Calcutta Town Hall or Covent Garden? Colonial horticultural knowledge, mimicry, and its discontents

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Highlights

  • The British in India developed a view of Indian vegetables as nutritionally deficient.

  • These ideas shaped the exhibitions of the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India (AHSI, founded 1820).

  • Bengali gardeners shaped the exhibitions by bringing a wide range of vegetables.

  • The AHSI tried to reiterate a colonial divide by classifying these vegetables as ‘native’.

  • Argues that colonial mimicry and hybridity cannot adequately describe the cultural entanglement evident at the exhibitions.

Abstract

This article investigates the entanglement of knowledge regarding vegetable gardening in early colonial Bengal through the prism of the yearly vegetable exhibitions organized in Calcutta by the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India (AHSI, founded in 1820). The European members of the society thought that there were not enough vegetables grown in Bengal and that the commonly eaten vegetables were nutritionally inadequate. In order to ‘improve’ local vegetable cultivation, the society held a yearly exhibition in which Bengali gardeners received prizes for growing new vegetables, such as cauliflower and cabbage. To supply these exhibitions, the society ordered large shipments of seeds and then distributed them to malis (Bengali gardeners) around Calcutta. In the 1830s they extended this practice to their satellite societies across India. The end result was an increase in the cultivation of these vegetables, and eventually their absorption into local cuisine. Yet, Bengali gardeners continued to bring other vegetables to the exhibitions which were not from the AHSI seed. Eventually, the society’s officers reacted to these unsolicited contributions by including awards for them. However, many members were anxious and unsure about these changes, constantly trying to make the vegetable exhibitions mimic the vegetable market at Covent Garden in London. In order to contain the changing exhibitions, they reiterated a divide between ‘native’ and ‘foreign’ vegetables by holding separate exhibitions for each. As such, this article reformulates the idea of mimicry, focusing more strongly on British ambivalence and anxiety as they tried to reiterate colonial boundaries with mixed success.

Section snippets

The exhibitions as a project of anglicization

The main reason why the AHSI started the yearly vegetable exhibitions was to begin the anglicization of vegetable production in India. Due to its location, the officers focused first on Calcutta. There were two interrelated reasons for this project of anglicization: first, they proclaimed the Bengali vegetable diet to be nutritionally deficient; second, they wanted to replicate a familiar diet for themselves. As early as 1796, William Carey complained in a letter to England that, despite its

Malis

The malis are a Sudra caste, the lowest of the four varna in the Hindu caste system. However, their status and occupations tend to vary quite widely in different locations. Malis generally work as gardeners, flower sellers and makers of garlands for decorating idols. In Rangpur, W.W. Hunter lists them as being a pure Sudra caste; however, in 24 Parganas (which included Calcutta) they were a high Sudra caste originating from a Kshatriya father and a Brahman mother.54

Malis at the AHSI exhibitions

Malis were not just passive recipients of the AHSI anglicization project. They also shaped the content and structure of the exhibitions by bringing fruits and vegetables that were not from the seed distributed by the AHSI. These unsolicited contributions resulted in several changes to the exhibitions over time as the AHSI officers tried to decide how to treat them. Initially, the AHSI organized the exhibitions specifically to promote new European vegetables and had some difficulty in getting

Conclusion

Both the ‘native’ and ‘foreign’ exhibitions remained popular into the 1840s.87 As such, the work of the AHSI remained an ongoing process of ‘improvement’ which could never be finished. Through the exhibitions, the European members of the AHSI imagined that they could transform local markets and gardens, improving Bengali diets by making them more European. Yet, the primary project of anglicization was constantly challenged by the ‘native’ produce

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the US Department of Education’s Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Award (Project number: P022A150020) and the Bilinski Foundation Dissertation Research and Writing Fellowship. I would also like to thank the dedication of archivists and librarians at the Agri-horticultural Society of India library, the Bangiya Sahitya Parishad, the Center for Studies in Social Sciences (Calcutta) library, the National Library in Kolkata, and the Angus Library in Oxford. In

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