Quote of the Day (P. J. O’Rourke, on Driving in India at the Turn of the Millennium)

“Jeeps bust scooters, scooters plow into bicycles, bicycles cover the hoods of jeeps. Cars run into trees. Buses run into ditches, rolling over on their old-fashioned rounded tops until they’re mashed into chapatis of carnage. And everyone runs into pedestrians. A speed bump is called a ‘sleeping policeman’ in England. I don’t know what it’s called in India. ‘Dead person lying in the road’ is a guess. There’s some of both in every village, but they don’t slow traffic much. The animals get clobbered, too, including the sacred cows, in accidents notable for the unswerving behavior of all participants. Late in our trip, in Bihar state, the car in front of us hit a cow — no change in speed or direction from the car, no change in posture or expression from the cow.”—American humorist P. J. O’Rourke (1947-2022), “Weird Karma,” originally published in Men’s Journal, January 1999, reprinted in The Best American Travel Writing 2000, edited by Bill Bryson (2000)

Well, I hope matters have improved since O’Rourke wrote this—not just for foreign travelers but also for the citizens of India.

Quote of the Day (Edmund Burke, on Why ‘Law and Arbitrary Power Are in Eternal Enmity’)

“Law and arbitrary power are in eternal enmity. Name me a magistrate, and I will name property; name me power, and I will name protection. It is a contradiction in terms, it is blasphemy in religion, it is wickedness in politics, to say that any man can have arbitrary power. In every patent of office the duty is included. For what else does a magistrate exist? To suppose for power is an absurdity in idea. Judges are guided and governed by the eternal laws of justice, to which we are all subject. We may bite our chains, if we will, but we shall be made to know ourselves, and be taught that man is born to be governed by law; and he that will substitute will in the place of it is an enemy to God.”—Anglo-Irish politician-statesman—and conservative theorist—Edmund Burke (1729-1797), “Speech on The Impeachment of Warren Hastings,” Feb. 15, 1788

The subject of this searing meditation on power and the law was Warren Hastings, born on this day in Churchill, Oxfordshire, England, in 1732. Having risen through the East Indian Company to become the first de facto Governor-General of India, Hastings was accused of mismanagement and personal corruption while in power from 1772 to 1785. Edmund Burke (pictured), outraged by reports of abuses on the subcontinent, spearheaded the impeachment process against Hastings. 

The resulting trial before the House of Lords, extraordinarily long (from 1788 to 1795), ended in Hastings’ acquittal on charges of extortion and bribery, but not before Burke gave voice to some of the most compelling and eloquent thoughts on the proper exercise of power ever delivered by a Western statesman.

British historian and Whig politician Thomas Babington Macaulay vividly conveys the impact of Burke’s blistering four-day opening speech against Hastings, an autumnal burst of eloquence by the aging statesman:

“The energy and pathos of the great orator extorted expressions of unwonted admiration even from the stern and hostile Chancellor Thurlow; and, for a moment, seemed to pierce even the.resolute heart of the defendant. The ladies in the galleries, unaccustomed to such displays of eloquence, excited by the solemnity of the occasion, and perhaps not unwilling to display their taste and sensibility, were in a state of uncontrollable emotion. Handkerchiefs were pulled out; smelling bottles were handed round; hysterical sobs and screams were heard: and Mrs. [Richard Brinsley] Sheridan was carried out in a fit.”

The Hastings impeachment trial has had implications beyond Britain or even its overseas possessions such as India. Politics in the early U.S. republic still avidly followed the fortunes of Burke, who, even upon the outbreak of the American Revolution, had advocated for the necessity of reconciliation with the rebellious colonies and against the folly of abusing their rights.

For the United States, then in the midst of a furious debate on its own Constitution, the Hastings trial threw into sharp relief the question of impeachment’s use as a tool to redress maladministration, corruption, and abuse of power. 

