Towards the end of Paul Scott'sA Division of the Spoils, the final novel ofThe Raj Quartet, and in the television series as well, Indian people make an appearance and commit acts of unmotivated and horrible violence. The British heroine comments, “Such a damn, bloody, senseless mess … the mess theraj had never been able to sort out.” Making sense, sorting out, was supposed to be the special vocation of British rule, yet here were all the seething, primordial conflicts rising to the surface again in the Hindu versus Muslim partition of India in 1947.

An earlier version of this essay was presented in July 1989 at a conference on “Culture, Consciousness and the Colonial State,” at the Isle of Thorns Conference Center, University of Sussex, sponsored by the South Asia Committee of the Social Science Research Council, which also funded some of the research with the American Institute of Indian Studies. I am particularly indebted to Bernard S. Cohn, Shahid Amin, Carol A. Breckenridge, and Sandria Freitag for their comments and encouragement.

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¹⁴ SeeFoucault,Michel,The Order of Things (New York:Vintage,1973),294–300Google Scholar.

¹⁵ This is part of the lengthy subtitle ofGilchrist,,The Stranger's Infallible East-Indian Guide, third ed. (London:Kingsbury, Parbury, and Allen,1820)Google Scholar.

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¹⁸Siddiqi, Origins, 63.

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²⁶Gilchrist,John Borthwick,Parliamentary Reform, on Constitutional Principles (Glasgow:W. Lang,1815)Google Scholar; see alsoKidwai,,Gilchrist,57Google Scholar.

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³³ GOI, Finance and Commerce/Bonuses and Honorariums 143, 1887, inSingh,,Inquiries,133Google Scholar.

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³⁷ SeeGrierson,,The Linguistic Survey of India and the Census of 1911 (Calcutta:Superintendent of Government Printing,1919)Google Scholar; and hisIndex of Language Names (Calcutta:Superintendent of Printing,1920)Google Scholar and the General Reports in the 1901, 1911, and 1921 censuses.

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⁴¹Das,Durga, ed.,Sardar Patel's Correspondence, 1945–50, vol.IV (Ahmedabad:Navajivan Publishing House,1972),60–91Google Scholar.

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⁴³ The relevant records are in the archives of All-India Radio, New Delhi; see alsoLuthra,H. R.,Indian Broadcasting (New Delhi: Publications Division),255–73Google Scholar. I have discussed this at greater length in“Transmitters and Culture: The Colonial Roots of Indian Broadcasting,”South Asia Research,10:1 (051990),41–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁴⁶ Directorate-General, All India Radio, “Basic Plan for the Development of Broadcasting in India” (first draft, November 1944; revised, September 1945) in Home-Public 179/1946 (National Archives of India).

⁴⁷ SeeCohn,Bernard S., “Regions Subjective and Objective: Their Relation to the Study of Modern Indian History” [1967], in hisAnthropologist Among the Historians,100–35Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ SeeAhmad,Aijaz, “Some Reflections on Urdu,”Seminar (No. 359), “Literature and Society” (071989),23–29Google Scholar.