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In Search of the Collective Self: How Ethnic Group Concepts were Cast through Conflict in Colonial India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Dietrich Reetz
Dietrich Reetz
Affiliation:
Centre for Modern Oriental Studies, Berlin
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Extract

When the concept of Western nationalism travelled to India in the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century it was carried by British officialdom and an increasingly mobile and articulate Indian élite that was educated in English and in the tradition of British society. Not only did it inspire the all-India nationalist movement, but it encouraged regional politics as well, mainly in ethnic and religious terms. Most of today's ethnic and religious movements in South Asia could be traced back to their antecedents before independence. Looking closer at the three major regional movements of pre-independence India, the Pathans, the Sikhs and the Tamils, one finds a striking similarity in patterns of mobilization, conflict and concept irrespective of their association with the national movement (Red Shirt movement of the Pathans, Sikh movement of the Akalis) or independent existence in opposition to Congress (non-Brahmin/Tamil movement)

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , May 1997 , pp. 285 - 315
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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References

An outline version of this paper was delivered at the symposium on ‘Changing Identities—The Self and the Other in Colonial Societies of Asia and Africa’, at the Centre for Modern Oriental Studies in Berlin, on 21–22 October 1993.

1 The paper is part of a larger study on ‘Ethnic and Religious Identities in Colonial India: A Comparative Analysis’ which concerns itself with the profile of ethnic and religious movements under colonial rule concentrating on the Pathans, the Sikhs and the Tamils. For a discussion of theoretical issues involved in the project, see Reetz, D., ‘Ethnic and religious identities in colonial India: a conceptual debate’, Contemporary South Asia, Vol. 2, no. 2 (1993), pp. 109–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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27 The usage of the term is confusing, particularly for the outsider. It is often used interchanging with the term Pathan. At the time, Pakhtun was more often used to describe ethnic and linguistic attributes and the commonness of all the tribes in both Afghanistan and India while Pathan is the eastern tribesman living mainly in India and the independent territories.

28 ‘All those who belong to the N.-W.F.P., whether rich or poor, Hindus, Muslims or Sikhs, are Pakhtoons’. Hindustan Times, 9–7–1947; ‘By Pakhtun I mean everyone, whether Hindu, Muslim, Sikh or Christian, whether rich or poor, Pir, Khan or ordinary layman’. Tribune, 9–7–1947, quoted in Jansson, Erland, India, Pakistan or Pakhtunistan? The Nationalist Movement in the North-West Frontier Province, 1937–1947 (Studia Historica Upsaliensia; 119) (Uppsala, 1981), p. 219.Google Scholar

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35 Hindu, weekly edition, 1 January. 1925, quoted in Irschick, Politics and Social Conflict in South India, p. 263.

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42 Report of the North-West Frontier Enquiry Committee and Minutes of Dissent by Mr. T. Rangachariar and Mr. N. M. Samarth (Delhi, 1924), p. 17.Google Scholar

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49 Cf. secret government memo on Akali Dal in Papers of Sir Evan Jenkins, Governor of the Punjab, Record of distrubances and constitutional affairs, confidential letters, interview notes etc., Mar.—Aug. 1947. India Office Library and Records R/3/1/176, file pages 75–80. Kerr doubts that the mass participation was really massive. Singh, Mohinder (The Akali Movement (Delhi, 1978), pp. 100–1, table note) gives the number of 25,000 which even if doubled would amount to only 1.6 per cent of the Sikhs in the Punjab (3,110,060) in 1921.Google ScholarKerr, Ian J., ‘Fox and the Lions: The Akali Movement Revisited’ in O'Connell, et al. (eds.), Sikh History and Religion, p. 222, footnote 46.Google Scholar

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53 He was the president of the temple administration committee SGPC from 1936 till 1944, and he also remained the president of the Shiromani Akali Dal for most of this period. Except for a short period in 1944, he remained the most prominent Akali leader of the time.

54 Akali Party Manifesto in The Tribune, 20 June 1936.

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56 Quotd from Arooran, Tamil Renaissance and Dravidian Nationalism, p. 269.

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64 For details, see ibid., Chapter 9 ‘The Demand for Dravidanad, 1940–44’, pp. 233–51.