An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India

by Shashi Tharoor

The resulting output was an ‘Anglo-Brahminical’ text that arguably violated in both letter and spirit the actual practice: in letter, because it was imprecise in regard to the originals, and in spirit, because the pandits proceeded to take advantage of the assignment to favour their own caste, by interpreting and even creating sacrosanct ‘customs’ that in fact had no shastric authority. This served to magnify the problem of caste hierarchy in the country. Prior to this, scholars argue, disputes in Indian civil society were settled by jati or biradri, i.e. a person’s fate was decided within a community or clan by his own peers in accordance with their local traditions and values and without needing approval from any higher caste authority. The pandits, instead of reflecting this widespread practice, cited doctrinal justifications from long-neglected texts to enshrine their status as the only authority figures, and most of the British took them at their word. (Some had their doubts. The most learned of British Orientalists, William Jones, who in 1797 founded the Asiatic Society in Calcutta and served in the Supreme Court of Judicature, remarked, ‘I can no longer bear to be at the Mercy of our pandits who deal out Hindu Law as they please, and make it at reasonable rates, when they cannot find it ready made’. But Jones died tragically young and his wisdom was not replicated in his successors.)