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Imperial Bodies: The Physical Experience
of the Raj, c. 1800-1947.
The British experience of India was replete with "heat, dust, dirt, noise and smells" along with disease and death. The body's physical deterioration was therefore complemented by the attire of loose trousers, khaki shorts, the bush shirt and white waistcoats, which were finally replaced in the latter imperial era by the smart white flannels of the sahib. The experience of the Raj, therefore, was imprinted on the British physique ranging from boils and bites to a predominantly visible confident demeanour projected in their clothing. E. M. Collingham, in her book Imperial Bodies, uses Pierre Bordieu's concept of "habitus", a notion that instils "a whole cosmology, through injunctions as insignificant as 'sit up straight' or 'don't hold your knife in your left hand', and inscribed in the most fundamental principles of the arbitrary content of a culture in seemingly innocuous details of bearing, of physical and verbal manners, so putting them beyond the reach of consciousness and explicit statement." Thus, it is argued in the book that patterns of behaviour or lifestyles become a bridge between personality structure and social structure. Blending colonial history and the history of the body becomes a move towards the analysis of the physical experience, an extraordinary work of research on the British manipulation of their bodies. Collingham's book moves from commerce to control, an imperial history that runs parallel to the ways in which Britain and India managed and displayed their bodies. As time progresses, the British imperceptibly move away from all that is singularly Indian. The curry gives way to canned food. No longer are Indian mistresses needed, as the British officers begin to "import" English women for their wives: "The study of the British body in India," argues Collingham, "traces the transformation of the early 19th century nabob from the flamboyant, effeminate and wealthy East India Company servant, open to Indian influence and into whose self-identity India was incorporated, to the sahib, a sober, bureaucratic representative of the Crown." There is a conspicuous emphasis on the manly and the physically robust physique sustained by an Oxford ideology of athleticism that brings with it an interest in polo, squash and tennis. This civil servant "displayed his possession of an appropriate physique, while simultaneously demonstrated his possession of the essential qualities of the ruling class: the ability to observe rules, loyalty and comradeship towards the team members, fair play to the other side-in other words, honesty, uprightness, courage and endurance." This shift from an "open to a closed and regimented body appears to reflect the emergence between 1650 and 1900 of what might be termed a modern European bourgeois body." From acting as indigenous rulers who began to adopt the ways of the Indians (dressing up in Indian clothes, eating Indian food and having Indian women for their pastime), they were officially encouraged to adopt the quintessential European construct of the body. It was the adoption of an "affective wall" between the body and the environment of the tropics. The black tie or the cumbersome western women's dress became the order of the day in place of the cool native textile so easily available and so conducive to the oppressive weather conditions. All such comfort had to be sacrificed for reasons of dominance. In reality, the British continued to enjoy the Indian curry, and in place of the hookah, invented the cheroot. Indeed, the British by the end of the 19th century had become deeply interested in the civilizing mission, which led to a change in their sartorial and culinary habits as well as their sense of morality motivated by the desire to project an image of the liberal humanist upright Englishman who would cast a spell on the Indian mind leading to mimicry. It was a way of going back to British virtues that became an inherent strategy of imperial advancement with the main purpose of bringing civilization to the subcontinent. The British cleverly began to use the body as an instrument of official discourse of authority and hegemony. Symbolically, the physique became synonymous with British power as is visible in the conversion of the pith helmet from a mere projection of British vulnerability in the scorching sun of the tropics to a representation of power. What Collingham is doing is using a methodology in looking at the body "as an object of historical inquiry that can be approached through the everyday practices surrounding it." Collingham has made a scholarly and an extensively researched contribution to the history of the Raj, taking into consideration archival records, medical and cookery literature as well as private letters to demonstrate how the body is integral to the British approach towards improving social inequality, a racist underpinning to the European discourse. |
