‘Racialisation as a mechanism of colonial governance: racial hierarchies within colonial India’ by Oisín Calvert Woods

Degree programme: Joint Honours English & Sociology

Year of study: Second year

Introduction

What does it mean to know a society through the eyes of its colonisers? For much of contemporary sociological history, India has been understood through the lens of ‘oriental despotism’. Even the ‘founding figures’ of sociology, such as Marx and Weber, reproduced this framing (Dirks, 1987: 3), with Marx characterising Indian society as governed by tyrannical despotism rooted in fear and violence, constraining the human mind (Dirks, 1987: 3) alongside religious oppression and conflict (Dirks, 1987: 4). Yet this is not a neutral scholarly inheritance; it is itself a product of colonial rule, shaped by the British Empire’s control over knowledge production and education, and by the racialised consciousness through which India—and its Hindu and Muslim populations—have been understood. Sociology and its ‘canon’ remain deeply entangled with the Western intellectual tradition (Arjomand & Connell, 2008: 546). This analysis therefore engages decolonial thought to interrogate sociology’s “imperialistic unconscious” (Go, 2013: 49). Racialisation—the process through which racial meanings are produced and embedded within social and institutional structures provides a critical analytical lens for this task.

The British Empire’s colonisation of India stands as one of the most studied, politically consequential, and analytically instructive instances of imperial rule in history, and as such demands sustained sociological scrutiny. As Bonilla-Silva argues, racialised social systems tend to generate ideologies that become embedded within a society’s institutional structures (Bonilla-Silva qtd. in Golash-Boza, 2016: 133). Within this framework, the British Empire can be understood as deliberately manufacturing racial categories, mobilising racialisation as a flexible and strategic instrument of colonial governance, the effects of which continue to shape both India’s political landscape and its sociological interpretation today.

Historical Context

Before discussing the sociological elements, it is important for certain historical aspects to be highlighted. Firstly, much of colonial India’s history was conducted under a private English company, known as the ‘East India company’, acting as the primary imperial force.  Before the rampant colonisation from the British Empire, India was one of the largest economies in the world (Tharoor, 2017: 2), precisely the reason why the East India company was formed. The British’s establishment of colonial rule was not based on religious values, or of racial purity, it was merely greed (Tharoor, 2017: 95-6). After the fall of the Mughal empire in approximately 1857, Britain, operating under the private corporation, sought to fill this power gap (Tharoor, 2017: 4). The East India company, whilst not technically acting as a governing body of England, is still regarded as some form of quasi-state. This was not only due to the transferring of revenue from India to England, but also due to it amassing a private army of nearly three-hundred thousand men exercising control over nearly two-hundred million civilians (Tharoor, 2017: 4). This was the case until the company was dissolved and the British state formally entered India. The British empire, due to their motivation being strictly economic gain, left India in 1947 as the colonies were no longer profitable (Tharoor, 2017: 146). It left, however, a politically and socially disrupted society; one where the penal and governmental legislation was riddled with policies that acted as a shadow of colonial power structures (Tharoor, 2017:  93), a population not skilled enough to continue with the left-behind infrastructure (Tharoor, 2017: 179) and intense, and often violent, national and religious upheaval over the splitting up of the Indian population and the creation of the state of Pakistan (Tharoor, 2017: 246).

Racialisation: Theory and Application

Having established this historical context, it is necessary to define the theoretical lens through which the article proceeds. Racialisation primarily acts as a mode of power by which ‘others’ are defined by their racial traits and the terminology through which we refer to them is inherently racialised (Murji & Solomos, 2005: 19). Racialisation relies on the social constructivist ideas; it is the way racial formation occurs and is produced by differing groups (Murji & Solomos, 2005: 22). Typically, as will be seen, these groups are dominant within a society. Race in this way is not fixed, as racialisation is constantly fluctuating. This can be seen in cultural studies regarding Irish Catholics, who for a long time in history were an oppressed race and viewed separately from other white European groups (Ignatiev, 2009; 2). However, through the ever-fluctuating process of racialisation they are now a benefactor of white privilege and can act as an oppressive force in racial discrimination in America (Ignatiev, 2009; 2). The process of racialisation is also incredibly reflexive and ever evolving (Murji & Solomos, 2005: 22). The study of the concept extends past an agency-level into structural analysis of legal systems, nations and religious identities (Murji & Solomos, 2005: 1). The baseline definition for racialization can be seen as any “race-inflected social situations” (Murji & Solomos, 2005: 3). In a social situation where, racial meaning is based on structural understanding, humans are assigned racial meanings and these meanings, both at a structural and individual level, are assumed to be natural and thus justify the positive or negative treatment of a certain group.