The framers were influenced enough by what they read overseas to insert the phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors” into the founding document of their new republic, indicating that more than just treason was enough to require removal from office. The proceedings in England would influence the debates and denouements of subsequent landmark American impeachment attempts involving Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase and Presidents Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.

Burke pursued the case against Hastings despite the fact that Britain as a whole and even his own Whig Party was indifferent at best and hostile at worst to his cause. As the above quote indicates, he recognized the moral, not just political or legal, dimensions of the problem posed by Hastings’ wielding of power through the East India Company. His warning is as valid for 2017 America as it was for 1788 Britain: “he that will substitute will in the place of [law] is an enemy to God.”

At some time in the not-so-distant future, I hope that an American politician (and this is a real dream--a Republican!) will take the President and rake him over the coals with the same sense of outrage that Burke summoned against Hastings:

“I impeach him in the name of the Commons' House of Parliament, whose trust he has betrayed. I impeach him in the name of the English nation, whose ancient honour he has sullied. I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose rights he has trodden under foot, and whose country he has turned into a desert. Lastly, in the name of human nature itself, in the name of both sexes, in the name of every age, in the name of every rank, I impeach the common enemy and oppressor of all!"

This Day in Literary History (Death of Rudyard Kipling, Imperial Poet)

Jan. 18, 1936— Rudyard Kipling, the youngest winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature at age 41, who saw his reputation decline even in his lifetime for racist, jingoistic tales and poems celebrating the British Empire, died in London at age 70.

At the same time, a counter-reaction, even among liberal writers who loathed his politics, took hold, lauding him for the color and vigor of his work. Among these ambivalent defenders are George Orwell, W.H. Auden and Christopher Hitchens.

These and other champions recognized a crucial element of his life: Though Kipling can be dismissed, he cannot be avoided—not when so many memorable phrases flowed out of his pen and into the public consciousness, including “East is East, and West is West,” “The female of the species is more deadly than the male,” “Somewhere East of Suez,” “Paying the Dane-geld,” and “from here to eternity.”

Another one of the phrases, famous in its own time but simply notorious now, is “The White Man’s Burden.” That poem was read, with drama in every line, in a class I took 35 years ago with Columbia University professor James Shenton, who used it to illustrate Kipling’s exhortation to the United States, about to come into new possessions as a result of winning the Spanish-American War, to assume the same kind of responsibilities for “civilizing” natives that had been wielded so long by Great Britain. The United States heeded that call then, with rebellion and suspicion against the Yankee occupiers —in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines—that played out over the years.

An equally indelible memory related to Kipling came from a fellow member of my college paper, who became legendary for his Cockney-inflected recital of “Gunga Din.” The poem, already locked in the staffer’s memory, required only liberation from any inhibitions the staffer might have had through generous amounts of alcohol.  Late at night, with friends packed into the neighborhood watering hole, the West End, he would jump to his feet, particularly stressing the line, “You may talk o’ gin and beer.” He rolled on, stanza after stanza, gaining strength from the refrain shouted by friends, “Din! Din! Din!”

These two college experiences of mine with Kipling epitomize, I think, the polarizing nature of his literary legacy. While elementary and perhaps secondary school teachers might teach him to small children or even adolescents, he is unlikely to attract notice from academics except when ironic treatment is required of Dead White Men. Yet on an individual basis, he remains surprisingly remembered and recited.

First, the indictment against Kipling—and it is a loaded one:

It won’t do simply to excuse Kipling’s racism as shared by his contemporaries. Unlike Philip Larkin, whose views on such matters were largely private, the Nobel Prize winner’s were pitched so publicly, pungently and repeatedly as to influence his contemporaries.

Like racism in the U.S., Kipling’s often degraded a class of whites even as it condescended to “new-caught, sullen peoples.” His attitudes toward England’s first colonial training ground, Ireland, were not so infamous as those he professed toward Africans and Asians halfway around the world, but they were every bit as wrongheaded.

