DECLINE OF MUGHAL EMPIRE

The Mughal dynasty, created in 1526 by Zahiruddin Babur, rose to prominence under the reign
of great emperor Jalal-ud-din. Muhammad Akbar's dominance over much of India for more than
two centuries was significant in the second part of the sixteenth century, and the dynasty
maintained its record of unusual talent and administration through its seven generations of
power. A new generation was also raised to combine Muslims (Mughals) and Hindus into a
single Indian state. In the modern age, the Mughal Empire was regarded as one of the greatest
powers, eventually expanding to encompass all of South Asia (Afghanistan to Southern tip of
India and from River Indus to frontiers of river Burma).During its reign it accounted for world’s
more than twenty percent of economic output.
This massive increase in both political and economic prosperity has been largely attributed to
the country's military prowess. A significant share of total resources were committed to the
empire's growth and defence system. The Mughals' political, social, and cultural identities were
shaped by their continual conquest and preparation for conquest. However, during the reign of
the last great emperor, Aurangzeb, the empire began to fall. Even in the first half of the
seventeenth century, Delhi (capital) was regarded as the dominant power centre in the entire
eastern region of India; nevertheless, signs of collapse began to emerge within fifty years. The
signs of degradation were unmistakable in the institutions and mechanisms inherent to its
cultural identity and administrative policies.
The overall rot that had begun to set in during Aurangzeb's rule could not be prevented by his
weak successors, and the recurring succession conflict exacerbated the condition. The Mughal
army was further undermined by a lack of capable leaders; no further military reforms or new
technology were introduced, as Akbar had done. The political situation in Northern India clearly
signalled the end of the Mughal Empire's glory days. While some historians feel that institutional
and systemic failure (inherent in the administration system) is the root cause, others believe that
specific policies are to blame.

There are several reasons identified by historians for the decline and disintegration of the mighty
Mughal Empire:

1. Weak successors

The Mughals did not follow any succession law, such as the law of primogeniture. As a result,
whenever a ruler died, a war of succession between the brothers for the throne began. This
damaged the Mughal Empire, particularly after the death of Aurangzeb. By backing with one of
the contenders or the other, the nobles boosted their own influence. Aurangzeb's successors were
weak and fell victim to the intrigues and plots of the faction-ridden nobles. They were ineffective
generals who were incapable of putting down revolts. The Mughal Empire had become weak due
to the lack of a strong monarch, an effective bureaucracy, and a capable army.
2. Degeneration of the Mughal Nobility:
Bairam Khan, Munim Khan, Muzaffar Khan, and Abdur Rahim Khan Khana, Itmad Ud daulah
and Mahababat Khan, Asaf Khan, and Saadulla khan wrote the history of India under the reigns
of Akbar, Jahangir, and Shahjahan. However, as the character of the later Mughal Emperors
deteriorated, so did the character of the nobility. The wealth and leisure that the foreign Muslims
acquired in India fostered luxury and sloth, and the presence of many women in their harems
encouraged debauchery, which in turn weakened their character and love of adventure. As a
result, the ruling elites degenerated physically, morally, and intellectually.
3. Aurangzeb’s Religious persecution of the Hindus:
Aurangzeb failed to recognise that the enormous Mughal Empire relied on the people's willing
support. He lost the allegiance of the Rajputs, who had considerably contributed to the Empire's
power. They had been pillars of support, but Aurangzeb's policies had transformed them into fierce
enemies. The Mughal Empire's resources had been depleted by conflicts with the Sikhs, Marathas,
Jats, and Rajputs. Akbar had won over the Hindus by granting religious tolerance and providing
opportunities for talent regardless of caste, race, or creed. As dependable defenders of his throne,
he had engaged Hindu Warrior tribes, most notably the Rajputs.

Under him and his three immediate successors, the Rajputs carried the Mughal banner to the far
reaches of India's subcontinent, as well as deep into Central Asia. Dr. S.R. Sharma wrote of
Aurangzeb's religious persecution of Hindus, "These were not the acts of a moral ruler or
constructive statesman, but the outbursts of blind fanaticism, unworthy of the immense brilliance
that Aurangzeb clearly possessed in all other areas." The prevailing consensus on Aurangzeb's
religious policy is that he was a zealous Sunni Muslim, and his main goal was to turn "Dar-ul-harb
(India: the country of Kafirs or unbelievers) into Dar-ul-Islam" (Country of Islam).Aurangzeb was
against Shia Muslims as well he was intolerant towards other faiths, especially Hindus.

Essentially, his policy takes two factors into account. First and foremost, to promote Islamic tenets
and ensure that people live their lives in accordance with them. Secondly,adoption of Anti-Hindu
measures. Aurangzeb failed to recognise that the enormous Mughal Empire was dependent on the
people's willing support. Aurangzeb's anti-Hindu policies included the destruction of temples and
the smashing of idols. He was even present when the governor of Deccan demolished many
temples, including the renowned Chintamani temple in Ahmedabad, and replaced them with
mosques. In his first year as emperor, he ordered the destruction of all temples in Odisha, and in
his twelfth year, he ordered the destruction of all 'important' temples in the Mughal empire and the
construction of mosques.The most famous being temples of Keshva (Krishna Janmbhoomi) in
Mathura, Vishwanath temple in Varanasi and Somnath in Kathiawar. The other black order of his
rule was the imposition of Jizya (tax on Hindu pilgrimage) which Akbar had abolished.

According to Elliot, the goal of this imposition is to limit atheists (one of the main reasons Hindus
revolted) and distinguish between those who are faithful to the land and those who are not.
Whereas Niccolao Manucci believes the goal is to replenish his dwindling fortune, the other
believes the goal is to coerce Hindus to adopt Islam. Another restriction is the removal of Hindus
from official offices, despite the fact that Akbar assigned a huge number of Hindus to various
departments throughout his realm. Hindus were barred from holding higher-level positions in the
administration department. Aurangzeb's general edict of 1670 fully banned Hindu employment in
the revenue administration. However, due to their lower efficacy, Hindus were eventually allowed
to work on select roles. Some other policies are restriction on Hindu educational institutions;
conversion through different means; social restrictions and many more.

Aurangzeb's religious extremism and Akbar's reversal of Akbar's religious toleration policy
overshadowed his merits and weakened the Mughal empire. It also resulted in other clashes and
battles in various sections of the country. He lost the backing of the majority of Rajputs (who
contributed greatly to strengthen the empire). The wars with the Sikhs, Marathas, Jats, and
Marathas further hampered the empire's resources. One of the most difficult issues was
Aurangzeb's attempt to convert the Marwari gaddi to Islam. All these rebellions contributed to
affect the peace of empire and also to a larger extent weakened the economy because many of the
nobles after all this tried to maintain their own revenue system and stopped providing revenues to
the empire which to some extent led to the financial shortage in royal funds.

4. Demoralization of the Mughal Army:

Another key reason for the decline of the Mughal Empire was the demoralisation of the Mughal
army, which was weak and faulty due to its origins and makeup. It was mostly made up of
contingents recruited and maintained by high officials and nobles who were given income from
wide swaths of the land to keep them going. As a result, the individual soldier regarded his
mansabdar as his chief rather than his officer. There was no communication between the emperor
and the individual soldiers, who were paid by their commander or mansabdar rather than directly
from the Royal treasury. The fundamental flaws of this revolutionary and sound system work
were exacerbated under the reign of Aurangzeb and his successors. As the later Mughul
monarchs' authority waned, the empire's wealthy nobles and officers began to turn the
assignment they held for maintaining armies into hereditary holdings. As a result, the emperor
was left without a substantial group of personal warriors to impose his authority. Furthermore,
due to the inadequacy of imperial authority, the mansabdars became so envious of one another
that a commander would frequently purposefully refrain from bringing a three-fourth won war or
siege to a successful end if he felt that another officer would share the glory for a success.

From the last part of the 17th century, Mughul officers made it a routine to engage in dangerous
correspondence with the enemy. Because the emperor and Mir Bakshi lacked ability and
character, they were unable to maintain proper discipline in the army, which had been reduced to
a well-armed mob. Even Aurangzeb tolerated military misdeeds, and there were no regular
sanctions for disobedience of duty. As a result, the army that had carried the Mughal banners to
the far reaches of the kingdom, even as far as the rivers Oxus and Helmand in Central Asia,
became ineffective for offence and defence.
5. Economic Bankruptcy:
Shah Jahan's construction zeal had exhausted the treasury. In addition, Shah Jahan and
Aurangzeb's long battle in the south had depleted the exchequer. They increased the state
demand to one-half of the soil's produce, and as revenue demand increased, production declined
in proportion. The cultivators began to abandon their crops, but they were forced to continue
cultivating. In the period of Aurangzeb and his successors, who had to fight many wars to obtain
and keep the throne, bankruptcy began to confront the Mughal government in the face. The
economic collapse occurred during the reign of Alamgir II (1754-1759), who was starving, and
the royal privy purse-income estate's were taken by the unscrupulous Wazir Imad-ul-Mulk.
Alamgir II had no sufficient convenience to ride in procession to the Idgah a month and a half
after his accession, and he had to stroll on foot from the harem to the Fort's stone mosque. The
astonishing feature is that the insolvent Mughal government lasted another 50 years.

6. Invasions:
Foreign invasions drained the Mughals' last power and hastened their downfall. The invasions of
Nadir Shah and Ahmad Shah Abdali resulted in even more wealth draining. These incursions
shook the empire's foundations.
7. Size of the Empire and Challenge from Regional Powers:
The Mughal Empire had become too enormous to be ruled from a single location, namely Delhi.
The Great Mughals were efficient and wielded power over ministries and armies, but the later
Mughals were inept managers. As a result, the far-flung regions gained independence. The rise
of autonomous kingdoms caused the Mughal Empire to disintegrate.

8. Degradation of relation between Aristocracy and Empire.

Since the late years of Aurangzeb's reign, there has been no or very little conquest, owing to the
empire's steady depletion of resources. This shattered the functional link between the aristocracy
and the Emperor, which was critical for the efficient administration of the empire. To
comprehend this disparity, we must first comprehend the composition of ruling elites.
Lineage/ethnic background was the most essential element for appointment as'mansabdars'
during Aurangzeb's reign. Although the majority of the ruling class are foreigners to India, they
progressively Indianised themselves and became separated into several ethno-religious
groupings, the most powerful of which were the Turani and Irani. Hindus (mostly Rajputs and
Marathas), Indian Muslims, and others are also included in the category. Due to the absorption of
Maratha and Deccan nobility during Aurangzeb's final years, there was a drastic transformation
in Mughal aristocracy, which created tensions among its ranks. Proximity of one group to the
emperor naturally drives other groups away, affecting personal bonds of loyalty to the emperor
as well as disaffection among the group for conquest to be more near to the emperor. Along with
that, it breeds corruption in the army, weakening it as a result of a lack of technological
developments and development, resulting in a "virtual fragmentation of the empire."

9. The Jagirdari Crisis:

The Mughal empire was a conquest state (war state) governed by military elites, with a system in
which military and civil administrations were very closely interwoven, and the emperor stood at
the summit of the hierarchy, resting his authority. Below the monarch, the'military aristocracy'
was seen as the most important. With the assistance of Shahbaz Khan in the late 16th century
(1571), Akbar organised this aristocracy through the mansabdari system, which means a military
organisation of aristocracy in which officials were ranked and civil and military duties of them
were recognised based primarily on loyalty to the emperor. There is a loyalty criterion because
the emperor was the only one who could appoint, promote, or remove any mansabdar and
allocate/transfer jagirs. So, we can say that the relationship as “patron-client relationship”.

And the effectiveness of this partnership is dependent on the emperor's personal traits and his
ability to constantly develop resources (constant territorial conquests and expansions). Every
aristocracy was referred to as a 'mansabdar,' with two levels (indicating a particular nobleman's
standing in the Mughal administration) — "jat (personal rank) and sawar (number of horses he
was obligated to maintain)." They were mostly paid in cash (naqdi), but they were also
frequently compensated in jagirs or landed estate along with the revenue income (jama), which
covered his personal pay as well as the maintenance expenditures of soldiers and horses. There
were two kinds of jagirs: transferable (tankha) jagirs and non-transferable (vatan) jagirs. Those
mansabdars who were not paid in cash were given a jagir or landed estate in lieu of wages.They
were the jagirdars who were required to collect the revenue from the particular jagir of which
one part would go to the state and the other two parts would cover his personal expenses and the
maintenance allowances for his soldiers and horses.

During the final years of Aurangzeb's reign, the number of jagirdars appointed had increased to
such an extent that there was a severe scarcity of paibaqi land (land earmarked to be given as
jagirs). This reduction in the Empire's resources shattered the functional link between the
monarch and the nobility, signalling the start of inefficiency within the imperial Mughal
administrative structure. As a result of the 18th century economic crises, the various ethno-
religious groups within the nobility began competing with one another.About four-fifths of the
land revenue of the Mughal Empires was under the control of mansabdars and jagirdars; but this
income was unevenly distributed among them, creating jealousies within the aristocracy-
particularly at the time when the resources of the Empire were diminishing. This economic
situation known as the 'jagirdari crisis' of the 18th century- has been defined by Satish chandra
in the following words:

'the available social surplus was insufficient to defray the cost of administration, pay for Wars of
one type or another and to give the ruling classes a standard of living in keeping with its
expectations'.
In this case, the actual revenue collection (hasil) was substantially lower than what had been
projected (jama), lowering the jagirdars' expected income. The penultimate year of Aurangzeb's
reign saw an increase in crises, primarily due to the Deccan war, which necessitated a bigger
number of mansabdars, and the accompanying political unrest made income collection more
difficult. The jagirdari problem sparked a dangerous fight for control of the fertile jagir. And the
situation worsened when the price of luxury goods, which mansabdars rely heavily on, rose in
the late 17th century, while income collection decreased. As a result of the economic crisis, the
entire nobility experienced personal uncertainty. This exacerbated the existing 'factionalism'
situation at the Mughal court following Bahadur Shah's death in 1712. The problem worsened as
low-ranking mansabdars struggled to maintain their opulent lifestyle. According to J.F. Richards,
this problem was created by Aurangzeb's bad policies, who was continuously extending the
capacity of 'khalisa' (royal land). There was an increase in wealth following the conquests of
Golconda and Bijapur, but instead of distributing it, Aurangzeb hoarded all of it for his future
trips for the Deccan campaign. Satish Chandra, on the other hand, claims that Deccan has always
been a deficit area. According to Satish Chandra, one of the reasons was not the rivalry with
Deccan. Thus, it is difficult to say how conquest of Bijapur and Golconda affected the jagirdari
crisis.

