James Tod
Encyclopedia
Lieutenant-Colonel James Tod (1782–1835) was an English officer of the British East India Company
and an Oriental scholar
.
Tod was born in London and educated in Scotland, later joining the East India Company as a military officer. He travelled to India in 1799 as a cadet in the Bengal Army
where he rose quickly in rank. Tod eventually became captain of an escort for an envoy in a Sindian royal court. After the Third Anglo-Maratha War
, during which Tod was involved in the intelligence department, he was appointed Political Agent for some areas of Rajputana
. His task was to help unify the region, under the control of the East India Company. It was during this period that Tod conducted most of the research work that he would later publish. While Tod was initially successful, his methods were questioned by other members of the East India Company. Over time, his work was restricted and his areas of oversight were significantly curtailed. In 1823, due to declining health and reputation, Tod resigned his post as Political Agent and travelled back to England.
After returning to his home country Tod published a number of academic works about Indian history and geography, most notably Annals and Antiquities of Rajas'han, based on materials collected during his travels. He retired from the military in 1826, the same year in which he married Julia Clutterbuck. Tod died in 1835 aged 53.
Tod's major works have been criticised as containing significant inaccuracies and bias. However, he is highly regarded in some areas of India, particularly among those whose ancestors were praised by Tod. Furthermore, his accounts of India in general and the Rajput in specific had a significant impact on British views of the area for many years.
, London, on 20 March 1782. He was the second son born to his parents, James and Mary, both of whom came from families of "high standing", according to Jason Freitag. He was educated in Scotland, whence his ancestors came, although precisely where he was schooled is unknown. Those ancestors included people who had fought with Robert the Bruce and he had a pride in this fact as well as an acute sense of what he perceived to be the chivalric
values of those times.
As with many people of Scots descent who sought adventure and success at that time, Tod joined the British East India Company and initially spent some time studying at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. He left England for India in 1799 and in doing so he followed in the footsteps of various other members of his family, including his father, although Tod senior had not been in the Company but had instead owned an indigo
plantation at Mirzapur
. The young Tod journeyed as a cadet in the Bengal Army, appointment to which position was at the time reliant upon patronage
. He was appointed lieutenant
in May 1800 and in 1805 was able to arrange his posting as a member of the escort to a family friend who had been appointed as Envoy and Resident
to a Sindian royal court. By 1813 he had achieved promotion to the rank of captain and was commanding the escort.
The royal court was moved around the kingdom, rather than situated permanently in one place. Tod undertook various topographical
and geological studies as it travelled from one area to another, using his training as an engineer and employing other people to do much of the field work. These studies culminated in 1815 with the production of a map which he presented to the Governor-General
, the Marquis of Hastings. This map of "Central India" (his phrase) became of strategic importance to the British as they were soon to be fighting the Third Anglo-Maratha War. During that war, which ran from 1817 to 1818, Tod acted as a superintendent of the intelligence department and was able to draw on other aspects of regional knowledge which he had acquired while moving around with the court. He also drew up various strategies for the military campaign.
In 1818 he was appointed Political Agent for various states of western Rajputana, itself in the northwest of India, where the British East India Company had come to amicable arrangements with the Rajput rulers in order to exert indirect control over the area. The anonymous author of the introduction to Tod's posthumously published book, Travels in Western India, says that
His responsibilities were extended quickly: initially involving himself with the regions of Mewar
, Kota
, Sirohi
and Bundi
, he soon added Marwar
to his portfolio and then, in 1821, was also given responsibility for Jaisalmer
. These areas were considered to be a strategic buffer zone against Russian advances from the north which, it was feared, might result in a move into India via the Khyber Pass
. Tod believed that to achieve cohesion, and therefore assist in achieving stability in the areas and give reason for the inhabitants not to be swayed by outside forces, it was necessary that the Rajput states should contain only Rajput people, with all others being expelled. He had a "Romantic understanding of nationality", according to Ramya Sreenivasan, and "His transfers of territory between various chiefs and princes helped to create territorially consolidated states and 'routinised' political hierarchies." His successes were plentiful and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography notes that Tod was
Tod was not, however, universally respected in the East India Company. His immediate superior, David Ochterlony
, was unsettled by Tod's rapid rise and frequent failure to consult with him. One Rajput prince objected to Tod's close involvement in the affairs of his state and succeeded in persuading the authorities to remove Marwar from Tod's area of influence. In 1821 his favouritism towards one party in a princely dispute, contrary to the orders given to him, gave rise to a severe reprimand and a formal restriction of his ability to operate without consulting Ochterlony, as well as the removal of Kota from his charge. Jaisalmer was then taken out of his sphere of influence in 1822, as official concerns grew regarding his sympathy for the Rajput princes. This and other losses of status, such as the reduction in the size of his escort, caused him to believe that his personal reputation and ability to work successfully in Mewar, by now the one area still left to him, was too diminished to be acceptable. He resigned his role as Political Agent in Mewar later that year, citing ill health. He suffered from poor health for much of his life before and after that time. Reginald Heber
commented that
He left India for England in February 1823, having first travelled to Bombay by a circuitous route for his own pleasure.
