There was no destruction of temples in Bahadur Shah’s reign. In the beginning, he made an attempt to gain greater control over the regional states through the conciliation; however, dissensions developed among the regional kingdoms (including Rajput, Marathas, etc.); resultantly, they fought among themselves as well as against Mughal Emperor.
Bahadur Shah had tried to conciliate the rebellious Sikhs by making peace with Guru Gobind Singh and giving him a high mansab (rank). But after the death of the Guru, the Sikhs once again raised the banner of revolt in Punjab under the leadership of Banda Bahadur. The Emperor decided to take strong measures and himself led a campaign against the rebels, soon controlled practically the entire territory between the Sutlej and the Yamuna, and reached the close neighborhood of Delhi.
Bahadur Shah conciliated Chatarsal (the Bundela chief, who remained a loyal feudatory) and the Jat chief Churaman, who joined him in the campaign against Banda Bahadur.
In spite of hard efforts of Bahadur Shah, there was further deterioration in the field of administration in Bahadur Shah's reign. The position of state finances worsened as a result of his reckless grants and promotions.
During Bahadur Shah's reign, the remnants of the Royal treasure, amounting to some total 13 crores of rupees in 1707, were exhausted.
Bahadur Shah was examining towards a solution of the problems besetting the Empire. He might have revived the Imperial fortunes, but unfortunately, his death in 1712 plunged the Empire once again into civil war.
In the civil war, one of Bahadur Shah's weak sons, Jahandar Shah, won because he was supported by Zulfiqar Khan, the most powerful noble of the time.
Jahandar Shah was a weak and degenerate prince who was wholly devoted to pleasure. He lacked good manners, dignity, and decency.
During Jahandar Shah's reign, the administration was virtually in the hands of the extremely capable and energetic Zulfiqar Khan, who was his wazir.
Zulfiqar Khan believed that it was necessary to establish friendly relations with the Rajput rajas and the Maratha Sardars and to conciliate the Hindu chieftains necessary to strengthen his own position at the Court and to save the Empire. Therefore, he swiftly reversed the policies of Aurangzeb and abolished the hated jzyah (tax).
Jai Singh of Amber was given the title of Mira Raja Saint and appointed Governor of Malwa; Ajit Singh of Marwar was awarded the tide of Maharaja and appointed Governor of Gujarat.
Zulfiqar Khan made an attempt to secure the finances of the Empire by checking the reckless growth of jagirs and offices. He also tried to compel the (nobles) to maintain their official quota of troops.
An evil tendency encouraged by him was that of ‘ijara’ or revenue-farming. Instead of collecting land revenue at a fixed rate as under Todar Mal’s land revenue settlement, the Government began to contract with revenue farmers and middlemen to pay the Government a fixed amount of money while they were left free to collect whatever they could from the peasant. This encouraged the oppression of the peasant.
Many jealous nobles secretly worked against Zulfiqar Khan. Worse still, the Emperor did not give him his trust and cooperation in full measure. The Emperor's ears were poisoned against Zulfiqar Khan by unscrupulous favorites. He was told that his wazir was becoming too powerful and ambitious and might even overthrow the Emperor himself.
The cowardly Emperor could not dismiss the powerful wajir (Zulfiqar Khan), but he began to intrigue against him secretly.
The Sayyid brothers soon acquired dominant control over the affairs of the state and Farrukh Siyar lacked the capacity to rule. He was coward, cruel, undependable, and faithless. Moreover, he allowed himself to be influenced by worthless favorites and flatterers.
In spite of his weaknesses, Farrukh Siyar was not willing to give the Sayyid brothers a free hand but wanted to exercise personal authority.
The Sayyid brothers were convinced that administration could be carried on properly, the decay of the Empire checked, and their own position safeguarded only if they wielded real authority and the Emperor merely reigned without ruling.
There was a prolonged struggle for power between the Emperor Farrukh Siyar and his wazir and mir bakshi.
Year after year the ungrateful Emperor intrigued to overthrow the two brothers, but he failed repeatedly. In the end of 1719, the Sayyid brothers deposed Farrukh Siyar and killed him.
In Farrukh Siyar place, they raised to the throne in quick succession two young princes' namely Rafi-ul Darjat and Rafi ud-Daulah (cousins of Farrukh Siyar), but they died soon. The Sayyid brothers now made Muhammad Shah the Emperor of India.
The three successors of Farrukh Siyar were mere puppets in the hands of the Saiyids Even their personal liberty to meet people and to move around was restricted. Thus, from 1713 until 1720, when they were overthrown, the Sayyid brothers wielded the administrative power of the state.
The Sayyid brothers made a rigorous effort to control rebellions and to save the Empire from administrative disintegration. They failed in these tasks mainly because they were faced with constant political rivalry, quarrels, and conspiracies at the court.
The everlasting friction in the ruling circles disorganized and even paralyzed administration at all levels and spread lawlessness and disorder everywhere.
The financial position of the state deteriorated rapidly as zamindars and rebellious elements refused to pay land revenue, officials misappropriated state revenues, and central income declined because of the spread of revenue farming.
The salaries of officials and soldiers could not be paid regularly and soldiers became undisciplined and even mutinous.
Many nobles were jealous of the 'growing power’ of the Sayyid brothers. The deposition and murder of Farrukh Siyar frightened many of them: if the Emperor could be killed, what safety was there for mere nobles?
Moreover, the murder of the Emperor created a wave of public revulsion against the two brothers. They were looked down upon as traitors.
Many of the nobles of Aurangzeb's reign also disliked the Sayyid alliance with the Rajput and the Maratha chiefs and their liberal policy towards the Hindus.
Many nobles declared that the Sayyids were following anti-Mughal and antiIslamic policies. They thus tried to arouse the fanatical sections of the Muslim nobility against the Sayyid brothers.
The anti- Sayyid nobles were supported by Emperor Muhammad Shah who wanted to free himself from the control of the two brothers.
In 1720, Haidar Khan killed Hussain Ali khan on 9 October 1720, the younger of the two brothers. Abdullah Khan tried to fight, back but was defeated near Agra. Thus ended the domination of the Mughal Empire by the Sayyid brothers (they were known in Indian history as 'king makers').
In reality, the existing means of communication and the economic and political structure of the country made it difficult to establish a stable centralized administration over all parts of the country.
Aurangzeb’s objective of unifying the entire country under one central political authority was, though justifiable in theory, not easy in practice.
Aurangzeb’s futile but arduous campaign against the Marathas extended over many years; it drained the resources of his Empire and ruined the trade and industry of the Deccan.
Aurangzeb’s absence from the north for over 25 years and his failure to subdue the Marathas led to deterioration in administration; this undermined the prestige of the Empire and its army.
In the 18th century, Maratha’s expansion in the north weakened central authority still further.
Alliance with the Rajput rajas with the consequent military support was one of the main pillars of Mughal strength in the past, but Aurangzeb's conflict with some of the Rajput states also had serious consequences.
Aurangzeb himself had in the beginning adhered to the Rajput alliance by raising Jaswant Singh of Kamer and Jai Singh of Amber to the highest of ranks. But his short-sighted attempt later to reduce the strength of the Rajput rajas and extend the imperial sway over their lands led to the withdrawal of their loyalty from the Mughal throne.
The strength of Aurangzeb’s administration was challenged at its very nerve center around Delhi by Satnam, the Jat, and the Sikh uprisings. All of them were to a considerable extent the result of the oppression of the Mughal revenue officials over the peasantry.
They showed that the peasantry was deeply dissatisfied with feudal oppression by Zamindars, nobles, and the state.
Aurangzeb left the Empire with many problems unsolved, the situation was further worsened by the ruinous wars of succession, which followed his death.
In the absence of any fixed rule of succession, the Mughal dynasty was always plagued after the death of a king by a civil war between the princes.
The wars of succession became extremely fierce and destructive during the 18th century and resulted in great loss of life and property. Thousands of trained soldiers and hundreds of capable military commanders and efficient and tried officials were killed. Moreover, these civil wars loosened the administrative fabric of the Empire.
Aurangzeb was neither weak nor degenerate. He possessed great ability and capacity for work. He was free of vices common among kings and lived a simple and austere life.
Aurangzeb undermined the great empire of his forefathers not because he lacked character or ability but because he lacked political, social, and economic insight. It was not his personality, but his policies that were out of joint.
The weakness of the king could have been successfully overcome and covered up by an alert, efficient, and loyal nobility. But the character of the nobility had also deteriorated. Many nobles lived extravagantly and beyond their means. Many of them became ease-loving and fond of excessive luxury.
Many of the emperors neglected even the art of fighting.
Earlier, many able persons from the lower classes had been able to rise to the ranks of nobility, thus infusing fresh blood into it. Later, the existing families of nobles began to monopolies all offices, barring the way to fresh comers.
Not all the nobles, however, bad become weak and inefficient. A large number of energetic and able officials and brave and brilliant military commanders came into prominence during the 18th century, but most of them did not benefit the Empire because they used their talents to promote their own interests and to fight each other rather than to serve the state and society.
The major weakness of the Mughal nobility during the 18th century lay, not in the decline in the average ability of the nobles or their moral decay, but in their selfishness and lack of devotion to the state and this, in turn, gave birth to corruption in administration and mutual bickering.
In order to increase emperors’ power, prestige, and income, the nobles formed groups and factions against each other and even against the king. In their struggle for power, they took recourse to force, fraud, and treachery.
The mutual quarrels exhausted the Empire, affected its cohesion, led to its dismemberment, and, in the end, made it an easy prey to foreign conquerors.
A basic cause of the downfall of the Mughal Empire was that it could no longer satisfy the minimum needs of its population.
The condition of the Indian peasant gradually worsened during the 17th and 18th centuries. Nobles made heavy demands on the peasants and cruelly oppressed them, often in violation of official regulations.
Many ruined peasants formed roving bands of robbers and adventurers, often under the leadership of the zamindars, and thus undermined law and order and the efficiency of the Mughal administration.
During the 18th century, the Mughal army lacked discipline and fighting morale. Lack of finance made it difficult to maintain a large number of army. Its soldiers and officers were not paid for many months, and, since they were mere mercenaries, they were constantly disaffected and often verged on a mutiny.
The civil wars resulted in the death of many brilliant commanders and brave and experienced solders. Thus, the army, the ultimate sanction of an empire, and the pride of the Great Mughals, was so weakened that it could no longer curb the ambitious chiefs and nobles or defend the Empire from foreign aggression.
Tipu Sultan’s desire to change with the times was symbolized in the Introduction of a new calendar, a new system of coinage, and new scales of weights and measures.
Tipu Sultan’s personal library contained books on such diverse subjects as religion, history, military science, medicine, and mathematics. He showed a keen interest in the French Revolution.
Tipu Sultan planted a 'Tree of Liberty' at Sringapatam and he became a member of a Jacobin club.
Tipu Sultan tried to do away with the custom of giving jagirs, and thus increased the state income. He also made an attempt to reduce the hereditary possessions of the poligars.
Tipu Sultan’s land revenue was as high as that of other contemporary rulers— it ranged up to 1/3rd of the gross produce. But he checked the collection of illegal ceases, and he was liberal in granting remissions.
Tipu Sultan’s infantry was armed with muskets and bayonets in fashion, which were, however, manufactured in Mysore.
Tipu Sultan made an effort to build a modern navy after 1796. For this purpose, two dockyards, the models of the ships being supplied.
Tipu Sultan was recklessly brave and, as a commander was, however, hasty in action and unstable in nature.
Tipu Sultan stood forth as a foe for the rising English power. The English, in turn, too as his most dangerous enemy in India.
Tipu Sultan gave money for the construction of goddess Sarda in the Shringeri Temple in 1791. He regularly gave gifts to as well to several other temples.
In 1799, while fighting the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War, Tipu Sultan died.
Martanda Varma organized a strong army on the western model with the help of European officers and armed it with modern weapons. He also constructed a modern arsenal.
Martanda Varma used his new army to expand northwards and the boundaries of Travancore soon extended from Kanyakumari to Cochin.
Martanda Varma undertook many irrigation works, built roads and canals for communication, and gave active encouragement to foreign trade.
By 1763, all the petty principalities of Kerala had been absorbed or subordinated by the three big states of Cochin, Travancore, and Calicut.
Haidar Ali began his invasion of Kerala in 1766 and in the end annexed northern Kerala up to Cochin, including the territories of the Zamorin of Calicut.
Trivandrum, the capital of Travancore, became a famous center of Sanskrit scholarship during the second half of the 18th century.
Rama Varma, the successor of Martanda Varma, was himself a poet, a scholar, a musician, a renowned actor, and a man of great culture. He conversed fluently in English, took a keen interest in European affairs. He regularly used to read newspapers and journals published in London, Calcutta, and Madras.
The Jats, a caste of agriculturists, lived in the region around Delhi, Agra, and Mathura.
Repression by Mughal officials drove the Jat peasants around Mathura to revolt. They revolted under the leadership of their Jat Zamindars in 1669 and then again in 1688.
Jats’ revolts were crushed, but the area remained disturbed. After the death of Aurangzeb, they created disturbances all around Delhi. Though originally a peasant uprising, the Jat revolt, led by zamindars, soon became predatory.
Jats plundered all and sundry, the rich and the poor, the jagirdars and the peasants, the Hindus and the Muslims.
The Jat state of Bharatpur was set up by Churaman and Badan Singh.
The Jat power reached its highest glory under Suraj Mal, who ruled from 1756 to 1763 and who was an extremely able administrator and soldier and a very wise statesman.
Suraj Mal extended his authority over a large area, which extended from the Ganga in the East to Chambal in the South, the Subah of Agra in the West to the Subah of Delhi in the North. His state included among others the districts of Agra, Mathura, Meerut, and Aligarh.
After the death of Suraj Mal in 1763, the Jat state declined and was split up among petty zamindars most of whom lived by plunder.
The most important challenge to the decaying Mughal power came from the Maratha Kingdom, which was the most powerful of the Succession states. In fact, it alone possessed the strength to fill the political vacuum created by the disintegration of the Mughal Empire.
The Maratha Kingdom produced a number of brilliant commanders and statesmen needed for the task. But the Maratha Sardars lacked unity, and they lacked the outlook and program, which were necessary for founding an all-India empire.
Shahu, the grandson of Shivaji, had been a prisoner in the hands of Aurangzeb since 1689.
Aurangzeb had treated Shahu and his mother with great dignity, honor, and consideration, paying full attention to their religious, caste, and other needs, hoping perhaps to arrive at a political agreement with Shahu.
Shahu was released in 1707 after Aurangzeb's death.
A civil war broke out between Shahu at Satara and his aunt Tara Bai at Kolhapur who had carried out an anti-Mughal struggle since 1700 in the name of her son Shivaji II after the death of her husband Raja Ram.
Maratha Sardars, each one of whom had a large following of soldiers loyal to themselves alone began to side with one or the other contender for power.
Maratha Sardars used this opportunity to increase their power and influence by bargaining with the two contenders for power. Several of them even intrigued with the Mughal viceroys of the Deccan.
Balaji Vishwanath, a Brahmin, started life as a petty revenue official and then rose step by step as an official.
Balaji Vishwanath rendered Shahu loyal and useful service in suppressing his enemies. He excelled in diplomacy and won over many of the big Maratha Sardars.
In 1713, Shahu made him his Peshwa or the mulk pradhan (chief minister).
Balaji Vishwanath gradually consolidated Shabu's hold and his own over Maratha Sardars and over most of Maharashtra except for the region south of Kolhapur where Raja Ram's descendants ruled.
The Peshwa concentrated power in his office and eclipsed the other ministers and' seniors.
Balaji Vishwanath took full advantage of the internal conflicts of the Mughal officials to increase Maratha power.
Balaji Vishwanath had induced Zulfiqar Khan to pay the chauth and sardeshmukhi of the Deccan.
All the territories that had earlier formed Shivaji's kingdom were restored to Shahu who was also assigned the chauth and sardeshmukhi of the six provinces of the Deccan.
In 1719, Balaji Vishwanath, at the head of a Maratha force, accompanied Saiyid Hussain Ali Khan to Delhi and helped the Saiyid brothers in overthrowing Farrukh Siyar.
At Delhi, Balaji Vishwanath and the other Maratha Saradars witnessed at first hand the weakness of the Empire and were filled with the ambition of expansion in the North.
Balaji Vishwanath died in 1720 and his 20-year old son Baji Rao I succeeded as Peshwa. In spite of his youth, Baji Rao I was a bold and brilliant commander and an ambitious and clever statesman.
Baji Rao has been described as "the greatest exponent of guerrilla tactics after Shivaji".
Led by Baji Rao, the Marathas waged numerous campaigns against the Mughal Empire trying to compel the Mughal officials first to give them the right to collect the chauth of vast areas and then to cede these areas to the Maratha kingdom.
By 1740, when Baji Rao died, the Maratha had won control over Malwa, Gujarat, and parts of Bundelkhand. The Maratha families of Gaekwad, Holkar, Sindhia, and Bhonsle came into prominence during this period.
Baji Rao died in April 1740. In the short period of 20 years, he had changed the character of the Maratha state. From the kingdom of Maharashtra it had been transformed into an Empire expanding in the North (as shown in the map below).
Baji Rao's 18-year old son Balaji Baji Rao (also known as Nana Saheb) was the Peshwa from 1740 to 1761. He was as able as his father though less energetic.
King Shahu died in 1749 and by his will left all management of state affairs in the Peshwa's hands.
The office of the Peshwa had already become hereditary and the Peshwa was the de facto ruler of the state. Now Peshwa became the official head of the administration and, as a symbol of this fact, shifted the government to Poona, his headquarters.
Balaji Baji Rao followed in the footsteps of his father and further extended the Empire in different directions taking Maratha power to its height. Maratha armies now overran the whole of India.
Maratha control over Malwa, Gujarat, and Bundelkhand was consolidated.
Bengal was repeatedly invaded and, in 1751, the Nawab of Bengal had to cede Orissa.
In the South, the state of Mysore and other minor principalities were forced to pay tribute.
In 1760, the Nizam of Hyderabad was defeated at Udgir and was compelled to cede vast territories yielding an annual revenue of Rs. 62 lakhs.
Later, the arrival of Ahmad Shah Abdali and his alliance with the major kingdoms of North India (including an alliance with Najib-ud-daulah of Rohilkhand; Shuja-ud-daulah of Avadh, etc.) lead to third battle of Panipat (on January 14, 1761).
The Maratha army did not get any alliance and support resultantly was completely routed out in the third battle of Panipat.
The Peshwa's son, Vishwas Rao, Sadashiv Rao Bhau and numerous other Maratha commanders perished on the battle field as did nearly 28,000 soldiers. Those who fled were pursued by the Afghan cavalry and robbed and plundered by the Jats, Ahirs, and Gujars of the Panipat region.
The Peshwa, who was marching north to render help to his cousin, was stunned by the tragic news (i.e. defeat at Panipat). Already seriously ill, his end was hastened and he died in Jun 1761.
The Maratha defeat at Panipat was a disaster for them. They lost the cream of their army and their political prestige suffered a big blow.
Afghans did not get benefit from their victory. They could not even hold the Punjab. In fact, the Third Battle of Panipat did not decide who was to rule India, but rather who was not. The way was, therefore, cleared for the rise of the British power in India.
The 17-year old Madhav Rao became the Peshwa in 1761. He was a talented Soldier and statesman.
