Preface
At the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1840, Great Britain was at the threshold of emerging as the dominant global power, encompassing the largest empire the world has known. The jewel in the crown of Britainís Empire was the mighty south Asian realm known as India. Indeed, British Rule in India, known immortally as the British Raj, was a result of the Victorian eraís infusion of British liberal philosophy in colonial policy and social governance with that of the diverse, regional, religious and princely regimes that defined the Indian mosaic. Liberal-minded principles of economics, social responsibility and military administration permeated British legislative and imperial rule never more clearly than in the British Administration of the Indian subcontinent.
Certainly, the British made positive contributions to Indian life, but colonialism also brought serious negative consequences. When the British Crown took over direct control from the East Indies Company in 1857, it inherited over 750,000 square miles of Indian territory. Slowly, the British extended their control throughout the region. Moreover, the Crown found itself obligated to support the long list of treaties the East Indies Company had made with numerous Indian Princes and regional rulers. The British government honored these agreements and India was carved into more than 600 sovereign territories in the sub-continent. These native states had British advisors; the large British provinces such as Punjab, Bengal and Assam had British Governors who reported to the imperial viceroy of India, who in turn reported to Parliament and the monarch in London. In all, this amalgam of colonial control and traditional feudalism reflected and in some ways deepened the regional and local disunities of India. Although certain parts of the sub-continent adopted and promoted the contributions of the colonial era, others rejected and repelled them wholly.
The framework of government concentrated power over India in the hands of distant British government. The liberal mindset of London, however, heightened its sense of duty and standards of honesty such that the British never intentionally acted in a capricious or oppressive manner toward their Indian subjects. This benign self-image of the men who ruled India was tirelessly proclaimed both in Britain and India, and it contained much truth. In this application of enlightenment, however, the administrators of India found themselves confronted with resistance from subjects who did not see things in the same way and were deeply devoted to customs which their masters despised. A collision between rulers and the ruled became inevitable as the Indian government turned its attention towards what it imagined to be the emancipation of India from its past.
"C is for Colonies
Rightly we boast,
That of all the great nations
Great Britain has the most."
The Empire of India Exhibition, which opened at Earlís Court in 1895, captivated Londoners. It was a colorful imperial extravaganza, which suited the mood of the times and both educated and entertained. The overall theme was clear: modern India was the product of British patience and genius.
There was indeed something miraculous about the way in which less than a hundred thousand soldiers and administrators held in thrall two hundred and fifty million Indians. India also possessed elements of glamour and mystery that entranced the Victorians and everyone sensed that ruling it gave Britain power and prestige. Furthermore, and this was made clear in Earlís Court displays, many British believed that everything that was good in India derived from Britainís influence.
The history of India since 1815, as chronicled by the British, was a steady ascent from the depths of chaos, ignorance and backwardness towards the heights of peace, order and material progress. Yet, in many quarters, doubts lingered concerning the ambiguity of Britainís position in the country. How was it that a nation with liberal traditions and deeply held convictions about personal liberty could maintain an authoritarian empire which ultimately rested on force? The answer was that the constraints on Indians were applied humanely by a régime devoted to their best interests. "Autocratic paternalism" coined by Commissioner Herbert Edwards in 1848 became a standard defense of the British Raj for the following one hundred years.1
After 1815, the old East Indies Companyís "live-and-let-live" approach to the governing of India was replaced by one that set great store on remolding the country along Western lines.2 India became a sort of laboratory for current British liberal, evangelical and utilitarian theorists who sought, in various ways to regenerate all mankind. Thus, using their dictatorial powers, humane British officials would "sweep away the supernatural encumbrances on Indian thought." The poet and historian Thomas Macaulay, who was chairman of a committee formed in 1833 to consider future educational policy in India, predicted that Hinduism would wither away as Western learning spread across the country.3 To accelerate this process, he insisted that all teaching be done in English and based on English texts. With remarkable foresight, he claimed that exposure to British ideas and patterns of thinking would, in time, create an Indian élite, which would demand self-government. Some years later, the governor-general Lord Ellenborough, remarked to a babu (an English speaking Indian clerk), "You know, if these gentlemen succeed in educating the natives of India, to the utmost extent of their desire, we should not remain in the country three months." "Not three weeks," was the babuís reply.4
The agitation of British political and religious theorists, however, did push the Company in the direction of benevolent, paternalist policies which, by their nature, disturbed Indian society. Non-interference with native customs was abandoned and campaigns were undertaken against religious rituals that offended European sensibilities. Under Lord William Bentinck, governor-general from 1828 to 1835, systematic measures were adopted to eradicate thagi (the Hindu cult of assassin-priests who preyed on travelers) and sati. The Thugs, as they came to be known, were all but eliminated by congenial methods, as was sati.5 In the same stroke, Company employees were encouraged to dissociate themselves from Hindu ceremonies and involvement in the administration of temples. Nonetheless, passive tolerance had to be shown publicly to native religions. A handbook of advice for young officers, published in 1833, suggested that they would have to show forbearance towards their menís religions even though they were unwholesome.
