topics: |  history | india

The modern period covers the British Raj and independence. The text incorporates a postcolonial view of the British period, as in this quote from chapter 4 on the mutiny and reforms:

Most historians now agree that the rigidities introduced by colonial policy decisively shaped, even distorted, modernity in India. This approach offers a corrective to what was too easily described during the colonial era as the ‘blessings of British rule’, namely the pacification and unification of the country, legal codification, the use of the English language, public works, and a range of social reforms.

Critics of European modernity, among them Britons as well as Indians, even at the time saw the dark side of these changes, among them racism, militarism, and the economic exploitation that was part of the colonial relationship. What coloured those ‘blessings’ above all was a mentality that discounted Indian abilities and aspirations to self-rule, an attitude the historian Francis Hutchins termed the British ‘illusion of permanence’. British rule in the 1830s and 1840s had been founded in Enlightenment notions of universal human destiny and expectations of progress, although, to be sure, even then an authoritarian strain was evident in evangelical and utilitarian reform. But by the 1870s the mood was different, above all in an explicitly authoritarian attitude among colonial officials. They were, for the most part, convinced of an essential difference between British and Indian that justified indefinite control of political power by a ‘superior race’. 94

23 year old District Magistrates

In 1859, John Beames, at age 23, was appointed a magistrate in a province
of Punjab.  This was possible owing to the "patronage power" of the
Company.  He recalls his early days as a wet-behind-the-ears civil servant
in the late 1850s:

   My stock of available knowledge consisted of Persian and Hindustani
   ...Of law and procedure I, of course, knew nothing ... I said as if by
   instinct, ‘Call up the first case’ ... Both these people spoke Panjabi,
   of which I could not understand one word, but the sarishtadar [chief
   clerk] translated it into Hindustani as they spoke, so I got on
   wonderfully well ... I next began to learn Panjabi, for which purpose I
   engaged an old Sikh priest ... Like most Panjabis of those days the good
   Bhai was a kindly, simple-hearted old child ... They are a fine, manly
   race ...

There was no law in the Panjab in those days. Our instructions
were to decide all cases by the light of common sense and our own sense
of what was just and right.

   [Elmslie, his Haileybury classmate and now colleague] and I were in the
   saddle by five in the morning and worked on horseback for two or three
   hours, riding about inspecting police-stations, roads and bridges and
   public building under construction, tree-planting, ferry-boats, settling
   disputes about land and property between villagers, and such like
   business. Or we would walk with our horses led behind us through the
   narrow lanes of the ancient town, accompanied by a crowd of police
   officers, overseers, and others giving orders for sanitary improvements,
   repairing roadways and drains, opening out new streets, deciding disputes
   and a variety of similar matters ... Hard work as usual filled up the
   day. 94

The power entrusted to Beames, at age twenty-three with no experience is
telling. The Jallianwalla Bagh massacre of 1919, evidence of the tragic side
of such official power, is telling as well.  [Punjab leaned more towards
"enlightened despotism" than other parts of the Raj] 95

 
cover of the Hindi play: Rashtriya Sangit Julmi Daayar – Jallianwalla Bagh,
a play by Manohar Lal Shukla, 1922. depicts ‘Martial Law’ as a policeman
above the female figure of ‘Punjab’ praying for help, the law book of
colonial promise set aside, while ‘Satyagraha’, representing Gandhi, looks
on in despair.

Railways and post

To reach his first posting, in 1859 Beames rode the train from Howrah to
the end of the line, [ar Raneegunge] only a little over 100 miles at that
point; most of the rest of the way he perched on top of his luggage on a
horse cart, taking some twenty-four days in all to reach the Punjab. 96

 
india postage stamps, 1937, with scenes of mail delivery. the four lower
value stamps, labelled ‘DAk’, show human and animal carriers, while the
higher values depict mechanized ‘mail’ transport.

in 1848 the Peninsular and Oriental bought the first iron steamers for their
Indian Ocean routes. In the 1830s an exchange of letters between Britain and
India could take two years; by 1870, with the opening of the Suez Canal, a
letter could reach Bombay in only one month.

Paper cartridges

	soldiers [were required] to bite off the end of each cartridge –
	widely reputed to have been greased with pig or cow fat, polluting to
	both Hindus and Muslims.

but "widely reputed" sidesteps the issue of whether Indian troops were
actually issued beef cartridges or not.  See detailed analysis based on
several texts in this summary.

