Notable-Planned Rites

In such carefully orchestrated occasions as the municipal address and the durbar, it is often difficult to assess the commitment of local leaderships to the occasion. But evidence of considerable elite enthusiasm is clearly present in the less-planned observances that surrounded such events. On many occasions prominent local men went far beyond the government's minimal expectations and made special contributions—for instance, by mobilizing their coreligionists for the ceremony, by fixing expensive illuminations on their homes, or by hanging banners

with slogans such as "Long Live Emperor Edward VII" or "God Save the King" outside their houses. In a few instances, the notables were responsible for organizing the entire ritual occasion. In 1900, Nawab Mir Muzaffar Hussein Khan invited the citizens of Surat to his palace for the purpose of expressing thanksgiving for the British victory in the Boer War. Leading members of all the communities in the city attended. Numerous speeches were given, each of which, reported the Gujarat Mitra, "breathed a spirit of intense loyalty to the crown of Her Gracious Majesty." At the end of the gathering, those present offered a prayer to "God almighty to bless British Arms and the British flag." One participant even suggested establishing a committee to raise funds for widows and orphans of the soldiers who had died in defense of the empire. Attendees sang "God Save the Queen" and raised three cheers each for the Empress Victoria, Lord Roberts (commander of British forces in South Africa), and the British flag. A journalist commented afterward that the event confirmed Surat's traditional claim to be the "cradle of the British Empire in India," since the city had organized its own celebration before Bombay, which usually took the lead in public affairs.^[74]

There were even instances when the enthusiasm of local elites in celebration of empire went beyond the bounds of imperial propriety. One such case took place in 1901, when leading residents arranged a series of events to honor the departing collector, Mr. Weir. First, several neighborhood groups organized festivities for Weir and his wife in their own localities. A few citizens invited the couple into their homes for tea, coffee, and refreshments. Later that evening, the municipality organized an evening party for the collector at the home of a Muslim sheth, to which all the Europeans of the city and their wives were invited. After entertainment—playing European songs on the piano—Khan Bahadur Moulvi Abdul Kader Bakza and others made speeches praising Weir for his efforts during the plague of 1897 and the famine of 1899–1900. The following day there was a huge gathering in Victoria Gardens, with school children in parade, athletic demonstrations, and band music. Then residents escorted the collector through the streets of the city to the railway station with representatives of local groups stopping his carriage repeatedly to garland him. When Weir arrived in Bombay, a group of Surti sheth s presented another address to Weir at a party in Madhav Bagh.^[75]

Local newspapers reported these activities as special, joyous celebrations honoring a popular official. But civil servants in Bombay regarded the festivities more grimly. In the General Department, officials suggested that the events had violated administrative regulations prohibiting government servants from "receiving addresses and testimoni-

als" and from attending "complimentary entertainments of a formal and public character." The various parties in Surat, one memo reported, "may be said to be of a private character," but the "demonstration held in the Victoria Gardens appears to have been of a public character. A fund of Rs 1,100 was collected for the occasion. There were sports and tamashas and bands, and the school children carrying flags marched in procession." Others questioned whether even the parties were entirely of a private character, since they were held "under the auspices" of the city's most prominent citizens; obviously the specter of Indians' crossing over into social rites that were usually exclusively European struck some officials as posing a danger to the civil service's reputation of objectivity. The procession to the station drew the sharpest criticisms. One outraged administrator commented that the collector's carriage and its entourage seemed "to have partaken of the nature of a royal progress."^[76] Weir embarrassedly defended himself by claiming that the various parties he had attended "were not of a public nature" and that "the demonstrations on the road to the railway station were unpremeditated and were distasteful to myself and if the train had not been an hour late in arriving would have caused us to miss the train."^[77]

Because these ceremonies were planned by indigenous elites, they provide an especially interesting opportunity to suggest how Surti understandings of their ritual activity might have differed from those of their rulers. Prominent local residents certainly acknowledged the importance of loyalty and civic consciousness in ritual, but they sometimes injected expressions of personal deference that violated British standards of appropriateness. Ritual occasions were chances to express and build bonds of clientship with the colonial authorities. Thus, to give a "royal" celebration to a district officer or to conflate the "public" and the "private" in the observance of a ceremonial occasion hardly seemed problematic. Certainly by combining elements involved in the durbar, the imperial visit, and the European social party, the "native gentlemen" of Surat had given their own twists of meaning to forms of ritual expression initially designed by their rulers.

The personal and community stake involved in imperial observances was quite great. In ritual, status was confirmed, and honor lost or won. Even the seating arrangements made by the district establishment could become the subject of intense local contests. In 1877, Hindus and Jains protested that the Modi, the representative of the Parsi community, had been given a seat of greater prominence than the Nagarsheth, their community head, at a durbar, forcing the government to move the Nagarsheth to a more honorable position.^[78] Local newspapers regularly offered comments and complaints about the adequacy of seating

arrangements at ceremonies or the completeness of the collector's list of darbaris.^[79]

Those who took leading roles in ritual confirmed their positions as natural leaders of local religious groupings as they expressed their identification with city and empire. On Edward VII's birthday in 1909, the Anjuman-e-Islam, composed mainly of the old Mughal gentry, sent a delegation to the collector's house to congratulate him on behalf of the Muslim community; the Nagarsheth presided over a puja (a ceremony of worship) on the banks of the Tapi, in which Hindus and Jains wished the emperor well; and the da'i of the Bohras and the Modi of the Parsis sent telegrams from their communities to the viceroy.^[80] In such instances, the magnates employed a double language: they simultaneously made statements in the idiom of empire and the idiom of community. British civil servants certainly had no objection to what they seemed to view as a quaint injection of indigenous elements into the larger ceremony.

It may be that ritual activities assumed special importance primarily because the expression of loyalty called no principle of great indigenous concern into doubt. During an era in which deference had not yet been seriously challenged by Indian nationalists, elites who publicly participated in imperial ceremony did not endanger their own local authority. Nonetheless the notables sometimes needed to take steps to ensure that involvement in imperial ceremony would not harm their reputations. In the at-home parties at the residence of the collector, organizers had to make separate provisions in the refreshments for members of each community present so that commensal rules would not be violated through attendance. A few even refused to adopt the ritual dress expected for imperial observances. At his own durbar in 1900, Hirachand Motichand, the Jain pearl merchant, stunned those present by opting for a simple white dhoti and red turban, perhaps because he did not wish to be stigmatized for wearing the rather ostentatious dress and headdress expected of a representative of his community. In general, the notables were able to participate in such a way that they did not offend their patrons, but also did not endanger their status within their communities. Involvement in such events was by no means a sign that they had merged their identities with the alien ruling group.^[81]

By taking part in civic and imperial observances, local elites actively contributed to the construction of British authority; they openly demonstrated their commitment to the Raj and to the principles for which the Raj stood. They were not merely passive participants in a ritual order foisted on them by their rulers but often introduced elements into ceremonies that the British did not intend, thus giving civic and

imperial ceremony a distinctively Anglo-Indian shape. As a result, while urban ritual took its form from the rulers, it drew much of its content from the Surtis.