Puzzlement, alarm and dismay were common reactions of many Indians to the many less obvious changes to their lives being introduced by a determined and energetic government. A few tried to avert the new order. Early in 1832, a frightening conspiracy to massacre Europeans had been discovered at Banglore. The ringleaders had exploited fears that the government was preparing for the mass conversion of Muslims to Christianity. Jolted by this unpleasant reminder of the fragility of British power, the local authorities turned the punishment of the chief culprits into a somber display of retribution. Four condemned men, all sepoys, were escorted to the place of execution by military bands playing the ëDead Marchí from Handleís Saul6 and were tied to cannon barrels and blown to pieces. According to the superintendent of police, this spectacle "struck such terror into all Classes, Civil and Military," and he felt certain that it would be a long time before further signs of resistance manifested themselves.7
This incident was quickly dismissed as the waywardness of the native character and naïveté of Muslims, who readily swallowed any rumor, however preposterous. The method of execution, traditional in India, also dramatically illustrated the internal contradictions of a "despotism," which simultaneously boasted its humanity and enlightenment.
At this time, the spread of Western enlightenment was becoming one of the chief purposes of the Indian Government. It was a task for which it was not well fitted. There was no uniform administration throughout the sub-continent: in the old Company presidencies of Bengal, Madras, and Bombay and their dependencies authority was exercised by district judges and collectors, while in other regions, native princess ruled under the guidance of British residents. A considerable part of administrative energy was consumed in the collection of land revenue from the local peasantry. At the lower most levels, this was undertaken by local proprietors, the zamindars and taluqdars. Their powers had been confirmed and enhanced during the late 18th century when the government wanted to enlist the support of men of substances and influence within Indian society. As a result of this distinctly "British" means of governance, one in which the rule of the indigenous populace was managed in much the same manner as it had been prior to Imperial occupation, the Company streamlined the means of Indiaís ruling class, while retaining the basic structure.8 The results were obvious; in the fiscal year 1856-7, the Indian governmentís income was approximately £30 million, of which £16.7 million came from land revenues and nearly £7 million from salt and opium monopolies.9 The British Raj in India therefore, rested on the ability of its servants to extract the small surpluses made by peasant farmers, who at best lived a hand-to-mouth existence. Their cash provided the wherewithal for schemes designed to transform and regenerate the country. Land taxes funded the schools, and the metal plated roads, which from 1836 onwards radiated out from and connected the large centers of commerce and administration. Twenty years later, the governmentís investment program included a railway network 3,000 miles in length and linking Calcutta with Delhi, Delhi with Peshawar, and Bombay with Nagpur. By the beginning of 1857 nearly three hundred miles of track had been laid and in advance of the railway gangs, engineers had criss-crossed the country with 4,000 miles of telegraph lines.10
Roads, railways and telegraph wires symbolized the irreversible march of progress, probably more than the schools, colleges and teaching hospitals, which were springing up in provincial capitals. This remaking of the continent epitomized the manner in which British administrators saw their intelligence and technology being dispersed to general Indian society, testaments to Great Britainís patriarchal rule over the country. For Indians who tried to fathom their meanings, these novelties were, however, a source of unease. As the tempo of change increased and the results began to affect new areas of everyday life, the old, persistent fear of forced conversion became stronger. When in January 1857, a mob burned down the new telegraph office at Barrackpore, it did so because the building represented change imposed from above by an alien power rather than a direct assault on Indian traditions.11
The railway trains, river steamship and telegraph lines marked progress, that historical force which seemed to have gathering momentum since the intellectual and scientific revolutions of the eighteenth century. Britain was in the forefront of progress, indeed the first industrial nation found no difficulty in identifying itself as the banner-bearer of civilization, destined to transform the world for the better. India represented a stagnant nation, where progress had so long ago ground to a halt and where minds closed to reason were filled with fairy tales (Raj 174). In theory, India could have remained in this condition upon the arrival of the British East Indies Company, for the system of government set up in 1784 confined the activities of state to defense, internal security and the collection of revenue. The Company possessed no mandate to promote reinvestment in the country - or what successive governors called the ëhappinessí of its subjects.