Manufacturing Race: Martial and Effeminate Categories

With this theoretical framework established, we can turn to the colonial case itself, beginning with the most explicit example of manufactured racial identity: the construction of ‘martial’ and ‘effeminate’ races. The example of a colonised India acts as an explicit examination of the concept of racialisation in the ability for an imperial state to forge race and categorisation in order to keep a native population subservient. Firstly, there must be a separation between coloniser and the colonised. Fanon highlights that a colonising state must argue that “Native society is not simply described as lacking in values […] it is declared insensible to ethics” (Fanon, 1965: 33-4), in order to justify both colonisation of a native society and the racialisation processes that are built alongside it. That is not to say, however, that the construction of race by empires is concrete. In the case of India, racialisation was incredibly unstable, having plasticity built into its process in order to maintain colonial rule through any adaptation necessary (Mahmud, 1999: 1224). The social construction of race within India highlights this plasticity as the British empire utilised differing lexical terms (‘caste’, ‘race’, ‘tribe’ or ‘nation’) interchangeably in whatever way suited the colonisers the most (Mahmud, 1999: 1228). Part of the colonial process is to shape and define racial traits and typologize essential types, as this knowledge keeps those subjected under colonialism “contained and represented by dominating frameworks” (Said, 1999: 40). We can see this explicitly in the British creating, through the manipulation of the religious caste systems, both ‘effeminate’ and ‘martial’ races.

The British empire used ‘cultural technology’ in order to “anthropologize” the demographics within India (Tharoor, 2017: 103), forming rigid views of identity based on military status, caste and religion. All of this was done whenever it would directly benefit the empire. The 1857 Indian Rebellion against the East India company, a significant blow to the empire’s control, helped create the idea of ‘martial race’ by proposing that martiality and combat prowess was a racially inherited trait (Mahmud, 1999: 1231). The rebellion was primarily conducted by the Bengali population within India, whilst the militarised Punjabi population helped defend British sovereignty. Thus, the empire began redefining their definition of race to fit in affectionate titles to ‘buy off’ specific populations. They argued Punjabis, descendants of Aryan invaders within history, were genetically predisposed to martial prowess (Mahmud, 1999: 1232), and that the Bengalis were, by nature, a part of an ‘effeminate race’, passive and unsuitable for combat. Here we see how the racialisation in India was not just pseudo-scientific but was known by the colonisers to be a way of benefiting the empire by morphing cultural identities in whatever way promotes coloniality. Not only does this add to the idea that racialisation is not a strict linear process, but it also furthers colonial discourse put forth by Stoler: “The demasculinization of colonized men and the hypermasculinity of European males are understood as key elements in the assertion of white supremacy” (Stoler, 2010: 46). The British, through their social construction of two classes of people within India, not only masculinised themselves as warriors, but also gave aspects of ‘whiteness’ to Punjabi individuals. This is seen not just through the ascribing of the martial class but also arguing they have historical ties to whiteness through the Aryan race, in order to recruit a specific population to benefit the power structures the British had set up. The British empire’s role in the colonisation of India is an explicit example of the everchanging social construction of race and the use of racialisation to the benefit of a colonial empire. This section has demonstrated, therefore, that the British empire’s racial construction of India was neither fixed nor merely descriptive: it was deliberate, malleable, and ruthlessly adapted to serve colonial interests.

Criminal Tribes Legislation and the Racialisation of Law

If the manufacturing of martial and effeminate races reveals racialisation operating through military recruitment and social engineering, the Criminal Tribes Legislation exposes its operation within colonial law. We can see the manufactured racialisation process when it comes not just to the penal code of colonial India, but also their systematic profiling of members within Indian society as ‘criminal tribes / caste’ under the British plan of ‘divide et impera’ (‘Divide and Conquer’) (Tharoor, 2017: 101). Under this plan, racialisation was incredibly important in the separation of racial groups and creating racialised knowledge structures within colonial India in order for the empire to profile specific groups. “Justice, in British India, was far from blind: It was highly attentive to the skin colour of the defendant” (Tharoor, 2017: 90), with Indians being punished more severely than whites over crime (Tharoor, 2017: 90). Racial discrimination, seen through The Criminal Tribes Legislation (1911) was legal. Any individual belonging to a criminal tribe had their movement restricted, repeatedly stopped and searched, along with permanent and unlawful detainment (Tharoor, 2017: 94). All of this lends itself into the process of racialisation, and its ability to benefit the dominant social group through categorizing ethnic groups on deterministic traits. Natives are to be reduced to “their racial essences to suit the exigencies of colonialism” (Said qtd. In Nigam, 1990: 133), with this being evident in the British subversion of the Indian caste system. The British empire had a fixation on the caste system in India, believing it to be the “essence of India” (Inden, 1986: 403). People in India are not seen as autonomous agents; rather they are bound by the caste they are born into (Nigam, 1990: 113-4). This idea, whilst misconstrued and highly deterministic, was written into law, in which ethnic groups were placed into strict castes that fatalistically determined their role in Indian society as a criminal:

“[…] Now everyone of the tribes I have mentioned (The Banjanrees, the Kolatees, Buddhuks) are professional criminals: crime is their trade and they are born into it and must commit to it. […] Therefore when a man tells you he is a Buddhuk [..] he tells you what few Europeans ever thoroughly realise that he is an offender against the law and [..] that reform is impossible for it is his trade, his Caste. I may say his religion to commit crime.” (Nigam, 1990: 135)

The British Empire contorted the use of the Indian Caste system in order to assume that criminality was inborn (Nigam, 1990: 136) and committed directly to law to justify oppression and surveillance. It also excused the resettling of specific ethnic groups which were socially constructed to have “criminal genes” (Mahmud 1999: 1236) into reformatory settlements, separating children and forbidding inter-marriages with caste-bound criminals (Mahmud, 1999: 1236). All of this was done to justify the protection of more ‘pure’ areas within India. These ideas were published in district manuals and magazine reports in order to forge an ideological baseline within India (Arnold, 1997: 8). This example interweaves the concepts of racialisation along with the strict knowledge structures from colonial empires. Racialisation always has a goal. In this case it was to enact the philosophy of divide and conquer. The Criminal Tribes Act acted as a wider racialisation epistemology of the British empire; going back to Said, we see that the law attempted to typologize quasi-ethnic groups into essential types based on innate criminality (Said, 1999; 40), all to benefit the empire.

Criminal Repression, the Body and Colonial Power

Beyond the ideological construction of race, racialisation also manifested materially in the control and repression of bodies. Foucault’s framework of discipline and surveillance is indispensable here. The ability to classify and quantify a population is integral to the central position of power (Foucault, 1997: 184). It is no surprise then that the British empire categorized entire ethnic groups in order to maintain control over the vastness of India. Repression is a key instance of power, with the control over physical bodies being a key topic within sociological discourse (Foucault, 2020: 4) as repression of the physical body has a fundamental link to both power and knowledge. To repress and control individuals or entire ethnic groups is to limit their impact on the wider structures within an empire, preventing damage to the hegemony the British empire was attempting to craft. Repression is also unique in its ability to limit the existence of ‘taboo’ subjects to certain areas within society (Foucault, 2020: 5). In the case of colonial India, we can see the repression of specific social groups within not just prison camps for criminal tribes, but also the limiting of movement for British soldiers as they were required to live within cantonment zones (Mahmud, 1999: 1226). Repression and separation are integral to imperial control. By separating British soldiers from the wider Indian population, it prevented threats to the social structures that the British empire was attempting to perform, in this case, racialised hierarchies between white and non-white groups.

Repressive colonial power also extends to the discourse surrounding it. For Foucault to discuss a repressed idea is to enact transgressions against it (Foucault, 2020: 6) and thus threaten the social structures in place within a society, with this being seen in colonial India. For example, as mentioned, inter-marriage was banned for those labelled as being part of a criminal tribe, and for the British it was not enough to physically repress those typologized as inherent criminals, but all interactions between the most oppressed and most powerful in colonial India was to be restricted. Inter-caste marriage threatened the deterministic and racialised systems of hierarchy that the empire relied on in order to assert colonial dominance. To connect with an individual whose caste / status is repressed is to challenge the very power structures set up by the oppressor who declares that discourse between those groups is prohibited because those of certain castes fatalistically threaten the ‘peace’ an empire is attempting to achieve. In this way racialisation was not just an ideological separation between ethnic groups based on terminology, but rather racialisation led to the physical repression and control of the bodies within colonial India.

