European activity in India, 1498-c. 1760
The period from 1707 AD, the year when Aurangzeb died, to 1857, the year of the Indian Uprising, saw the gradual increase of the European influence in India. The Europeans had been filtering into India for a long time before they actually decided to set up shop here. Even though the British got away with the jackpot, the real pioneers to reach India were the Portuguese.
Full of crusading and commercial zeal, Vasco da Gama was the first known European to reach India in 1498, even before the Mughals arrived here. When Vasco da Gama docked his ship in Calicut, he announced that he came in search of "Christians and spices" and the very first people he met here were Christians, who were descendants of those who had settled in India way back in the 4th century AD.
Portuguese Rule
When the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama landed at Calicut in 1498, he was restoring a link between Europe and the East that had existed many centuries previously. The Portuguese were the first agents of this renewed contact, because they were among the few European nations to possess both the navigational know-how and the necessary motivation for the long sea voyage. During the fifteenth century, the land routes for the Indian trade -- via the Red Sea and Egypt or across Persia, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey -- had become increasingly blocked, mainly by Ottoman action. The surviving Egyptian route was subject to increasing exploitation by a line of middlemen, ending with the Venetian monopoly of the European trade, and in 1517 it likewise passed under Ottoman suzerainty. The motive for finding a new route was therefore strong; this task fell to the Portuguese, partly because the stronger Spaniards were absorbed in discovering the New World (a by-product of the same search for an Eastern route). The Portuguese further inherited crusading zeal from wars against the Moors in Portugal and North Africa. Finally, they had learned navigational techniques from the Genoese, who were disgruntled at their exclusion from the Mediterranean carrying trade.
Religious fervor forgotten, the Portuguese eventually settled down to a very prosperous trade in spices with India. The Muslim rulers in Delhi and then the Mughals never really warmed up to the idea of a foreign power continuing trade on the seas under their imperial noses. What's more, they were not exactly very honest traders too, since they thought that no word that was given to an infidel need be kept. So much so that the word phirangi, or foreigner in colloquial, came to be a hissing and a byword among locals. In fact in Goa, where the Portuguese ruled, intolerance levels ran high and even the building of Hindu temples was banned.
Alberquerque (1509-1515), who was the second Portuguese viceroy in India, encouraged mixed marriages with the sole object of creating a mixed race who were Portuguese Catholics, and who would be bound by race and culture to the Portuguese. They were known as Luso-Indians at one time and now simply as Goans. One of main reasons why Portugal was never able to go anywhere further than Goa was that Spain took over the country in 1580 AD.
Advent of Dutch
The Dutch came shipping in the East were the first to arrive after the Spanish obstacle had been removed in 1595. Their first voyage was helped by the local knowledge of Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, who had worked for six years in Goa. However, they did not come to India initially, and established themselves at the helm of things in the spice trade in Jakarta. India came into the picture for them purely as a route to Europe, as part of a great Asian trade route that they developed which went through Ceylon and Cape Town. J. Van Neck's voyage in 1598 was so profitable (400 per cent for all eight ships) that the die was cast for a great Eastern adventure. The Dutch objective was neither religion nor empire but trade, and the trade in mind was the spice trade. They were monopolists rather than imperialists. Empire came later, as a safeguard for monopoly.
Although the Dutch had their factories dotting all over (in Cochin, Nagapatam and even up in Agra) they did not attempt to gain military power, being quite content to gain in cash. The Dutch system demanded the control of the Eastern seas, and this meant the elimination of European rivals. Those in possession were the Portuguese. The Dutch succeeded with superior resources and better seamanship, but the Portuguese, though defeated, were not destroyed. Ousted from most strongholds, the Portuguese retained their capital, Goa, in spite of blockades and sieges. The second European obstacle was the English, who followed the Dutch to the East Indies; no match for the Dutch in resources, they were virtually excluded from the East Indies with the Dutch seizure of their factory at Amboyna (modern Ambon) in 1623.
French Invaders
Although the French King Loius XII had granted letters of monopoly to French traders in 1611, it wasn't until December 1667 that a French company was actually set up in India. The French had shown an interest in the East from the early years of the sixteenth century, but individual efforts had been checked by the Portuguese. The first viable French company was launched by the minister of finance Jean-Baptiste Colbert, with the support of Louis XIV, in 1664. This was at Surat (in Gujarat) with Francis Caron as its Director-General. After some false starts, the French company acquired Pondicherry, 137 km south of Madras, from a local ruler in 1674. Soon, in 1669, another French company came up in Masulipatnam, thanks to a grant by the king of Golconda which exempted the French from paying import and export duty. In 1672, Caron's place was taken by Francis Martin, who is regarded as the real founder of the French. It obtained Chandernagore (modern Chandarnagar), 25 km north of Kolkata, from the Mughal governor in 1690-92. At first the French initiatives suffered from the mixing of grandiose political and colonial schemes with those of trade. Under the care of François Martin, from 1774, the company turned to trade and began to prosper.
English Formed East India Company
The English formed their East India Company on the last day of 1600 and entered the East Indies hand in hand with the Dutch. Their foes were common – the Portuguese and Catholic Spain – and this brought them closer. However, familiarity breeds contempt, and soon the English realized that the Dutch were not willing to share their space in Spice Islands (East Indies) with them. The company included a group of London merchants attracted by Eastern prospects, not comparable to the national character of the Dutch company. Its initial capital of £50,000 was less than one-tenth of the Dutch company's. Its object, like that of the Dutch, was to trade in spices; and it was at first modestly organized on a single-voyage basis. These separate voyages, financed by groups of merchants within the company, were replaced in 1612 by terminable joint stocks, which covered operations over a term of years. Not until 1657 was a permanent joint stock established.
The company's objective was the spices of the East Indies (Indonesia), and it went to India only for the secondary purpose of securing cottons for sale to the spice growers. The British East Indian venture met with determined Dutch opposition, culminating in the massacre of Amboyna in 1623, when the Dutch seized the English factory there and executed its factors. No redress was ever obtained, though the Dutch occupation was not recognized until 1667. Things became grim enough for the British to finally run away and find refuge in India. It was this success of the Dutch to hang on, with characteristic tenaciousness to the Spice Islands that finally made the British to settle on India as the second-best; because spices in India were essentially only in the south where the local rulers and other Europeans already had a monopoly.
