"Even in the case of a just grievance, our hatred comes less from a wrong done to us than from the consciousness of our helplessness, inadequacy and cowardice - in other words from self-contempt." - Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements
"They are fantasies produced by a lack of self-esteem." - Peter van der Veer, Imperial Encounters
1857, the year of the Sepoy Mutiny, was a watershed period in South Asia. Despite the civilising efforts of the evangelicals and the Utilitarians, the Indians persisted in and insisted on barbarism. The (alleged) sexual violence against "the angel in the house", the defenceless British woman, aroused a sexualised and racialised hatred of the dark-skinned Hindus and Muslims. After the Mutiny, some 50 novels were written on the subject in the century. The novels focused on the mutineers' desire for white women for the harem: The harem served to symbolise the lack of masculine restraint among orientals. The "treacherous" massacre at Kanpur, where the well had been stuffed with the mutilated bodies of British women and children despite a promise of safe passage, was a sign of the unmanly character of the natives (Peter Van Der Veer, Imperial Encounters (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2006), pp 86 - 87).
Flora Annie Steele, in her novel On the Face of the Waters: A Tale of the Mutiny (1896), penned these lines, among others: "So she [Kate] lay hidden, her strongest emotion, strange to say, being a raging curiosity to know what had become of the others, what was passing outside. But she could hear nothing save confused yells, with every now and again a dominant cry of "Deen! Deen!" or "Jai Kali ma!" For faith is one of the two great passions which make men militant, The other, sex. But as a rule it has no cry; it fights silently, giving and asking no words--only works."
The parading of the children born in the harem of the King of Siam, a country the Europeans could not conquer, even as recently as 1956 in The King and I, continues the old conception of the libidinous oriental who just can't keep it in his pants.
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