10. peasant revolts

The repeated peasant revolts in the late 17th and early 18th centuries are also thought to be a
contributing factor to Mughal downfall. The imposition of heavy economic pressures on peasants
was thought to never be accepted by rural society, and therefore peasant discontent began. They
did, however, follow earlier due to their fear of the Mughal army.But later in the late 17th to 18th
century, as the empire's weakness became apparent and the army faced successive debacles,
oppression by the ruling elite increased (economic crisis led to competition among them and a
quest to be more loyal to the emperor), and resistance by disaffected local zamindars with the
backing of oppressed peasants created combined pressure that was too much for the Mughal
authority to withstand. The major reason for the peasant uprising, according to some historians,
could be found in the Mughal empire's property relations. The emperor's ownership of land has
been disputed for a long time, but the emperor has full authority to collect as much revenue as he
wants from the peasants, although Irfan Habib claims that the Mughals worked on a
"subcompromise" basis, where the surplus was left with the peasants in order to produce more
after taking the revenues. The strain of tax collection is easily borne by the large peasants, but it
is the little peasants who rebelled against the monarchy due to their incapacity to cope with the
revenue machinery. Another reason for the peasant revolt was the pressure exerted on them by
the Zamindars for tax collection, because the Zamindars were also under pressure to collect
revenue from the big zamindars. Irfan Habib contends that because of the Mughal system and by
taking advantage of it, jagirdars oppressed peasants because they were frequently transferred,
making bonds or long-term interests in the estate with the peasants impossible, and they wanted
to extract as much revenue as they could during their brief tenure by oppressing peasants. Later,
with the fall in the 18th century, they established local power bases from which they plundered
as much as possible. This pattern can be seen in Golconda, where a number of jagirdars
negotiated contracts with Maratha leaders in the later years of Bahadur Shah, defying Mughal
officials to allow them (jagirdars) to collect as much revenue as possible. This causes poverty
and economic strain among peasants, particularly small peasants, fueling the uprising. According
to some historians, one cause for this revolution was to settle the problem of leadership for the
continuance of their struggle over a lengthy period of time. Maratha chiefs used peasants'
religious and regional identities to mobilise them against the Mughals, just as Jats were
mobilised by their zamindars toward north India; Sikhs revolted [8] in Punjab, and Rajputs
abandoned their allegiance from the Mughals. All of these revolts resulted in the emergence of
'independent kingdoms' in various parts of the empire, exacerbating the Mughals' authority.

11. Aurangzeb’s Deccan Policy:

Aurangzeb's Deccan policy, which resulted in the destruction of the greatest warriors and
severely damaged Mughul reputation, contributed significantly to his dynasty's demise. He
annihilated the Shia kingdoms of Bijapur and Golconda and launched a protracted, never-ending
battle of annihilation against the Marathas. This forced the hardy Marathas to fight in self-
defense, and when they were successful, they were inspired to go on the offensive, cross the
Narmada, and conquer the Mughal territories in Northern India. Northern Indian Hindus had
already been alienated by Aurangzeb's policy of religious persecution, and the empire's Hindu
officials and vassals were either indifferent or secretly hostile to the Mughal cause. This opens
up opportunities for the Marathas. They appealed to the common sentiments of Rajput and
Hindus who secretly allied themselves with Bajirao when the latter boldly pursued his policy of
striking at the withering trunk of the Mughal Empire in the belief that the independent provincial
Muslim dynasty would fall of them after the fall of the Mughal Empire. Thus, within thirty-one
years of Aurangzeb's death, his successor was forced to wage war against the Sikhs, Jats,
Bundelas, Rathores, Kachhwahas, and Sisodias, with no Hindu tribe of military importance on
their side.

Due to the Emperor's prolonged absence from Northern India, too many provincial governors
became independent, causing some regions to become tumultuous. Furthermore, the massive
expenses incurred in battles on Deccan left the royal coffers empty, fueling mutiny among
jagirdars as well as jagirdars and the emperor. Thus, Aurangzeb's long Deccan battles
contributed to the decline of the Mughal Empire.

While other historians (revisionist theorists) believe that 'poor and economic pressure' is not the
best explanation for this predicament due to geographical variances in local economies. The
'periphery' point of view. They believe that the Mughal empire never had an issue with economic
insufficiency or poverty, citing Moradabad, Bareilly, Awadh, Banaras, and Bengal as the most
populous and prominent parts of Mughal India, with enough surplus that 'could not be seized by
the local zamindars'. And these new territories spawned separate religious and political
orientations in order to form a newly agrarian community. The rise of agrarian settlements in
certain places, as well as the monetisation of the economy in others, made local lineages more
strong since they possessed economic power, and the weakening of central administration
control provided them the strength and autonomy to revolt. To summarise the preceding
discussion, we explored various aspects of the Mughal polity throughout the 18th century that
were necessary to comprehend for a better understanding of the regional rise. Regional powers
succeeded because the status of the emperor and his officials began to change (said to be after
Aurangzeb's death) and for a variety of other reasons, the emperor's authority was emasculated.
As previously stated, the emperor is the sole authority in charge of appointment and provincial
administration (like diwans, zameendars, faujdars, etc.) However, due to the financial crisis and
factional warfare among the nobles in the empire, this power dynamic was weakened. And
because the Emperor was unable to avoid the crisis, it failed to provide the necessary protection
to provincial governors (who were attacked by zamindars armed with peasants), which resulted
in the formation of new power dynamics as regional power. Examples include appointments in
the provinces made without previous order of the Emperor and attempts to create dynastic rule in
provinces. The provincial establishment of independent authority and even autonomous state of
Deccan, Rajputana, and others who were not directly under Mughal control but were an
important part of the empire cut off their relations with the empire, and this trend may or may not
have been directly visible in the first half of the 18th century but was occurring. All of this
resulted in the disintegration of empires and the development of regions.

Major Theories on Decline of Mughal Empire

(refer pdf if needed)

Battle of Plassey and Buxar

(refer pdf)

