Raja Ram Mohun Roy & Dwarkanath Tagore- having learned English and having gotten very rich by working for the East India Company- wanted Westminster to lift all restrictions on White emigration to India. Why? They were Hindu and feared the revival of Muslim power. Only White European Christians could militarily defeat & subjugate the Muslims in Bengal.
An academic of Hindu, Bengali, extraction- Shomik Dasgupta- claims in Aeon that
The Indian thinker Rammohun Roy believed that good governance must be close: distance made the British Empire cruel
In 1831, a man in a long cloak
everybody wore long cloaks or coats at that time.
stepped off a ship in Liverpool. He had no official title the British recognised, no position in the colonial administration, and no invitation from the Crown.
So what? The Moghul Emperor had given him the title 'Raja' & sent him to London, as his Vakil, or advocate, to plead for a higher pension. No invitation was needed. Anyone was welcome to come to London to make representations on behalf of anyone whatsoever.
Roy had held junior positions with the EIC but he was rich and well liked by some high British officials.
His name was Rammohun Roy. He came from Calcutta, sent not by the British Empire but by the weakening Mughal court in Delhi.
It was shit. It had been under Maratha protection till the Brits took over & made the 'Badshah' their own pensioner.
His stated mission was to represent the ageing emperor Akbar II in London. But Roy brought something else with him, something quietly radical.
He hoped Parliament wouldn't overturn the anti-Sati law. He also wanted unrestricted White immigration & more indigo planting, opium cultivation, etc. Why? Whites were good at fighting. They would slaughter the Muslims if they wagged their tails.
Among his papers was a detailed document on how India was governed under British rule, and how it might be governed more justly. Its title: Exposition of the Judicial and Revenue Systems of India.
Roy wanted people like himself to get richer by taking over more and more estates from older aristocratic lineages.
The moment was significant,
No. Nothing changed. British power was increasing. Roy & Tagore & others of their class would lose money and social prominence more particularly as Trading or 'Agency' Houses in Bengal began to fail in the 1830s & 1840s. This contributed to the British financial panic of 1847. After that date, the Bengali 'bhadralok' (landed gentry) became less entrepreneurial & more enmired in involuted agriculture. The mid-Victorian period was the high noon of Racism. The Brits no longer attended lavish banquets hosted by Indian compradors. The 'Babu' (clerks) social position was greatly eroded. Shoshee Chunder Dutt chronicles this change. His ancestor had been a 'banyan' (commercial agent) just like the 17 year old Warren Hastings. Both could get rich. But Hastings & his ilk had entered the British Parliament as MPs or as Lords. They were now part of the British governing class and had diversified portfolios. The 'bhadralok' was doomed to a century of decline before land-reform legislation crippled them economically and the creation of Pakistan meant they had to run the fuck away from Dacca and their estates in East Bengal.
even if few recognised it at the time. Here was an Indian thinker not merely demanding reform but arriving in the imperial metropole with his own diagnosis of empire’s ethical failings.
Any type of 'thinker' or stinker who could afford to pay for his passage was welcome to arrive in London & diagnose any stupid shite he liked. Dwarkanath Tagore, it must be said, received a better reception- but that was before he lost most of his money.
His cloak may have seemed out of place in the foggy streets of London, but his message was piercingly modern: power must be near to be fair.
In which case he would have wanted Bengal to be independent. But the cowardly Hindu would be the serf of the virile Musslaman. Look at Bangladesh. Fuck that. Look at Muslim majority, or near majority, districts in Mamta's West Bengal.
His presence in England wasn’t just diplomatic: it was symbolic.
It had some political significance. Roy was advocating the sort of policies favoured by the Governor General Bentinck. But there was nothing unusual about Indian lawyers or merchants coming to London on legal business. Naoroji Rustamji is considered the first such Indian. He arrived in 1723- 110 years before Roy.
Itsiam ud-Din arrived in 1765. He had written the Treaty of Allahabad & was the Munshi of the Nawab of Bengal. But his visit yielded nothing of value.
Roy was stepping into the heart of empire not merely to protest, but to propose.
No. He was the token darkie whose job was to praise the Governor General & demand more European immigration.
As he would argue, critique from a colonial subject wasn’t a contradiction; it was a form of ethical intervention.
Very true. A darkie who turns up to say 'please send more White peeps. Us darkies love being their slaves.' is being very ethical. He isn't a corrupt, sycophantic cunt. Perish the thought!
And perhaps more radically, he believed that Britain had something to gain by listening.
Britain disagreed. The praise of a corrupt sycophant is not worth hearing.
Roy did not call for rebellion, but for reform grounded in empathy, knowledge and responsibility.
Please send more White peeps. That way my son will be less important than me and his son will be less important than him. At any rate, that's what happened.
What he offered was a vision of rule based not on domination, but on ethical presence.
Physical presence. He wanted more White peeps- e.g. indigo planters.
To understand Roy’s radicalism, one must
be a stupid Bengali hypocrite
first recognise the peculiar nature of the empire he addressed. The British East India Company governed not as a typical colonial state, but as a multinational corporation with a private army.
The administrative side had been separated from the commercial side. John Company had a Royal Charter & was subject to the British Crown. Its army was separately funded & officered till 1858.
Its rule was bureaucratic, extractive and often unaccountable.
It was accountable to the British Parliament which is very fucking far away from India. Roy was cool with that. Why? If you fall foul of the local Collector or Governor, you could go to London & try your luck there.
In this world, Roy’s voice stood out not simply because it was Indian, but because it was reasoned, comparative and universalist.
Nobody gave a shit about him- save some Unitarians & followers of Bentham. But the latter found him a little too doctrinaire in his thinking.
He spoke the language of rights
Bentham said 'rights' are 'nonsense on stilts'.
and governance, of moral duty and political proximity: a language the British claimed to understand, and that Roy used to hold them to account.
He flattered his masters because they had turned a blind eye to his getting rich. He didn't hold them to account.
On the surface, the Exposition looked like a dry report. But inside was a surprising claim: the greatest problem with British rule in India wasn’t just oppression or corruption. It was distance. Courts operated in languages that ordinary people couldn’t understand.
The solution was to weaken the judicial side and increase the power of the District Collector. So long as he collected & remitted the entire revenue assessment, let him deal with matters pragmatically and with a view to saving money and curbing local resentment or distress.
Administrators rarely stayed long enough in one place to learn how it worked.
Roy is saying- 'rely more on the 'Dipty'- i.e. people like himself. Some already know English and others are eager to learn. Stop funding Arabic & Sanskrit. Give some financial assistance to English medium schools. We will speak your language, be wholly obsequious, and will deal with boring administrative shite under the supervision of White officers. What he didn't say was that this administration would be corrupt and bigoted towards the productive classes.
And decisions were made far away, in Calcutta or London, by people with no connection to the lives they affected.
Roy wanted more of that. He didn't want any part of Bengal to be returned to the rule of indigenous Princes. Worse yet, would be 'ryotwari'- i.e. landowning cultivators dealing directly with the Government.
