Colonial Categories of Thought

This chapter considers the extent to which Grierson articulates colonial categories of thought in the Survey and in his correspondence. He takes class, criminal tribes and levels of civilisation for granted. He also expressed an instrumentalist view of Indian literary studies and tried to safeguard English from creolisation. In doing so, he highlighted dialectal differences in India while underplaying them in Britain. He was also involved in the institutionalisation of anthropology as an academic and colonial discipline. The Survey was cast as a heroic narrative of colonial adventure and exploration, and Grierson had links to conservative and imperial lobby groups, reflecting his conservative politics. This politics is also evident in the foregrounding of a rural and folkloric India in the Survey’s volumes.