Language, Identity, and Power in Modern India

Gujarat, c.1850-1960

Riho Isaka

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781000468595
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book is a historical study of modern Gujarat, India, addressing crucial questions of language, identity, and power.

It examines the debates over language among the elite of this region during a period of significant social and political change in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Language debates closely reflect power relations among different sections of society, such as those delineated by nation, ethnicity, region, religion, caste, class, and gender. They are intimately linked with the process in which individuals and groups of people try to define and project themselves in response to changing political, economic, and social environments. Based on rich historical sources, including official records, periodicals, literary texts, memoirs, and private papers, this book vividly shows the impact that colonialism, nationalism, and the process of nation-building had on the ideas of language among different groups, as well as how various ideas of language competed and negotiated with each other.

Language, Identity, and Power in Modern India: Gujarat, c.1850–1960 will be of particular interest to students and scholars working on South Asian history and to those interested in issues of language, society, and politics in different parts of the modern world.

1 Gujarat society and its people

DOI: 10.4324/9781003177166-2

In 1892, Govardhanram Madhavram Tripathi (1855–1907), a well-known Gujarati writer, delivered a lecture at the Wilson College Literary Society in which he described Gujarat as ‘a country of merchants and poets’ (Tripathi 1958: 49). His theme was famous poets of medieval Gujarat, and yet, we should note, he found it necessary to refer to ‘merchants’. They were, for him, an important symbol of the region. His description vividly demonstrates the strong position that the mercantile tradition held in Gujarati society.

This chapter presents a brief overview of the history of Gujarat until the mid-nineteenth century. It engages with some of the unique features of this society that were to significantly influence the development of colonial education and intellectual conceptions of language and literature in the region.

A brief history of Gujarat

It is widely believed that the term ‘Gujarat’ was derived from the Gujjaras (Gurjjaras, Gurjaras), which referred to the group of cattle-rearers, husbandmen, and soldiers who accompanied ancient conquerors (Gazetteer I-I 1896: 2). From the reign of Siddharaja Jayasimha (r. 1094–1143), a Rajput king of Chaulukya from the height of the dynasty's rule, terms such as Gurjara-mandala and Gurjara-bhumi came to be used to designate territories in which Chaulukya political power had been established (Sheikh 2010: 26). The Chaulukyas extended their control over most of the territory of modern Gujarat, including Saurashtra (Kathiawad) and Kutch (Sheikh 2010: 4), thereby inventing a regional entity that survived through subsequent eras. At the same time, the boundaries between the four geographical, sociocultural subregions of North-Central Gujarat, South Gujarat, the peninsula of Saurashtra, and Kutch remained (Yagnik and Sheth 2005: 9). Relationships among these divisions continued to play important roles in the political history of Gujarat.

From the thirteenth century, the Vaghela dynasty replaced the Chaulukyas. They were eventually deposed by the Delhi sultanate, following an invasion at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and their territory was incorporated into the sultanate as a province called ‘Gujarat’. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, this province gained its independence and the Gujarat sultanate began (Bayley 1970: 84). The city of Ahmedabad was founded by its ruler, Ahmad Shah, in 1411, and has held its position as the centre of the region since. Ahmad Shah is believed to have gathered merchants, weavers, and artisans from many different places, settled them, and given them ‘every encouragement’ (Dosabhai 1986: 67). Gujarat developed as a distinct political and linguistic region in this period. The sultans unified the region, obtaining support from traders, military and landed intermediaries, and religious figures (Sheikh 2010: 186). They facilitated connectivity within it and with the world outside.

Under the patronage of the sultans, feudatories, merchants, and other social groups, the religious movements of Vaishnavism, Jainism, and Ismaili and other Islamic sects were reorganised and subsumed within a regional identity (173–4). The sultans also supported scholarship and literature in Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit. Scholars and poets began to write in early Gujarati and Gujari, the latter being a version of the general North Indian lingua franca with distinguishing characteristics specific to Gujarat (and yet distinct from Gujarati). Beyond being a purely administrative region, Gujarat came to be ‘identified with the local language in its diverse forms’ (6, 211).