To understand why Roy believed these things, we need to understand
that he liked money. Some Hindus looked down on him because of the manner in which he made his money. Thus he was the enemy of 'orthodoxy' (sanatan dharma)
the extraordinary life that shaped him. Born in 1772 into a well-to-do Brahmin family in Bengal, he was educated in a variety of intellectual traditions that few of his contemporaries had access to.
They had access. They just didn't want much of that shite.
His early studies in Persian and Arabic took place in Patna, where he was introduced to Islamic theology, logic and jurisprudence.
Useless shite- unless you have faith in Islam
Later, in Varanasi, he studied Sanskrit texts, absorbing the metaphysics and ritual knowledge central to Hindu philosophical traditions.
Useless shite- unless you have faith in Hinduism
He also engaged with Jain and Buddhist ideas and, over time, became deeply interested in Christian theology and Enlightenment rationalism.
Useless shite- unless you have faith in Christianity. As for 'Enlightenment Rationality'- it cashed out as 'White Protestant Male is smart. Niggers have shit for brains. Pay them peanuts & make them do boring, menial, work.'
This unique education didn’t just make Roy intellectually curious
nor did it make him bi-curious. Sad.
– it made him comparative. He was always seeking correspondences between traditions: what did Islam and Hinduism say about the moral duties of a ruler?
Kill the foreign invader. Don't suck his cock.
How did the Christian notion of the kingdom of God relate to Persianate ideas of justice?
It didn't.
How did Western liberalism align, or conflict, with indigenous notions of ethical conduct?
For some reason, the Brits felt you had done wrong if you inherited the ancestral Estate in the traditional way- viz. killing your brothers & cousins.
These weren’t abstract questions.
They were meaningless.
Roy saw them playing out in the colonial world around him.
No. He saw deals being done. Utility- which just meant revenue maximization- ruled over all.
From 1803 to 1814, he worked for the East India Company in various administrative roles – first as a munshi (a clerk or secretary), then as a revenue officer, and eventually as a translator and Persian-language expert.
i.e. he had the opportunity to grow rich lending money & acting as an agent or middleman.
He was posted in towns across Bengal and Bihar, and these experiences formed the crucible of his political thinking. He observed how policies devised in distant boardrooms were implemented, often clumsily, on the ground.
No. He observed how money was made- by himself, for example. Distant boardrooms wanted money. That's all they cared about.
He witnessed how local knowledge was routinely ignored,
District Collector should do Voodoo. That's 'local knowledge'.
and how language barriers created confusion and alienation.
When a guy says 'I'll help you' and you believe him, you become confused & alienated when he steals all your money & fucks you in the ass. This has nothing to do with 'language barriers'.
Roy’s familiarity with the colonial administration was not superficial.
He was a corrupt cog who soon had enough grease to get rich.
He knew its paperwork, its personnel, its practices.
But he didn't know shit about fighting. That's the only thing which mattered. That's why he wanted more White peeps in Bengal. Whites are cowardly. They know how to fight. Bengalis are still very angry with Churchill for not permitting Japan to conquer Calcutta.
He was, in effect, a part of the machinery. But he was also quietly and sharply critical of it.
Very quietly indeed. Still, Bentinck might have thought him a useful enough mouth-piece.
He saw how easily the system slid from bureaucracy into authoritarianism
Authoritarianism is bureaucratic. This dude is as stupid as shit.
– not through grand acts of oppression, but through a thousand small instances of disregard.
This is poetic. This dude says 'Head of Dept. is not sodomizing me. Small instances of disregard like this proves he is Adolf fucking Hitler.'
It was these experiences that led Roy to argue, later in London, that colonial rule suffered not just from injustice, but from estrangement.
He argued that Bentinck's ass was really really tasty which is why he kept licking it.
The British were ruling India, but they did not know it.
Indians knew it so well that they were ruled by the British.
They governed by abstraction, by rules, reports and statistics, rather than by presence.
No. They ruled by presence. Actual White dude gave the order to shoot darkies regardless of any rules, reports, or statistics.
Roy believed this was not just inefficient; it was unethical.
Roy wasn't mad. He knew there were no fucking rules or reliable statistics or reports not written for a partisan purpose.
And it was this ethical critique, grounded in his personal encounters with power, that gave the Exposition its quiet force.
It was useless. This darkie might have made a bit of money for himself but his masters had made much more. Could he fight? No. Fuck him.
Nor was Roy’s criticism confined to British officials. He also called upon Indian elites to rethink their role. Too many, he believed, had accepted the rewards of collaboration without the responsibilities of critique. Roy wanted a different kind of engagement – one that would hold power to account from the inside, using the tools of law, reason and moral persuasion.
What Roy wanted was irrelevant. It was guys like Napoleon & Wellington who decided who would rule. Some clerks might write some shite in between collecting bribes but nobody gave a fuck about them.
In many ways, Roy’s life up to 1831 was preparation for the arguments he would make in England.
To whom did he make those arguments? Nobody at all. The fact is the people he met regarded him as backward. They were trying to educate him or at least correct the obvious logical flaws in his reasoning, because he was, after all, a darkie- i.e. as thick as shit. The question was whether it would be better to pressure Roy to convert to Christianity now or to leave him as a Trojan horse. The old hands in the EIC didn't live proselytization but the Evangelicals were gaining the upper hand.
He had spent three decades navigating multiple worlds: Persian and Sanskrit, Mughal and British.
No. He had remained in a place where English had begun to appear alongside Sanskrit, Arabic & Persian.
The Exposition was the culmination of that journey. It was not a cry from the margins.
Roy came to the UK to get more money for the Emperor and to pretend that Indians wanted unrestricted European immigration. His views were taken note of in the 'General Appendix to the Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the affairs of the East India Company 1832 (Pages 341-342).' To be frank, his contribution is a bit shit compared to that of British officials who had held high positions. Still, he was a darkie and allowances should be made-
Advantages. First.—European settlers in India will introduce the knowledge they possess of superior modes of cultivating the soil and improving its products (in the article of sugar, for example),
because sugarcane is native to Britain- right? Basically the stupid darkie is saying 'you guys are smart. We have shit for brains. Even if you don't know how to grow tropical crops, you can't be as fucking stupid as the natives. You can beat them till they learn to dig the soil rather than try to dig the clouds.
as has already happened with respect to indigo, and improvements in the mechanical arts, and in the agricultural and commercial systems generally, by which the natives would of course benefit.
If you beat them. Please do so. Niggers love being whipped.
Secondly.—By a free and extensive communication with the various classes of the native inhabitants, the European settlers would gradually deliver their minds from the superstitions and prejudices, which have subjected the great body of the Indiau people to social and domestic inconvenience, and disqualified them from useful exertions.
Indians are shit. Europeans are super smart. For fuck's sake, just enslave us already. You needn't call it slavery. Just invest in beating and not paying the workers.
Thirdly.—The European settlers being more on a par with the rulers of the country, and aware of the rights belonging to the subjects of a liberal Government, and the proper mode of administering justice, would obtain from the load Governments, or from the Legislature in England, the introduction of many necessary improvements in the laws and judicial system ; the benefit of which would of course extend to the inhabitants generally, whose condition would thus be raised.