Of course, they ran into trouble in their very first step, so to speak, with the Portuguese. However, here the British luck turned; perhaps the Raj was destined, after all. As said earlier, the Portuguese were not winning any popularity contests in India, and then with Spain coming into the scene they were hard pressed for resources. Finally what won the east was that old trump card of the British, their naval supremacy.
In 1612 the Mughal emperor Jahangir received Sir Thomas Roe, the first ambassador of the British to Indian aristocracy. Roe's diplomacy with the Mughals was so successful that by a treaty in 1618 the East India Company became their unspoken, unsaid, naval aide. By 1674 Bombay came to the British as part of the dowry of Charles II's Portuguese queen Catherine, and from here they never looked back. 1708 or the dawn of the Modern Indian Era found them quite comfortably placed in India, commercially that is.
There followed through the seventeenth century a period of peaceful trading through factories operating under Mughal grants. This held good for Surat and later for Hugli (1651) in Bengal. In the south, the factory at Masulipatam (1611) was moved to the site off Madras (now Chennai), granted by a Hindu raja (1640); it shortly (1647) came under the control of the sultans of Golconda and thence passed to the Mughals in 1687. The only exception to this arrangement was the island port of Mumbai (now Mumbai); Mumbai was independent, but its trade was small because the Marathas, soon locked in combat with the Mughals, held the hinterland.
In India, the company suffered a serious setback when it resolved, under Sir Josiah Child's inspiration, to resort to armed trade and attack the Mughals. The Emperor Aurangzeb was too strong, however, and the venture (1686-90) ended in disaster. Out of this fiasco, however, came the foundation of Kolkata by Job Charnock in 1690 -- a mud flat that had the advantage of a deep anchorage -- and the age of fortified factories surrounded by satellite towns. These were the answers, with Mughal consent, to increasing Indian insecurity. The Madras factory was already fortified, and Fort William in Kolkata followed in 1696. The company thus had, with independent Mumbai, three centres of Indian power.
For the next half century, the company confined its relations with the Mughals, who had now spread to the deep south beyond Madras, to disputes over rights and terms of trade at local levels. Fresh privileges were obtained in Delhi, and these they were content to argue about rather than fight for. The factors were learning the art of Indian diplomacy as they had formerly to learn the arts of Indian commercial management.
Revolution in Bengal
The revolution in Bengal was the product of a number of unrelated causes. The imminence of the Seven Years' War prompted the British to send out Robert Clive with an armament to Madras in 1755. Succession troubles in Bengal combined with British mercantile incompetence to produce a crisis at a moment when the French in South India were still awaiting reinforcements from France.
This was a decisive point in British Indian history. According to plan, Clive should have returned to Madras to pursue the campaign against the French; but he did not. He sensed both the hostility and insecurity of Siraj's position and began to receive overtures to support a military coup. The chance of installing a friendly and dependent nawab seemed too good to be missed. Having taken this decision, Clive chose the right candidate in Mir Jafar, an elderly general with much influence in the army. In so acting Clive was probably influenced by the example of Bussy-Castelnau at Hyderabad; for six years Bussy-Castelnau had maintained himself with an Indo-French force, sustaining the nizam, Salabat Jang, and maintaining French influence in the largest South Indian State with outstanding success. This system of a "sponsored" Indian State, controlled but not administered, was the one Clive had in mind for Bengal.
The prospects for success seemed good. The event, however, proved otherwise, and there were reasons for this not realized at the time. The chiefs were so lacking in vigour that they made little resistance to British encroachments. External danger could come from only one direction and source -- the Mughal authority -- and that was at the moment in dissolution. While Bussy-Castelnau had no French merchants to satisfy, the British merchants in Kolkata were ready and eager to exploit the situation. And, because the British company's government was made up entirely of merchants, it is easy to understand why the sponsored State of 1757 became the virtually annexed State of 1765.
Declining of Mughal Regime
Post Aurangzeb the decline of the Mughals was shockingly swift (See Medieval Indian History). A confused state of affairs reigned supreme in India before the British finally took control. It is hardly surprising that the more insular Brits thought it was their divine right or the Whiteman's burden to set the house in order for the natives who seemed to be their own worst enemies.
Powerful nobility was ruling the day at the Mughal court whose grandiose and power had fallen into disarray and disgrace. Nautch girls, poetry and wine flowed; unfortunately so did the gold from the coffers of the treasury. Clearly it was that twilight zone; when dynasties just linger on for want of anything or anyone better.
Invasion of Nadir Shah
Then there were the inevitable, though disastrous, invasions. The first of these was led by the famous Persian king Nadir Shah in 1739. At this time the court in Delhi was busy fighting the Marathas and one of their best generals, Nizam-ul-Mulk was in war against them.
Nizam met Nadir when the latter arrived near Delhi and succeeded in changing his mind about sacking Delhi by offering him a booty of Rs. 50,00,000. However, here again court politics had the upper hand; one of Nizam's rival generals convinced Nadir he was settling for too little and the fabulous riches of Delhi were to be seen to be believed. So Nadir marched over to Delhi in time to have a khutba read in his name. Unfortunately, around this time a rumour started doing the rounds that Nadir was dead, which was not only celebrated by the inhabitants of Delhi, but everyone got bold enough to actually attack a few Iranian soldiers.
The result was that on March 11, 1739 an order went forth from Nadir Shah, and yet another one of those terrible massacres that Delhi was a regular witness to took place. The areas of Chandini Chowk, the fruit market, the Dariba bazaar and the buildings around Jama Masjid were burnt to cinders. Each and every inhabitant of the area was killed as an example. The people of Delhi will still point at the Khooni Darwaza (Blood Gate) in the old city and tell you about the massacre which happened here as if it were only yesterday. The royal treasury was sacked and its contents seized. When Nadir Shah left Delhi after 57 days of staying here, he also took along the fabulous Peacock Throne of the Mughals with him. And along with it also the final vestiges of the Mughal pride.
Afghans Invaded Delhi With Ahmad Shah Abdali
The next invasion that rocked Delhi was led by the Afghans, with Ahmad Shah Abdali, an ex-general of the same Nadir Shah, as their commander. Abdali led as many as seven invasions into India between 1748-1767.
