1858: Beginning of the Raj
In 1858,
British Crown rule was established in India, ending a century of control by the
East India Company. The life and death struggle that preceded this
formalisation of British control lasted nearly two years, cost £36 million, and
is variously referred to as the 'Great Rebellion', the 'Indian Mutiny' or the
'First War of Indian Independence'.
Inevitably,
the consequences of this bloody rupture marked the nature of political, social
and economic rule that the British established in its wake.
It is
important to note that the Raj (in Hindi meaning 'to rule' or 'kingdom') never
encompassed the entire land mass of the sub-continent.
Two-fifths
of the sub-continent continued to be independently governed by over 560 large
and small principalities, some of whose rulers had fought the British during
the 'Great Rebellion', but with whom the Raj now entered into treaties of
mutual cooperation.
Indeed the
conservative elites of princely India and big landholders were to prove
increasingly useful allies, who would lend critical monetary and military
support during the two World Wars.
Hyderabad
for example was the size of England and Wales combined, and its ruler, the
Nizam, was the richest man in the world.
They would
also serve as political bulwarks in the nationalist storms that gathered
momentum from the late 19th century and broke with insistent ferocity over the
first half of the 20th century.
But the
'Great Rebellion' did more to create a racial chasm between ordinary Indians
and Britons. This was a social segregation which would endure until the end of
the Raj, graphically captured in EM Forster's 'A Passage to India'.
While the
British criticised the divisions of the Hindu caste system, they themselves
lived a life ruled by precedence and class, deeply divided within itself.
Rudyard Kipling reflected this position in his novels. His books also exposed
the gulf between the 'white' community and the 'Anglo-Indians', whose mixed
race caused them to be considered racially 'impure'.
Government in India
While there
was a consensus that Indian policy was above party politics, in practice it
became embroiled in the vicissitudes of Westminster.
Successive
viceroys in India and secretaries of state in London were appointed on a party
basis, having little or no direct experience of Indian conditions and they
strove to serve two masters. Edwin Montagu was the first serving secretary of
state to visit India on a fact-finding mission in 1917-1918.
Broadly
speaking, the Government of India combined a policy of co-operation and
conciliation of different strata of Indian society with a policy of coercion
and force.
The empire
was nothing if not an engine of economic gain. Pragmatism dictated that to
govern efficiently and remuneratively, 1,200 Indian civil servants could not
rule 300 to 350 million Indians without the assistance of indigenous
'collaborators'.
However, in
true British tradition, they also chose to elaborate sophisticated and
intellectual arguments to justify and explain their rule.
On the one
hand, Whigs and Liberals expounded sentiments most iconically expressed by TB
Macaulay in 1833: 'that... by good government we may educate our subjects into
a capacity for better government, that, having become instructed in European
knowledge, they may, in some future age, demand European institutions. Whether
such a day will ever come I know not. ... Whenever it comes, it will be the
proudest day in English history.'
On the other
hand, James Fitzjames Stephen, writing in the 1880s, contended that empire had
to be absolute because 'its great and characteristic task is that of imposing
on Indian ways of life and modes of thought which the population regards
without sympathy, though they are essential to its personal well-being and to
the credit of its rulers.'
What was
less ambiguous was that it was the economic interests of Britain that were
paramount, though as the 20th century progressed, the government in India was
successful in imposing safeguards. For instance, tariff walls were raised to
protect the Indian cotton industry against cheap British imports.
Financial gains and losses
There were
two incontrovertible economic benefits provided by India. It was a captive
market for British goods and services, and served defence needs by maintaining
a large standing army at no cost to the British taxpayer.
However, the
economic balance sheet of the empire remains a controversial topic and the
debate has revolved around whether the British developed or retarded the Indian
economy.
Among the
benefits bequeathed by the British connection were the large scale capital
investments in infrastructure, in railways, canals and irrigation works,
shipping and mining; the commercialisation of agriculture with the development
of a cash nexus; the establishment of an education system in English and of law
and order creating suitable conditions for the growth of industry and
enterprise; and the integration of India into the world economy.
Conversely,
the British are criticised for leaving Indians poorer and more prone to
devastating famines; exhorting high taxation in cash from an inpecunious
people; destabilising cropping patterns by forced commercial cropping; draining
Indian revenues to pay for an expensive bureaucracy (including in London) and
an army beyond India's own defence needs; servicing a huge sterling debt, not
ensuring that the returns from capital investment were reinvested to develop
the Indian economy rather than reimbursed to London; and retaining the levers
of economic power in British hands.
The Indian National Congress
The
foundation of the Indian National Congress in 1885 as an all India, secular
political party, is widely regarded as a key turning point in formalising
opposition to the Raj.
It developed
from its elite intellectual middle-class confines, and a moderate, loyalist
agenda, to become by the inter-war years, a mass organisation.
It was an
organisation which, despite the tremendous diversity of the sub-continent, was
remarkable in achieving broad consensus over the decades.
Yet it was
not a homogenous organisation and was often dominated by factionalism and
opposing political strategies. This was exemplified by its splintering in 1907
into the so-called 'moderate' and 'extremist' wings, which reunited 10 years
later.
Another example
were the 'pro-changers' (who believed working the constitutional structures to
weaken it from within) and 'no-changers' (who wanted to distance themselves
from the Raj) during the 1920s.
There was
also a split within Congress between those who believed that violence was a
justifiable weapon in the fight against imperial oppression (whose most iconic
figure was Subhas Chandra Bose, who went on to form the Indian National Army),
and those who stressed non-violence.
