04/12/2013 Thorpe, Colonialism and History

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Thorpe, Colonialism and History Published at: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 21:07:03 IST
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Uncovering the reality of Robert Thorpe presents an opportunity for asserting Kashmir’s unique identity in
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the British Empire. It also means that to deal with its past, Kashmir needs its own tools and ideas and not
the ones borrowed from the hegemonic Indian historiography
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The way people remember their past remains one of the interesting subjects of inquiry for historians. ‘What
happened in the past’ and ‘what we think happened in the past’ might sound similar, but in fact they differ a Thorpe, Colonialism and History

lot. Historians most of the time start their journeys from ‘what we think happened in the past’ and their Language, Gender and Pow er

ultimate goal is to tell themselves and people at large what ‘happened in the past’. In places like Kashmir,
where the state is proactively censoring history writings – where research institutes have become sterile
grounds when it comes to knowledge production and where spaces of higher education serve more as
spaces for lavish lunch and dinner parties and select political propaganda – the problems of recollecting our
past becomes more acute. But despite the censor, people do have a sense of history, and they do
recollect their past, precisely because our past remains tightly enmeshed with our sense of being – our
‘self’. Many in Kashmir might see it problematic that every event, every individual means different things for
different people, but within this mosaic of narratives, I do see a silver lining. Unless one is not
compromising on facts and till one is not passing on fictitious narratives as History, I fail to understand why
we need to worry about the multiple histories that the people of Kashmir have and will be having.
Heterogeneity and not homogeneity makes things interesting and beautiful. As Mao Zedong used to say,
‘Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend.’
I will try to explain my ideas through the example of a British official Robert Thorpe who was in Kashmir
during Gulab Singh’s period and explained with lot of passion the sufferings of common Kashmiris in his
much acclaimed book, Cashmere Misgovernment. Right from the days of my Masters degree when I first
read Robert Thorpe’s work, I tried to look for more information on him. But except one document (to which I
will come later) on his death, which I had found in National Archives of India (NAI), I could find nothing
more. Robert Thorpe even now for me, and I believe for many like me, remains a personality shrouded
between myth, memory, and history. For some, Thorpe’s mother was Janna, for others it was Janni. For
some she was daughter of a landlord from Budgam, and for others she was a daughter of the ruler of
Kishtwar. For some, Robert Thorpe was a Muslim, because his father had converted to Islam, for others
Robert Thorpe was a Christian whose cemetery can still be seen in the Sheikh Bagh Christian graveyard in
Srinagar.
Maybe someday when archives are open and when it is not a question of ‘national security’ to talk about
Robert Thorpe, we will be able to actually get to know more about him. But, what concerns me more here
in this piece of writing is what actually Thorpe means to Kashmiris today. Thorpe’s book, Cashmere
Misgovernment, gives a vivid description of three different ways in which the Dogras exploited the Kashmiris
– the rural peasantry, the urban weavers/workers and the forced labour (begaer). Writing about the
condition of shawl bafs Thorpe in a poetic language says, “Those gaily-coloured threads of wool are not the
only ones which these looms weave to their completion! Threads of life, more costly than those of the
softest pashm, whose price will be demanded by Heaven yet, are spun out there on the loom of sickness
and suffering.” It was precisely revelations like these which made Dogra rulers uneasy about his presence
in Kashmir. But braving the ruthless Dogra regime, Thorpe enters Kashmir and as T.H. Thorton, then
Secretary to Government of Punjab, wrote to W.S. Seaton, then Secretary to Government of India, he
entered without a passport and stayed after the time stipulated for the foreigners to be in Kashmir.
So the kind of things which Thorpe had been noticing and writing surely meant that he had a threat to his
life, but his death has remained a mystery right from the day he died on 22 November 1868 till now. But
the inconsistencies that we have in the only report about Thorpe’s death points that it was not a normal
death, rather it was a murder. Dr. H. Cayley in the Demi-official letter dated 25 November 1868 written to
T.H. Thorton, Secretary to Government of Punjab, says, “I left Sirinuggur a week ago, and then saw him in
perfect health, and I have this evening received an express from the officials there and from Colonel
Gardiner, in the Maharaja’s service telling me that on 22nd Mr. Thorpe went out for his morning walk, and
on his return ordered breakfast, and went to lie down till it was ready, and an hour or so afterwards, as he
did not come to his breakfast, the servant went to his bedroom, and found him lying dead on the floor,
where he had evidently began vomiting copiously…” In the next letter dated 28 November Dr. H. Cayley
writes, “As there was nothing discoverable outwardly to indicate the cause of death, I made an internal
examination, and found that he had died from the rupture of the heart, the result of disease, almost the only
infection, except poison, that ever causes death so suddenly in an apparently healthy person; and Thorpe
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04/12/2013 Thorpe, Colonialism and History
had, I believe, never complained of any illness…”
Now these letters can be understood in many ways. One, for example, if it was a heart rupture then how
come Thorpe was vomiting copiously? Or second, Dr. Cayley doesn’t tell us what the reasons for the heart
rupture were when he himself conforms that Thorpe was a relatively healthy person. The inconsistency in
the report suggests that something else happened in between the two letters, something which is not
written, but which forms the subtext of the report. It seems that Dr. Cayley was directed by someone to
produce a certain kind of report and he seems to have been complying with that directive.
I will end this piece with some observations from the life and death of Robert Thorpe which I believe have
some resonance even now for the Kashmiris in general and history writings in Kashmir in particular. The life
of Robert Thorpe who stayed and wrote about Kashmir opens up the multifaceted reality of Colonialism. As
many other scholars have also said before, let me repeat here again, that colonialism doesn’t work in the
same way everywhere. The extent of exploitation may vary from region to region, some regions might be
devastated by Colonialism, but some might not suffer so much. Particularly the frontiers/margins of various
colonial empires experience colonial state in a very different manner.
Robert Thorpe’s death, and his writings, point to the fact that at times there are many variants of
colonialism, and sometimes just a strand of the colonialism might prompt the masses to rise against the
local tyrants. In case of Kashmir, it seems very much probable that the writings of Robert Thorpe and some
other British officials against the Dogra rule loosened the feudal grip on Kashmir. It is very much possible
that these writings were a part of British imperialist designs, but to me that seems a secondary concern
here. The main concern to me is what actually happened because of officials like Thorpe. Did it help
Kashmiris to organize and voice their protest, or did it strengthen the local rulers? The answer can be both
ways – given the material we are using. But asking this question seems more important because it
challenges the nationalist and liberal Indian historiography which says that colonialism had same impact
across the empire and that there was a ‘natural solidarity’ among different regions and communities.
Asking this question is thus questioning the ‘ghost of colonialism’ which haunts Indian social sciences in
general and historiography in particular. Questioning these assumptions means asserting the unique
identity which Kashmir had in the British Empire and thus to accept that to deal with its past, Kashmir
needs its own tools and ideas and not the borrowed tools and ideas of the hegemonic Indian
historiography.

The writer is doing his PhD in Department of History, University of Delhi. He can be mailed at
amithist27@gmail.com

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