Systematizing Religion: from Tahiti to the Tat Khalsa

  • Tony Ballantyne
Chapter
Part of the Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series book series (CIPCSS)

Abstract

So far this study has focused on the relationship between race and language within debates over Aryanism, tracing the rise of Company Orientalism, the dissemination of ethnological models from British India throughout the empire, and the ways in which Aryanism reshaped a range of colonial identities, ideologies and institutions. In this chapter, my analysis shifts to focus on ‘religion’, a key but often neglected problematic within histories of colonialism. Colonial governments exercised authority over communities whose cosmologies and ritual traditions were at sharp variance with the Protestant traditions that many Britons hoped to transplant to the frontiers of empire. Here I argue that the reality of cultural difference within the empire not only worked to invest the category of ‘religion’ with particular salience, but that it also transformed European understandings of the very meaning of ‘religion’. British imperial expansion in the later eighteenth century provided vast amounts of fresh evidence about non-Christian cultures and new testing-grounds for European theories about the nature of religion. The extension of British mercantile and missionary activity into the Pacific and the hinterlands of the great South Asian port cities brought the informal and formal servants of empire into contact with a range of ‘new’, and often challenging, beliefs and practices.

Keywords

Indian Society Colonial State Missionary Activity Hindu Tradition Indian Religion 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. 1.
    S. N. Balagangadhara, ‘The Heathen in his Blindness’: Asia, the West, and the Dynamic of Religion (Leiden, 1994).Google Scholar
  2. 2.
    Jonathon Z. Smith, Imagining Religion: from Babylon to Jonestown (Chicago, 1982), xi; Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, S. Rendall trans. (Berkeley, CA, 1984), 50.Google Scholar
  3. 3.
    Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore, MD, 1993), 28–9.Google Scholar
  4. 5.
    Peter Harrison, ‘Religion’ and the Religions in the English Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1990), 20–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  5. 6.
    Smith, Imagining Religion, 49; Richard King, Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India and the ‘Mystic East’ (London, 1999), 10–11.Google Scholar
  6. 7.
    For example, R. Po-Chia Hsia, Social Discipline in the Reformation: Central Europe, 1550–1750 (London, 1989).Google Scholar
  7. 8.
    Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York, 1971), 25–77,Google Scholar
  8. 10.
    David Chidester, Savage Systems: Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern Africa (Charlottesville, VA, 1996), 12.Google Scholar
  9. 11.
    Bernard Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific, 1768–1850: a Study in the History of Art and Ideas (Oxford, 1960) and Imagining the Pacific: in the Wake of the Cook Voyages (London, 1992).Google Scholar
  10. 13.
    Joseph Banks, The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks 1768–1771, J. C. Beaglehole ed., 2 vols (Sydney, 1962), II, 29.Google Scholar
  11. 14.
    O. H. K. Spate, Paradise Found and Lost (Rushcutters Bay, NSW, 1988), 246;Google Scholar
  12. G. Chinard, ‘Introduction’, to Denis Diderot, Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville (Paris, 1955), 72–8.Google Scholar
  13. 22.
    John Hawkesworth (ed.) An account of the voyages undertaken by the order of His Present Majesty for making discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere, 3 vols (London, 1773), III, 472.Google Scholar
  14. 28.
    Jane Samson, Imperial Benevolence: Making British Authority in the Pacific Islands (Honululu, HI, 1998), 24–43.Google Scholar
  15. 29.
    For a contemporary criticism of this policy see J. S. Polack, Manners and Customs of New Zealand, 2 vols (London, 1838), I, 147.Google Scholar
  16. 30.
    William Colenso, ‘On the Maori Races of New Zealand’, TPNZI, 1 (1868), appendix, 43.Google Scholar
  17. 31.
    William Williams, Christianity Among the New Zealanders (London, 1867), 18.Google Scholar
  18. 34.
