Chapter 4: The Colonial Era in India (History)

1. The chapter's usual definition: the practice of one country taking control of another region, setting up settlements there, and imposing its political, economic and cultural systems on it.
2. An economic definition: a system in which a powerful country exploits a weaker region's resources, labour and markets for its own benefit. It turns the colony into a supplier of raw materials and a buyer of its goods, and drains away its wealth (as Britain did to India).
3. A political and cultural definition: the loss of independence of a people, who are ruled by foreigners without their consent and are made to feel their own culture, language and traditions are inferior to those of the rulers (the so-called "civilising mission").

(1) One country controlling another region, settling it and imposing its systems; (2) exploiting a colony's resources, labour and markets for the ruler's benefit; (3) foreign rule without consent that replaces the colonised people's own culture and institutions.

No. The evidence shows the main aim was exploitation, not "civilising":

• India was already highly civilised: it was one of the two largest economies in the world (at least one-fourth of world GDP), with famous textiles and manufactures, and its civilisation is much older than Europe's.
• Famines: in the Bengal famine of 1770–72, the Company increased land tax while about 10 million people died. Across British rule, famines killed an estimated 50–100 million, and grain was exported even during the famine of 1876–78.
• Drain of wealth: an estimated 45 trillion US dollars (1765–1938) was taken out of India.
• Ruined industries: Indian weavers were reduced to poverty ("the bones of the cotton weavers are bleaching the plains of India").
• Education: Macaulay's policy aimed to create clerks "English in taste" and dismissed Indian knowledge without knowing it.
• Self-governing institutions destroyed: village self-government was dismantled.
• Racism: Indians were looked down upon, as seen in paintings and sketches.

Some side effects, such as surveys, archaeology and the translation of Sanskrit texts, were largely unintended. So the "civilising mission" was mainly a justification for domination.

No: India was already an ancient, rich civilisation; British rule brought famines, a huge drain of wealth, ruined industries and a foreign education meant to serve the rulers, so the "civilising mission" was a cover for exploitation.

What was new about the British:

• They kept up a pretence of being merchants while building political power.
• They used "divide and rule": taking sides in Indian rivalries and succession disputes, and buying traitors, as with Mir Jafar at Plassey (1757).
• They used the Doctrine of Lapse and subsidiary alliances, which gave them "an empire on the cheap".
• They collected land revenue over huge areas and reshaped the whole economy, education, law and administration to suit Britain.
• After 1858, India came under the British Crown directly.

The Portuguese aimed at sea trade monopoly and religious conversion in small coastal colonies; the French built trading posts and puppet alliances but lost to the British; the British turned a trading company into a ruling power over all of India through divide and rule, the Doctrine of Lapse, subsidiary alliances and revenue control.

The railways, telegraph and the whole colonial administration were presented as gifts of British rule, but Indian taxpayers paid for them, and they mainly served British interests:

• Railways: mostly paid for from Indian tax revenue. They were laid mainly to carry raw materials from the interior to the ports for export, to spread British factory goods across India, and to move troops quickly to crush rebellions.
• Telegraph: paid for by Indians in the same way, it helped the British control India and react fast to any uprising.
• Everything else: the army, the officials, their lavish lifestyles, and even Britain's wars, were charged to Indian revenue.

So Indians paid for the very tools used to rule, control and exploit them.

Indian taxes paid for railways, telegraphs, the army and the officials, which mainly served British trade and control (moving raw materials, British goods and troops), so Indians bore the cost of their own domination.

"Divide and rule" means keeping power over many people by splitting them into rival groups and playing them against one another, so that they never unite against the ruler.

Examples from the chapter:

• Taking sides in Indian rivalries: the Company offered military help to some rulers against others and used succession disputes in royal families to become a kingmaker.
• Battle of Plassey (1757): Robert Clive won by secretly promising Mir Jafar, the Nawab's commander, the throne of Bengal. Mir Jafar's troops stood aside, so a small British force defeated Siraj-ud-daulah.
• Using divisions in society: the British identified and often encouraged tensions between religious communities.
• After 1857: the Indian Army was reorganised so that soldiers of different regions and communities could not unite again.

Ruling by keeping people divided: backing rival rulers and claimants (Plassey, by bribing Mir Jafar), encouraging tension between religious communities, and reorganising the army after 1857 to prevent unity.

A sample short essay on education:

Before British rule, India had its own lively system of learning: pāṭhaśhālās, madrasās, vihāras and apprenticeships. British reports counted 1–1.5 lakh village schools in Bengal and Bihar alone, teaching reading, writing and arithmetic simply and cheaply. They passed on practical skills along with culture and values.

In 1835, Macaulay's Minute declared that "a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia". He wanted Indians who were "English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect". English-medium education spread, and traditional schools slowly disappeared. It mainly produced clerks for the government and cut many people off from their own heritage.

Signs today:

• English is still a language of prestige, and there is a gap between English-educated people and the rest.
• Many students know little of India's own knowledge traditions in science, mathematics and philosophy.
• There is pressure for rote learning aimed at jobs and exams.

At the same time, efforts like teaching in the mother tongue and including Indian knowledge systems in schools are trying to repair this damage.

(Other options: agriculture, with harsh cash revenue, famines and indebted farmers; trade and industry, with ruined weavers and India turned into a raw-material supplier; village life, with self-governing "little republics" replaced by distant courts and officials.)

Sample essay on education: Macaulay's 1835 policy replaced India's widespread village schools with English education meant to produce clerks; its effects (the prestige of English, distance from Indian knowledge traditions) can still be seen today.

