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| The British Empire in India |
The English East India Company continued to extend its control over Indian territory throughout the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Treaties made with Indian princes provided for the stationing of British troops within these princely states. To pay for the troops the British were often given revenue-collecting rights in certain parts of the states; this gave them indirect control over these areas. Many of these states were annexed when succession to the throne was in doubt or when the ruler acted in ways that seemed contrary to British interests.
The British made even more significant gains by military means. In the late 1700s they were drawn into a three-way conflict when the nizam of Hyderābād asked for British assistance against his rivals: the Marathas, and Tipu Sahib, the sultan of Mysore. In 1799 the British marched on Seringapatam, Tipu’s capital, and defeated his troops. Tipu was killed defending the city. The British annexed much of Mysore outright; they controlled the remainder through a new sultan they installed. After a series of battles (1775-1782, 1803-1805, 1817-1818) with the Marathas, the British also succeeded in bringing Maratha lands under their control.
In 1773 the British Parliament passed the Regulating Act, the first of a series of acts that gave British governors greater control over the English East India Company. Under the Regulating Act the company was still permitted to continue handling all trading matters and to have its own troops, but its activity was now supervised by parliament. The act also established the post of governor-general of India and made the holder of the office directly responsible to the British government. Warren Hastings became the first governor-general of India in 1774.
The British proceeded to make major changes in the administration of their realm. The three presidencies (administrative districts)—Bengal, Bombay, and Madras—adopted different systems of fixing responsibility for the payment of land taxes. In Bengal, the local landed gentry accepted responsibility for a fixed amount of taxes in return for ownership of large estates. Under this arrangement the British did not share in the gains of any potential improvements in agricultural productivity. By contrast, in Madras and Bombay, peasant cultivators paid annual taxes directly to the government. The tax rate could be adjusted at fixed intervals, so in this case the British could reap the benefits of agricultural expansion. A civil service system was developed that admitted British officers through a merit examination, trained them in an administrative college, and paid them handsomely to reduce corruption. Meanwhile, the development of the textile industry in Britain forced a transformation of India’s economy: India had to produce raw cotton for export and buy manufactured goods—including cloth—from England, while the cottage industries that produced textiles in India were ruined.
At the same time British attitudes about Indian culture changed. Until about 1800 the East India Company traders adapted themselves to the country, donning Indian dress, learning Sanskrit, and sometimes taking Indian mistresses. As British rule strengthened, and as an influential evangelical Christian movement emerged in the early 19th century, India’s customs were judged more harshly. Missionaries, who had been kept out by the company for fear they would upset Indians and thus disrupt commerce, were now brought in. Laws were passed to abolish Indian customs such as suttee (the immolation of a widow on her husband’s funeral pyre). The 18th-century company officers, such as Sir William Jones, a scholar of Sanskrit who discovered the relationship of Indo-European languages, were replaced by British subjects who felt Indian thought and literature was of virtually no value. In 1835 English was enforced as the language of government.
Under the leadership of Governor-General James Andrew Broun Ramsay, 10th earl of Dalhousie, the empire continued to expand. After two wars with the Sikhs, the Sikh state of Punjab was added in 1849. Governor-General Dalhousie also annexed Sātāra, Jaipur, Sambalpur, Jhānsi, and Nāgpur on the death of their native rulers, taking advantage of a British doctrine that declared Britain’s right to govern any Indian state where there was no natural heir to the throne. The absorption of Oudh, long under Britain’s indirect control, was the last major piece added to the company’s possessions; it was annexed in 1856. Dalhousie’s tenure was also marked by various improvements and reforms: the construction of railroads, bridges, roads, and irrigation systems; the establishment of telegraph and postal services; and restrictions on slave trading and other ancient practices. These innovations and reforms, however, aroused little enthusiasm among Indian people, many of whom regarded the modernization of their country with both fear and mistrust.
