'The Better Class' of Indians: Social Rank, Imperial Identity, and South Asians in Britain, 1858–1914 (review)

'The Better Class' of Indians draws upon two streams of scholarship: David Cannadine's emphasis on the importance of class over "race" as a prism through which British officials interpreted colonial subjects, and the small but growing collection of histories of Indo-British encounters in imperial Britain, developed by, among others, Antoinette Burton, Michael H. Fisher, Satadru Sen, and myself. A. Martin Wainwright's study focuses on how British civil servants, charities, educators, and missionaries sought to translate Indian social hierarchies into the British lexicon of class. Furthermore, according to Wainwright, elite Indian sojourners in Britain also exploited the language of class to claim high social rank in Victorian and Edwardian society. This book is thus concerned with official attitudes and policy towards loyal Indians, rather than the influential but disloyal Indian nationalists, who visited and studied in imperial Britain and went on to govern independent India and Pakistan.

'The Better Class' of Indians is split into two parts. Part 1 examines the background of British administrators and the government and government-sponsored institutions that dealt with the colonial Indian population in Britain. The first three chapters are devoted to the India Office, the National Indian Association, and the London City Mission. Part 2 explores the "interactions" between a variety of British officials and Indians including Indian oculists, litigants, entertainers, and, most significantly, students. Each chapter treats a different aspect of the relation between social hierarchy and the treatment of Indians. Indians were accepted by British officials and "polite society" when they successfully adhered to a variety of criteria that could be translated into social rank or elite class status, including "wealth and what it could buy," education, professional status, property, and other gentlemanly traits, including suitable dress, prowess on the sports field, demeanour, lifestyle, and charitable giving (234).

Above all, according to Wainwright, British officials were keen to attract loyal Indians to Britain. The subject of chapter 1, K. S. Ranjitsinjhi, "the cricketer prince," matched more of these criteria than most of his Indian compatriots in Britain, leading Wainwright to argue that Ranjitsinjhi's class status overcame barriers of "race." While most of the chapters show how Indian social rankings (including caste) translated into British equivalents, there is the occasional mismatch. For example, Indian oculists did not command the professional status and respect in Britain that they had in India. Instead, they were viewed as quacks by the medical profession and taken to court.

The book is not just a study of comparable social hierarchies; it also considers the risks and possibilities of "translation," a highly productive concept that could have been fruitfully explored in greater depth and one instance in which the study could have benefited from a more interdisciplinary approach. Instead Wainwright provides a close and very detailed reading of archival sources that will appeal to some historians but shows limited engagement with wider related secondary literature.

Wainwright's keen attempt to distinguish himself from previous scholarship is overstated at times. Nevertheless his focus on elite institutional responses, the uniqueness of Indo-British relations in the imperial metropolis in contrast to India, and the importance of the civilising mission in British official attitudes towards Indians in Britain do make departures from existing research. It would be very difficult to argue that class prejudice did not inform official British attitudes to Indians in Britain, as well as popular responses, given the class-conscious nature of Victorian and Edwardian society. However, this emphasis on class works best within the study when it intersects with other variables, in particular gender and "race." As Anne McClintock argues in Imperial Leather (1995), the "articulated categories" of race, class, and gender should be approached not in splendid isolation, but cross-referentially. Wainwright is on shakier ground when class alone is privileged, such as when he discusses how British officials' own class positions were enhanced...