Causes of the mutiny

As the unrest subsided, an Indian official serving the Raj, Sayyid Ahmad Khan
(1817–98), sought its causes:

   I believe that there was but one primary cause of the rebellion, the
   others being merely incidental and arising out of it. Nor is this opinion
   either imaginary or conjectural. It is borne out by the views entertained
   by wise men of past ages: and all writers on the principles of Government
   agree in itIt has been universally allowed that the admittance of
   the people to a share in the Government under which they live, is
   necessary to its efficiency, prosperity, and permanence. [Moreover,] [t]he
   Natives of India, without perhaps a single exception, blame the Government
   for having deprived them of their position and dignity and for keeping
   them downWhat! Have not [the British ICS officers’] pride and
   arrogance led them to consider the Natives of India as undeserving the
   name of human beingsWhat! Was not the Government aware that Natives
   of the very highest rank trembled before its officers, and were in daily
   fear of suffering the greatest insults and indignities at their hands? 100

Raised in a family close to the Mughal court, by 1857 Sayyid Ahmad had spent
twenty years in Company service. He was conspicuously loyal during the
uprising, evacuating the European residents from the town of Bijnor, where he
was serving, and even taking charge of the district on behalf of the British
for some time.  His essay, written in Urdu and subsequently translated into
English, evoked great interest on the part of the British. He correctly
insisted, contrary to British wishful thinking at the time and after, that
the Revolt was not merely a mutiny on the part of disgruntled soldiers.  It
was, rather, he argued, a response to multiple grievances. Among these were
British cultural policies, the severity of revenue assessments, and the
degradation of landed and princely elites, notably the recently exiled nawab
of Oudh. Above all, Sayyid Ahmad faulted the insolence and contempt for
Indians evinced by the British, and insisted on the importance of a
consultative process that would include them.

It is important to differentiate between events in the recently annexed
province of Oudh and those in the older, more settled districts.  The revolt
in Oudh, as Rudrangshu Mukherjee has forcibly argued, took on the shape of a
‘popular’ movement, with all classes fighting on behalf of their sepoy
kinsmen and deposed king Wajid Ali Shah.  Most prominent among the revolt’s
supporters were the taluqdari landlords, aggrieved by the loss of villages
during the 1856 land settlement, who, from the security of their mud forts,
rallied their followers, kinsmen, and tenants. Although many among the
peasantry had won title to their lands in 1856, to the dismay of the British
they threw in their lot with their former landlords – to have boldly
confronted them would have been foolhardy – and together they marched on
Lucknow to join the seige of the tiny British garrison there.

The revolt in the adjacent North-Western Provinces was of a different
sort. There, the response to the uprising was shaped by the experience of
fifty years of British rule. As the historian Eric Stokes demonstrated in a
series of careful local studies, those rural magnates who had profited from
the commercial opportunities brought by the British tended to be loyal, even
smothering the sparks of unrest among their tenantry, while those who had
lost wealth and consequence often took advantage of the engulfing anarchy to
join the revolt. Where tightly knit cultivating communities, especially Jat
and Rajput brotherhoods, held the land, they often rose without magnate
leadership to protest the heavy differential revenue assessments laid upon
them. The revolt in the North-Western Provinces can thus usefully be
described as a ‘post-pacification’ revolt, where long festering but diffuse
grievances erupted, by contrast with the ‘primary resistance’ of the Oudh
revolt, where a recently deposed royal family provided leadership. In this
way it is possible to link 1857 to uprisings elsewhere that took place in the
early stages of colonialism, and to distinguish it from the modern,
nationalist protests that followed. 102

On the march British troops, and even civilians, unleashed indiscriminate
terror, ravaging the countryside and killing randomly.  This racial savagery
continued throughout the fighting, despite the governor-general Lord
Canning’s effort – earning him the sobriquet ‘Clemency Canning’ – to curb
such behaviour in the so-called Clemency Proclamation of July 1857. 103

On 2 August 1858 the British Parliament passed the Government
of India Act, transferring all the authority of the East India Company
to the British Crown.
The patronage power of appointment had been replaced by a civil service exam
in 1853.