The annexation of Indian territory and the rigorous taxation on Indian land contributed to a revolt against British rule that began in 1857. The revolt started as a mutiny of Indian sepoys (soldiers) in the service of the English East India Company in Meerut, a town northeast of Delhi. The mutiny erupted when some sepoys refused to use their new Lee-Enfield rifles. To load the rifles, the soldiers had to bite off the ends of greased cartridges. Rumors that the cartridges were greased with the fat of cows and pigs outraged both Hindus, who regard cows as sacred, and Muslims, who regard pigs as unclean. After taking Meerut, the mutineers marched to Delhi and persuaded the nominal sovereign of India, the Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah II, to resume his rule. The revolt spread rapidly, with local rulers playing an active part in expelling or killing the British and putting their garrisons under siege, especially at Lucknow. The revolt extended through Oudh Province (now part of Uttar Pradesh) and present-day northern Madhya Pradesh. The British were able to crush it, making particular use of Sikh soldiers recruited in the Punjab. The mutiny ended by 1859, with both sides guilty of atrocities.
The Sepoy Rebellion, with its unanticipated fury and extent, left the British feeling insecure. In August 1858 the British Parliament abolished the English East India Company and transferred the company’s responsibilities to the British crown. This launched a period of direct rule in India, ending the fiction of company rule as an agent of the Mughal emperor (who was tried for treason and exiled to Burma). In November 1858, in her proclamation to the “Princes, Chiefs, and Peoples of India,” Queen Victoria pledged to preserve the rule of Indian princes in return for loyalty to the crown. More than 560 such enclaves, taking in one-fourth of India’s area and one-fifth of its people, were preserved until Indian independence in 1947. In 1876, at the urging of British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, Queen Victoria took the title of Empress of India.
Among the reforms introduced after the adoption of direct rule was a reorganization of the administrative system. A secretary of state, aided by a council, began to control Indian affairs from London. A viceroy (a governor who acts in the name of the British crown) implemented London’s policies from Calcutta. An executive and a legislative council provided advice and assistance. Provincial governors made up the next level of authority, and below them were district officials.
The army was also reorganized after the imposition of direct rule. The ratio of British to Indian soldiers was reduced, and recruitment policies were reshaped to favor Sikhs and other “martial races” who had been loyal during the Sepoy Rebellion. Castes and groups that had been disloyal were carefully screened out.
Although the system of revenue collection remained largely unchanged, landowners who remained loyal during the mutiny were rewarded with titles and grants of large amounts of land, much of it confiscated from those who rebelled. Later, during agitations for Indian independence, the British were able to rely on many landowners for support.
With the imposition of direct rule, the economy of India became even more closely linked than before with that of Britain. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 reduced the sailing time between Britain and India from about three months to only three weeks, enabling London to exercise tight control over all aspects of Indian trade. Railroads, roads, and communications were developed to bring raw materials, especially cotton, to ports for shipment to England, and manufactured goods from England for sale in an expanding Indian market. Development schemes, such as massive irrigation projects in the Punjab, were also intended to serve the purpose of enriching England. Indian entrepreneurs were not encouraged to develop their own industries.
Although some industrialization took place during this period, its benefits did not reach the majority of the Indian population. During the 1850s, mechanized jute industries were developed in Bengal and cotton textiles in western India, mainly by British firms. Although these industries expanded rapidly from 1880 to 1914, and although an Indian iron-and-steel industry was developed in the early 20th century, India remained essentially an agrarian economy. By 1914 industry accounted for less than 5 percent of national income, and less than 1 percent of India’s workforce was employed in factories. A succession of severe famines occurred at this time despite the general improvement of agricultural production, the expansion of the railways, and the development of administrative procedures designed to tackle such crises. With only small advances in public health, death rates remained high and life expectancy low.
The assumption of direct British rule in 1858 made Indians British subjects and promised in principle that Indians could participate in their own governance. Few reforms addressed this issue, however. Although local government councils had been elected even before 1857, it wasn’t until the Indian Councils Act of 1861 that Indians were permitted, by appointment, to participate in the Executive Council, the highest council of the land. Indian representation on local and provincial bodies gradually expanded under British rule, although never to the point of complete control. The higher civil service had theoretically been opened to Indians in 1833, and the Queen’s Proclamation of 1858 confirmed this point again. Nevertheless, candidates for the service had to go to England to compete in the examination, which emphasized classical European subjects. Those few who managed to overcome these initial obstacles and join the service encountered discrimination that prevented them from advancing.
