Imagining the Hindus and Hinduism

The mythical representation of the colonized by the colonizer cannot happen without engaging in fabrications and falsehoods. While accounting for the contentions made by the Francophone postcolonial thinkers on the issue of projection, this chapter builds a new postcolonial theory called the Indian Postcolonial Theory that is applied to show that the contentions of James Mill on Ancient India, Hindus, and Hinduism were a complete fabrication. They were rooted in the socio-political conditions James Mill wanted to transform in his domestic context. When Mill wrote about the Hindu Brahmins and Kshatriyas, he essentially was speaking about the English clergy and aristocrats. He described the Hindu form of governance, laws, and taxation structure in light of the Utilitarian reform of the British socio-political conditions he vehemently sought and clamored for. Mill emptied all the filth that he thought existed in British society onto the Hindu society to create its representation. By putting Mill’s writings in the History next to his writings for the British domestic context, we show as clearly as daylight the nature and degree of Mill’s projections and fabrications on Ancient India, Hinduism, and the Hindu people.