Malcolm Darling: Evolution of a British Administrator in India

Extract

[...] However, he will It took him a year after his arrival in India to have a real conversation with an educated Indian. Malcolm's mission in the Indian colonial administration is to govern individuals, shape their future. Malcolm arrives in India with his European cultivated gaze and moral qualities that lead him to experience a clash of civilizations. Despite archaic representations of the East, Malcolm deeply believes in the benefits of British civilization and the respect to be shown to administered subjects. [...]

[...] In 1930-1931, Malcolm is director of the cooperative societies of the Punjab and he acquires a solid reputation as a rural economist through his surveys of the peasantry. At 60 years old, the British government finally rewards Malcolm's services by making him a knight commander of the Indian Empire. Malcolm, who returns to Britain every four to five years, makes a balance sheet of the situation in India each time and notes that from the point of view of resources, infrastructure, and living conditions, India is a country of contrasts. [...]

[...] As a reader, one can obviously take a step back from this statement because poverty is also linked to conjunctural and material factors that will not be resolved simply by restricting births. What's interesting, however, in Malcolm's vision, is that he has started to look for values in Hinduism that the West may have lost. Chapter 6 titled "India for Indians?" which in an idea of continuity announces the different changes that have taken place in India, Malcolm begins to develop proposals to improve the lives of communities. [...]

[...] The fact that these are memoirs means that the work scrupulously respects the period mentioned in the title of the narrative. In his preface, Arundhati Virmani explains that her goal is not to achieve a simple biography of Malcolm Lyall Darling but to make his career an object of study to understand the evolution of the relationships between the East and the West. The author's family, of Indian origin, is deeply marked by a nationalist discourse that reinforces the negative vision of Indians regarding British presence. [...]

[...] Malcolm, in taking stock of his stay in India, notes that India has a large population, considerable resources but great misery and extreme poverty. He makes a difference between India of the 16th-18th centuries where travelers were fascinated by the pomp and wealth of the Mughal emperors' court and the 20th century which saw India's situation deteriorate. This paradox was confirmed in 1903 by a former administrator: Sir William Wedderburn, a sympathizer of the Congress Party. It took Malcolm almost 40 years of service in India, of incessant discussions on the ground with peasants, landowners, Indian officials to understand and accept that the success of a development project requires, in addition to the determination of the administrator in its monitoring and management, the conviction of the population that this project will improve their daily lives. [...]