Legal Discourse
• Two fundamental convictions shaped Hastings’s jurisprudence.
➢ One was that, as the historian Bernard Cohn has written, there existed in India ‘a
fixed body of laws, codes that had been set down or established by “law givers” and
that over time these had become corrupted by accretions, interpretations, and
commentaries’. Hastings saw his task as that of restoring these ‘original’ texts in all
their purity, and so freeing the British from dependence upon Indian legal scholars
trained in Sanskrit or Arabic.
➢ Hastings further believed that there existed distinct and separate codes of law for
Hindus and for Muslims. In civil suits regarding marriage, inheritance and the like, he
wrote, ‘the Laws of the Koran with respect to Mahomedans, and those of the Shaster
with respect to the Gentoos [Hindus] shall be invariably adhered to’. This insistence
on a fundamental difference between ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’ reduced a variety of
sectarian communities characterized by distinct customs and practices to two, each
defined through its textual tradition. In so doing Hastings inaugurated the practice
of seeing these categories as central to the organizing of Indian society; and this,
in turn, helped shape how Indians constructed identities for themselves in
subsequent years.
• The ‘recovery’ of these so-called ‘ancient’ usages was no easy task. Indeed, the arduous
process of compilation made clear the artificially contrived nature of the whole
 enterprise. In 1776 Hastings convened a panel of Sanskrit legal scholars (pandits) to
compile a ‘Code of Gentoo Laws’. The pandits, as N. B. Halhed described their work,
first ‘picked out sentence by sentence from various originals in the Shanscrit [sic]
language’ legal decisions on different topics. Then, as no Englishman at the time knew
Sanskrit, these passages were ‘next translated literally into Persian’ and from that tongue
they were rendered into English by Halhed himself.
• Within a decade the jurist Sir William Jones had mastered the Sanskrit language and so
set in motion the ‘Orientalist’ scholarship which was to make accessible to all the
ancient past of India.
• The insistence upon a ‘fixed’ body of law, necessary if the British were to administer
Hindu law, inevitably privileged Brahmanical texts over local usages that varied by caste
and region, and gave Brahman pandits, attached to the courts as ‘law-finders’ until 1864,
an unprecedented role in decision making. The whole, complementing the earlier growth
of Brahman political power, brought about the ‘Brahmanization’ of Indian law.
• Legal procedure was further transformed by the introduction of English case law, in
which individual suits were brought to trial before a judge, in place of traditional
procedures based on mediation and consensus.
• Hastings also took the first steps towards the establishment of a distinctively colonial
form of executive governance – that of the ‘Collector’ in charge of a district. Mughal
precedents existed for such an administrative structure, which made it attractive in
Hastings’s eyes, but the Mughal system had ceased to function under the Bengal nawabs.
Hastings was further hampered by the lack of trained British personnel. As Clive had
observed as early as 1765, when the British first took over the diwani, ‘To trust these
collections upon which our security and credit depend to the management of the
Company’s servants totally unacquainted with the business would have been a dangerous
and at this time would have been termed a criminal experiment.’ Hence revenue
administration during the Hastings era had to be left, for the most part, to the old Indian
officeholders.
• Change was to come only under Lord Cornwallis, who, untainted by his defeat in
America, came to India with a mandate for reform. Frustrated, baffled, and angry at the
‘intricacy and confusion’ of the district accounts left in Indian hands, Cornwallis
displaced all senior Indian officeholders. Making the Indians scapegoats for the credulity
and complicity in misrule of the English, Cornwallis averred that, ‘Every native of
Hindostan, I verily believe, is corrupt.’ Formalized by the Company charter of 1793, all
civil appointments above a certain level of pay were to be held by ‘convenanted’
servants, all of whom were to be of European British origin. This was to be the start of
a policy of racist exclusion in employment that was to characterize the Raj almost to
its end.

• The coherence of the Hindu religion, so these early scholars insisted, was, like that of
Christianity itself, to be found in its sacred texts. In their view, the ancient Sanskrit texts
would reveal the doctrinal core of the Hindu faith, and they turned for advice in the
 interpretation of those texts to those whom they saw as the 'priests' of the religion, the
Brahmin pandits.

• These texts were seen as embodying not only moral injunctions but precise legal
prescriptions. The first fruits of this enterprise can be seen as early as 1776, when N. B.
Halhed published A Code of Gentoo Laws. Subtitled The Ordination of the Pundits, this
work involved a collaboration between Halhed and eleven 'professors' of Sanskrit, who
created a text 'picked out sentence by sentence from various originals in the Shanscrit
language'. The articles thus collected 'were next translated literally into Persian ... and
from that translation were rendered into English'. From this laboriously contrived text,
Halhed conceived, could be formed a precise idea of the customs and manners of these
people', as well as making available materials for the ‘legal accomplishment of a new
system of government in Bengal'.