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| The Movement for Independence |
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| Rise of Indian Nationalism |
The Sepoy Rebellion and its aftermath increased political awareness among the Indian people of the abuses of British rule. This growing consciousness found its strongest voice among an English-educated intelligentsia that grew up in India’s major cities during the last three decades of the 19th century. These men were journalists, lawyers, and teachers from India’s elite. Most had attended universities founded in 1857 by the British in Bombay (now Mumbai), Calcutta, and Madras (now Chennai). Studying the political theorists of Western democracy and capitalism such as John Stuart Mill convinced many that they were being denied the full rights and responsibilities of British citizenship.
Dissatisfaction with British rule took organized political form in 1885, when these men, with the support of sympathetic Englishmen, formed the Indian National Congress. Resolutions at the first session called for increased Indian participation on provincial legislative councils and improved access for Indians to employment in the Indian Civil Service. Initially the organization adopted a moderate approach to reform. For its first 20 years, the Congress served as a forum for debate on questions of British policy toward India, as well as a platform to push for economic and social changes. Central to a newly developed Indian identity was the argument, articulated by three-time Congress president Dadabhai Naoroji, that Great Britain was draining India of its wealth by means of unfair trade regulations. The Congress also took issue with the restraint on the development of native Indian industry and the use of Indian taxes to pay the high salaries and pensions of the British who ruled over India by “right” of conquest.
At the same time, a Hindu social reform movement that had begun 50 years earlier contributed ideas about the injustice of caste and gender discrimination. Reformers lobbied for laws to permit, for example, the remarriage of Hindu women widowed before puberty. In western India, one reformer, journalist Bal Gangadhar Tilak, impatient with the slow pace of the nationalist movement, attempted to mobilize a larger audience by drawing on Hindu religious symbolism and Maratha history to spark patriotic fervor. A similar thread of nationalism appeared in Bengal. By 1905 extreme nationalists had arisen to challenge the more moderate members of Congress, whose petitioning of the British government had had little success.
George Nathaniel Curzon, who was viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905, presided over the affairs of British India at its peak, and he worked to weaken nationalist opposition to British rule. In 1905 he partitioned the administratively unwieldy province of Bengal into East Bengal and Assam (with a Muslim majority) and Bengal, Bihār, and Orissa (with a Hindu majority). This measure sparked a set of developments in the nationalist movement that were to transform India’s future. The Hindu elite of Bengal, many of whom were landlords collecting rent from Muslim peasants of East Bengal, were roused to protest not just in the press and at public meetings, but with direct action. Some pushed a boycott and swadeshi (literally “own-country,” but meaning here “buy Indian”) campaign against British goods, especially textiles. Others joined small terrorist groups that succeeded in assassinating some British officials. This movement echoed in other parts of India as well. By 1908 imports had fallen off significantly, and sales of local goods enjoyed a five-year boom that gave real impetus to the development of native industries.
The emergence of extremism, led particularly by Tilak, resulted in a split in the Congress in 1907. The election of a new Liberal government in Britain in 1906 and the subsequent appointment of a new Liberal secretary of state, John Morley, gave new heart to the moderates. Many extremists were imprisoned by the British for lengthy terms.
Finally, the partition of Bengal, the vehement agitation against it, and the prospect of liberal reform crystallized the opposition of the Muslim elite to the trend of Indian nationalism. They worried about the role of a Muslim minority in a fully democratic, independent India. In October 1906 a delegation of about 35 Muslim leaders called upon Lord Minto, the viceroy, to ask for separate electorates for Muslims and a weighted proportion of legislative representation that would reflect their historic role as rulers and their record of cooperating with the British. (These requests were later adopted in the reforms incorporated in the Government of India Act of 1909.) In December, this delegation, joined by additional delegates from every province of India and Burma, formed the All-India Muslim League (later the Muslim League). Although the Muslim League did not then generate a mass following, its leaders played an important role in the politics that accompanied the challenge to British rule and the partition of India in 1947.