During the last years of his life he talked about India at functions in Paris and elsewhere across Europe. He also became a member of the newly established Royal Asiatic Society
in London, for whom he acted for some time as librarian. He retired from his military career in 1826, soon after he had been promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel. His marriage to Julia Clutterbuck (daughter of Henry Clutterbuck
) in 1826 produced three children but his health was declining. He spent the last year of his life abroad in an attempt to cure a chest complaint and died on 18 November 1835 soon after his return to England from Italy. The cause of death was an apopletic fit
sustained on the day of his wedding anniversary, although he survived for a further 27 hours. He had suffered a similar fit in 1825 as a consequence of overwork.
Tod's belief in the then-fashionable concept of Romantic nationalism
dictated that each princely state was inhabited by only one community and this led to the expulsion of Marathas, Pindari
s and other groups from Rajput territories. It also dictated redrawing the territorial boundaries of the various states in order better to delineate them as separate entities, where previously some lines – both geographical and political – had been blurred, primarily due to local arrangements based on common kinship. However, his successes in arranging these matters via treaties did not extend to a third pillar of his beliefs. His opinion was that British rule had supplanted Maratha rule in such a way that the Rajputs had merely swapped the onerous overlordship of one government for that of another. He was one of the architects of indirect rule, in which the princes looked after domestic affairs but paid tribute to the British for protection in foreign affairs, but he was also a critic of it. He saw the system as one that prevented achievement of true nationhood, and therefore, as Peabody describes, "utterly subversive to the stated goal of preserving them as viable entites." Tod wrote in 1829 that the system of indirect rule had a tendency to "national degradation" of the Rajput territories and that this undermined them because
There was a political aspect to these views, most notably because he thought that if the British recast themselves as overseers seeking to re-establish lost Rajput nations then this would at once smooth the relationship between those two parties and distinguish the threatening, denationalising Marathas from the paternal, nation-creating British. It was an argument that had been deployed by others in the European arena, notably in relation to the way in which Britain portrayed the imperialism of Napoleonic France as denationalising those countries which it conquered, whereas (it was claimed) British imperialism freed people; William Bentinck
noted in 1811 that "Bonaparte made kings; England makes nations". However, granting sovereignty to the Rajputs was not an argument that Tod was able to win in India, although the frontispiece
to volume one of his Annals did contain a plea to George IV to reinstate the "former independence" of the Rajputs.
While he viewed the Muslim Mughals as despotic and the Marathas as predatory, Tod saw the Rajput social systems as being similar to the feudal system of medieval Europe, and their traditions of recounting history through the generations as similar to the clan poets of the Scottish Highlanders
. There was, he felt, a system of checks and balances between the ruling princes and their vassal
lords, a tendency for feuds and other rivalries, and often a serf
-like peasantry. The Rajputs were, in his opinion, on the same developmental trajectory as nations such as Britain had followed. His ingenious use of these viewpoints enabled him later to promote in his books the notion that there was a shared experience between the people of Britain and this community in a distant, relatively unexplored area of the empire. He speculated that there was a common ancestor shared by the Rajputs and Europeans somewhere deep in pre-history and that this might be proven by comparison of the commonality in their history of ideas, such as myth and legend. In this he shared a contemporary aspiration to prove that all communities across the world had a common origin. There was another appeal inherent in a feudal system and it was not unique to Tod: Metcalf has said that Above all, it saw character as being more worthy of admiration than wealth or intellect, and it appealed to the old landed classes at home as well as to many who worked for the Indian Civil Service.
In the 1880s, Alfred Comyn Lyall
revisited Tod's classification and asserted that the Rajput society was in fact tribal, based on kinship rather than feudal vassalage. He had previously generally agreed with Tod, who did accept there were claims that blood-ties played some sort of role in the relationship between princes and vassals in many states. In shifting the emphasis from a feudal to a tribal basis, Lyall was able to deny the possibility that the Rajput kingdoms might gain sovereignty. If Rajput society was not feudal then it was not on the same trajectory as European nations had followed, there was no need to consider that they might evolve into sovereign states and thus no need for Britain to consider itself to be illegitimately governing them.
Tod's enthusiasm for bardic poetry reflected the works of Sir Walter Scott on Scottish subjects, which had a considerable influence both on British literary society and, bearing in mind Tod's Scottish ancestry, on Tod himself. Tod reconstructed Rajput history on the basis of the ancient texts and folklore of the Rajputs, although not everyone – for example, James Mill
– accepted the historical validity of the native works. Tod also used philological techniques
to reconstruct areas of Rajput history that were not even known to the Rajputs themselves, by drawing on works such as the Puranas.
, Louis Haghe
and either Edward or William Finden
. He had to finance publication himself: sales of works on history had been moribund for some time and his name was not particularly familiar either at home or abroad. Original copies are now scarce but they have been reprinted in many editions, with William Crooke's
1920 version being significantly editorialised.
