Colonialism and the Rhetoric of Politics

While many more important conflicts have occurred in India and elsewhere in the colonial world, the debate over Surat's municipal presidency illustrates two points about the role of the idioms, or languages, of politics that are of general significance. First, language tends to define the bounds of potential debate and conflict. Specific kinds of political discourse have built-in assumptions about the nature of power and justice. Language furnishes conventions which govern the performance of political acts; it supplies the categories, grammar, and principles through which political assertions are articulated and perceived; it provides yardsticks by which claims to authority and justice are measured and disputed. It defines the terrain of political debate, including some matters as legitimate points of discussion and excluding others.^[10] The languages of a dominant group, if appropriated by a subordinate group, may inhibit its ability to express heretical ideas and to conceive of alternative images of society. An important method of testing cultural hegemony in a colonial context is to judge the extent to which the colonized operate within the confines of colonial discourse and the extent to which such discourse constrains the actors who use it from constructing formulations that more fully challenge colonial rule and the underlying moral principles on which it is based. Even resistance to an alien government may be evidence of the continued influence of hegemony if it fails to break the confines of the legitimating idioms of colonial domination.

At the same time, historians must recognize that subordinate groups play a creative role in shaping the meanings of the languages that they employ. Language is a major battleground of politics, where individuals and groups constantly contest the meanings of terms, symbols, and

concepts as they compete for power and strive for justice. Over time, through the conflicts of day-to-day politics, the bounds of what is appropriate political discussion can change, though new boundaries are constantly being constructed.^[11] Forty years after the struggle between the civil administration and the Sabha, it would have been rash for any political actor in Surat, British or Indian, to suggest that local councillors should not enjoy the right to elect their own president. But in other important respects—such as the assumption that civic authority should be exercised by men with special public qualifications who would represent the people and who would be committed to progress and the common good—the old language of public politics remained largely intact.

Analysis of political discourse thus needs to maintain an awareness of the dual character of a hegemonic language as a constraining influence and as a ground of political conflict. The concept of a negotiated hegemony acquires value precisely because it recognizes that subordinate groups make their own culture, but they may do so within the framework of certain assumptions issuing from the dominant group.

A major premise of this study is that political rhetoric—the language used in seeking political influence and in asserting claims to justice— plays a critical role in shaping political culture and that examining it can illuminate the causal relationship between colonial domination and the production and reproduction of cultural forms by the colonized. Here I adopt a very broad conception of rhetoric, one that includes not only political performances that are spoken or written but other forms of politically significant symbolic action as well. The chief sources for this study are familiar ones: petitions, addresses, resolutions, newspaper editorials, and texts of public speeches. But I also suggest that other, often unspoken, forms of cultural behavior—participation in ritual, gift giving, membership in certain kinds of organizations, and gestures of protest—may also constitute rhetorical "statements" whose underlying meanings can be explored.^[12]

Whatever its form, political rhetoric is purposive. That is to say, humans act and speak politically in order to achieve power, wealth, and status; to defend themselves against threats to their livelihoods and reputations; or to implement their notions of justice. Success lies in shaping the perceptions and emotions of others and in inducing them to act in desired ways. Analysis of the efficacy of political rhetoric thus leads inevitably to viewing rhetoric as a social act involving both a speaker and an audience. As Sandra Sizer has argued:

Changing the world necessitates changing the minds of those who construct reality, and that implies persuading them to accept a particular definition of it. The same necessity for persuasion holds if one is talking

about preserving rather than changing the definition of the world; for it is not a question of inertia versus change but of the ongoing activity of maintaining a world of any sort. This perspective forces one to view each cultural phenomenon as part of a speaker (or writer) and audience relationship, with very definite social purposes. . . Focusing on the rhetorical aspect can provide. . . a more adequate approach to the problem of the relation between text and social situation.^[13]

To a great extent political influence flows from the ability to frame arguments in a manner that is convincing or emotionally evocative to individuals and groups whose behavior one hopes to affect. Even hereditary leaders are continuously involved in persuasive efforts, since they must regularly remind their followers of the importance of their family's qualities through genealogies and ritual performances.

Though the word rhetoric and other concepts used in this work—idiom, symbolic action, and the management of meaning —tend to imply that people use language in a self-conscious, calculating manner, we cannot assume that political actors are free to manipulate words and symbols as they choose.^[14] In the process of attempting to persuade others, humans constantly generate the cultural meanings by which they themselves understand reality and perceive their own interests. As people present their cases to their potential followers or their political overlords and as they defend their formulations against the claims of their rivals, they develop commitments to principles they have espoused; they come to see alternative principles as threatening, illogical, or hopelessly Utopian. The understandings that they generate may thus create new limitations for themselves in future formulations and indeed may also constrain their opponents, who may have to resort to the same language in countering their contentions. Logic employed repeatedly can assume the authority of "common sense," so that individuals and groups find it difficult to formulate and conceive of their own selfinterests outside its limits.^[15]

