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Harjot Oberoi: Empire, Orientalism and Native Informants 95
Empire, Orientalism, and Native Informants:
The Scholarly Endeavours
of Sir Attar Singh Bhadour
Harjot Oberoi
University of British Columbia
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It is no more tenable to view the relationship between the West and the
East through simple binaries like powerful metropolitan knowledge and
powerless vernacular cultures. The production of colonial knowledge was
not simply a matter of what was advanced by knowledge practitioners in
the West. Indigenous intellectuals and antique traditions of knowledge
actively, if not equally, shaped the imperial agenda. Thus, we can no
longer confidently speak of a hegemonic western discourse. While the
imperial powers may have had powerful illusions of a fully autonomous
archive, the reality on the ground was that a massive repertoire of
Munshis, Pandits, and Bhais, the traditional bearers of indigenous
knowledge systems, enabled and greatly expanded colonial knowledge.
The workings of indigenous knowledge systems and the makings of
colonial archives are explored in this essay through the masterly
translations and writings of Sir Attar Singh Bhadour (1833-1896).
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“Thought is a labyrinth.” Hugh Kenner
“Beneath every history, another history.” Hilary Mantel 1
Edward Said in his influential work, Orientalism passionately argued that
the West since ancient times but particularly during the period of modern
imperialism sought to subjugate the East through a powerful discourse
made up of essentialized caricatures, negative images and insidious
categories. Collectively this discourse under the cover of complex
knowledge systems, like philology, travelogues, taxonomy, anthropology
and the study of world religions, showed the West to be all prevailing
and powerful and the East always ready for submission and
subordination. Colonialism thus was not simply a matter of guns, frigates
and superior technology but also involved a complex network of texts,
symbolic systems and scholarly traditions. 2 While a great deal of what
Said proposed was initially enthusiastically accepted within the academy,
most recent scholarship is uncomfortable with the Saidian paradigm and
suggests radical amendments and revisions, if not a complete