Manufacturing Categories, Inheriting Shame

Before the first French soldier crossed into Morocco, before the British East India Company became the British Raj, there were the mapmakers, the surveyors, the ethnographers. Colonialism did not begin with conquest—it began with classification.

This chapter traces how European powers built vast archives of knowledge about the peoples they intended to rule. In both Morocco and India, colonial knowledge production was not a neutral scientific endeavor but a deliberate strategy of control.

The Ethnographic State: Morocco

In 1904, eight years before France would establish its Protectorateالحمايةal-ḤimāyaFrench "protection" of Morocco (1912–1956) — colonial rule disguised as guardianship. over Morocco, the Mission Scientifique du Marocالبعثة العلميةMission ScientifiqueFrench scientific mission (1904–1912) that mapped Morocco's tribes, customs, and territories before conquest. was founded in Tangier. This institution, staffed by linguists, cartographers, and ethnographers, had one purpose: to render Morocco knowable to French administrators.

The Mission published the journal Archives Marocaines, which systematically documented Moroccan tribes, religious practices, legal customs, and territorial boundaries. By 1912, when the Treaty of Fez formalized French control, the colonial administration possessed an extraordinary archive of information about a country it did not yet rule.

Key French ethnographers of Morocco: Edmond Doutté (1867–1926), author of En Tribu (1914); Eugène Aubin, author of Le Maroc d'aujourd'hui (1904); and Alfred Le Chatelier, founder of the Mission Scientifique.

The Information Order: India

The British approach to India established the template that France would later adapt for Morocco. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, the East India Company commissioned massive surveys to document the subcontinent.

Colin Mackenzie (1754–1821), a Scottish engineer, conducted one of the most ambitious early surveys, collecting thousands of manuscripts, inscriptions, and maps across South India. His collection, now held at the British Library, represents one of the earliest systematic attempts to archive Indian knowledge for colonial use.

Francis Buchanan conducted surveys of Bengal, Bihar, and other regions between 1807–1814, documenting everything from agriculture to social structures. The Imperial Gazetteer of India, compiled under William Wilson Hunter beginning in 1869, represented the culmination of this knowledge project—a comprehensive encyclopedia spanning geography, ethnography, and administration.

The Census as Colonial Technology

Perhaps no colonial technology shaped indigenous society more profoundly than the census. In India, the decennial census beginning in 1871 did not merely count populations—it classified them.

Herbert Hope Risley (1851–1911) served as Census Commissioner for the 1901 Census of India. Risley developed an elaborate system of racial classification based on anthropometric measurements, including his nasal indexநாசி குறியீடுNasal IndexRatio of nose width to length — pseudoscientific measurement Risley used to rank Indian "races."—the ratio of nose width to nose length—which he used to rank Indian populations on a hierarchy from Aryanஆரியன்ĀryanColonial racial category for "noble" northern Indians — now discredited as pseudoscience. to Dravidianதிராவிடர்DrāviḍarColonial racial category for southern Indians — originally a linguistic term, racialized by British ethnographers..

Moroccan and Indian Scholarly Perspectives

Scholars from formerly colonized societies have offered crucial analyses of how colonial knowledge production operated.

Abdallah Laroui (b. 1933), the Moroccan historian and philosopher, addresses French colonial knowledge in The History of the Maghrib: An Interpretive Essay (Princeton University Press, 1977), analyzing how French ethnographic categories distorted North African history and self-understanding.

The Indian political theorist Partha Chatterjee (b. 1947) has examined how colonial knowledge categories were sometimes adopted, sometimes resisted, and sometimes transformed by nationalist movements in The Nation and Its Fragments (Princeton University Press, 1993).

The sociologist M.N. Srinivas (1916–1999) documented how British census categories influenced caste consciousness in India, contributing to both rigidification and political mobilization around caste identity.

Knowledge and Power

What connects the French ethnographer documenting Berber customary law with the British census commissioner measuring skulls in Bengal? Both operated on the premise that knowledge precedes and enables rule. To classify a population is to make it governable. To create categories—Arab/Berber, Aryan/Dravidian, martial race/non-martial race—is to create the tools of administration.

Colonial powers did not simply find the categories they used; they made them. The tribe, the caste, the race—these were not timeless essences but products of a particular historical encounter.

Colonial powers did not only seek to know their subjects—they sought to divide them. Across Morocco and India, European administrators crafted ethnic and social classifications that fractured indigenous societies along lines that often had little basis in lived reality.

These divisions were not merely administrative conveniences. They were political technologies designed to prevent unified resistance. By elevating some groups and subordinating others, by hardening fluid identities into fixed categories, colonialism created hierarchies that would long outlast formal colonial rule.

Morocco: The Berber Dahir of 1930

On May 16, 1930, the French Residency in Morocco issued a royal decree—a dahirظهيرẒahīrRoyal decree issued by the Moroccan Sultan — under the Protectorate, often drafted by French administrators.—that would ignite the first mass nationalist movement in Moroccan history.

The Berber Dahir (Dahir Berbère) placed Berber-speaking tribes under French customary law and French judicial courts, removing them from the jurisdiction of Shariaالشريعةal-SharīʿaIslamic law derived from the Quran and Hadith — the Berber Dahir aimed to sever Berbers from this shared legal tradition. and the Sultan's religious authority. On its surface, the decree claimed to respect Berber "traditional customs." In practice, it aimed to sever Berbers from the Arab-Islamic identity that unified Morocco.

The policy reflected decades of French politique berbèreالسياسة البربريةPolitique Berbère"Berber policy" — French colonial strategy to separate Berbers from Arabs, portraying them as closer to Europeans and less Muslim., which held that Berbers were racially and culturally distinct from Arabs—closer to Europeans, less attached to Islam, and therefore more amenable to French civilization.

The Colonial Construction of "Arab" versus "Berber"

French ethnographers constructed a sharp binary between "Arab" and "Berber" populations that mapped onto a moral hierarchy:

This binary obscured the reality of Moroccan society, where Arab and Berber identities were fluid, intermarried, and united by Islam. Many Moroccans spoke both Arabic and Tamazight. The distinction between Bled Makhzenبلاد المخزنBled al-MakhzenLands under central government authority. (lands under central authority) and Bled Sibaبلاد السيبةBled al-Siba"Land of dissidence" — areas outside central control, but not lawless. (lands outside central control) was similarly distorted by French administrators who portrayed it as an eternal, racial divide rather than a shifting political relationship.

India: Caste as Colonial Category

In India, the British did not invent caste—but they transformed it. What had been a fluid, regional, and contextual system of social organization became, under colonial rule, a rigid, enumerated, and all-India hierarchy.

The decennial census, beginning in 1871, required colonial administrators to classify every Indian by caste. This seemingly neutral act of enumeration had profound consequences:

Fixing fluid categories: Local jatisசாதிJātiBirth group — occupational/kinship communities, often local and fluid. (occupational/kinship groups) were forced into standardized all-India varnaவர்ணம்VarnaThe four-fold textual classification — a Brahmanical ideal, not lived reality. categories.

Creating hierarchy: Herbert Hope Risley's 1901 Census ranked castes by "social precedence," creating official hierarchies where ambiguity had existed.

Enabling mobilization: Once caste became an official category, groups organized to improve their census ranking—making caste more politically salient than ever before.

Herbert Hope Risley (1851–1911) was the most influential architect of colonial caste classification. As Census Commissioner for the 1901 Census, he implemented a system that ranked castes based on how much "respect" higher castes showed them—essentially codifying social prejudice as scientific fact. His work also incorporated anthropometric theories, using measurements like the "nasal index" to argue that caste distinctions reflected racial differences between "Aryan" and "Dravidian" populations.

The "Martial Races" Theory

Beyond caste, British administrators developed the theory of martial racesபோர் இனங்கள்Martial RacesBritish theory that some Indian communities (Sikhs, Gurkhas, Pathans) were "naturally" warlike — a political fiction created after 1857.—the idea that some Indian communities were naturally warlike and loyal, while others were effeminate and untrustworthy.

After the 1857 Revolt1857 புரட்சிSepoy Mutiny / First War of IndependenceMajor uprising against British rule — called "Mutiny" by the British, "First War of Independence" by Indians., in which Bengali sepoys played a major role, the British restructured the Indian Army to favor Sikhs, Gurkhas, Pathans, and Punjabi Muslims—groups deemed "martial"—while excluding Bengalis, Marathas, and South Indians. The theory had no scientific basis. It was a political response to 1857, designed to recruit from communities considered loyal and exclude those considered dangerous.

Parallel Strategies, Parallel Consequences

The French in Morocco and the British in India pursued strikingly similar divide-and-rule strategies:

In both cases, colonial administrators took fluid, contextual identities and fixed them into rigid categories. These categories were presented as ancient and natural, obscuring their recent, political origins. The categories created real consequences—legal, economic, social—that made them self-fulfilling.

The Violence of Classification

Classification was never innocent. To be labeled "Berber" in French Morocco meant being subject to French courts rather than Islamic law. To be enumerated as a "depressed class" in British India meant being marked as inferior. To be excluded from "martial race" status meant being denied military employment.

The Berber Dahir ignited the first mass nationalist movement in Morocco. In mosques, people chanted Ya Latifيا لطيفYa Latif"O Gentle One" — prayer that became a cry of resistance..

In Tamil Nadu, the DevadasisதேவதாசிDevadāsi"Servant of god" — temple dancers married to the deity. were girls dedicated to temples. In Morocco, the Shikhateالشيخاتal-ShīkhātProfessional female singer-dancers of Morocco. bear a rich oral poetry tradition.

Alexis Chottin created a taxonomy distinguishing "refined" Andalusian music from "primitive" folk. Rukmini Devi Arundale de-eroticized Sadhirசதிர்SadirOriginal temple dance before Bharatanatyam. into Bharatanatyam.

Imperial amnesia: former colonial powers forget violence. Imperial nostalgia: romanticizing the colonial past.

In Moroccan Darija, saying ShikhaشيخةShīkhaOriginally honorific, now used to shame women. to a woman is an insult. Devadasi has morphed into ThevadiyaதேவடியாThevadiyāDerogatory term from Devadasi.—a censored slur.