Indo colonial critics insisted only local-born Indos could properly investigate pauperism

Evidence

Again Knaap stated his case: that an investigation into pauperism should be done by educated Indos, those who knew the land where they were born as newly appointed European civil servants could not. More pointedly, Knaap tore into De Meyier’s claim that state underlings would find their wages sufficient if they only knew how to save and “curb their needs.” As Knaap insisted, countless among them already lived so simply that there was nothing else to cut. What else do you do without “when you live in miserable hovels, have insufficient food, always in want,” and on a starvation wage (hongerloon)? What more did they have to be wanting, he asked, for De Meyier, who apparently had never seen poverty up close, to be satisfied? — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 945

Categorization

• XREF: This is an epistemic-authenticity claim paralleling the broader colonial-commonsense theme—local knowledge versus metropole-appointed expertise, echoing contemporary ‘who can speak for the colonized’ debates in colonial historiography.