Within the short period of 11 years, Madhav Rao restored the lost fortunes of the Maratha Empire. He defeated the Nizam, compelled Haidar Ali of Mysore to pay tribute, and reasserted control over North India by defeating the Rohelas and subjugating the Rajput states and Jat chiefs.
In 1771, the Marathas brought back to Delhi Emperor Shah Alam who now became their pensioner.
Once again, however, a blow fell on the Marathas for Madhav Rao died of consumption in 1772.
The Maratha Empire was now in a state of confusion. At Poona there was a struggle for power between Reghunath Rao, the younger brother of Balaji Baji Rao, and Narayan Rao, the younger brother of Madhav Rao.
Narayan Rao was killed in 1773. He was succeeded by his posthumous son, Sawai Madhav Rao.
Out of frustration, Raghunath Rao approached to the British and tried to capture power with their help. This resulted in the First Anglo-Maratha War.
Sawai Madhav Rao died in 1795 and was succeeded by the utterly worthless Baji Rao II, son of Raghunath Rao.
The British had by now decided to put on end to the Maratha challenge to their supremacy in India.
The British divided the mutually-warring Maratha Sardars through clever diplomacy and then overpowered them in separate battles during the second Maratha War, 1803-1805, and the Third Maratha War, 1816-1819.
While other Maratha mates were permitted to remain as subsidiary states, the house of the Peshwas was extinguished.
India also exported raw silk and silk fabrics, hardware, indigo, saltpeter, opium, rice, wheat, sugar, pepper and other spices, precious stones, and drugs.
Constant warfare and disruption of law and order, in many areas during the 18th century, banned the country's internal trade and disrupted its foreign trade to some extent and in some directions.
Many trading centers were looted by the Indians as well as by foreign invaders. Many of the trade routes were infested with organized bands of robbers, and traders and their caravans were regularly looted.
The road between the two imperial cities, Delhi and Agra, was made unsafe by the marauders. With the rise of autonomous provincial regimes and innumerable local chiefs, the number of custom houses or chowkies grew by leaps and bounds.
Every petty or large ruler tried to increase his income by imposing heavy customs duties on goods entering or passing though his territories.
The impoverishment of the nobles, who were the largest consumers of luxury products in which trade was conducted, also injured internal trade.
Many prosperous cities, centers of flourishing industry, were sacked and devastated.
Delhi was plundered by Nadir Shah;
Lahore, Delhi, and Mathura by Ahmad Shah Abdali;
Agra by the Jats;
Surat and other cities of Gujarat and the Deccan by Maratha chiefs;
Sarhind by the Sikhs, and so on.
The decline of internal and foreign trade also hit the industries hard in some parts of the country. Nevertheless, some industries in other parts of the country gained as a result of expansion in trade with Europe due to the activities of the European trading companies.
The important centers of textile industry were −
Dacca and Murshidabad in Bengal;
Patna in Bihar;
Surat, Ahmedabad, and Broach in Gujarat;
Chanderi in Madhya Pradesh
Burhanpur in Maharashtra;
Jaunpur, Varanasi, Lucknow, and Agra in U.P.;
Multan and Lahore in Punjab;
Masulipatam, Aurangabad, Chicacole, and Vishakhapatnam in Andhra;
Bangalore in Mysore; and
Coimbatore and Madurai in Madras.
Kashmir was a center of woolen manufactures.
Ship-building industry flourished in Maharashtra, Andhra, and Bengal.
Even during war and anarchy, women were seldom molested and were treated with respect.
A European traveler, Abbe J.A. Dubois, commented, at the beginning of the 19th century −
"A Hindu woman can go anywhere alone, even in the most crowded places, and she need never fear the impertinent looks and jokes of idle loungers....A house inhabited solely by women is a sanctuary which the most shameless libertine would not dream of violating."
The women of the time possessed title individuality of their own. This does not mean that there were no exceptions to this rule. Ahilya Bai administered Indore with great success from 1766 to 1796.
Many Hindu and Muslim ladies played important roles in 18th century politics.
While women of the upper classes were not supposed to work outside their homes, peasant women usually worked in the fields and women of the poorer classes often worked outside their homes to supplement the family income.
The purdah was common mostly among the higher classes in the North. It was not practiced in the South.
Boys and girls were not permitted to mix with each other.
All marriages were arranged by the heads of the families. Men were permitted to have more than one wife, but except for the well-off, they normally had only one.
On the other hand, a woman was expected to marry only once in her life-time.
The custom of early marriage prevailed all over the country.
Sometimes children were married when they were only three or four years of age.
Among the upper classes, the evil customs of incurring heavy expenses on marriages and of giving dowry to the bride prevailed.
The evil of dowry was especially widespread in Bengal and Rajputana culture.
In Maharashtra, it was curbed to some extent by the energetic steps taken by the Peshwas.
Two great social evils of the 18th century India, apart from the caste system, were the custom of sati and the harrowing condition of widows.
Sati involved the rite of a Hindu widow burning herself (self-immolation) along with the body of her dead husband.
The Asian part of the trade was carried on mostly by Arab merchants and sailors, while the Mediterranean and European part was the virtual monopoly of the Italians.
Goods from Asia to Europe passed through many states and many hands. Every state levied tolls and duties while every merchant made a substantial profit.
There were many other obstacles, such as pirates and natural calamities on the way. Yet the trade remained highly profitable. This was mostly due to the pressing demand of the European people for Eastern spices.
The Europeans needed spices because they lived on salted and peppered meat during the winter months, when there was little grass to feed the cattle, and only a liberal use of spices could make this meat palatable. Consequently, European food was as highly spiced as Indian food till the 17th century.
The old trading routes between the East and the West came under Turkish control after the Ottoman conquest of Asia Minor and the capture of Constantinople in 1453.
The merchants of Venice and Genoa monopolized the trade between Europe and Asia and refused to let the new nation states of Western Europe, particularly Spain, and Portugal, have any share in the trade through these old routes.
The trade with India and Indonesia was highly prized by the West Europeans to be so easily given up.
The demand for spices was pressing and the profits to be made in their trade inviting.
The reputedly fabulous wealth of India was an additional attraction as there was an acute shortage of gold all over Europe, and gold was essential as a medium of exchange if the trade was to grow unhampered.
The West European states and merchants therefore began to search for new and safer sea routes to India and the Spice Islands of Indonesia, (at that time popular as the East Indies).
The West Europeans wanted to break the Arab and Venetian trade monopolies, to bypass Turkish hostility, and to open direct trade relations with the East.
The West European were well-equipped to do so as great advances in shipbuilding and the science of navigation had taken place during the 15th century. Moreover, the Renaissance had generated a great spirit of adventure among the people of Western Europe.
Vasco da Gama returned with a cargo, which sold for 60 times the cost of his voyage.
Columbus and Vasco da Gama’s sea routes along with other navigational discoveries opened a new chapter in the history of the world.
Adam Smith wrote later that the discovery of America and the Cape route to India were "the two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind."
The new continent was rich in precious metals. Its gold and silver poured into Europe where they powerfully stimulated trade and provided some of the capital, which was soon to make European nations the most advanced in trade, industry, and science.
America became a new and inexhaustible market for European manufacturers.
Some other source of early capital accumulation or enrichment for European countries was their penetration into African land in the middle of the 15th century.
In the beginning, gold and ivory of Africa had attracted the foreigner. Very soon, however, trade with Africa concentrated on the slave trade.
In the 16th century, this trade was a monopoly of Spain and Portugal; later it was dominated by Dutch, French, and British merchants.
Year after year (particularly after 1650), thousands of Africans were sold as slaves in the West Indies and in North and South America.
The slave ships carried manufactured goods from Europe to Africa, exchanged them on the coast of Africa for Negroes, took these slaves across the Atlantic and exchanged them for the colonial produce of plantations or mines, and finally brought back and sold this produce in Europe.
While no exact record of the number of Africans sold into slavery exists, historians' estimate, ranged between 15 and 50 million.
Slavery was later abolished in the 19th century after it had ceased to play an important economic role, but it was openly defended and praised as long as it was profitable.
Monarchs, ministers, members of Parliament, dignitaries of the church, leaders of public opinion, and merchants and industrialists supported the slave trade.
On the other hand, in Britain, Queen Elizabeth, George III, Edmund Burke, Nelson, Gladstone, Disraeli, and Carlyle were some of the defenders and apologists of slavery.
Portugal had a monopoly of the highly profitable Eastern trade for nearly a century. In India, Portugal established her trading settlements at Cochin, Goa, Diu, and Daman.
From the beginning, the Portuguese combined the use of force with trade and they were helped by the superiority of their armed ships which enabled them to dominate the seas.
Portuguese also saw that they could take advantage of the mutual rivalries of the Indian princes to strengthen their position.
Portuguese intervened in the conflict between the rulers of Calicut and Cochin to establish their trading centers and forts on the Malabar Coast. Likewise, they attacked and destroyed Arab shipping, brutally killing hundreds of Arab merchants and seamen. By threatening Mughal shipping, they also succeeded in securing many trading concessions from the Mughal Emperors.
In 1615, English ambassador Sir Thomas Roe reached the Mughal Court (shown in the image given above) and exerted pressure on the Mughal authorities by taking advantage of India's naval weakness. English merchants also harassed the Indian traders while shipping through the Red Sea and to Mecca. Thus, combining entreaties with threats, Roe succeeded in getting an imperial Farman to trade and establish factories in all parts of the Mughal Empire.
Roe's success further angered the Portuguese and a fierce naval battle between the two countries began in 1620 that ended with English victory.
Hostilities between the English and Portuguese came to an end in 1630.
In 1662, the Portuguese gave the Island of Bombay to King Charles II of England as dowry for marrying with a Portuguese Princess.
Eventually, the Portuguese lost all their possessions in India except Goa, Diu, and Daman.
The English Company fell out with the Dutch Company over division of the spice trade of the Indonesian Islands. Finally, the Dutch nearly expelled the English from the trade of the Spice Islands and the later were compelled to concentrate on India where the situation was more favorable to them.
The intermittent war in India between the English and the Dutch had begun in 1654 and ended in 1667; when the English gave up all claims to Indonesia while the Dutch agreed to leave alone the English settlements in India.
The English, however, continued their efforts to drive out the Dutch from the Indian trade and by 1795, they had expelled the Dutch from their last possession in India.
The English East India Company had very humble beginnings in India. Surat was the center of its trade till 1687.
Throughout the trading period, the English refrained petitioners before the Mughal authorities. By 1623, they had established factories at Surat, Broach, Ahmedabad, Agra, and Masulipatam.
By the end of the 17th century, the English Company was claiming full sovereignty over Madras and was ready to fight in, defence of the claim. Interestingly enough, from the very beginning, English Company of profit seeking merchants was also determined to make Indians pay for the conquest of their own country.
In Eastern India, the English Company had opened its first factories in Orissa in 1633.
English Company was given permission to trade at Hugli in Bengal. It soon opened factories at Patna, Balasore, Dacca, and other places in Bengal and Bihar.
Englishmen’s easy success in trade and in establishing independent and fortified settlements at Madras and at Bombay, and the preoccupation of Aurangzeb with the anti-Maratha campaigns led the English to abandon the role of humble petitioners.
English Company now dreamt of establishing political power in India, which would enable them to compel the Mughals to allow them a free hand in trade, to force Indians to sell cheap and buy costly goods.
Hostilities between the English and the Mughal Emperor broke out in 1686, after the former had sacked Hugli and declared war on the Emperor. But the English had seriously miscalculated the situation and underestimated Mughal strength.
The Mughal Empire under Aurangzeb was even now more than a match for the petty forces of the East India Company. The war proved disastrous to the English.
The English were driven out of their factories in Bengal and compelled to seek protection in a fever-stricken island at the mouth of the Ganga.
Their factories at Surat, Masulipatam, and Vishikhapatam were seized and their fort at Bombay besieged.
Having discovered that they were not yet strong enough to fight with the Mughal power, the English once again became humble petitioners and submitted "that the ill crimes they have done may be pardoned."
Once again they relied on flattery and humble entreaties to get trading concessions from the Mughal Emperor. The Mughal authorities readily pardoned the English folly as they had no means of knowing that these harmless-looking foreign traders would one day pose a serious threat to the country.
English, though weak on land, were, because of their naval supremacy, capable of completely ruining Indian trade and shipping to Iran, West Asia, Northern and Eastern Africa, and East Asia.
Aurangzeb therefore permitted them to resume trade on payment of Rs. 150,000 as compensation.
In 1691, the Company was granted exemption from the payment of custom duties in Bengal in return for Rs. 3,000 a year.
In 1698, the Company acquired the zamindari of the three villages Sutanati, Kalikata, and Govindpur where the English built Fort William around its factory. These villages soon grew into a city, which came to be known as Calcutta (now Kolkata).
During the first half of the 18th century, Bengal was ruled by strong Nawabs namely Murshid Quli Khan and Alivardi Khan.
Nawabs of Bengal exercised strict control over the English traders and prevented them from misusing their privileges. Nor did they allow them to strengthen fortifications at Calcutta or to rule the city independently.
British settlements in Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta became the nuclei of flourishing cities. Large numbers of Indian merchants and bankers were attracted to these cities.
The Charter of 1600 granted the East India Company the exclusive privilege of trading East of the Cape of Good Hope for a period of 15 years.
The Charter provided for the management of the Company by a committee consisting of a Governor, a Deputy-Governor, and 24 members to be elected by a general body of the merchants forming the Company. This committee later on came to be known as the 'Court of Directors' and its members as 'Directors'.
The East Indian Company soon became the most important trading company of England. Between 1601 and 1612 its rate of profit recorded about 20 per cent per annum.
Profits of the East Indian Company were derived both from trade and from piracy, there was no clear dividing line between the two at the time.
In 1612, the Company made a profit of £ 1,000,000 on a capital of 200,000.
The Company was a strictly closed corporation or a monopoly. No non-member was allowed to trade with the East or to share in its high profits.
From the very beginning, the English manufacturers and those merchants who could not secure a place in the ranks of the monopoly companies carried on a vigorous campaign against royal monopolies like the Fast India Company. But the monarchs threw their influence behind the big companies who gave heavy bribes to them and to other influential political leaders.
From 1609 to 1676, the Company gave loans amounting to £ 170,000 to Charles II. In return, Charles II granted it a series of Charters confirming its previous privileges, empowering it to build forts, raise troops, make war and peace with the powers of the East, and authorizing its servants in India to administer justice to all Englishmen and others living in English settlements. Thus the Company occulted extensive military and judicial powers.
Many English merchants continued to trade in Asia in spite of the monopoly of the East India Company. They called themselves 'Free Merchants' while the Company called them Interlopers.'
The Interlopers in the end, compelled the Company to take them into partnership.
A change of fortunes occurred in 1688 when Parliament became supreme in England as a result of the Revolution of 1688, which overthrew the Stuart king James II and invited William III and his wife Mary to be the joint sovereign of Britain.
The "Free Merchants" now began to press their case on the public and the Parliament. But the Company defended itself by giving heavy bribes to the King, his ministers, and members of the Parliament. In one year alone it spent 80,000 on bribes, giving the King £ 10,000. In the end, they secured a new Charter in 1693.
The time was running against the Company; its success was short-lived. In 1694, the House of Commons passed a Resolution that "a subjects of England have equal rights to trade in the East Indies, unless prohibited by Act of Parliament."
In Southern India, however, conditions were gradually becoming favorable to foreign adventurers, as the central authority had disappeared there after the death of Aurangzeb (1707) and Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah (1748).
The Maratha chiefs regularly invaded Hyderabad and the rest of the South for collecting Chauth (tax).
The absence of central power gave the foreigners an opportunity to expand their political influence and control over the affairs of the South Indian states.
For nearly 20 years from 1744 to 1763, the French and the English were to wage a bitter war for control over the trade, wealth, and territory of India.
The French East India Company was founded in 1664. It made rapid progress and it was reorganized in the 1720's and soon began to catch up with the English Company.
It was firmly established at Chandernagore near Calcutta and Pondicherry on the East Coast.
The French Company had some other factories at several ports on the East and the West coasts. It had also acquired control over the islands of Mauritius and Reunion in the Indian Ocean.
The French East India Company was heavily dependent on the French Government, which helped it by giving it treasury grants, subsidies, and loan, etc.
The French East India Company was largely controlled by the Government, which appointed its directors after 1723.
The French state of the time was autocratic, semi-feudal, and unpopular and sniffled from corruption, inefficiency, and instability.
Instead of being forward-looking, it was decadent, bound by tradition, and in general unsuited to the times. Control by such a state could not but be injurious to the interests of the Company.
In 1742, war broke out in Europe between France and England. One of the major causes of the war was rivalry over colonies in America. Another was their trade rivalry in India. This rivalry was intensified by the knowledge that the Mughal Empire was disintegrating and so the prize of trade or territory was likely to be much bigger than in the past.
Anglo-French conflict in India lasted for nearly 20 years and led to the establishment of British power in India.
After defeated by France, the British appealed to the Nawab of Carnatic (in whose territory Madras was situated), to save their settlement from the French.
The Nawab sent an army against the French to stop the two foreign trading companies from fighting on his soil. And so the 10,000 strong armies of the Nawab clashed with a small French force, consisting of 230 Europeans and 700 Indian soldiers trained along Western lines, at St. Thorne on the banks of the Adyar River.
The Nawab was decisively defeated. This battle revealed the immense superiority of Western armies over Indian armies because of their better equipment and organization.
In 1748, the general war between England and France ended and, as a part of the peace settlement, Madras was restored to the English.
In the Carnatic, Chanda Sahib began to conspire against the Nawab, Anwaruddin, while in Hyderabad the death of Asaf Jah (Nizam-ul-Mulk), was followed by civil war between his son Nash Jang and his grandson Muzaffar Jang.
Dupleix seized concluded a secret treaty with Chanda Sahib and Muzaffar Jang to help them with his well-trained French and Indian forces.
In 1749, the three allies defeated and killed Anwaruddin in a battle at Ambur.
Carnatic passed under the dominion of Chanda Sahib who rewarded the French with a grant of 80 villages around Pondicherry.
In Hyderabad, the French were successful. Nasir Jung was killed and Muzaffar Jang became the Nizam or Viceroy of the Deccan.
Muzaffar Jang rewarded the French Company by giving territories near Pondicherry as well as the famous town of Masulipatam.
Dupleix stationed his best officer, Bussy, at Hyderabad with a French army. While the ostensible purpose of this arrangement was to protect the Nizam from enemies, it was really aimed at maintaining French influence at his court.
While Muzaffar Jang was marching towards his capital, he was accidentally killed. Bussy immediately raised Salabat Jang, the third son of Nizam-ul-Mulk, to the throne.
Salabat Jang, in return, granted the French the area in Andhra known as the Northern Sarkars, consisting of the four districts of Mustafanagar, Ellore, Rajahmundry, and Chicacole.
The French had started out by trying to win Indian states as friends; they had ended by making them clients or satellites. But the English had not been silent spectators of their rival's successes. To offset French influence and to increase their own, they (British) had been intriguing with Nasir Jung and Muhammad Ali.
In 1750, British decided to throw their entire strength behind Muhammad Ali.
Robert Clive, a young clerk in the Company's service, proposed that French pressure on Muhammad Ali, besieged at Trichinopoly, could be released by attacking Arcot, the capital of Carnatic. The proposal accepted and Clive assaulted and occupied Arcot with only 200 English and 300 Indian Soldiers.