Muslim rulers should bring in more Muslims from their natal place... oh wait! That's what the Turks did. The outcome wasn't good for Hindus like Roy.
Fourthly.—The presence, countenance and support of the European settlers would not only afford to the natives protection against the impositions and oppressions of their landlords and other superiors, but also against any abuse of power on the part of those in authority.
White skin has magic powers.
Fifthly.—The European settlers, from motives of benevolence, public spirit, and fellow- feeling towards their native neighbours, would establish schools and other seminaries of education for the cultivation of the English language throughout the country, and for the diffusion of a knowledge of European arts and sciences ; whereas at present the bulk of the natives (those residing at the Presidencies and some large towns excepted) have no more opportunities of acquiring this means of national improvement than if the country had never had any intercourse or connexion whatever with Europe.
White people are angels. That's why there is no poverty or ignorance in Europe. The rich White dude 'from motives of benevolence' establishes schools & hospitals and so forth with the result that opulence is very broadly defused.
Sixthly.—As the intercourse between the settlers and their friends and connexions in Europe would greatly multiply the channels of communication with this country, the public and the Government here would become much more correctly informed, and consequently much better qualified to legislate on Indian matters than at present, when, for any authentic information, the country is at the mercy of the representations of comparatively a few individuals, and those, chiefly the parties who have the management of public affairs in their hands and who can hardly fidl therefore to regard the result of their own labours with a favourable eye.
European settlement in India would change British politics in a manner favourable to those with investments there.
Seventhly. In the event of an invasion from any quarter, east or west, the Government would be better able to resist it, if, in addition to the native population, it were supported by a large body of European inhabitants, closely connected by national sympathies with the ruling power, and dependent on its stability for the continued enjoyment of their- civil and political rights. . .
White people are good at fighting. Bengalis are shit.
Eighthly . The same cause would operate to continue the connexion between Great Britain and India on a solid and permanent footing ; provided only the latter country be governed in a. liberal maimer, by means of Parliamentary superintendence, and such other legislative checks in this country as may be devised and established. India may thus, for an unlimited period, enjoy union with England, and the advantage of her enlightened Government; and in return contribute to support the greatness of this country.
Roy wants India to be a permanent colony of Britain with White people in India taking the lead in all matters.
Ninthly. If, however, events should occur to effect a separation between the two countries, then still the existence of a large body of respectable settlers (consisting of Europeans and their descendants, professing Christianity, and speaking the English language in common with the bulk of the people, .-is well as possessed of superior knowledge, scientific, mechanical, and political) would bring that vast empire in the East to a level with other large Christian countries in Europe, and by means of its immense riches and extensive population, and by the help which maybe reasonably expected from Europe, they (the settlers and their descendants) may succeed sooner or later in enlightening and civilizing the surrounding nations of Asia.
So, even if the English colonists in India follow the path of George Washington, still- from the racial point of view- English dominance will have gained a vast new territory in which to burgeon.
Roy had a mercenary motive for saying what he did to Westminster. He may have genuinely liked his masters but the reason he gave to his Hindu brethren for his actions explains his motives completely. Without the Europeans, power would pass back to the Muslims or the Marathas. His own class would suffer.
It was a challenge from someone who had seen the system from within,
he had made a lot of money serving in subordinate capacities
and who wanted it to do better.
By him & his ilk. But this meant more White people owning land & running businesses & practicing Law & preaching Christianity & running English medium Schools & Colleges. He wanted his own kids to speak English & adopt Anglicized ways. But, they would be 'subaltern'- i.e. relegated to subordinate positions.
His proposal was simple but bold: rulers should be present, visible, and answerable to those they govern.
That wasn't his proposal. He wanted more White settlers owning land & running businesses. The rulers were already present. You could see them when you attended the Collector's cutcherry. You were answerable to him. He was answerable to the Governor who was answerable to the Board of Control in London which was answerable to the Crown in Parliament.
Power should not float above people’s lives; it should live among them.
The District Collector lived in the District most of the time. This is because he was responsible for collecting money from the people who lived there & putting them in jail if they did anything wrong. God's power may float in the air. Human power involves human beings being present. Police men & Magistrates live amongst us. They aren't angels or ghosts. Why does Dasgupta not know this?
Roy’s mission to England was, at least formally, as the emissary of the Mughal emperor Akbar II.
Any lawyer or other agent was welcome to turn up and make representations on behalf of anyone who had authorised him to do so.
By that time, the Mughal dynasty, once the most formidable imperial power in South Asia – had become a shadow of its former self. Its territorial reach was minimal, its treasury depleted, and its court largely symbolic.
The 'Emperor' was a pensioner of the British.
Yet, for Roy, that symbolism mattered.
No. He was asking for more European settlement not more dudes from Central Asia.
The emperor might have been politically diminished, but he remained, in Roy’s eyes, a sovereign figure whose legitimacy derived not from conquest or commerce, but from an older, morally infused conception of rule.
He didn't give a fart for some Muslim potentate who had no power.
This connection was more than ceremonial. Roy had cultivated ties with the Mughal court over several years and was conferred the title of Raja, a move that British officials privately mocked but could not entirely dismiss.
They could do what they liked. The title "Maharaja" ('Great Raja) was conferred on Nandakumar by Emperor Shah Alam II in 1764. This didn't prevent his judicial murder for the crime of forgery by Justice Impey. Roy didn't believe in ghosts or some mythical power of the 'Grand Moghul'.
His diplomatic mission to England was also a subtle act of political imagination:
it was a crude way to ingratiate himself with his masters.
an attempt to revive the ethical memory of Indo-Persian kingship
Nutters like Dasgupta like to pretend that Hindus lurved Muslims till nasty Modi took power & turned India into a Fascist country.
within the corridors of imperial power.
Not the corridors of the Mughal Emperor which were dirty and full of cobwebs.
In carrying the voice of the emperor to the British Crown, Roy was insisting that India’s political traditions had not been erased, they were merely sidelined, awaiting recognition.
No. He was insisting that India was perfectly safe for large scale European settlement because the natives were stupid, shitty & anxious to serve.
Roy’s Mughal affiliation also revealed the layered and overlapping sovereignties of early colonial India.
No. The Mughal Emperor was a pensioner for the Brits. He asked a guy who worked for the Brits to intercede with them to increase his pension.
He did not view indigenous kingship and colonial rule as irreconcilable opposites.
He viewed European hegemony as inevitable and (so he said) desirable for the natives.
Instead, he saw the potential for a fusion: a system in which older norms of justice, responsibility and public ethics (values cultivated in the Persianate courtly tradition) could temper the utilitarian logic of the East India Company.
This was the last thing he wanted. Why? He would be downgraded to serving a Muslim aristocrat who would take his orders from a Britisher. What he wanted was to displace the Muslim or other aristocrats with Hindus like himself. Why? To make lots of money.
