Physical conquest of India by the British was relatively a simple affair even though it took 60 long years, 1757-1818. But the colonial empire needed legitimacy and support from among the natives. This was accomplished by developing ancient India as a colonial tool. The same tool was utilized by the Hindus to blunt the missionary attacks on their religion and develop mild courage to look the empire in the eye.

1. Ancient India: Discovery,
invention and uses
Rajesh Kochhar
Panjab University Mathematics
Department Chandigarh160022
rkochhar2000@gmail.com

2. • Physical conquest of India by the British was
relatively a simple affair even though it took 60
long years, 1757-1818.
• But the colonial empire needed legitimacy and
support from among the natives.
• This was accomplished by developing ancient
India as a colonial tool.
• The same tool was utilized by the Hindus to blunt
the missionary attacks on their religion and
develop mild courage to look the empire in the
eye.

3. • Indology under colonial auspices began in 1772
with the declaration that in civil cases ‘regarding
inheritance, marriage, caste and other religious
usages or institutions’, the Hindus shall be
governed by the laws of their own, based on ‘the
Shaster’.
• Treating the Hindu and Muslim laws as co-equal
was in itself a pronounced gesture towards Hindus
because technically the British were acting on
behalf of the theocratic Mughal Empire.

4. • Europe of the day would not have known but the exercise
was inherently flawed.
• There was in fact no single Shaster, but a multitude of
ancient texts (Shastras) which were neither internally self-
consistent nor mutually consistent nor universally
applicable.
• More importantly, Hindu law in the judicial sense did not
exist.
• Hindu practices did not derived their legitimacy from any
sacred text but from actual usage which varied from place
to place.
• This realization came later and slowly. But obsession with
tracing everything back to ancient texts has persisted.
• Lindsay, Benjamin (1941) “Law”. In : Modern India and
the West (ed: L.S.S. O’Malley), pp. 107-137 ( London:
Oxford University Press).

5. • Pandits were commissioned to prepare Hindu law
digests and hired as court officials to advise the
European presiding officers.
• The ‘looseness’ of Hindu tradition meant that ‘expert’
opinions on them could be arbitrary and contrary.
• Distrustful of court Pandits’ scholarship and integrity,
the colonialists decided to master Sanskrit themselves
so that they could go to the primary sources, and
interpret the laws they were enforcing.
• Almost immediately, Sanskrit studies transcended
utilitarian arguments and developed into an exciting
new intellectual discipline with profound implications
for Indian and world history.
• Colebrooke 1884, Vol. 2, pp. 113-114.

6. • The British displayed sustained, secular and
respectful interest in sacred Hindu texts;
identified and even accentuated Brahmin
sensitivities with a view to pandering to them;
manifestly supported Hindu institutions of
learning and worship; and embarked on
‘exceeding in our attention towards them and
their systems, the care shewn even by their own
native princes’.
• As a result they were able to endear themselves to
Brahmins and enlist them and other leading castes
as their allies.

7. • The Aryan Race Theory provided Britain with
legitimizing ideology for their rule over India.
• Europeans and upper-caste Hindus were seen as
coming from the same ethnic stock, the Aryan,
while the Muslims were the undifferentiated other.
• Muslim rule over India was presented as an
aberration and its replacement by the British as the
return of the Aryan.
• The Vedic and classical periods of Indian history
were accepted as constituting the pristine joint Indo-
European heritage.
• Hinduism in actual practice was considered to be a
degradation brought about by India’s debilitating
climate and the Muslim influence.

8. • De-Brahminization of Sanskrit was a
development of great all-round significance.
• Old sacred manuscripts were collected and made
into library books.
• Erstwhile shudras and mlechchhas [barbarian
foreigners] now became Sanskrit scholars.

9. • Ancient India was as much a discovery for Indians as
it was for the Europeans.
• The resources that the colonialists assembled for
their own use and the scholarship that they generated
became available to Indians also irrespective of their
caste.
• Joint Indo-European heritage enabled Hindu
leadership to initiate theological and social reforms
and also gave it mild courage to look the Empire in
the eye.

10. • Orientalism, in Edward Said’s Muslim world,
was confrontational.
• But in India it was seductive, persuasive and
interactive, because here it took the form of
Indo-Europeanism.

11. • The British invented a new India, namely the
Indologist’s India, for the new Indian social class
to dwell in and dwell on.
• While Europe, through the telescope, microscope,
maritime voyages and geographical explorations,
was discovering for itself that knowledge did not
lie in churches, classical and sacred literature or
the past but in the open and into the future, India
was made a prisoner of archivalism; even
solutions to contemporaneous problems had to be
justified on scriptural grounds.