Dupleix made strenuous attempts to reverse the tide of French misfortunes. But he was given little support by the French Government or even by the higher authorities of the French East India Company.
In the end, the French Government, weary of the heavy expense of the war in India and fearing the loss of its American colonies, initiated peace negotiations and agreed in 1754 to the English demand for the recall of Dupleix from India.
The temporary peace between the two Companies (British and France) ended in 1756 when another war between England and France broke out.
The French Government made a determined attempt to oust the English from India and sent a strong force headed by Count de Lally, it was all in vain.
The French fleet was driven off Indian waters and the French forces in the Carnatic were defeated.
The English replaced the French as the Nizam’s protectors and secured from him Muslipatam and the Northern Sarkar.
The decisive battle was fought at Wandiwash on 22 January 1760 when the English General Eyre Coot defeated Lally. The war ended in 1763 with the signing of the Treaty of Paris.
The French factories in India were restored but they could no longer be fortified or even adequately garrisoned with troops. They could serve only as centers of trade; and now the French lived in India under British protection.
Haidar Ali was more than a match for the Company's armies. Having beaten back the British attack, he threatened Madras in 1769 and forced the Madras Council to sign a peace on his terms. Both sides restored each other's conquests and promised mutual help in case of attack by a third party.
In 1771, when Haidar Ali was attacked by the Marathas, the English went back on their promise and did not come to his help. This led Haidar Ali to distrust and dislike them.
In 1775, the English clashed with the Marathas, which lasted in 1782.
In the English and Maratha war, all the Maratha chiefs were united behind the Peshwa and their chief minister, Nana Phadnavis.
The Southern Indian powers had long been resenting the presence of the British among them, and Haidar Ali and the Nizam chose this moment to declare war against the British Company.
The British in India were, however, led at this time by their brilliant, energetic, and experienced Governor-General, Warren Hastings.
Acting with firm determination, he retrieved the vanishing British power and prestige.
The English had found in the Marathas a determined enemy, with immense resources. Mahadji Sindhia had given evidence of his power which the English dreaded to contest.
The Anglo-Maratha War had come to a standout. With the intercession of Mahadji, peace was concluded in 1782 by the Treaty of Salbai by which the status quo was maintained.
This war, known in history as the First Anglo-Maratha War, did not end in victory for either side. But it did give the British 20 years of peace with the Marathas, the strongest Indian power of the day.
The British utilized the period of 20 years to consolidate their rule over the Bengal Presidency, while the Maratha chiefs frittered away their energy in bitter mutual squabbles.
The Treaty of Salbai enabled the British to exert pressure on Mysore as the Marathas promised to help them in recovering their territories from Haidar Ali.
In July 1781, the British army under Eyre Coote defeated Haidar Ali at Porte Novo and saved Madras.
In reality, by signing a Subsidiary Alliance, an India state virtually signed away−
Its independence;
The right of self-defense;
Maintaining the diplomatic relations;
Employing foreign experts; and
Settling its disputes with its neighbors.
As a consequence of Subsidiary Alliance, lakhs of soldiers and officers were deprived of their hereditary livelihood, spreading misery and degradation in the country.
Many of the unemployed soldiers joined the roaming bands of Pindarees which were to ravage the whole of India during the first two decades of the 19th century.
The Subsidiary Alliance system was, on the other hand, extremely advantageous to the British. They could now maintain a large army at the cost of the Indian states.
Lord Wellesley signed his first Subsidiary Treaty with the Nizam of Hyderabad in 1798.
The Nizam was to dismiss his French-trained troops and to maintain a subsidiary force of six battalions at a cost of £ 241,710 per year. In return, the British guaranteed his state against Maratha encroachments.
In 1800, the subsidiary force was increased and, in lieu of cash payment, the Nizam ceded part of his territories to the Company.
The Nawab of Avadh was forced to sign a Subsidiary Treaty in 1801. In return for a larger subsidiary force, the Nawab was forced to surrender to the British nearly half of his kingdom consisting of Rohilkhand and the territory lying between the Rivers Ganga and the Yamuna.
Wellesley dealt with Mysore, Carnatic, Tanjore, and Surat even more sternly.
Tipu of Mysore would, of course, never agreed to a Subsidiary Treaty. On the contrary, he had never reconciled himself to the loss of half of his territory in 1791. He worked incessantly to strengthen his forces for the inevitable struggle with the British.
Tipu Sultan entered into negotiations for an alliance with Revolutionary France. He sent missions 'to Afghanistan, Arabia, and Turkey to forge an anti-British alliance.
Lord Wellesley was no less determined to bring Tipu to heel and to prevent any possibility of the French re-entering India.
The British army attacked and defeated Tipu in a brief but fierce war in 1799, before French help could reach him.
Tipu still refused to beg for peace on humiliating terms. He proudly declared that it was "better to die like a soldier, than to live a miserable dependent on the infidels, in the list of their pensioned, rajas and Nawabs."
Tipu met a hero's end on 4 May 1799 while defending his capital Seringapatam. His army remained loyal to him to the very end.
Nearly half of Tipu's dominions were divided between the British and their ally, the Nizam. The reduced kingdom of Mysore was restored to the descendants of the original rajas from whom Haidar Ali had seized power.
A special treaty of Subsidiary Alliance was imposed on the new Raja by which the Governor-General was authorized to take over the administration of the state in case of necessity.
An important result of the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War was the complete elimination of the French threat to British supremacy in India.
In 1801, Lord Wellesley forced a new treaty upon the puppet Nawab of Carnatic compelling him to cede his kingdom to the Company in return for a handsome pension.
The Madras Presidency as it existed till 1947 was created, by attaching the Carnatic to territories seized from Mysore and Malabar.
The territories of the rulers of Tanjore and Surat were taken over and their rulers pensioned off.
The Marathas were the only major Indian power left outside the sphere of British control. Wellesley now turned his attention towards them and began aggressive interference in their internal affairs.
The following map shows the acquired British territories in 1765 and 1805.
The Second Anglo-Maratha War had shattered the power of the Maratha chiefs but not their spirit. The loss of their freedom rankled in their hearts. They made a desperate last attempt to regain their independence and old prestige in 1817.
The lead in organizing a united front of the Maratha chiefs was taken by the Peshwa who was smarting under the rigid control exercised by the British Resident. However, once again the Marathas failed to evolve a conceded and well-thought out plan of action.
The Peshwa attacked the British Residency at Poona in November 1817. Madhoji II Bhonsle (also known as Appa Sahib) of Nagpur attacked the Residency at Nagpur, and Madhav Rao Holkar made preparations for war.
The Governor-General, Lord Hastings, struck back with characteristic vigor.
Hastings compelled Sindhia to accept British suzerainty, and defeated the armies of the Peshwa, Bhonsle, and Holkar.
The Peshwa was dethroned and pensioned off at Bithur near Kanpur. His territories were annexed and the enlarged Presidency of Bombay brought into existence.
Holkar and Bhonsle accepted subsidiary forces. All the Maratha chiefs had to cede to the Company large tracts of their territories.
To satisfy Maratha pride, the small Kingdom of Satara was founded out of the Peshwa's lands and gave to the descendant of Chhatrapati Shivaji who ruled it as a complete dependent of the British.
Like other rulers of Indian states, the Maratha chiefs too existed from now on at the mercy of the British power.
The Rajputana states had been dominated for several decades by Sindhia and Holkar. After the downfall of the Marathas, they lacked the energy to reassert their independence and readily accepted British supremacy.
By 1818, the entire Indian sub-continent excepting the Punjab and Sindh had been brought under British control.
The death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh in June 1839 was followed by political instability and rapid changes of government in the Punjab. Selfish and corrupt leaders came to the front. Ultimately, power fell into the hands of the brave and patriotic but utterly indiscipline army.
The political instability in Punjab led the British to look greedily across the Sutlej upon the land of the five rivers even though they had signed a treaty of perpetual friendship with Ranjit Singh in 1809.
The British officials increasingly talked of having to wage a campaign in the Punjab.
The Punjab army let itself be provoked by the warlike actions of the British and their intrigues with the corrupt chiefs of the Punjab.
In November 1844, Major Broadfoot, who was known to be hostile to the Sikhs, was appointed the British agent in Ludhiana.
Broadfoot repeatedly indulged in hostile actions and gave provocations. The corrupt chiefs and officials found that the army would sooner or later deprive them of their power, position, and possessions. Therefore, they conceived the idea of saving themselves by embroiling the army in a war with the British.
In the autumn of 1845, news reached that boats designed to form bridges had been dispatched from Bombay to Ferozepur on the Sutlej.
The Punjab Army, now convinced that the British were determined to occupy the Punjab, took counter measures.
When it heard in December that Lord Gough, the Commander-in-Chief, and Lord Harding, the Governor-General, were marching towards Ferozepur, the Punjab army decided to strike.
The war between the two was thus declared on 13 December 1845. The danger from the foreigner immediately united the Hindus, the Muslims, and the Sikhs.
The chief instrument through which Lord Dalhousie implemented his policy of annexation was the ‘Doctrine of Lapse.’
Under the Doctrine of Lapse, when the ruler of a protected state died without a natural heir, his/her state was not to pass to an adopted heir as sanctioned by the age-old tradition of the country. Instead, it was to be annexed to the British dominions unless the adoption had been clearly approved earlier by the British authorities.
Many states, including Satara in 1848 and Nagpur and Jhansi in 1854, were annexed by applying this doctrine.
Dalhousie also refused to recognize the titles of many ex-rulers or to pay their pensions. Thus, the titles of the Nawabs of Carnatic and of Surat and the Raja of Tanjore were extinguished.
After the death of the ex-Peshwa Baji Rao II, who had been made the Raja of Bithur, Dalhousie refused to extend his pay or pension to his adopted son, Nana Saheb.
Lord Dalhousie was keen on annexing the kingdom of Avadh. But the task presented certain difficulties. For one, the Nawabs of Avadh had been British allies since the Battle of Buxer. Moreover, they had been most obedient to the British over the years.
The Nawab of Avadh had many heirs and could not therefore be covered by the Doctrine of Lapse. Some other pretext had to be found for depriving him of his dominions.
Lord Dalhousie hit upon the idea of alleviating the plight of the people of Avadh. Nawab Wajid Ali Shah was accused of having misgoverned his state and of refusing to introduce reforms. His state was therefore annexed in 1856.
From 1765 to 1772, in the period of the Dual Government, Indian officials were allowed to function as before but under the over-all control of the British Governor and British officials.
The Indian officials had responsibility but no power while the Company's officials had power but no responsibility. Both sets of officials were venal and corrupt men.
In 1772, the Company ended the Dual Government and undertook to administer Bengal directly through its own servants. But the evils inherent in the administration of a country by a purely commercial company soon came to the surface.
The East India Company was at this time a commercial body designed to trade with the East. Moreover, its higher authority was situated in England, many thousands of miles away from India.
The parliamentary politics of Britain during the latter half of the 18th century were corrupt in the extreme.
The Company, as well as its retired officials bought seats in the House of Commons for their agents.
Many English statesmen were worried that the Company and its officials, backed by Indian plunder, might gain a preponderant influence in the Government of Britain. The Company and its vast empire in India had to be controlled or the Company as master of India would soon come to control British administration and be in a position to destroy the liberties of the British people.
The exclusive privileges of the Company were also attacked by the rising school of economists representing free-trade manufacturing capitalism. In his celebrated work, “The Wealth of Nations.”
Adam Smith, the founder of Classical economics, condemned the exclusive companies; “Such exclusive companies, therefore, are nuisances in many respect; always more or less inconvenient to the countries in which they are established and destructive to those which have the misfortune to fall under their government.”
The first important parliamentary act regarding the Company's affairs was the Regulating Act of 1773.
Act of 1773 made changes in the constitution of the Court of Directors of the Company and subjected their actions to the supervision of the British Government.
The Directors were to lay before the Ministry all correspondence dealing with the civil and military affairs and the revenues of India.
In India, the Government of Bengal was to be carried on by a Governor-General and his Council who were given the power to superintend and control the Bombay and Madras Presidencies in matters of war and peace.
The Act also provided for the establishment of a Supreme Court of Justice at Calcutta to administer justice to Europeans, their employees, and the citizens of Calcutta.
The Regulating Act soon broke down in practice. It had not given the British Government effective and decisive control over the Company.
In India, the Act had paced the Governor-General at the mercy of his Council. Three of the Councilors could combine and outvote the Governor-General on any matter.
In practice, Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General under the Act, and three of his Councilors quarreled incessantly, often creating deadlocks in the administration.
The Act perceptively had failed to resolve the conflict between the Company and its opponents in England who were daily growing stronger and more vocal. Moreover, the Company remained extremely vulnerable to the attacks of its enemies as the administration of its Indian possessions continued to be corrupt, oppressive, and economically disastrous.
The defects of the Regulating Act and the exigencies of British politics necessitated the passing in 1784 of another important act known as Pitt's India Act.
Pitt’s Act gave the British Government supreme control over the Company's affairs and its administration in India. It established six Commissioners for the affairs of India, popularly known as the Board of Control, including two Cabinet Ministers.
The Board of Control was to guide and control the work of the Court of Directors and the Government of India. In important and urgent matters it had the power to send direct orders to India through a secret committee of Directors.
The Pitt’s Act placed the Government of India in the hands of the Governor-General and a Council of three, so that if the Governor-General could get the support of even one member, he could have his way.
The Act clearly subordinated the Bombay and Madras Presidencies to Bengal in all questions of war, diplomacy, and revenues.
With the Pitt’s Act, a new phase of the British conquest began in India. While the East India Company became the instrument of British national policy, India was to be made to serve the interests of all sections of the ruling classes of Britain.
The Company having saved its monopoly of the Indian and Chinese trade was satisfied. Its Directors retained the profitable right of appointing and dismissing its British officials in India. Moreover, the Government of India was to be carried out through their agency.
While Pitt's India Act laid down the general framework in which the Government of India was to be carried on till 1857, later enactments brought about several important changes which gradually diminished the powers and privileges of the Company.
In 1786, the Governor-General was given the authority to overrule his Council in matters of importance affecting safety, peace, or the interests of the Empire in India.
The Charter Act of 1833 brought the Company's monopoly of tea trade and trade with China to an end. At the same time, the debts of the Company were taken over by the Government of India, which was also to pay its shareholders a 10.5 per cent dividend on their capital.
The Government of India continued to be run by the Company under the strict control of the Board of Control.
Supreme authority in India was, therefore, delegated to the Governor-General in Council. The Governor-General, having the authority to overrule his Council in important questions, became in fact the real, effective ruler of India, functioning under the superintendence, control, and direction of the British Government.
As per the Act of 1833, Indians were allowed ‘no share’ in their own administration.
The three seats of authority, as far as India was concerned, were −
With none of these three seats, any Indian was associated even remotely or in any capacity.
The British created a new system of administration in India to serve their purposes.
The chief aim of the British was to enable them to exploit India economically to the maximum advantage of various British interests, ranging from the Company to the Lancashire manufacturers.
At the same time, India was to be made to bear the full cost of its own conquest as well as of the foreign rule. An examination of the economic policies of the British in India is, therefore, of prime importance.
From 1600 to 1757, the East India Company’s role in India, was that of a trading corporation, which brought goods or precious metals into India and exchanged them for Indian goods like textiles, spices, etc., which it sold abroad.
British’s profits came primarily from the sale of Indian goods abroad. It tried constantly to open new markets for Indian goods in Britain and other countries. Thereby, it increased the export of Indian manufactures and thus encouraged their production. This is the reason why the Indian rulers tolerated and even encouraged the establishment of the Company's factories in India.
By 1720, laws had been passed forbidding the wear or use of printed or dyed cotton cloth in the UK.
Other European countries, except Holland, also either prohibited the import of Indian cloth or imposed heavy import duties. In spite of these laws, however, Indian silk and cotton textiles still held their importance in foreign markets, until the middle of the 18th century when the English textile industry began to develop on the basis of new and advance technology.
After the Battle of Plassey in 1757, the pattern of the Company's commercial relations with India underwent a qualitative change. Now the Company could use its political control over Bengal to push its Indian trade.
The Company used its political power to dictate terms to the weavers of Bengal who were forced to sell their products at a cheaper and dictated price, even at a loss. Moreover, their labor was no longer free. Many of them were compelled to work for the Company for low wages and were forbidden to work for Indian merchants.
The British Company eliminated its rival traders, both Indian and foreign, and prevented them from offering higher wages or pries to the Bengal handicraftsmen.
The servants of the Company monopolized the sale of raw cotton and made the Bengal weaver pay exorbitant prices for it. Thus, the weaver lost by both ways, as a buyer as well as a seller. On the contrary, Indian textiles had to pay heavy duties on catering England.
The Industrial Revolution transformed British society in a fundamental manner. It led to rapid economic development, which is the foundation of today's high standard of living in Britain as well as in Europe, the Soviet Union, the U.S.A., Canada, Australia, and Japan.
Britain became increasingly urbanized as a result of the Industrial Revolution. More and more men began to live in factory towns.
In 1750, Britain had only two cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants; in 1851, their number was 29.
Two entirely new classes of society were born i.e.
The industrial capitalists, who owned the factories, and
The workers who hired out as the labors on daily wages.
While the industrial capitalist class developed rapidly, enjoying unprecedented prosperity, the workers — the laboring poor in the beginning reaped a harvest of sorrow.
Instead of exporting manufactured goods, India was now forced to export raw materials like raw cotton and raw silk, which British industries needed urgently, or plantation products like indigo and tea, or food grains, which were in short supply in Britain.
The British also promoted the sale of Indian opium in China even though the Chinese put a ban on it because of its poisonous and other harmful qualities. But the trade yielded large profits to British merchants and fat revenues to the Company-cannoned administration of India.
Interestingly enough, the import of opium into Britain was strictly banned. Thus, the commercial policy of the East India Company after 1913 was guided by the needs of British industry. Its main aim was to transform India into a consumer of British manufactures and a supplier of raw materials.
In 1773, the British Company decided to manage the land revenues directly.
Warren Hastings auctioned the right to collect revenue to the highest bidders. But his experiment did not succeed.
The amount of land revenue was pushed high by zamindars and other Speculators bidding against each other; however, the actual collection varied from year to year and seldom came up to official expectations. This introduced instability in the Company's revenues at a time when the Company was hard pressed for money.
Neither the ryot nor the zamindar would do anything to improve cultivation when they did not know what the next year's assessment would be or who would be the next year's revenue collector.
The idea of fixing the land revenue at a permanent amount was introduced. Finally, after prolonged discussion and debate, the Permanent Settlement was introduced in Bengal and Bihar in 1793 by Lord Cornwallis.
Permanent Settlement had some special features i.e.
The reminders and revenue collectors were converted into so many landlords. They were not only to act as agents of the Government in collecting land revenue from the ryot, but also to become the owners of the entire land (over which they were collecting revenue). Their right of ownership was made hereditary and transferable.
On the other hand, the cultivators were reduced to the low status of mere tenants and were deprived of long-standing rights to the soil and other customary rights.
The use of the pasture and forest lands, irrigation canals, fisheries, and homestead plots and protection against enhancement of rent were some of the cultivators’ rights which were sacrificed.
In fact the tenancy of Bengal was left entirely at the mercy of the zamindars. This was done so that the zamindars might be able to pay in time the exorbitant land revenue demand of the Company.