After the plundering that Delhi received by Nadir Shah, the Mughals seemed to have just given up. Abdali was all over the place ransacking Lahore, Punjab and so on, but it seemed like the Delhi court couldn't care less. It was left to the powers-that-be, the Marathas, to face the Abdali challenge. He promptly reduced the Marathas to the powers-that-had-been in the third and final battle of Panipat on January 13, 1761.
That was one of the reasons why the British found India completely at a loose end when they came here – most of the rising powers had been ground to dust by invading armies before they could amount to anything.
Abdali Captured Delhi
In January 1757 a carnage of the Nadir Shah vintage was repeated. After pillaging Delhi the Afghans marched on to overrun most of Northern India. It is said that following the ransacking of the cities of Mathura, Brindaban and Gokul, for 'seven days the waters of the Jamuna flowed of a blood-red colour.'
An outbreak of cholera in his army forced Adbali to withdraw; but not before he had made the Delhi court cough up around 120,000,000 rupees (that the Delhi court still had that kind of money speaks for the unbelievable riches which the Mughals once commanded). Also he demanded, and got, Kashmir, Lahore, Sirhind and Multan. This was unfortunately not the last time that Abdali invaded India.
It was left to the powers-that-be, the Marathas, to face the next Abdali challenge. Seeing the ruins of a powerful kingdom and the immense riches that Hindustan had in its womb in Delhi, Abdali thundered in again. On January 13, 1761, he took on the Maratha confederation under Bhao Rao, promptly reducing them to the powers-that-had-been in the third and final battle of Panipat. This was the end of the Maratha power in the north, for they stayed away for the next 10 years.
Abdali returned in 1764, driven once again by a hunger not for power but for gold. His sixth invasion had the Sikhs (who had by then carved out a kingdom under the famous Maharaja Ranjit Singh) up in arms. The determined Sikh power had put up a stiff challenge not only for Abdali, but were the main reason why the Marathas were never able to be very successful up north. When Abdali invaded India for the last time in 1767, they managed to inflict defeat on him and the Sikhs took Lahore and Central Punjab. However the areas from Peshwar up remained with Abdali.
It was an India exhausted with war and battle; an India badly in need, and indeed glad, of someone who could take charge. She had gone around a circle in the cycle of history. It was a great leap too – from the cultured, sophisticated and erudite civilisation under the Mughals to the power hungry and superstitious dark ages of the late 18th and 19th century. The status of women in society fell like never before: Huge weddings which were a drain to the bride's family took place; oppression reared its nasty head in the form of a rigid caste system (even with the Muslims); and Sati, the Rajput ritual of a widow being cremated with her dead husband, and so on which were never a part of Indian 'culture' became so now.
No, we were not putting on out best faces for the phirangis.
British Rises To Power
Against this troubled backdrop the British rise to power was slow, but remarkably steady. Slow because the path was far from smooth; first there were the French to deal with. The commercial rivalry that cropped up with such a vengeance amongst the British and the French had roots in the prevailing political situation in Europe, and even then as long as the French carried on business in a small way in India the British left them to themselves.
The real trouble started between 1720 and 1740, when the French company's trade with India increased by about ten-fold to come up to half the volume that the English company was generating at that time. Now the stakes were just too much for each to ignore the other – especially taking in the factor that this Indian trade amounted for more than ten percent of Mother England's revenue. This was the time when the War of Austrian Succession (1740-48) had broken out in Europe, following Fredrick the Great of Prussia's seizure of Silesia in 1740. The French and British found themselves in opposing camps in this war. Later, during the Seven Years War too (1756-63) both were at loggerheads with each other, supporting rival camps. These two wars of Europe, by Europe and for Europe in the end totally changed the balance of power as India knew it.
The regime that Clive established in 1765 in Bengal was really a private dominion of the East India Company. It was not a British colony, and it fitted into the very flexible structure of the dying Mughal Empire. The structure of the administration was Mughal, not British, and its operators were Indian, personified by the deputy nawab Muhammad Ria Khan. It was a continuation of the traditional State under British control, and it can be aptly described by the company's popular title, the Company Bahadur — the Valiant, or Honourable, Company. This Company Bahadur State continued through Warren Hastings' time and in essence until the early nineteenth century, although Lord Cornwallis (governor-general, 1786-93) substituted largely British for Indian personnel. The revenue was collected by the officers of the deputy nawab; the law administered was the current Mughal (Islamic) criminal code, with the traditional personal codes of the Hindu and Muslim communities; the language of administration was Persian. Only the army broke with the past, with its British officers, its discipline, and its Western organization and tactics.
It was this State that Warren Hastings inherited when he became governor of Bengal in 1772. His 13-year rule can be divided into his internal administration, his dealings with his council, and his foreign policy. Hastings inherited a State that in the five years since Clive's departure had stepped back towards the corruption from which Clive had rescued it. But Hastings was armed with authority by the directors, so that the first two years of his government were a period of real reform. He first dealt with the dastaks, or free passes, the use of which had crept in again since Clive's departure; they were abolished, and a uniform tariff of 2.5 per cent was enforced on all internal trade. Private trade by the company's servants continued but within enforceable limits. The Bengalis began to experience some security and a settled order, if not yet an equitable society. Next, the company "stood forth as diwan", taking over the responsibility for the revenue collection from Ria Khan, who was arraigned for corruption; the charges could not be proved, however, even with the approving support of the British authorities. Hastings substituted British for Indian collectors working under a Board of Revenue. In a way this was a retrograde step, for the new collectors were often as corrupt as their predecessors and more powerful; but the change gave legal power to those who already wielded it in fact, and in the future their irregularities could more easily be dealt with than could the surreptitious dealings through the old Indian collectors. Finally, Hastings instituted a network of civil and criminal courts in place of the deputy nawab's. The same law was administered by British judges, who were often incompetent, but a model was provided into which Western ideas and practices could later be fed.
The War Between French And English Arose
Between 1746-48 the French and English finally came to blows in the first Carnatic War (1746-48) in the Deccan. There were two more of these skirmishes and they were to seal the fate of the French company as far as India was concerned. The first Carnatic War was merely an echo of the Austrian War of Succession as said earlier. The fight was over Madras and though the French captured it, it was given back to the English as part of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle of 1748.
What had happened in the meanwhile was that the British and the French had got their fleets upto the Indian mainland, an important development as the balance of power was now shifting fast in the favor of the Europeans. And Dupleix, the French governor of the time, decided that this power could be used to gain a support base within the country.