THE JHANSI COURIER, June 1858
"Best and bravest of the rebels": Rani of Jhansi falls fighting near Gwalior
The Rani of Jhansi, Lakshmibai, who refused to give up her kingdom to the East India Company, died on the battlefield near Gwalior on 18 June. Even the British officer who led the attack on Jhansi called her "the best and bravest of the rebels".
After the Company tried to annex Jhansi under the Doctrine of Lapse, the Rani defended her city. When British forces besieged Jhansi, she escaped with her soldiers. Joined by the Maratha commander Tatia Tope, she captured the great fort of Gwalior, seizing its treasury and arsenal, before British troops attacked again. She fought to the end.

Timeline:

• Before 1857: annexations under the Doctrine of Lapse, including Jhansi, and anger over taxes and land revenue.
• Early 1857: rumours of cartridges greased with cow and pig fat. Mangal Pandey attacks British officers at Barrackpore and is executed.
• May 1857: sepoys at Meerut kill their officers and march to Delhi, where they proclaim Bahadur Shah Zafar their leader.
• June 1857: the revolt spreads to Kanpur (Nana Saheb), Lucknow (Begum Hazrat Mahal) and Jhansi, where Rani Lakshmibai takes command.
• September 1857: the British recapture Delhi with great brutality.
• March–April 1858: the British besiege and capture Jhansi. The Rani escapes.
• June 1858: with Tatia Tope she takes Gwalior, and she is killed in battle on 18 June 1858.
• November 1858: Queen Victoria's proclamation. Company rule ends and the British Crown takes over. Tatia Tope fights on until 1859, when he is betrayed and hanged.

The report should describe her refusal to accept annexation, her defence of Jhansi, her escape and capture of Gwalior with Tatia Tope, and her death in battle on 18 June 1858, with a timeline from Barrackpore and Meerut (1857) to the Crown take-over (November 1858).

A sample story:

The Weavers of Surat
In the year 1900, Meera's grandfather still ran the family loom in Surat, just as his grandfather had. But the looms had changed. Fifty years earlier, Indian engineers in the Maratha and Mysore kingdoms had studied the new machines of Europe and built their own, powered by water and then by coal from Bengal.
"We never stopped selling cloth to the world," grandfather told her proudly. "Our muslin still goes to London, Cairo and Canton, but now our own ships carry it."
India was not one country yet. The great kingdoms, Maratha, Mysore, Hyderabad, the Sikh kingdom in the Punjab and the Ahoms in the east, had learned from their wars to make treaties instead. A council of rulers met each year at Delhi to settle disputes, and traders moved freely with hundis honoured in every city.
Meera went to the village pāṭhaśhālā, where she learned arithmetic, Sanskrit and Gujarati, and, these days, chemistry and English too, because the merchants traded everywhere. Her elder brother had gone to the great new university at Nalanda, rebuilt by the kingdoms, to study medicine, combining Ayurveda with the new science.
There had been droughts, of course, but the village councils kept grain in common stores, and no ruler would dare to raise taxes in a bad year.
"Do you think we will ever be one nation?" Meera asked.
Grandfather smiled. "We already share one culture, one history and the same festivals. Perhaps one day we will choose to share one government too."

(Your own story can imagine different paths, but it should show India's industries, trade, education and self-government developing on their own.)

A short story imagining India's industries, trade, schools and village self-government continuing and modernising under Indian rulers (a sample is given).

A sample script:

British Official: Mr Naoroji, surely you agree that British rule has brought India peace, railways, telegraphs and good government?
Dadabhai Naoroji: Railways and telegraphs, yes, but paid for by Indian taxes and built mainly to carry our raw materials to your ports and your goods into our markets. As for peace, millions died in famines while grain was exported.
Official: Famines are natural disasters. Droughts happen.
Naoroji: Droughts happened before too, but never with such deaths. In Bengal in 1770, the Company raised the land tax while a third of the people died. In 1876, the Viceroy forbade any interference to lower food prices.
Official: Britain has invested much in India.
Naoroji: On the contrary. I have shown from your own reports that a vast "drain" of wealth flows from India to Britain every year: salaries, pensions, profits, interest and the cost of wars, all charged to India. That is why I call it "un-British rule": it goes against the very British ideals of fair play and justice that you practise at home.
Official: And what would you have us do?
Naoroji: Stop the drain, reduce the land tax, give Indians a real share in governing their own country, and let India develop her own industries.

A sample dialogue: the official praises railways and "good government"; Naoroji answers with the drain of wealth, famine deaths, Indians paying for railways that served Britain, and demands for fair taxes and self-government.

Choose a movement from your own region. A sample report on the Santhal Rebellion (Hul), 1855–56 (Jharkhand, Bihar and West Bengal):

• Trigger: moneylenders and landlords, with British support, were taking away Santhal ancestral lands and trapping them in debt. Cash taxes and loss of forest rights added to their anger.
• Leaders: the brothers Sidhu and Kanhu Murmu (with Chand, Bhairav, Phulo and Jhano).
• Demands: an end to exploitation by moneylenders and landlords, the return of their lands, and their own self-rule. They declared their own government and vowed to "fight to the last drop of blood".
• British response: after some early losses, the British crushed the revolt brutally. They burned villages, killed thousands of Santhals, and finally executed the leaders.
• Remembered today: Hul Diwas on 30 June is observed every year, with songs, gatherings and statues of Sidhu and Kanhu. It inspired later tribal movements.

(Other examples: the Kol uprising (1831–32) in Chota Nagpur; the Khasi uprising (1829–33) in Meghalaya; the Indigo Revolt (1859–62) in Bengal; Rani Abbakka at Ullal against the Portuguese; Marthanda Varma of Travancore against the Dutch at Colachel; or a movement from your own state.)

Pick a local movement and cover its trigger, leaders, demands, the British response and its memory today (a sample is given on the Santhal Hul of 1855–56, remembered on Hul Diwas, 30 June).