The zamindars were to give 10/11th of the rental they derived from the peasantry to the state, keeping only 1/11th for themselves. But the sums to be paid by them as land revenue were fixed in perpetuity.
At the same time, the zamindar had to pay his revenue rigidly on the due date even if the crop had failed for some reason; otherwise his lands were to be sold.
John Shore, the man who planned the Permanent Settlement and later succeeded Cornwallis as Governor-General, calculated that if the gross produce of Bengal be taken as 100, the Government claimed 45, zamindars and other intermediaries below them received 15, and only 40 remained with the actual cultivator.
Benefits of Permanent Settlement
Before 1793, the Company was troubled by fluctuations in its chief source of income, i.e. the land revenue. The Permanent Settlement guaranteed the stability of income.
The Permanent Settlement enabled the Company to maximize its income as land revenue was now fixed higher than it had ever been in the past.
Collection of revenue through a small number of zamindars seemed to be much simpler and cheaper than the process of dealing with lakhs of cultivators.
The Permanent Settlement was expected to increase agricultural production.
Since the land revenue would not be increased in future even if the zamindar's income went up, the latter would be inspired to extend cultivation and improve agricultural productivity.
A modified version of the zamindari settlement, introduced in the Gangetic valley, the North-West Provinces, parts of Central India, and Punjab, was known as the Mahalwari System.
The revenue settlement was to be made village by village or estate (mahal) by estate with landlords or heads of families who collectively claimed to be the landlords of the village or the estate.
In Punjab, a modified Mahalwari System known as the village system was introduced. In Mahalwari areas also, the land revenue was periodically revised.
Both the Zamindari and the Ryotwari systems, departed fundamentally from the traditional land systems of the country.
The British created a new form of private property in land in such a way that the benefit of the innovation did not go to the cultivators.
All over the country, the land was now made salable, mortgagable, and alienable. This was done primarily to protect the Government's revenue.
If land had not been made transferable or salable, the Government would find it very difficult to realize revenue from a cultivator who had no savings or possessions out of which to pay it.
The British by making land a commodity which could be freely bought and sold introduced a fundamental change in the existing land systems of the country. The stability and the continuity of the Indian villages were shaken, in fact, the entire structure of the rural society began to break up.
The East India Company had from the beginning carried on its trade in the East through servants who were paid low wages but who were permitted to trade privately.
Later, when the Company became a territorial power, the same servants assumed administrative functions. They now became extremely corrupt by −
Oppressing local weavers and artisans, merchants, and zamindars,
Extorting bribes and 'gifts' from rajas and nawabs, and
Indulging in illegal private trade. They amassed untold wealth with which they retired to England.
Clive and Warren Hastings made attempts to put an end to their corruption, but were only partially successful.
Cornwallis, who came to India as Governor-General in 1786, was determined to purify the administration, but he realized that the Company's servants would not give honest and efficient service so long as they were not given adequate salaries.
Cornwallis, therefore, enforced the rules against private trade and acceptance of presents and bribes by officials with strictness. At the same time, he raised the salaries of the Company's servants. For example, the Collector of a district was to be paid Rs 1,500 a month and one per cent commission on the revenue collection of his district.
Cornwallis also laid down that promotion in the Civil Service would be by seniority so that its members would remain independent of outside influence.
In 1800, Lord Wellesley pointed out that even though civil servants often ruled over vast areas, they came to India at the immature age of 18 or so and were given no regular training before starting on their jobs. They generally lacked knowledge of Indian languages.
Wellesley, therefore, established the College of Fort William at Calcutta for the education of young recruits to the Civil Service.
The Directors of the Company disapproved of his action and in 1806 replaced it by their own East Indian College at Haileybury in England.
Till 1853, all appointments to the Civil Service were made by the Directors of the East India Company who placated the members of the Board of Control by letting them make some of the nominations.
The Directors fought hard to retain this lucrative and prized privilege and refused to surrender it even when their other economic and political privileges were taken away by Parliament.
The Directors lost it finally in 1853 when the Charter Act decreed that all recruits to the Civil Service were to be selected through a competitive examination.
A special feature of the Indian Civil Service since the days of Cornwallis was the rigid and complete exclusion of Indians (from it).
It was laid down officially in 1793 that all the higher posts in administration worth more than £ 500 a year in salary were to be held by Englishmen. This policy was also applied to other branches of Government, such as the army, police, judiciary, and engineering.
The Indian Civil Service gradually developed as one of the most efficient and powerful civil services in the world.
The British laid the foundations of a new system of dispensing justice through a hierarchy of civil and criminal courts.
Though given a start by Warren Hastings, the system was stabilized by Cornwallis in 1793.
In each district was established a Diwani Adalat, or civil court, presided over by the District Judge who belonged to the Civil Service.
Cornwallis thus separated the posts of the Civil Judge and the Collector.
Appeal from the District Court lay first to four Provincial Courts of Civil Appeal and then, finally, to the Sadar Diwani Adalat.
Below the District Court were Registrars' Courts, headed by Europeans, and a number of subordinate courts headed by Indian judges known as Munsifs and Amins.
To deal with criminal cases, Cornwallis divided the Presidency of Bengal into four Divisions, in each of which a Court of Circuit presided over by the civil servants was established.
The civil courts applied the customary law that had prevailed in any area or among a section of the people since times immemorial.
In 1831, William Bentinck abolished the Provincial Courts of Appeal and Circuit. Their work was assigned first to Commissions and later to District Judges and District Collectors.
Bentinck also raised the status and powers of Indians in the judicial service and appointed them as Deputy Magistrates, Subordinate Judges, and Principal Sadar Amins.
In 1865, High Courts were established at Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay to replace the Sadar Courts of District and Nizamat.
The British also established a new system of laws through the processes of enactment and codification of old laws.
The traditional system of justice in India had been largely based on customary law which arose from the long tradition and practice.
Though many laws were based on the shastras and shariat as well as on imperial authority. However, the British gradually evolved a new system of laws.
British introduced regulations, codified the existing laws, and often systematized and modernized them through judicial interpretation.
The Charter Act of 1833 conferred all law making power on the GovernorGeneral-in-Council.
The Indian legal system under the British was based on the concept of equality before law. This meant that in the eyes of law ‘all men were equal.’
The same law applied to all persons irrespective of their age, religion, or class.
Previously, the judicial system had paid heed to caste distinctions and had differentiated between the so-called high-born and low-born.
For the same crime lighter punishment was awarded to a Brahmin than to a non-Brahmin. Similarly, in practice zamindars and nobles were not judged as harshly as the common people. In fact, very often they could not be brought to justice at all for their actions.
There was, however, one exception to this excellent principle of equality before law. The Europeans and their descendants had separate courts and even laws.
In criminal cases, Europeans could be tried only by European judges.
Many English officials, military officers, planters, and merchants behaved with Indians in a haughty, harsh, and even brutal manner. When efforts were made to bring them to justice, they were given indirect and undue protection and consequently light or no punishment by many of the European judges before whom alone they could be tried. Consequently, miscarriage of justice occurred (frequently).
In practice, another type of legal inequality emerged; justice became quite expensive as court fees had to be paid, lawyers engaged and the expenses of witnesses met. Courts were often situated in distant towns. Law suits dragged on for years.
The complicated laws were beyond the grasp of the illiterate and ignorant peasants.
Invariably, the rich could turn and twist the laws and courts to operate in their own favor. The mere threat to take a poor person through the long process of justice from the lower court to the highest court of appeal and thus to face harm with complete ruin often sufficed to bring him to heel.
The widespread prevalence of corruption in the ranks of the police and the rest of the administrative machinery led to the denial of justice. Officials often favored the rich.
In contrast, the system of justice that had prevailed pre-British times, was comparatively informal, speedy, and inexpensive.
Till 1813, the British also followed a policy of non-interference in the religious, social, and cultural life of the country, but after 1813, they took active steps to transform Indian society and culture.
Science and technology also opened new vistas of human progress.
The 18th and 19th centuries witnessed a great ferment of new ideas in Britain and Europe, which influenced the British outlook towards the Indian problems.
Modernization of India was accepted by many English officials, businessmen, and statesmen because it was expected to make Indians better customers of British goods and reconcile them to the alien rule.
The basic dilemma before the British administrators in India was that while British interests in India could not be served without some modernization, full modernization would generate forces, which would go against their interests and would, in the long run, endanger British supremacy in the country.
They had, therefore, to follow a delicately balanced policy of partial modernization that is a policy of introducing modernization in some respects and blocking and preventing it in other respects.
The policy of modernizing Indian society and culture was also encouraged by the Christian missionaries and religious-minded persons such as William Wilberforce and Charles Grant, the Chairman of the Court of Directors of the east India Company, who wanted to spread Christianity in India.
Christian missionaries supported a program of Westernization in the hope that it would eventually lead to the country’s conversion to Christianity. They, therefore, opened modern schools, colleges, and hospitals in the country.
As a matter of fact, the policy of modernization was gradually abandoned after 1858 as Indians proved apt pupils, shifted rapidly towards modernization of their society and assertion of their culture, and demanded to be ruled in accordance with the modern principles of liberty, equality, and nationality.
Lord Bentinck deserves praise for having acted resolutely in outlawing a practice of Sati, which had taken a toll of 800 lives in Bengal alone between 1815 and 1818.
Regulations prohibiting infanticide had been passed in 1795 and 1802, but they were sternly enforced only by Bentinck and Harding.
Harding also suppressed the practice of making human sacrifices that had prevailed among the primitive tribe of Gonds.
In 1856, the Government of India passed an Act enabling Hindu widows to remarry.
Ram Mohan Roy was pained by the stagnation and corruption of the contemporary Indian society, which was at that time dominated by caste and convention. Popular religion was full of superstitions and was exploited by ignorant and corrupt priests.
The upper classes were selfish and often sacrificed social interest to their own narrow interests.
Ram Mohan Roy possessed great love and respect for the traditional philosophic systems of the East; but, at the same time, he believed that Western culture alone would help to regenerate Indian society.
In particular, Ram Mohan Roy wanted his countrymen to accept the rational and scientific approach and the principle of human dignity and social equality of all men and women. He was also in favor of the introduction of modern capitalism and industry in the country.
Ram Mohan Roy represented a synthesis of the thought of East and West. He was a learned scholar who knew more than dozen languages including Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic, English, French, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.
As a young man, Ram Mohan Roy had studied Sanskrit literature and Hindu philosophy at Varanasi and Koran and Persian and Arabic literature at Patna.
Ram Mohan Roy was also well-acquainted with Jainism and other religious movements and sects of India.
Ram Mohan Roy made an intensive study of Western thought and culture. Only to study the Bible in the original form, he learnt Greek and Hebrew.
In 1809, Ram Mohan Roy wrote his famous work Gift to Monotheists in Persian. In this work, he put forward weighty arguments against belief in many gods and for the worship of a single God.
Ram Mohan Roy settled in Calcutta in 1814 and soon attracted a band of young men with whose cooperation he started the Atmiya Sabha.
In particular, Ram Mohan Roy vigorously opposed worship of idols, rigidity of caste, and prevalence of meaningless religious rituals. He condemned the priestly class for encouraging and inculcating these practices.
Roy held that all the principal ancient texts of the Hindus preached monotheism or worship of one God.
Roy published the Bengali translation of the Vedas and of five of the principal Upanishads to prove his point. He also wrote a series of tracts and pamphlets in defence of monotheism.
In 1820, Roy published his Precepts of Jesus in which he tried to separate the moral and philosophic message of the New Testament, which ho praised, from its miracle stories.
Roy wanted the high-moral message of Christ to be incorporated in Hinduism. This earned for him the hostility of the missionaries.
Roy vigorously defended Hindu religion and philosophy from the ignorant attacks of the missionaries. At the same time, he adopted an extremely friendly attitude towards other religions.
Roy believed that basically all religions preach a common message and that their followers are all brothers under the skin.
In 1829, Roy founded a new religious society, the Brahma Sabha, later known as the Brahmo Samaj, whose purpose was to purify Hinduism and to preach theism or the worship of one God. The new society was to be based on the twin pillars of reason and the Vedas and Upanishads.
The Brahmo Samaj laid emphasis on human dignity, opposed idolatry, and criticized such social evils as the practice of Sati.
Ram Mohan Roy was one of the earliest propagators of modem education, which he looked upon as a major instrument for the spread of modern ideas in the country.
In 1817, David Hare, who had come to India in 1800 as a watchmaker, but who spent his entire life in the promotion of modern education in the country, founded the famous Hindu College.
Ram Mohan Roy gave most enthusiastic assistance to Hare in his educational projects.
Roy maintained at his own cost an English school in Calcutta from 1817 in which, among other subjects, mechanics and the philosophy of Voltaire were taught.
In 1825, Roy established a Vadanta College in which courses both in Indian learning and in Western social and physical sciences were offered.
Ram Mohan Roy represented the first glimmerings of the rise of national consciousness in India.
In particular, Roy opposed the rigidities of the caste system, which he declared, “has been the source of want of unity among us.” He believed that the caste system was double evil: it created inequality and it divided people and deprived them of patriotic feeling.
Ram Mohan Roy was pioneer of Indian journalism. He brought out journals in Bengali, Persian, Hindi, and English to spread scientific literary, and political knowledge among the people, to educate public opinion on topics of current interest, and to represent popular demands and grievances before the Government.
Roy was also the initiator of public agitation on political questions in the country.
Roy condemned the oppressive practices of the Bengal Zamindars, which had reduced the peasants to a miserable condition.
Roy demanded that the maximum rents paid by the actual cultivators of land should be permanently fixed so that they too would enjoy the benefits of the Permanent Settlement of 1793.
Roy also protested against the attempts to impose taxes on tax-free lands.
Roy demanded the abolition of the Company’s trading rights and the removal of heavy export duties on Indian goods.
Roy raised the demands for the Indianization of the superior services, separation of the executive and the judiciary, trial by jury, and judicial equality between Indians and Europeans.
Ram Mohan Roy took a keen interest in international events and everywhere he supported the cause of liberty, democracy, and nationalism and opposed injustice, oppression, and tyranny in every form.
Roy condemned the miserable condition of Ireland under the oppressive regime of absentee landlordism. He publicly declared that he would emigrate from the British Empire if Parliament failed to pass the Reform Bill.
Though Vidyasagar was a great Sanskrit scholar, his mind was open to the Western thought, and he came to represent a happy blend of Indian and Western culture.
Vidyasagar resigned from government service, as he would not tolerate undue official interference.
Vidyasagar’s generosity to the poor was fabulous. He seldom possessed a warm coat that he invariably gave it to the first naked beggar he met on the street.
Vidyasagar evolved a new technique of teaching Sanskrit. He wrote a Bengali primer which is used till this day. By his writings, he helped in the evolution of a modern prose style in Bengali.
Vidyasagar opened the gates of the Sanskrit college to non-Brahmin students as well.
To free Sanskrit studies from the harmful effects of self-imposed isolation, Vidyasagar introduced the study of Western thought in the Sanskrit College. He also helped to establish a college, which is now named after him.
He raised his powerful voice, backed by the weight of immense traditional learning, in favor of widow remarriage in 1855.
The first lawful Hindu widow remarriage among the upper castes in India was celebrated in Calcutta on 7 December 1856 under the inspiration and supervision of Vidyasagar.
In 1850, Vidyasagar protested against child-marriage. All his life, he campaigned against polygamy.
As a Government Inspector of Schools, Vidyasagar organized thirty five girls’ schools, many of which he ran at his own expense.
The Bethune School, founded in Calcutta in 1849, was the first fruit of the powerful movement for women’s education that arose in the 1840s and 1850s.
As Secretary to the Bethune School, Vidyasagar was one of the innovators of higher education for women.
In 1848, several educated young men formed the Students’ Literary and Scientific Society, which had two branches, the Gujarati and the Marathi (Dnyan Prasarak Mandlis).
Other general causes of revolt were the British land revenue policies and the systems of law and administration. In particular, a large number of peasant proprietors lost their lands to traders and most of the lenders found themselves hopelessly burden under debt.
The common people were hard hit by the prevalence of corruption at the lower levels of administration. The police, petty officials, and lower (law) courts were notoriously corrupt.
The middle and upper classes of Indian society, particularly in the North, were hard hit by their exclusion from the well-paid higher posts in the administration.
Displacement of Indian rulers by the East India Company meant the sudden withdrawal of the patronage and the impoverishment of those who had depended upon it.
Religious preachers, pandits, and maulavis, who felt that their entire future was threatened, were to play an important role in spreading hatred against the foreign rule.
The British remained perpetual foreigners in the country. For one, there was no social link or communication between them and the Indians.
Unlike foreign conquerors before them, they did not mix socially even with the upper classes of Indians; instead, they had a feeling of racial superiority and treated Indians with contempt and arrogance.
The British did not come to settle in India and to make it their home. Their main objective was to enrich themselves and then go back to Britain along with Indian wealth.
Munshi Mohanlal of Delhi, who remained loyal to the British during the Revolt, wrote that even "those who bad grown rich under British rule showed hidden delight at British reverses." Another loyalist, Moinuddin Hasan Khan, pointed out that the people looked upon the British as "foreign trespassers."
The British army suffered major reverses in the First Afghan War (1838-42) and the Punjab Wars (1845-49), and the Crimean War (I854-56).
In 1855-56, the Santhal tribesmen of Bihar and Bengal rose up armed with axes and bows and arrows and revealed the potentialities of a popular uprising by temporarily sweeping away British rule from their area.
The British ultimately won these wars and suppressed the Santhal uprising; however, the disasters British suffered in major battles revealed that the British army could be defeated by determined fighting, even by an Asian army.
The annexation of Avadh by Lord Dalhousie in 1856 was widely resented in India in general and in Avadh in particular. It created an atmosphere of rebellion in Avadh and in the Company's army.
Dalhousie's action angered the Company's sepoys, as most of them came from Avadh.
The annexations rule of Dalhousie, created panic among rulers of the native states. They now discovered that their most groveling loyalty to the British had failed to satisfy the British greed for territory.
This policy of annexation was, for example, directly responsible for making Nana Sahib, the Rani of Jhansi, and Bahadur Shah their staunch enemies.
Nana Sahib was the adopted son of Baji Rao II, the last Peshwa. The British refused to grant Nana Sahib the pension they were paying to Baji Rao II, who died in 1851.
The British insistence on the annexation of Jhansi incensed the proud of Rani Lakshmibai who wanted her adopted son to succeed her deceased husband.
The house of the Mughals was humiliated when Dalhousie announced in 1849 that the Successor to Bahadur Shah would have to abandon the historic Red Fort and move to a humbler residence at the Qutab on the outskirts of Delhi.
In 1856, Canning announced that after Bahadur Shah's death, the Mughals would lose the title of kings and would be known as mere princes.
An important role in turning the people against British rule was played by their fear that it endangered their religion. This fear was largely due to the activities of the Christian missionaries who were "to be seen everywhere — in the schools, in the hospitals, in the prisons and at the market place."
The missionaries tried to convert people and made violent and vulgar public attacks on Hinduism and Islam. They openly ridiculed and denounced the long cherished customs and traditions of the people.
In 1850, the Government enacted a law, which enabled a convert to Christianity to inherit his ancestral property.
Religious sentiments were also hurt by the official policy of taxing lands belonging to temples and mosques and to their priests or the charitable institutions which had been exempted from taxation by previous Indian rulers.
The many Brahmin and Muslim families dependent on the religious activities were aroused to fury, and they began to propagate that the British were trying to undermine the religions of India.