Dupleix The French Governor
Dupleix was a very shrewd and resourceful character, with great diplomatic skills, and his understanding of local politics was formidable, though flawed by a hyper temperament which made him extremely difficult to work with. The perfect opportunity came in 1748 when the Nawab of Arcot (in present Tamil Nadu) died and the question of who would succeed him arose.
Dupleix was so successful in his intrigue that he succeeded in enthroning a Nizam of his choice, Chanda Sahib. The new Nizam was supported by the old Nawab's grandson Muzzafar Jung and backed up by French troops under the able command of De Bussy.
The idea was to close in on Madras by surrounding it with French territory. The plan would have developed pretty neatly but for Robert Clive, sent away to Madras by his family to become a clerk, who turned out to be a brilliant strategist.
His seizure of Arcot in 1751 with a mere 210 men upset all of Dupleix's subtle strategies. Chanda Sahib was killed and a British nominee was put on the Arcot throne. Two years later Dupleix was recalled to France.
Dupleix was succeeded by Godeheu, who sued for peace with the British. By the new treaty both the French and the British agreed not to interfere in Indian internal matters and went back to their old positions. But though the British got a town the French agreed to give up everything they had taken so far. Godeheu was denounced for having "signed the ruin of the country and the dishonor of the nation," but the damage was done. The British emerged much stronger after the second Carnatic War.
The third and final phase of this Anglo-French war for supremacy was brought on by the Seven Years War in the shape of the third Carnatic War (1756-63). However, despite some heroics by French generals like De Bussy and Lally, the British were able to decisively beat the French who eventually lost practically everything they had in India. With the close of the third Carnatic War, the French were finished as far as India was concerned. Thanks to their superior sea-power, greater resources and steadier support from Europe, the English were able to vanquish the dream of dominion de l'empire de la France in India forever.
The Mutiny & Revolt of 1857
Since then the story of the British rise to power in India became sort of predictable. Except for one small hiccup in 1857 during the Indian Uprising. Debate has continued and will always go on about whether 1857 was actually the first Indian War of Independence or simply a mutiny. Well, a little of both, we conclude. It was far too limited in its scope and aims to be dignified as the first Indian War of Independence; but nor was it that restricted that one can dismiss it as just a mutiny.
There is enough evidence to support the fact that the Uprising had been planned for months before the actual outbreak. What the revolutionaries did, apart from the fact that they failed to spread the word beyond Central India and Delhi, was that the Uprising did not go according to plan. It broke out before the appointed date; if D-day had gone according to schedule the Uprising would have broken out in many areas simultaneously, and then it would have been very difficult for the British to control it. However, as things were, trouble broke out sporadically in various places in May 1857 and there was little, if any, co-ordination about the whole thing. So, the British were able to curb it with relative ease.
The mutiny of the Bengal army began on May 10, 1857, at Meerut, when Indian soldiers who had been placed in irons for refusing to accept new cartridges were rescued by their comrades. They shot the British officers and made for Delhi, 64 km distant, where there were no British troops. The Indian garrison at Delhi joined them, and by the next nightfall they had secured the city and Mughal fort, proclaiming the aged titular Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah II, as their leader. There at a stroke was an army, a cause, and a national leader -- the only Muslim who appealed to both Hindus and Muslims.
But this movement became much more than a military mutiny. Nationalist historians have seen in it the first Indian war of independence. In fact, it was rather the last effort of traditional India. The military cause was both particular and general. In particular, it was the greased cartridges supplied for the new breech-loading Enfield rifles. These had to be bitten off before insertion, and the British manufacturers had supplied fat of mixed beef and pork -- anathema to both Hindus and Muslims. This mistake was retrieved as soon as discovered; but the fact that explanations and reissues could not quell the soldiers' suspicions suggests that the troops were already disturbed by other causes. The Bengal army of nearly 130,000 Indian troops contained about 40,000 Brahmins as well as many Rajputs. The British had accentuated caste consciousness by careful regulations, had allowed discipline to grow lax, and had failed to maintain understanding between British officers and their men. In addition, the General Service Enlistment Act of 1856 required recruits to serve overseas if ordered, a challenge to the castes who composed so much of the Bengal army. To these points may be added the fact that the British garrison in India had been reduced at this time to 23,000 men because of troop withdrawals for the Crimean and Persian wars.
The general factors that turned a military mutiny into a popular revolt can be comprehensively described under the heading of political, economic, social, and cultural Westernization. Politically, the princes of India had retired into a sulky seclusion after their final defeat in 1818. But the wars against the Afghans and the Sikhs and then the annexations of Dalhousie alarmed and outraged them. The Muslims had lost the large State of Awadh; the Marathas had lost Nagpur, Satara, and Jhansi. Further, the British were becoming increasingly hostile towards traditional survivals and contemptuous of anything Indian. There was, therefore, both resentment and unease among the old governing class, fanned in Delhi by the decision to end the Mughal imperial title on Bahadur Shah's death.
Economically and socially, there had been much dislocation in the landholding class all over northern and western India as a result of British land-revenue settlements, setting group against group. There was thus a suppressed tension in the countryside, ready to break out whenever governmental pressure might be reduced.
The Revolt and its Aftermath
The dramatic capture of Delhi turned the mutiny into a full-scale revolt. The whole episode falls into three periods: first came the summer of 1857, when the British, without reinforcements from home, fought with their backs to the wall; the second concerned the operations for the relief of Lucknow in the autumn; and the third was the successful campaign of Sir Colin Campbell and Sir Hugh Rose in the first half of 1858. Mopping-up operations followed, lasting until the British capture of Tatya Tope (leader of the Indian mutiny of 1857) in April 1859.
The restoration of peace was hindered by British cries for vengeance, often leading to indiscriminate reprisals. The treatment of the aged Bahadur Shah was a disgrace to a civilized nation; also, the whole population of Delhi was driven out into the open, and thousands were killed after perfunctory trials or no trials at all. Order was restored by the firmness of Charles Canning, first viceroy of India (governed 1858-1862).
Measures of prevention of future crises naturally began with the army, which was completely reorganized. The ratio of British to Indian troops was fixed at roughly 1:2 instead of 1:5 -- one British and two Indian battalions were brigaded together so that no sizable station should be without British troops. The effective Indian artillery, except for a few mountain batteries, was abolished, while the Brahmins and Rajputs of Awadh were reduced in favour of other groups. The officers continued to be British, but they were more closely linked with their men. The army became an efficient professional body, drawn largely from the northwest and aloof from the national life.