The pattern of twenty-year charter reviews now gave way to regular
parliamentary scrutiny of Indian affairs. A cabinet member, the Secretary of
State for India, advised by a Council of India, was given authority for the
government of India. In India supreme authority was vested in the Viceroy,
the title assumed by Governor-General Canning when Queen Victoria proclaimed
these changes to the ‘Princes, Chiefs, and People of India’ in November 1858.

The change to Crown rule also ushered in an elaboration of bureaucratic and
technical structures, a change taking place in Britain as well in this
period, from police and sanitation to forestry and finance. This last was a
subject of immediate attention given the financial costs of the revolt, all
of which were charged to India.

Victoria’s proclamation [also] responded to presumed causes of the revolt. In
a reversal of Dalhousie’s policy, the proclamation guaranteed the princes
their titles. No longer were limits put on adoptions: princely ‘rights,
dignity and honour’, as well as control over their territory, would be
respected. This meant that about one-third of the people of India were, until
the end of the Raj, to remain under the ‘indirect rule’ of some 500
princes.

And the proclamation explicitly repudiated any ‘desire to impose our
convictions on any of our subjects’ and enjoined ‘all those who may be in
authority under us’ to abstain from interference with Indian religious belief
or worship. ‘Due regard’ would be paid to ‘the ancient rights, usages, and
customs of India’.

The theory of rule enunciated in this proclamation contained an implicit
contradiction. On the one hand, there was the language of a feudal order that
stressed the role of hereditary leaders.  By so doing the British sought, for
the most part successfully, to make of India’s princes and large landlords a
conservative bulwark for the Raj.

On the other hand, the proclamation also expressed a conception of politics
associated with British parliamentarism and the liberal political theory of
such men as Macaulay. Its inauguration inevitably would undermine the
hereditary rulers.

In 1859, Lord Canning undertook a series of tours, holding courts, called
‘durbars’ in superficial emulation of Mughal practice, to recognize not only
loyal princes but also landlords, among them the large landlords of Oudh, now
invested with honours and titles as aristocratic bulwarks of British rule. In
Bernard Cohn’s words, already incipient was ‘a social orderestablished
with the British Crown seen as the centre of authority, and capable of
ordering into a single hierarchy all its subjects’. No reversal of
Dalhousie’s policy, Canning’s incorporation of the princes marked the
completion of his predecessor’s search for a unified sovereignty over India.

British racism

The uprising intensified British racism. Suspect sepoys were blown
from cannons...

Nana Sahib’s murder of British women in particular stirred a fierce
hatred. This act and the hysteria that followed - some "eye-witness" 
accounts invented stories of rape of white women (see 
Biswamoy Pati's The 1857 Rebellion: Debates, p.xiv.) -
left an enduring legacy in Victorian paintings and mass market novels
filled with lurid accounts of torture, rape and mutilation and images of 
the threatened ‘purity’ of British womanhood. John Beames, travelling to
Punjab two years after the revolt, wrote of his passage through Cawnpore:
    The fading daylight lasted long enough to enable me to take a hurried
    glance at the ghastly place; a desolate, sandy waste it then was. The
    dreadful well [where the bodies of women and children were thrown] was
    marked by a few boards, the walls of the roofless houses were riddled
    with shot and tottering; ruins, flies, evil odours and general misery and
    distress were all one could see ... [a] horrible place.

This exaggerated British view of the Kanpur violence lives on even today,
perhaps. Here is historian Eric Stokes, writing more than a century later:
	At Kanpur (Cawnpore) fifty miles to the South, the historical
	tradition is darker.  The Sati Chaura Ghat with its Siva temple still
	bears the ominous title of Massacre Ghat, and the air seems loaded
	with menace.  - ''The peasant armed: the Indian revolt of 1857'' (1986)

as Rudrangshu Mukherjee says in Spectre of violence: 
" Violence looms over Kanpur and over writings about it."


 
The memorial at the Bibighar well.  After independence both the statue of the
angel and the wall behind it were transferred to the all-soul's church.  The
angel now lies in forgotten glory on the south verandah of the church.

