In 1871 the banker Lala Lachmi Narayan delivered a long speech in highly Persianized Urdu at the Delhi Society. The topic of his talk was the civilizing value of associations and more specifically of the very debating clubs, of which the Delhi Society (founded by the joint efforts of the British and the social and intellectual elite of Delhi) was an example. What is fascinating about this text is not so much the fact that he endorsed the British credo of a civilizing mission but the way he translated it into the concept of tahzib ul akhlaq (the polishing of the manners) that his audience was familiar with—Hindus and Muslims alike. Whereas formerly it was the kings, he recounted, who brought forth the equilibrium and unity of a well-ordered society and thus prevented the relapse into a state of wilderness, at the individual as well as at the social level, this function had now been taken over by associations. It was through them that India would one day regain her rightful place among the most advanced nations. Thus, he not only linked the civility of tahzib ul akhlaq to the institutions of civil society, but he also inserted the move by which a person subdues his passions to the control of reason and acquires polishing—what one might term the individual civilizing mission— into the struggle of nations to gain precedence in the order of the most progressive civilizations. 1 These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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