• A view of Indian society derived from the study of texts and cooperation with pandits
inevitably encouraged the British to view Brahmins as the predominant group in Indian
society, and to adopt their perspectives on it. To justify his reliance on Brahmin
collaborators, Halhed insisted that the people paid his eleven pandits a 'degree of
personal respect little short of idolatry in return for the advantages supposed to be
derived from their studies'. A Brahminical Hinduism was of course not only the result
of conversations with pandits, for such an orientation was embedded in the texts
themselves. Almost all were written by Brahmins and incorporated mythic accounts such
as that, faithfully reported by British writers from Dow to Colebrooke, which saw the
Brahmins ‘proceeding, with the Veda, from the mouth of Brahma', while the three tower
orders sprang from his arms, thighs, and feet. Though themselves occasionally sceptical
of Brahminical claims, these scholars nevertheless insisted that this ordering of society
was accepted by all. If, as Halhed remarked, the ordinary people blame any thing it is the
original turn of chance which gave them rather to spring from the belly or the feet of
Brihma, than from his arms or head'. In the end, indeed, one can only see the constructed
Hinduism of the early colonial era as a joint product of British scholars and Brahmin
pandits.
• Yet, ironically, though the Brahmins were the chief beneficiaries of this
collaboration, still for them the Hindu religion was a living system, not a mere
collection of texts. Hence they were sometimes reluctant participants, occasionally even
protesting the British denial of authenticity to medieval, and vernacular, materials.
• The discovery of ancient Indian legal texts inevitably undercut the notion that India
was a land subject to an 'Oriental despotism. As Halhed proudly proclaimed, his 'Code
of Gentoo Laws' offered a 'complete confutation of the belief too common in Europe, that
the Hindoos have no written laws whatever'. Yet the amassing of Sanskrit texts did not
put an end to the notion that India was a distinctively 'Oriental' land. Men like Jones saw
themselves not only as rescuing India's ancient laws, but as ordering these 'original texts'
in a 'scientific method'. This 'method' involved the assumption, foreign to indigenous
Indian scholarship, that somewhere there existed fixed bodies of prescriptive knowledge
 in India - one for Hindus and one for Muslims - and that the closest approach to certainty
was to be gained by establishing the oldest texts. These alone were authoritative; all
subsequent versions were invariably corrupted by the accretions and commentaries of
later ages,
• To be sure, during the Renaissance Europeans had themselves looked to the classical past
for 'authentic' knowledge. But after the seventeenth-century battle of the ancients and
moderns', and the subsequent adoption of the idea of 'progress', such notions had fallen
out of favour. By Jones's time, though the British steeped themselves in the classics of
Greece and Rome, they took pride in the Europe of their own time as 'modern' and
'progressive'. Asia alone was a land where all greatness was to be found in antiquity. The
outcome of British study of the ancient texts, in Jones's view, was to be a 'complete
digest' of Hindu and Muslim law, which could be enforced in the Company's courts, and
would preserve 'inviolate' the rights of the Indian people.As Jones proudly told Lord
Cornwallis, the governor-general, with such a code the British government could give to
the people of India 'security for the due administration of justice among them, similar to
that which Justinian gave to his Greek and Roman subjects. Cornwallis, Jones's patron,
would thus become the 'Justinian of India'.
• Nor was Jones the first to conceive of Britain's role in India in these terms. Halhed
had already in 1776 held up the model of the Romans, who 'not only allowed to their
foreign subjects the free exercise of their own religion, and the administration of their
own civil jurisdiction, but ... even naturalized such parts of the mythology of the
conquered, as were in any respect compatible with their own system'. Parallels between
Britain's empire and that of Rome, as we shall see, were to be drawn ever more
insistently as time went on.
• The notion that there existed original texts', and that these could be taken as
representing an enduring Indian reality, inevitably meant that any code based on
these texts would devalue India's historic experience. The contrast with the British
conception of their own law was striking. The common law, which formed the basis of
jurisprudence in England, was, to be sure, based upon a presumption of antiquity and
stability in legal culture. Precedent was honored, and the origins of the law were sought
in the forests of Saxon times. In England too, as in India, the law was meant to fit the
'disposition' and 'habits' of the people whose lives it shaped. Yet the common law, as a
succession of precedents derived from individual cases, flexible in accommodating
multiple interpretations, embodied in its very nature the history of England. In it could be
seen, so English jurisprudence believed, the changing 'habits' and 'usages' of the English
people. There was no sense that Hindu 'usages' were similarly responsive to historical
change.
• To the contrary, Jones's conception of Hindu law implied that Indians lived a
timeless existence. In practice, the British courts in India, as at home, developed their
own case law, including such distinctive forms as 'Anglo-Muhammadan law', so that by
the later nineteenth century most pleading in the courts was conducted on the basis of
prior judicial decisions. The idea of India as a country somehow lost in time nevertheless
 remained, and was to have profound effects not only on the working of the British Indian
judicial system, but on the fundamental structures of the Raj itself.
{
Company Raj needed some rule of law for its legitimacy and did not want to be perceived as an
absolutist or dictatorial rule because it wanted to show that the Raj is making the nation (India)
civilised and 'rule of law' was the only source that could lend legitimacy to its opposing present
nature (i.e., despotic rule). Warren Hastings' jurisprudence was fundamentally based on two
convictions. The first, as stated by Bernard Cohn, is that there is a fixed body of rules or codes
that were established earlier by lawgivers but have become corrupted due to multiple
interpretations and commentaries. As a result, Hastings believed that it was necessary to first
purify or extract the pure version of this rule, which would reduce their reliance on Sanskrit or
Arabic academics for interpretations and further institutionalise the law. The second conviction
of Hastings was that there is some type of law that regulates both Hindus and Muslims in civil
suits such as marriage, inheritance, and so on. He referred to these regulations as the 'Law of
Koran' for Muslims and the 'Law of Shastras' for Hindus. In distinguishing between Hindus and
Muslims, Hastings split various sectarian communities that are defined by their belief systems,
customs, and practises into two that are defined by their textual traditions. In doing so, Hastings
discovered a means to organise Indian society around religious identities, which helped to shape
Indian identity in the years that followed. To gain the full picture of tradition, all of the original
text had to be collected and assembled; doing so revealed the law-making process. Hastings
assembled a panel of Sanskrit legal professors or pandits for the compilation of Hindu (Gentoo)