Climax of the Raj, 1858-85
The quarter century following the bitter Indian revolt of 1857-1859, though spanning a peak of British imperial power in India, ended with the birth of nationalist agitation against it. For both Indians and British, the period was haunted with dark memories of the mutiny, and numerous measures were taken by the British raj to avoid another conflict. In 1885, however, the founding of the Indian National Congress marked the beginnings of effective, organized protest for "national" self-determination.
On August 2, 1858, less than a month after Canning proclaimed the victory of British arms, Parliament passed the Government of India Act, transferring British power over India from the East India Company, whose ineptitude was primarily blamed for the mutiny, to the crown. The merchant company's residual powers were vested in the secretary of State for India, a minister of Great Britain's Cabinet, who would preside over the India Office in London and be assisted and advised, especially in financial matters, by a Council of India, which consisted initially of 15 Britons, 7 of whom were elected from among the old company's court of directors and 8 of whom were appointed by the crown. Though some of Britain's most powerful political leaders became secretaries of State for India in the latter half of the nineteenth century, actual control over the government of India remained in the hands of British viceroys (who divided their time between Kolkata and Shimla) and their "steel-frame" of approximately 1,500 Indian Civil Service (ICS) officials posted "on the spot" throughout British India.
On November 1, 1858, Lord Canning announced Queen Victoria's proclamation to "The Princes, Chiefs and Peoples of India", which unveiled a new British policy of perpetual support for "native princes" and nonintervention in matters of religious belief or worship within British India. The announcement reversed Lord Dalhousie's prewar policy of political unification through Princely State annexation, and princes were left free to adopt any heirs they desired so long as they all swore undying allegiance to the British crown. In 1876, at Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli's prompting, Queen Victoria added the title Empress of India to her regality. British fears of another mutiny and consequent determination to bolster Indian States as "natural breakwaters" against any future tidal wave of revolt thus left more than 560 enclaves of autocratic princely rule to survive, interspersed throughout British India, for the entire nine decades of crown rule. The new policy of religious nonintervention was born equally out of fear of recurring mutiny, which many Britons believed had been triggered by orthodox Hindu and Islamic reaction against the secularizing inroads of utilitarian positivism and the proselytizing of Christian missionaries. British liberal socio-religious reform therefore came to a halt for more than three decades -- essentially from the East India Company's Hindu Widow's Remarriage Act of 1856 to the crown's timid Age of Consent Act of 1891, which merely raised the age of statutory rape for "consenting" Indian brides from 10 years to 12.
The typical attitude of British officials who went to India during this period was, as the English writer Rudyard Kipling put it, to "take up the White man's burden". By and large, throughout the interlude of their Indian service to the crown, Britons lived as super-bureaucrats, "Pukka Sahibs", remaining as aloof as possible from "native contamination" in their private clubs and well-guarded military cantonments (called camps), which were constructed beyond the walls of the old, crowded "native" cities in this era.
Indian National Congress
So was born the party that must surely have given the British government much cause to regret that they had ever thought it up at all. For, much to the British government's chagrin, the Indian National Congress took its job seriously. In its early phase, which is called the phase of the Moderates (1885-1905), the Congress was thoroughly loyal to the British.
Its members were British in all aspects except where it mattered the most, in colour. They were a class of elite erudite men who were into philosophy and intellectual discussions; the much more popular 'peoples' leaders' were to follow. Dadabhai Naoroji, the most prominent among their leaders observed: "Let us speak out like men and proclaim that we are loyal to the backbone; that we understand the benefits the English rule has conferred upon us."
Understandably, the man on the road was hardly aware they were alive. And nor, if their attitude is anything to go by, was the British government.
The Policies of British Government Leads To Dissatisfactions
In 1907 there was split in the Congress as those members who were unsatisfied with the scheme of affairs under the Moderates, including popular leaders like Lala Lajpat Rai and Bal Gangadhar Tilak, parted company with them. This hardly helped their cause because for the next eight years the Congress, for all contents and purposes, went into hibernation.
This was the time when extreme nationalists came into the scene, especially after the controversial partition of Bengal into west and east Bengal in 1905 by the highly unpopular and obnoxiously highhanded Lord Curzon. The decision evoked sharp reactions from all over India and there was violent agitation against it.
October 16, 1905, the day on which the partition came into effect, was observed as a day of mourning and fasting throughout Bengal. Rabindranath Tagore, the famous Nobel-laureate and writer, spoke out against it through a passionate poem. This was the time when the Swadeshi movement was first launched; that is, Indians burnt foreign clothes, cigarettes, soap and anything made across the seas in huge bonfires and turned to Indian made articles instead. Many factories manufacturing indigenous clothes, textiles and whatever else was required were set up. Lots of earnest young leaders of Bengal took up the task of educating people. On August 15, 1906, a national council of education was introduced under the educationist Aurobindo Ghose.
The government came down heavily on the demonstrations, choosing to break up meetings, insult leaders and beat up peaceful protestors. In 1907, leaders Lala Lajpat Rai and Sardar Ajit Singh were deported from the Punjab. In 1908, Bal Gangadhar Tilak was arrested and sentenced to six years imprisonment. Aurobindo Ghose was arrested, prosecuted and though acquitted, chose to retire to Pondicherry.
The agitation to oppose the partition of Bengal (although the partition was reverted in 1911) saw the coming of age of Indian nationalism. India was together like never before and the country was bristling with nationalistic fervor. However, the idea of independence from the British was still not an option that nationalists were considering.
Home Rule Movement Started
When Great Britain was deeply enmeshed in the World War I, India's national movement though intermittent continued to throw up surprises. One of them was the Home Rule Movement. In December 1915, Tilak, who was one of the first nationalist leaders with a following and deep understanding of the grassroots of India, voiced the thought of Home Rule (instead of 'swadeshi', that being a word the British were wary about). It was for the first time that someone had mentioned the word Home Rule as being the goal for the Indian National Movement. On April 28, 1916, the Home Rule League was set up with its headquarters in Poona (Pune). Tilak went on a whirlwind tour of the country, appealing to everybody to unite under the banner of Home Rule League. Anne Besant of the Theosophical Society fame also assisted him in this task.