    Augustus Earle, Narrative of a Residence in New Zealand. Journal of a Residence in Tristan da Cunha, E. H. McCormick ed. (Oxford, 1966), 126.Google Scholar
  19. 35.
    Elsdon Best, Some Aspects of Maori Myth and Religion (Wellington, 1922), 9.Google Scholar
  20. 36.
    Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church. Part One (London, 1966), 441.Google Scholar
  21. 38.
    Samuel Marsden, Journal, 11 March 1830, The Letters and Journals of Samuel Marsden 1765–1838, J. R. Elder ed. (Dunedin, 1932), 462.Google Scholar
  22. 40.
    P. J. Marshall and Glyndwr Williams, The Great Map of Mankind. British Perceptions of the World in the Age of Enlightenment (London, 1982), 98.Google Scholar
  23. 41.
    Cited in P. J. Marshall (ed.) The British Discovery of Hinduism in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1970), 24.Google Scholar
  24. 42.
    Joseph Priestly, A Comparison of the Institutes of Moses with those of the Hindoos and other Ancient Nations (Northumberland, 1799), 33.Google Scholar
  25. 44.
    Rosane Rocher, ‘British Orientalism in the eighteenth century: the dialectics of knowledge and government’, Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament. Perspectives on South Asia, Carol Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer, eds (Philadelphia, 1993), 230;Google Scholar
  26. C. J. Fuller, The Camphor Flame: Popular Hinduism and Society in India (Princeton, NJ, 1992).Google Scholar
  27. 45.
    Luke Scrafton, Reflections on the government, & c., of Indostan: and a short sketch of the History of Bengal, from the year 1739 to 1756 (Edinburgh, 1761), 5.Google Scholar
  28. 47.
    Monier Monier-Williams, Indian Wisdom or Examples of the Religious, Philosophical, and Ethical Doctrines of the Hindus (London, 1875), xxvi.Google Scholar
  29. 48.
    Monier-Williams, Hinduism (London, 1877), 11–13, 134, 151.Google Scholar
  30. 49.
    Charles Grant, ‘Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain’, Appendix to Report from the Select Committee on the Affairs of the East India Company with Minutes of Evidence Volume I, GBPP, 1831- (734) VIII.Google Scholar
  31. 50.
    Walter L. Arnstein, Protestant versus Catholic in Mid-Victorian England (Columbia, MO, 1982), 214.Google Scholar
  32. 52.
    Allan K. Davidson, Evangelicals and Attitudes to India 1786–1813. Missionary Publicity and Claudius Buchanan (n.p., 1990), 47.Google Scholar
  33. 53.
    J. Long, Handbook of Bengal Missions in Connection with the Church of England (London, 1848), 93–4.Google Scholar
  34. 55.
    James Mill, The History of British India. Fifth edition with notes and continuation by Horace Hayman Wilson, 10 vols (London, 1858), I, 229, 267, 277.Google Scholar
  35. 56.
    H. H. Wilson, Two Lectures on the Religious Practices and Opinions of the Hindus; delivered before the University of Oxford on the 27th and 28th February, 1840 (Oxford, 1840), 4, 26, 37.Google Scholar
  36. Also see H. H. Wilson, Sketch of the Religious Sects of the Hindus (Calcutta, 1846), 5.Google Scholar
  37. 59.
    Sir Alfred C. Lyall, Asiatic Studies Religious and Social (London, 1882), 288.Google Scholar
  38. 61.
    Sir Alfred Lyall, Natural Religion in India. The Rede Lecture Delivered in the Senate House on June 17, 1891 (Cambridge, 1891), 12, 10.Google Scholar
  39. 64.
    Thomas Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj (Cambridge, 1995), 137.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  40. 68.
    Charles Wilkins, ‘Observations and Inquiries concerning the Seeks and their College, at Patna’, AR, 1 (1788), 292.Google Scholar
  41. 69.
    Monier-Williams, Hinduism, 142n; Monier Monier-Williams, Brahmanism and Hinduism or Religious Thought and life in India based on the Veda and other sacred books of the Hindus, 3rd edn (London, 1887), 161.Google Scholar
  42. 71.
    J. D. Cunningham, A History of the Sikhs (London, 1849).Google Scholar
  43. 72.
    R. N. Cust, Essay on the Common Features, which appear in all forms of religious belief (London, 1895), 13.Google Scholar
  44. 75.
    R. N. Cust, Pictures of Indian Life Sketched with the Pen from 1852 to 1881 (London, 1881), 313.Google Scholar
  45. 76.
    R. N. Cust, The Life of Baba Nanuk, the founder of the Sikh sect of the Hindu Religion in the Punjab. For the use of schools (Lahore, 1859), 7.Google Scholar
  46. 77.