Laws. The experts went over each book line by line and then picked all of them, and then other
scholars translated all of the Sanskrit laws into Persian because Britishers didn't understand
Sanskrit, and then from Persian it was translated to English in the same speech, tenor. Within a
decade, several British jurists and officials learnt Sanskrit and encouraged Orientalist scholarship
on studying Sanskrit, the major goal of which was to make all previous Indian literature in
Sanskrit accessible. Because Britishers desired a fixed set of laws or text, they prioritised
Brahminical text over the customs and traditions that local bodies followed, which varied
according to caste and region, and also until 1864, due to this Sanskritization drive, Brahman
pandits enjoyed the dominant role of 'law-finders' and had an unprecedented role in decision-
making. All of this progress contributes to the Brahmanization of Indian law. Finally, the
introduction of English case laws, which superseded the ancient methods, aided in the
development of law and procedure.
By undertaking this process of law consolidation, they gained an insight of the Indian
Civilization as a whole, as well as mastery over the old wisdom produced by this understanding.
However, this also resulted in what many authors refer to as Oriental Despotism, which states
that anything the tyrant stated was incorporated in law and the existence of knowledge and that
nothing outside his will existed. Warren Hastings, the then-Governor-General in the 1770s,
stated that Hindus have had their rules since antiquity, which are still very much intact in their
current form. So, the British must respect these existing rules and acquire the Sanskrit language
(the language of law), as well as respect the customs of the new subjects (i.e., Indians), while
also attempting to avoid interfering in matters pertaining to those laws in order for them to work
properly. According to several historians, his generosity toward culture and learning about
ancient India was motivated by two factors: intellectual interests and the practicality of
administrative difficulties. His perspectives were impacted by the ongoing Enlightenment effort
in his home country. Where he understands the importance of knowing any culture which helps
in gaining a sense of humanity among the ruler and the ruled and also it would be a fruitful
exercise not only in the scholastic area but also help the state in a variety of ways, one of the
most important being that their rules appear less foreign to the subjects. And it instils a sense of
goodness not only in Indians but also in their countrymen.
This school of thought was neither uninterested in its themes nor entirely manipulative. This era
had a tremendous impact on rule of Raj in India, as well as the legislative process and the
British understanding of India. The first influence was Europeans' conviction in the existence of
a separate religion known as 'Hinduism' ,which they defined as an Indian devotional activity
designated, organised, or developed through the markers of priests and texts. This version of the
theory gained traction in the late eighteenth century, when Britishers obtained a better
understanding of Indian culture, knowledge, customs, and so on. As a result, it gained traction
and developed a 'legitimate' religion, namely Hinduism. Britishers felt that the sacred scriptures
of Hinduism and Christianity, as well as the pronouncements of priests (Brahmans in Hinduism)
had coherency in their texts.According to them, the ancient Sanskrit scripture conveyed
Hinduism's beliefs, which not only morally obligated people but also provided legal remedies.
This was the result of the laborious process of text interpretation begun by Hastings earlier, in
which they discovered a connection between Sanskrit texts and Hinduism as a religion, and the
achievement of a precise idea of ancient customs and laws led to the introduction of a new
government system in Bengal. Previously, the British assumed that Brahmans were the
dominating element of society, but after interpreting ancient manuscripts and reading about
Indian civilizations, this notion proved to be correct, influencing the British to adopt a more
favourable view of Brahmins. It was also shown throughout the interpretation work that
Brahmins received a degree of personal adoration, as a kind of worship in which they exalted
Brahman's intellect and honoured their positions in society, as Halhed argued. Although
Britishers were sceptical of the Brahminical assertions, they persisted due to societal support of
the same notion. It is important to mention that, while Brahmans were the primary beneficiaries
of Britishers' ideology, they did not totally agree with the assertion that the Hindu religion is only
a collection of writings; instead, they believed it to be a living system. As a result, people were
sometimes not participating and were also revolting against the British authorities for denying
the custom, religion, or vernacular tradition.
This legal process called into question the long-held belief that India was an Oriental dictatorial
land. This procedure also disproved the widely held idea in Europe that Hindoos lack written
law. However, it should not be misunderstood that even when Britishers stopped thinking of
India as the home of tyrannical Orientals, they still thought of India as Oriental. At the time,
British scholars saw themselves as the rescuers of ancient Indian laws, as well as scientifically
arranging all the laws, and they believed that there was already a fixed prescriptive body of text
for both Hindus and Muslims, and the only way to establish these laws with certainty was to
obtain it through the oldest texts. These writings alone remain entire and pure authoritative, but
future changes in the text corrupted it due to commentary and accretions produced depending on
the makers' philosophy. This deviation in text interpretation alone can be linked to Renaissance
Europe, where people later adopted the concept of 'progress' and 'modernity.' According to Jones
the end result of this process was the creation of a "complete digest" of both Muslim and Hindu
law that could be enforced and Indian people (rather than subjects) get their rights and proper
administration of justice can be done as Justinian did for his Greek and Roman "subjects." As a
result, Cornwallis, the then-Governor-General of India, desired to provide Indians with the
assurance of their legal rights. According to Whig's philosophy which Cornwallis followed, the
people would get safety, the safety of property by the state.
The concept of 'original texts' embodying India's enduring reality was devaluing India's historic
experience, which unavoidably meant that all the conditioning and other happenings in ancient
India were constructed in a text and Indian experiences were judged by those texts. This is
noteworthy when compared to how the British perceive their own legal system. Back home, the
British had the Common Law system, which was based on the presumption of antiquity and
stability in legal culture. Also, the system of jurisprudence was precedent, where it was assumed
that society changes its disposition and habits, and that the law establishes its tenor in response to
these changes, or that the law was flexible in this regard. But there was no indication in Britain
that Hindu 'usages' were changing over time. They believed that Indian customs or ways of life
were timeless. In actual practise in India, the British courts built their case laws over time and
conducted subsequent judicial processes based on those case laws, implying that the relevance of
Hindu or Muslim law waned as cases were developed by the courts.
}