12. • The Empire could go to ridiculous lengths to establish its
credentials as an ally of pre- and non-Muslim India.
• After the 1842 victory over Afghans, the Governor-
General Lord Ellenborough removed the gates of the
tomb of Sultan Mahmood of Gazni claimed them to have
originally adorned the Somnath temple and ceremonially
paraded them across India proclaiming that “ The insult
of 800 years is avenged”.
• Even though the gates were declared by the experts to be
un-connected with Somnath, Ellenborough remained
unrepentant, no doubt convinced that his purpose had
been served.
• Algernon Law (ed.) (1926) India under Lord
Ellenborough (London: John Murray), p 55.

13. • When Upper Ganges[Ganga] canal was constructed, by
way of ‘some atonement for the liberties taken with the
[holy river] Ganges’, a new masonry bathing ghat was
built at its headworks in Hardwar and general facilities for
pilgrims improved.
• The canal was officially opened on 8 April 1854 at the
down-stream Roorkee.
• There were two components in the ceremony. While a
50000-strong native crowd waited outside, a religious
ceremony was conducted ‘according to a form expressly
prepared by the bishop’ for those ‘as being of Christian
birth and connection’, in the presence of special native
invitees such as Maharaja of Gwalior.
• After the Christian ceremony, the canal was publicly
declared open with appropriate pomp.

14. • Interestingly, the real but unpublicized opening had
already taken place on 1 April 1854 at Hardwar,
where ‘ten Fakeers led the working party’.
• The colonial government had to balance two
contrary pulls: it was viewed as a Christian
government by its own people and expected to act as
one. At the same time for reasons of governance it
had to manifestly show its sensitivity to Hindu
culture, customs, beliefs and superstitions.
• North American Review (1855) Vol. 81, p. 535-543;
see p. 535

15. Archivalism
• East India Company did not wish to be seen as
forcing a reformative agenda on unwilling
natives.
• To avoid any possibility of native backlash, it
sought to present liberal or progressive
initiatives as anchored in ancient India and
supported by, if not the majority, an influential
section of public opinion.
• The value colonial administration attached to
archivalism can be gauged from the fact that it did
not mind committing a fraud to support the cause.

16. • When vaccination was introduced in South India
in early 19th century, attempts were made to pass
off newly composed pro-vaccination Sanskrit
verses written on old paper as if they were from
old texts.
• Wujastyk, Domink (2001) “A pious fraud.” In :
Studies on Indian Medical History (eds: G. Jan
Meulenbeld and D. Wujastyk) ( Delhi: Motilal
Banarasidass).

17. • As preparation for human dissection in late 1835 or
early 1836 at Medical College in Calcutta,
Madhusudan Gupta the Indian professor of Sanskrit
medicine was asked to equip himself with suitable
quotes from scriptures.
• At a subsequent debate with the pandits, Madhusudan
convinced them about ‘the existence of dissection in
ancient India’.
• Interestingly the meeting was convened by the
Lieutenant Governor and presided over by Maharaja
of Nadia, a well known centre of Brahmin learning.
• Bose, Debasis (1994) Madhusudan Gupta. IJHS
29(1): 31-40; see p. 33

18. • Selective scriptures were similarly quoted in
support of the 1829 ban on widow burning
(called suttee in official records), upheld by the
Privy Council in 1832 in the presence of his
Majesty and the later (1856) permission for
widow remarriage.
• In both cases, the staus quoists also came up with
scriptural passages supporting their case.
• Missionary Register, 1832, Volume 20, p. 319

19. • Quoting the scriptures was not a pro-active
exercise. Rather, the real reasons were
contemporaneous, but legitimization came from
the past.

20. Religious reform
• Rammohun Roy was the first Indian to translate Upanishads
into an Indian language (Bengali) and English. His work was
greatly facilitated by the researches of British Indologists HT
Colebrooke and HH Wilson.
• He is presumably the first person to use the term Hinduism.
• With a view to blunting the attack on Hinduism by the
missionaries, he met them more than half way by arguing that
• the superstitious practices which deform the Hindoo religion
have nothing to do with the ‘spirit of its dictates’; and the real
or pure Hinduism was the one based on the Upanishads.
• Nag and Burman1995,pt.1, p.12.

21. • Rammohun was ‘totally ignorant of the Rig-
Veda’; not a copy of which was known as existing
in Bengal in his time.
• The first specimen of the Rigveda was published
in Europe in 1830 by Rosen, the year in which
Ram Mohun Roy left India for Europe, never to
return.
• Rev. Kenneth S. Macdonald’s 1890 paper in
Indian Evangelical Review, quoted in Robertson
1995, p. 84.

22. • The Vedas were brought into Indian discourse by Gujarat-born
Swami Dayanand Sarasvati who was largely driven by his own
studies.
• He pushed the roots of Hinduism further back from the
Vedanta to the Vedas themselves which were given the status
of revealed texts.
• Even though he did not know English he took pains to acquaint
himself with English translation of Rigveda being carried out
in England under Max Muller. Rammohun-inspired Brahmo
Samaj de-ritualized Hinduism; Dayanand reintroduced ritual
but de-Brahminized it.
• It is not surprising that his Arya Samaj (founded 1875) became
popular in Punjab and Haryana where Brahminism had
traditionally been weak.
• Also, while Brahmoism remained cerebral, Arya Samaj
displayed a stridency which was directed against other
religions.

