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Tolerant Imperialism: John Stuart Mill's Defense of British Rule in India

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Tolerant Imperialism: John Stuart Mill's Defense of British Rule in India The Review of Politics 68 (2006), 1–26. Copyright # University of Notre Dame DOI: 10.1017/S0034670506000246 Printed in the USA 1 2 Tolerant Imperialism: John Stuart Mill’s Defense 3 of British Rule in India 4 5 6 Mark Tunick 7 8 9 Abstract: Some critics of John Stuart Mill understand him to advocate the forced 10 assimilation of people he regards as uncivilized and to defend toleration and the 11 principle of liberty only for civilized people of the West. Examination of Mill’s social 12 and political writings and practice while serving the British East India Company 13 shows, instead, that Mill is a tolerant imperialist: Mill defends interference in India 14 to promote the protection of legal rights, respect and toleration for conflicting 15 viewpoints, and a commercial society that can cope with natural threats. He does 16 not think the principle of liberty is waived for the uncivilized or that the West 17 should forcibly reshape them in its own monistic image. Mill’s tolerant imperialism 18 reflects a tension between liberty and moral development that also surfaces when 19 Mill thinks about the scope of government in civilized societies. 20 21 22 23 24 I. Critics of Mill’s Imperialism1 25 26 John Stuart Mill, an undisputed spokesperson for British imperialism, was a 27 loyal employee of the East India Company for roughly half his life. He saw 28 England and the Company as forces of progress that spread liberal values 29 and improved mankind’s capacity for individuality and the enjoyment 30 of higher pleasures (Rel 10:422, 426; AU 1:145–46). He praised the impro- 31 vements to India’s infrastructure, health care system, and educational 32 institutions that were made possible by the Company’s introduction 33 of modernizing technologies (CW 30:141–48). 34 35 36 1 37 References to Mill’s works will be cited as “CW volume: page.” Abbreviations: AU 38 (Autobiography, 1873: in CW 1); Civ (“Civilization,”1836: in CW 18); CW (John Stuart 39 Mill, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. John M. Robson et al. [Toronto: 40 University of Toronto Press, 1963-]); NI (“A Few Words on Non-Intervention,” 1859: in CW 21); NW (John Stuart Mill, Newspaper Writings, eds. Ann P. Robson and John 41 M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986); OL (On Liberty, 1859: in CW 42 18); PPE (Principles of Political Economy, 1848: in CW 2, 3); Rel (Three Essays on 43 Religion, 1874: in CW 10); RG (Considerations on Representative Government, 1861: in 44 CW 19); SpA (“The Spirit of the Age,” 1831: in CW 22); U (Utilitarianism, 1861: in 45 CW 10). Q1 1 2 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS 46 Mill’s support of British imperialism may seem puzzling given that Mill 2 47 defends toleration, liberty, and experiments in living. How could the theorist 48 who defends a principle holding that no one could “rightfully be compelled to 49 do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so” (OL 18:223–24) also 50 defend a system of imperialism seeking to compel the improvement of 51 others? Uday Mehta finds the defense of empire by liberals like Mill 52 “ironic,” given that liberals should be committed to toleration, 3 53 self-determination, and human dignity. The two positions—support of 54 imperialism and defense of liberal values—have been reconciled in the past 55 by understanding Mill’s principle of liberty to apply only to civilized 56 people and Mill to support despotism for the uncivilized. On this view, 57 Mill did not think we should be tolerant of the practices and laws of 58 peoples, like those living in India, whom he thought uncivilized. 59 Mill has been sharply criticized for championing despotism for 60 non-Western peoples. Some critics charge him with ethnocentrically seeking 61 to impose the individualist liberal values of his England on the rest of the 62 world and advocating cultural assimilation.4 Bikhu Parekh sees Mill as 63 willing to use violent and intolerant forms of coercion to impose a “monistic 64 vision of the good life.”5 On Parekh’s view, Mill, assuming some cultures are 65 superior to others, wants to prevent the ascendancy of an inferior group by 66 ruling out any form of diversity that emphasizes “ethnically grounded” or 67 “traditional and customary ways of life, as well as those centered on the com- 68 munity.” For Parekh, Mill is a “missionary” for liberal diversity and intolerant 69 of nonliberal ways of life.6 70 Some of Mill’s critics trace what they perceive as Mill’s intolerant imperial- 71 ism to racist attitudes.7 Some link it to a lack of appreciation for radically 72 different ways of understanding the world. Mehta argues that Mill, in 73 74 2OL 18:260–61, 275; cf. Elizabeth S. Anderson, “John Stuart Mill and Experiments in 75 Living,” Ethics 102 (1991): 4–26. 