Sati
Apart from the caste system, the custom of sati and the plight of widows were two major social
ills in 18th-century India. Sati was a Hindu widow's rite of self-immolation alongside the body of
her deceased spouse. It was most common in Rajputana, Bengal, and other northern Indian
states. It was unusual in the South, and the Marathas discouraged it. Even in Rajputana and
Bengal, only the households of rajas, chiefs, rich zamindars, and upper castes practised it.
Widows from higher classes and castes could not remarry, yet widow remarriage was extremely
prevalent in some regions and castes, for example, among non-brahmins in Maharashtra, the Jats,
and those from the hill regions of the North. The Hindu widow's condition was usually
miserable. Her attire, nutrition, movements, and so on were all restricted. In general, she was
supposed to give up all earthly pleasures and to serve selflessly members of her husband's or her
brother's family, depending on where she lived the rest of her life.
The practise of Sati was much more than what we can call a religous custom or ceremony. Sati's
origins can be traced back to Hindu mythology, to Shiva's wife Sati, who self-immolated herself
upon witnessing the insult of her husband Shiva. In the early nineteenth century, public debate
was the new dimension of social interaction in India. The printing and translation of literature
into multiple languages (as was happening in Europe at the same time), as well as the assistance
of local intellectuals, were important factors in igniting the Sati debate among the British and
others. As texts were printed and shared, educated Indians, including those outside of
government, developed a public forum for discussion and debate. And, regardless of their
attitudes (points of view), the existence of meetings in public, phamplets, and voluntary societies
signalled the creation of a new 'modern' India. Originating in Calcutta, this kind of public
activism expanded to other capitals and, more slowly, into the interiors of the British Empire,
where debates with Christian missionaries began and raised some key issues for further
discussion.
Lord William Bentinck's greatest achievement was the eradication of Sati in 1829, and
implementing this reformist agenda was not an easy feat for him because funds were extremely
scarce at the time, and Bentinck was particularly concerned about hurting the sentiments of
Indians (anatagonization of customary practise intervention by an outsider). Although Sati was
celebrated in the 18th century as a heroic act of self-sacrifice, by the time of Benedict (1828-35),
it had come to be regarded as barbarous in nature, presenting India as a nation thirsty for blood in
the name of faith. Above all, English men began to argue that it is the fatal flaw of Indian men,
not to nurture and protect their wives, but rather to contribute to the degeneration of their wives'
lives (This demonstrates the British's highly paternalistic attitude as well as ignorance of widows'
opinions by solely focusing on its own understanding). According to certain historians, Sati was
not a rule in Hindu culture, but rather an anomaly that was practised mostly by Rajputs of North
India and Rajasthan, as well as the Vijaynagara in the south. However, it was most prevalent
during the British period, spreading to Calcutta and surrounding areas, ironically in areas where
there was higher development experiences, not just among the upper caste but also among the
lower castes (peasants class), who sought to legitimise their new status of social mobility by
imitating their upper class lords. Sati's popularity here stems not only from this tradition, but also
from a property factor. The relatives of the deceased demanded that the Sati should be continued
because they did not want to lose a share of property; they wanted a weaker wife but not a
widow with property; and this issue is prevalent primarily in the Dayabhaga school of thought
(greater right to inherit property) as opposed to the Mitakshara school of thought (no property
rights for widows). Though Christian missionaries were the first to condemn Sati, it was Raja
Rammohun Roy who gave the cause a push. Finally, Bentinck dissolved it in 1829 through a
government order that could not be overturned by an anti-abolitionist Dharma Sabha appeal to
the privy council in 1830. Although the practise was outlawed, it lingered in popular culture, as
evidenced by epics, ballads, and folktales. It returned in public life as recently as 1989, in Roop
Kanwar's Sati at Deorala village in Rajasthan.
Despite the fact that he was responding to furious liberal and evangelical opinion, Bentinck took
pains to gain Indian backing, particularly from a panel of Brahman pandits who assured him that
the practise was not mandated by 'scripture,' and he presented himself as an enlightened Hindu
ruler. Despite its visibility, sati was not extensively practised in Bengal, with about about 800
occurrences per year at most which means it was not practised widely but supported due. As a
result, prohibiting sati could satisfy the liberal reformist drive without risking causing an
uprising. Other, more pervasive customs, such as female infanticide among the Rajputs of
northern India, were circumvented cautiously by the British.
Despite the fact that colonial narratives about Sati contradicted Indian reality, colonial accounts
portrayed Sati from the angle of a "civilising process" standpoint. Arguments were made about
the well being and support of widows without actually taking into account the opinion of widows
themselves, effectively excluding them from the discussion. This can be referred to as a
'paternalistic' notion since the government decided what should be done for the 'nurtarance' of
widows because Indian males were unable to do so (according to the British) and women were
denied the option. The most significant element was the exclusion of widows from the debate,
which is now centred on whether she should "survive her husband or be burned on his husband's
funeral pyre." Furthermore, this discussion obscured the underlying motivation for abolishing
Sati (evident from colonial portrayal of horrors of Sati). In this regard, Edward Said stated that
colonial narratives of indigenous populations, relying on orientalist assumptions, presented a
misleading narrative of the locals, thereby legitimising the necessity for western evangelical
intervention to "civilise the 'savage' man."
Missionaries appeared to be sympathetic about widows' condition, but their frequent recourse on
discourse of horror in the context of metropolitan caricatured the sufferings and pain of widows
along with their dehumanised existence. Furthermore, the social ill-treatment of indigenous
women was often viewed as evidence of the need for 'evangelism.'To further complicate the
question of Sati's violence, European authorities and missionaries read about Sati based on their
own conception of "conjugal love" (claim nowhere mentioned in indigenous literature). This
notion that wifely responsibility is given due consideration in the scriptures was thus translated
into the bourgeois notion of women's devotion and sacrifice for her husband.
Lata Mani contends that colonial speech impacted the Indian debate and influenced indigenous
perception. The British saw brahminical books as gospel truth and regarded religion in the form
of scriptures as influencing social structures and a complete guide for indigenous society's
functioning. Religion was supposed to regulate social life, and religious rituals were taken from
scripture texts. It indicates that religion was considered to be in accordance with scripture, and
any deviation from the practise was regarded as evidence of the social practice's inauthenticity.
As a result, the scripture-based version of sati was legally established and policed by EIC
officials in 1813. However, this colonial perspective based on texts was not in line with reality,
as evidenced by interactions between officials and missionaries and the public, particularly court
commentators. This was incompatible with the heterogeneous nature of society, and the
discourse was unfamiliar and perplexing to the general public. However, their understanding of
obscurity did not allow them to shift their perception, and they remained committed to the
presumptions they had formed about the practices. They relied on their own understanding of the
problem by "ignoring, marginalising, domesticating, and exceptionalizing" anything that didn't
fit well with their presumptions. As a result, they used their own ideas and beliefs to develop
this other view of reality. Despite contradicting statements from widows, European eyewitness
records on sati depicted it as a religious act showing the devotion of the wife as the material
underpinning of the practise. Furthermore, colonial knowledge or understanding was elevated
above indigenous knowledge. So, despite the fact that indigenous people were active in the
production of knowledge, their contributions were altered by British, rendering indigenous
scholars' discourse subordinate to that of Britishers. For example, there are disagreements
between pandits and authorities about how texts should be interpreted and how much weight they
should be given. Colonials, on the other hand, lay out what to read in the book as
recommendations to the pundits through their process of evidence protocols and disciplinary
measures.
In various regions, Bhadralok (gentleman of society) debated the widow burning argument with
British officials, either for or against the widow burning. The talks were independent in other
places. Pamphlets on sati, for example, to diverge from official deliberations. Its objections
focused on the actual content of the texts and their repercussions, rather than the form of the
texts. When texts differed on aspects relating to widow burning (necessity of practise, its
purpose, individual rights in this regard, etc.), they were not regarded as contradictions, but
rather as differences of opinion in which each claimed authenticity of their own reading of the
text. The link between the two types of discourse is rife with similarities and differences. Though
both were involved with scriptures, their approaches to them were very different. Over time,
there was a trend towards a more colonial direction, such as an increased equivalence of scripture
and law. The conflation of tradition with Brahminism, as well as the stress on the earlier
existence of Hindu age and collapse due to Islamic tyranny. Thus, we can deduce that when
problems such as monotheism or the role of ritual in religious discourse (in pre-colonial India)
were addressed, there was a perceptible shift in the method and objective of the debate.
Bhadralok became more involved in colonial discourse because one of the techniques for
colonial rule was conflicts over tradition, and bhadralok could be the class that protected the
proper tradition. However, in establishing itself as a distinct class, it attempted to reconstruct
tradition in light of many social challenges, the most important of which was the status of
women. Yet, the argument over sati demonstrates that it did not result in women's liberation and
instead reconstructed patriarchy and caste. This is not to say that females did not gain anything,
but any social advantages for women were limited to the upper caste and class, and came at the
expense of increased surveillance of behaviour as it became associated with men's honour. The
Brahminic text interpretation (from a British perspective) denied non-upper caste women of
customary rights and liberties by placing them in a restricted purview.
Rammohun Roy's role was also crucial in the practise of elimination of the Sati institution. As
we know, the attack against Sati was launched by 'missionaries,' who were aided by his string
abolitionist crusade. He is regarded as an important nineteenth-century figure from India in the
critical investigation of Indian heritage to craft out the evils. He makes similar arguments to
Bhadralok about ' reasoning-based scripture.' However, Sumit Sarkar, as stated by Lata Mani,
critiqued Roy's view of modernity as authoritarian and contradictory. He also contended that
Rammohun Roy's own texts transitioned from arguments based on reason in "Tuhfat" to
arguments based on Brahminical scriptures.
Widows were marginalised because colonial officials either walked away or just voiced their
own point of view, which marginalised the widow's perspective. Her viewpoint on whether she
should live or be burned was ignored, and her voice was drowned out in official talks on Hindu
law. She is a victim of the British fear that if they interfered in a religious ritual, there would be
political and economic anarchy. Ignorance fostered by the Bhadralok discourse, which focused
on the ritual's position in Hindu religion, also contributed to widows' marginalisation.
Missionaries showed concern, but not truly for the women's benefit, by dehumanising them and
using this as a tool in their own mission. Because missionaries had a misunderstanding of the
street audiences who were the recipients. And the low rate of conversion makes them
unconcerned about the situation.