In reality, as the Companyís interests in India expanded, it could not and did not distance itself from the moral and intellectual welfare of its subjects. On a purely practical level its operations required a body of educated Indians to serve in junior administrative posts. More importantly, there was something within the contemporary British temperament that rendered it impossible for them to perpetuate a status quo in which the mass of Indians languished in a state of cataleptic contentment.
It is worth mention that the era of tentative reform inside India, which accompanied its introduction to the ëcivilizedí west, was also one in which the Company consolidated and extended its authority. In 1818 the Mahrathas had been forced to submit and in 1824 a part of the independent kingdom of Burma was annexed after a short war. By the 1830ís attention was turning towards Indiaís northern borders, the powerful Sikh state of Punjab, which would eventually join the Companyís India. Later, the question for the British authority was whether the Indian frontier should lie on the Indus or be pushed forward into the Himalayan foothills, where the passes from Afghanistan debauched.12 The result of these reforms was a vast Indian state, far greater than any immediately previous rulers had managed to accomplish. It cannot be underestimated that this amazing land of radically diverse cultures, religions, castes and stratification of wealth, under the direction of diverse and often warring princely states, was largely homogenized in a few short decades under British direction. This propelled India to the worldís forefront as one of the fastest and economically viable developing nations.
II
"It is that belief in the superior pluck and fighting qualities of our race that won us India and still enable us to hold it." - Garnet Wolseley, Junior Officer, British Army
Nemesis overtook the Raj in 1857, but it came slowly and its approach was hardly noticed. Perhaps the passion for reform and change was out of control and Indians had had more than they could absorb. "I am afraid the enlightenment of Calcutta and other presidencies is going too fast for our Upper Provinces and Central India," a Company administrator commented in 1857.13 At the top of the list of discontented were the great men and women whose fortunes, supplied at the governmentís expense and living in relative comfort, had been reversed by the British. Wajid Ali Shah, the ex-king of Awadh, grumbled in Calcutta where he and a reduced court had been exiled after the Governor-General, Lord Dalhousie, had deposed him for misrule.14 Another victim of the new order was a Maratha nobleman, who held court at Bithur. He had been refused his title after a six-year battle in the courts and failed to secure his £80,000 annuity the government had provided his father. The noble was subject to Lord Dalhousieís doctrine of ëlapseí, which overruled Hindu customs of adoption, and insisted that a state whose ruler died without a direct male heir must forfeit to the Company. Between 1847 and 1856, when he left India, the Governor-General had acquired Satara, Sambalpur, the Punjab, Jhansi and Nagpur by this legal stratagem.15 The kin of their former rulers were naturally disgruntled and tried to assert their rights in the courts, but without success. Henceforward, there would be no security for any prince, however loyal and accommodating.
The fall of the princes had repercussion throughout their states. When Awadh had been taken over in February 1856, the royal household was severely reduced, the 200,000-strong royal army was dispersed and those who maintained it, including 12,000 armoires, were thrown out of work.16 The number of unemployed rose further when the new government ordered the taluqdars to dismiss their armed retainers. Jobless and discontented men drifted towards the big-cities in search of other unemployment. Rural grudges were long-standing and direct in equal parts against the government, which extracted taxes, and the moneylenders who supplied the peasantry with the wherewithal to pay.