Just when Britain’s Liberal Party seemed on the verge of granting Ireland its long-sought Home Rule, Kipling advocated in favor of Sir Edward Carson’s threat of rebellion by Ulster Protestants if the plan were ever implemented. His 1912 poem “Ulster” was as hysterical as it was incendiary:

“We know the war prepared

 On every peaceful home,

 We know the hells declared

 For such as serve not Rome -

 The terror, threats, and dread

 In market, hearth, and field -

 We know, when all is said,

 We perish if we yield.” 

Britain’s delayed fulfillment of its promise ensured that it would have a rebellion on its hands, all right, except not by Carson’s Unionist intransigents but by the small band of primarily Catholics who proclaimed, fought and died for their idea of a republic in the 1916 Easter Rising. It was all unnecessary.

The mythic ideal that Kipling cherished of Britannia was dealt a crushing blow by the news that his son John was reported missing in action and presumed dead in WWI. The writer's subsequent bitterness, anguish, and guilt (he had urged John into the fight, despite poor eyesight that should have disqualified him for service) epitomized how Great Britain had kept its empire but lost the self-confidence that had sustained it.

It wasn’t just that so many recoiled in horror from the demonization of “the Hun” (an epithet that Kipling had helped popularize), but that now the author himself questioned the veracity of the government that put in harm’s way his son and others among Britain’s best and brightest youth.  His poem “Common Form” succinctly captures an epoch of disillusion in one couplet: "If any question why we died,/Tell them, because our fathers lied."

In the end, it did not matter that Kipling was now leading the national revulsion against leaders of the “Great War.” His part in heightening tensions in the prewar period was remembered. That, coupled with the national re-consideration of possessing India as agitation for its independence increased, led to a liberal devaluation of his prolific work.

And yet, Kipling remains, stubbornly, read, and it would do well to inquire why.

George Orwell’s seminal 1942 essay on Kipling didn’t even bother to defend him from the charge of racism, which in this case would have been utterly indefensible. His concluding statement partially explains the Nobel Prize winner’s continuing appeal—certainly then, and perhaps even now: “He dealt largely in platitudes, and since we live in a world of platitudes, much of what he said sticks.” Indeed, “If—,” easily one of Kipling’s most anthologized poems, continues to uplift and inspire with its urge to “meet with Triumph and Disaster/And treat those two impostors just the same.”

But a movie trailer I saw yesterday, of Jon Favreau’s upcoming version of The Jungle Book, reminded me how Kipling’s narrative vigor has translated readily to the big screen, including in Spencer Tracy’s Oscar-winner, Captains Courageous, Soldiers Three, Light That Failed, Gunga Din, Wee Willie Winkie, and Kim.

In their treatment of India and Britain, E.M. Forster (A Passage to India), Paul Scott (The Raj Quartet), and Tom Stoppard (Indian Ink) now receive the plaudits that used to come Kipling’s way for their far more complicated treatment of what Scott called “two nations locked in an imperial embrace.” But his straightforward sentiments and narratives, while anathema to academe, also exude vitality and a genuine affection for the exotic India where he was born, as seen in this passage from the short story “The Miracle of Purun Bhagad”:

“He followed the Himalaya-Thibet road, the little ten-foot track that is blasted out of solid rock, or strutted out on timbers over gulfs a thousand feet deep; that dips into warm, wet, shut-in valleys, and climbs out across bare, grassy hill-shoulders where the sun strikes like a burning-glass; or turns through dripping, dark forests where the tree-ferns dress the trunks from head to heel, and the pheasant calls to his mate. And he met Thibetan herdsmen with their dogs and flocks of sheep, each sheep with a little bag of borax on his back, and wandering wood-cutters, and cloaked and blanketed Lamas from Thibet, coming into India on pilgrimage, and envoys of little solitary Hill-states, posting furiously on ring-streaked and piebald ponies, or the cavalcade of a Rajah paying a visit; or else for a long, clear day he would see nothing more than a black bear grunting and rooting below in the valley.”