23. • It is not very well known that the first ever
initiative (early 1870) for a pan-Indian middle
class organization invoked Aryan Race Theory
(and was in the name of science).
• Dr Mahendralal Sircar argued that it was the duty
of the British to take their Indian “brethren, now
fallen and degraded” by hand and elevate them in
elevating them in the scale of nations.

24. • Both the colonial and Indians continually reworked
ancient India to meet requirements of the day.
• In the initial stage the Hindus were told that in the past
when Indo-Aryans held sway, Europeans were still
barbarians. Now it was the turn of the Europeans to rule.
• Subsequently, when India wanted a more equal
partnership based on Indo-Europeanism, Indians were told
that their forte was metaphysics and things like science
should be left to the Europeans.
• When the Indians pointed out that the Buddhists
had worked extensively on health-related chemistry , they
were told with a straight face that in their ancient texts ,
probably by Buddhist , Arabs were meant.
• Surely Arabs would have liked to hear that. But it was not
considered necessary to inform them.

25. • They in their place were told that their role in the world
history of science had been no more than as librarians
and archivists for preserving Greek science till Europe
was in a position to take its heritage back.
• A Calcutta-based British author while preparing a text
on geometry in Arabic for use in government-run
madrasas ( traditional Muslim schools) removed ‘all
that is not Euclids’ so that Muslim students would not
learn anything about the celebrated al-Tusi .
• The Second Report of Calcutta School Book Society’s
Proceedings, 1819, App. IV, p. 37.

26. Ancient India in contemporary politics
• Immediately on return home from South Africa in
1915, Mahatma Gandhi set out to make the
nationalist movement broad based.
• With a view to connecting with the new
constituency he decided to use symbolism from
Hinduism in actual practice.
• He exhorted people to establish Ram Rajya [the
kingdom of Lord Rama].
• From the context it is clear that his first ever
reference was to the epic Ramayana.
• Very soon he idealized the concept to make it
universal.

27. • Unlike the archaeologists of Hinduism like
Rammohun Roy and Dayanand who were
Brahmins, Gandhi was a Bania.
• Backlash against his attempts to secularize
Hinduism also came from Banias. Attempts to
celebrate Puranic Hinduism in its own right as it
stood were initiated in 1923, by leaders of the
Marwari Aggarwal Bania community with the
setting up of Gita Press Gorakhpur.

28. • In recent times, Puranic and Epical Hinduism has
come to occupy centre stage due to a combination
of factors: compulsions of electoral processes,
populism, posturing and quest for smaller and
smaller identities.

29. • There has been a flourishing industry in India
which takes modern scientific discoveries
made in the West and discovers references to
them in ancient texts. The exercise is post-
facto.
• Nobody has ever obtained a clue from old texts
and made modern discovery.
• There is some method in this madness. Linking
modern scientific discoveries to ancient texts,
traditions and myths makes it possible to
accept West-centred advancements without
feeling culturally threatened.

30. • As you know, the number of malls and
multiplexes has drastically increased in India in
recent times to cater to the new Globalization-era
middle class.
• What is not known so well is that the number of
temples dedicated to the malignant planet Saturn
(Shani) have multiplied even more.

31. • A new phenomenon is taking place.
• The new young middle class powered by
globalization-era economics and entertained by
the electronic media, with high levels of personal
insecurities and hardly any time or inclination to
delve into any texts leave aside of the religious or
spiritual type, has avidly grabbed mythology,
pseudo-mythology, pseudo-science and
supernaturalism for time pass and as a refuge
from the present.

32. References
• Baron, John (1827) The Life of Edward Jenner, Vol. 1
(London: Henry Colburn)
• Colebrooke, T. E. (1884) Life of the Honourable
Mountstuart Elphinstone, 2 vols ( 2011: Cambridge
University Press).
• Max Muller, F. (1884) Biographical Essays (London: Scribner)
• Mukhopadhyaya , Girindranath (1922-1929) History of Indian
Medicine, Vol. I ( Calcutta: Calcutta University Press.
• Nag, Kalidas and Burman, Debajyoti (1995) The English
Works of Raja Rammohun Roy (Calcutta: Sadharan Brahmo
Samaj).

33. • Robertson, Bruce Carlisle (1995) Raja Rammohan
Roy (Delhi: Oxford University Press).
• Sinha, Samita (1993) Pandits in a Changing
Environment (Calcutta: Sarat Book House).
• Upadhyaya, Baldev (1994) Kashi ki Panditya
Parampara (Varanasi: Vishvavidyalaya Prakashan).
• Wujastyk, Domink (2001) “A pious fraud.” In :
Studies on Indian Medical History (eds: G. Jan
Meulenbeld and D. Wujastyk) ( Delhi: Motilal
Banarasidass).