    Ibid. Cf. his later interpretation in R. N. Cust, Orientation of Early Christian Missionaries in Asia and Africa (London, 1891), 262–3.Google Scholar
  47. 78.
    On the janarnsakhis see W. H. McLeod, Guru Nanak and the Sikh Religion (Oxford, 1968) and Early Sikh Tradition (Oxford, 1980).Google Scholar
  48. 82.
    Lepel Henry Griffin, Ranjit Singh (Delhi, 1957 [1892]), 28.Google Scholar
  49. 83.
    Lepel Henry Griffin, The Rajas of the Punjab. Being the history of the principal states of the Punjab and their political relations with the British Government (Lahore, 1870), 2.Google Scholar
  50. 85.
    N. G. Barrier, ‘Trumpp and Macauliffe: western students of Sikh history and religion’, Historians and Historiography of the Sikhs, Ganda Singh ed. (New Delhi, 1978), 166–85.Google Scholar
  51. 86.
    Ernest Trumpp, The Adi Granth, or the Holy Scriptures of the Sikhs, translated from the original Gurmukhi, with introductoty essays (London, 1887), v-vi.Google Scholar
  52. 94.
    Lepel H. Griffin, Officiating Secretary, Punjab Government to Secretary to the Government of India, Punjab Home Proceedings, April 1872, A/15.Google Scholar
  53. 97.
    M. A. Macauliffe, ‘The Fair at Sakhi Sarvar’, Calcutta Review, LX (1875), 78–101.Google Scholar
  54. 99.
    M. A. Macauliffe, How the Sikhs became a Militant People (Paris: 1905), selection reprinted in Panjab Past and Present, 26 (October 1982), 504.Google Scholar
  55. 104.
    Eugene F. Irschick, Dialogue and History: Constructing South India, 1795–1895 (Berkeley, CA, 1994).Google Scholar
  56. 108.
    Richard Fox, Lions of the Punjab: Culture in the Making (Berkeley, CA, 1985), 140–1.Google Scholar
  57. 109.
    Harjot Oberoi, The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity and Diversity in the Sikh Tradition (Delhi, 1994), 372–3.Google Scholar
  58. 110.
    G. T. Vigne, Travels in Kashmir, Ladak, Iskardo, the countries adjoining the mountain-course of the Indus, and the Himalaya, north of the Panjab (London, 1842), 54.Google Scholar
  59. 111.
    W. T. Osborne, The Camp and Court of Ranjit Sing (London, 1840), 69, 64, 62.Google Scholar
  60. 113.
    George St P. Lawrence, ‘The Sikh and European Soldiers of Our Native Forces’, Journal of the United Service Institution, 11 (1868), 89.Google Scholar
  61. 115.
    MacMunn, The Armies of India, 139–40. On the ‘Sikh look’ see Simeran Man Singh Gell, ‘The origins of the Sikh “look”: from Guru Gobind to Dalip Singh’, History and Anthropology, 10 (1996), 37–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  62. 116.
    On the British as arbiters of tradition see Nicholas Dirks, ‘The policing of tradition: colonialism and anthropology in Southern India’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 39(1997), 182–212.Google Scholar
  63. 117.
    R. W. Falcon, Handbook on Sikhs for the use of Regimental Officers (Allahabad, 1896), 61–2.Google Scholar
  64. 119.
    Vincent Eyre, The Sikh and European Soldiers of Our Indian Forces. A Lecture (London, 1867), 7–8.Google Scholar
  65. 120.
    For example, A. A. Roberts to R. Montgomery, 20 March 1858, Mutiny Records. Reports in Two Parts, 2 vols (Lahore, 1911) I, 234; Colonel H. St G. M. McRae, Regimental History of the 45th Rattrays Sikhs. Volume I, 1856–1914 (London, 1933), 19.Google Scholar
  66. 121.
    On Jats and the composition of the Panth see W. H. McLeod, Who is a Sikh? The Problem of Sikh Identity (Oxford, 1989), 40–1.Google Scholar
  67. 123.
    Rajiv A. Kapur, Sikh Separatism. The Politics of Faith (London, 1986), 64.Google Scholar
  68. 125.
    H. M. Clark, ‘The Decay of Sikhism’, Panjab Notes and Queries, 3 (1885), 20.Google Scholar
  69. 126.
    Macauliffe, Sikh Religion, I, lvii. In a similar vein David Petrie praised the colonial state for ‘buttressing the crumbling edifice of the Sikh religion’ but warned that the maintenance of a separate Sikh identity was an ongoing project. David Petrie, Recent Developments in Sikh Politics, 1900–1911, a Report (Amritsar, 1911), 52.Google Scholar
  70. 128.
    K. S. Talwar, ‘The Anand Marriage Act’, The Panjab Past and Present, 2 (1968), 400–10.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Tony Ballantyne 2002

Authors and Affiliations

  • Tony Ballantyne
    • 1
  1. 1.University of OtagoDunedinNew Zealand

Personalised recommendations