On this view, the Mughal court was not a fossil but offered a way to remind the British that power without legitimacy is fragile,
It really isn't. Power is fragile only if it can't fuck over anybody who tries to fuck with it in even the slightest degree. The Brits had that power. They could kill and keep killing because they had the money to pay soldiers- some White (and thus less shite than the native variety)- to kill and keep killing. After that they could settle down to the business of raping and looting.
and that legitimacy is not simply a function of military force or administrative reach.
Legitimacy just means what is legal. British courts decided this. Roy's class would turn into barristers (who had eaten their dinners at the Inns of Court) within three decades.
In his writings, Roy often staged this synthesis. The Exposition is filled with references to English law and Enlightenment ideals, but its moral cadence is unmistakably shaped by Persianate ethical thought.
Which is why it came across as somewhat retarded.
Concepts like justice, proximity and ethical accountability – common in Islamic political writing
or any sort of writing, Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian
– inform his ideas.
Nobody was interested in his ideas.
Roy did not abandon these traditions
he never possessed them to such a degree as to be recognised as an authority by the Ulema
when he wrote in English. He translated them.
So what?
And in doing so, he created a political vocabulary that could speak simultaneously to the emperor’s court and to the British parliament.
No. He used the language and vocabulary familiar to each when addressing them. He wasn't an important man by any means. But he was well-bred enough.
To the British public, Roy’s Mughal ties might have seemed quaint, even anachronistic.
Why? They paid the dude a pension. He had sent an agent to ask for it to be increased. It was- to the tune of £30,000. There's nothing anachronistic about money. It isn't as though Roy was claiming to be the Royal Wizard or Dragon Master.
But for Roy, they offered a platform from which to issue a critique.
Ass-licking is not a critique.
His journey to England was thus layered with intent. It was not only a petition on behalf of a declining monarch. It was a declaration that India’s political voice could still speak for itself, not in defiance, but in dialogue.
Please send more Whites. Darkies are stupid & shitty. That isn't a dialogue. It is ass-licking.
The Exposition, published in London in 1832, is a remarkably grounded critique of British administration in India. Rather than the language of revolution, Roy speaks of reform, precision and moral responsibility. The document is divided into several sections that detail the flaws of the colonial judiciary and revenue systems.
Sadly, it was of poor quality and filled with errors. Still, the fellow was a darkie and thus not much could be expected of him.
Roy begins with everyday realities. Farmers pushed into debt due to excessive tax assessments.
Stuff like that had been mentioned in Parliament when Clive was put through the wringer a couple of years before Roy was born.
Legal processes that bewildered ordinary people because proceedings were conducted in unfamiliar languages.
English legal processes could be bewildering to a lot of English people.
Judges and collectors who rotated too frequently to understand the local contexts they were meant to oversee.
They rotated too quickly to become corrupt. Roy was for corruption. He leant money to British officials.
The effect was alienation, not just in law but in life. The people governed did not recognise themselves in their governors,
Because the Governors were White. Roy was in favour of this.
and the governors rarely made an effort to learn from the governed.
They learned enough to grow in effectiveness.
Roy outlines more than bureaucratic inefficiency – there’s a deeper political problem: a form of governance unmoored from the people it affects.
Also lack of support for LGTQ communities of colour. Roy was an early advocate for transgender rights.
He argued that decisions made in London or by distant Company directors could never be just if they didn’t incorporate local realities and voices.
No. He just wanted more Whites to turn up and take over everything.
Roy advocated for Indian judges, courts that spoke local languages, and administrative continuity.
This already existed. It was only 5 years after Roy died that English in higher courts & local languages in lower courts, replaced Persian by, the Bengal Act XXIX of 1837.
His demand was not for Indian rule alone,
It was for White Rule with greatly increased White settlement.
but for a system of accountability rooted in ethical practice and public engagement.
not to mention DEI & support for LGTBQ communities of colour.
This ethical core, what Roy would have understood through both Enlightenment ideals and Persianate ethics, insisted that governance required familiarity, attentiveness and moral clarity.
In which case, Persian would never have been the court language anywhere in India.
He called not for the rejection of bureaucracy altogether, but for its reform.
That 'reform' being to make it more British & less Indian.
He believed that a government might still be legitimate if it was structured to listen, respond and explain itself.
In England, maybe. Not in India. Why? Indians were shit. Unless lots of Whites settled there, the place would never improve.
But such responsiveness required what he called domiciliation: power that lived where it governed.
By domicilation he meant that more Europeans should settle in India, own land, run enterprises, & lord it over the niggers. Sadly, in view of Abolitionist sentiment, Roy couldn't demand the enslavement of the native population.
In making this argument, Roy anticipated one of the great critiques of modern administration – that it becomes impersonal, procedural and aloof.
Which is preferable to its beating and robbing your incessantly.
Long before Max Weber or later theorists of bureaucracy, Roy observed how distant governance
like that of Emperor Akbar?
often transforms justice into ritual, law into jargon, and accountability into empty routine.
Bengal didn't have much in the way of bureaucracy back then. The Brits had taken over the existing 'Nizamat' (administration) & were gradually replacing Persian with English at the higher level and vernacular languages at the lower levels.
His Exposition is filled with illustrations of these dynamics, not theoretical, but deeply empirical.
No. It is third rate. He was a mere 'Munshi'. The higher officials were all British & their evidence was of a superior type. Roy's job was to say 'Indians are shit. Please send out more Whites.'
Rather than merely assert abstract principles, Roy shows how injustice functions on the ground. A farmer is taxed on a mistaken assessment and loses his land.
There had been a 'Permanent Settlement' in Bengal. A tax-farmer (zamindar) who couldn't pay because he was improvident or unfortunate was sold up. But business houses which couldn't pay their debtors went bankrupt & their assets were auctioned off. This happened in England as it did in India. However, in some circumstances, the aristocratic landlord's title would be preserved while the State took over the administration of his domain till debts had been cleared. This was also the case where the heir was a minor or a purdah-nashin woman incapable of managing her own affairs.
A litigant attends court for months without understanding a word spoken by the judge.
Because proceedings were in Persian. The odd thing was that the Bengali upper class wanted to retain Persian. They argued that Bengali was too underdeveloped.
A village waits years for an official to arrive to settle a land dispute.
Land disputes can be resolved without the intervention of an official.
Each example becomes a window into the ways a disconnected system can do violence, not loudly, but daily.
But all this could be said about England.The difference was that no Englishman was saying foreigners should come and settle in England because the English were shit.
Roy’s approach here was distinctively bureaucratic, even procedural. Yet it carried a sharp political edge. He was less concerned with abstract denunciations of colonialism
because he wanted more of it. White colonies should be created in India.
and more focused on the granular mechanics of how injustice worked.
He wanted more injustice, not less. Why? His class had gotten rich from that injustice.
These weren’t just administrative quirks: they were the machinery of alienation.
e.g. having Persian as the language of the Courts when the vast majority could not speak a word of Persian.
And yet Roy remained hopeful. He believed that reform was possible, and that ethical governance could be built if both Indian and British officials committed themselves to the people they served.
No. He thought Indians were shit. India needed more White peeps.
His critique was born not of ideology but of experience, experience sharpened into moral vision.