Racialised Labour Hierarchies

The consequences of racialisation extended itself into the structured colonial economy, producing a racialised labour hierarchy whose effects persisted long after independence. As mentioned previously, one of the most damaging aspects to contemporary India’s economy was the leaving behind of an unskilled labour force when it came to the operation of Indian infrastructure (Tharoor, 2017: 179). The British argued that Indians did not have the “judgement and presence of mind” to deal with crises arising within infrastructure economies like the civil service or railways (Tharoor, 2017: 179). Thus, they outcast them from learning core skills in running the country’s infrastructure. In this way both contemporary and colonial India had an incredibly racialised labour hierarchy.

 It is widely recognised that the bureaucracy of the Indian civil service positions was based on a “functional hierarchy” of “distinctively racial rationale” (Arnold, 1997: 5). Native hires within the police force, for example, were always under the direction of a superior European officer, based on the idea that native Indians did not have the capabilities for effective policing (Arnold, 1997: 5) resulting in lower pay and more menial duties (Arnold, 1997: 4). Racialisation was required in order to make the Indian infrastructure run, as it was a difficult and expensive process to only hire European manpower (Arnold, 1997: 5). As such, racialisation was core to the recruitment of Indian civil service workers. By categorizing specific social groupings within India, it assisted the processes of colonial control by simultaneously employing certain demographics of the native population, whilst excluding those who were viewed as inferior (Arnold, 1997: 7). For example, in the 1920s the percentage of constables that belonged to the ethnic group known as ‘Nayars’ was 9.6% (Arnold, 1997: 11), due to the British empire viewing the community as eminently trustworthy.

However, as we have seen, racialisation is ever fluctuating, and after the Malabar special police strike in 1946, suspicion against the Nayars as a community effective in policing was called into question (Arnold, 1997: 15), furthering the reflexivity of the racialisation process. Recruitment into the Indian Civil Service was primarily based on ‘communal’ qualities, i.e., whether they were a part of the martial class, once again likening back to the British’s view that caste was a deterministic and essential quality of the individual (Arnold, 1997: 17). In this way racialisation also helped bolster the empire’s coercive apparatus. By having the dominant positions within the state of India occupied nearly exclusively by white Europeans, the basis that they are the only ones fit to rule, the empire made the Indian economy and infrastructure reliant on the British empire’s rule.

Conclusion

This article has demonstrated that racialisation was not a by-product of British colonialism in India but its active instrument: a flexible, strategic, and deliberately unstable mechanism for manufacturing division, legitimising exploitation, and sustaining colonial governance. It did more than classify Indian populations, it used those classifications to generate division and social tension. Nowhere is the destructive legacy of racialisation more starkly visible than in the 1947 Radcliffe Line.

The Line was not the product of neutral expertise or dispassionate administration. Chatterji establishes that Cyril Radcliffe, appointed to chair the Bengal Boundary Commission, had no background in Indian administration and no prior experience adjudicating disputes of this kind (Chatterji, 1999: 186). Far from representing a clean technical solution, the border was shaped by the explicitly political structure of the Commission itself (Chatterji, 1999: 191–192), a by-product of British imperialism. The boundary was thus never a neutral cartographic exercise. It was, from the outset, a politically saturated document, bearing all the marks of the colonial power structures that produced it. The consequences for ordinary people were immediate and catastrophic. The border sliced through settled agricultural communities, separating sharecroppers from their fields, creditors from debtors, and families from one another (Chatterji, 1999: 225). The border was reinforced by two militias, the Pakistani Ansar Bahini and the Indian Bangiya Jatiua Rakashi Dal, both acting as instruments of antagonisation for communities that previously maintained informal cross-border relationships (Chatterji, 1999: 237-239). The line partitioned the subcontinent along racialised and religious lines, producing the state of Pakistan and displacing up to fifteen million people and costing an estimated two million lives in the violence that followed (Tharoor, 2017: 147)

Importantly, the Line’s making reflected the same racialised logic of division that this article has traced throughout British colonial governance. The boundary was not the tragic consequence of an unbiased cartographic exercise, it was the endpoint of decades of British colonial policy that had deliberately inflamed religious and ethnic distinctions by categorising, separating, and antagonising communities in order to rule over them – Divide et Impera. The enduring geopolitical conflict between India and Pakistan can be seen as not a residue of ancient hatred but the direct inheritance of British racialisation and its aggressive remaking of South Asian identity (Tharoor, 2017: 246–7). To understand colonialism’s aftermath, we must understand racialisation, not as a historical curiosity, but as an ongoing epistemological problem and one that continues to shape both the politics of the subcontinent and the sociological frameworks through which we attempt to study it.

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