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Now that I& #39;ve finally handed in my masters thesis, I& #39;m going to do a thread about it in the hope that all the cool things I found out will be read by more than just one annoyed professor. If you& #39;re interested in the history of colonialism, protest, and Madras, read on.
The Madras Native Association, the topic of my thesis, is a a political group from the 1850s that finds surprisingly little mention in the history of South India, considering its important and often unique interventions.
Its agitations led to the first (and maybe last) official admission of torture being used as part of routine administrative practice in India. Major reforms ensued. (But little actually changed on the ground, which is why we still have cases like Jayaraj & Bennix today.)
It also contributed, directly and indirectly, to the expansion of education in Madras presidency, lowering of tax rates, recruiting of Indians to the civil services, decreased centralisation of power, and the overall dismantling of the East India Company& #39;s rule in India.
Created in 1852, it was the first political group of its kind to be formed in South India: cutting across caste lines, based in a city but with branches/agents in the districts, and well-versed in methods of constitutional agitation such as public meetings and petitions.
The last part is crucial. By the 1850s, British rule had become firmly rooted in India, especially in their great cities. And if you wanted to make claims/fight for rights/demand justice, you increasingly had to do it through formal legal/political channels created by the British
(of course you could choose to take up arms, but there are too many examples of that not working out thanks to the brutally efficient system that the Company had created, which heavily taxed Indians in order to fund an army that enforced & constantly expanded its hold over India)
The MNA& #39;s primary weapon was the petition. It continuously made written demands that the British were forced to take seriously because... a) they were expertly written, meeting all the norms of discourse and procedure. For example, MNA& #39;s arguments were almost always...
backed up by citations of either govt docs or writings of Europeans. b) They drew legitimacy from their mobilisation & support across caste and region. Thousands turned up to their meetings and they sourced info+funds from interior districts of present day AP and TN.
The MNA was exclusively made up of rich upper caste Hindu men. Their grounding in activism came from a long-running anti-Christian-missionary movement, during which they started a newspaper, started organising actively, holding meetings, and writing petitions.
Cross-caste solidarity, even among upper castes, was unheard of then. And MNA went even further by trying to articulate concerns of lower castes too. Notably, they actively argued against their own caste/class interest by criticising the oppression of zamindars.
The only people they didn& #39;t try to represent were Muslims (and Christians of course). Its roots in a religious protection movement meant that the MNA was always Hindu in character and composition, though it did ally with Muslims occasionally (especially on anti-conversion).
All of these factors - claim to wide representation, expertise in petitioning and organising, wealth and influence - put together, meant the MNA was taken seriously. Not just by the Company in Madras, but by the parliament in London. This opened up new possibilities for dissent.
The Company, which ruled India on behalf of the queen, was hated not just by Indians but also many Brits (for the same and different reasons). The MNA actively collaborated with them in pushing a pro-reform agenda in parliament. This also drew support from the British press.
Thus, after a century and a half of the British using India& #39;s internal politics to their advantage, the MNA sought to use the same tactic by exploiting the multiple centres of power in the Empire. And they did it using the laws, procedures, and institutions created by Empire.
Aside from the reforms it directly or indirectly achieved, the MNA& #39;s primary achievement in taking the debate about India to Britain lay in its exposing of the double standards of an Empire that was barbaric and cruel in the colonies but talked of enlightened rule in its capital.
The MNA was a short-lived group that effectively died within a decade of its creation. But the precedents it set in subverting British political and legal frameworks to agitate for Indian rights and freedoms were emulated, to great effect, by many groups that came after it.