Ultimately the opposition to the partition of Bengal was successful. In 1911 the division was annulled, and the eastern and western portions of Bengal were reunited as a presidency, with Calcutta as its capital. Assam became its own province, while Bihār and Orissa were joined as a province (divided into separate provinces in 1936). Also at this time, the British authorities announced that the capital of India would be moved from Calcutta (where it had been formally since 1858) to Delhi. There, a new adjoining city called New Delhi would be built to house the government offices; it was inaugurated as the capital in 1931. Although New Delhi was constructed on a grand imperial scale, the losses from World War I (1914-1918) dealt what was to become a mortal blow to the British Empire.
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| The World Wars and the Emergence of Gandhi |
India was a major source of support for Britain’s war effort. Some 750,000 Indian troops served in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa; more than 36,000 were killed. India supplied wheat and other goods to British forces east of Suez, and with the loss of trade with Germany and the other Central Powers and the continuance of heavy taxation, the economic cost of the war was evident. Political resistance to British rule continued, although mainly at a more moderate level. A small, mostly Sikh revolutionary movement appeared briefly in Punjab.
Shortly after the war began, Indian lawyer Mohandas Gandhi returned to India from South Africa, where he had organized and led an Indian ambulance corps when the war broke out. When he came to India in 1915 he was already an important political leader because of an earlier trip to India in 1901 and 1902 and because of his efforts for civil liberties in South Africa. He met with the viceroy and the leaders of the Congress, and in 1916 he forged a pact with Mohammed Ali Jinnah, leader of the Muslim League, for Congress-Muslim League joint action. Gandhi also became involved in a number of campaigns of nonviolent resistance, in which he honed the nonviolent techniques he had developed in South Africa.
In 1917 Edwin Montague, the secretary of state for India, had announced a policy of the “gradual development of self-governing institutions with a view to the progressive realization of responsible government in India as an integral part of the British Empire.” As the war ended the British introduced a fresh set of reforms, culminating in the Government of India Act of 1919. This act brought some Indian control over certain executive departments in the provinces and greater representation of Indians in the central legislative council. Also, the act made it easier for Indians to gain admission into the civil service and into the officer corps of the army, an aspect of the law which encountered resistance from some British.
In the same year that it passed these reforms, however, the legislative council also passed the Rowlatt Acts. The Rowlatt Acts, which detractors called the Black Acts, made permanent some restrictions on civil liberties that had been imposed during the war. Specifically, the acts gave the government emergency powers to deal with so-called revolutionary activities. There was an immediate wave of disapproval from all Indian leaders, and Gandhi stepped in and organized a series of nonviolent acts of resistance. Gandhi called these acts satyagraha (Sanskrit for “truth and firmness”). These included nationwide work stoppages (hartal) and other activities in which Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs participated together. One of these protests coincided with a Hindu festival in Amritsar. Despite a last-minute ban on public meetings, thousands of unarmed pilgrims and protesters gathered in a public square to celebrate on April 13, 1919. Without warning, British troops opened fire on the peaceful crowd, killing nearly 400 people. The success of the Rowlatt Satyagraha followed by the Amritsar incident brought public sympathy to the nationalist movement, and with it a new level of prestige.
In 1920, when the government failed to make amends, Gandhi began an organized campaign of noncooperation. Many Indians returned their British honors, withdrew their children from British schools, resigned from government service, and began a new boycott of British goods. Gandhi reorganized the Congress in 1920, transforming it from an annual gathering of self-selected leaders with a skeleton staff to a mass movement, with membership fees and requirements set to allow even the poorest Indian to join. Gandhi ended the noncooperation movement in 1922 after 22 Indian policemen were burned to death. A lull in nationalist activity followed. Gandhi was jailed shortly after ending the noncooperation movement and remained in prison until 1924. In 1928, a British committee began to study the next steps of democratic reform, sparking a revival of the Congress movement. In its 1929 annual session, the Congress issued a demand for “complete independence.”
