Some Preliminary Conclusions

Abstract

I can begin to summarise the effects of the system of representations denoted in this section as Muslim ‘conspiracy’, by underlining the most immediate import of the destabilisation of the category ‘Christian’. In contrast to the lack of reciprocity seen in the disinclination shown by Lyall’s ‘Hindoo’ to engage with the colonialist demand for recognition, one potential consequence of this destabilisation is the suggestion of ‘indigenisation’ that it seeks to attach to the British ‘Christian’. In this regard, the now inclusive category ‘Christian’ acts as a partial defence against the vacuum of motives disclosed by the events of 1857–59: that is, as one means by which the idea of colonial despotism is held at bay, and a renewed understanding of British relations to Indian society constructed. The briefly resurgent and, as the narratives demonstrate, deeply conflicted desire to present themselves as, and to bind themselves to, an indigenous community, is (ironically enough, after the free usage that his own narrative makes of them) given bitter expression by Thornhill in his concluding chapter, when he argues that ‘the only class on whose fidelity it was found we could rely was the one whom our policy had discountenanced, and whose increase it had prevented, namely, the native Christians.’¹