Colonialism's civilizing mission: The case of the Indian Hemp Drug Commission

This paper examines a particular episode in the history of British imperial ism in India: the appointment of the Indian Hemp Drug Commission in 1893. W e analyze the way a quasi-judicial investigation into the consumption of dr ugs was differently conceived and executed as a civilizing mission by, on t he one hand, British colonizers, and, on the other hand, an aspiring coloni zed elite. By bringing together the ideological dimensions of a civilizing mission (e.g., the reliance on scientific knowledge, proper procedures, leg al techniques) with its social ones (e.g., collaboration between colonizers and a local elite), we show how the very notion of a civilizing mission be came a site of struggle over meaning, identity, and desirable forms of gove rnance. The analysis reveals a local elite struggling to Position itself at once on a par With British criteria of scientific competence and yet not a s a mere proxy for British interests; at once able to articulate itself in terms of enlightenment concepts such as reason and modernity and yet celebr ating its own distinct cultural authenticity.