Chapter 4: British Indophobia

The author begins this chapter with: "British Indomania did not die of
natural causes; it was killed off."  In rest of the chapter he tries to
build a case for this statement.

The Indophobia was constructed by Evangelicalism and Utiliarinism and
its chief architects were Charles Grant and James Mill.

Charles Grant, an evangelical, after returning from India wrote a policy
paper "The Observations on the .. Asiatic subjects of Great Britain."  
He attacks Hinduism, Indian civilization and prevailing Indomania and 
makes a case for aggressive Anglicization and Christianization.  In this
paper (immensly influential in author's opinion) he invented the reform 
agenda for British India and thus created a justification for British rule.

Grant judged Indians (specifically Bengali Hindus) as lacking in truth,
honesty, and good faith.  He claims to be interested not in blanket 
condemnation of Indians but in determining "their true place in the 
moral scale."  Grant develops an argument that the moral depravity of 
Hindus results from government, laws, religion -- in short, from moral
causes and consequently the cure must of the same kind.  Although he uses
Jones' discourse to build his case, he completely ignores Jonesean doctrine 
of a kinship between European languages and Sanskrit, and hence between 
Europeans and Indians.

Thomas Macaulay, who studied neither Sanskrit nor Arabic, regards these
as repositories of outmoded knowledge and states his belief that English is 
to be to India what Greek and Latin had been to England.  This was in
direct opposition to Orientalists who considered Sanskrit to be Greek and
Latin of India.  The author considers Macaulay's "Minute" to be a masterpiece
of polemical prose. 

Charles Grant was influential in setting East India College in England.
One of the principal motive was to innoculate British boys with European
culture against Indian culture.  Ironically it was Indophobia that created
the professorship of Sanskrit at the East India College, the principal
reason being rivalry with the French.

The Anglicist postition prevailed and drove the British policy down the
path of minimization and denigration of accomplishment of Indian 
civilization.

James Mill's "History of British India (1817)", most particularly the long
essay "Of the Hindus," is the single most important source of British
Indophobia and hostility to Orientalism.  The author says it can be
considered a secular version of Grant's "Observations."

Mill's attack upon Orientalism begins with the question of authority,
the issue of greatest vulnerability for him.  Mill knew no India languages
and had never been to India.  He consigns Orientalists and India hands 
who knew Indian languages to merely gatherer of facts and eyewitnesses
and reserves the right of philosophizing, forming theories to people
like himself who presumably have higher level mental faculties.  Mill
who read Jones' discourse is completely silent about Jonesean doctrine
of a kinship between Greek, Latin and Sanskrit.

Until beginning of 19 the century, the purpose of British empire in 
India was no more than yielding profits to shareholders of the East India
Company.  Grant proposed a nobler purpose, the moral uplift of the Indians.
Mill promoted the civilization project of liberating Indians from their
own past.  Systematic denigration of Indians and Indian civlization and
resulting Indophobia was a price for development of justifications for 
British rule.

The author closes the chapter with this paragraph: "... Indophobia did not 
spring up naturally from the soild of Britain, it was deliberately 
built. ..."