Colonial Challenges and Buddhist Revival 219the power of the press, of ‘print capitalism’, meant they were heard
as never before. They were becoming open to possession by Indians
themselves; they could be used, by the elite to challenge British
rule or by the masses to challenge elite rule. The ‘soberness’ which
Marx and Engels point out—the disdain for the magical enchant-
ments of the feudal imagination, the dismisal of ‘supernatural’
entities, the search for scientific explanations—did not immedi-
ately mean a rejection of old religions, but it did require their
reinterpretation.
Thus, though many apparent similarities existed between the
cautious way adopted by the British and their Muslim forebearers
to deal with the complexity of Indian society, the very pervasive-
ness of the new ideas and the forces of production backing them up
meant that the situation had irrevocably changed. British courts
could go on implementing Brahmanic laws especially after the 1857
revolt, out of the fear of unleashing too many forces of change and
resistance in Indian society, but British judges and officials could
no longer believe that these were really just.
Similarly, Muslim rulers and foreign visitors had earlier taken
interest in Indian religions, in discourses, in the sacred texts. But
it was under the British that these were not simply studied, but
published. Texts like the Vedas, previously forbidden for Shudras
to even hear, were now translated and made available publicly. The
British engaged in their own self-justifying historiography, classifying
Indian populations, speculating on origins, writing self-justifying
histories that were often immersed in racist and outmoded ideas,
yet representing a new challenge because of their accessibility to
Indians of all types. Indians now had to justify their own history
and society in ways that they never had had to do before; and they
had to do so with at least some reference to the new Enlightenment
values and ideas—which were now coming not simply from foreign
rulers, but from their own countrymen.
Responses to the new situation varied. It was a deeply divided
Indian society which confronted the challenges of colonial rule. In
contrast to China, where mobility into the gentry had existed, or to
the fierce ethnocentrism of the Japanese, in India caste had created
a unique, birth-defined gap between the elites and masses. The
elites could be defined as the ‘twice-born’ in varna terms, the
Brahmans, the Kshatriyas (that is, all those who could claim status
as rulers and warriors) and the Vaishyas, now comprising merchants.218 Buddhism in India
of the ground—what earlier century had even a presentiment that
such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?So wrote Marx and Engels in one of the most influential writings of
all time, The Communist Manifesto. Their description of capitalism
and its global effects brings out the new challenges that were brought
before India by British colonial rule.
These challenges were of three types. First, it was a rule that
was ‘foreign’ in a way never felt before. Muslims, and before them
‘barbarians’, many of them born outside India, had ruled the coun-
try for centuries, had founded dynasties. The imperialism of the
capitalist era was qualitatively different. Earlier conquerors, what-
ever their origin, had settled in India and become Indians. None had
been subordinate to political centers outside the subcontinent.
British rule, however, remained foreign, with the subcontinent of
India subordinated to an island in Europe whose Colonial Office
continued to make policy in the interests of that island, not even in
the interests of the section of its inhabitants settled in India.
This was possible because of the industrial power of the developing
European nation-states. Industrialism resulting from harnessing
human invention to the forces of production, unleashed new produc-
tive powers. Machinery, mass production, new communications,
shortened periods of transportation, railroads, printing presses,
new weapons, all were qualitatively different from what had been
known before. These confronted all backward societies, colonised or
not, with the new challenge of developing the machinery, technology
and science that was needed to stand up against world powers.
Control over vast, wealthy agrarian tracts and armies of millions
were no longer sufficient; industrialisation became a necessity.
Along with these political and economic challenges, as The
Communist Manifesto makes clear, capitalist industrialisation
presented an intellectual and moral challenge. The immense forces
of change represented by the new means of production made it
impossible to maintain any version of the harmonies and stabilities
proclaimed by feudal ideologies. ‘All that is solid’ was everywhere
melting into air; for good or ill, human beings stood revealed as
forces of change and controllers of nature. Old religions and legiti-
mations were being question. The new ideas of the Enlightenment—
individualism, reason, progress and the slogans of the French
Revolution—liberty, equality, fraternity, all began to resound, and