In this brief afterword, I delincate some of the themes of my analysis of the multiple stakes and
determinations of the discourses that constituted the debate on widow burning between 1780 and
1833. In undertaking a work of this kind one is in critical dialoguc not merely with the
ideologues of the time but also with what has been claimed about them by subsequent
historiography. Such claims, as we have seen in the case at hand, are often very mislcading.
Colonialist historiography, for example, has represented the prohibition of widow burning as an
instance of the civilizing mission, an assertion hardly sustainable in a close reading of the terms
upon which the discussions proceeded. Similarly, the argument that the Bengal Renaissance
initiated a radical break turns out, upon inspection, to require a reconceptualization. Perhaps the
most striking feature is the astonishing marginality of the widow to this debate over whether she
should survive her husband or be burned on his funeral pyre. She is buried under a welter of
official deliberations on "Hindu law," and becomes hostage to colonial superstition about the
political and economic chaos that it was presumed would ensuc from intervention in a practice
insistently coded as religious, dcspite evidence to the contrary. In bhadralok discourse she
disappears behind an abstract scripturalism. Although the bhadralok were cognizant that the
justification for widow burning rested on particular conceptions of women's nature, they were
ultimately more interested in debating the proper place of ritual within Hinduism. Missionaries
appear to show concern for the widow's plight. However, their frcquent recourse to a
discourse of horror, especially in the metropolitan context, caricatured her suffering and
dehumanized her existence. Furthermore, in their case, the social ill-treatment of indigenous
women largely served as evidence for the paramount necessity for evangelism. All parties
normalized the violence of sati, and ambivalence toward the practice is evident in the writings of
both those for and those against it. Thus Rammohun could approvingly cite sati as exemplifying
women's fortitude even as he articulated his opposition to the practice and argued that it was in
most cases involuntary. Meanwhile, European officials and missionaries could read into widow
burning their own narrative about conjugal love ----a claim for sati nowhere made by the
indigenous literati. A conception of wifely duty given credence by some brahmanic scriptures
was thus translated into a bourgeois notion of a woman's love and sacrifice for her husband,
adding another layer of obfuscation to the violence of sati. A key argument of this book is that a
specifically colonial discourse on Indian socicty informed the debate on widow immolation and
initiated shifts in indigenous perception. British colonial officials conceived of brahmanic texts
as authentic, legitimate, and exhaustive guides to indigenous society. Religion was presumed to
structure social life, and all practices were seen to derive from the scriptural texts. Religion was
equated with scripture, and any evidence of a divergence of social practice from scriptural texts
was seen to confirm the practice's inauthenticity. Thus it was that a particular version of sati was
codified as legal in 1813 and policed by East India Company officials. Likewise we find the
Baptist missionaries challenging the natives they met to defend their practices in terms of
brahmanic scriptures, seeking to shame them for their "ignorance" of these texts, which was
widespread. This discourse on India was not invented from whole cloth. It drew on
contemporaneous European intellectual and philosophical currents, among them orientalism,
protestantism, evangelism, and utilitarianism. These structured a colonial view of Indian society
which was shared by missionarics and colonial officials alike, among whom numbered many
preeminent orientalists. Colonial perception was incommensurable with the heterogeneous
actuality of the society officials and missionaries encountered. It is clear from the early
interactions of colonial officials with court pundits, that the discourse of the former was alien and
puzzling to the latter. A similar process was observable in the interactions between the Baptist
missionaries and their subaltern audiences. Both court pundits and street
audiances articulated their own understanding of the circumscribed place of text in religion and
daily life, the importance of custom, and a view of the relationship of religion to material
practice which was not one of correspondence. Such cvidence did not, however, challenge
colonial knowledge. Officials and missionaries secured an insistence on their own view by
ignoring, marginalizing, domesticating, and exceptionalizing whatever did not accord with their
presumptions. These tactics were not always instrumental in the narrow sense. They illustrate
how ideology literally constructs "reality.” The extraordinary way in which colonial discourse
continued to constitute the object of its perception in its own terms is clearly illustrated in
European cyewitness accounts of widow burning, which represent sati, as a religious act of
wifely devotion in the face of the coercion of women, and of widows' testimonials regarding the
material basis of the practice. In addition, there was the a priori arrogation of the supremacy of
colonial over indigenous knowledge. Thus although indigenous persons were integrally involved
in the production of colonial knowledge, their writings were recast in specific ways, making their
discourse a structurally subordinate one, especially when they were employees of the East India
Company. Accordingly, in chapter I we traced the contest between colonial officials. and pundits
over the form, status, and interpretation of scriptural texts. Colonial officials, however, through
their disciplinary procedures and evidentiary protocols laid down the principles by which these
texts were to be read, guidelines that over time shaped the vyawasthas of pundits. The shifts
initiated by colonial discourse were far from total. The discursive traces of colonialism are most
discernible when bhadralok sought to communicate with the East India Company, as in
vyawasthas, or in pctitions for or against widow burning. Elsewhere the terms of bhadralok
discussion were quite distinct, and relatively autonomous from official concerns. Indigenous
pamphlets on sati are a good example here. For although these, too, engaged scripture, they did
so in ways that differed from official deliberations. In general the bhadralok were less concerned
about the form of these texts and more interested in contesting their content. Thus, we find them
challenging each other on particular interpretations of textual fragments, and their philosophical
implications as well as social consequences. They are engaged in a frankly evaluative process,
and in no way seek to crase the impress of their own readings, even while claiming transparency
and authenticity for their positions. The disagreements of texts on virtually all the issues raised
by widow burning (its necessity and purpose, the right of individuals to take their
own life, the goal of human existence, the place of ritual in religious worship, etc.) were scen not
as contradictions but as differences of opinion. The texts are not conceived, as in the official
view, as static mirrors of an ideal society. Nor is there an obsessive concern with ordering texts
according to their antiquity. Rather, there is a tendency to simultaneously cite a great variety of
sources, and to mix genres of texts, features that are absent from petitions that tend to focus on
the Vedas and Manusmriti to the exclusion of other texts, in recognition of the interpretive
priorities of officials. Bhadralok discourse was thus not derivative of colonial rhetoric. As argued
in chapter 2, this relationship is better characterized as one of intersection and disjunction. Even
when both framed their arguments within scripture, for example, each brought a distinctive set of
concerns to their articulation of it. Notwithstanding this fact, however, one may note that over
time there is in bhadralok discourse a drift in a specifically colonial direction. Among the
clements that one may point to here are the increasing equation of scripture and law, the
conflation of tradition with brahmanism, and the conviction of the existence of a prior Hindu
golden age and its fall as precipitated by an Islamic tyranny. Thus we sce that even when issues
that had been engaged in precolonial India are taken up, such as monotheism or the place of
ritual in religious life, there is a discernible transformation in the mode and goal of the argument.
This shift is clearly traceable in the writings of Rammohun Roy, which move from a forceful
critique of religion in terms drawn from Islamic rationalism and devotional vaishnavism, to the
reform of Hinduism conceived as a return to vedantism. The increasing entanglement of
bhadralok with official discourse is comprehensible not merely because of the growing
consolidation of colonial power, but also in part because contests over tradition became integral
to colonial ideology of rule, and this class could take upon itself the custodianship of tradition
proper. No wonder, then, that the making of this class proceeded in part through the supposed
remaking of tradition in relation to a range of social issues, the most célèbrated of which
involved the status of women. The increasing focus on women has been mistakenly conceived as
signifying a new and thoroughly modern concern for their rights as individuals. What is,
however, abundantly clear. in examining the debate on sati, the first of these causes célèbres, is
that, far from signaling any such concern, these debates became the context in which the
bhadralok remade itself in relation to the so-called lower orders and to colonial power. In that
sense, it may be no exaggeration
to say that these debates reconstituted patriarchy and caste much more than liberating women
into modernity. This is not to say that women experienced no social gains. Such gains were
mostly limited to uppercaste and upper-class women, however, and were made in return for a
greater scrutiny of their behavior, which was now scen increasingly to reflect upon the honor of
the men of their familics and, by extension, their communities. As for non-brahmin women, the
generation of colonial law from brahmanic texts deprived them of their customary rights and
freedoms by placing them within the enclosure of its restrictive purview. While elements of
colonial chetoric might be found to inflect and at times reshape bhadralok consciousness, the
uneven reach of the colonial state implied a differential relation between colonial and subaltern
discourses. One must proceed carefully here for our access to subaltern discourses in the present
study is minimal, certainly compared to that of the bhadralok, among whom widow burning
predominated. Furthermore such material as we do have is from the early years of the period
under consideration. These qualifications notwithstanding, it seems clear that these groups were
largely impervious to the cultural logic of colonialism. One may note here that the street
audiences of missionaries neither comprehended nor cared to engage missionary critique of their
faith, life, and religious practice. To the despair of missionaries, they either walked away or else
simply stated their view of things: that their practice was customary, that those who had leisure
might pay attention to the shastras, thất the nature of their employment reflected material
necessity, and so on. The poor record of conversions suggests a gcncral, continued indifference
to the evangelists' message. If the missionaries had little power to enforce their worldview on
these groups, the colonial state had little interest in doing so. The latter established a relation of
force with the laboring classes, not one in which they were cither invited or enlisted into its
cultural logic and remade through disciplinary, reformist projects. As should by now bc clcar,
official, missionary, and bhadralok discourses were not homogeneous but internally
differentiated. Although official and missionary perceptions densely overlapped and reiterated
one another, each brought its own concerns to bear. Ultimately, for the East India Company in
Bengal the prohibition of widow burning was a law-and-order problem, given their analysis of
Indian society. The Court of Directors in London also took this view, although the pressure of
public opinion and their distance from the colony made them more apt
to note, without in any way bclaboring, the ethical issues involved in tolerance of sati.
Missionaries, especially in Britain, expressed vociferously their opposition to the practice in
moral terms. Baptists in India, however, explicitly engaged the terms by which the discussion
proceeded in Bengal, their ethical concerns being incorporated into such arguments as a minor
and infrequent theme. However, both in Britain and India, evangelists brought a specific concern
for the consequence of widow burning for family and society which was absent from official
discussions. Bhadralok writings on sati were similarly varied. There was a specificity to the
discourse of Bengali newspapers, pamphlets, and petitions to the East India Company. Petitions
most directly engaged colonial rhetoric; newspapers were a primarily autonomous realın, except
in the period immediately before and after legislative prohibition; and pamphlets occupied an
intermediate third space. These discourses existed in determinate, evolving, and specifiable
relations of complementarity, contestation, and disjunction with each other. As a final word, I
would like to clarify the burden of the project undertaken here. In the years that I have presented
this material I have on occasion been criticized for bringing to it a late-twentieth-century feminist
perspective which, it is claimed, makes me unsympathetic to the cultural milieux of the late
eighteenth and carly nineteenth century. The point, however, is not to blame colonialists for not
properly enacting the civilizing mission; nor to berate the bhadralok for not being authentically
modern. Rather, it is to sort through the grand claims of the historiography of both groups, so
that the submerged truths, ironies, contradictions, and paradoxes can be brought to the surface.
Without such a move, the real legacies of colonialism and of nineteenth-century social reform
cannot bc narrativized. While both have arrogated to themselves the agency of history, the
widows' valiant and persistent efforts at self-preservation and self-affirmation have been fatally
occluded. Even though widows who were questioned at the pyre consistently spoke the naked
truths of terror, of their coercion by family members, and of the material distresses of
widowhood, their voices have not been attended to. It is hoped that the testimonials here
analyzed will serve to bury once and for all that violent fiction of sati as a dutiful act of religious
volition.