The Whiteness Aesthetic and Caste Implications of Ivory Art of South India

In the early decades of British colonization, Indian furniture and decorative arts at-large were preferred over European imports among British officers and traders who lived in the Indian subcontinent. It was only after the 1830s that a racialized understanding of Indian arts came into being, a change that paralleled the increasing popularity of Victorian-era mores and aesthetics. Scholars have studied the import of European decorative arts into South Asia but lesser understood are the concomitant changes that took place in Indian aesthetics in the Long Eighteenth century.

This paper explores changing modes of aesthetics in South India in the Long Eighteenth century. The paper argues that a racialized understanding of raw materials of wood and ivory in this period was a byproduct of the colonial encounter in South Asia. Specifically, the paper traces the replacement of wood as the royal raw material in the kingdom of Travancore, to ivory. I have called this the whiteness aesthetic, this change directly related to the reformist colonial apparatus that “educated” South Asians on best arts and crafts practices. The use of ivory as premier raw material also sheds light on caste-based occupational practice of Indian artisans. This paper seeks to discuss both the outward-in whiteness aesthetic prevalent in the subcontinent as well as internal caste hierarchies that dictated the aesthetic of the long eighteenth century in the Indian sub-continent. The use of decorative arts made of organic raw material highlights the racialized practice of making art in colonial South Asia.