The types of sovereignty that we have mentioned above cannot sufficiently capture the nature of sovereignty in a colonial context. For example, British colonial rule in India enjoyed or arrogated for itself a special kind of hegemonic power. Colonial sovereignty by its very nature and political arrangements denied Indians the principle of popular sovereignty. Even the concept of the political sovereign of Dicey would not apply. A few commentators have likened colonial sovereignty, at least during some part of the nineteenth century when feeling of loyalty to British liberalism and rule appeared, with what Hobbes called ‘acquired sovereignty’.39
Hobbes, in his Leviathan, has differentiated between acquired and instituted sovereignty. A ‘Commonwealth’ is said to be ‘instituted’ when a multitude of men agree and covenant, every one with every one, to give to man or assembly of men, the right to present the person of them all and authorize all the actions and judgments from which is derived all the rights and faculties of the sovereign. Thus, the original contract becomes the first source of sovereignty. Hobbes also mentioned a second source of sovereignty, which he called ‘A Commonwealth by Acquisition’—‘acquired’ sovereignty. A commonwealth is said to be acquired where the sovereign power is acquired by force. It is acquired by force because when men singly or by plurality, for fear of death or bondage, authorize the sovereign. However, this is not due to fear of the sovereign but in fact, due to the fear of one another. Thus, it is not the force of the conqueror but the submission of the conquered due to fear of life that is the basis of sovereignty.
However, with the rise of nationalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this condition could not be obtained and the fear to life was never there in the minds of Indians or at least amongst the majority. As such, acquired sovereignty could not be enforced, so, at most, Colonial rule was domination, not sovereignty.
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