The sepoys also had religious or caste grievances of their own. The Indians of those days were very strict in observing caste rules, etc.
The military authorities forbade the sepoys to wear caste and sectarian marks, beards, or turbans.
In 1856, an Act was passed under which every new recruit undertook to serve even overseas, if required. This hurt the sepoys' sentiments as, according to the current religious belief of the Hindus, travel across the sea was forbidden and led to less of caste.
Mangal Pande, a young soldier, was hanged on 29 March 1857 for revolting single-handed and attacking his superior officers. This and many similar incidents were a sign that discontent and rebellion were brewing among the sepoy, and then came the explosion at Meerut.
On 24 April 1857, ninety men of the 3rd Native Cavalry refused to accept the greased cartridges. On 9 May 1857, eighty five of them were dismissed, sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment, and put into fetters. This sparked off a general mutiny among the Indian soldiers stationed at Meerut.
The very next day, on 10 May, sepoys released their imprisoned comrades, killed their officers, and unfurled the banner of revolt. As if drawn by a magnet they set off for Delhi after sunset.
When the Meerut soldiers appeared in Delhi the next morning, the local infantry joined them, killed their own European officers, and seized the city.
The rebellious soldiers proclaimed the aged and powerless Bahadur Shah the Emperor of India.
Delhi was soon to become the center of the Great Revolt and Bahadur Shah its great symbol.
Bahadur Shah, in turn, under the instigation and perhaps the pressure of the sepoys, soon wrote letters to all the chiefs and rulers of India urging them to organize a confederacy of Indian states to fight and replace the British regime.
The entire Bengal Army soon rose in revolt which spread quickly. Avadh, Rohlikhand, the Bundelkhand, Central India, large parts of Bihar, and the East Punjab, all shook off British authority.
In many of the princely states, rulers remained loyal to their British overlord but the soldiers revolted or remained on the brink of revolt.
More than 20,000 of Gwalior's troops went over to Tantia Tope and the Rani of Jhansi.
Many small chiefs of Rajasthan and Maharashtra, revolted with the support of the people, who were quite hostile to the British. Local rebellions also occurred in Hyderabad and Bengal.
The tremendous sweep and breadth of the Revolt were matched by its depth. Everywhere in Northern and Central India, the mutiny of the sepoys was followed by popular revolts of the civilian population.
After the sepoys had destroyed British authority, the common people was up in arms often lighting with spears and axes, bows and arrows, lathis and scythes, and crude muskets.
It was the wide participation to the Revolt by the peasantry and the artisans which gave it real strength as well as the character of a popular revolt, especially in the areas at present included in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
The popular character of the Revolt of 1857 also became evident when the British tried to smash it. They had to wage a vigorous and ruthless war not only against the rebellious sepoys but also against the people of Avadh, NorthWestern Provinces and Agra, Central India, and Western Bihar, burning entire villages and massacring villagers and urban people.
The sepoys and the people fought staunchly and valiantly up to the very end. They were defeated but their spirit remained unbroken.
Much of the strength of the Revolt of 1857 lay in Hindu-Muslim unity. Among the soldiers and the people as well as among the leaders there was complete cooperation as between Hindus and Muslims.
In fact, the events of 1857 clearly bring out that the people and politics of India were not basically communal in medieval times and before 1858.
Even though spread over a vast territory and widely popular among the people, the Revolt of 1857 could not embrace the entire country or all the groups and classes of Indian society.
Most rulers of the Indian states and the big zamindars, selfish to the core and fearful of British might, refused to join in.
On the contrary, the Sindhia of Gwalior, the Holkar of Indore, the Nizam of Hyderabad, the Raja of Jodhpur and other Rajput rulers, the Nawab of Bhopal, the rulers of Patiala, Nabha, Jind, and Kashmir, the Ranas of Nepal, and many other ruling chiefs, and a large number of big zamindars gave active help to the British in suppressing the Revolt. In fact, no more than one per cent of the chiefs of India joined the Revolt.
Governor-General Canning later remarked that these rulers and chiefs "acted as the breakwaters to the storm which would have otherwise swept us in one great wave."
Madras, Bombay, Bengal, and the Western Punjab remained undisturbed, even though the popular feeling in these provinces favored the rebels.
Except for the discontented and the dispossessed zamindars, the middle and upper classes were mostly critical of the rebels; most of the propertied classes were either cool towards them or actively hostile to them.
The money-lenders were the chief targets of the villagers' attacks. They were, therefore, naturally hostile to the Revolt.
The merchants too gradually became unfriendly. The rebels were compelled to impose heavy taxation on them in order to finance the war or to seize their stocks of foodstuffs to feed the army
The merchants often hid their wealth and goods and refused to give free supplies to the rebels.
The big merchants or Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras supported the British because their main profits came from foreign trade and economic connections with the British merchants.
The zamindars of Bengal also remained loyal to the British. They were after all a creation of the British.
The modern educated Indians also did not support the Revolt. They were repelled by the rebels' appeals to superstitions and their opposition to progressive social measures.
The educated Indians wanted to end the backwardness of the country. They mistakenly believed that British rule would help them accomplish these tasks of modernization while the rebels would take the country backward.
The revolutionaries of 1857 proved to be more farsighted in this respect; they had a better, instinctive understanding of the evils of foreign rule and of the necessity to get rid of it.
On the other hand, they did not realize, as did the educated intelligentsia, that the country had fallen prey to foreigners precisely because it had stuck to rotten and outmoded customs, traditions, and institutions.
In any case, it cannot be said that the educated Indians were anti-national or loyal to a foreign regime. As events after 1858 were to show, they were soon to lead a powerful and modem national movement against British rule.
An Act of Parliament in 1858 transferred the power to govern from the East India Company to the British Crown.
While authority over India had previously been wielded by the Directors of the Company and the Board of Control, now this power was to be exercised by a Secretary of State for India aided by a Council.
The Secretary of State was a member of the British Cabinet and as such was responsible to Parliament. Thus the ultimate power over India remained with British Parliament.
By 1869, the Council was completely subordinated to the Secretary of State. Most of the members of the India Council were retired British-Indian officials.
Under the Act, a government was to be carried on as before by the Governor-General who was also given the title of Viceroy or Crown's personal representative.
Viceroy was paid two and a half lakhs of rupees a year in addition to his other allowances.
With the passage of time, the Viceroy was increasingly reduced to a subordinate status in relation to the British Government in matters of policy as well as the execution of policy.
As a result of the Regulating Act, Pitt's India Act, and the later Charter Acts the Government of India was being effectively controlled from London.
Instructions from London took a few weeks to arrive and the Government of India had often to take important policy decisions in a hurry. Control by the authorities in London was therefore often more in the nature of post facto evaluation and criticism than of actual direction.
By 1870, a submarine cable had been laid through the Red Sea between England and India. Orders from London could now reach India in a matter of hours.
The Secretary of State could now control the minutest details of administration and do so constantly every hour of the day.
No Indian had a voice in the India Council or the British Cabinet or Parliament. Indians could hardly even approach such distant masters.
In a given condition, Indian opinion had even less impact on government policy than before. On the other hand, British industrialists, merchants, and bankers increased their Influence over the Government of India.
In India, the Act of 1858 provided that the Governor-General would have an Executive Council whose members were to act as heads of different departments and as his official advisers.
The position of the members of the Council was similar to that of Cabinet ministers. Originally there were five members of this Council but by 1918, there were six ordinary members, apart from the Commander-in-Chief who headed the Army Department.
The Council discussed all important matters and decided them by a majority vote; but the Governor-General had the power to override any important decision of the Council. In fact, gradually all power was concentrated in the Governor-General's hands.
The Indian Councils Act of 1861 enlarged the Governor-General's Council for the purpose of making laws in which capacity it was known as the Imperial Legislative Council.
The Governor-General was authorized to add to his Executive Council between six and twelve members of whom at least half had to be non-officials who could be Indian or English.
The Imperial Legislative Council possessed no real powers and should not be seen as a sort of elementary or weak parliament. It was merely an advisory body. It could not discuss any important measure, and no financial measures at all, without the previous approval of the Government
The Imperial Legislative Council had no control over the budget. It could not discuss the notions of the administration; the members could not even ask questions about them. The Legislative Council had no control over the executive.
No bill passed by Legislative Council could become an Act until it was approved by the Governor-General.
The Secretary of State could disallow any of its Acts. Thus, the only important function of the Legislative Council was to ditto official measures and give them the appearance of having been passed by a legislative body.
The Indian members of the Legislative Council were few in number and were not elected by the Indian people, but rather were nominated by the GovernorGeneral whose choice invariably fell on princes and their ministers, big zamindars, big merchants, or retired senior government officials.
For the better understanding, we can study the major administrative changes under the following heads −
Provincial Administration
Local Bodies
Change in Army
Public Services
Relations with Princely States
Administrative Policies and
Extreme Backwardness of Social Services
All these headings have been described briefly in subsequent chapters (with the same headings).
For the administrative convenience, the British had divided India into provinces; three of which — Bengal, Madras, and Bombay were known as Presidencies.
The Presidencies were administered by a Governor and his three Executive Councils, who were appointed by the Crown.
The Presidency Governments possessed more rights and powers than other provinces. Other provinces were administered by Lieutenant Governors and Chief Commissioners appointed by the Governor-General.
The Act of 1861 marked the turning of the tide of centralization. It laid down that legislative councils similar to that of the center should be established first in Bombay, Madras, and Bengal and then in other provinces.
The provincial legislative councils also were mere advisory bodies consisting of officials and four to eight non-official Indians and Englishmen. They also lacked the powers or a democratic parliament.
The evil of extreme centralization was most obvious in the field of finance. The revenues from all over the country and from different sources were gathered at the center and then distributed by it to the provincial governments.
The Central Government exercised authoritarian control over the smallest details of provincial expenditure. But this system proved quite wasteful in practice. It was not possible for the Central Government to supervise the efficient collection of revenues by a provincial government or to keep adequate check over its expenditure.
The two governments constantly quarreled over minute details of administration and expenditure, and, on the other, a provincial government had no motive to be economical. The authorities therefore decided to decentralize public finance.
In 1870, Lord Mayo had taken the first step in the direction of separating central and provincial finances. The provincial governments were granted fixed sums out of central revenues for the administration of certain services like Police, Jails, Education, Medical Services, and Roads and were asked to administer them as they wished.
Lord Mayo's scheme was enlarged in 1877 by Lord Lytton who transferred to the provinces certain other heads of expenditure such as Land Revenue, Excise, General Administration, and Law and Justice.
To meet the additional expenditure, a provincial government was to get a fixed share of the income realized from that province from certain sources like Stamps, Excise Taxes, and Income Tax.
In 1882, Lord Ripon had brought some changes. The system of giving fixed grants to the provinces was ended and, instead, a province was to get the entire income within it from certain sources of revenue and a fixed share of the income.
Thus all sources of the revenue were now divided into three heads as −
The financial arrangements between the center and the provinces were to be reviewed every five years.
Financial difficulties led the Government to further decentralize administration by promoting local government through municipalities and district hoards.
Local bodies were first formed between 1864 and 1868, but almost in every case, they consisted of nominated members and were presided over by the District Magistrates.
The local bodies did not represent local self-government at all nor did the intelligent Indians accept them as such. The Indians looked upon them as instruments for the extraction of additional taxes from the people.
In 1882, Lord Ripon Government laid down the policy of administering local affairs largely through rural and urban local bodies, a majority of whose members would be non-officials.
The non-official members would be elected by the people wherever and whenever officials felt that it was possible to introduce elections.
The resolution also permitted the election of a non-official as Chairman of a local body.
The provincial acts were passed to implement this resolution. But the elected members were in a minority in all the district boards and in many of the municipalities.
Elected members were, moreover, elected by a small number of voters since the right to vote was severely restricted.
District officials continued to act as presidents of district boards though nonofficials gradually became chairmen of municipal committees.
The Government also retained the right to exercise strict control over the activities of the local bodies and to suspend and supersede them at its own discretion.
The local bodies functioned just like departments of the Government and were in no way good examples of local self-government.
All positions of power and responsibility in the administration were occupied by the members of the Indian Civil Service who were recruited through an annual open competitive examination held in London.
Indians also could sit in this examination. Satyendranath Tagore, brother of Rabindranath Tagore, was the first Indian civil servant.
Almost every year, thereafter, one or two Indians joined the coveted ranks of the Civil Service, but their number was negligible compared to the English entrants.
In practice, the doors of the Civil Service remained barred to Indians because −
The competitive examination was held in faraway London;
It was conducted through the medium of the alien English language;
It was based on Classical Greek and Latin learning, which could be acquired only after a prolonged and costly course of studies in England; and
The maximum age for entry into the Civil Service was gradually reduced from twenty-three in 1859 to nineteen in 1878.
In other departments of administration such as: Police, Public Works Department, and Railways the superior and highly paid posts were reserved for British citizens.
The rulers of India believed it to be an essential condition for the maintenance of British supremacy in India.
The Viceroy, Lord Lansdowne, stressed "the absolute necessity of keeping the government of this widespread Empire in European hands, if that Empire is to be maintained."
The Indians, in the civil services, functioned as agents of British rule and loyally served Britain's imperial purposes.
Under Indian pressure, the different administrative services were gradually Indianised after 1918, but the positions of control and authority were still kept in British hands. Moreover, the people soon discovered that Indianisation of these services had not put any part of political power in their hands.
The British had introduced the printing press in India and thus initiated the development of the modern press.
The educated Indians had immediately recognized that the press could play a great role in educating public opinion and in influencing the government policies through criticism and censure.
Ram Mohan Roy, Vdyasagar, Dadabhai Naoroji, Justice Ranade, Surendranath Banerjea, Lokmanya Tilak, G. Subramaniya Iyer, C. Karhnakara Menon, Madan Mohan Malaviya, Lala Lajpat Rai, Bipin Chandra Pal, and other Indian leaders played an important part in starting newspapers and making them a powerful political force.
The Indian press was freed of restrictions by Charles Metcalfe in I835. This step had been welcomed enthusiastically by the educated Indians. It was one of the reasons why they had for some time supported British rule in India.
The nationalists gradually began to use the press to arouse national consciousness among the people and to sharply criticize the reactionary policies of the Government. This turned the officials against the Indian press and they decided to curb its freedom. This was attempted by passing the Vernacular Press Act in 1878.
The Press Act put serious restrictions on the freedom of the Indian language newspapers. Indian public opinion was now fully aroused and it protested loudly against the passage of this Act.
The protest had immediate effect and the Act was repealed in 1882. For nearly 25 years thereafter, the Indian press enjoyed considerable freedom. But the rise of the militant Swadeshi and Boycott movement after 1905 once again led to the enactment of the repressive press laws in 1908 and 1910.
In the 19th century, the condition of workers in modem factories and plantations was miserable. They had to work between 12 and 16 hours a day and there was no weekly day of rest.
Women and children worked the same long hours as men. The wages were extremely low, ranging from Rs. 4 to 20 per month.
The factories were over-crowded, badly lighted and aired, and completely unhygienic. Work on machines was hazardous, and accidents very common.
The Government of India, which was generally pro-capitalist, took some half-hearted and 'totally inadequate steps to mitigate the sorry state of affairs in the modern factories; many of the factories were owned by the Indians.
The manufacturers of Britain put constant pressure on it to pass factory laws. They were afraid that cheap labor would enable Indian manufacturers to outsell them in the Indian market.
The first Indian Factory Act was passed in l881. The Act dealt primarily with the problem of child labor.
The Factory Act of 1881 laid down that the child below 7 could not work in factories, while the children between 7 and 12 would not work for more than 9 hours a day. Children would also get four holidays in a month.
The Act also provided for the proper fencing around the dangerous machinery.
The second Indian Factory Act was passed in 1891, it provided for a weekly holiday for all workers.
Working hours for women were fixed at 11 per day while daily hours of work for children were reduced to 7. Hours of work for men were still left unregulated.
Neither of the two Acts applied to British-owned tea and coffee plantations. On the contrary, the Government gave every help to the foreign planters to exploit their workers in a most ruthless manner.
The Nepal valley had been conquered in 1768 by the Gurkhas, a Western Himalayan tribe.
Gurkhas had gradually built up a powerful army and extended their sway from Bhutan in the East to the river Sutlej in the West.
From the Nepal Tarai, the Gurkha now began to push southward. In the meanwhile, the British conquered Gorakhpur in 1801. This brought the two expanding powers face to face across as ill-defined border.
In October 1814, a border clash between the border police of the two countries led to open war.
The British officials had expected an easy walk-over especially as their army attacked all along the 600 mile frontier. But the Gurkhas defended themselves with vigor and bravery. The British armies were defeated again and again.
In the long run, however, the Gurkhas could not survive. The British were far superior in men, money, and materials
In April 1815, they occupied Kumaon, and on 15th May, they forced the brilliant Gurkha Commander Amar Singh Thapa to surrender.
The Government of Nepal was now compelled for peace. But the negotiations for peace soon broke down. The Government of Nepal would not accept the British demand for the stationing of a Resident at Kathmandu, capital Nepal.
It was realized that to accept a subsidiary alliance with the British amounted to signing away Nepal's independence. Fighting was resumed early in 1816.
The British forces won important victories and reached within 50 miles of Kathmandu. In the end, the Nepal Government had to make a peace agreement (known as Treaty of Sugauli) on British terms.
Burma and British India developed a common frontier at the close of the 18th century when both were expanding powers.
After centuries of internal strife, Burma was united by King Alaungpaya between 1752 and 1760.
Bodawpaya, the successor of King Alaungpaya, was ruling from Ava on the river Irrawaddi repeatedly invaded Siam, repelled many Chinese invasions, and conquered the border states of Arakan (1785) and Manipur (1813) bringing Burma's border up to that of British India. Continuing his westward expansion, he threatened Assam and the Brahmaputra Valley.
In 1822, the Burmese conquered Assam. The Burmese occupation of Arakan and Assam led to continuous friction along the ill-defined border between Bengal and Burma.
The Burmese Government pressed the British authorities to take action against the insurgents (Arakanese fugitives) and to hand them over to the Burmese authorities.
The Burmese forces, chasing the insurgents, would often cross into Indian Territory. In 1823, clashes on the Chittagong Arakan frontier came to a head over the possession of Shahpuri island, which was first occupied by the Burmese and then by the British.
The Burmese proposal for neutralization of the island was rejected by the British and tension between the two began to mount.
Burmese occupation of Manipur and Assam provided another source of conflict between the two. It was looked upon by the British authorities as a serious threat to their position in India. To counter this threat they established British influence over the strategic border states of Cachar and Jaintia.
The Burmese were angered by the British action and marched their troops into Cachar. A clash between Burmese and British troops ensued, the Burmese being compelled to withdraw into Manipur.
For several decades, British Indian authorities had been trying to persuade the Government of Burma to sign a commercial treaty with them and to exclude French traders from Burma.
The British believed that the Burmese power should be broken as soon as possible, especially as they felt that British power was at the time far superior to that of the Burmese. The Burmese, on their part, did nothing to avoid war.
The Burmese rulers had been long isolated from the world and did not correctly assess the strength of the enemy. They were also led to believe that an AngloBurmese war would lead many of the Indian powers to rebel.
The war was officially declared on 24 February 1824. After an initial set-back, the British forces drove the Burmese out of Assam, Cachar, Manipur, and Arakan.
