The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c15.s1.44

c15.s1.44

This, however, did in no way mean that Indian society was destroyed as the English, taken aback at their own innovative daring, were often prone to think. The fact is that their mode of operation, however striking a departure from tradition it was, precluded such drastic results. The new dispensation implied that in order to preserve itself from the run-away effects of involvement in society the government must refuse to work with influence networks and their leaders and only deal with categories and legal abstractions. The British Indian government could only view society in terms of census categories and of nested territorial units, from the revenue village upward—incidentally creating considerable misunderstanding about the concepts of caste and village. In other words, British rule was a thoroughly bureaucratic one—the ideal first of the Mughals, who had, however, been betrayed by circumstances.