In 1573, Gujarat was annexed by Akbar, the third Mughal emperor, becoming one of the empire's subas (provinces) for almost 200 years. Surat became an important port during this time and a commercial hub of the Mughals (Yagnik and Sheth 2005: 11). European traders, including the Portuguese, the Dutch, British, and French, established factories there, and it was used as an embarkation port for the hajj. Under the Mughal empire, Gujarat also saw the growth of the bhakti movement, particularly that of Vaishnavism led by the Vallabhacharya sect, which spread especially among the trading communities. The strong influence of Vaishnavism in this region due to the rise of the Vallabhacharya sect from the sixteenth century and that of the Swaminarayan sect from the nineteenth century seems to have contributed to some form of social and cultural unity across different parts of Gujarat (Majmudar 1965: 309).

The death of the emperor Aurangzeb in 1707 heralded the weakening of Mughal control. From the eighteenth century, Maratha power was gradually established in Gujarat, detrimentally affecting mercantile activities in the region. Maratha rule was often critically described in subsequent periods, based on the popular memory of the Maratha rulers as ‘plunderers’ (Vakhatchand 1977: 53–5). British impressions recorded in the early nineteenth century enhanced this picture. For instance, James Forbes, in his Oriental Memoirs (1813), bemoaned ‘the cruel oppressions and mean advantages of the Mahratta pundits and governors, now dispersed throughout Guzerat, and occupying these magnificent remains of Mogul splendour’ (Forbes 1813: 120).

In 1817, the Marathas were overthrown by the British, who had been increasing their influence in different parts of India since the seventeenth century. Edalji Dosabhai, a historian of late nineteenth-century Gujarat, expressed his view that the British were the saviours who had delivered the region from a ‘crushing calamity’ under the Maratha rulers (Dosabhai 1986: 292). He was not the only one who praised the British government in colonial Gujarat. Maganlal Vakhatchand, who wrote a history of Gujarat in 1851, described British rule as ‘Ram Rajya (the rule of Lord Ram)’ (Vakhatchand 1977: 53, 65). Gujarati intellectuals often compared British rule with previous regimes, under which, in their view, frequent plunder and fighting occurred and little attention had been paid to public welfare. Even at the time of the 1857 Rebellion, Bholanath Sarabhai, a famous intellectual of the period, wrote a prayer to God in his diary that the matter would be settled quickly, for British rule was, in his opinion, far superior to any other rule (Bholanath 1888: 65). Similarly, Edalji Dosabhai, looking back on this incident, stated that ‘happily’ the Mutiny extended to Gujarat in ‘only a slight degree’ (Dosabhai 1986: 258). Such ardent support for British rule, however, was to wane by the end of the century, as described later.

The territory of Gujarat in its present form (that is, the state of Gujarat founded in 1960) was divided politically into two broad divisions during the British period. The first consisted of five districts (Ahmedabad, Kheda, Panch Mahals, Broach, and Surat) in the Bombay Presidency directly under British rule. The second contained the princely states of Gujarat, including those in Kathiawad (amounting to around 220 states), Kutch, and other states in the mainland such as the large and influential state of Baroda. According to the census of 1891, the populations of British Gujarat and the princely states were, respectively, 3,098,197 and 7,938,509. A total population of 11,036,706 lived in a territory measuring 69,037 square miles (10,296 square miles in the British districts and 58,741 in the princely states) (Gazetteer IX-I 1901: vii; Menon 1985: 176, 205).

Map 1.1 British districts in colonial Gujarat.

The Bombay Presidency, which later became Bombay Province under the Government of India Act, 1935, was named after the capital city of the presidency. Although Bombay city was never part of Gujarat in terms of administrative divisions, under British rule it had a sizeable population of people originally from the region. It was also closely related to Gujarat economically, socially, and culturally, playing an important role in the development of the Gujarati language and literature in the colonial period.