Freitag has argued that the Annals "is first and foremost a story of the heroes of Rajasthan ... plotted in a certain way – there are villains, glorious acts of bravery, and a chivalric code to uphold". So dominant did Tod's work become in the popular and academic mind that they largely replaced the older accounts upon which Tod based much of his content, notably the Prithvirãj Rãjo and the Nainsi ri Khyãt. K. S. Singh, of the Anthropological Survey of India
, has explained that the Annals were primarily based on "bardic accounts and personal encounters" and that they "glorified and romanticised the Rajput rulers and their country" but ignored other communities.
Tod submitted archæological papers to the Royal Asiatic Society's Transactions series and a paper on the politics of Western India that was appended to the report of the House of Commons committee on Indian affairs, 1833. He had also taken notes on his journey to Bombay and collated them for another book, Travels in Western India. That book was published posthumously in 1839.
In the preface to his Annals, Tod explains that,
An amateur numismatist
, Tod is known for having discovered the first specimens of Bactria
n and Indo-Greek coins from the Hellenistic period following the conquests of Alexander the Great, which were described in his books. These ancient kingdoms had been largely forgotten or considered semi-legendary but Tod's findings confirmed the long-term Greek presence in Afghanistan and Punjab. Similar coins have been found in large quantities since his death.
More severe analysis was to follow. Tod was an officer of the British imperial system, at that time the world's dominant power. Working in India he attracted the attention of local rulers who were keen to tell their own tales of defiance against the Mughal empire
. He heard what they told him but knew little of what they omitted. He was a soldier writing about a caste renowned for its martial abilities, and he was aided in his writings by the very people whom he was documenting. He had been interested in Rajput history prior to coming into contact with them in an official capacity, as administrator of the region in which they lived. These factors, says Freitag, contribute to why the Annals were "manifestly biased". Freitag argues that critics of Tod's literary output can be split into two groups, being those who concentrate on his errors of fact and those who concentrate on his failures of interpretation.
Tod relied heavily on existing Indian texts for his historical information and most of these are today considered to be unreliable. Macaulay wrote in 1835 that "a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia," while Crooke's introduction to his 1920 edition of the Annals, recorded that the old Indian texts recorded "the facts, not as they really occurred, but as the writer and his contemporaries supposed that they occurred." That introduction continues by saying that Tod's "knowledge of ethnology was imperfect, and he was unable to reject the local chronicles of the Rajputs." More recently Robin Donkin has argued that with one exception, "there are no native literary works with a developed sense of chronology, or indeed much sense of place, before the thirteenth century", and that researchers must rely on the accounts of travellers from outside the country.
Examples of dubious interpretations made by Tod include his assertions regarding the ancestry of the Mohil
s when, even today, there is insufficient evidence to prove his point, mistaking Rana Kumbha as the husband of Mira Bai, and misrepresenting the story of Padmini
. Crooke notes in his introduction to the 1920 edition that Tod's "excursions into philology are the diversions of a clever man, not of a trained scholar, but interested in the subject as an amateur." Michael Meister has commented that Tod had a "general reputation for inaccuracy ... among Indologists by late in the nineteenth century", although the opinion of those Indologists sometimes prevented them from appreciating some of the useful aspects in his work. That reputation persists, with one modern writer, V. S. Srivastava, commenting that his works "... are erroneous and misleading at places and they are to be used with caution as a part of sober history".
In its time Tod's work was influential, even among officials of the government, although it was never formally recognised as authoritative. Andrea Major has commented on a specific example, being the tradition of sati
(ritual immolation of a widow):
The romantic nationalism that Tod espoused was used by Indian nationalist writers certainly from the 1850s as they sought to resist British control of the country. Works such as Jyotirindranath Tagore's
Sarojini ba Chittor Akrama and Girishchandra Ghosh's Ananda Raho retold Tod's vision of the Rajputs in a manner to further their cause. In India today, he is still revered by those whose ancestors he documented in good light. In 1997 the Maharana Mewar Charitable Foundation instituted an award named after Tod and intended to be given to modern non-Indian writers who exemplified Tod's understanding of the area and its people. In other recognition of his work in Mewar Province, a village has been named Todgarh, and it has been claimed that Tod was in fact a Rajput as an outcome of the process of karma
and rebirth
. Freitag describes the opinion of the Rajput people
Furthermore, Freitag points out that "The information age has also anointed Tod as the spokesman for Rajasthan, and the glories of India in general, as attested by the prominent quotations from him that appear in tourism related websites."
By others – A partial review of Travels, concluded in the subsequent issue. – an example of a treaty in which Tod was involved.
British East India Company
The East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...
and an Oriental scholar
Orientalism
Orientalism is a term used for the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists, as well as having other meanings...
.
Tod was born in London and educated in Scotland, later joining the East India Company as a military officer. He travelled to India in 1799 as a cadet in the Bengal Army
Bengal Army
The Bengal Army was the army of the Presidency of Bengal, one of the three Presidencies of British India, in South Asia. Although based in Bengal in eastern India, the presidency stretched across northern India and the Himalayas all the way to the North West Frontier Province...
where he rose quickly in rank. Tod eventually became captain of an escort for an envoy in a Sindian royal court. After the Third Anglo-Maratha War
Third Anglo-Maratha War
The Third Anglo-Maratha War was the final and decisive conflict between the British East India Company and the Maratha Empire in India. The war left the Company in control of most of India. It began with an invasion of Maratha territory by 110,400 British East India Company troops, the largest...