Gandhi then led another even more massive movement of civil disobedience. It climaxed in 1930 with the so-called Salt Satyagraha, in which thousands of Indians protested taxes, particularly the tax on salt, by marching to the Arabian Sea and making salt from evaporated seawater. Tens of thousands, including Gandhi, were sent to jail as a result. The British government gave in, and Gandhi went to London as the sole representative of the Congress to negotiate new steps of reform.
In 1935, after these negotiations, the British Parliament approved legislation known as the Government of India Act of 1935. The legislation provided for the establishment of autonomous legislative bodies in the provinces of British India, the creation of a federal form of central government incorporating the provinces and princely states, and the protection of Muslim minorities. The act also provided for a bicameral national legislature and an executive arm under control of the British government. The federation was never realized, but provincial legislative autonomy went into effect April 1, 1937, after nationwide elections. In these elections, the Congress saw victory in much of India, except in areas where Muslims were a majority. Congress governments, with significant powers, took office in a number of provinces.
When World War II broke out in 1939 the British declared war on India’s behalf without consulting Indian leaders, and the Congress provincial ministries resigned in protest. After extended negotiations with the British, who were searching for a way to grant independence some time after the war’s end, Gandhi declared a “Quit India” movement in 1942, urging the British to withdraw from India or face nationwide civil disobedience. Along with other Congress leaders, he was imprisoned in August that year, and the country erupted in violent demonstrations. Gandhi was not released until 1944.
The Muslim League supported Britain in the war effort but had become convinced that if the Congress Party were to inherit British rule, Muslims would be unfairly treated. Jinnah campaigned vigorously against Congress during the war and increased the Muslim League’s support base. In 1940 the League passed what came to be known as the Pakistan Resolution, which demanded separate states in the Muslim-majority areas of India (in the northwest, centered on Punjab, and in the east, centered on Bengal) at independence. Many Muslims supported the Muslim League in its demand, while Hindus (and some Muslims) supported the Congress, which opposed partition of British India. Another round of negotiations over Indian independence began after the war in 1946, but the Congress and the Muslim League were unable to settle their differences over partition. Jinnah proclaimed August 16, 1946, Direct Action Day for the purpose of winning a separate Muslim state. Savage Hindu-Muslim riots broke out in Calcutta the next day and quickly spread throughout India. In September, an interim government was installed. Jawaharlal Nehru, the leader of Congress, became India’s first prime minister. A united India, however, no longer seemed possible. The new Labor government in Britain decided that the time to end British rule of India had come, and in early 1947 Britain announced its intention of transferring power no later than June 1948.
As independence approached and Hindus and Muslims continued to fight and kill each other, Gandhi once again put his belief in nonviolence into play. He went on his own to a Muslim-majority area of Bengal, placing himself as a hostage for the safety of Muslims living among Hindus in western Bengal. With the British army unable to deal with the threat of mounting violence, the new viceroy, Louis Mountbatten, decided to advance the schedule of the transfer of power, leaving just months for the parties to agree on a formula for independence. Finally in June 1947 Congress and Muslim League leaders, against Gandhi’s wishes, agreed to a partition of the country along religious lines, with predominantly Hindu areas allocated to India and predominantly Muslim areas to Pakistan. They agreed to a partition of the Muslim-majority provinces of Punjab and Bengal as well. Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh refugees numbering in the millions streamed across the newly drawn borders. In Punjab, where the Sikh community was cut in half, a period of terrible bloodshed followed. In Bengal, where Gandhi became what Lord Mountbatten called a “one-man boundary force,” the violence was insignificant in comparison. On India’s independence day, August 15, 1947, Gandhi was in Calcutta rather than Delhi, mourning the division of the country rather than celebrating the self-rule for which he had fought.
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