEVANCE AND COMPLEXITY OF CIVILIZING MISSIONS 3
Americans have the largest number of troops in the country and the British
hold the number two spot.
The fundamental goals of ISAF are threefold: increasing security (creating
‘a secure and stable environment’), supporting reconstruction and development
with government, international and nongovernmental (NGO) partners,
and ‘building capacity’ for governance among Afghans (‘strengthen the
institutions required to fully establish good governance and rule of law and
to promote human rights’).8 These objectives may sound familiar to anyone
knowledgeable about European colonial civilizing missions in the nineteenth
century, with NGOs as twenty-first-century missionaries – bringing modern
attitudes, institutions and practices to the world’s underdeveloped peoples –
despite the existence of tensions between NGOs and military or government
officials.9 Though there is more emphasis on newer terms or concepts
such as ‘security’, ‘human rights’, ‘governance’ and ‘building capacity’, an
apparent need to develop and civilize a chaotic and ‘backward’ Afghanistan
is clear. Afghanistan’s difference, in the sense of its inferiority, is implicit
too. Moreover, one might also note the self-imposed responsibility of a
more advanced or ‘civilized’ power to pacify Afghanistan, and to morally
and materially improve, uplift and modernize an unstable or ‘failed’ state.
According to ISAF and the United States, Afghanistan must be uplifted to
a universal standard of civilization that is based on European or Western
standards (the ‘silent referent’).
ISAF and American military forces quickly deposed the Taliban
government and dispersed Al Qaeda operatives in late 2001, but a so-called
counterinsurgency is still being waged against the Taliban nearly a decade
later. In fact, Taliban ‘insurgents’ have gained strength in recent years and
ISAF and American success in Afghanistan is far from certain, however
‘success’ is defined. The nature of the Afghan threat has shifted too. The
original goal of the war was to oust the Taliban and deny Al Qaeda a base
from which it could support anti-Western terrorism and directly threaten
the security and ‘way of life’ of American or other Western citizens. More
recently the objective has morphed into preventing Pakistan and the rest
of South Asia from sliding into a state of anarchy that would be dangerous
for the West. Pakistan has been destabilized by American pressure to
support the ‘War on Terror’, especially in the nebulous border areas of
the ‘northwestern frontier’ that were such a concern to the Raj in the
nineteenth century. US and ISAF operations in southern and southeastern
Afghanistan – and in Pakistan itself – have only aggravated Pakistan’s
problems by pushing Taliban fighters across the porous border and enraging
the local populace, which has long resisted modern state-building projects.
Many Western leaders fear that if Pakistan collapses its nuclear weapons
4 CIVILIZING MISSIONS IN COLONIAL AND POSTCOLONIAL SOUTH ASIA
could fall into the hands of Islamic extremists or ‘Islamists’ who might
threaten India, Pakistan’s rival and former foe, and this would have dire
consequences for the entire subcontinent.
Evidently, it is considered imperative to establish a Pax ISAF or Pax
Americana in Afghanistan, which would allow it to grow into a ‘civilized’
liberal democracy and member of the ‘international community’. As one
of the twenty-six member countries of NATO Canada is part of ISAF and
has had troops in Afghanistan since 2001 though the scope of its mission
increased dramatically in 2006. In 2007, as the war dragged on and ‘security’
in Afghanistan began to deteriorate, public support began to wane and the
Canadian government sponsored a study that was published in early 2008
as the Independent Panel on Canada’s Future Role in Afghanistan.10 This document
repeatedly makes the point that Afghanistan is different, yet once again in
the sense of being inferior. It does not explicitly say that it is ‘uncivilized’,
but it states that Afghanistan is a ‘divided tribal society’ and ‘developing
country’ that is ‘shockingly poor and dangerous’. Moreover, Afghanistan is
characterized by ‘corruption’, ‘criminality’ and a lack of ‘discipline’ in its
police and military forces, as well as by ‘insecurity’ and ‘violence’ – all in a
‘region of violent instability’.11 Such images of ‘backwardness’ have received
further support from media descriptions of Afghans ‘living in the Stone
Ages’ or, more generously, living in ‘medieval conditions’. Afghan society
is therefore apparently timeless and static. The solution is ‘improvement’,
‘development’ or ‘capacity building’. In fact, the report of Canada’s
independent panel mentions ‘building capacity’, which is the newest addition
to the lexicon of development, twenty-eight times. Old habits die hard,
however, and ‘improvement’ is discussed on more than thirty occasions while
the need for ‘development’ is stressed 142 times – an average of 1.6 times
per page, in spite of the fact that between 2002 and 2006 over 90 per cent
of the international funds committed to Afghanistan were spent on military
affairs rather than development.12 Development encompasses both ‘moral
and material’ dimensions, with comments regarding the need to improve the
capacity of Afghans for ‘accountable, honest and effective governance’ and
the obligation ‘to enhance roads, bridges and electrification so that ordinary
Afghans can see progress’.13
The Canadian panel describes the Taliban as a monolithic group that
ruled as ‘a radical Islamist regime of exceptional violence’ and ‘coercive
repression’. The Taliban-led ‘insurgency’, meanwhile, is characterized by its
‘proven brutality’.14 Conversely, the American and ISAF counterinsurgency is
led by progressive forces, ‘including most of the great democracies’, that seek
to support Afghans in their quest for ‘the democratic rule of law and the full
exercise of human rights’.15