Objective structures, such as the shape of social power or institutions of politics, seriously influence the process by which certain assumptions and issues of conflict become accepted and survive as commonsensical ones. Within a political environment, some kinds of rhetoric will successfully evoke agreement, strong emotional responses, or even political action from important wielders of power. These forms may come to acquire a privileged position in a political culture. Approaches which are ignored, laughed at, or repudiated by those one seeks to influence may be discarded. In time, general dispositions and assumptions take shape, creating "practices and representations that are regular without reference to overt rules and that are goal-directed without requiring conscious selection of goals or mastery of methods of achieving them."^[16]

For elites in Surat, the key objective structures influencing political rhetoric were ones clearly associated with British rule: the courts, schools and colleges, the municipality, and, most important, the dominating presence of the European colonial rulers. As in many colonial settings, persons in the city who wished to achieve or maintain political prominence needed to master methods of addressing the alien ruling group. But, at the same time, they also had to be concerned with maintaining some support from the indigenous population in order to perpetuate their social statuses in local society, to gain or sustain recognition as local leaders, and to win seats in the municipality. Both audiences—the colonial rulers and the people of Surat—had their own distinct languages, which defined the general issues of political discussion and debate, the key symbols and vocabulary, the possible range of assumptions about justice and power, and even the appropriate organizational forums and arenas in which politics took place.^[17]

Such a picture, of course, is a simplified abstraction of a more complex reality. First of all, neither of these two audiences was perfectly homogeneous; each contained subaudiences with their own subcultural idioms. The colonial rulers included a number of groups with conflicting interests—administrators, businessmen, educators, missionaries, and others. Even the South Asians who gained entry into the Indian Civil Service and other high-level administrative positions must be considered part of the ruling group. The local population, too, was composed of numerous subcommunities with distinct political identities and idioms. Moreover, it was also stratified, containing important leaderships that had little direct contact with British civil servants. Elites —and I will use the term in this study to refer to persons who acted as intermediaries between the colonial rulers and the Surtis—were often concerned more with gaining the backing of the city's most powerful local magnates than with mobilizing the underclasses of Surat for direct political action. No doubt, too, there was some interpenetration of the languages of the governors and the governed, as the colonizers tried to make sense of their subjects' society^[18] and as the colonized injected alien notions into their own politics, for instance, as a result of their involvement in the colonial legal system.^[19]

Yet once these complexities are recognized, this picture remains a useful one for analysis. To a great extent, the access of imperial rulers and native subjects to each other's political languages remained limited except through the intervention of interpreters, specialists with a knowledge of both kinds of discourse. These mediating figures were more than just translators; they also aspired to power and influence. Their position of leadership depended upon being able to cultivate their two audiences successfully. A municipal commissioner on the Sabha who wished to influence colonial policy needed to have mastered

municipal law, the ritualized procedures for the presentation of petitions and for debate within the council, and the language of constitutional justice if he were to make an effective case to the government. But if he failed to address concerns of his indigenous clients (and patrons), he risked the loss of his local social standing or of votes at the next election.

For illustrative purposes, it is useful to imagine three hypothetical ways an elite group could adapt rhetorically to its two audiences: (1) a nonhegemonic pattern, (2) a hegemonic pattern, and (3) a counterhegemonic pattern. Each of these patterns of adaptation is characterized by different forms of accommodation and resistance to colonialism. While this typology does not capture all of the more specific modes of cultural accommodation to colonialism, it should suggest the range of possibilities available. In constructing this typology, I by no means wish to suggest any inevitability of movement between one type and another.

A nonhegemonic adaptation is characteristic of colonial systems that are maintained simply by coercion or by a marriage of convenience between European rulers and traditional indigenous elites. Here the indigenous leaders may be "bilingual," but only imperfectly. They give meaning to their actions primarily within precolonial paradigms of authority and justice, entering colonially derived idioms temporarily and only to secure very specific ends. In the metaphor of language learning, they do not yet think in their second language; they attribute little symbolic importance to the words and notions they manipulate in this language. A nonhegemonic situation is inherently unstable, lasting only as long as the colonized believe that revolt is futile or that indigenous leaderships feel that they can obtain sufficient advantages from a relationship with the rulers that it remains worth their while to collaborate. If these conditions disappear, the leaders may try to organize their followers to resist the foreigners, perhaps in the name of restoring the traditional polity.

An elite that bargains with the colonial overlords extensively over time may, however, develop a hegemonic adaptation. In this situation the indigenous leadership has become fully bilingual—it has come to regard colonially derived principles as common sense, at least in political arenas of central significance to the alien rulers. It enters into the discourse of the colonizers regularly, it holds the colonizers to principles they espouse, and it frames its own identity at least partially in reference to alien ideological models. Under these conditions, imperial domination is no longer based upon coercion alone; it depends also upon the joint participation of local leader and colonial ruler in a common sphere of political action where the governing paradigms issue from the language of the colonial rulers.^[20]

