South Africa and India. Michelle Williams M.

that was important. It produced an ironic version of the ‘imperial subject’. The British military reverses appear to have narrowed down the ‘imperial subject’ to one of simple loyalism alone. Further, they focussed an obsessive attention on British military power, indicating that this was the real source of British domination. This structure of ambivalence was different from the understandable and simple paradox of criticising the government while swearing loyalty to it. Now the groundwork of political faith was getting hollowed out, making it seem more a travesty of its former state. This structure is best embodied in The Bengalee. Towards the end of the conventional phase of the war, it admitted that patriotism was an ‘exotic’ thing in India and that Indians were dependent on the British to weld together the many nations of India into one great nation. At the same time, it defined this dependence as dictated by self-interest, making it clear that the British served a pragmatic function for Indians. The practical uses of the ‘imperial subject’ status were even more tangible in thinking out what could happen internationally as a result of the war. The great fear was that Russia would be emboldened to strike at Afghanistan and invade India. This prospect made The Bengalee (11 March 1900) state that it would back the British, for it was better to have a known than an unknown ruler.

      But The Bengalee (25 January 1900) was also clear about its attitude to the British involvement in the war. In response to the refusal of some tea planters to raise additional funds for the war, the paper declared that it was an imperial war that did not in any way involve Indian interests. It made a clear distinction between government and people by saying that the contributions to the war made by India were not given by its people, since they were not even part of the government in a ‘metaphorical sense’. Other newspapers went further. The Prativasi (9 October 1899), a vernacular with limited circulation, ran a story unambiguously entitled ‘Worship of force, pure and simple’ that featured a satire based on the Kali puja (worship). It told of preparations for worship of the goddess of force made by a number of pujaris (priests) headed by Lord Salisbury, with the uitlanders as minor priests; the sacrificial goat was, of course, the Boers, who were told that they were being sacrificed not just because of their crimes, but ultimately for their own welfare. The way Prativasi wrote about the Boer War seems as if it could have been writing about imperial justifications for colonising India. The war provided a displaced site to think about the conditions of Indians themselves.

       Gandhi’s refashionings

      I have said that the ‘imperial subject’ was both attenuated and hollowed out by the response to the Anglo-Boer War in India. It is interesting to note that Gandhi both played and did not play a role in this sharpening of this loss of loyalty. From what has already been said, it is not difficult to see that Gandhi’s critical understanding of the ‘imperial subject’ lagged behind that of his compatriots in India, and clearly the position of Indians in South Africa had a great deal to do with this. This may have been one of the reasons why he did not make a significant impact at the meeting of the National Congress in 1901. He recalled that he was barely given five minutes in which to sum up what he had to say (Uppal, 1995:174), which was in striking contrast to the widespread interest in the war. At the same time, Gandhi brought a new ethic of leadership into the country that may not have been given any recognition in India at that time, but which later proved to be a decisive element in countering the elitist social ethos of the ‘imperial subject’. This was expressed in his willingness to do sanitary work during the INC meeting, a job that was normally done by the low castes, and in his decision to travel third-class as a way of getting to know the people of the country (Uppal, 1995:174–77). It should be recalled that, just before this, Gandhi had for the first time come into close proximity with the poor and low castes through the stretcher bearers with whom he had served in the Ambulance Corps. Proximity to the generally silenced social groups of India would have motivated his desire to know people who could not easily claim ‘imperial subjecthood’ (Vahed, 2000:212–13).