India that is Bharat: Coloniality, Civilisation, Constitution

by J. Sai Deepak

European conception of a nation whose condition precedent is internal homogeneity.

this ancient land attains its rightful and honoured place in the world and make its full and willing contribution to the promotion of world peace and the welfare of mankind [emphasis added].

putting together a statist apparatus for an ancient civilisation of which they were descendants.

words of Lord Krishna through which he taught a practical philosophy to the people of this country—

It will be a matter of great shame for us if we do not accept this word and have some other word for the name of our country.

By adopting a name that harkens back to a civilisational identity that antedates the arrival of both Middle Eastern and European colonialities, the framers of the Constitution cemented the position that independent Bharat is indeed the successor State to the Indic civilisation.

Here the social and political composition is based on the group, and not the individual, as the unit: e.g. the family, the village community, the caste, and various other similar corporations,

those that drive Middle Eastern and European colonialities, which are founded on the firm belief of domination or annihilation of identities that do not conform to their own,

no part of this sacred geography must be tested solely on the anvils of its utility as a natural resource.

and its representation is not as neutral and objective as is often made out to be. The irony is that the colonial consciousness of the Indian mind is best captured by the fact that the very same views expressed by Sarda, Mookerji, Sarkar and Majumdar and others29 on the civilisational character of Bharat30 and its cultural unity31 are welcomed and received with a lot more enthusiasm when a book titled India: A Sacred Geography is written by Diana L. Eck.32 Perhaps,

in the interest of its survival, Bharat must employ the decolonial option,

survival of a consciousness is inextricably connected to its ability to remember the good, the bad and the ugly, and pass on that memory to future generations.

as a good Christian, ought to

be

an...

deemed to be at war with ‘infidels’ forever, which applied equally...

Bengal famine of 1770—when a fifth of Bengal’s population perished

a sum of not less than a lakh of rupees would be set apart annually ‘for the revival and improvement of literature, and the encouragement of the learned natives of India, and for the introduction and promotion of a knowledge of the sciences among the inhabitants of the British Territories in India’

The resistance of the Company to increased missionary activity in Bharat until the 1813 Act did not spring from the well of religious neutrality or ‘secularism’ as some would like to believe, but was merely the product of mercantile pragmatism.

missionary activity interfering with commerce by alienating the native population. The Company’s reluctance to institutionalise missionary activity was also partly owed to the experience of the Vellore Mutiny in 1806, which resulted in the death of 200 in a garrison of 370 due to a revolt of Indian soldiers against their officers.24 The revolt was triggered by apprehensions among the soldiers that the Company was intent on converting them to Christianity by force.

Claudius Buchanan,

must be credited with the corruption of the word ‘Jagannath’ to ‘juggernaut’

Both Houses of the British Parliament received hundreds of petitions from British Churches fervently appealing for the ‘propagation of Christian knowledge in India’.

Clearly, Christian OET has contributed substantially to the creation of the white man’s saviour complex that has done more harm than good to the world.

insertion of the Missionary Clauses in the 1813 Act was a milestone that led to feverish missionary activity in Bharat.

Indian Bishops and Courts Act, 1823

A more incongruous mix of the religious and the secular cannot be found, but perhaps it did not appear incongruous to the British coloniser since his secularism was, after all, Christian secularism.

order to legitimise the civilising mission of the Christian White European coloniser. She demonstrates credibly in her book that the presence of Sati as a practice was nowhere close to being as rampant as it was made out to be by the missionaries to ‘shock and motivate the British public and also garner funds at home for missionary

could not have been a matter of mere coincidence that all the ‘ills’ of the Hindu society were to be found in the vicinity of Calcutta or in Bengal,

The use of the words ‘caste’ and ‘races’ in the Charter Act has immense significance, for it reflects the entry of both categories in the administrative and legal infrastructure of the coloniser’s establishment.

He did not think there was any hardship in compelling the inhabitants of India to pay not only for the Government which protects them, but also for the religion of that Government.

Irish Roman Catholics, or Scotch Presbyterians, or English Dissenters, who collectively formed a much greater number than the Members of the Episcopalian or English Established Church.

The contents of these debates prove that Bharat was treated as a fertile territory for soul-harvesting by various Christian denominations, all of which sought a level playing field to compete for the status of the true champions of the one true religion,

imposed on us the high moral duty of taking such measures as prudence, combined with zeal, would justify for the purpose of spreading over a heathen continent the knowledge of that truth which was essential to our own happiness, and which, extended abroad, he believed might be essential to the happiness of millions yet unborn.

As stated earlier, the consequence of this approach was that Brahmins, ‘Brahminism’ and ‘Brahminical institutions’ replaced the Pope and Catholic Church as the new objects of hatred and perpetual ‘reform’ at the hands of evangelical Christianity.

the charge of ‘sacred or cultic prostitution’ that was employed by early Christians to malign and slander pagan temples in Europe was extended to the Devadasi practice in Bharat as well, which ultimately resulted in the legislative abolition of the practice.

Roover argues that the Christian framework within which the British policy of toleration towards Indic faith systems and practices was adopted did not leave such systems untouched. On the contrary, indigenous/Indic OET was restructured to fit into the Christian idea of ‘religion’, which was embraced, unfortunately, by Hindu ‘reform’ movements as well.

only those practices which could be traced to the sacred texts of Hinduism would be tolerated by the colonial State, while the rest would be treated as superstitious and immoral, warranting State interference.

struck a distinction between ‘core’ religious practices that did not warrant State interference, and ‘false religion’ and civil/secular aspects of religious ...

the devil and his priests corrupt this sense by imposing their fabrications as divinely revealed commandments upon innocent believers.

In fact, the Christian distinction between the religious, the secular, and the idolatrous was introduced as though it concerned a distinction internal to Hindu religion. Some practices were accepted as truly religious, while others were rejected as illegitimate additions to religion.

The boundary was drawn along the lines of the Protestant division between the essentials commanded by God in scripture and indifferent things falsely superimposed as religion…

the normative framework behind the colonial legal system compelled Hindu traditions to internalize the Christian division between the religious, the secular and the falsely religious…

toleration meant that what constituted the ‘Hindu religion’ was determined through the application of a manifestly Christian framework.

manifested itself in the coloniser’s understanding of the fundamental tenets or ‘laws’ of Hinduism, leading to the quest for a Moses-like ‘lawgiver’. This quest yielded Manu, the author of the much-reviled Manusmriti.

Roy treated the Vedas as the Hindu ‘Bible’ and attempted to draw structural parallels between the ‘Hindu religion’ and Christianity.

The Essential Religious Practices (ERP) test, as applied by the Indian Supreme Court in matters involving protection of religious practices and institutions under Articles 25 and 26 of the Constitution, may be traced to the Christian colonial distinction between essential tenets of a religion and its non-essential aspects;

The application of the Christian concept of ‘religion’ to Indic OET gave rise to the debate as to whether Hinduism was a ‘religion’ or ‘a way of life’.

Owing to the significant resources attached to temples, the East India Company began interfering with the administrative structures of temples citing corruption in their administration as the primary pretext.

British policy of centralised collection as well as distribution of all temple revenues within the territories under its control. The policy also included audit of funds used by temple authorities and bureaucratic control over temple administrators.