historians, but the historians themselves were rejected as biased and motivated”
(Kejariwal 1988: 233).
The British Empire should not be considered in isolation from other empires.
Not only is the British Raj to be set beside the Turkish, Persian, Roman, and other
Empires, we must also note Chaudhuri’s assertion of Hindu imperialism:
I had better confess that all Hindus are traditionally imperialists, and they con-
demned imperialism only in so far as British imperialism made them subjects to an
empire instead of its masters. This is due to the fact that the strongest political
passion of the ancient Hindus was directed towards conquest and domination. All
Sanskrit literature and all the historical inscriptions are full of glorification of both.
This aspiration to conquer and dominate was suppressed during Muslim and
British rule, but today, even if not given practical expression, it conditions the
attitude of the present Hindu ruling class towards the neighbours of India.
(Chaudhuri 1988: 774)Har Bilas Sarda’s Hindu Superiority(1906) invents an account of Hindu colo-
nization of the world (Jaffrelot 1997: 331). R. C. Majumdar’s history of India,
widely used in schools and colleges in India, sees the spread of Hinduism and
Buddhism in southeast Asia as the result of colonization by the Indian master
race. Pollock claims that the source of such thinking is European (Pollock 1996:
233). True, but the goal of the traditional Hindu king was universal empire.
Pollock concedes that domination did not enter India with European colonialism
and that “gross asymmetries of power...appear to have characterized India in
particular times and places over the last three millennia and have formed the
background against which ideological power, intellectual and spiritual resis-
tance, and many forms of physical and psychological violence crystallized”
(Pollock 1993: 115) “Sanskrit was the principal discursive instrument of domi-
nation in premodern India and... it has been continuously reappropriated in
modern India by many of the most reactionary and communalist sectors of the
population” (Pollock 1993: 116). Inden’s Imagining Indiaseeks to refute the
“Orientalist” account (in Said’s sense) of India which Inden says deprives Hindus
of agency by defining Hinduism in terms of essence, caste, and spirituality. Yet
his refutation of the supposed colonialism and imperialism of his predecessors in
the field of Indology proceeds by setting against them the medieval imperialism
of Hinduism – universal empire was always the theoretical goal of Hindu kings.
Orientalism and Racial Theories
Various views on the origin and types of mankind were current in seventeenth-
century Europe, including the theory of Pre-adamite man, but “racial theory
has as its official birthdate 24 April 1664” (Toth 1988: 23), when Bernier
published in the Journal des Scavansa new division of the earth according to the
different races that occupy it. He did not sign his paper because of intense
52 david smith