The greatest bitterness arose from those Indianís who felt their very way of life besieged by the Companyís moves to modernize the region. They saw the distribution of food as a token that the in the near future the Company would end all distinctions of caste and religion and that everyone would share a common diet.17 This prediction was a variation on an old, but enduring theme: the Companyís secret plan to impose Christianity on India. Sepoys argued that the Governor-General, Lord Canning had "given orders to all commanding officers which he received from the Company to destroy the religion of the country." During the winter of 1856-7, two new twists were given to the familiar tale of impending conversion. To the Indians, the signs were unmistakable; laws had been passed to allow Hindu widows to remarry, the Company was accused of contaminating the salt, ghi and sugar of sepoys in the Bengal army, with the bones of pigs and cows. There was one widely credited report that the cartridges for the new Enfield rifle were greased with a blend of pork and beef fat, the greatest of insults and abominations to devout Hindu and Muslim troops. Both rumors regarding the military proved to be false, but what mattered was that they gave substance to hitherto vague fears that Christianity was about to be imposed.18
Muslims and high-caste Hindus of the Bengal army were particularly susceptible to misgivings. Their elevated self-esteem had been eroded by new military regulations. The British, in their quest for greater efficiency had imposed new reforms to military troops, callous to indigenous tradition, as well as their refocus to recruit only the ëtraditionalí warrior races of the Sind and Punjab.19 For sepoys, where soldering had long been regarded as an honorable occupation for Brahmins, for whom no other source of dignified labor existed, gave rise to an additional grievance.
As a result, these undercurrents of apprehension and anger broke to the surface at Meerut in the last week of May 1857 after sepoys had been publicly humiliated and punished for refusing to touch the by now infamous Enfield rifle cartridges. The result, one cavalry and three infantry regiments spontaneously rebelled, ransacked the European cantonment and murdered several officers and their families. The insurgents fled to Delhi, seized the city and proclaimed the aged Badhur Shah, a descendant of the Mughals, Emperor of India. Then the mutineers paused to await the reactions of their countrymen and their rulers.
Its own soldiers had challenged the Raj with a suddenness that left everyone momentarily dazed. Prestige was at stake and the classic British response would have been a counter-attack whatever the risks. But no hammer-blow struck Delhi until the second week of June, when a scratch force of 4,000 men, hastily assembled in Punjab, arrived outside the city walls and began a blockade.20 Elsewhere, administrators and generals decided to sit tight and, like the mutineers, wait and see what was to happen. Their pusillanimity would be later condemned, but there was little else they could have done given the vast disparity in numbers between British and Indian troops. In all there were 45,000 white and 232,000 Indian soldiers dispersed across the sub-continent, while two-hundred and fifty million Indianís waited to see what would happen.21
The spirit of the insurrection slowly spread out from Delhi and by early July there had been uprisings in Alighar, Benares, Jhansi, Gawaloir and Indore. Sepoys attacked and murdered their officers and their wives and children. Civilians who had in various ways been losers as result of the Companyís reforms within India joined them. The dispossessed, like Nana Sahib and Rani of Jhansi, were augmented by peasants whose marginal lands were overtaxed, soldiers from the disbanded armies, Muslim holy men, petty criminals and bandits for whom any collapse of authority was a chance to make a profit. It had taken roughly six weeks for all signs of British authority to be erased from the region. Everywhere, there was a feeling that the Raj, like the rebels in the three cities, was at bay.
Despite, the British, through ruthless and iron stamina were beginning to get the upper hand by early autumn, and the turning point came with the capture of Delhi in September when 30,000 or more rebels fled the city before the final four weeks of the assault. In October, a column from Delhi raised the siege of Agra and a month later the garrison and civilian population Lucknow was evacuated.22 The war of containment was ending and a campaign of pacification was being prepared.
The Indian Mutiny was a civil war. Thousands of Indians fought along side the British, including traditionally militant Pathans from the North-West Frontier, who defied calls to fight for Islam against the infidels.23 The Afghan amir, no friend to Britain, made no hostile move, nor aided the rebel cause. Others who had suffered at the hands of the British also refused to commit themselves. The Mutiny came to be seen as a soldiersí rebellion, which had temporarily gotten out of hand because the government lacked the forces to contain it. It was localized, negative in its objectives, destructive and chaotic in nature and therefore limited in appeal.
III
"In olden days, and for a considerable time - indeed,
until I would say the last ten years - the principle of our government
of India, if I may venture to describe it in a sentence, was to respect
Nationality."
