Chapter VIII / Osterley Walk
The British in the Madras Presidency
Amidst the loud and lavish Grand Tour paintings lie quietly “....ivory, porcelain and lacquer treasures along the west wall”38 all seeming like fruits of trade to mask the rot of colonial extraction.
Walk across the hall slowly, as you listen to the audio.
In 1833, the Slavery Abolition Act was passed, criminalising the centuries-old practice of enslavement in Britain and all of its colonies. It is not accurate to say that the system had ended there, because for Britain and the East India Company, the wheels of empire needed to keep running, their plantations needed harvesting, their thirst for power and control needed quenching. Indentured servitude was brought into practice to replace slave labour, and thousands of workers were taken by the British empire from India to their plantations across the world, under unclear terms of work and harsh conditions. From 1839 onwards, Madras was brought under this system, when the Company transported Tamil people as labourers from the port-town to British plantations in Sri Lanka, peninsular Malaysia, Mauritius, South and East Africa and the Caribbean.39
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London
In India, land and caste have been historically tied, for land and its ownership continues to play an important role in sustaining caste apartheid that had existed for centuries before British colonial rule.40
In 1855, the Madras Torture Commission Report was published in the British Parliament, revealing the brutal acts of violence committed by oppressor-caste revenue collectors against cultivators from oppressed-castes, under the approval of the East India Company. Torture was inflicted to extract revenue and control land transactions on enclosed cultivable land.41 Through the Company, the British empire utilised caste to its own benefit as a means of exerting power and sovereignty over the Madras Presidency. This coloniality was two-fold - perpetrated by caste-oppressors who were aided by the British. At the Parliament, the Company as an entity was absolved of its complicity in the crime, and a renewed body of colonial police that was based on the model of the Irish Constabulary, was eventually introduced into the Presidency.42
In 1858, the East India Company rule in the Indian subcontinent ended, paving the way for the British Crown to directly take over its colonies. British rule in the subcontinent was overthrown in 1947 after centuries of resistance43 to the subjugation but not without leaving behind massacres, mass displacements, geopolitical tensions and neo-colonial aspirations.44 While the white supremacists had left the Madras state, dominant-caste supremacists regained their power and began stealing and forcefully occupying panchami lands - an unjust and violent practice that continues even today. 45
The Madras state was eventually divided and reorganised into the five southern Indian states that exist today, with the rechristening of Madras into the modern-day metropolis of Chennai. The use of torture in colonial Madras under the rule of the East India Company, introduction of the colonial police and the subsequent introduction of the Criminal Tribes Act by the British Raj formed the basis for the authoritarian policing systems, police brutality in the present-day state of Tamil Nadu.46 Many of these injustices are Brahmanical47 in origin and were fortified by British colonial laws.
For three generations, the Child family administered the activities of the East India Company that directly and indirectly impacted large parts of Asia, of which my hometown of Chennai was merely one example. The Childs may not have directly meted out these horrors but their association with the Company that did proved fruitful and profitable to them. The house and estate of Osterley Park was sustained by this association and is the reason it exists today.
At this juncture, you may choose to take a self-guided tour of the house before continuing on the audio tour. As you look around, pay attention to the labels and texts of the objects on display.
Meet me outside on the porch to continue.
Image: A Tea Estate. Sri Lanka, 1891. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2006BC5463). Non-Commercial licence.
38 Text in an interpretive panel at the Long Hall, titled ‘Long Gallery: Craftsmanship and Design.’
39 Del Pilar Kaladeen, Maria Dr (Institute of Commonwealth Studies). 2021. Indian Indenture in the British Empire: The Making of the Modern World - Lecture 6. The Sociological Review. https://thesociologicalreview.org/projects/connected-sociologies/curriculum/mmw/indenture-and-indian-ocean-world/
40 “What is Caste?” n.d. Dalit Solidarity Network. Accessed August 25, 2024. https://dsnuk.org/caste-discrimination/what-is-caste/.
41 Elliott, Derek. 2012. “Hidden narratives of torture”. UNiversity of Cambridge. Accessed June 10, 2024. https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/hidden-narratives-of-torture#:~:text=The%20allegations%20of%20torture%2C%20publicly,as%20the%20Madras%20Torture%20Report.
42 Dzenisevich, Uladzimir. n.d. “The police we have and where it came from: An Analysis.” Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative. Accessed October 5, 2024. https://www.humanrightsinitiative.org/blog/the-police-we-have-and-where-it-came-from-an-analysis.
Arnold, David. “The Police and Colonial Control in South India.” Social Scientist 4, no. 12 (1976): 3–16. https://doi.org/10.2307/3516332. Pg. 4-8
43 Jangam, Chinnaiah. 2017. “Whose Nation? Dalits and the Imagination of the Nation.” Dalits and the Making of Modern India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Rao, Anupama. The Caste Question: Dalits and the Politics of Modern India. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/25913. Pg. 81-117.
44 Dalrymple, William. 2015. “The Bloody Legacy of Indian Partition.” The New Yorker, June 22, 2015. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/06/29/the-great-divide-books-dalrymple.
Zakaria, Anam. 2022. “The Ongoing Legacies of the Partition of British India.” Asia Society. https://asiasociety.org/magazine/article/ongoing-legacies-partition-british-india.
Zia, Ather. 2020. “The New East India Company”. The Haunting Specter of Hindu Ethnonationalist-Neocolonial Development in the Indian Occupied Kashmir. Development Volume 63. Pg 64-65. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41301-020-00234-4#Sec5
Mushtaq, Samreen, and Sabahat A. Wani. 2020. “India’s Settler Colonialism In Kashmir Is Not Starting Now, Eliminating The Natives Is A Process Long Underway.” The Polis Project. https://www.thepolisproject.com/read/indias-settler-colonialism-in-kashmir-is-not-starting-now-eliminating-the-natives-is-a-process-long-underway/
45 Samraj, Jerome C. 2006. “Understanding the Struggle for Panchama Land.” Madras Institute for Development Studies. Accessed 22 September 2024.https://www.mids.ac.in/assets/doc/WP_197.pdf
46 Vijayan, Suchitra and Heath, Deana. “Violence is a legacy of empire that didn’t end when empire ended - Deana Heath.” The Polis Project - Podcast series. Accessed 12 September 2024.https://www.thepolisproject.com/listen/violence-is-a-legacy-of-empire-that-didnt-end-when-when-empire-ended-a-conversation-with-dr-deana-heath/
Mohammad, Noor, and Sion Kongari. 2023. “More than 70 years from liberation, former “Criminal Tribes” continue to endure stigma and discrimination.” ActionAid India, July 31, 2023. https://www.actionaidindia.org/more-than-70-years-from-liberation-former-criminal-tribes-continue-to-endure-stigma-and-discrimination/
47 Pegu, Sanjana. 2018. “Why Understanding Brahminical Patriarchy Is Of Utmost Importance.” Feminism in India, November 23, 2018. https://feminisminindia.com/2018/11/23/brahminical-patriarchy-understanding/