, during which Tod was involved in the intelligence department, he was appointed Political Agent for some areas of Rajputana
Rajputana
Rājputāna was the pre-1949 name of the present-day Indian state of Rājasthān, the largest state of the Republic of India in terms of area. George Thomas was the first in 1800 A.D., to term this region as Rajputana...
. His task was to help unify the region, under the control of the East India Company. It was during this period that Tod conducted most of the research work that he would later publish. While Tod was initially successful, his methods were questioned by other members of the East India Company. Over time, his work was restricted and his areas of oversight were significantly curtailed. In 1823, due to declining health and reputation, Tod resigned his post as Political Agent and travelled back to England.
After returning to his home country Tod published a number of academic works about Indian history and geography, most notably Annals and Antiquities of Rajas'han, based on materials collected during his travels. He retired from the military in 1826, the same year in which he married Julia Clutterbuck. Tod died in 1835 aged 53.
Tod's major works have been criticised as containing significant inaccuracies and bias. However, he is highly regarded in some areas of India, particularly among those whose ancestors were praised by Tod. Furthermore, his accounts of India in general and the Rajput in specific had a significant impact on British views of the area for many years.
Life and career
Tod was born in IslingtonIslington
Islington is a neighbourhood in Greater London, England and forms the central district of the London Borough of Islington. It is a district of Inner London, spanning from Islington High Street to Highbury Fields, encompassing the area around the busy Upper Street...
, London, on 20 March 1782. He was the second son born to his parents, James and Mary, both of whom came from families of "high standing", according to Jason Freitag. He was educated in Scotland, whence his ancestors came, although precisely where he was schooled is unknown. Those ancestors included people who had fought with Robert the Bruce and he had a pride in this fact as well as an acute sense of what he perceived to be the chivalric
Chivalry
Chivalry is a term related to the medieval institution of knighthood which has an aristocratic military origin of individual training and service to others. Chivalry was also the term used to refer to a group of mounted men-at-arms as well as to martial valour...
values of those times.
As with many people of Scots descent who sought adventure and success at that time, Tod joined the British East India Company and initially spent some time studying at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. He left England for India in 1799 and in doing so he followed in the footsteps of various other members of his family, including his father, although Tod senior had not been in the Company but had instead owned an indigo
Indigofera
Indigofera is a large genus of about 700 species of flowering plants belonging to the family Fabaceae.The species are mostly shrubs, though some are herbaceous, and a few can become small trees up to tall. Most are dry-season or winter deciduous. The leaves are pinnate with 5–31 leaflets and the...
plantation at Mirzapur
Mirzapur
Mirzapur is a city in the heart of North India, nearly 650 km between Delhi and Kolkata and also equidistant from Allahabad and Varanasi. Located in the state of Uttar Pradesh, Mirzapur has a population of a little over 205,264 and is renowned for its famous carpet and brassware industry...
. The young Tod journeyed as a cadet in the Bengal Army, appointment to which position was at the time reliant upon patronage
Patronage
Patronage is the support, encouragement, privilege, or financial aid that an organization or individual bestows to another. In the history of art, arts patronage refers to the support that kings or popes have provided to musicians, painters, and sculptors...
. He was appointed lieutenant
Lieutenant
A lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer in many nations' armed forces. Typically, the rank of lieutenant in naval usage, while still a junior officer rank, is senior to the army rank...
in May 1800 and in 1805 was able to arrange his posting as a member of the escort to a family friend who had been appointed as Envoy and Resident
Resident (title)
A Resident, or in full Resident Minister, is a government official required to take up permanent residence in another country. A representative of his government, he officially has diplomatic functions which are often seen as a form of indirect rule....
to a Sindian royal court. By 1813 he had achieved promotion to the rank of captain and was commanding the escort.
The royal court was moved around the kingdom, rather than situated permanently in one place. Tod undertook various topographical
Topography
Topography is the study of Earth's surface shape and features or those ofplanets, moons, and asteroids...
and geological studies as it travelled from one area to another, using his training as an engineer and employing other people to do much of the field work. These studies culminated in 1815 with the production of a map which he presented to the Governor-General
Governor-General of India
The Governor-General of India was the head of the British administration in India, and later, after Indian independence, the representative of the monarch and de facto head of state. The office was created in 1773, with the title of Governor-General of the Presidency of Fort William...
, the Marquis of Hastings. This map of "Central India" (his phrase) became of strategic importance to the British as they were soon to be fighting the Third Anglo-Maratha War. During that war, which ran from 1817 to 1818, Tod acted as a superintendent of the intelligence department and was able to draw on other aspects of regional knowledge which he had acquired while moving around with the court. He also drew up various strategies for the military campaign.