He had got rich as a 'Munshi' or clerk to the Brits. He also leant them money. But it was Dwarkanath who had made the big bucks.
In many ways, the Exposition was an administrative document.
It was a third rate precis of a highly tendentious type containing no information not already in the public domain. From the Indian nationalist point of view, it did have some positive aspects- e.g. praise for Ranjit Singh, the ruler of the Punjab.
But in Roy’s hands, it became a form of political philosophy: a vision of governance as care.
No. Saying 'send more White peeps' is not a vision of governance if you are a darkie. It is a vision of slavery.
That is what makes Roy’s Exposition so compelling.
It is shit. That is why Indians don't read it. The thing is shameful.
More than a relic of colonial policy, it is a dialogue on what power should look like when it is done justly.
No. It is a fairy story about niggers becoming good little Christians provided nice Europeans come and take over all the land and whip the darker so they work harder.
In an age when data-driven decision-making and bureaucratic rationality are once again under scrutiny, Roy’s work reminds us that the first requirement of good governance is not information, but presence.
Absence. He died far away from India. But he imparted the information that niggers want Whites to take over their land and whip them regularly.
Roy’s idea did not emerge from any single intellectual tradition.
He was a corrupt sycophant.
It was shaped by a remarkable confluence of influences, intellectual encounters and moral commitments.
This may be said of his Religious views which may be described as Unitittyarianism- nipples are many. Titty is one.
Rather than being the product of one culture or creed, his ethics was braided from multiple traditions,
i.e. sycophancy to Muslims as well as sycophancy to Europeans
each offering a different vocabulary for justice, responsibility and the purpose of power.
i.e. saying 'nigger scum' instead of 'kaffir scum'.
One of his earliest writings, Tuhfat-ul-Muwahhidin (‘Gift to the Believers in One God’),
represented sycophancy to Muslims
composed around 1803, shows his deep engagement with Islamic theology and particularly the ethical tradition known as akhlaq.
It is shit. Would the kaffir convert? No. Then fuck him. Akhlaq- disposition- is formed by adopting good habits so you come to do the right thing without much reflection. Islamic Akhlaq begins and ends with scrupulous religious observance- doing namaz 5 times a day, fasting during Ramadan, going on Hajj if you have the means to do so, etc. etc.
In this literature, power is inseparable from virtue;
No. Virtue is desirable but power is separate from it.
rulers are not simply sovereigns but moral agents accountable to divine justice and social responsibility.
Everyone is accountable to God. Social responsibility is displayed by killing kaffirs unless they convert.
Drawing on thinkers like Nasir al-Din al-Tusi,
a double dyed traitor who betrayed his Prince to the Mongols
Roy was steeped in a tradition where the king’s first duty was not to expand dominion but to cultivate fairness and moderation.
He wasn't steeped in Islam because he wasn't a Muslim. Cultivating fairness & moderation won't stop the Mongols or the Europeans or whatever from conquering you country and enslaving you.
From Hindu texts, especially the Upanishads, Roy drew a sense of spiritual duty (dharma)
dharma just means piety. A thief may be pious.
and the idea that self-knowledge carried public consequences.
No. A fully self-realized person who has tasted the honeyed wisdom of the Chandogya may follow a menial occupation. No one may be aware of his advanced spiritual state.
The king, in this worldview, was the guardian of cosmic and social order.
Roy praises Ranjit Singh. Why? The dude kicked ass. Who cared if he was or wasn't a Guardian of the Galaxy or a pillar of the Cosmic Order.
The justice he administered was not his alone, it reflected the balance of the universe.
Sycophants did witter on in that fashion.
Roy was particularly drawn to the idea that truth was unified, even if its expressions varied across traditions.
He was a liar by vocation.
This gave him the confidence to seek moral guidance across boundaries.
By licking the ass of the Brits or anybody else with a bit of money.
This comparative method was no intellectual game – it was an ethical necessity.
i.e. it was a good way to get some money & receive a bit of attention.
Roy believed that moral clarity often emerged at the edges of traditions, not their cores.
Moral clarity consisted of saying 'Indians are shite. Please send us more Whites'.
Good governance had to be multilingual, morally plural and intellectually generous.
Bengalis of his class wanted to stick with Persian. They had a point. The Bengali script had not been strandardized & it took longer to write. But the main thing was that they didn't want ordinary folk to understand legal documents or court proceedings. English, however, was welcome to replace Persian because even fewer people knew it.
Christianity shaped Roy’s ethics in another way. Through his interactions with Christian missionaries and his reading of the New Testament, Roy came to admire the moral teachings of Jesus – especially the emphasis on compassion, humility and resistance to arbitrary authority.
Christ said 'resist not evil'. He didn't say 'tell Caesar to fuck off'.
He believed that Jesus modelled a form of leadership that elevated the weak, questioned entrenched power, and refused to separate faith from ethics.
No he didn't. Also, he did not advocate compulsory gender reassignment surgery for all practicing male heterosexuals.
Roy did not convert to Christianity,
because it was Trinitarian. He was Unitarian. Moreover, the Christians would have wanted him to give up his wealth & go look after lepers or some other such shite.
but he found in it a moral clarity that resonated with his own convictions.
viz. that lots of Whites should settle in India & rule over darkies.
Equally significant were the liberal ideas he encountered through his engagement with European philosophy. He read John Locke on governance, William Blackstone on legal rights, and Montesquieu on the separation of powers. These thinkers gave him a language for political accountability, constitutional limits and civil liberty.
He was a sedulous ape. If Bentinck is a Whig & Mill is a great force in the India Office, then he spouted Whiggish, Benthamite, shite.
Rather than merely adopt these ideas, Roy interpreted them through the lens of his multilingual, multireligious education.
& came to the conclusion that Indians were shite.
Where Locke spoke of life, liberty and property, Roy heard echoes of older ideas about justice, responsibility and the ethical character of rulers.
Roy wasn't utterly stupid. He knew about the American & French Revolutions. In Britain, the power of the monarch had been greatly curtailed. The Prince Regent had a rotten ethical character. This didn't matter in the slightest.
What emerged from this intellectual ecosystem was a hybrid ethics of rule.
Sycophancy. Roy didn't rule shit.
Roy was not content to be a translator or commentator.
He wanted to be chief ass-licker- at least as far his own clerical class was concerned.
He fused his sources into a coherent moral philosophy: one that insisted that
Darkies are shit. Please send out more Whites to rule over them.
rulers were stewards, not merely administrators, their power a responsibility, not a right.
Roy was aware that the 'Crown in Parliament' was supreme in the UK. Rulers didn't matter. If they tried to, they might be chased away. Look at Charles X in France.
And their legitimacy came not from conquest or title, but from their ethical proximity to the people they governed.
In which case the Brits couldn't legitimately rule India. The problem with advocating more settlement is that settlers might turn 'Creole' & demand independence as had happened in Latin America. The solution was for the better class of European settlers to send their kids back to Blighty for education. The 'country bottled' could be given lowly clerical jobs or encouraged to fuck off to Australia.
Importantly, Roy’s ethics were not abstract.