The British expeditionary forces by sea occupied Rangoon in May 1824 and reached within 45 miles of the capital at Ava.
If the First Burmese War was in part the result of border clashes, the second Burmese War which broke out in 1852 was almost wholly the result of British commercial greed.
British timber firms had begun to take interest in the timber resources of Upper Burma. Moreover, the large population of Burma appeared to the British to be a vast market for the sale of British cotton goods and other manufactures.
The British, already in occupation of Burma's two coastal provinces, now wanted to establish commercial relations with the rest of the country, but the Burmese Government did not permit further foreign commercial penetration.
The British merchants now began to complain of ''lack of facilities for trade" and of "oppressive treatment" by the Burmese authorities at Rangoon.
The fact of the matter was that British imperialism was at its zenith and the British believed themselves to be a superior people. British merchants had begun to believe that they had a divine right to force their trade upon others.
By the time, the aggressive Lord Dalhousie became the Governor-General of India. He was determined to heighten British imperial prestige and to push British interests in Burma.
As an excuse for armed intervention in Burma, Dalhousie took up the frivolous and petty complaint of two British sea-captains that the Governor of Rangoon had extorted neatly 1,000 rupees from them.
In November 1851, Dalhousie sent an envoy, accompanied by several ships of war, to Rangoon to demand compensation for the two British merchants.
The British envoy, Commodore Lambert, behaved in an aggressive and unwarranted manner. On reaching Rangoon, he demanded the removal of the Governor of Rangoon before he would agree to negotiate.
The Court at Ava was frightened by the show of British strength and agreed to recall the Governor of Rangoon and to investigate British complaints. But the haughty British envoy was determined to provoke a conflict. He started a blockade of Rangoon and attacked and destroyed over 150 small ships in the port.
The Burmese Government agreed to accept a British Resident at Rangoon and to pay the full compensation demanded by the British.
The Government of India now turned on the screw and pushed up their demands to an exorbitant level. They demanded the recall of the new Governor of Rangoon and also an apology for alleged insults to their envoy.
Such demands could hardly be accepted by an independent government. Obviously, the British desired to strengthen their hold over Burma by peace or by war before their trade competitors, the French or the Americans, could establish themselves there.
A full British expedition was dispatched to Burma in April 1852. This time, the war was much shorter than in 1825-26 and the British victory was more decisive.
There are many other political and economic questions over which the Burmese king and the British Government clashed.
The British Government humiliated the king in 1871 by armoring that relations with him would be conducted through the Viceroy of India as if he were merely a ruler of one of the Indian states. Another source of friction was the attempt by the king to develop friendly relations with other European powers.
In 1873, a Burmese mission visited France and tried to negotiate a commercial treaty, which would also enable Burma to import modern arms, but later under British pressure, the French Government refused to ratify the treaty.
King Mindon died in 1878 and was succeeded by King Thibaw.
The British gave shelter to rival princes and openly interfered in Burma's internal affairs under the garb of preventing the alleged cruelties of King Thibaw.
The British thus claimed that they had the right to protect the citizens of Upper Burma from their own king.
Thibaw's desire to pursue his father’s policy of developing commercial and political relations with France.
In 1885, Thibaw signed a purely commercial treaty with France providing for trade. The British were intensely jealous of the growing French influence in Burma.
The British merchants feared that the rich Burmese market would be captured by their French and American rivals.
The British officials felt that an alliance with France might enable the king of Upper Burma to escape British tutelage or might even lead to the founding of a French dominion in Burma and so endanger the safety of their Indian Empire.
The French had already emerged as a major rival of Britain in South-East Asia.
In 1883, they had seized Annam (Central Vietnam), thus laying the foundation of their colony of Indo-China.
They were pushing actively towards North Vietnam, which they conquered between 1885 and 1889, and in the west towards Thailand and Burma.
The chambers of commerce in Britain and the British merchants in Rangoon now pressed the willing British Government for the immediate annexation of Upper Burma.
The policy of non-interference did not, however, last very long. From 1870 onwards, there was a resurgence of imperialism all over the world. The Anglo-Russian rivalry was also intensified.
The British Government was again keen on the commercial and financial penetration of Central Asia.
Anglo-Russian ambitions clashed ever, more openly in the Balkans and West Asia.
The British statesmen once again thought of bringing Afghanistan under direct political control so that it could serve as a base for British expansion in Central Asia.
The Indian Government was directed by London to make Afghanistan a subsidiary state whose foreign and defence policies would be definitely under British control.
Sher Ali, the Afghan ruler or Amir, was fully conscious of the Russian danger to his independence and he was, therefore, quite willing to cooperate with the British in eliminating any threat from the North.
Sher Ali offered the Government of India a defensive and offensive alliance against Russia and asked it for promise of extensive military aid in case of need against internal or foreign enemies.
The Indian Government refused to enter into any such reciprocal and unconditional commitment. It demanded instead the unilateral right to keep a British mission at Kabul and to exercise control over Afghanistan's foreign relations.
When Sher Ali refused to comply, he was declared to be anti-British and pro-Russian in his sympathies.
Lord Lytton, who had come to India as Governor-General in 1876, openly declared: "A tool in the hands of Russia, I will never allow him to become. Such a tool it would be my duty to break before it could be used."
Lytton proposed to effect "the gradual disintegration and weakening of the Afghan power."
To force British terms on the Amir, a new attack on Afghanistan was launched in 1878. Peace came in May 1879 when Sher Ali's son, Yakub Khan, signed the Treaty of Gandamak by which the British secured all they had desired.
They secured certain border districts, the right to keep a Resident at Kabul, and control over Afghanistan's foreign policy.
The British success was short lived. The national pride of the Afghans had been hurt and once again they rose to defend their independence.
On 3 September 1879, the British Resident, Major Cavagnari, and his military escort were attacked and killed by rebellious Afghan troops. Afghanistan was again Invaded and occupied.
Tibet lies to the north of India where the Himalayan peaks separate it from India. It was ruled by a Buddhist religious aristocracy (the Lamas) who had reduced the local population to serfdom and even slavery.
The chief political authority was exercised by the Dalai Lama, who claimed to be the living incarnation of the power of the Buddha.
The lamas wanted to isolate Tibet from the rest of the world; however, since the beginning of the 17th century, Tibet had recognized the nominal suzerainty of the Chinese Empire.
The Chinese Government also discouraged contacts with India though a limited trade and some pilgrim traffic between India and Tibet existed.
The Chinese Empire under the Manchu monarchy entered a period of decline during the 19th century. Gradually, Britain, France, Russia, Germany, Japan, and the United States of America penetrated China commercially and politically and established indirect political control over the Manchus.
The Chinese people also created a powerful anti-Manchu and anti-imperialist nationalist movement at the end of the 19th century and the Manchus were overthrown 'in 1911.
But the nationalists led by Dr. Sun Yat Sen failed to consolidate their power and China was torn by civil war during the next few years.
The result was that, China, since the middle of the 19th century, was in no position to assert even nominal control over Tibet. The Tibetan authorities still acknowledged in theory Chinese over lordship so that other foreign powers would not feel tempted to penetrate Tibet. But Tibet was not able to maintain its complete isolation for long.
Both Britain and Russia were keen to promote relations with Tibet. The British policy towards Tibet was governed by both economic and political considerations.
Economically, the British wanted to develop lndo-Tibetan trade and to exploit its rich mineral resources.
Politically, the British wanted to safeguard the northern frontier of India. But up to the end of the 19th century, the Tibetan authorities blocked all British efforts to penetrate it.
At this time, Russian ambitions also turned towards Tibet. Russian influence in Tibet was on the increase, this the British Government would not tolerate.
The Government of India, under Load Curzon, a vigorous empire builder, decided to take immediate action to counter Russian moves and to bring Tibet under its system of protected Border States.
According to some historians, the Russian danger was not real and was merely used as an excuse by Curzon to intervene in Tibet.
In March 1904, Curzon dispatched a military expedition to Lhasa, the Capital of Tibet, under Francis Younghusband.
In 1835, the Raja of Sikkim ceded to the British territory around Darjeeling in return for an annual money grant.
Friendly relations between the British and Raja (of Sikkim) were disturbed in 1849 when a minor quarrel led Dalhousie to send troops into Sikkim whose ruler was in the end forced to cede nearly 1700 square miles of his territory to British India.
In 1860, the second clash occurred when the British were engaged by the troops of the Diwan of Sikkim.
By the peace treaty signed in 1861, Sikkim was reduced to the status of a virtual protectorate.
The Raja of Sikkim expelled the Diwan and his relations from Sikkim, agreed to pay a fine of Rs. 7,000 as well as full compensation for British losses in the war, opened his country fully to British trade, and agreed to limit the transit duty on goods exchanged between India and Tibet via Sikkim.
In 1886, fresh trouble arose when the Tibetans tried to bring Sikkim under their control with the complicity of its rulers who were pro-Tibet. But the Government of India would not let this happen.
It looked upon Sikkim as an essential buffer for the security of India's northern frontier, particularly of Darjeeling and its tea-gardens. The British, therefore, carried out military operations against the Tibetans in Sikkim during 1888.
A settlement came in 1890 with the signing of an Anglo-Chinese agreement. The treaty recognized that Sikkim was a British protectorate over whose internal administration and foreign relations, the Government of India had the right to exercise exclusive control.
There was a sudden and quick collapse of the urban handicrafts, which had for centuries made India’s name a byword in the markets of the entire civilized world.
Indian goods made with primitive techniques could not compete with goods produced on a mass scale by powerful steam-operated machines.
The development of railways enabled British manufactures to reach and uproot the traditional industries in the remotest villages of the country.
The gradual destruction of rural crafts broke up the union between agricultural and domestic industry in the countryside and thus contributed to the destruction of the self-sufficient village economy.
In the very beginning of British rule in Bengal, the policy of Clive and Warren Hastings of extracting the largest possible land revenue had led to such devastation that even Cornwallis complained that one-third of Bengal had been transformed into “a jungle inhabited only by wild beasts.”
Over a period of time, the British rule introduced the concept of transferability of land; likewise, the British revenue system enabled the money-lender or the rich peasant to take possession of land.
The process of transfer of land from cultivators was intensified during periods of scarcity and famines.
By the end of the 19th century, the money-lender had become a major curse of the countryside and an important cause of the growing poverty of the rural people.
In 1911, the total rural debt was estimated at Rs 300 crores and by 1937, it was 1,800 crores.
The pressure of taxation and growing poverty pushed the cultivators into debt, which in turn increased their poverty.
The growing commercialization of agriculture also helped the money-lendercum-merchant to exploit the cultivator.
The Permanent Settlement in North Madras and the Ryotwari Settlement in the rest of Madras were equally harsh.
The modem Indian nationalism arose to meet the challenges of foreign domination.
It was British rule and its direct and indirect consequences, which provided the material, moral, and intellectual conditions for the development of a national movement in India.
The Indians realized gradually that their interests were being sacrificed to those of Lancashire manufacturers and other dominant British interests.
The foundations of the Indian nationalist movement lay in the fact that increasingly British rule became the major cause of India's economic backwardness. It became the major barrier to India's further economic, social, cultural, intellectual, and political development.
The peasants saw that the Government took away a large part of his produce as land revenue; that the Government and its machinery – the police, the courts, the officials – favored and protected the zamindars and landlords, who rack-rented them, and the merchants and money- lenders, who cheated and exploited him in diverse way and who took away their land.
The artisans or handicraftsmen saw that the foreign regime had helped foreign competition to ruin them and had done nothing to rehabilitate them.
All these three classes of Indian society—the peasants, the artisans, and the workers, constituting the overwhelming majority of Indian population — discovered that they had no political rights or powers, and that virtually nothing was being done for their intellectual or cultural improvement.
Education did not percolate down to them. There were hardly any schools in villages and the few that were there were poorly run.
Economic exploitation by Britain was swelling India’s poverty. They began to complain of the extreme costliness of the Indian administration, of the excessive burden of taxation especially on the peasantry, of the destruction of India's indigenous industries, of official attempts to check the growth of modern industries through a pro-British tariff policy, of the neglect of nation-building and welfare activities such as education, irrigation, sanitation, and health services.
The Indian intelligentsia suffered from growing unemployment. The few Indians who were educated were not able to find employment and even those who did find jobs discovered that most of the better paid jobs were reserved for the English middle and upper classes, who looked upon India as a special pasture for their sons.
The educated Indians found that the economic and cultural development of the country and its freedom from foreign control alone could provide them with better employment opportunities.
Instead, the Government and its bureaucracy favored foreign capitalists who came to India with their vast resources and appropriated the limited industrial field.
The Indian capitalists were particularly opposed to the strong competition from foreign capitalists. In the 1940's, many of the Indian industrialists demanded that "all British investments in India be repatriated."
In 1945, M.A. Master, President of the Indian Merchants' Chamber warned: "India would prefer to go without industrial development rather than allow the creation of new East India Companies in this country, which would not only militate against her economic independence, but would also effectively prevent her from acquiring her political freedom."
The Indian capitalists, therefore, realized that there existed a contradiction between imperialism and their own independent growth, and that only a national government would create conditions for the rapid development of Indian trade and industries.
As a result of the spread of modern western education and thought during the 19th century, a large number of Indians imbibed a modern rational, secular, democratic, and nationalist political outlook.
The Indians began to study, admire, and emulate the contemporary nationalist movements of the European nations. Rousseau, Paine, John Stuart Mill, and other western thinkers became their political guides, while Martini, Garibaldi, and Irish nationalist leaders became their political heroes.
The educated Indians were the first to feel the humiliation of foreign subjection. By becoming modern in their thinking, they also acquired the ability to study the evil effects of the foreign rule. They were inspired by the dream of a modern, strong, prosperous, and united India. In a course of time, the best among them became the leaders and organizers of the national movement.
In fact, in the schools and colleges, the authorities tried to inculcate notions of docility and servility to foreign rule. Nationalist ideas were a part of the general spread of modern ideas.
Modern education also created a certain uniformity and community of outlook and interests among the educated Indians. The English language played an important role in this respect. It became the medium for the spread of modern ideas. It also became the medium of communication and exchange of idea, between educated Indians from different linguistic regions of the country.
Political leaders like Dadabhai Naoroji, Sayyid Ahmed Khan, Justice Ranade, Tilak, and Gandhiji agitated for a bigger role for the Indian languages in the educational system.
The chief instrument through which the nationalist-minded Indians spread the message of patriotism and modern economic, social, and political ideas and created an all-India consciousness was the press.
In their columns, the official policies were constantly criticized; the Indian point of view was put forward; the people were asked to unite and work for national welfare; and ideas of self-government, democracy, industrialization, etc., were popularized among the people.
Some of the prominent nationalist newspapers of the period were the Hindu Patriot, the Amrita Bazar Patrika, the Indian Mirror, the Bengalee, the Som Prakash and the Sanjivani in Bengal; the Rast Goftar, the Native Opinion, the Indu Prakash, the Mahratta, and the Kesari (in Bombay); the Hindu, the Swadesamitran, the Andhra Prakasika, and the Kerala Patrika (in Madras); the Advocate, the Hindustani, and the Azad (in U. P.); and the Tribune, the AkhbarI-Am, and the Koh-i-Noor (in Punjab).
National literature in the form of novels, essays, and patriotic poetry also played an important role in arousing the national consciousness.
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and Rabindranath Tagore in Bengali, Lakshminath Bezbarua in Assamese; Vishnu Shastri Chiplunkar in Marathi, Subramanya Bharati in Tamil; Bharatendu Harishchandra in Hindi; and Altaf Husain Hah in Urdu were some of the prominent nationalist writers of the period.
Many Indians had fallen so low as to have lost confidence in their own capacity for self-government.
Many British officials and writers of the time constantly advanced the thesis that Indians had never been able to rule themselves in the past that Hindus and Muslims had always fought one another, that Indians were destined to be ruled by foreigners, that their religion and social life were degraded and uncivilized making them unfit for democracy or even self-government.
Many of the nationalist leaders tried to arouse the self-confidence and selfrespect of the people by countering this propaganda. They pointed to the cultural heritage of India with pride and referred the critics to the political achievements of rulers like Asoka, Chandragupta Vikramaditya, and Akbar.
Unfortunately, some of the nationalists went to the other extreme and began to glorify India's past uncritically ignoring its weakness and backwardness. Great harm was done, in particular, by the tendency to look up only to the heritage of ancient India while ignoring the equally great achievements of the medieval period.
The ignorance of medieval period encouraged the growth of communal sentiments among the Hindus and the counter tendency among the Muslims of looking to the history of the Arabs and the Turks for cultural and historical inspiration.
In meeting the challenge of cultural imperialism of the West, many Indians tended to ignore the fact that in many respects, the people of India were culturally backward.
A false sense of pride and smugness was produced, which tended to prevail Indians from looking critically at their society.
The growth of communal sentiments weakened the struggle against social and cultural backwardness, and led many Indians to turn away from healthy and fresh tendencies and ideas from other people.
By the 1870's, it was evident that Indian nationalism had gathered enough strength and momentum to appear as a major force on the Indian political scene. However, it required the reactionary regime of Lord Lytton to give it visible form and the controversy around the Ilbert Bill gave it an organized form.
During Lytton's viceroyalty from 1876-80, most of the import duties on British textile imports were removed to please the textile manufacturers of Britain. This action was interpreted by Indians as proof of the British desire to ruin the small but growing textile industry of India. It created a wave of anger in the country and led to widespread nationalist agitation.
The Second War against Afghanistan aroused vehement agitation against the heavy cost of this imperialist war, which the Indian Treasury was made to bear.
The Arms Act of 1878, which disarmed the people, appeared to them as an effort to emasculate the entire nation.
The Vernacular Press Act of 1878 was condemned by the politically conscious Indians as an attempt to suppress the growing nationalist criticism of the alien government.
The holding of the imperial Durbar at Delhi in 1877 at a time when the country was suffering from a terrible famine led people to believe that their rulers cared very little even for their lives.
In 1878, the government announced new regulations reducing the maximum age limit for sitting in the Indian Civil Service Examination from 21 years to 19.
Already Indian students had found it difficult to compete with English boys since the examination was conducted in England and through English medium. The new regulations further reduced their chances of entering the Civil Service.
The Indians now realized that the British had no intention of relaxing their near-total monopoly of the higher grades of services in the administration.
Lytton’s viceroyalty helped to intensify discontent against foreign rule.
In 1883, Ripon who succeeded Lytton as the Viceroy, tried to pass a law to enable Indian district magistrates and session judges to trial Europeans in criminal cases.
Under the existing law, even Indian members of the Indian Civil Service were not authorized to try Europeans in their courts.
The Europeans in India organized a vehement agitation against this Bill, which came to be known as Ilbert Bill (after Ilbert, the Law Member).
The Ilbert Bill poured abuse on Indians and their culture and character. They declared that even the most highly educated among the Indians were unfit to trial a European.
Banerjea began his public career in 1875 by delivering brilliant addresses on nationalist topics to the students of Calcutta.
Led by Surendranath and Anandamohan Bose, the younger nationalists of Bengal founded the Indian Association in July 1876.
The Indian Association set before itself the aims of creating a strong public opinion in the country on political questions and the unification of the Indian people on a common political program.
In order to attract large numbers of people to its banner, the Indian Association fixed a low membership fee for the poorer classes.
The first major issue that the Indian Association took up for agitation was the reform of the Civil Service regulations and the raising of the age limit for its examination.