Yet because of its need to create a following, to maintain local standing, or to demonstrate command of local influence to the rulers, the elite intermediary often must continue to operate in domains of politics under the control of indigenous social groups. Here languages of precolonial origin may continue to hold sway. In a hegemonic situation, the notions that had once sanctioned the authority of the displaced rulerships tend to lose force over time, but the underclasses—meaning here all those who do not interact directly with the colonial overlords— do not necessarily come to accept the culture of the colonizers in every sphere of their lives. Indigenous idioms not directly challenging colonial rule may still remain entrenched—for example, idioms stressing the importance of family ancestry; loyalties to friends, kinspeople, and caste or clan fellows; or the duty of leaders to sustain religious worship and to meet certain religious obligations. Such principles may be at odds with the imperial emphasis on loyalty to the state and disinterested public service; they may offer to the colonized sources of solidarity, identity, and self-worth that are not dependent on adherence to colonially derived values; they may indeed express a contradictory consciousness which implicitly opposes many colonial presumptions and even informs everyday resistance to the political order but they do not constitute a fully articulated anticolonial ideology.^[21]

By appealing to members of their own society in the local idioms of indigenous politics and by engaging in behavior that provides a certain check on colonial policies, such as "inefficiency," "corruption," "nepotism," and other obstructions to progress, indigenous elites may sustain the support of critical elements of their own society. But at the same time, by maintaining a specialized control over the languages needed to communicate directly with the ruling group, the elite may effectively keep the larger population outside the most crucial domains of political decision-making. The underclasses are unable to participate in the outer arenas, where the shape of the larger polity is determined, because they lack access to the necessary linguistic tools. This contributes both to the maintenance of colonial hegemony and to the perpetuation of underclass dependence on the elite, that is, to factionalism.

A third possible form of rhetorical adaptation, that of counterhegemony, typically develops only in extreme situations, perhaps most commonly among leaderships that have been exposed to hegemonic ideas but have come to feel that all possibility of bargaining with the colonial rulers has been blocked. Frustrated by such circumstances, especially innovative persons may emerge with an ability to generate or appropriate a new language that attempts both to escape and confront colonial presumptions. Typically, the revolutionary who espouses such a counterhegemony still addresses two audiences. In order to shake colonial self-confidence, rouse international opinion, and embarrass elite

groups who collaborate with the rulers, he or she needs to expose the fallacies of colonial contentions. This by necessity involves entering the languages of the colonizers, if only to turn upside down the standard assumptions implicit in these languages. At the same time, the revolutionary hopes to "mobilize" the "masses" to join in smashing colonial domination, a goal that is usually possible only if he or she draws upon indigenous idioms. Evoking potent indigenous symbols and myths, the revolutionary provides members of his or her society with a sense of pride and an identity; employing a powerful moral vocabulary, he or she may create a sense that the highest principles of indigenous culture are at stake. But while nonrevolutionaries may be content with using different idioms in different political contexts, proponents of counterhegemony attempt to collapse the languages of the outer and inner domains into one. Revolutionaries are generally intolerant of bilingualism, of any attempt to compartmentalize existence in distinct moral spheres. They attack important aspects of tradition at the same time they challenge alien rule and try to fashion an all-encompassing set of principles, in some cases by radically juxtaposing notions drawn from very different sources. Through this process, they provide the colonized with a means of making sense of the outer domain and of deriving meaning from actions that confront their domination.

In Surat, I will argue here, political leaderships after the midnineteenth century tended to follow the hegemonic pattern of adaptation to colonialism. Elites in the city pursued status, power, and justice within the framework of special relationships with colonial rulers and of institutions established by the Anglo-Indian administration, particularly the local municipality. Within this framework, they discovered, they could achieve important goals as individuals and sometimes also satisfy the larger groups to which they belonged. But willingness to engage in bargaining with the rulers meant adhering to liberal representative conventions of approach and persuasion that were to a great extent borrowed from British culture. Over time, by accommodating themselves to the discourse of their rulers, local leaders redefined their concepts of political morality, reformulated their own roles, and set the basis for the development of new identities. While there was a period in which counterhegemonic discourse dominated—the Gandhian phase of politics associated with the noncooperation movement of 1919-24— this period proved short-lived.

The purpose of this book is to show how, through these processes, a public culture—that is, conventions and political discussion and debate revolving around originally British notions of public opinion and the public good—gradually took shape in Surat and how this created an arena of civic action that effectively excluded the city's underclasses

from a genuine participation in shaping the larger political order. In part 3 of this book, I examine how this public culture was constructed during the late nineteenth century and how it withstood momentarily the crisis of World War I. In part 4, I explore challenges to this public culture posed by the Gandhians—but I also document how the counterhegemony offered by the Gandhians failed to institutionalize itself as a replacement for a colonially derived language. In both sections, I show how powerful instruments of colonialism worked to confine political discourse within liberal democratic and communalist principle.

First, however, I must establish the social setting in which these processes occurred and consider whether alternative approaches to the development of civic values and conventions, such as the westernization and Marxian models, provide satisfactory tools for our undertaking. So in the next part of this study, I examine Surat's economy, the idioms of indigenous politics, and the historical patterns of elite adaptation to rule by outsiders before the mid-nineteenth century.