He had no fucking ethics. That's why he had been able to make a bit of money.
They were meant to guide governance in specific ways.
Roy wasn't utterly stupid. He knew that nobody wanted guidance from a little brown monkey or Munshi or whatever. Still, maybe the fucker would convert & go off to preach to the lepers or whatever.
He argued that justice must be comprehensible to its subjects;
No. He was a Utilitarian. Justice should promote good outcomes. It is a service industry.
laws must be intelligible;
to lawyers & judges. Bentham argued that, in England, judicial language should become simpler. Roy was making no similar claim about India though he did support reform of Hindu personal law.
policies must reflect the lived conditions of those they affect.
Otherwise they won't affect them. Thus, if the Government's policy is to encourage levitation as a mode of transport, it will have no effect if nobody alive can actually levitate
This meant that language, continuity and cultural knowledge were not mere accessories to administration, they were ethical requirements.
No. There is no ethical requirement that a baby be able to speak or display cultural knowledge. Yet the administration could protect the property & other rights of the baby.
A court that spoke in Persian or English while adjudicating the affairs of Bengali villagers was more than inefficient; it was unjust.
But that is what Roy wanted.
Roy’s ethical vision thus combined moral rigour with administrative insight.
No. He didn't know much about the administration because he had merely been a Munshi. Tagore had held higher offices but it was Britishers who had come out to India at the age of 17 & who had risen to the top posts who had all the facts & figures at their finger tips.
It asked how one could rule fairly in a multilingual, multireligious and colonised land.
No it didn't. Nobody was concerned with 'ruling fairly'. Could a profit be made? That's all that mattered.
And it insisted that the answer lay not in uniform control, but in layered responsibility.
Which already existed. Roy was on the side of increased centralization & reduced subsidiarity.
The ruler must be close enough to understand, humble enough to listen, and virtuous enough to act.
No. He must be powerful enough to fuck over anyone who tried to fuck with him. Also, he must make a profit. Otherwise, sooner or later, he won't be able to pay his troops & they will desert him.
This capacious moral framework allowed Roy to act as a bridge, between traditions, between empires, between ideas of East and West.
Also he was a great advocate for DEI & the rights of the LGBTQ community.
In a world increasingly divided between coloniser and colonised, he
asked England to send out more colonisers.
offered a model of political thought that was both critical and connective. His ethics, drawn from many sources, became a tool to evaluate, and challenge, the new order of empire.
No. He said 'Europeans are lovely. Indians are shitty. Please send us more Europeans'.
Roy’s political imagination was forged in the overlap between philosophy, politics and public communication.
He saw he could be useful to Bentinck & Mill at the India Office. Sadly, he died before he could get anything substantial in the way of reward.
He was not a political theorist in the academic sense, but his writings collectively form a coherent and radical vision: a vision rooted in ethics, shaped by daily life,
Dasgupta is shaped by nightly life.
and articulated through an extraordinary command of multiple intellectual traditions.
Had he lived, he might have shaped up to be a Utilitarian economist. I'm kidding. He was a typical Bengali blathershite.
He wrote across genres: petitions, essays, open letters, pamphlets and newspaper articles. In Sambad Kaumudi, one of the newspapers he founded, he tackled contemporary issues in a tone that was direct, often satirical, and deeply engaged with the moral and civic life of Bengal.
Bengali publishing was taking off. But its influence remained limited. Roy & Tagore were independently wealthy & could subsidize their magazines. The question was whether their sycophancy would be rewarded by the Raj.
He addressed subjects ranging from widow remarriage to press freedom,
The political background was this. Governor Hastings had clashed with London, which wanted to lower the pay of soldiers in the Bengal Army. he was recalled. Adams was his temporary replacement but he too failed to do what London wanted. Attacking him over his 'gagging order' might go down well in London. Amherst who replaced Adams was equally unable to deliver. Indeed, he expanded Adam's war in Burma which led to a big financial drain & a financial crisis. With Bentinck & Metcalfe, the fiscal position improved. Roy's argument was that more White Settlers would mean more revenue for the Government.
and from education reform to judicial procedure. His Bangla tracts brought abstract political principles into the realm of lived experience.
The abstract principle he supported was that Indians are shit. Whites aren't. Bengal needs more Whites!
Using metaphors drawn from agriculture,
his readers weren't agriculturists. He should have stuck to metaphors relating to defecation.
family and folklore, he made his case in ways ordinary readers could grasp and relate to.
Few ordinary people could read. The literacy rate was 3 percent. Of that 3 percent only a microscopic minority could afford newspapers.
This was no small feat.
Nor was it a big feat. I'd say it was a successful speculation. Both Roy & Tagore did well out of their venture into publishing not because it was profitable but because it enabled them to receive a respectful welcome in the UK.
Roy was crafting a political language where none yet existed.
No. He was translating or adapting what already existed. What was unusual about him is that he appealed both to the Unitarian & the Utilitarian. His lasting legacy is Emerson's Brahma on the one hand & Amartya Sen's stupid shite on the other.
Even his religious writings had political undertones. When Roy argued for monotheism or defended the rights of women, he was implicitly arguing
that Hinduism is shit. Muslims deeply agreed. Christian Missionaries, on the other hand, wouldn't have been happy unless Bengalis converted & went off to preach to lepers or such like.
for an ethical public sphere,
i.e. one with a lot more Whites.
one in which reason, mutual respect and moral accountability formed the basis of both religious and political authority.
Also the next Pope should be a Jewish lesbian of colour.
More than simply theological, his critique of idolatry was also a critique of institutional power.
No. It was a stupid Islamic prejudice. That is all.
How might political institutions be reimagined to serve people rather than simply manage them?
District Collector should wipe everybody's bum.
Roy’s political imagination was shaped by lived experience,
No. It was shaped by stuff he read. He didn't come to England till the end of his life. No 'political imagination' is required to be a Munshi or a money lender.
not just textual traditions. His knowledge of the inner workings of the East India Company
was entirely by hearsay. The big nobs didn't chat familiarly to their Munshis. They shouted at them to fucking fetch the fucking file futt a futt.
administration gave him a practical understanding of how power functioned on the ground.
Every Munshi or Vakil or Dalal knew how it functioned on any particular patch of ground.
This realism distinguished him from utopian thinkers.
Not having any original thoughts distinguished him from actual thinkers.
He did not call for the wholesale dismantling of British rule
Nor for the chopping of all heterosexual dicks.
but for a system where power was made ethical through its responsiveness to the governed.
i.e. power wipes everybody's bum.
The Exposition, then, must be read as part of this broader project.
to promote DIE while showing solidarity with the transgender community by chopping your own dick off.
It is not just a policy document.
It isn't a policy document because a retired Munshi doesn't make policy.
It is an ethical map.
Of what? A country where lots of Whites turn up & take over the country while the natives slave for them?
Roy was outlining what governance should feel like to those at its receiving end: accessible, fair, answerable.
No. He is saying that if the natives have more contact with Whites, they will stop being so utterly shite.
He was asking how political institutions might be reimagined to serve people rather than simply manage them.
