SOAS, University of London (The School of Oriental and African Studies)

Treading upon Fires': The 'Mutiny’-Motif' and Colonial Anxieties in British India

During the early months of 1894, a strange phenomenon was observed throughout the district of Bihar in northern India: hundreds of mango trees were found to be mysteriously marked with a smear of mud in which a few hairs had been planted; no-one knew what it meant. While locals suggested that the marks had been left by supernatural beings, the so-called 'mud-daubing' affair sent tremors through the colonial state and caused a panic amongst the British, who feared that it signalled an impending uprising. While the mud-daubing panic of 1894 may be little more than a curious anecdote in the longer history of the Raj, it is nevertheless as revelatory of the workings and failings of the colonial state and information order as was the 'Mutiny' of 1857. Rather than a singular event, this paper argues that the mud-daubing panic was a symptom of something far more pervasive, namely the recurrent pattern of colonial anxieties. While it is generally acknowledged that the trauma of the 'Mutiny' had an immense impact on the British in India, the significance of what Thomas Metcalf has described as 'an enduring legacy of fear' remains largely unexplored. Examining the political landscape of colonial anxieties, this paper proposes a new approach to the study of British rule in India that focuses on structural continuities and the correlation between knowledge and panic.