- Benjiman Disreali, 1874
The Mutiny pushed India into the forefront of British political life and there was much heart-searching as to what had gone wrong and why. The Indian Rebellion of 1857 marked a turning point for Britain and its relationship with India. Ironically, although perhaps inevitably, the East India Company was the main causality of the mutiny. The 1858 Government of India Act swept away the Companyís authority and brought Britain, as the theoretical master of India into a direct reality. The governor-general was given the title of viceroy, but carried on with past duties uninterrupted. A Secretary of State for India, with fifteen advisors, was established in London for the British Government to sharpen its control over the region.24
The army naturally was reformed following the mutiny. All of its troops were placed under the crown and there was a genuine effort to increase the number of British troops active in India. Since, however, Indian soldiers outnumbered British two to one and an attempt was made to recruit reliable men. As a result, the Indian army came to rely heavily on Sikhs, Gurkhas and the frontier tribes of the northwest.25
One unexpected result of the crushing of the mutiny was the strengthening of conservatism in the sub-continent. The Indian princes', whom had shown almost a complete unanimity of loyalty towards the British during the rebellion, now reaped their reward. The British Administration clearly regarded them as stalwart champions of the Raj. The result was that princely states now were safe from British encroachment as long as they accepted British overlordship and advice. As well, the British exercised a new caution over the process of reform. Fearful to set in motion an Indian reaction similar to the one that had precipitated the soldiersí mutiny, the government avoided all forms of drastic political and social change. Missionary activity was halted completely.26
As a result of these reforms and reactions, by 1870, Britainís India stood pacified and, to some extent, reformed. Economic progress was made and there were some improvements in the areas of communication, agriculture and education. Overall, therefore, India became more British as a result of the mutiny, not less so. The number of British officials and non-officials increased markedly. Anglo-Indian high society became more self-contained and self-confident. The self-assurance of the British community was, however, often near to arrogance. This arose partly from the sheer scale of Britainís Indian enterprise: "mastery of the enormous territory conferred on British character a sense of inflated imperial pride and it also engineered a set of prejudices."27 British supremacy in India also tended to confirm some of the less pleasing characteristics of the rulers, in E.M. Fosterís A Passage to India he states, "India had developed sides of his character that [the people] had never admired. His self-complacency, his censoriousness, his lack of subtlety."28
The bitter aftermath of the mutiny, with a distinct hardening of racial attitudes and a tendency for crude stereotyping, meant that a genuine dialogue between the two races was, for the foreseeable future, out of the question. By the mid-Victorian age, ëthe white-manís burdení in India had become, at least in part, the color of his skin. In the eyes of many of the British in India, however, the brown skin of the indigenous man and woman was perceived to be an even greater burden, serving as a badge of inferiority and a bar to progress towards European political rights and freedoms.29
That the British wished to maintain control of India against almost any odds was based on one simple calculation. Britain could simply not afford to lose her greatest dependency. The extent of the total British investment in India, and the capacity of the Indian market to take up to 20 percent of British exports by the 1880ís, meant that Britain would not willingly abandon her rule in the sub-continent. By 1900, India was paying Britain £10 million per year in interest as well as bearing the cost of salaries and pensions for administration. India was an enormously profitable, self-financing enterprise, approximating very closely to the Victorian capitalist and imperial ideal.30
The Raj was a source of inestimable pride to so many Britons for another reason. It was, in their eyes, an almost philanthropic venture, through conveniently based on sound economy. Good and fair government, an expanding economy, and a whole range of improvements from famine relief to irrigation schemes, from the medical assault on cholera to the establishment of a Europeanized education system, all bore witness to the high-minded agenda of British rule. Few in Britain imagined that the handing of power over to the Indian populace would be anything but catastrophic, bringing corruption, misadministration and chaos in its wake. Moreover, despite the magnificent pomp of the Raj at its most ceremonial, there were, so it was asserted, a host of Britons modestly doing their duty, quietly, efficiently, patriotically and judiciously. Despite such, the whole administration of the Raj, benevolent or otherwise, was financed by taxes levied on the Indian people. Although it was possible for the British to boast that India had never been so well governed, the fact was that Indians not only paid for their own government, but also had no say in its structure.