In 1818 he was appointed Political Agent for various states of western Rajputana, itself in the northwest of India, where the British East India Company had come to amicable arrangements with the Rajput rulers in order to exert indirect control over the area. The anonymous author of the introduction to Tod's posthumously published book, Travels in Western India, says that
His responsibilities were extended quickly: initially involving himself with the regions of Mewar
Mewar
Mewar is a region of south-central Rajasthan state in western India. It includes the present-day districts of Pratapgarh, Bhilwara, Chittorgarh, Rajsamand, Udaipur, Dungarpur, Banswara and some of the part of Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh. The region was for centuries a Rajput kingdom that later...
, Kota
Kota district
Kota District is a district of the state of Rajasthan in western India. The city of Kota is the administrative headquarters of the district.During the period around 12th century AD, Rao Deva,a Hada Chieftain conquered the territory and founded Bundi and Hadoti...
, Sirohi
Sirohi
Sirohi is a city in southern Rajasthan state in western India. It is the administrative headquarters of Sirohi District, and was formerly the capital of the princely state of the same name. Nearest railway station to Sirohi is Sirohi Road station.-Geography:...
and Bundi
Bundi
Bundi is a city and a municipality of approximately 88,000 inhabitants in the Hadoti region of Rajasthan state in northwest India. It is of particular architectural note for its ornate forts, palaces, and stepwell reservoirs known as baoris...
, he soon added Marwar
Marwar
Marwar is a region of southwestern Rajasthan state in western India. It lies partly in the Thar Desert. In Rajasthani dialect "wad" means a particular area. The word Marwar is derived from Sanskrit word 'Maruwat'. English translation of the word is 'The region of desert'., The Imperial Gazetteer...
to his portfolio and then, in 1821, was also given responsibility for Jaisalmer
Jaisalmer
Jaysalmer , nicknamed "The Golden City", is a town in the Indian state of Rajasthan. It is located west from the state capital Jaipur. It was once known as Jaisalmer state. The town stands on a ridge of yellowish sandstone, crowned by a fort, which contains the palace and several ornate Jain...
. These areas were considered to be a strategic buffer zone against Russian advances from the north which, it was feared, might result in a move into India via the Khyber Pass
Khyber Pass
The Khyber Pass, is a mountain pass linking Pakistan and Afghanistan.The Pass was an integral part of the ancient Silk Road. It is mentioned in the Bible as the "Pesh Habor," and it is one of the oldest known passes in the world....
. Tod believed that to achieve cohesion, and therefore assist in achieving stability in the areas and give reason for the inhabitants not to be swayed by outside forces, it was necessary that the Rajput states should contain only Rajput people, with all others being expelled. He had a "Romantic understanding of nationality", according to Ramya Sreenivasan, and "His transfers of territory between various chiefs and princes helped to create territorially consolidated states and 'routinised' political hierarchies." His successes were plentiful and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography notes that Tod was
Tod was not, however, universally respected in the East India Company. His immediate superior, David Ochterlony
David Ochterlony
Sir David Ochterlony, 1st Baronet GCB was a British general.-Biography:David Ochterlony was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and attended the Dummer Charity School in nearby Byfield, Massachusetts...
, was unsettled by Tod's rapid rise and frequent failure to consult with him. One Rajput prince objected to Tod's close involvement in the affairs of his state and succeeded in persuading the authorities to remove Marwar from Tod's area of influence. In 1821 his favouritism towards one party in a princely dispute, contrary to the orders given to him, gave rise to a severe reprimand and a formal restriction of his ability to operate without consulting Ochterlony, as well as the removal of Kota from his charge. Jaisalmer was then taken out of his sphere of influence in 1822, as official concerns grew regarding his sympathy for the Rajput princes. This and other losses of status, such as the reduction in the size of his escort, caused him to believe that his personal reputation and ability to work successfully in Mewar, by now the one area still left to him, was too diminished to be acceptable. He resigned his role as Political Agent in Mewar later that year, citing ill health. He suffered from poor health for much of his life before and after that time. Reginald Heber
Reginald Heber
Reginald Heber was the Church of England's Bishop of Calcutta who is now remembered chiefly as a hymn-writer.-Life:Heber was born at Malpas in Cheshire...
commented that
He left India for England in February 1823, having first travelled to Bombay by a circuitous route for his own pleasure.
During the last years of his life he talked about India at functions in Paris and elsewhere across Europe. He also became a member of the newly established Royal Asiatic Society
Royal Asiatic Society
The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland was established, according to its Royal Charter of 11 August 1824, to further "the investigation of subjects connected with and for the encouragement of science, literature and the arts in relation to Asia." From its incorporation the Society...
in London, for whom he acted for some time as librarian. He retired from his military career in 1826, soon after he had been promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel. His marriage to Julia Clutterbuck (daughter of Henry Clutterbuck
Henry Clutterbuck
Henry Clutterbuck M.D. was a medical writer.Clutterbuck was the fifth child of Thomas Clutterbuck, attorney, who died at Marazion in Cornwall 6 November 1781, by his wife, Mary, a daughter of Christopher Masterman, merchant, Truro...
