Colonial Knowledge Production in North-East India
- Part I -

Dr Syed Ahmed *

Photo courtesy: https://meeshao.com (book cover of T.C. Hodson's The Meitheis

The construction and control of European Empires in the colonies have been facilitated to a great extent by the systematic and meticulous process of colonial knowledge production. Emphasising the importance of colonial knowledge in empire building, renowned academic, Nicholas B. Birks, in the forward of Bernard Cohn’s book, Colonialism and its forms of knowledge (1996), states:

“Colonial conquest was not just the result of power of superior arms, military organization, political power, or economic wealth – as important as these things were. Colonialism was made possible, and then sustained and strengthened, as much by cultural technologies of rule as it was by the more obvious and brutal modes of conquest that first established power on foreign shores.

The cultural effects of colonialism have too often been ignored or displaced…but more than his, it has been sufficiently recognised that colonialism was itself a cultural project of control. Colonial knowledge both enabled conquest and was produced by it; in certain important ways, knowledge was what colonialism was all about.

Cultural forms in societies newly classified as “traditional” were reconstructed and transformed by and through this knowledge, which created new categories and oppositions between colonizers and colonized, European and Asian, modern and traditional, colonizers and colonized…”

Cohn sees construction of Empire as an intellectual and cultural phenomenon. He contends that the British Orientalists’ attempt to understand and study Indian languages and its socio-cultural life was important to the colonial project of control and command.

The command of native language and knowledge of colonial society was key to control the natives. Cohn, in his book, illustrates “how the very Orientalist imagination which led to brilliant antiquarian collections, archaeological finds, and photographic forays were in fact forms of constructing an India that could be better packaged, inferiorized, and ruled.”

In India, the British Orientalists, under the patronage of Governor General, William Hastings (1773-85), initiated a rigorous work of knowledge production, which led to the rediscovery of of India and her past. Renowned Philologist William Jones founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784 at Kolkata. The building of the society is presently at Park Street, Kolkata.

The Presidents and General Secretaries of the Society in its early days:

Year	President	General Secretary
1784-89	Sir William Jones	George Hillarow Barlow
1790	Sir William Jones	J. Herbert Harrington
end of 1792	Sir William Jones	Edmund Morris
1794-95	Sir John Shore	Edmund Morris
1796	Sir John Shore	Captain Symes
1797	Sir John Shore	C.E. Corrington
1799	Sir J. Ansturther Bart	W. Hunter
1802	Sir J. Ansturther Bart	R. Home
1805	Sir J. Ansturther Bart	W. Hunter
1807	H.T. Colebrooke	W. Hunter
1810	H.T. Colebrooke	W. Hunter
1820	Marquis of Hastings	Captain A. Lockett
1822	Marquis of Hastings	H.H. Wilson
1825	J.H. Harington	W.W. Wilson

Under this society, numerous Orientalists collected and translated the “useful” indigenous texts. The society also published a journal called Asiatick Researches (later renamed Journal of Asiatic Society) which published research papers. Jones himself translated Kalidasa’s Sakuntala (1789), Joydeva’s Gitagovinda (1789), Manusamhita (1794), Laila Majnu and edited Ritusamhita (1792).

Sir Charles Wilkins translated the Bhagavatgita (1785), Hitopadesha (1787) into English, and a Grammar of Sanskrit language.

H.T. Colebrooke published, On the duties of a faithful Hindu Wife (1795), Digest of Hindu Law on Contracts and Successions (1798), and edited Amarkosha (1808).

H.H. Wilson published an edition of Kalhana’s history text, Rajatarangini (1825) and Kalidasa’s Meghaduta (1813).

Nathaniel Brassey Halhed published in English, A Code of Gentoo laws, or Ordinations of the Pundits (from a Persian translation, made from the original written in Sanskrit language) in 1776, Charles Hamilton published Al-Hidayah (a 12th century Hanafi legal manual, translated into Persian in 1776 by a group of Muslim scholars in Bengal under the instruction of Hamilton) in 1791.

In 1780, Hastings founded Calcutta Madrassa (now Aliya Madrassa), which promoted the study of Persian and Arabic languages, Islamic law and related disciplines, and translation of texts, at Calcutta. The intense study of native customs and law resulted in the establishment of rule of law by the codification of Indian Penal Code, land revenue reforms, social legislations, etc. in British India.

Colonial knowledge production continued throughout till the early 20th century by the colonizers. British administrators engaged in studies of the native people and its cultural system, besides the natural resources, trade routes, climatic and topographic conditions.

Photo courtesy: https://www.gutenberg.org (of Sidney Endle, author of The Kacharis_20250524) 

In Northeastern part of India, several administrators left behind various forms of knowledge such as histories, ethnographic accounts, language studies, maps, geographical studies, natural resource studies, travel accounts, etc. This knowledge production was an important part of the colonisers’ attempt to achieve complete domination over their colonised subjects in mainland India and the western and eastern frontiers.

Some of the prominent works include

o R.B. Pemberton’s Report on Eastern Frontier of British India (1835),
o Alexander Mackenzie’s The North-East Frontier of India (1884),
o B.C. Allen’s Volumes of Gazetteers of the provinces of North-East India,
o E.A. Gait’s History of Assam (1906),
o W. McCulloch’s Account of the Valley of Munnipore and of the Hill Tribes, with a Comparative Vocabulary of the Munnipore and Other Languages (1859),
o James Hartley & M.J. Wright’s Three Years in Cachar: With a short account of the Manipur massacre (1895),
o Thomas Callan Hodson’s The Meitheis (1908) and Naga Tribes of Manipur (1911),
o R. Brown’s The Statistical Account of the native state of Manipur, and the hill territory under its rule (1873),
o C.A. Soppitt’s An Historical and Descriptive account of the Kachari Tribes in the North Cachar Hills with Specimens of Tales and Folklore (1885),
o J.H. Hutton’s The Angami Nagas (1921), The Sema Nagas (1921), Diaries of Two tours in the unadministered area east of the Naga Hills (1929),
o Sidney Endle’s The Kacharis (1911),
o J.P. Mills’ The Lhota nagas (1922), The Ao Nagas (1926) and The Rengma Nagas (1937),
o Christoph Von Furer-Haimendorf’s Naked Nagas (1939), Return of the Naked Nagas (1976) and The Konyak Nagas (1969),
o Francis Buchanan-Hamilton’s An Account of Assam (1940),
o Ursula Graham Bower’s Naga Path (1950), Drum Behind the Hill (1950), The Hidden Land (1953), among others.

To be continued...

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* Dr. Syed Ahmed wrote this article for e-pao.net
The writer is an Associate Professor at
Department of History,
D.M. College of Arts, Imphal
and can be contacted at syed_ahmed4(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
This article was webcasted on May 24 2025.

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