Under face of this attack, the government fell back to that old reliable – stricter laws. Laws were formulated to prevent agitations, to prevent 'undesirable aliens' from entering India, propaganda came under government control, and so on.
The importance of the Home Rule movement was that for the first time the independence of India came to be clearly the goal of the Indian national movement. The public at large was first an audience and then terrorist nationalists who bombed parliaments and blew up railways, and they must have further scared the middle class away from the movement. And history will tell you no movement for independence was ever a success without the involvement of the bourgeoisie. So, while the idea of freedom was gaining ground, the populace at large was not really involved.
And then, as Jawaharlal Nehru would later say, Gandhi came.
Gandhiji's Strategy
Suddenly everything changed. The man dressed in a dhoti, kurta and pugri with a lathi in hand (initially) and mingled with elegantly dressed British-Indian moderates. He was not a rabble-rouser; he would have been loath to do a Demosthenes. Nor was he anyone's idea of a charismatic leader. Just a short, thin, shrivelled man, with what Sarojini Naidu called 'Mickey Mouse ears' and a twinkle in his eyes. He talked of peace. Of loving his enemies, not of bombs or murders. Of non-violence, ahimsa. That was his only weapon; and, as the British were to find out to their expense, boy did it work!
For Gandhi there was no dichotomy between religion and politics, and his unique political power was in great measure attributable to the spiritual leadership he exerted over India's masses, who viewed him as a sadhu ("saint") and worshipped him as a mahatma ("great soul"). He chose satya ("truth") and ahimsa ("nonviolence", or love) as the polar stars of his political movement; the former was the ancient Vedic concept of the real, embodying the very essence of existence itself, while the latter, according to Hindu (as well as Jain) scripture, was the highest religion (dharma). With these two weapons, Gandhi assured his followers, unarmed India could bring the mightiest empire known to history to its knees. His mystic faith magnetized millions, and the sacrificial suffering (tapasya) that he took upon himself by the purity of his chaste life and prolonged fasting armed him with great powers. Gandhi's strategy for bringing the giant machine of British rule to a halt was to call upon Indians to boycott all British-made goods, British schools and colleges, British courts of law, British titles and honours, British elections and elective offices, and, should the need arise if all other boycotts failed, British tax collectors as well. The total withdrawal of Indian support would thus stop the machine, and nonviolent non-cooperation would achieve the national goal of swaraj.
When Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi came back to India from South Africa at the age of 49, he had already built a tremendous reputation for himself as a political leader. Almost immediately upon docking in Bombay, he was offered to lead the national Movement. Gandhi, however, begged out, opting to travel and know the country thoroughly first. The first causes he chose to associate with were minor local affairs and it would almost seem that the nationalist leaders of the time did not know what to think of this almost too-mild, too-moral and too-impractical maverick.
During 1917-18, hectic political moves were being made by a worried British government. One of the results of this was the Rowlatt Act proposed by Justice Rowlatt. Among other things this act gave the courts the right to try political cases without a jury and provincial governments, apart from the centre, the power of internment without trial. Gandhi, in his typical style, said that the Rowlatt Act raised issues of trust and self-respect, and hence should be met by a moral response in shape of a hartal, or a traditional Indian way of protest involving cessation of activities for a day.
The Muslim quarter of India's population could hardly be expected to respond any more enthusiastically to Gandhi's satyagraha call than they had to Tilak's revivalism, but Gandhi laboured valiantly to achieve Hindu-Muslim unity by embracing the Ali brothers' Khilafat movement as the "premier plank" of his national programme. Launched in response to news of the Treaty of Sèvres's** dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire in 1920, the Khilafat movement coincided with the inception of satyagraha, thus giving the illusion of unity to India's nationalist agitation. December 1920 Mohammed Ali Jinnah, alienated by Gandhi's mass following of Hindi-speaking Hindus, left the Nagpur Congress. The days of the Lucknow Pact were over, and by the start of 1921 the antipathetic forces of revivalist Hindu and Muslim agitation, destined to lead to the birth of the independent dominions of India and Pakistan in 1947, were thus clearly set in motion in their separate directions.
The Massacre At Jallianwala Bagh
The flash-point came in Punjab. On April 12, 1919, General Dyer, who had taken over the troops in Punjab the day before, prohibited all meetings or gatherings. So of course a public meeting was announced to be held the very next day, April 13, 1919 in Jallianwala Bagh (a park enclosed on all sides with only a single narrow entrance) at 4.30pm. Dyer ordered indiscriminate firing on 10,000 men, women, and children gathered at a rally at Jallianwala Bagh.
It has been repeated in emotion-charged words in books and in poignant scenes in movies. Giving no word of warning, he ordered 50 soldiers to fire into the gathering. That day 6000 to 10,000 people, including women and children, were shot dead in that park as an example of what happened to people who disobeyed the orders of the British Raj. Almost 400 civilians were killed, and another 1,200 were left wounded with no medical attention. The governor of the Punjab province supported the massacre at Amritsar and, on April 15, placed the entire province under martial law. Secretary of State Montagu appointed a commission of inquiry, headed by Lord Hunter. In the court martial which followed later, General Dyer coldly observed that he had fired only 1600 rounds of ammunition on the crowd; that was because that was all he had. He added that he would fired more if he had so seen fit.
The Jallianwala Bagh massacre turned millions of moderate Indians from patient and loyal supporters of the British raj into nationalists who would never again place trust in British "fair play". It thus marks the turning point for a majority of the Congress' supporters from moderate cooperation with the raj and its promised reforms to revolutionary non-cooperation. Liberal Anglophile leaders, such as Jinnah, were soon to be displaced by the followers of Gandhi, who would launch, a year after that dreadful massacre, his first nationwide satyagraha ("devotion to truth") campaign as India's revolutionary response.
The Beginning of Non Co-operation Movement
In 1920, under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, the Indian National Congress launched the first of his innovative movements of protest, the Non Co-operation Movement. It involved surrender of all titles, honorary offices and nominated posts in local bodies.
People stopped attending government functions and darbars. Parents were requested to withdraw their children from government schools and colleges. British courts and the army was boycotted. Indians were to stand for elections to any government body or legislature. Ahimsa or non-violence was to be observed strictly.
The hugeness of the idea of Non Co-operation amazed every political leader in India, who started realising that Gandhi was not so meek after all. The idea captured popular imagination and suddenly, in one sweep, the National Movement was taken to every man on the street.