Flashback, February 1835: Macaulay Note Guides Racist British Policy in India

Before he set out to write history, Thomas Babington Macaulay created it, as legal member of the Supreme Council of India. But the same emotional trait that endeared him to the British public and its ruling class—a cocksure belief in his conclusions—marred his ethnocentric Feb. 2, 1835 “Minute” on education on the subcontinent.

The son of a former governor of Sierra Leone, the 35-year-old Macaulay hadn’t planned on extensive foreign service. But as he considered the career alternatives available to someone with his background—a law practice that he had dropped in favor of the far more interesting pastimes of politics and writing, along with a family business whose reverses had forced the sale of a Gold Medal he had won at Cambridge—he suddenly found that the chance to effect international change dovetailed nicely with a salary that would allow him to devote more of his energy to writing.

For Macaulay personally, the most significant result of his four years in India (1834-1839) was the income he put aside that eventually enabled him to embark on his epic History of England from the Accession of James the Second. For Indian colonists and their descendants, the most important consequence was his advocacy of a Western education (including study of the English language). Both results were highly problematic.

In a prior post, I noted that Macaulay, for all his prejudices, was an extraordinarily vivid historian. He was also a highly influential one: The famous third chapter of his History, a survey of English society in the year 1685 that analyzed such matters as population, cities, classes and tastes, pioneered a form of social history that provided a model for Henry Adams’ History of the United States in the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and, at greater length, Frederick Lewis Allen’s account of the Roaring Twenties, Only Yesterday.

But Macaulay’s interest in social history and mores really did not extend much beyond the Mediterranean SEa. He did not have the boundless curiosity of a Montaigne or Sir Richard Burton in learning about unfamiliar races or nations.

Although Macaulay quietly rejected the fierce Evangelical piety of his father, he did not dispense with one of the principal consequences of that faith: the urge to spread the benefits of Western (and, to be precise, British) civilization abroad. By his lights, he wanted to help colonials—and, to be fair, he genuinely foresaw a day when India would be independent.

But it never seems to have bothered him that, from a position of power, he would be forcing millions of people to learn a language not their own. He was not responding to an Indian plea that English be taught, but superimposing it from without.

Indeed, in the unlikely phenomenon of British Orientalists—a group of British East India Co. bureaucrats trained in the local languages and culture of the subcontinent—an alternative existed that took full cognizance of the ancient religious and cultural traditions of classical India.

Somehow, Macaulay didn’t get their message. He responded in his “Minute” with the kind of sweeping, cast-all-doubt-aside statement that has made his History suspect in our time as an unbiased source: “I have never found one among them [Orientalists] who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.”

That kind of statement makes Macaulay practically a bull’s eye for those academics who deride Dead White European Males.

As in his histories, the politician-bureaucrat sought, in Indian law and education, “uniformity where you can have it; diversity where you must have it; but in all cases certainty.” To replace what a number of observers at the time felt to be an inefficient welter of legal rules on the subcontinent, he drafted the Indian Penal Code, which was finally enacted in 1862, three years after his death.

I would be the last to argue against a system simple and logical to use. The problem comes when the proponent of a system can’t imagine another lying outside his own experience.

That was precisely the case with Macaulay. Peter Gay’s Style in History (1974) summarizes pretty neatly the problems that so many historians of our day have had with the man nicknamed “The Beast” (for his ugliness) by fellow Cambridge students: “He professes to detest—and, worse, he really detests—what he is too limited to grasp: the subtler points of philosophy, the mysteries of poetry, the sheer historical interest of personages or causes he does not find sympathetic.”

At the same time, several huge problems exist when Macaulay’s “Minute” and the circumstances surrounding it are examined:

*He did not know Sanskrit. Indeed, his opportunity to learn the language was lost when his Sanskrit-English dictionary fell overboard in his voyage to his new assignment, forcing him to learn Portuguese.