Bombay city came under British rule in the seventeenth century, when it was given to King Charles II of England as dowry upon his marriage to the Portuguese Princess, Catharine of Braganza in 1661. Three years later, it was passed to the East India Company, leading to its evolution into the centre of trade and commerce for western India. The Company encouraged the trading communities of Gujarat to move to Bombay, which they did in large numbers, taking up prominent roles in its economic activities (Dobbin 1972). After it became the capital of the presidency, Bombay city was developed as a centre of not only trade and commerce but also of administration, education, and social and cultural activities, attracting people from different areas in western India. As a result, Bombay grew as a multilingual city. According to the 1881 census, for instance, half of the population were Marathi speakers, 20 per cent Gujarati, 12 per cent Hindustani/Urdu, 4 per cent Konkani, and 7 per cent Kutchi (Weir 1883: 58). Although Kutchi is now often projected as a dialect of the Gujarati language, it was considered as a separate language in this census. As discussed in Chapter 6, in the Linguistic Survey of India conducted by George Abraham Grierson, whose results were published between 1903 and 1928, Kutchi was defined as a dialect of Sindhi and not Gujarati (Grierson 1919: 184). Gujarati was spoken widely among trading communities such as Parsis, Vaniyas, Bhatias, Bohras, Khojas, and Memons (the last three were Muslim communities), though Bhatias and Muslim trading communities also include many people whose mother tongue was Kutchi (Weir 1883: 58–9). As Christine Dobbin shows, Gujarati speakers were a dominant presence in nineteenth-century Bombay and their language was the city's lingua franca (Dobbin 1972: 2). This prominence was to be strongly criticised by the Marathi-speaking leaders after independence, when the latter began to demand actively a separate linguistic state for the Marathi speakers and the inclusion of Bombay city in it.

Mercantile tradition

Gujarat has long been known for its mercantile activities, as the words of Govardhanram Tripathi quoted at the beginning of this chapter demonstrate. Its long coastline granted it access to the world of Indian Ocean commerce. Trade across the seas, along the coastline, and overland had always been important for the economy of this region. Merchant groups even played a prominent role in politics (Yagnik and Sheth 2005: 19; Sheikh 2010: 5).

Among the cities of Gujarat, Ahmedabad had been particularly known for its prosperous mercantile activities for many years. For instance, John Jourdain, an Englishman working for the East India Company, who had visited Ahmedabad in 1611, considered the city as ‘one of the fairest’ in the whole of India, with its thriving cloth production and trade (Foster 1905: 171). Jourdain's colleague, William Finch, was equally impressed by the richness of the place. He not only found its buildings ‘comparable to any citie in Asia or Africa’, and the streets ‘large and well paved’, but also admired the flourishing trade, affluent merchants, and skilful artisans producing carvings, paintings, inlaid works, and embroidery with gold and silver (Foster 1921: 173). John Albert De Mandelslo, a German traveller, left a similar account of the city he saw in 1638. ‘There is not’, he declared, ‘in a manner any nation, nor any merchandise in all Asia, which may not be had at Ahmedabad, where particularly there are made abundance of silks and cotton stuffs’ (Commissariat 1931: 26). Ahmedabad possessed a rich and fertile hinterland that supplied it with food, cotton, and indigo to fuel its various industries, including its famous cotton textile production.

With the arrival of the East India Company, Surat and Bombay also developed as centres of commercial activities in western India. During the eighteenth-century period of political instability, a close tie was established between the East India Company and the merchants from Gujarat, a situation which some scholars have described as the ‘Anglo-Bania order’ (Subramanian 1985, 1987, 1996; Haynes 1992: 89–90). While the company depended on indigenous collaborators who became financiers and intermediaries for their business, the local trading communities began to regard the British as a source of profit and also as an alternative source of law and order (Haynes 1992: 90). Some local traders became involved in the import-export business by themselves too, mainly with Britain and China. In particular, Parsi merchants became successful in their export business of raw cotton and opium sent to China (Dobbin 1972: 10–13).