People came out in their thousands to support Gandhi and his movement. The government machinery did not actually break down, but came under visible strain.
Unfortunately, in the time when the movement was showing signs of real success, an incident occurred in Chauri Chaura, in which a mob of 3000 people killed 25 policemen and one officer. Similar tragic events had happened earlier on November 17, 1921, in Bombay and on January 13, 1922, in Madras. Gandhi, who was the last of the ethical political leaders, immediately withdrew his movement. And got arrested in the bargain, on March 13, 1922. However, the Mahatma did get his way, the Rowlatt Act was repealed.
Gandhi was severely criticised almost everywhere for disassociating himself from the Non Co-operation Movement; for certainly the moment he went, so did the masses. This was not the first difference of opinion that was to happen in the Congress about Gandhi's actions. Many more such occasions were to crop up, though everyone invariably gave in to the Mahatma. Gandhi was already the invisible ruler of the country.
A committee was set up in 1927 to review the status of Indian affairs by the British government, under Sir John Simon. So far, so good. However, the committee did not include even a single Indian, a situation which convinced the Congress that action was called for.
This was time when young radicals like Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhash Chandra Bose were insisting on total independence being the goal for the Congress. The new Viceroy Lord Irwin had got the Labour government in London to agree to a declaration that dominion status was the goal of British policy and a round table conference was called to consider the next step. After coming out one of his famous thinking breaks, Gandhi was for the offer. But the mood in the country was totally contrary to this. So rather than let the radical element take over, Gandhi decided to control the situation by leading a non-violent movement himself.
The Demand of Complete Independence - Purna Swaraj
At midnight, on December 31, 1929, Jawaharlal Nehru unfurled the Tricolor on the banks of the river Ravi in Punjab and the Congress called for complete Independence, purna swaraj. January 26, 1930, was declared as Independence Day. From February 14 to 16, 1930, the Congress Working Committee met at Gandhi's famous ashram in Sabarmati and vested Mahatma Gandhi with launching his Civil Disobedience movement "at a time and place of his choice".
On February 27, the plan of agitation was announced. The entire nation was in ferment. Everyone was waiting in eager suspense about what would the Mahatma do next; none more than the British government, though not so eagerly, one presumes.
On March 12, 1930, accompanied with 78 colleagues of the Sabarmati Ashram, Mahatma Gandhi embarked on a 60-mile march to the sea coast of Dandi. He intended to defy the Salt tax, paid indirectly by every peasant. The first instinct of the government was to let him walk as much as he wanted, and ignore him. However, the Gandhi magic worked. Soon protests, hartals, processions were taking place all over India. Gandhi was arrested on May 5, 1930, and his place was taken by Abbas Tyabji as the leader of the movement. When Tyabji was arrested, Sarojini Naidu, the famous nightingale of India, replaced him. All over India, the mood was ablaze, the atmosphere tense and the people were on the streets. Louis Fischer wrote about the Civil Disobedience: "The British beat the Indians with batons and rifle butts. The Indians neither cringed nor complained nor retreated. That made England powerless and India invincible."
First Round Table Conference
When the first Round Table Conference was held in London from November 12, 1930 to January 19, 1931, it turned into a failure for not a single Congressman attended. The British now appealed to the Congress to work with them. Lord Irwin also declared that Mahatma Gandhi and the other members of the Congress Working Committee would be freed soon to consider the matter "freely and fearlessly".
The Mahatma was persuaded to meet Irwin and the result was the Irwin-Gandhi pact under which the Civil Disobedience Movement was withdrawn and a second Round Table Conference with Congress participation was agreed upon. This peace did not last long. Gandhi attended the Second Round Table conference in London in 1931 as the sole representative of the Congress. He demanded control foreign and defence affairs, and there was complete deadlock over the matter of minorities, thanks to Muhammad Ali Jinnah, His Highness the Aga Khan and Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar. Gandhi returned to India on December 28, 1931 empty handed.
By May 1934, the Civil Disobedience Movement was completely withdrawn.
During the second World War the Congress decided that India should co-operate with Britain on the understanding that complete independence be granted to India after that. The British, however, stuck to the policy of 'no change during war and whatever you want will be discussed after that'. This attitude did not exactly ease the minds of the Congress members as to the intentions of the government. Now also was visible a wide open split between Jinnah's Muslim League and the Congress' aims and demands. Early in 1940 Jinah declared Pakistan as the goal of the league.
After the fall of France in 1940, Gandhi declared, "We do not seek independence out of Britain's ruin." The British reply to this was an offer that an Indian constituent assembly as well as Dominion status would be discussed 'after the war'. The offer was spurned. The result? A deadlock which was not to unlock till 1947.
Gandhi, with his usual skill for the innovative, now rallied the country and Congress behind him with his Quit India movement. The threat was the launch of a Civil Disobedience movement which could have coincided with the Japanese advances from the far-east towards India. "After all," he said, "this is open rebellion."
The movement was launched on August 8, 1942 in Bombay. Gandhi declared: "I want freedom immediately, this very night, before dawn, if it can be had. You may take it from me that I am not going to strike a bargain with the Viceroy for ministers and the like… Here is the mantra, a short one, that I give you… Do or die. We shall either free India or die in the attempt."
Independence was just ahead
From 1942 onwards it was quite clear that independence of India was only a matter of time now.
New Delhi, the new capital of India, was hardly seven years old then. The British did not live long in the beautiful New Delhi they created. Thus, again fulfilling the age-old prophecy about those who build Delhi don't live in it for long.
In 1946, Lord Mountbatten arrived in Delhi amid a buzz of political activity. The British, following their World War II concerns, wanted to basically wash their hands off India. Also, the Indians wanted to get back what was rightfully theirs. However, there were too many emotional ties – the British and the Indians went too far back together for the British to just pack up and leave. They had a responsibility. Unfortunately Mountbatten, although a favorite with the Indians because of his youthful good looks, was the wrong man for the job. He was in such a hurry to get back to England that he seemed to just go along with the first proposal that found favor with both the Congress and the Muslim League without taking into account what the people really wanted.
The Transfer of Power and the Birth of two Nations
Elections held in the winter of 1945-46 proved how effective Jinnah's single-plank strategy for his Muslim League had been, as the league won all 30 seats reserved for Muslims in the Central Legislative Assembly and most of the reserved provincial seats as well. The Congress was successful in gathering most of the general electorate seats, but it could no longer effectively insist that it spoke for the entire population of British India.