The towering
figure in this latter group was Mahatma Gandhi, who introduced a seismic new
idiom of opposition in the shape of non-violent non-cooperation or 'satyagraha'
(meaning 'truth' or 'soul' force').
Gandhi
oversaw three major nationwide movements which achieved varying degrees of success
in 1920-1922, 1930-1934 and in 1942. These mobilised the masses on the one
hand, while provoking the authorities into draconian repression. Much to
Gandhi's distress, self-restraint among supporters often gave way to violence.
Reasons for independence
The British
Raj unravelled quickly in the 1940s, perhaps surprising after the empire in the
east had so recently survived its greatest challenge in the shape of Japanese
expansionism.
The reasons
for independence were multifaceted and the result of both long and short term
factors.
The pressure
from the rising tide of nationalism made running the empire politically and
economically very challenging and increasingly not cost effective. This
pressure was embodied as much in the activities of large pan-national
organisations like the Congress as in pressure from below - from the
'subalterns' through the acts of peasant and tribal resistance and revolt,
trade union strikes and individual acts of subversion and violence.
There were
further symptoms of the disengagement from empire. European capital investment
declined in the inter-war years and India went from a debtor country in World
War One to a creditor in World War Two. Applications to the Indian Civil
Service (ICS) declined dramatically from the end of the Great War.
Britain's
strategy of a gradual devolution of power, its representation to Indians
through successive constitutional acts and a deliberate 'Indianisation' of the
administration, gathered a momentum of its own. As a result, India moved
inexorably towards self-government.
The actual
timing of independence owed a great deal to World War Two and the demands it
put on the British government and people.
The Labour
party had a tradition of supporting Indian claims for self-rule, and was
elected to power in 1945 after a debilitating war which had reduced Britain to
her knees.
Furthermore,
with US foreign policy pressurising the end of western subjugation and
imperialism, it seemed only a matter of time before India gained its freedom.
Partition and religion
The growth
of Muslim separatism from the late 19th century and the rise of communal
violence from the 1920s to the virulent outbreaks of 1946-1947, were major
contributory factors in the timing and shape of independence.
However, it
was only from the late 1930s that it became inevitable that independence could
only be achieved if accompanied by a partition. This partition would take place
along the subcontinent's north-western and north-eastern boundaries, creating
two sovereign nations of India and Pakistan.
Muslims, as
a religious community, comprised only 20% of the population and represented
great diversity in economic, social and political terms.
From the
late 19th century, some of its political elites in northern India felt
increasingly threatened by British devolution of power, which by the logic of
numbers would mean the dominance of the majority Hindu community.
Seeking
power and a political voice in the imperial structure, they organised
themselves into a party to represent their interests, founding the Muslim
League in 1906.
They
achieved something of a coup by persuading the British that they needed to
safeguard the interests of the minorities, a demand that fed into British
strategies of divide and rule. The inclusion of separate electorates along
communal lines in the 1909 Act, subsequently enlarged in every successive
constitutional act, enshrined a form of constitutional separatism.
While there
is no denying that Islam and Hinduism were and are very different faiths,
Muslims and Hindus continued to co-exist peaceably. There were, however,
occasional violent outbursts which were driven more often than not by economic
inequities.
Even
politically, the Congress and the League cooperated successfully during the
Khilafat and Non Cooperation movements in 1920-1922. And Muhammad Ali Jinnah
(the eventual father of the Pakistani nation) was a Congress member till 1920.
Although
Congress strove to stress its secular credentials with prominent Muslim members
- for example, Maulana Azad served as its president through World War Two - it
is criticised for failing to sufficiently recognise the importance of a
conciliatory position towards the League in the inter-war years, and for its
triumphant response to Congress's 1937 election victory.
The Muslim
League advocated the idea of Pakistan in its annual session in 1930, yet the
idea did not achieve any political reality at the time. Furthermore, the League
failed to achieve the confidence of the majority of the Muslim population in
the elections of 1937.
Hasty transfer of power
The lack of
confidence in the Muslim League among the Muslim population was to be
dramatically reversed in the 1946 elections.
The
intervening years saw the rise of Jinnah and the League to political prominence
through the successful exploitation of the wartime insecurities of the British,
and the political vacuum created when the Congress ministries (which had
unanimously come to power in 1937) resigned en masse to protest at the
government's unilateral decision to enter India into the war without
consultation.
The
rejuvenated League skilfully exploited the communal card. At its Lahore session
in 1940, Jinnah made the demand for Pakistan into its rallying cry. The ensuing
communal violence, especially after Jinnah declared 'Direct Action Day' in
August 1946, put pressure on the British government and Congress to accede to
his demands for a separate homeland for Muslims.
The arrival
of Lord Louis Mountbatten as India's last viceroy in March 1947, brought with
it an agenda to transfer power as quickly and efficiently as possible. The
resulting negotiations saw the deadline for British withdrawal brought forward
from June 1948 to August 1947.
Contemporaries
and subsequent historians have criticised this haste as a major contributory
factor in the chaos that accompanied partition. Mass migration occurred across
the new boundaries as well as an estimated loss of a million lives in the
communal bloodbaths involving Hindus, Muslims and also Sikhs in the Punjab.
The final
irony must remain that the creation of Pakistan as a land for Muslims
nevertheless left a sizeable number of Muslims in an independent India making
it the largest minority in a non-Muslim state.