British rule not only made a significant impact on the commercial activities of the Gujarati merchants, but it also led to the development of the textile industry in this region. Observing the rapid growth of cotton textiles imports from Britain, some merchants in major western Indian cities began to start their own cotton mills in the middle of the nineteenth century (Dobbin 1972: 19). The first of these was founded by a Parsi merchant in Bombay, Kavasji Nanabhai Davar (1814–73), who started the Bombay Spinning and Weaving Company in 1854. Other merchants in Bombay and Ahmedabad gradually joined him (Dobbin 1972; Mehta 1982; Chandavarkar 1994: 244–51). These local merchants were well-equipped to become pioneers of the cotton mill industry in India. They had thrived under British rule, possessed financial resources and business skills, and raw cotton was readily available from surrounding regions of Gujarat.

It is noteworthy that the interests in trade and industry were not limited to those directly involved in commercial activities. Government officials and professionals among the Gujarati elite shared them. As Govardhanram Tripathi's words suggest, there was a strong sense of pride among the colonial elite that their region had long been characterised by its mercantile tradition. This feeling was articulated in various forms. For instance, Ambalal Sakarlal Desai, a prominent intellectual of Gujarat in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, described Gujarat as follows at the annual session of the Indian National Congress in Ahmedabad in 1902: ‘Guzerat and its people have long been well known for their patient and industrious habits and for their strong partiality for commercial pursuits’ (Report of the Eighteenth Indian National Congress, 1902: 5). Similarly, an article in an Ahmedabadi newspaper a few years later demonstrates the pride of the Gujarati elite in their ability to develop industry by themselves, through comparison between Gujarat and Bengal.

Our readers are aware that jute is one of the staple articles of industry and commerce in Bengal, but the industry is practically wholly in the hands of the European capitalist. With pardonable pride, we venture to state that if Guzrat had grown jute, our Guzrati brethren would have engrossed the trade mainly or wholly. Our fellow-countrymen of Bengal, though undoubtedly ahead of us in literature and general knowledge, have yet to acquire the aptitude and means, which go to the making of successful captains of industry.

(Praja Bandhu, 20 January 1907: 1)

The notion among the regional elite that Gujarat was a ‘country of merchants’ strongly influenced their social and cultural activities. In addition, the economic power of traders and industrialists was important as financial support for these activities. Pride was openly voiced regarding the capacity of the people in Gujarat to support educational institutions and schemes for public welfare with their own money. They often emphasised that they had been improving their local areas through ‘self-help’ (Education Commission II Memorials: 9).

Although the elite in Gujarat were evidently supportive of the colonial government as long as they could see the economic benefit, their attitude began to change around the turn of the twentieth century. Some factions began to express frustration at the government's economic policies. Some showed interest in political developments in other parts of India, especially Bengal and Maharashtra, where nationalist ideas were being strongly articulated. Such changes prepared the ground for the ‘Gandhian era’ that was to come in the late 1910s, with its accompanying debates on language.

Their pride in the mercantile tradition of this region also led the elite there to be conscious of geographical areas outside Gujarat or even outside the subcontinent with which they were connected through trade and commerce. Krishnalal Mohanlal Jhaveri (1868–1957), in the Introduction to his book on the history of Gujarati literature first published in 1914, enumerated as follows the places in the world where the ‘natives of Gujarat’ resided and continued to use their mother tongue:

Banias, Jains, Lohanas, Bhatias, Khojas and Musalmans, along with Parsis, have helped to carry the use of the Gujarati language beyond the borders of India. Natives of Gujarat are to be met within Burma, Ceylon, South and East Africa, Siam, Manilla, Hong-Kong, Shanghai and Kobe, and recently in London and Paris, and though scattered over such a wide area, they are using their mother tongue for purposes of trade and commerce.

(Jhaveri 1914: 5–6)

In the second edition of the same book, published in 1938, Jhaveri added ‘Mauritius, Fiji Islands, and Straits Set...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Endorsements Page
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of maps
• List of Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Gujarat society and its people
• 2 Educational institutions and language
• 3 The Gujarat Vernacular Society and the press
• 4 Debates over Gujarati language and literature
• 5 Nationalism and language
• 6 The formation of Gujarat state
• Conclusion
• Glossary
• Chronology
• Bibliography
• Index