Abstract
The conquest of India by the British, as of other parts of the colonized world, was achieved not merely through gunpowder and bayonet but with the cultural and civilisational tool of European modernism. This was the period of the Industrial Revolution and Victorian society was fast undergoing changes in behavioural norms and philosophies, primarily due to the rise of rationality in the Age of European Enlightenment and decline in the ruling power of the Church. The British brought these changing influences to India in the eighteenth century and employed these ideals in its cultural hegeomony over the region by gradually getting involved in codifying vernacular languages and intervening in India’s literary culture. This was a contrarian claim, no doubt, with an imperialist invader trying to coach the subjects in the ideals of European humanism but it gradually took root and developed an imaginary among the local ruling classes that remains hard to dislodge to this day.
Gull-i-Hina. (2017) Translating India: British Orientalism and respect for the vernacular Literature, Journal of the Punjab University Historical Society, Volume 30, Issue 1.
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