In some ways, the Raj was a bluff. By the end of Queen Victoriaís reign, some 300 million Indians were ruled by barely 1500 administrators of the Indian Civil Service. There were approximately, 3000 British officers in the Indian Army. Leaving aside the British regiments serving in India, the total number of non-military personnel living in the sub-continent by the turn of the century, was under 20,000.31 If the Indian people had chosen to throw off their overlords in a fashion more consistent and concerted than that of 1857, there would have been little to prevent them. The divisions within Indian society proved that such a concerted action was very unlikely to occur. Ultimately, they did not, and remained subservient to British rule. Indeed, the British continued to maintain their authority and the power and strength of the Raj, following the rebellion of 1857, through the exploitation of the differences and divisions within the sub-continent. British power in India, in time would come to be countered and even removed, restoring the nationís governance completely to its own administration. What the British had accomplished, however, what they managed to mould and create out of India in under a century had propelled the British Empire to an unparalleled height.
The Raj set the standard for the imperial race that would ensue decades after the British had long been established on the sub-continent. It was British policy, British administration, both in Delhi and London and ultimately British military control that maintained Britainís burdening task of civilizing India. British rule in India underpinned Britainís claim to many of the great attributes spectators to Earlís Court exhibit viewed in 1895. Yet, in Britainís unparalleled ëliberal viewí of governance, it found a means to justify its military enforcement of British interests and coerced administrative control over the country.
The insurgents in 1857 presented the first real challenge to British Policy in India. For the British this presented a re-thinking of the manner in which traditional liberal thinking was employed on the continent. The resulting policy changes, in the wake of 1857, resulted in a stricter perpetuation of Briton's belief that they were the only persons able to properly govern India, while they simultaneously separated themselves from the general Indian populace.
For Indians, the end of the ëMutiny,í signaled a return
to the stability the British Raj had brought with it when it arrived, albeit
with a reduction in moves to reform the nation. Conversely, it signaled
an aggressive move on the sub-continent to establish British rule with
a new efficiency, void of any significant advisement from Indians. Ultimately,
from the British perspective, liberal policies set the stage for Britainís
sincere desire develop India and alleviate its years of stagnancy. Liberal
policy would also excuse the infighting of 1857 as frustrations caused
in minor amount by the Rajís attempts to reform Indian society. Yet, the
liberal mind-set failed to go far enough in recognizing Britainís limited
time role in India; the final reality would beseech the nation with Indiaís
eventual move away from the Raj. Contemporary liberal policy made it impossible
for Britons to perpetuate a status quo in which the mass of Indians languished
in a state of cataleptic contentment. The Liberal mind set, aided greatly
by the prestige and economic factors that India brought the Raj, forced
the British to take a role in India, and notwithstanding the final outcome,
it did.
Asburner, L.R.: ëGujarat Disturbances, 1857-1859.í Bombay Gazetter, I, 1896 pg. 434-5.
Barnett, C.: The Collapse of British Power. Gloucester: 184 pg. 261-2.
Chakravarty, S.: The Raj Syndrome: A Study of Imperial Perceptions. London: 1989 pg. 50.
Foster, E.M.: A Passage to India. 3rd Edition, London: 1936 pg. 79.
Greathed, Elisa: "Introduction," in Letters Written During the Siege of Delhi. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, & Roberts, 1858 pg. 144.
Grey, A.: ëOfficial files and correspondence of : the first and fourth Earls of Minto.í National Library of Scotland, Edinburg: pg. 32.
Holmes, O.: ëIndian papers of the first Earl of Auckland.í British Library, London: Add Mss pg. 41
Illustrated London News, 13 March 1852 pg. 4.
Lawrence, James: Raj. London: Abacus 1997 pg. 232-245.
Lawrence, James: The Rise and Fall of the British Empire. London: Abacus 1998 pg. 220-300.
Merteck, Alex: India's Epic Battle: 1857. http://www.geocities.com/Broadway/Alley/5443/indmut.htm
Press Lists of Punjab Civil Secretariat (XVII): Political Departments from 1859 to 1963, Judicial Dept. Lahore: 1928 pg. 122.
Public Record Office, Admirality 1/5603, 125/43
Raj, J.: Economic Conflict in Northern India. Dehli: 1978
pg. 58-9