76 3Uday Singh Mehta, Liberalism and Empire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 77 1999), 3–4. 78 4Bhikhu Parekh, “Decolonizing Liberalism,” in The End of ‘isms’? Reflections on the 79 Fate of Ideological Politics after Communism’s Collapse, ed. Alexander Shtromas 80 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 85–103; “Liberalism and Colonialism: a Critique of Locke 81 and Mill,” in The Decolonization of Imagination: Culture, Knowledge and Power, ed. Jan 82 Pieterse and Bhikhu Parekh (London: Zed Books, 1995), 81–98; and Eddy Souffrant, 83 Formal Transgression: J.S. Mill’s Philosophy of International Affairs (Lanham: Rowman 84 and Littlefield, 2000). 5 85 Parekh, “Liberalism and Colonialism,” 96; cf., “Decolonizing Liberalism.” 6Ibid., “Superior People: The Narrowness of Liberalism from Mill to Rawls,” Times 86 Literary Supplement (February 25, 1994). 87 7Shiraz Dossa, “Liberal Imperialism? Natives, Muslims, and Others,” Political 88 Theory 30 (2002):738–45; Vinay Lal, “Organic Conservatism, Administrative 89 Realism, and the Imperialist Ethos in the ‘Indian Career’ of John Stuart Mill,” New 90 Quest 54 (1998): 54–64; Richard Drayton, Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial TOLERANT IMPERIALISM 3 91 wanting to civilize Indians, completely ignores how Indians already have an 92 integral way of life and a system of reference giving meanings to particular 8 93 things. Mill, according to Mehta’s view, in confronting Indian forms of life 94 so different from his own, lacks the humility needed to appreciate how 95 Indian religions and traditions provided “dwellings in which peoples lived 9 96 and had deeply invested identities.” Mill, overly confident in his own 97 claims of knowledge, infantilizes Indians without understanding them. He 98 assumes that Indian experiences were provisional and in need of correction 10 99 and completion by enlightened guides. This criticism of Mill’s defense of 100 British imperialism draws on a broader criticism of liberalism itself as the 101 imposition of what is seen as peculiarly Western ideas of rationality, 102 science, and progress. In seeing India as not yet civilized, Mill imposes a 103 certain historical approach that dismisses folk beliefs that are not rationally 104 demonstrable, including all “unreal, impossible and supernatural events.”11 105 In Mehta’s words, Mill imposes a “cosmopolitanism of reason” that rejects 106 the unfamiliar.12 Mill wants the British to civilize India, thereby imposing a 107 particular conception of how a people ought to live and what constitutes a 108 good life, without recognizing the validity of different conceptions. Who, 109 ask Mill’s critics, is Mill to say that one has mismanaged one’s life and is in 110 need of benevolent interference, and why should we assume that civilization 111 will always make all humans happy?13 112 While Mill certainly defends imperialism and a vision of historical progress 113 against which he finds India wanting, I shall argue that many of the above 114 criticisms misrepresent Mill’s position. Mill defends what I call “tolerant 115 imperialism” (section 2). He does want England to civilize India, but to civi- 116 lize, for Mill, does not entail forced assimilation (section 3), nor should the 117 despotism it involves deny the rights of or use power arbitrarily against 118 Indians (section 4). Mill’s critics fail to see how Mill tolerates even illiberal 119 practices of Indians and recognizes the importance they play in their lives 120 121 122 123 Britain, and the ‘Improvement’ of the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000); 124 Mehta, Liberalism and Empire, 195–96. 125 8Mehta, Liberalism and Empire, 82. 126 9Ibid., 27–28, 21, 212. 10 127 Ibid., 44, 191. 11 128 Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World (Minneapolis: 129 University of Minnesota Press, 1986), 58–59; and Dipesh Chakrabarty, 130 Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 10, 238. 131 12Mehta, Liberalism and Empire, 20. 132 13Souffrant, Formal Transgression, 98–99, 121; cf. Mehta, Liberalism and Empire, 20, 133 44–45; Bruce Baum, Rereading Power and Freedom in J. S. Mill (Toronto: University of 134 Toronto Press, 2000); Jennifer Pitts, “Legislator of the World? A Rereading of 135 Bentham on Colonies,” Political Theory 31 (2003): 224. 4 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS 136 (section 5). There are limits to the toleration Mill would allow, but this reflects, 137 I shall argue, not a lack of respect stemming from racist attitudes (section 6), 138 but rather a tension between liberty and moral development, both of which 139 Mill values—a tension evident not only in Mill’s concept of tolerant imperial- 140 ism for the East but in the liberalism he advocates for the civilized and not so 141 civilized peoples of the West (section 7).
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