In 1946, Secretary of State Pethick-Lawrence personally led a three-man Cabinet deputation to New Delhi with the hope of resolving the Congress-Muslim League deadlock and, thus, of transferring British power to a single Indian adminstration. Cripps was responsible primarily for drafting the ingenious Cabinet Mission Plan, which proposed a three-tier federation for India, integrated by a minimal central-union government in Delhi, which would be limited to handling foreign affairs, communications, defence, and only those finances required to care for such unionwide matters. The subcontinent was to be divided into three major groups of provinces: Group A, to include the Hindu-majority provinces of the Mumbai Presidency, Madras, the United Provinces, Bihar, Orissa, and the Central Provinces (virtually all of what became independent India a year later); Group B, to contain the Muslim-majority provinces of the Punjab, Sind, the North-West Frontier, and Baluchistan (the
areas out of which the western part of Pakistan was created); and Group C, to include the Muslim-majority Bengal (a portion of which became the eastern part of Pakistan and in 1971 the country of Bangladesh) and the Hindu-majority Assam. The group governments were to be virtually autonomous in everything but matters reserved to the union centre, and within each group the princely States were to be integrated into their neighbouring provinces. Local provincial governments were to have the choice of opting out of the group in which they found themselves should a majority of their populace vote to do so.
Punjab's large and powerful Sikh population would have been placed in a particularly difficult and anomalous position, for Punjab as a whole would have belonged to Group B, and much of the Sikh community had become anti-Muslim since the start of the Mughal emperors' persecution of their gurus in the seventeenth century. Sikhs played so important a role in the British Indian Army that many of their leaders hoped that the British would reward them at the war's end with special assistance in carving out their own nation from the rich heart of Punjab's fertile canal-colony lands, where, in the "kingdom" once ruled by Ranjit Singh (1780-1839), most Sikhs lived. Since World War I, Sikhs had been equally fierce in opposing the British raj, and, though never more than two per cent of India's population, they had as highly disproportionate a number of nationalist "martyrs" as of army officers. A Sikh Akali Dal ("Party of Immortals"), which was started in 1920, led militant marches to liberate gurdwaras ("doorways to the Guru"; the Sikh places of worship) from corrupt Hindu managers. Tara Singh (1885-1967), the most important leader of this vigorous Sikh political movement, first raised the demand for a separate Azad ("Free") Punjab in 1942. By March 1946, Singh demanded a Sikh nation-state, alternately called "Sikhistan" or "Khalistan" ("Land of the Sikhs" or "Land of the Pure"). The Cabinet Mission, however, had no time or energy to focus on Sikh separatist demands and found the Muslim League's demand for Pakistan equally impossible to accept.
As a pragmatist, Jinnah, himself mortally afflicted with tuberculosis and lung cancer, accepted the Cabinet Mission's proposal, as did Congress leaders. The early summer of 1946, therefore, saw a dawn of hope for India's future prospects, but that soon proved false when Nehru announced at his first press conference as the reelected president of the Congress that no constituent assembly could be "bound" by any prearranged constitutional formula. Jinnah read Nehru's remarks as a "complete repudiation" of the plan, which had to be accepted in its entirety in order to work. Jinnah then convened the League's Working Committee, which withdrew its previous agreement to the federation scheme and instead called upon the "Muslim Nation" to launch "direct action" in mid-August 1946. Thus began India's bloodiest year of civil war since the mutiny nearly a century earlier. The Hindu-Muslim rioting and killing that started in Kolkata sent deadly sparks of fury, frenzy, and fear to every corner of the subcontinent, as all civilized restraint seemed to disappear.
Lord Mountbatten (1900-79) was sent to replace Wavell as viceroy in March 1947, as Britain prepared to transfer its power over India to some "responsible" hands by no later than June 1948. Shortly after reaching Delhi, where he conferred with the leaders of all parties and with his own officials, Mountbatten decided that the situation was too dangerous to wait even that brief period. Fearing a forced evacuation of British troops still stationed in India, Lord Mountbatten resolved to opt for partition, one that would divide Punjab and Bengal virtually in half, rather than risk further political negotiations while civil war raged and a new mutiny of Indian troops seemed imminent. Among the major Indian leaders, Gandhi alone refused to reconcile himself to partition and urged Mountbatten to offer Jinnah the premiership of a united India rather than a separate Muslim nation. Nehru, however, would not agree to that, nor would his most powerful Congress deputy, Vallabhbhai Patel (1875-1950), as both had become tired of arguing with Jinnah and were eager to get on with the job of running an independent government of India.
Britain's Parliament passed in July 1947 the Indian Independence Act, ordering the demarcation of the dominions of India and Pakistan by midnight of August 14-15, 1947, and dividing within a single month the assets of the world's largest empire, which had been integrated in countless ways for more than a century. Racing the deadline, two boundary commissions worked desperately to partition Punjab and Bengal in such a way as to leave a majority of Muslims to the west of the former's new boundary and to the east of the latter's, but as soon as the new borders were known, no fewer than 10 million Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs fled from their homes on one side of the newly demarcated borders to what they thought would be "shelter" on the other. In the course of that tragic exodus of innocents, some one million people were slaughtered in communal massacres that made all previous conflicts of the sort known to recent history pale by comparison. Sikhs, caught in the middle of Punjab's new "line", suffered the highest percentage of casualties. Most Sikhs finally settled in India's much-diminished border State of Punjab.
Partition of India
The rest is history. Partition, one of the worst mass movements of people in recent history after that of the Jews in the World War II, happened. Two republics were born from one nation on August 15, 1947 – Pakistan and India.
Gandhi, the father of the nation, did not join the celebration that followed. He was in Bihar working in riot torn areas, praying for peace. For him independence, in the shape that it came, meant failure. With this in mind, Gandhi withdrew from active politics.
Accusations by Hindu fundamentalists that he had sided with the Muslims in giving away Pakistan too easily dogged Gandhi since the day the state of Pakistan was declared. On January 30, 1948, a Hindu fundamentalist called Nathu Ram Godse shot and killed the man who was the Mahatma.
The story that Vasco da Gama, when he docked that boat full of exhausted Portuguese traders in Cochin, ends here with Gandhi's martyrdom.