) in 1826 produced three children but his health was declining. He spent the last year of his life abroad in an attempt to cure a chest complaint and died on 18 November 1835 soon after his return to England from Italy. The cause of death was an apopletic fit
Apoplexy
Apoplexy is a medical term, which can be used to describe 'bleeding' in a stroke . Without further specification, it is rather outdated in use. Today it is used only for specific conditions, such as pituitary apoplexy and ovarian apoplexy. In common speech, it is used non-medically to mean a state...
sustained on the day of his wedding anniversary, although he survived for a further 27 hours. He had suffered a similar fit in 1825 as a consequence of overwork.
Worldview
Theodore Koditschek has explained that Tod saw the Rajputs as "natural allies of the British in their struggles against the Mughal and Maratha states". Norbert Peabody has gone further, arguing that "Maintaining the active support of groups, like the Rajputs for example, was not only important in meeting the threat of indigenous rivals but also in countering the imperial aspirations of other European powers." and that some of Tod's thoughts were "implicated in [British] colonial policy toward western India for over a century."Romantic nationalism
Romantic nationalism is the form of nationalism in which the state derives its political legitimacy as an organic consequence of the unity of those it governs...
dictated that each princely state was inhabited by only one community and this led to the expulsion of Marathas, Pindari
Pindari
The Pendharis or Free Companions were dispersed throughout the Maratha states and were countenanced and protected by the Maratha chiefs to whom they acted as agents for supplying all the commissariat required by their armies. They were composed of different tribes who congregated together solely...
s and other groups from Rajput territories. It also dictated redrawing the territorial boundaries of the various states in order better to delineate them as separate entities, where previously some lines – both geographical and political – had been blurred, primarily due to local arrangements based on common kinship. However, his successes in arranging these matters via treaties did not extend to a third pillar of his beliefs. His opinion was that British rule had supplanted Maratha rule in such a way that the Rajputs had merely swapped the onerous overlordship of one government for that of another. He was one of the architects of indirect rule, in which the princes looked after domestic affairs but paid tribute to the British for protection in foreign affairs, but he was also a critic of it. He saw the system as one that prevented achievement of true nationhood, and therefore, as Peabody describes, "utterly subversive to the stated goal of preserving them as viable entites." Tod wrote in 1829 that the system of indirect rule had a tendency to "national degradation" of the Rajput territories and that this undermined them because
There was a political aspect to these views, most notably because he thought that if the British recast themselves as overseers seeking to re-establish lost Rajput nations then this would at once smooth the relationship between those two parties and distinguish the threatening, denationalising Marathas from the paternal, nation-creating British. It was an argument that had been deployed by others in the European arena, notably in relation to the way in which Britain portrayed the imperialism of Napoleonic France as denationalising those countries which it conquered, whereas (it was claimed) British imperialism freed people; William Bentinck
Lord William Bentinck
Lieutenant-General Lord William Henry Cavendish-Bentinck GCB, GCH, PC , known as Lord William Bentinck, was a British soldier and statesman...
noted in 1811 that "Bonaparte made kings; England makes nations". However, granting sovereignty to the Rajputs was not an argument that Tod was able to win in India, although the frontispiece
Book frontispiece
A frontispiece is a decorative illustration facing a book's title page. The frontispiece is the verso opposite the recto title page. Elaborate engraved frontispieces were in frequent use, especially in Bibles and in scholarly books, and many are masterpieces of engraving...
to volume one of his Annals did contain a plea to George IV to reinstate the "former independence" of the Rajputs.
While he viewed the Muslim Mughals as despotic and the Marathas as predatory, Tod saw the Rajput social systems as being similar to the feudal system of medieval Europe, and their traditions of recounting history through the generations as similar to the clan poets of the Scottish Highlanders
Scottish clan
Scottish clans , give a sense of identity and shared descent to people in Scotland and to their relations throughout the world, with a formal structure of Clan Chiefs recognised by the court of the Lord Lyon, King of Arms which acts as an authority concerning matters of heraldry and Coat of Arms...
. There was, he felt, a system of checks and balances between the ruling princes and their vassal
Vassal
A vassal or feudatory is a person who has entered into a mutual obligation to a lord or monarch in the context of the feudal system in medieval Europe. The obligations often included military support and mutual protection, in exchange for certain privileges, usually including the grant of land held...
lords, a tendency for feuds and other rivalries, and often a serf
SERF
A spin exchange relaxation-free magnetometer is a type of magnetometer developed at Princeton University in the early 2000s. SERF magnetometers measure magnetic fields by using lasers to detect the interaction between alkali metal atoms in a vapor and the magnetic field.The name for the technique...
-like peasantry. The Rajputs were, in his opinion, on the same developmental trajectory as nations such as Britain had followed. His ingenious use of these viewpoints enabled him later to promote in his books the notion that there was a shared experience between the people of Britain and this community in a distant, relatively unexplored area of the empire. He speculated that there was a common ancestor shared by the Rajputs and Europeans somewhere deep in pre-history and that this might be proven by comparison of the commonality in their history of ideas, such as myth and legend. In this he shared a contemporary aspiration to prove that all communities across the world had a common origin. There was another appeal inherent in a feudal system and it was not unique to Tod: Metcalf has said that Above all, it saw character as being more worthy of admiration than wealth or intellect, and it appealed to the old landed classes at home as well as to many who worked for the Indian Civil Service.