Management is a service. People hire managers to look after their property & ensure it yields a bigger profit. Dasgupta, being a Bengali, thinks 'management' incessantly sodomizes and steals from the workers due to Neo-Liberalism is very evil. Did you know that there was once a Bengali blathershite who said 'instead of sodomizing your servants, why not wipe their bums?'
His proposals, such as appointing Indian judges or conducting trials in local languages, were grounded not only in administrative logic but in moral reasoning.
Roy & his son had civil suits pending against them- including a charge of embezzlement. The position at the opening of the nineteenth century was that an Indian 'munsif' could only try cases of a value of Rs. 50 but, in practice, this was raised to Rs 150. After 1803, there were Indian sadr amin judges trying cases up to Rs. 500 (or 1000 with permission from higher up) Roy argued that there could be two Indian sub-judges at the 'sadr amin' level (i.e. up to Rs. 500). By the 1820s, Indian judges were disposing of more and more criminal cases. This was simply a matter of economy & expediency. Roy's proposals in this regard were quite conservative. He wanted a couple of Indian sub-judges at the District Court. Obviously, as time went by, they would deal with more and more cases of a type which could be easily disposed off.
Roy pointed out that there were many places where an Indian could do the job of Collector just as well or better but, he understood, the Indians themselves were distrustful of Indian judges and thus made no similar stipulation regarding District Magistrates. However, he suggested that well paid Indian 'assessors' could be appointed. He believed that if Indians could earn decent money & got some measure of official recognition, their morale would improve. They might, slowly but surely, acquire 'the dignity & firmness' of the European rather than retain habits of slavish obsequiousness & malicious sharp practice.
Crucially, Roy believed that communication was central to power.
Not a big problem where 'dubashes' (translators) were cheap. Anyway, Haileybury & Addiscombe taught cadets some Hindustani, Persian, etc.
His multilingualism was a strategy, not just a skill.
It was a skill. He liked learning languages. The English had adopted the promotion & learning of Indic languages as part of their strategy for improving efficiency & fiscal sustainability for the Raj.
He wrote in English, Persian, Bangla and occasionally Arabic, tailoring each message to a different audience. To British officials, he offered reasoned critique in the language of reform. To Indian readers, he offered satire, allegory and moral exhortation.
Hindus thought he was a corrupt running dog of the new masters. He heaped calumny upon them by way of revenge. I suppose one could say that Roy & Tagore provoked the Hindutva reaction which has now come to dominate Indian politics. Dasgupta, no doubt, has kittens that Modi performs 'idol worship' in the new Ram Temple. But Dasgupta has shit for brains.
This polyphony allowed him to operate in multiple spheres at once, imperial and vernacular, elite and popular.
No. It allowed him to keep some of his ill gotten gains.
His political thought is difficult to pin down precisely because it
was embarrassingly Racist. Indians are shite. Please send more Whites to show us how to be less utterly shite.
refuses simple classification. It is liberal in its defence of rights,
Bentham thought talk of rights was 'nonsense on stilts'. Roy was a Benthamite.
constitutional in its calls for reform,
Kindly change the law so more Whites can come take over India.
theological in its moral urgency,
stop being so fucking Hindu you fucking Hindus!
and pragmatic in its policy suggestions.
Pay 'assessors' Rs 200 a month.
Above all, it is grounded in the conviction that proximity, not just of geography but of understanding, is essential to justice.
Which is why he appealed for justice to the Privy Council in 1823. It isn't located in London. It is located in Howrah.
Roy’s political imagination, then, was both expansive and grounded.
It was both Capitalist & Communist and founded on both Sharia & Satanism.
It did not dream of utopias; it demanded reforms.
It didn't demand shit. It was obsequious.
It did not romanticise the past or idealise the West;
It idealized Europeans. They are so nice. If more of them come to India, the natives will stop hanging by their tails from trees.
it asked what could be done, here and now, to make power more just. In this, he was a pioneer of modern Indian political thought.
Which, admittedly, is shit. Dasgupta has a point.
And though he rarely used the language of democracy as we understand it today,
nor the language of militant lesbianism as we understand it today.
his work laid important foundations for it:
No. His work did lay the foundation for the Brahmo Samaj which was deeply boring.
a vision of governance that is ethical, inclusive and accountable to the people it serves.
and wipes their bums incessantly.
When Roy arrived in England, he caused a stir among certain political and intellectual circles.
Not much of one. Dwarkanath was more of a hit.
British Unitarians saw him as a fellow traveller in the search for rational religion and ethical reform. Parliamentarians sympathetic to political reform welcomed his insight into colonial governance. Intellectuals such as Jeremy Bentham and Robert Owen were aware of his presence and, in some cases, intrigued by the precision and civility of his arguments. Yet despite this momentary curiosity, Roy remained largely marginal in formal imperial circles, welcomed as a curiosity, perhaps, but not taken seriously as a political equal.
Dwarkanath was rich. His company was doing very well. Sadly, he soon became insolvent.
His Exposition didn’t prompt sweeping reform. There was no sudden change in how the East India Company administered justice or collected revenue. But this wasn’t necessarily a failure.
Because he didn't actually attempt to do anything. You can't fail if you don't try.
The true significance of the text lay in its political gesture,
it was a pioneering text in Sharia based LGBTQ Liberation theology.
not in its policy influence.
You can't influence policy if people think you are a corrupt sycophant.
Roy demonstrated that critique could come from the colonised, articulated in the idiom of the coloniser, and still reflect a deeply Indian moral vision.
Only in the sense that he demonstrated that a Jewish Lesbian could make a very good Pope.
His work set a precedent for speaking truth to power,
No. Guys who told the Brits they were evil racist bastards who should fuck the fuck off back to Blighty, spoke truth to power. Roy was a sycophant.
from within the very spaces where that power was presumed to be unquestioned.
Roy crawled up the anus of the Governor and started talking from that vantage point. This greatly discomfited Lord Amherst.
After Roy’s sudden death from meningitis in Bristol in 1833, his reputation evolved rapidly.
No. It was only after the Brahmo Samaj took off that anybody remembered that blathershite.
In Bengal, he was celebrated as a reformer, remembered for his advocacy against sati (widow immolation), his efforts to modernise Hindu education, and his co-founding of the reformist movement Brahmo Sabha. But as Indian politics grew more nationalist in tone, Roy’s image was simplified: he became either the father of Indian liberalism or a faint outline in the pantheon of proto-nationalist heroes.
Whereas actually he was a champion of LGBTQ rights who insisted that Viceroy Sahib should be physically present to wipe everybody's bum.
This often obscured the nuance of his political thought, his careful attention to bureaucracy, his insistence on ethical proximity, and his belief in moral governance as a practice of care, not just control.
Meaningless jibber jabber. Roy & Dwarkanath- like Rabindranath- believed that the Muslims would take over if the Whites fucked off. In East Bengal, they weren't wrong.
Nonetheless, Roy’s ideas lived on in more subtle ways. Later thinkers like Dadabhai Naoroji, Gopal Krishna Gokhale and even Rabindranath Tagore inherited fragments of Roy’s vision.
