Colonial publics weaponized liberal rhetoric to contest autocratic British rule

Evidence

In the course of the trial, far from ignoring the Indian public, the Anglo-Indian press regularly cited the trial’s impact on ‘native’ opinion and the adverse effect of the proceedings on the legitimacy of British rule. As the colonial administration increasingly defended autocratic government as necessary in the colonial setting, the Indian and Anglo-Indian publics selectively deployed liberal ideology and rhetoric to assert their own opposing interpretation of the colonial project. — Julia Stephens, The Phantom Wahhabi, 156

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the broad anti-colonial appropriations of liberal and Enlightenment language traced in Naqvi’s Home Boy and Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist.