Organized Religion: Unwitting Accomplice to Imperialist Practice, Past and Present

The imperial mindset is not one that can be summarized neatly. It is a complex and variegated system of beliefs, and reliant upon numerous presuppositions and institutions. These are necessitated by the fact that Empire falsely presumes that it can fully comprehend an entire people, and amount to little more than justifications for an unjustifiable practice. By employing a number of strategies and arguments, Empire attempts to render the domination and exploitation of a race of people not only logically sound, but morally defensible. Not the least of these strategies is the institution of organized religion.

Empire, at is core, is a collective of like-minded individuals seeking to not only sustain, but also to improve their quality of life. This collective adheres to a system of beliefs that simultaneously keeps it cohesive and renders it different from other collectives of individuals with differing beliefs. By propagating this idea of difference, Empire justifies its expansion and absorption of other peoples, and it does this in a number of ways. Christianity, however, has served as the prime motivator for numerous causes over the history of the world. While, in theory, it serves as a guideline for a harmonious existence, historically, the religion has been and continues to be abused, serving as the stock justification for an untold number of atrocities.

A comprehensive belief set enjoying almost universal acceptance, Christianity was one of the chief rationalities for the expansion of the British Empire. Though Empire amounts to little more than a people's acquisition of land and resources at the expense of other peoples, through religion, Britain painted it as not merely economically sensible, but as a moral obligation. Because natives of colonized lands were heathens, they were condemned to Hell from the start. In order to give them a chance to be saved, Empire reasons, they must be introduced to the tenets of Christianity.

This idea of Christian theology and its relation to other cultures is one addressed in the literature contemporaneous with the British imperial movement. The writings produced during the rise and decline of the British Empire serve as a rough barometer of the vacillations in public opinion over its course. For instance, many writers such as H. Rider Haggard, born and writing at the beginning of the end of British Empire, still clung to its moral justifiability and necessity until the very end.

In his King Solomon's Mines, Haggard weaves a tail of bravery, adventure, and overt racism. Its overall tone stands in firm support of the imperial belief that natives are reliant upon their colonizers for enlightenment, and benefit directly from their occupation. It also belittles the seemingly superstitious beliefs of the natives, positing the irrefutable superiority of Christianity over their witchcraft. In his novel, Haggard portrays the natives of the African country of Kukuanaland as largely cowardly and gullible. This is evident in the scene in which the three white protagonists trick the natives into believing that white men have the power to extinguish the sun: "A groan of terror rose from the onlookers. Some stood petrified with fear, others threw themselves upon their knees and cried out. As for the king, he sat still and turned pale beneath his dusky skin" (Haggard 116).

Here, Haggard illustrates the foolishness and ignorance of the natives' superstition. That Christianity is founded upon the belief in a supernatural, omnipotent deity that no one alive has ever seen never enters into imperial discourse; Christianity was merely accepted as fact, and viewed as somehow separate from and above the beliefs of other peoples. That this kind of myopia could be manifest in any thinking human being speaks to the power of Empire to justify itself, and to the willingness of its proponents to be deceived.

Such is the attraction and convenience of Empire: Its justifications may be based on flawed, circular arguments (e.g., a culture's need for Christianity to replace its superstition, when Christianity is itself superstitious, or a nation's dependence upon Empire for trade and infrastructure, when Empire created that dependence in the first place); However, by lending the enterprise a philanthropic bent and rooting it in widely-accepted institutions like religion, those who stand to gain from it may do so with a minimum of guilt.

Not all writers during the High British Empire were bound by such a hopeless shortsightedness. Some, particularly those writing during the fall of the British Empire from public favor, sought to expose its inherent hypocrisy and injustice. One notable example is E.M. Forster. Published after the turn of the century, when the British Empire was a mere husk of its former power, A Passage to India is an insightful and self-conscious work of British imperial literature. Free of most of the presuppositions that had driven the empire for hundreds of years, Forster is able to produce a novel that attempts to do justice to the native voice. In this, he inspires the hope that, as a species, humanity is not entirely incapable of overlooking difference to find common bonds between cultures.

A central them of the book, in fact, is the harmonization of two vastly different belief sets: East and West, Islam/Buddhism/Hinduism and Christianity. In contrast to earlier British imperial works, A Passage to India is refreshingly open-minded, as illustrated in the following passage: Mrs. Moore, in a refutation of Ronny (the traditional imperialist)'s assertion that the British are not in India to be "pleasant," replies, "Because India is part of the earth. And God has put us on the earth in order to be pleasant to each other. God... is... love" (Forster 53). This statement is echoed by another, during the festival of the God: "God si love!" (Forster, 324). The inversion of the central verb, "is," implies an inversion of the entire statement: Love is God. This single statement is the overriding message of the novel. Individual religions and practices are unimportant next the common bond of humanity that all people share. God is not an invisible, bearded man, or a many-armed, sword-wielding deity; God is manifest in the love people feel for one another that transcends race, religion, and culture.

Not even Forster is entirely free of preconceptions, however. His tendency to treat India as a paragon of exoticism and 'Easternness,' as well as the sole place in which the West and East may become harmonized is indicative of the inescapability of at least some tinge of the imperial perspective. While Forster's labeling of India is an innocuous, well-intentioned one, it still falls prey to the tendency to believe that it is possible for any one culture to fully comprehend and speak for another. However, the overarching message of A Passage to India remains an uplifting and unifying one, and its flaws may be forgiven in the face of its earnestness.

Through analysis of the literature of writers such as Haggard and Forster, it is possible to trace the progress and decline of the British Empire. The writings of each author serve to illustrate not only the particular writer's perspective on empire, but also popular notions of religion, just one of the many justifications of imperial discourse for the subjugation of another race.

Works Cited

Haggard, Rider H. King Solomon's Mines. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Forster, E.M. A Passage to India. New York, New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1952.