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 DOI: 10.1177/025764301102700108

2011 27: 133Studies in HistorySabyasachi Dasgupta

Rebellion58: Prisons, Prisoners and−Book Review: The Indian Uprising of 1857

  

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- Jan 10, 2012Version of Record >>

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Book Reviews 133

Studies in History, 27, 1 (2011): 131–146

As for the so-called ‘benefits’ of British rule, Moosvi provides a forceful re-futation. She demonstrates that there was no lowering of the tax burden on the peasantry but, instead, a sharp increase in the second half of the nineteenth cen-tury, and that the claims of a rise in per capita income and in population growth did not stand in the face of the stagnation, if not a secular fall, in real wages and a sharp fall in the rate of life expectancy.

At the end of a very incisive quantitative survey of the period 1600–1900, Moosvi attempts a grand comparison of India’s economic performance between Akbar’s time and period at the end of nearly one and a half centuries of British rule. The results are most revealing. She comes to the conclusion that the per capita income (in terms of the purchasing power of wheat) was about 4.5 per cent higher in 1595 than what it was 300 years later, that is, the first decade of the twentieth century! Equally important, not only did per capita income not show any increase under colonial rule, the distribution of the GDP into various sectors did not undergo any change either. The distribution of the GDP over this period remained approximately 64 per cent in the primary sector, 11 per cent in the sec-ondary sector and 25 per cent in the tertiary sector. So much for the claims of neo-colonial apologists like Tirthankar Roy that ‘colonial India experienced positive economic growth…Real income in industry and services grew rapidly throughout the colonial rule…’

Moosvi’s book is a major contribution to the economic history of the late medi-eval and colonial periods in India, with important implications for understanding the impact of colonialism in preventing India’s transition to modernity, delaying it by nearly two centuries! It is not a surprise that the first edition of the book was sold out and a revised reprint came out early this year.

Aditya MukherjeeProfessor of Contemporary History, Centre for Historical Studies

andDirector, Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Advanced Study,

Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

Clare Anderson, The Indian Uprising of 1857–58: Prisons, Prisoners and Rebellion, Anthem Press, London and New York, 2007, pp. 205, $80.

DOI: 10.1177/025764301102700108

Clare Anderson’s book is one of those monographs where the subtitle is a more accurate pointer to the general thrust of the argument than the main title. This is a book that is avowedly about the uprising of 1857 and the symbolic value that the jail space assumed in the context of the rebellion. Yet, the rebellion and the contest over jail sites occupy but a small part of the larger narrative. The year 1857 is cru-cial to the narrative but is nevertheless only a part of the broader story about jails

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134 Book Reviews

Studies in History, 27, 1 (2011): 131–146

being a site for cultural contestation between the Raj and indigenous society. The year was a significant flashpoint in this regard and constituted, according to Anderson, a decisive break.

Anderson sets out to explore prisons as sites of cultural contestation between the Raj and its native prisoners. The jail became a site where the colonial author-ities introduced reforms that ostensibly had the potential of subverting caste and religious taboos in general, apt examples being moved to introduce common messing, removal of lotas, shaving of beards, and so on. The result was a strong resistance to all proposed innovations by prisoners, cutting across religious and caste boundaries. The notion of status and identity thus assumed an extraordinary significance in the jail environs. As Anderson shows, Muslims resisted common messing because they wanted to assert their right as a distinct community.

Strangely, Anderson does not attempt to locate the attempt to launch signifi-cant prison reforms in the broader colonial context. The 1820s and 1830s were a time when the colonial state was making forays into domains that had been hitherto considered sacrosanct. For, the natives, according to classic Orientalist discourse, were apparently very sensitive to perceived encroachments on their cultural space, as these implied attempts by the Raj to tamper with their religious and caste practices. Yet, a partial paradigm shift was around the corner.

The 1820s and 1830s were the decades when the Company, under the influ-ence of the Utilitarians and a small but influential group of indigenous reformers, sought to intervene in the cultural practices of the natives by amending existing laws or framing new laws. Shastric sanction, though, was always invoked for these breaks with existing practices. The paradigm shift was never a total one, as is commonly perceived to have occurred with the advent of the Utilitarians. The jail reforms that Anderson highlights have to be seen within this context, and it is hoped future researchers on the subject will do that.

Though the native prisoners saw red at what they interpreted as the deep import of jail reforms, jail reforms were in reality in keeping with the general tenor of colonial reform. They were halfway measures and carried the weight of Shastric sanction behind them, a typical case being the introduction of com-mon mess where definite spaces were carved out for specific castes within the common precincts of the mess. Tradition, even while being pierced, was being upheld. The version of tradition being bandied about, though, was the colonial government’s own version of tradition informed by certain select pundits, a point made by scholars in the past.

While Anderson fails to dwell adequately on the broader context of jail reforms, she does a commendable job of highlighting how the jail became a site for forging new cultural practices or renegotiating existing customs and conven-tions. Lower-caste prisoners, for instance, suddenly discovered new taboos related to dining, cooking food and drinking water. As Anderson argues, jails became a site for upward mobility for the lower castes. This was in keeping with the general trend in colonial society, particularly in Bengal where the nouveau riche, often

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Studies in History, 27, 1 (2011): 131–146

hailing from humble social and caste origins, aggressively aped upper-caste cus-toms in the first half of the nineteenth century, again a point Anderson neglects to dwell on.

The fact that the jail became a site for a considerable amount of social churn-ing was one of the pivotal factors behind jails acquiring a huge symbolic value, according to Anderson. Jails for the rebels symbolized a space where the customs and traditions of indigenous society were under severe threat. Therefore, they had to be liberated from the clutches of the English. This was apart from mundane reasons, such as the need for labour to carry the provisions of the rebel sepoys. Low-caste prisoners fitted the bill admirably. Anderson thus does an excellent job of overturning the usual picture of bonhomie between the liberated prison-ers and rebels. She brings out the inner contradictions in the world of the rebels admirably.

The last part of Anderson’s book dwells on the penal settlement in the Andamans subsequent to the uprising of 1857, after the decline of Singapore and Malay as penal colonies. Anderson does an excellent job of depicting the terrors that the ship journey to, and internment in, the Andamans held for the native convicts, especially upper-caste Hindus and high-born Muslims. The Andamans seemed a particularly ripe location for the defilement and loss of caste and religious status. Added to this, as Anderson shows, was the prospect of completely losing one’s social identity, as the convicts were cut off from their social moorings forever. This completely demoralized them and they became slovenly in their habits and appearance.

The Andamans became a site for experiments in prison management and in treating penal colonies differently from the usual prisons. The colonial authorities also evolved, through their experiments in the Andamans, a system of classifica-tion of prisoners into different categories. Contrasting the Andamans with other penal colonies such as Singapore, Anderson places the former in its proper per-spective and draws heavily on prisoners’ own accounts to flesh out her narrative. Some of these vernacular accounts have been rarely used before and they lend Anderson’s account a rich flavour. They also serve the purpose of correcting the bias in favour of colonial sources that some works show.

The anomalies notwithstanding, Anderson’s book is a significant contribution to the story of colonial prisons in India. Her book fills certain important gaps in the historiography of colonial India and accords prisons a centrality beyond the clichéd descriptions of prisons as sites for the surveillance and incarcera-tion of native elements that were detrimental to the stability of the Raj. Jails in Anderson’s narrative assume a much bigger role and Anderson deserves to be commended for this.

Sabyasachi DasguptaAssistant Professor, Department of History

Viswa-Bharati, Santiniketan

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