Politics of Providence: Reformist Discourses in Colonial India

Abstract

As a rational and ethical system of God and a grand teleology, Providence has evinced robust faith in both Pagan and Christian cultures over the centuries in the Platonist, Neo- Platonist, Stoic, Epicurean, Catholic and Protestant traditions. Serving as a template for Humanism to align human will and enterprise with the divine moral purpose, necessities of nature and chance, providentialism was eventually played into history. All the large projects of evangelism, imperialism, messianism and apocalypse etc. were variously conceptualized in history, and these justified Providence in its teleological variations. This paper focuses on the iconic colonial figures like Raja Rammohun Roy, Bankimchandra Chatterji, and Rabindranath Tagore who invoked providence as the raison de être for British rule. Raja Rammohun Roy and Bankimchandra saw the positive benefits of European culture and modernity through British colonial rule. Tagore, for his part, thought that it was providential for India to be colonized by the British within the grand allegorical scheme of the civilizational eugenics of East meeting West.