Munro Lights and Commemoration in the Princely State of Travancore

Abstract

From nineteenth century onwards light symbolised progress of the West and darkness came to be associated with ignorance of the colonies. If at all the new technologies of illumination was viewed as another tool for exercising power, the colonisers found new ways to challenge this. One such example can be found in the princely state of Travancore where commemoration of a British officer using lights came to be embedded in the existing caste order. It also benefitted the state in masking the turbulent political situation. The case study thus shows how imperial ideologies and technologies aimed at disciplinary control were not accepted in its entirety. Niharika Dinkar observed the constructs surrounding ‘light’ and ‘darkness’ as forming the ideological base of British empire’s ‘civilizing mission' where the colonisers were seen as bringing enlightenment to the colonized.  Ute Hasenohrl examined how this aided in the introduction of electrification in colonies which actually was a way to ensure their control and surveillance over the colonized. She also highlighted how this was appropriated by the colonized and used as a “weapon of the weak”. Here she mentioned electricity theft and other subversive activities carried out at night against the powerful.  Another use of lighting technology was when gaslights became a status symbol for the wealthy Indians, especially in case of Bombay.  This paper then invites attention to how a Princely State made use of lights in order to commemorate Colonel John Munro, a British officer, whose service is thought to have “brought sunshine into a land of darkness.”  It then tries to answer the following questions- was he actually the ‘beacon of modernity’? Whose agency was getting erased? Does the move to place these lights away from the royal court and temple point to his status in the social order? If yes, then can the British be deemed as successful in their ‘civilizing mission’?

DOI: 10.46700/asssr/2025/v7/i2/168