A Colonial in the Colonies

Governor Casey, Mahatma Gandhi, and the endgame of empire

Bibliographic Data

ID4549853
AuthorsKama Maclean (0000-0002-8562-5696, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume19
Issue3
Publication date2018-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Colonialism and Colonial History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1532-5768 • E-ISSN: 1532-5768
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/cch.2018.0022
OpenAlexW2903864492
LanguageEN
References cited11

This article explores the particular subjectivity of a ‘colonial’ in the higher echelons of imperial governance in late colonial India. Focussing on the Australian statesman R. G. Casey, who served as Governor of Bengal from 1944-1946, it demonstrates the unique perspective that Casey brought to his role. Appointed to a troubled province - stricken by a famine now widely recognised as colonially-induced, on the frontline of the Japanese advance toward India, at a time when communal violence was sharply on the rise, and at a critical time in the negotiations over decolonisation - Casey skilfully deployed his positionality as a relative outsider in British India to gain political leverage and to further negotiations with Indian nationalists. Casey could have been rendered ineffective by being identified somewhat disparagingly at the time of his appointment as a ‘colonial’ by Britons, and as an ‘Australian’, tainted through association with the White Australia Policy, by a critical Indian press. Yet Casey deployed these identities to strategically project himself as an engaged intermediary in the standoff between a defensive, reluctant decoloniser and a combative, fractured nationalist movement. The best example of this is a series of talks he had with M. K. Gandhi on the political situation in late 1945, at a time when Gandhi’s relations with the Government of India and in particular, with the Viceroy, had badly deteriorated. This article focuses on the impact of the Gandhi-Casey talks, as they became known in the press, on the cusp of decolonisation

Ancient history · British Empire · Colonialism · Decolonization · Economic history · Empire · Nationalism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Australian History and Society · Colonial History and Postcolonial Studies · Gender Studies · History · Law

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