I was reading some papers about Bastar when I came across this book — The Colonial Origins of Ethnic Violence in India. In this book, the author, Ajay Verghese, presents a relatively radical explanation for some of the ethnic violence in India. He attributes it to colonial British policies.
Understanding of colonial origins and ethnic violence in India
The author takes the examples of Jaipur & Ajmer and Malabar & Travancore to show the contrast in ethnic violence and religious violence between both. The British did not rule all of India directly, their rule was direct in the form of British administered provinces or native ruled princely States. This was largely a result of the 1857 riots which scared the British and put their expansion on hold as they figured out a better model to control the Indian territory.
According to Verghese, local rulers were more progressive towards caste issues and friendlier to tribals as opposed to those of the opposite religion. For example, the Nizam of Hyderabad was hostile to Hindus, the ruler of Kashmir was hostile to Muslims. He gives examples of Jaipur vs Ajmer and Malabar vs Travancore. Jaipur was ruled by a Hindu king while Ajmer was a British province. He claims that Jaipur till date has a strong polarization/conflict over religion while Ajmer is relatively peaceful while it is the opposite in the case of caste-related conflict.
He makes a similar case Malabar which was ruled directly by the British while Travancore was under a Hindu ruler. He also claims the Malabar rebellion was largely based on caste-based fault lines due to the lower castes who converted to Islam fighting against the landlords who oppressed them. He goes on to cite evidence of arrests of a large number of Hindu bandits during the time where the disturbances started as well as the fact that during the early stages of the revolt, there were Hindu lower castes as well who fought against the British administration as well as the landed class who were mostly Hindu upper castes.
He explains how Hindu rulers while being antagonistic towards Muslims and Christians were pretty progressive in recognizing tribal property rights and even tried to empower them. The British who were spooked by the 1857 riots and worried about religious fanaticism, tried to secularize their administration and were more worried about religious conflict. Their actions such as giving a greater representation of Muslims in their administration helped reduce religious conflict. On the contrary their policies such as declaring criminal tribes, a census that identified and listed the castes that were considered ‘untouchables’, declaring some tribes as criminal tribes and prosecuting them created more barriers against social mobility for the lower castes and also increased the stigma against them.
The British interest in exploiting forests led them to deprive the property rights of tribals, ones which no ruler in India, including the Mughals, ever imagined or tried. Rulers in India largely recognized the rights of tribals over forests and were even given recognition/appointment in the royal courts/administration.
He uses this theory and uses statistics to calculate the chances for religious/ethnic violence in many districts and he finds that statistically his theory holds good.
While his theory holds well for the cases he lists, he also mentions Bastar which is the hub for caste-based violence/conflict. This would disprove his theory since Bastar was not administered by the British and had a ruler. he explains this conundrum that while it was true on paper, the rulers of Bastar were mere puppets and the British had a huge history of interference even replacing the rulers and changing their own rules to maintain their control. and by proxy, they implemented the same policies against the tribals as they did in British administered territory.
Personal Views on The Colonial Origins of Ethnic Violence in India
Personally, I’m not totally sold on this theory as a general explanation or an overarching theory of ethnic conflict in India. But for the cases he specifically mentions, it does seem that he might have a point. Since there are many complex variables that are hard to quantify such as the amount of British interference in the administration of princely states/territories (almost none in the case of Travancore versus high in the case of Bastar), it would seem that it would be hasty to use statistics to jump to a conclusion since these variables cannot be properly quantified.
Also, some of his data is based on surveys of various govt officials, academics and maybe that’s an acceptable methodology to gauge sentiments, I think there is no substitute for hard empirical data since it is prone to biases. It was an interesting read for sure, but this theory doesn’t seem watertight.
Also while he states that the data shows a lesser amount of religious conflict today in the Malabar region than compared to Travancore. when I asked a bunch of people who reside in Kerala, all of them felt the opposite(i understand that’s not a reliable indicator) but some of the most violent riots like the Marad massacre seem to have occurred in the Malabar region.
Also personally I think that sometimes you can’t just use the number of incidents of religious conflict as a proxy for how strong the religious conflict animosity in an area is. one big large scale riot that is extremely violent is not the same as 10 smaller ones with an equivalent injury/kill count spread over a few years. Also, his data doesn’t capture the number of people who participate in a riot, which can also be a good indicator. If 5000 people take to the streets it definitely means a lot more than smaller groups causing equivalent damage to life and property.
About the author
Ajay Verghese is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Riverside. Verghese was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University from 2012 to 2013.