*His perspective was that of the ruler, not of someone seriously interested in a different culture. His arrival in India was quite agreeable: Not only did he receive a 15-gun salute when he set foot on the beach, but, he also noted, “I traveled the whole four hundred miles between this (Ootacamund) and Madras on men's shoulders.” He read European classics avidly during this time. Indian arts, science and theology? Not on his radar.

*His policy pronouncements had practical consequences. Governor General William Bentinck accepted Macaulay's contentions, writing a year later that "the great object of the British Government ought to be the promotion of European literature and science among the natives of India." As a result, two Orientalists retired from the Committee of Public Instruction, shifting the balance toward the Anglicists who favored English instruction.

A people that sees its language extirpated is halfway toward having not just their heritage but also their existence discounted and even annihilated. Macaulay may have found such receptiveness to his blithe dismissal of Indian languages and customs because the British government had already been doing so closer to home, in Ireland. For six centuries, one of the aims of British policy was to destroy the Irish language, which the occupiers of the island widely regarded as a bulwark of attachment to all things Irish.

In our own lifetime, other intellectuals have elicited opprobrium for remarks as ill-considered as Macaulay’s about ethnic or racial groups’ cultural achievements. Novelist Saul Bellow got into some trouble for a 1988 interview with The New York Times Magazine in which he asked flippantly, “Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus? The Proust of the Papuans? I'd be glad to read them." Samuel Eliot Morison arrogantly wrote, in The Oxford History of the American People, that the Famine Irish contributed “surprisingly little to American economic life, and almost nothing to American intellectual life.”

But the difference with Macaulay was that his views would not only inform internal policies in a single colony, but also foreign policy across the Atlantic, by two statesman enthralled as much by his worldview as his writing style. Winston Churchill used Macaulay’s rhetorical devices in the speeches and other writings that won him a Nobel Prize for Literature. Theodore Roosevelt was even more enthusiastic, hailing Macaulay’s “eminently sane and healthy mind” as well as his “wholesome spirit and knowledge of practical affairs.” In a private letter, he noted: “Of all the authors I know[,] I believe I should first choose him [Macaulay] as the man whose writings will most help a man of action who desires to be both efficient and decent, to keep straight and yet to be of some account in the world.” Hyperkinetic TR read Macaulay’s immense History all the way through a number of times, including during the 1904 election.

Another aspect of Macaulay appealed to these two leaders, however: his justification of a worldwide imperium centered on an Anglo heritage and democratic values. Even before his projection of American power beyond North America, T.R. had written The Winning of the West. Churchill, highly reluctant to see India become independent, called his own epic narrative A History of the English-Speaking Peoples.

Those who argue that British imperialism was a net plus to colonial peoples can point to the economic advantage they hold in a world where the de facto language of international commerce is business. (English has also became the language of choice in communicating scientific discoveries, as discussed in Michael D. Gordin’s article “Absolute English” for Aeon.)

But such a view is morally myopic, failing to recognize that the element of self-interest that has obtained in imperial enterprises even more than in normal international affairs. Across the maddeningly diverse Indian subcontinent, Macaulay believed, the only hope was in “an enlightened and paternal despotism.” Time has proven how easily paternalism can shade into dominance when it comes to a “backward” colony and its allegedly “civilized” conqueror.

In an 1833 speech in Parliament, Macaulay hailed Britain’s “pacific triumphs of reason over barbarism,” in an “imperishable empire of our arts and our morals, our literature and our laws.” Our…our…our…our. Might made right, especially to deal with subjugated people on “our” terms.

Edward Said’s controversial 1978 study, Orientalism, surely overstated the case when it claimed that “every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was… a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric.” But Macaulay, through his “Minute” on Indian education, provided the late Columbia University scholar with one of the most devastating bits of evidence in his indictment against the West.