‘Civilisation Drove Forward in a Mortuary Cart’1

Abstract

Violence presents us with an interesting motif to study colonial politics, aptly captured in James Milne’s telling metaphor. Its inextricable association with colonialism implied a gradual conflation of political order with civilisation that is discernible in extant writings. The conventional paradigm in International Relations (IR) regards order as coterminous with the domestic domain and anarchy to be the structural attribute of international politics. This dichotomous divide permits little space for the hybrid states of existence of both anarchy and order that were often witnessed in the colonies and written about. The article examines the manner in which colonialism applied the notion of violence to the Indian context that was in denial of such complexities. It further argues that bringing imperial relations within the ambit of IR would help explain the differentiated interpretations of sovereignty that marked the parallel existence of the sovereign state system and the imperial political system.