A Conquest Foretold
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2938358 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ranajit Guha (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1998 |
| Issue | 54 |
| Pages | 85 |
| Publication date | 1998-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Social Text (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0164-2472 • E-ISSN: 1527-1951 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/466751 |
| OpenAlex | W2333295419 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 1 |
Whenever I read or hear the phrase colonial India, it hurts me. It hurts like an injury that has healed and yet has retained somehow a trace of the original pain linked to many different things-memories, values, sentiments. For pain, says Wittgenstein, characterized by very definite connexions. The phrase he uses here in the German original is in fact more inclusive than mere connections: Zusammenhiinge. What it connotes is not only linkages, but also a sort of aggregation of the linked entities to form a loosely gathered context.' The context of the pain that niggles us, shadows every reference to us as the colonized or once colonized, is part of a legacy that dates back to the early years of British rule in South Asia and was passed on, through successive generations, eventually to us whose passage from infancy to youth coincided with the last two decades of the Raj. The turmoil and sensitivities of that difficult transition not only added to the intensity of the pain but taught us at the same time to contextualize it in history. We learned, for instance, to trace it back to its source in an event which had come, by this time, to epitomize the British conquest of India. That event was the battle of Plassey, fought between the Nawab of Bengal and the English East India Company, in which the latter won a decisive victory on 23 June 1757. As an armed conflict, it was a relatively minor affair-less of a Waterloo than one of those regional clashes in which Europe's mercantile operations in South Asia had been routinely involved since the seventeenth century. It impresses us, in retrospect, not so much for its military outcome brought about by a prearranged defection of the Nawab's commander in chief as for its foundational importance in the history of conquest. For India was not conquered in a nine-hour battle on one single day.2 Even the company's acquisition of Bengal, which was to prepare the ground for its further expansion, had to wait another seven
Ancient history · Art · CONQUEST · Economic history · Political science · History · Indian History and Philosophy · Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East · South Asian Studies and Conflicts
| Citations per year | 0.23 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2000 - 2025 (26) |
| Highly cited | No |