Surendranath Banerjea toured different parts of the country during 1877-78 in an effort to create an all-India public opinion on this question.
The Indian Association also carried out agitation against the Arms Act and the Vernacular Press Act and in favor of protection of the tenants from oppression by the reminders.
During 1883-85, the Indian Association organized popular demonstrations of thousands of peasants to get the Rent Bill changed in favor of the tenants.
The Indian Association agitated for better conditions of work for the workers in the English-owned tea plantations.
Many branches of the Indian Association were opened in the towns and villages of Bengal and also in many towns outside Bengal.
Some other Important Public Associations were −
Justice Ranade and others organized the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha in the 1870's.
The Madras Mahajan Sabha was started in 1881 and the Bombay Presidency Association in 1885.
The most important of the pre-Congress nationalist organizations was the Indian Association of Calcutta.
The Poona Sarvajanik Sabha brought out a quarterly journal under the guidance of Justice Ranade. This journal became the intellectual guide of new India, particularly on economic questions.
These organizations were mainly devoted to criticism of important administrative and legislative measures.
The aims of the National Congress were declared to be −
Promotion of friendly relations among nationalist political workers residing in different parts of the country;
Development and consolidation of the feeling of national unity irrespective of caste, religion, or province;
Formulation of popular demands and their presentation before the Government; and
Training and organization of public opinion in the country.
One of the main aims of Hume in helping to found the National Congress was to provide an outlet i.e. 'a safety valve'—to the increasing popular discontent against British rule.
In 1879, Wasudeo Balwant Phadke, a clerk in the commissariat department, had gathered a band of Ramoshi peasants and started an armed uprising in Maharashtra. Though this crude and an ill-prepared attempt was easily crushed, it was a portent of events to come.
Hume as well as other English officials and statesmen were afraid that the educated Indians might provide leadership to the masses and organize a powerful rebellion against the foreign government. As Hume put it: "A safety valve for the escape of great and growing forces generated by our own action was urgently needed."
Hume believed that the National Congress would provide a peaceful and constitutional outlet to the discontent among the educated Indians and would thus help to avoid the outbreak of a popular revolt.
The National Congress represented the urge of the politically conscious Indians to set up a national organization to work for their political and economic advancement.
In any case, the Indian leaders, who cooperated with Hume in starting this National Congress, were patriotic men of high character who willingly accepted Hume's help as they did not want to arouse official hostility towards their efforts at so early stage of political activity.
Surendranath Banerjea and many other leaders of Bengal had not attended the first session of the National Congress as they were busy with the Second National Conference at Calcutta.
In 1886, Surendranath Banerjea and other leaders of Bengal merged their forces with those of the National Congress whose second session met in Calcutta in December 1886 under the president-ship of Dadabhai Naoroji.
From the Calcutta session, the National Congress became 'the whole country's Congress'. Its delegates, numbering 436, were elected by different local organizations and groups.
The National Congress met every year in December, in a different part of the country.
The number of its delegates soon increased to thousands. Its delegates consisted mostly of lawyers, journalists, traders, industrialists, teachers, and landlords.
In 1890, Kadambini Ganguli, the first woman graduate of Calcutta University addressed the Congress session.
This was symbolic of the fact that India's straggle for freedom would raise Indian women from the degraded position to which they had been reduced for centuries past.
Some of the great presidents of the National Congress during its early years were Dadabhai Naoroji, Badruddin Tyabji, Pherozeshah Mehta, P. Ananda Charlu, Surendranath Banerjea, Ramesh Chandra Dutt, Ananda Mohan Bose, and Gopal Krishna Gokhale.
The Indian national movement up to 1905 was dominated by leaders who have often been described as moderate nationalists or Moderates.
The political methods of the Moderates can be summed up briefly as constitutional agitation within the four walls of the law and slow orderly political progress.
Moderates believed that if public opinion was created and organized and popular demands presented to the authorities through petitions, meetings, resolutions, and speeches, the authorities would concede these demands gradually and step by step.
In 1889, the British Committee started a journal called ‘India.’
Dadabhai Naoroji spent a major part of his life and income in England in popularizing India’s case among England’s people.
Moderates genuinely believed that the continuation of India's political connection with Britain was in the interests of India at that stage of history. They, therefore, planned not to expel the British but to transform British rule to approximate to national rule.
Later, when Moderates took note of the evils of British rule and the failure of the government to accept nationalist demands for reform, many of them stopped talking of loyalty to British rule and started demanding selfgovernment for India.
From the beginning, many nationalist leaders had no faith in the good intentions of the British. They believed in depending on political action by, and the strength of the Indian people themselves.
Tilak and numerous other leaders and newspaper editors represented the trend, that later came to be known as Extremists or radical nationalists.
The most important reformer among the Muslims was Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-1898). He was tremendously impressed by modern scientific thought and worked all his life to reconcile it with Islam.
Sayyid Ahmad Khan, first of all, declared that the Quran alone was the authoritative work for Islam and all other Islamic writings were secondary.
Sayyid Ahmad Khan urged the people to develop a critical approach and freedom of thought. He said, "so long as freedom of thought is not developed, there can be no civilized life."
He also warned against fanaticism, narrow-mindedness, and exclusiveness, and urged students and others to be broadminded and tolerant. A closed mind, he said, was the hallmark of social and intellectual backwardness.
Therefore promotion of modern education remained his first task throughout his life. As an official, he founded schools in many towns and had many western books translated into Urdu.
In 1875, Sayyid Ahmad Khan founded the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh as a center for spreading western sciences and culture. Later, this College grew into the Aligarh Muslim University.
Sayyd Ahmad Khan was a great believer in religious toleration. He believed that all religions had a certain underlying unity, which could be called practical morality. Believing that a person's religion was his or her private affair, he roundly condemned any sign of religious bigotry in personal relations. He was also opposed to communal friction. He appealed to Hindus and Muslims to unite.
Sayyid Ahmad Khan wrote in favor of raising the women's status in society and advocated removal of purdah and spread of education among women. He also condemned the customs of polygamy and easy divorce.
Sayyid Ahmad Khan was helped by a band of loyal followers who are collectively described as the Aligarh School.
The Hindus were divided into numerous castes (jath). The caste, into which a person was born, determined large areas of his/her life.
The caste system determined whom he/she would marry and with whom he/she would didn’t.
Caste largely determined one’s profession and his social loyalties. The castes were carefully graded into a hierarchy of status.
At the bottom of the ranking, scheduled castes (or untouchables caste) came, they constituted about 20 per cent of the Hindu population.
The untouchables suffered from numerous and severe disabilities and restrictions, which of course varied from place to place. Their touch was considered impure and was a source of pollution.
In some parts of the country, particularly in the South, their shadow was avoided, so that they had to move away if a Brahmin was seen or heard coming.
The scheduled caste could not enter the Hindu temples or study the shartras.
Often scheduled caste’s children could not attend a school in which children of upper caste (of Hindus) studied.
Public services such as the police and other were closed for them.
The untouchables were forced to take up menial and other such jobs which were considered as 'unclean,' for example, scavenging, shoe-making, removing dead bodies, skinning dead animals, tanning hides and skins, etc.
The caste system was an evil in modern times, it became a major obstacle in the growth of a united national feeling and the spread of democracy.
The introduction of modern industries, railways, and buses and growing urbanization made it difficult to prevent mass contact among persons of different castes, especially in the cities.
Modern commerce and industry opened new fields of economic activity to all.
Modern democratic and rationalist ideas spread among Indians and they raised their voice against the caste system.
The Brahma Samaj, the Prarthana Samaj, the Arya Samaj, the Ramakrishna Mission, the Theosophists, the Social Conference, and nearly all the great reforms of the 19th century attacked on the caste system.
The growth of the national movement played a significant role in waning the caste system. The national movement was opposed to all institutions which tended to divide Indian people.
All his life, Gandhi ji kept the abolition of untouchability in the front of his public activities.
The politics of the moderate nationalists were founded on the belief that British rule could be reformed from within. But the spread of knowledge regarding political and economic questions gradually undermined this belief.
The nationalist writers and agitators blamed British rule for the poverty of the people. Politically conscious Indians were convinced that the purpose of British rule was to exploit India economically, that is, to enrich England at the cost of India.
The nationalists realized that India could make little progress in the economic field unless British imperialism was replaced by a government controlled and run by the Indian people.
In 1898, a law was passed making it an offence to excite "feelings of disaffection" towards the foreign government.
In 1899, the number of Indian members in the Calcutta Corporation was reduced.
In 1904, the Indian Official Secrets Act was passed restricting the freedom of the press.
The Nathu brothers were deported in 1897 without trial; even the charges against them were not made public.
In 1897, Lokamanya Tilak and other newspaper editors were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment for arousing the people against the foreign government.
The moderate leader Gokhale complained that "the bureaucracy was growing frankly selfish and openly hostile to national aspirations."
The Indian Universities Act of 1904 was seen by the nationalists as an attempt to bring Indian universities under tighter official control and to check the growth of higher education.
Gradually, an increasing number of Indians were getting convinced that selfgovernment was essential for the sake of the economic, political, and cultural progress of the country and that political enslavement meant stunting the growth of the Indian people.
A noticeable part in the Swadeshi agitation was played by the students of Bengal. They practiced and propagated swadeshi and took the lead in organizing picketing of shops selling foreign cloth. They were perhaps the main creators of the swadeshi spirit in Bengal.
The government made every attempt to suppress the students. Orders were issued to penalize those schools and colleges whose students took an active part in the Swadeshi agitation: their grants-in-aid and other privileges were to be withdrawn.
Many students were fined, expelled from schools and colleges, arrested, and some time beaten by the police. However, students refused to be cowed down.
The traditionally home-centered women of the urban middle classes joined processions and picketing. Likewise, from this time, students were taken an active part in the nationalist movement.
Many prominent Muslims joined the Swadeshi movement including Abdul Rasul, the famous barrister, Liaquat Husain, the popular agitator, and Guznavi, the businessman.
Tilak quickly observed that with the inauguration of this movement in Bengal, a new chapter in the history of Indian nationalism had opened i.e. the challenge and an opportunity to lead a popular struggle against the British Raj and to unite the entire country in one bond of common sympathy.
The Governments of the two Bengals, particularly of East Bengal made active efforts to divide Hindus and Muslims. Seeds of Hindu-Muslim disunity in Bengal politics were perhaps sown at this time, which embittered the nationalists.
As the consequences of Swadeshi movement −
Shouting of ‘Bande Mataram’ in public streets in East Bengal was banned;
Public meetings were restricted and sometimes forbidden;
Laws controlling the press were enacted;
Swadeshi workers were prosecuted and imprisoned for the long periods;
Many students were given corporal punishment;
Prosecutions against a large number of nationalist newspapers were launched and freedom of the press was completely suppressed;
Military police was stationed in many towns where it clashed with the people;
In December 1908, nine Bengal leaders, including the venerable Krishna Kumar Mitra and Ashwini Kumar Dutt were deported;
Earlier in 1907, Lala Lajpat Rai and Ajit Singh had been deported; and
In 1908, the great Tilak was again arrested and given the savage sentence of 6 years imprisonment.
Government repression and frustration caused by the failure of the political struggle ultimately resulted in revolutionary terrorism.
The Yugantar wrote on 22 April 1906 after the Barisal Conference: "The remedy lies with the people themselves. The 30 crores of people inhabiting India must raise their 60 crores of hands to stop this curse of oppression. Force must be stopped by force."
The revolutionary young men did not try to generate a mass revolution. Instead, they decided to copy the methods of the Irish terrorists and the Russian Nihilists, that is, to assassinate unpopular officials.
In 1897, the Chapekar brothers assassinated two unpopular British officials at Poona.
In 1904, V.D. Savarkar had organized the Abhinava Bharat, a secret society of revolutionaries.
After 1905, several newspapers had begun to advocate revolutionary terrorism. The Sandhya and the Yugantar in Bengal and the Kal in Maharashtra were the most prominent among them.
In April 1908, Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki threw a bomb at a carriage, which they believed was occupied by Kingsford, the unpopular Judge at Muzzaffarpur. Prafulla Chaki shot himself dead while Khudiram Bose was hanged.
Many secret societies of terrorist youth came into existence. The most famous of these was the Anushilan Samiti whose Dacca section alone had 500 branches.
Soon terrorist societies became active in the rest of the country also. They became so bold as to throw a bomb at the Viceroy, Lord Harding, while he was riding on an elephant in a state procession at Delhi. The Viceroy was wounded.
The terrorists also established centers of activity abroad. In London, the lead was taken by Shyamji Krishnavarma, V.D. Savarkar, and Har Dayal, while in Europe Madam Cama and Ajit Singh were the prominent leaders.
The terrorists did make a valuable contribution to the growth of nationalism in India.
After Bengal partition, all sections of the National Congress united in opposing the partition and supported the Swadeshi and Boycott movement of Bengal.
There was much public debate and disagreement between the moderate and the militant nationalists. While the latter wanted to extend the mass movement in Bengal as well as in the rest of the country, the Moderates wanted to confine the movement to Bengal and even there to limit it to Swadeshi and Boycott.
There was a tussle between the militant nationalists and moderates for the president-ship of the National Congress. In the end, Dadabhai Naoroji, respected by all nationalists as a great patriot, was chosen as a compromise.
Dadabhai electrified the nationalist ranks by openly declaring in his presidential address that the goal of the Indian national movement was 'self-government' or Swaraj, like that of the United Kingdom or the colonies.
The split between the two came at the Surat session of the National Congress in December 1907: The moderate leaders having captured the machinery of the Congress excluded the militant elements from it.
In the long run, the split did not prove useful to either party. The moderate leaders lost touch with the younger generation of nationalists.
The British Government played the game of 'Divide and Rule' and tried to win over moderate nationalist opinion so that the militant nationalists could be isolated and suppressed.
To appease the moderate nationalists it announced constitutional concessions through the Indian Councils Act of 1909, which are known as the Morley-Minto Reforms of 1909.
In 1911, the Government also announced the cancellation of the partition of Bengal. Western and eastern Bengals were to be reunited while a new province consisting of Bihar and Orissa was to be created.
In 1911, the seat of the Central Government was moved from Calcutta to Delhi
The Morley-Minto Reforms Increased the number of elected members in the Imperial Legislative Council and the provincial councils. But most of the elected members were elected indirectly, by the provincial councils in the case of the Imperial Council and by municipal committees and district boards in the case of provincial councils. Some of the elected seats were reserved for landlords and British capitalists in India.
Out of the 68 members of the Imperial Legislative Council, 36 were officials and 5 were nominated non-officials.
Of the 27 elected members, 6 were to represent the big landlords and 2 the British capitalists.
The reformed councils still enjoyed no real power, being merely advisory bodies. The reforms in no way changed the undemocratic and foreign character of British rule or the fact of foreign economic exploitation of the country.
The Reforms also introduced the system of separate electorates under which all Muslims were grouped in separate constituencies from which Muslims alone could be elected. This was done for the sake of protecting the Muslim minority. But in reality, this was a part of the policy of dividing Hindus and Muslims and thus maintaining British supremacy in India.
The system of separate electorates was based on the idea that the political and economic interests of Hindus and Muslims were separate. This notion was unscientific because religions cannot be the basis of political and economic interests or of political groupings.
The moderate nationalists did not fully support the Morley-Minto Reforms. They soon realized that the Reforms had really not granted much.
Modern political consciousness was late in developing among the Muslims. As nationalism spread among the Hindus and Parsees of the lower middle class, it failed to grow equally rapidly among the Muslims of the same class.
After the suppression of the 1857 Revolt, the British officials had taken a particularly vindictive attitude towards the Muslims, hanging 27,000 Muslims in Delhi alone.
To check the growth of a united national feeling in the country, the British decided to follow more actively the policy of 'Divide and Rule' and to divide the people along religious lines. They encourage communal and separatist tendencies in Indian politics.
The British promoted provincialism by talking of Bengali domination. They tried to utilize the caste structure to turn the non-Brahmins against Brahmins and the lower castes against the higher castes.
In U.P. and Bihar, where Hindus and Muslims had always lived in peace, the British actively encouraged the movement to replace Urdu as a court language by Hindi.
Sayyid Ahmad Khan laid the foundations of Muslim communalism when in the 1880's he gave up his earlier views and declared that the political interests of Hindus and Muslims were not the same but different and even divergent.
Sayyid Ahmad Khan preached complete obedience to British rule. When the Indian National Congress was founded in 1885, he decided to oppose it and tried to organize along with Raja Shiva Prasad of Varanasi a movement of loyalty to British rule.
Sayyid Ahmad Khan urged the Muslims not to listen to Badruddin Tyabji’s appeal to join the National Congress.
Sayyid Ahmed Khan and others raised the demand for special treatment for the Muslims in the matter of government services.
Bombay was the only province where the Muslims had taken to commerce and education quite early; and the Nationalist Congress included in its ranks such brilliant Muslims as Badruddin Tyabji, R.M. Sayani, A. Bhhimji, and the young barrister Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
In his presidential address to the National Congress of 1886, Dadabhai had given the clear assurance that the Congress would take up only national questions and would not deal with religious and social matters.
In 1889, the Congress adopted the principle that it would not take up any proposal which was considered harmful to the Muslims by a majority of the Muslim delegates to the Congress.
Many Hindus began to talk of Hindu nationalism and many Muslims of Muslim nationalism.
The politically immature people failed to realize that their economic, educational, and cultural difficulties were the result of common subjection to foreign rule and of economic backwardness and that only through common effort they could free their country, develop it economically, and thus solve the underlying common problems, such as unemployment and poverty.
In 1906, the All India Muslim League was founded under the leadership of the Aga Khan, the Nawab of Dacca, and Nawab Mohsin-ul-Mulk.
Two Home Rule Leagues were started in 1915-16, one under the leadership of Annie Besant, and S. Subramaniya Iyer.
The two Home Rule Leagues carried out intense propaganda all over the country in favor of the demand for the grant of Home Rule or self-government to India after the War.
It was during Home Rule agitation, Tilak gave the popular slogan i.e. “Home Rule is my birth-right, and I will have it.”
The war period also witnessed the growth of the revolutionary movement, as the terrorist groups spread from Bengal and Maharashtra to the whole of northern India.
Indian revolutionary in the United States of America and Canada had established the “Ghadar (Rebellion) Party in 1913.”
Most of the members of Ghadar Party were Sikh peasants and soldiers, but their leaders were mostly educated Hindus or Muslims.
Ghadar Party had active members in some other countries as well including Mexico, Japan, China, Philippines, Malaya, Singapore, Thailand, East and South Africa.
The Ghadar Party was pledged to wage a revolutionary war against the British in India.
As soon as the First World War I broke out in 1914, the Ghadarites decided to send arms and men to India to start an uprising with the help of soldiers and local revolutionaries.
Several thousand men volunteered to come back to India. Millions of dollars were contributed to pay for their expenses. Many gave their life-long savings and sold their lands and other property.
The Ghadarites also contacted Indian soldiers in the Far East, South-East Asia, and all over India and persuaded several regiments to rebel.
21 February 1915 was fixed as the date for an armed revolt in the Punjab. Unfortunately, the British authorities came to know of Ghadarites’ plans and took immediate action.
The rebellious regiments were disbanded and their leaders were either imprisoned or hanged. For example, 12 men of the 23rd Cavalry were executed. The leaders and members of the Ghadar Party in the Punjab were arrested on a mass scale.
