The release of MJ Akbar’s new book Doolally Sahib and the Black Zamindar: Racism and Revenge in the British Raj has stirred up old questions. Does the publication of such a book constitute a whitewashing of the author’s alleged crimes, even if he has not been found guilty by the law of the land?
Some would say that these questions are easy to answer if one has a clear, principled stance in solidarity with the #MeToo movement. Others would argue that things are never as uncomplicated as they seem; so, one must allow for responses that are different from one’s own, recognizing that solidarity takes multiple forms.
Akbar was scheduled to speak at Jaipur Literature Festival 2022 but his session was cancelled after the organisers were called out on Twitter for giving him a platform. While the de-platforming was celebrated as a win by some, it does not change the fact that the book exists and there are readers who wish to know what it is about. This review is for them.
Akbar, who has written books on Nehru, Gandhi, Jinnah, Kashmir, Jihad and Pakistan in the past, turns his attention to “racial relations” between Indians and their British colonizers with his new volume. He draws upon memoirs, journals and letters to discuss the pompous attitude of “white superiority” that was ingrained in the British mind despite the fact that they were totally unsuccessful in saving millions of Indian lives lost to famine and drought.
{{/usCountry}}Akbar, who has written books on Nehru, Gandhi, Jinnah, Kashmir, Jihad and Pakistan in the past, turns his attention to “racial relations” between Indians and their British colonizers with his new volume. He draws upon memoirs, journals and letters to discuss the pompous attitude of “white superiority” that was ingrained in the British mind despite the fact that they were totally unsuccessful in saving millions of Indian lives lost to famine and drought.
{{/usCountry}}The author chronicles all the debauchery of the British who wanted to regulate the passions of the natives. “Some over-optimistic Victorian army commanders thought that they could ‘sweat the sex out’ of the soldier with rigorous drill and endless football games. Neither the football nor the morals improved,” Akbar writes. Brothels sprang up close to the cantonment areas in major Indian cities like Calcutta, Delhi, Agra, and Bombay.
Who was Doolally Sahib? The author explains that “Doolally” is derived from “Deolali, a transit camp situated in Nashik about a 100 miles from Bombay and referred to the feverish eccentricity of the English soldier waiting to go home.” Many such soldiers had Indian lovers but few, if any, chose to marry “an Indian paramour.” These men “wanted the comforts of betrothal” but “without the ‘plague’ of marriage” to the Indian women they consorted with.
Before the soldiers returned home, there was a departure parade held in their honour. There was beer, whisky and music. It was a rambunctious affair, complete with a band that played Rolling home to dear old Blighty as the soldiers marched in the direction of the railway station. The book skilfully recreates the mood at some of these drunken escapades.
Akbar writes, “From the Indian side of the pageantry, a wail would be heard, the cry of abandoned girlfriends and their parents.” One girlfriend’s father uses the term “Doolally Sahib” for a departing soldier. Cursing the solider, he says, “Oh doolally sahib, fifteen years you’ve had my daughter, / and now you go to Blighty, sahib; / May the boat that takes you over sink to the bottom of / the pani, sahib!” Akbar finds this reference from Charles Allen’s book Plain Tales from the Raj: Images of British India in the Twentieth Century (1975).
This might sound funny but the vengefulness came from a place of deep anguish. Akbar’s book provides examples of how the British practised racism. They did not even spare the children they had with Indians. They believed that “half-British children would over time ‘infect’ and ‘debase’ pure British blood.” The presence of Indian blood was seen as polluting. People who were half-British and half-Indian were called “half-caste”, “half-and-half”, or even “eight annas” because a full rupee was equivalent to 16 annas at the time.
Akbar notes, “A pernicious theory fostered in the septic environment of white England – that those of mixed descent inherited the most dangerous characteristics of both races – was turned into government policy. The English became convinced that they would be devoured by their own children.” Mixed marriages became taboo because of these fears and prejudices.
