Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Currying Favor: The Politics of British Educational and Cultural Policy in India, 1813-1854

1988; Duke University Press; Issue: 19/20 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/466180

1527-1951

Gauri Viswanathan,

Indian History and Philosophy

Antonio Gramsci illuminates relations of culture and power through useful insight that cultural domination works by consent and often precedes conquest by force. Power, operating concurrently at two clearly distinguishable levels, produces a situation where the supremacy of a social group manifests itself in two ways, as 'domination' and as 'intellectual and moral leadership.'... It seems clear ... that there can, and indeed must be hegemonic activity even before rise to power, and that one should not count only on material force which power gives in order to exercise an effective leadership.I The importance of moral and intellectual suasion in matters of governance is readily conceded on theoretical grounds as an implicit tactical maneuver in consolidation of power. There is an almost bland consensus in post-Arnoldian cultural criticism that age of ideology begins when force gives way to ideas. But precise mode and process by which cultural domination is ensured is less open to scrutiny as historically documented fact. Current approaches have gotten around this problem somewhat by treating ideology as a form of masking, and license given to speculative analyses as a result is sometimes great enough to suspend, at least temporarily, search for actual intentions. Arguably, detailed records of self-incrimination are not routinely preserved in state archives. But where such records do exist, evidence is often compelling enough to suggest that Gramscian notion is not merely a theoretical construct but an uncannily accurate description of historical process, howsoever subject it may be to vagaries of particular circumstances. A case in point is British India, whose checkered history of cultural confrontation conferred a sense of urgency to voluntary cultural assimilation as most effective form of political action. The political choices are spelled out in