In the 1880s, Alfred Comyn Lyall
Alfred Comyn Lyall
Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall, GCIE, KCB was a British civil servant, literary historian and poet.-Early life:He was born at Coulsdon in Surrey, the second son of Alfred Lyall and Mary Drummond Broadwood, daughter of James Shudi Broadwood. He was educated at Eton...
revisited Tod's classification and asserted that the Rajput society was in fact tribal, based on kinship rather than feudal vassalage. He had previously generally agreed with Tod, who did accept there were claims that blood-ties played some sort of role in the relationship between princes and vassals in many states. In shifting the emphasis from a feudal to a tribal basis, Lyall was able to deny the possibility that the Rajput kingdoms might gain sovereignty. If Rajput society was not feudal then it was not on the same trajectory as European nations had followed, there was no need to consider that they might evolve into sovereign states and thus no need for Britain to consider itself to be illegitimately governing them.
Tod's enthusiasm for bardic poetry reflected the works of Sir Walter Scott on Scottish subjects, which had a considerable influence both on British literary society and, bearing in mind Tod's Scottish ancestry, on Tod himself. Tod reconstructed Rajput history on the basis of the ancient texts and folklore of the Rajputs, although not everyone – for example, James Mill
James Mill
James Mill was a Scottish historian, economist, political theorist, and philosopher. He was a founder of classical economics, together with David Ricardo, and the father of influential philosopher of classical liberalism, John Stuart Mill.-Life:Mill was born at Northwater Bridge, in the parish of...
– accepted the historical validity of the native works. Tod also used philological techniques
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
to reconstruct areas of Rajput history that were not even known to the Rajputs themselves, by drawing on works such as the Puranas.
Publications
Koditschek says that Tod "developed an interest in triangulating local culture, politics and history alongside his maps", and Metcalf believes of the Rajputs that Tod "ordered their past as well as their present" while working in India. During his time in Rajputana, Tod was able to collect materials for his Annals and Antiquities of Rajas'han, which detailed the contemporary geography and history of Rajputana and Central India along with the history of the Rajput clans who ruled most of the area at that time. The work was published in two volumes, in 1829 and 1832, and included illustrations and engravings by notable artists such as the StorersJames Sargant Storer
James Sargant Storer was an English draughtsman and engraver.Storer was born in 1771, and devoted himself to the production of works on topography and ancient architecture, the plates in which, drawn and engraved by himself on a small scale, were distinguished for extreme accuracy and beauty of...
, Louis Haghe
Louis Haghe
Louis Haghe was a lithographer and watercolour artist.His father and grandfather had practised as architects. Training in his teens in watercolour painting, he found work in the relatively new art of lithography when the first press was set up in Tournai...
and either Edward or William Finden
William Finden
William Finden was an English line engraver.He served his apprenticeship to one James Mitan, but appears to have owed far more to the influence of James Heath, whose works he privately and earnestly studied...
. He had to finance publication himself: sales of works on history had been moribund for some time and his name was not particularly familiar either at home or abroad. Original copies are now scarce but they have been reprinted in many editions, with William Crooke's
William Crooke
William Crooke was an English orientalist and "the central figure in Anglo-Indian folklore" according to Richard Mercer Dorson. He was a member of a family that had been settled in Ireland for many years, with his father being a doctor in Macroom. County Cork...
1920 version being significantly editorialised.
Freitag has argued that the Annals "is first and foremost a story of the heroes of Rajasthan ... plotted in a certain way – there are villains, glorious acts of bravery, and a chivalric code to uphold". So dominant did Tod's work become in the popular and academic mind that they largely replaced the older accounts upon which Tod based much of his content, notably the Prithvirãj Rãjo and the Nainsi ri Khyãt. K. S. Singh, of the Anthropological Survey of India
Anthropological Survey of India
Anthropological Survey of India is the apex Indian organisation involved in anthropological studies and field data research for human and cultural aspects, working primarily in the fields of physical anthropology and cultural anthropology...
, has explained that the Annals were primarily based on "bardic accounts and personal encounters" and that they "glorified and romanticised the Rajput rulers and their country" but ignored other communities.
Tod submitted archæological papers to the Royal Asiatic Society's Transactions series and a paper on the politics of Western India that was appended to the report of the House of Commons committee on Indian affairs, 1833. He had also taken notes on his journey to Bombay and collated them for another book, Travels in Western India. That book was published posthumously in 1839.
In the preface to his Annals, Tod explains that,
An amateur numismatist
Numismatics
Numismatics is the study or collection of currency, including coins, tokens, paper money, and related objects. While numismatists are often characterized as students or collectors of coins, the discipline also includes the broader study of money and other payment media used to resolve debts and the...
, Tod is known for having discovered the first specimens of Bactria
Bactria
Bactria and also appears in the Zend Avesta as Bukhdi. It is the ancient name of a historical region located between south of the Amu Darya and west of the Indus River...
n and Indo-Greek coins from the Hellenistic period following the conquests of Alexander the Great, which were described in his books. These ancient kingdoms had been largely forgotten or considered semi-legendary but Tod's findings confirmed the long-term Greek presence in Afghanistan and Punjab. Similar coins have been found in large quantities since his death.