The Anglo-Indians, who were then called Eurasians, were kept out of clubs – “the white islands of British India”. Akbar points out that “the very exclusive Bengal Club in Calcutta,” which was founded in 1827” had no Indian members. It also looked down upon “white men who married outside their colour.” Some exceptions were made for Englishmen of higher rank but rather grudgingly. A Scottish tea manager who married a tribal tea-picker did not have such luck.
And then there was the Black Zamindar, a designation for an Indian person whose official duty was to collect revenue on behalf of the British. The first to hold this designation was a Bengali man, Gobindaram Mitra. Akbar writes, “His cudgel-wielding goons called paiks, naibs and naiks, were let loose upon the citizenry. This triptych became the template of the future Calcutta police, the equivalent of constables, head constables and investigating officers.”
Mitra’s job description behoved him to take care of British interests but he was equally adept at looking out for himself. He used his position to fill his own coffers, operating with impunity. Apparently, he inflated tenders, fudged accounts, and manipulated auctions for public works and land sales conducted from his house. Akbar calls him “Calcutta’s first godfather of white-collar crime”.
There were Indians who collaborated with the British, and Indians who fought them. The Right Reverend Reginald Heber, Lord Bishop of Calcutta, for instance, was astonished when he saw “the whole population of Benares and its neighbourhood determined to sit dhurna till their grievances were redressed.” There were three lakh people at the gathering. Bishop Heber was told that Hindoos who die of fasting at a bhook-hartal become spirits and return to torment those who did not listen to them or redress their grievances at the demonstration.
If this description makes you chuckle, Akbar has more lined up. Edward Aitken, a founding member of the Bombay Natural History Society, hated his dhobie because the washerman “wreaked his rage upon short and trouser and coat” as if “he were wringing the necks of poultry.” An English hostess, a memsahib, found her cook using his mundu “or thin linen wrap-around” to strain the clear soup. As you might have guessed, the cook was fired.
Why did Indians resent the British so much? Akbar is of the opinion that “previous rulers, of whatever faith or community…even if they began as invaders, they learnt to adapt to the culture and kinship of their subjects, or praja, if they wanted to survive.” The British were too caught up with their superiority complex to understand the importance of being in sync with Indian sensibilities. They “ate differently, dressed differently, thought differently and indeed laughed for very different reasons.”
Of course, there were exceptions, and Akbar does write about British people who were wary of treating India as “a fortune-hunter’s turf” and were embarrassed about the racism of their countrymen. But by and large, they saw Indians as inferior, and even sub-human. They had to do this in order to justify the colonial project and denigrate the religious practices of Indians.
Akbar compares the British with the Mughals. He recalls his namesake, the Mughal emperor who married Rajput women, had temples built for his Hindu wives within the palace complex, funded the translation of religious texts from Sanskrit to Persian, turned vegetarian, “and famously wondered why men should turn their stomachs into a graveyard for animals.”
Thankfully, the author does not romanticise the Mughals. He spends a few pages lambasting Aurangzeb for alienating his Hindu subjects, as well as women in his own palace who felt that the ban on drinking alcohol and wearing tight trousers was excessive, even laughable.
In the course of his research for this book, Akbar also found that Sir Mir Turab Ali Khan, or Salar Jung I, Prime Minister of Hyderabad, once told Richard Temple, the British Resident, that Indians have been ruled by despots worse than the British but the Mughals survived “because they had amalgamated with the people” unlike the British, who were “utterly foreign.”
Even Indian mosquitoes could not wait to get rid of them. There is a hilarious moment in the book, where Akbar writes, “Pests were the great English bugbear. There was a strong view that Indian mosquitoes had colour prejudice, feasting on a white man’s blood with gluttonous intensity.” In order to protect themselves from getting bitten all over, some of them wore breeches up to the toes, and mufflers on their hands and face. I had not considered the unsung contribution of mosquitoes to our freedom struggle but reading Akbar’s book changed that.
Chintan Girish Modi is an independent journalist and book reviewer.