As did Pussy Riot & Imam Khomeini.
Naoroji’s economic critique of British rule echoed Roy’s insistence that imperial governance was alienating and extractive.
which echoes arguments put forward by Sheridan & Burke from the 1780s.
Gokhale’s moral tone, his stress on responsibility and gradual reform, bore traces of Roy’s ethical method.
I suppose there was some similarity between the Prarthana Samaj & the Brahmos.
Even Gandhi, in his emphasis on decentralisation, civic proximity and spiritual politics, echoed Roy’s belief that power must dwell among the people to be just.
He was deeply influenced by Roy's holistic commitment to obeying the Law of Gravity.
Roy’s ideas also influenced constitutional thinking in the 20th century, though indirectly.
In 1832, Roy passed by a lady in Bristol who offered to fuck him in return for six-pence. This indirectly influenced a cat one of whose distant descendants said meow to Dr. Ambedkar.
The emphasis in India’s founding documents on representation, transparency and ethical statecraft parallels Roy’s vision of governance as moral responsibility.
As opposed to governance as fucking a prostitute for six-pence. Dr. Ambedkar explained this to Shyama Prasad Mukherjee who said 'meow' and ran away.
He had planted the seed for a conception of the state that was not merely procedural, but principled – rooted in proximity, humility and accountability.
& wiping everybody's ass.
In our present moment, Roy’s thought feels uncannily timely.
Only to an uncannily stupid Bengali blathershite.
As global governance grows more abstract, as decision-making becomes automated, centralised and emotionally disengaged, Roy’s insistence on ethical presence is a potent reminder that power without presence becomes alienation;
e.g. if you aren't physically present in the Legislature you are 'alienated' from stuff guys you elected do there.
that administration without understanding becomes violence in slow motion;
Slow torture can be inflicted by administrators who understand what they are doing. A business administrator who doesn't understand what he is doing does not necessarily inflict any type of violence. This cunt doesn't understand shit but that doesn't mean he is anally raping the Pope in slow motion.
and that justice, in the end, is not only a question of law or efficiency, but of nearness.
This simply isn't true. You go to Court. The Judge doesn't come to you. Dasgupta is Bengali- i.e. unable to reason. Just mindlessly repeating stupid shite doesn't mean anything.
Roy may not have lived to see a decolonised India.
He wanted more Whites not less.
But he helped imagine one in which rulers were moral agents among their people, not distant authorities.
The District Collector was near enough. If he was White, Indians thought he was more likely to be moral than if he was Indian. File under 'Sad but true'.
Roy died far from home,
A Hindu became PM in that far country.
but his intellectual legacy lives on in the questions he raised.
He raised no questions. He merely said- 'send us more Whites. We are utterly shit. Maybe, the presence of Whites will make us less shit.
What makes authority just?
Sodomy. Roy was a prominent advocate of LGBTQ rights.
How close must a government be to be ethical?
Close enough to wipe your bum.
Can institutions behave not just efficiently, but morally?
They can be neither if Bengalis are involved.
His answers were consistent, not simplistic. Proximity matters. Language matters. Accountability matters. These are not abstractions.
They are foolish ipse dixit assertions. Proximity does not matter for any activity which does not involve being able to touch the person concerned. Language does not matter for any purpose where some complex request or proposal has to be conveyed in the absence of a translator. Accountability doesn't matter at all save where it is legally mandated or required under the terms of a contract. I can do what I like with my post-tax income. I don't have to account for a single penny of it.
They are the daily conditions of dignity and justice.
No. They are immaterial. You don't face conditions of dignity and justice if what you are faced with everyday is a guy who is close to you and who is speaking to you and who is keeping strict accounts regarding the number and size of his turds that he is forcing you to eat.
For Roy, governance was not just about power, it was about the ethical form that power takes when it comes into contact with people’s lives.
Roy wasn't crazy. He didn't teach worthless shite. Governance is about solving collective action problems in a pragmatic & utilitarian manner. That, at any rate, is what he believed. Power comes into contact with people's lives when it hangs them or incarcerates them or enforces a contract against them. If this happens to bad people only, good people are happy.
In the Exposition, Roy was not asking for an Indian takeover of British institutions.
He was asking for more Europeans to come and take over Indian land & resources.
He was asking for something more foundational: that governance, to be legitimate, must be intelligible,
every sort of governance is intelligible. Legitimacy merely means that it is recognized as lawful.
humane and grounded in ethical awareness.
This may be desirable. It may not. What one considers humane, another may consider bestial.
This was not merely a critique of British rule.
He didn't critique it. He licked its arse.
It was a blueprint for any system of power, imperial, democratic or otherwise, that hoped to endure with integrity.
He offered no such thing though one could say he had Benthamite proclivities.
In a world increasingly defined by distance,
Fuck off! The world has shrunk.
between citizen and state,
brought closer by smartphones & Social Media
between policy and experience,
brought closer by real-time analytics.
between law and justice, Roy offers a reminder that good government is not only a matter of laws or statistics. It is a matter of presence.
Bum wiping.
His insistence that rulers live among the ruled,
He didn't want the Board of Control to relocate to India. All he asked was for the Privy Council to relocate to Howrah.
listen to them in their own languages, and remain morally accountable to them, is a principle that transcends his time.
It wasn't his principle. Stupid shit which exists only in Dasgupta's brain doesn't transcend anything.
In his most optimistic moments, Roy believed that even the colonial state could be redeemed if it learned to govern not from a distance, but from within.
i.e. Viceroy should crawl up the rectum of every Indian and rule from within them.
His work suggests that proximity is not just spatial, but ethical.
What is Dasgupta saying? Modiji should kindly sodomize me?
It means listening across difference,
while tenderly sodomizing each other
and governing with the humility
while being fisted by all sundry
that no law is just unless it is understood, felt, and answerable.
to some Bengali blathershite.
We live now in an age of data-driven governance,
It must be said, the Brits were ahead in 'Political Arithmetic'- i.e. the use of Statistics to guide policy making. v
automated decisions and vast bureaucracies.
Fair point. The bureaucracies are too large.
The state has grown more capable, but also more impersonal.
Viceroy no longer wipes Dasgupta's bum. Sad.
In such a moment, Roy’s vision feels radical again.
Only to a Bengali blathershite who teaches History only because he totally failed to learn from it.
Not because it is grandiose, but because it is intimate.
Roy stuck his head up Dasgupta's ass. That's why Dasgupta feels Roy's vision is intimate.
He did not ask to be remembered.
He demanded that stupid Bengali blathershites tell stupid lies about him.
He asked, insistently, that power be visible, proximate and accountable.
Which was the case of the District Collector. Roy did say Indians could make good Collectors but not Magistrates.
That vision still matters.
Only to people paid a little money to tell stupid lies about Indian history
And perhaps now more than ever, it deserves to be read not as a relic, but as a provocation: a call to bring ethics back into the everyday workings of governance.
But if the only person it is calling to is a useless shithead like Dasgupta, then the thing doesn't need to be read at all. Indeed, that's why it isn't.