Criticism
Criticism of the Annals came soon after publication. The introduction to his Travels states thatMore severe analysis was to follow. Tod was an officer of the British imperial system, at that time the world's dominant power. Working in India he attracted the attention of local rulers who were keen to tell their own tales of defiance against the Mughal empire
Mughal Empire
The Mughal Empire , or Mogul Empire in traditional English usage, was an imperial power from the Indian Subcontinent. The Mughal emperors were descendants of the Timurids...
. He heard what they told him but knew little of what they omitted. He was a soldier writing about a caste renowned for its martial abilities, and he was aided in his writings by the very people whom he was documenting. He had been interested in Rajput history prior to coming into contact with them in an official capacity, as administrator of the region in which they lived. These factors, says Freitag, contribute to why the Annals were "manifestly biased". Freitag argues that critics of Tod's literary output can be split into two groups, being those who concentrate on his errors of fact and those who concentrate on his failures of interpretation.
Tod relied heavily on existing Indian texts for his historical information and most of these are today considered to be unreliable. Macaulay wrote in 1835 that "a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia," while Crooke's introduction to his 1920 edition of the Annals, recorded that the old Indian texts recorded "the facts, not as they really occurred, but as the writer and his contemporaries supposed that they occurred." That introduction continues by saying that Tod's "knowledge of ethnology was imperfect, and he was unable to reject the local chronicles of the Rajputs." More recently Robin Donkin has argued that with one exception, "there are no native literary works with a developed sense of chronology, or indeed much sense of place, before the thirteenth century", and that researchers must rely on the accounts of travellers from outside the country.
Examples of dubious interpretations made by Tod include his assertions regarding the ancestry of the Mohil
Mohil
Mohil, Mial or Mohal is a branch of Chauhan Rajputs. Mohils are also one of the gotras of Yadavas. British Historians H.A. Rose, Ibbetson and Maclagan have stated Mohals as a gotra of Yaduvanshi Ahirs...
s when, even today, there is insufficient evidence to prove his point, mistaking Rana Kumbha as the husband of Mira Bai, and misrepresenting the story of Padmini
Rani Padmini
Rani Padmini was the queen of Chittor and the wife of King Rawal Ratan Singh. She features in Padmavat, an epic poem written by Malik Muhammad Jayasi in 1540.- Jauhar :...
. Crooke notes in his introduction to the 1920 edition that Tod's "excursions into philology are the diversions of a clever man, not of a trained scholar, but interested in the subject as an amateur." Michael Meister has commented that Tod had a "general reputation for inaccuracy ... among Indologists by late in the nineteenth century", although the opinion of those Indologists sometimes prevented them from appreciating some of the useful aspects in his work. That reputation persists, with one modern writer, V. S. Srivastava, commenting that his works "... are erroneous and misleading at places and they are to be used with caution as a part of sober history".
In its time Tod's work was influential, even among officials of the government, although it was never formally recognised as authoritative. Andrea Major has commented on a specific example, being the tradition of sati
Sati (practice)
For other uses, see Sati .Satī was a religious funeral practice among some Indian communities in which a recently widowed woman either voluntarily or by use of force and coercion would have immolated herself on her husband’s funeral pyre...
(ritual immolation of a widow):
The romantic nationalism that Tod espoused was used by Indian nationalist writers certainly from the 1850s as they sought to resist British control of the country. Works such as Jyotirindranath Tagore's
Jyotirindranath Tagore
Jyotirindranath Tagore was a playwright, a musician, an editor and a painter. Endowed with an outstanding talent, he had the rare capability of spotting talent in others...
Sarojini ba Chittor Akrama and Girishchandra Ghosh's Ananda Raho retold Tod's vision of the Rajputs in a manner to further their cause. In India today, he is still revered by those whose ancestors he documented in good light. In 1997 the Maharana Mewar Charitable Foundation instituted an award named after Tod and intended to be given to modern non-Indian writers who exemplified Tod's understanding of the area and its people. In other recognition of his work in Mewar Province, a village has been named Todgarh, and it has been claimed that Tod was in fact a Rajput as an outcome of the process of karma
Karma
Karma in Indian religions is the concept of "action" or "deed", understood as that which causes the entire cycle of cause and effect originating in ancient India and treated in Hindu, Jain, Buddhist and Sikh philosophies....
and rebirth
Reincarnation
Reincarnation best describes the concept where the soul or spirit, after the death of the body, is believed to return to live in a new human body, or, in some traditions, either as a human being, animal or plant...
. Freitag describes the opinion of the Rajput people
Furthermore, Freitag points out that "The information age has also anointed Tod as the spokesman for Rajasthan, and the glories of India in general, as attested by the prominent quotations from him that appear in tourism related websites."
Further reading
By TodBy others – A partial review of Travels, concluded in the subsequent issue. – an example of a treaty in which Tod was involved.