Between the ‘real’ and the ‘imagined’: nineteenth and twentieth century British accounts of nature in Chotanagpur

This paper aims to highlight the multiple and sometimes contradictory strands in the British colonial discourse on nature and indigeneity in India. With reference to the private accounts of British civil and military officers working in Chotanagpur, it argues that their depictions of the landscape resided in a space between the ‘imagined’ and ‘reality’. While much their interpretation of the Indian landscape was undoubtedly shaped by the cultural world of the colonizers and informed by their prejudices, their diaries, memoirs, and histories reveal a constant engagement with the material reality and a utilitarian appreciation of its worth. The paper further argues that the unique features of nature in this region – primordial and yet punctuated by remains of ancient civilizations, – often worked as an autonomous frame of reference which sometimes times preceded and supported the colonial classification of indigenous communities.