Abstract
The French desire to colonise India reached its height in the eighteenth century (p. 17), This desire prompted Jyoti Mohan, to undertake a very interesting study of what India actually meant to the French and in particular ‘the process of creating India in the French imagination’ (p. 19) by basing her study on Kate Marsh’s theory of France’s politically subordinate status in India (ibid.). Other than an introduction and a conclusion, the book has eight chapters, each detailing a different aspect of French writing about India, namely those of missionaries, philosophers, Indologists, philologists, anthropologists and historians. These different points of view, at times rather divergent, about India served to create a certain India in the minds of the French people who did not have the opportunity of visiting India.
There being different images of India created by different countries such as Britain, France, Portugal, Germany and Denmark, Jyoti realised the importance of studying the ‘different Indias’ produced by the different French academics and some of their appropriations (p. 22). French studies on India, being legitimised by the colonial status of India and even its loss, Jyoti studies the impressions of India on the French over a long period of time starting with philosophers such as Voltaire and Montesquieu to the writings of Indologists in the early twentieth century in order to prove that this scholarship ‘set the path for ordinary thousands of millions of Europeans, who knew nothing about India except what they were told in newspapers, entertainment and schools’ (p. 34).
In her first chapter ‘India: A Land of Wonders or of Monstrosities’, Jyoti, examining the image of India in the works of French missionaries writing about the East, has focused primarily on the fourteenth century Mirabilia Descripta of Jourdain du Sévérac and to a lesser extent on the Lettres édifiantes, a collection of later missionary writings. The writer classifies pre-nineteenth century writings into two broad classifications: Missionary views and secular views (p. 3) and studies the former largely because it fills a gap in the scholarship on pre-colonial modern India and also because these missionaries recorded a lot of information thereby influencing a lot of French writing on India (p. 4). Jyoti has ably demonstrated in this chapter that how much of the French scholarship on India was tolerant of Hindus and Hinduism but were largely critical of Islam and of Muslims, going to the extent of a missionary, Father Maudit, saying that the Moors’ usurping India spoilt the country (p. 15).
The second chapter, ‘The Business of Serious Academic’, of Claiming India, which opens with a quotation of Voltaire’s, praising India, details the impressions of the French philosophers such as Voltaire and Montesquieu which were markedly different from the missionary views. So the chapter which provides a historical bridge between the thematically ‘older’ writings of the missionaries and the ‘modern’ writings of the academics (p. 42) is divided into two sections focusing on continuity and change. The first section describes writers on India and the motives, while the second examines the views which commanded popularity (p. 43). Jyoti outlines the influence of India on the French citing Voltaire saying that India is a land of utopian beauty (p. 69) and that all the current ills in her society stem from the constant stream of foreign invasions, more specifically Muslim invasions (p. 73). Besides Voltaire who forms the major part of the chapter, the French Anquetil-Duperron, Montesquieu and Filliozat are also discussed alongside the British William Jones, highlighting their love and admiration for Sanskrit (pp. 94 and 106).
‘The Era of Empiricism and the Rise of Philology’, the fourth chapter, describes the shift in the paradigms of French Indology, wherein the older school or romantics which focused of Sanskritic culture gave way to philological study (grammar, syntax and comparison of languages). With Eugène Burnouf, philologists moved from Vedic scholarship to studying Buddhism, Pali and its connection to Sanskrit, leading to studies on the post-Vedic period (p. 121). The French study of Pali and Sanskrit was in stark contrast to the British scholarship of contemporary languages such as Persian and Turkish (p. 128). This changing trend in French studies on India led to the decline of Indic studies in France over the next 20 years, whereas in Germany it was at its peak (p. 135).
The rather long sentence-like title of the fifth chapter reads ‘The Glory of Ancient India Stems from Her Aryan Blood: The Development of “Scientific Anthropology” in Relation to India’. This chapter examines the role of French academics in creating a position for India in the racial imagination for the first time in history, beginning with a certain Dr Paterson of Calcutta concluding after an examination that the skull of an average 30-year-old Hindu man was comparable to that of a 15-year-old European (p. 151). The ‘scientific studies’ of the anthropologists and ethnologists were the basis of the writings of the likes of Louis Rousselet, Arthur de Gobineau, Paul Topinard and Gustave Le Bon who therefore argued for the colonisation of India by the Europeans. Some of these writers also identified a certain type of features for all the Indians pictures of which were carried in their works and of which copies can be found in Claiming India (pp. 166–168). This study and writings therefore led to the concepts of superiority and inferiority of races and of the need for the ‘superior races’ to civilise the ‘inferior races’. Gobineau, for instance, described the Hindus as having reached great heights of intellectual and metaphysical achievement but lacking in material desire and therefore material accomplishment. According to Le Bon, ‘the Hindu is weak, timid, crafty, insinuating and dissimulating to the highest degree’ and therefore condemned to be servant and never master (pp. 172 and 184).
The sixth chapter, ‘Recasting India in French Indology: Hinduism and the Caste System’ studies the origin and utility of the caste system in India in the works of French Indologists. Sénart for instance was of the view that the caste system originated when the Aryans invaded India and subdued the ‘dark-skinned race of inferior civilization’ (p. 210). The Europeans saw the caste system as a system of social organisation and not a religious construct, where the Aryans were the superior race and the Dravidians the inferior. This chapter also discusses the roots of ‘Hindu identity’ (p. 222).
‘Writing Histories, Creating “India”’, the penultimate chapter, besides examining the histories of India which were available to the French public at the end of the nineteenth century, accessible mostly in the form of school textbooks, also draws parallels between India and Gaul and examines Frenchmen according to whom the Gauls and the Indo-Aryans were related. Furthermore, it establishes a close link between Christianity and Hinduism in the writings of the French Indologists.
The last chapter, as the title ‘Imperial Showcase: The Visual Presentation of “India”’ suggests, examines the representation of India at the grand Colonial Exhibition in Paris during the better part of 1931. The images of the various pavilions give the reader an insight into the ‘exoticism’ that the writer talks about. However, this chapter would have been an easier read had it been more cryptic. Details about Uday Shankar’s life, for instance, could have been omitted.
Jyoti sums up her monograph with an interesting statement in her concluding chapter, ‘Despite British territorial dominance in India, the conception of India as a land of spiritual and intellectual greatness was still strongly French and it continues to endure in Europe even today’ (p. 349).
The narratological Claiming India has brought together a plethora of ideas of diverse people of various professions, united only by their interest in India, and will undoubtedly be of great help to all Indic researchers. A little critical analysis by the writer may have helped scholars even more. A point that leaps to my mind, for instance, when I read the opinion of Gobineau that ‘India could never regain its former majesty’ (p. 174) as invasions weakened the purity of the Aryan race or the Brahmin race is that how many Brahmin rulers did India ever have.