42 of arrested men were hanged, 114 were transported for life, and 93 were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment.
Many of the Ghadarites, after their release, founded the Kirti and Communist movements in the Punjab. Some of the prominent Ghadar leaders were: Baba Gurmukh Singh, Kartar Singh Saraba, Sohan Singh Bhakna, Rahmat Ali Shah, Bhai Parmanand, and Mohammad Barkatullah.
Inspired by the Ghadar Party, 700 men of the 5th Light Infantry at Singapore revolted under the leadership of Jamadar Chisti Khan and Subedar Dundey Khan. They were crushed after a bitter battle in which many died. Thirty-seven others were publicly executed, while 41 were transported for life.
In 1915, during an unsuccessful revolutionary attempt, Jatin Mukerjea popularly known as 'Bagha Jatin’ died while fighting a battle with the police at Balasore.
Rash Bihari Bose, Raja Mahendra Pratap, Lala Hardayal, Abdul Rahim, Maulana Obaidullah Sindhi, Champak Raman Pillai, Sardar Singh Rana, and Madam Cama were some of the prominent Indians who carried on revolutionary activities and propaganda outside India.
To win popular support for their war effort, the Allied nations – Britain, the United States, France, Italy, and Japan, promised a new era of democracy and national self-determination to all the peoples of the world; but after their victory, they showed little willingness to end the colonial system.
Nationalism had gathered its forces and the nationalists were expecting major political gains after the war; and they were willing to fight back if their expectations were thwarted.
The economic situation in the post-war years had taken a turn for the worse. There was first a rise in prices and then a depression in economic activity.
The Indian industries, which had prospered during the war because foreign imports of manufactured goods had ceased, now faced losses and closure.
The Indian industrialists wanted protection of their industries through imposition of high customs duties and grant of government aid; they realized that a strong nationalist movement and an independent Indian Government alone could secure their demands.
The workers, facing unemployment and high prices and living in great poverty, also turned actively towards the nationalist movement.
Indian Soldiers, returned with their triumphs from Africa, Asia, and Europe, imparted some of their confidence and their knowledge of the wide world to the rural areas.
The peasantry, groaning under deepening poverty and high taxation, was waiting for a lead. On the other hand, the urban educated Indians were dissented because of increasing unemployment.
A major impetus to the national movements was given by the impact of the Russian Revolution.
On 7 November 1917, the Bolshevik (Communist) Party, led by V.I. Lenin, overthrew the Czarist regime in Russia and declared the formation of the first socialist state, the Soviet Union, in the history of the world.
The Russian Revolution gave people self-confidence and indicated to the leaders of the national movement that they should rely on the strength of the common people.
The Government, aware of the rising tide of nationalist and anti-government sentiments, once again decided to follow the policy of the 'carrot and the stick,' in other words, of concessions and repression.
After attaining his legal education in Britain, Gandhiji went to South Africa to practice law.
Imbued with a high sense of justice, Gandhiji was revolted by the injustice, discrimination, and degradation to which Indians had to submit in the South African colonies.
Indian laborers who had gone to South Africa, and the merchants who followed were denied the right to vote. They had to register and pay a poll-tax. They could not reside except in prescribed locations, which were insanitary and congested.
In some of the South African colonies, the Asians, also the Africans, could not stay out of door after 9 p.m.; nor could they use public footpaths.
Gandhi soon became the leader of the struggle against these conditions and during 1893-94 was engaged in a heroic though unequal struggle against the racist authorities of South Africa.
It was during this long struggle lasting nearly two decades that Gandhiji evolved the technique of Satyagraha based on truth and non-violence.
The ideal satyagrahi was to be truthful and perfectly peaceful, but at the same time, Gandhiji would refuse to submit to what he considered wrong. He would accept suffering willingly in the course of struggle against the wrong-doer. This struggle was to be part of his love of truth.
In a famous article in his weekly journal, Young India, published in 1920, Gandhiji wrote that "Non-violence is the law of our species, as violence is the law of the brute", but that "where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence ....."
Gandhiji returned to India in 1915 at the age of 46. He was keen to serve his country and his people.
In 1916, Gandhi founded the Sabarmati Ashram at Ahmedabad where his friends and followers were to learn and, practice the ideals of truth and nonviolence.
The politically-conscious Muslims were critical of the treatment meted out to the Ottoman (or Turkish) Empire by Britain and its allies who had partitioned it and taken away Thrace from Turkey proper.
This was in violation of the earlier pledge of the British Premier, Lloyd George, who had declared: "Nor are we fighting to deprive Turkey of the rich and renowned lands of Asia Minor and Thrace which are predominantly Turkish in race."
The Muslims also felt that the position of the Sultan of Turkey, who was also regarded by many as the Caliph or the religious head of the Muslims, should not be undermined.
A Khilafat Committee was soon formed under the leadership of the Ali brothers, Maulana Azad, Hakim Ajmal Khan, and Hasrat Mohani, and a countrywide agitation was organized.
The All-India Khilafat Conference held at Delhi in November 1919, decided to withdraw all cooperation from the Government if their demands were not met.
The Muslim League, now under the leadership of nationalists, gave full support to the National Congress and its agitation on political issues.
The Congress leaders, including Lokamanya Tilak and Mahatma Gandhi, viewed the Khilafat agitation as a golden opportunity for cementing Hindu-Muslim unity and bringing the Muslim masses into the national movement.
The Congress leaders realized that different sections of the people—Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians, capitalists and workers, peasants and artisans, women and youth, and tribes and peoples of different regions—would come into the national movement through the experience of fighting for their own different demands and seeing that the alien regime stood in opposition to them.
In June 1920, an all-party conference met at Allahabad and approved a program of boycott of schools, colleges, and law courts.
The Khilafat Committee launched a non-cooperation movement on 31 August 1920.
The Congress met in special session in September 1920 at Calcutta. Only a few weeks earlier it had suffered a grievous loss—Lokamanya Tilak had passed away on 1 August at the age of 64.
The Congress supported Gandhi's plan for non-cooperation with the Government till the Punjab and Khilafat wrongs were removed and Swaraj established.
“The British people will have to beware,” declared Gandhiji at Nagpur, that if they do not want to do justice, it will be the bounden duty of every Indian to destroy the Empire.
The Nagpur session also made changes in the constitution of the Congress. Provincial Congress Committees were reorganized on the basis of linguistic areas.
Congress membership was thrown open to all men and women of the age of 21 or more on payment of 4 annas as annual subscription. However, in 1921, the age limit for membership was reduced to 18.
The years 1921 and 1922 witnessed an unprecedented movement of the Indian people. Thousands of students left government schools and colleges and joined national schools and colleges.
Hundreds of lawyers, including Chittaranjan Das (popularly known as Deshbandhu), Motilal Nehru, and Rajendra Prasad, gave up their legal practice.
The Tilak Swarajya Fund was started to finance the non-cooperation movement and within six months, over crore of rupees were subscribed.
Women showed great enthusiasm and freely offered their jewelry.
Huge bonfires of foreign cloth were organized all over the land.
Khadi soon became a symbol of freedom.
In July 1921, the All-India Khilafat Committee passed a resolution declaring that no Muslim should serve in the British Indian army.
In September, the Ali brothers were arrested for 'sedition'. Immediately, Gandhiji gave a call for repetition of this resolution at hundreds of meetings.
Fifty members of the All India Congress Committee issued a similar declaration that no Indian should serve the government which degraded India socially, economically, and politically.
By the end of 1921, all important nationalist leaders, except Gandhiji, were behind the bar along with 3,000 others.
In November 1921, huge demonstrations greeted the Prince of Wales, heir to the British throne, during his tour of India. He had been asked by the Government to come to India to encourage loyalty among the people and the princes.
In Bombay, the Government tried to suppress the demonstration by killing 53 persons and wounding about 400 or more.
The annual session of the Congress, meeting at Ahmedabad in December 1921, passed a resolution affirming "the fixed determination of the Congress to continue the program of non-violent non-cooperation with greater vigor than hitherto ….till the Punjab and Khilafat wrongs were redressed and Swarajya is established."
The resolution urged all Indians, and in particular students, "quietly and without any demonstration to offer themselves for arrest by belonging to the volunteer organizations."
All such Satyagrahis were to take a pledge to "remain non-violent in word and deed to promote unity among Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Parsis, Christians, and Jews, and to practice swadeshi and wear only khadi.
In Malabar (Northern Kerala), the Moplahs, or Muslim peasants, created a powerful anti-zamindar movement.
The Viceroy wrote to the Secretary of State in February 1919 that "The lower classes in the towns have been seriously affected by the non-cooperation movement.
On 1 February 1922, Mahatma Gandhi announced that he would start mass civil disobedience, including non-payment of taxes, unless within seven days the political prisoners were released and the press freed from government control.
Very soon the Khilafat, question also lost relevance. The people of Turkey rose up under the leadership of Mustafa Kamal Pasha and, in November 1922, deprived the Sultan of his political power.
Kamal Pasha took many measures to modernize Turkey and to make it a secular state. He abolished the Caliphate (or the institution of the Caliph) and separated the state from religion by eliminating Islam from the Constitution.
Kamal Pasha nationalized education, granted women extensive rights, introduced legal codes based on European models, and took steps to develop agriculture and to introduce modern industries. All these steps broke the back of the Khilafat agitation.
In December 1922, Chittaranjan Das and Motilal Nehru formed the Congress-Khilafat Swaraj Party; Das as president and Motilal Nehru as one of the secretaries.
The communal elements took advantage of the situation to propagate their views and after 1923, the country was repeatedly plunged into communal riots.
The Muslim League and the Hindu Mahasabha, which was founded in December 1917, once again became active. The result was that the growing feeling that all people were Indians first received a set-back.
The Swarajist Party, whose main leaders, Motilal Nehru and Das, were staunch nationalists, was split by communalism.
A group known as “responsivists” including Madan Mohan Malviya, Lala Lajpat Rai, and N. C. Kelkar, offered cooperation to the Government so that the socalled Hindu interests might be safeguarded.
In September 1924, Gandhiji went on 21 days fast at Maulana Mohammed Ali’s house in Delhi to do penance for the inhumanity revealed in the communal riots. But his efforts were of little avail.
The failure of the first non-cooperation movement had led to the revival of the terrorist movement. Therefore, after an All India Conference, the Hindustan Republican Association was founded in October 1924 to organize an armed revolution.
The terrorists soon came under the influence of socialist ideas; in 1928, under the leadership of Chandra Shekhar Azad, changed the title of the organization from the “Hindustan Republican Association” to the “Hindustan Socialist Republican Association.”
Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt threw a bomb in the Central Legislative Assembly on 8 April 1929 to protest against the passage of the Public Safety Bill, which would have reduced civil liberties.
The bomb did not harm anyone, as it had been deliberately made harmless. The aim was not to kill but, as a terrorist leaflet put it, “to make the deaf hear.”
Bhagat Singh and B. K. Dutt could have easily escaped after throwing the bomb, but they deliberately chose to be arrested for they wanted to make use of the court as a forum for revolutionary propaganda.
In April 1930, a raid was manipulated on the government armory at Chittagong under the leadership of Surya Sen.
The remarkable aspect of the terrorist movement in Bengal was the participation of young women.
To protest against the horrible conditions in the prisons, Jatin Das sat on hunger strike; as a result of which, he attained martyrdom after 63 days of epic fast.
In spite of huge protests, Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, and Rajguru were executed on 23 March 1931.
In February, 1931, Chandra Shekhar Azad was killed in a shooting encounter with the police in a public park; later this park renamed as Azad Park (located at Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh).
Surya Sen was arrested in February 1933 and hanged soon after.
In March 1929, thirty-one prominent trade union and communist leaders (including three Englishmen) were arrested and after a trial (known as Meerut Conspiracy Case) lasting four years, sentenced for long periods of imprisonment.
The Second Civil Disobedience Movement was started by Gandhiji on March 12, 1930 with his famous Dandi March.
Together with 78 chosen followers, Gandhiji walked nearly 200 miles from Sabarmati Ashram to Dandi, a village on the Gujarat sea-coast. Here Gandhiji and his followers made salt in violation of the salt laws.
The act of making salt was a symbol of the Indian people's refusal to live under British-made laws or under the British rule.
The movement now spread rapidly. Everywhere in the country, people joined strikes, demonstrations, and the campaign to boycott foreign goods and to refuse to pay taxes.
The movement reached the extreme north-western corner of India and stirred the brave and hardy Pathans.
Under the leadership of Khan Abdul Ghaffer Khan, popularly known as "the Frontier Gandhi", the Pathans organized the society of Khudai Khidmatgars (or Servants of God), known popularly as Red Shirts.
Nagaland produced a brave heroine i.e. Rani Gaidinliu who at the age of 13 responded to the call of Gandhiji and the Congress and raised the banner of rebellion against foreign rule.
The young Rani was captured in 1932 and sentenced to life imprisonment. She wasted her bright youthful years in the dark cells of various Assam jails, to be released only in 1947 by the Government of free India.
The British Government summoned in London in 1930, the first Round Table Conference of Indian leaders and spokesmen of the British Government to discuss the Simon Commission Report. But the National Congress boycotted the Conference and its proceedings proved abortive.
Lord Irwin and Gandhi negotiated a settlement in March 1931. The Government agreed to release those political prisoners who had remained non-violent, while the Congress suspended the Civil Disobedience Movement and agreed to take part in the Second Round Table Conference.
The Karachi Session of Congress is also notable for a resolution on Fundamental Rights and the National Economic Program. The resolution guaranteed basic civil and political rights to the people.
Gandhiji went to England in September 1931 to attend the Second Round Table Conference. But in spite of his powerful advocacy, the British Government refused to concede the basic nationalist demand for freedom on the basis of the immediate grant of Dominion Status. On his return, the Congress resumed the Civil Disobedience Movement.
After the Third Round Table Conference, the Government of India Act of 1935 passed.
The Act provided for the establishment of an All India Federation and a new system of government for the provinces on the basis of provincial autonomy.
The federation was to be based on a union of the provinces of British India and the Princely States.
There would be a bicameral federal legislature in which the States were given disproportionate weightage.
The representatives of the States were not to be elected by the people, but appointed directly by the rulers.
Only 14 per cent of the total population in British India was given the right to vote. Even this legislature, in which the Princes were once again to be used to check and counter the nationalist elements, was denied the real power.
Defence and foreign affairs remained outside the legislature’s control, while the Governor-General retained special control over the other subjects.
The Governor-General and the Governors were to be appointed by the British Government and were responsible for the governance.
In the provinces, local power was increased. The ministers responsible to the provincial assemblies were to control all departments of provincial administration. But the Governors were given special powers. They could veto legislative action and legislate on their own.
Moreover, the government retained full control over the civil service and the police.
The Act could not satisfy the nationalist aspiration for both political and economic power continued to be concentrated in the hands of the British Government.
Foreign rule was to continue as before, only a few popularly elected ministers were to be added to the structure of British administration in India.
The Congress condemned the Act as "totally disappointing."
The federal part of the Act was never introduced, but the provincial part was soon put into operation.
Though bitterly opposed to the Act, the Congress contested the elections under the new Act of 1935.
The elections conclusively demonstrated that a large majority of Indian people supported the Congress, which swept the polls in most of the provinces.
Congress ministries were formed in July 1937 in seven out of eleven provinces. Later, Congress formed coalition governments in two others. Only Bengal and the Punjab had non-Congress ministries.
The decade of 1930s witnessed the rapid growth of socialist ideas within and outside the Congress.
In 1929, there was a great economic slump or depression in the United States, which gradually spread to the rest of the world resulting in economic distress and unemployment on a large scale (across the world). But the economic situation in the Soviet Union was just the opposite. There was not only no slump, but the years between 1929 and 1936 witnessed the successful completion of the first two Five Year Plans, which increased the Soviet industrial production by more than four times.
The world depression, thus, brought the capitalist system into disrepute and drew attention towards Marxism, socialism, and economic planning. Consequently, socialist ideas began to attract more and more people, especially the young, the workers, and the peasants.
The economic depression also worsened the conditions of the peasants and workers in India. The prices of agricultural products dropped by over 50 per cent by the end of 1932.
The employers tried to reduce wages. The peasants all over the country began to demand land reforms, reduction of land revenue and rent, and relief from indebtedness.
Workers in the factories and plantations increasingly demanded better conditions of work and recognition of their trade union rights. Consequently, there was rapid growth of trade unions in the cities and the Kisan Sabhas (peasants' unions) in many areas, particularly in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, and Punjab.
The first all-India peasant organization, the All-India Kisan Sabha was formed in 1936. The peasants also began to take a more active part in the national movement.
In his presidential address to the Lucknow Congress in 1936, Nehru urged the Congress to accept socialism as its goal and to bring itself closer to the peasantry and the working class.
In 1938, Subhash Chandra Bose had been re-elected as the president of the Congress even though Gandhi had opposed him. However, an opposition by Gandhi and his supporters in the Congress Working Committee compelled Bose to resign from the President-ship of the Congress in 1939.
The All India Congress Committee met at Bombay on August 8, 1942. It passed the famous 'Quit India' Resolution and proposed the starting of a non-violent mass struggle under Gandhiji’s leadership to achieve this aim.
Early in the morning of August 9, Gandhiji and other Congress leaders were arrested and the Congress was once again declared illegal.
The news of these arrests left the country aghast, and a spontaneous movement of protest arose everywhere, giving expression to the pent up anger of the people.
All over the country there were strikes in factories, schools and colleges, and demonstrations which were lathi-charged and fired upon.
The Government on its part went all out to crush the 1942 movement. Its repression knew no bounds. The press was completely muzzled. The demonstrating crowds were machine-gunned and even bombed from the air.
In the end, the Government succeeded in crushing the movement. The Revolt of 1942, as it has been termed, was in fact short-lived.
After the suppression of the Revolt of 1942, there was hardly any political activity inside the country till the war ended in 1945.
The established leaders of the national movement were behind the bars, and no new leaders arose to take their place or to give a new lead to the country.
In 1943, Bengal was plunged into the worst famine in recent history. Within a few months over three million people died because of starvation. There was deep anger among the people for the Government could have pre-vented the famine from taking such a heavy toll of life.
On February 20, 1947, Clement Attlee, British Premier, declared that the British would quit India in June 1948.
The ecstasy of coming independence was marred by the large-scale communal riots during and after August 1946. The Hindu and Muslim communalists blamed each other for starting the heinous killings and competed with each other in cruelty.
Lord Louis Mountbatten, who had come to India as Viceroy in March 1947, worked out a compromise after long discussions with the leaders of the Congress and the Muslim League: the country was to be free but not united.
India would be partitioned and a new state of Pakistan would be created along with a free India.
The nationalist leaders agreed to the partition of India in order to avoid the large-scale blood bath that communal riots threatened. But they did not accept the two-nation theory.
The nationalist leaders did not agree to hand over one-third of the country to the Muslim League as the latter wanted and as the proportion of the Muslims in Indian population would have indicated.
The national congress agreed to the separation of only those areas where the influence of the Muslim League was predominant.
In the North Western Frontier Province, and the Sylhet district of Assam where the influence of the League was doubtful, a plebiscite was held.
The Indian nationalists accepted the partition not because there were two nations in India - a Hindu nation and a Muslim nation, but because of the historical development of communalism, both Hindu and Muslim. In last 70 years, the communalism had created a situation where the alternative to partition was mass killing of lakhs of innocent people in senseless and barbaric communal riots.