Victorian emphasis on "caste"

The most important identity for Victorian anthropologists of India was
‘caste’, taken as a concrete, measurable ‘thing’ that could be fitted into a
hierarchy able to be ascertained and quantified in reports and surveys. The
increasing systematization of caste was closely connected with the use of
photography, whose ‘exact’ images complemented the search for scientific
precision. ‘Characteristic specimens’ could exemplify precise measures of
physiognomy, dress, and manners. The first major compilation of such
photographs was The Peoples of India, published by the Government of India in
1868 in eight volumes.

e.g. Banjaras, nomadic herdsmen and traders, [were described as] having ‘a
reputation for perfect honesty’, but they were later relegated to the
status of ‘criminal tribe’, a reminder of the fantasy that passed for
exactitude.

The caste ‘system’ is thus one of the countless parameters of life in India
that is a product of modern change, as are other aspects of social life,
not least the powerful position of princes, magnates, and gentry, bolstered
by administrative action then, and now too often identified as
‘traditional’. 112

In 1877, shortly after Victoria had assumed the title of Empress of India,
[Keshab Chandra Sen] gave a speech in Calcutta:

    Loyalty shuns an impersonal abstraction ... We are right then if our
    loyalty means not only respect for law and the Parliament, but personal
    attachment to Victoria, Queen of England and Empress of India [Applause]
    ... Do you not recognize the finger of special providence in the
    progress of nations?  Assuredly the record of British rule in India is
    not a chapter of profane history, but of ecclesiastical history [Cheers]
    ... All Europe seems to be turning her attention in these days toward
    Indian antiquities, to gather the priceless treasures which lie buried in
    the literature of Vedism and Buddhism.  Thus while we learn modern
    science from England, England learns ancient wisdom from India.

many figures of like background spoke in what was for the most part the
language of British liberal politics.

[key concepts] such as – ‘loyalty’, ‘law and the Parliament’, ‘personal
attachment’, ‘the progress of nations’, ‘modern Revolt, the modern state, and
colonized subjects, 1848–1885 115 science’, and ‘ancient wisdom from India’
... structured discourse in a variety of genres, not only in English but in
the vernaculars, where newspapers and journals, public speaking, debates,
petitions, tracts, and novels were shaping many Indian languages into their
modern forms. 114-115

 
Indian currency notes carry the denomination in fifteen languages:
Assamese Bengali Gujarati Kannada Kashmiri Konkani Malayalam
Marathi Nepali Oriya Punjabi Sanskrit Tamil Telugu and Urdu.  (this
slightly older note is missing Konkani and Nepali).

Glossary

bhakti An approach to worship and spiritual practice in the Hindu tradition
       characterized by personal devotion to a Divinity, often mediated by
       a holy person or teacher
Brahman The varna or status category identified in the classical Sanskrit
	tradition as most pure and entitled to perform priestly duties
Buddhist A follower of Gautama Buddha (b. 560 bc). Like Mahavira Jain,
	he rejected the authority of Brahmanic ritual; he taught that suffering
	is inseparable from existence, and that one should strive to extinguish
	the self and the senses in order to achieve a state of illumination called
	nirvana. Supported by the great emperor Asoka (c. 269–32 bc), Buddhism
	essentially disappeared in the Indian subcontinent by the tenth century.
	It was revived in the mid-twentieth century by the ‘untouchable’ leader
	Ambedkar.
dalit ‘Down-trodden’, term used by former untouchables to describe their
	community. Has replaced Gandhi’s term harijan ‘children of God’ in
	recent decades.
darbar Royal audience, hall of audience, court; executive government of
	a princely state. Also durbar.
diwan The chief civil administrator of an area under the Mughals; diwani,
	civil or revenue administration
factor A commercial agent, here of the East India Company, resident in India;
	the term factory denoted a warehouse for storing trade goods
farmer A revenue term used for a person who bids to secure the right to
	collect the taxes of a given area in return for payment to the government
	of a fixed sum
hadith Traditions of the Prophet Muhammad’s sayings and actions
hartal Closing of all shops in a market as a protest against oppression or
	ill-treatment
imam A prayer leader; among Shi‘a, venerated male descendants of the Prophet
	Muhammad, whose succession terminated after twelve incumbents for the
	majority of Shi‘a followers, after seven for several smaller sects
jagir The right to the assessed tax revenue of a piece of land, given for a
	limited term by the Mughals as a reward for service; the holder of a jagir
	is a jagirdar
Jain A follower of Mahavira (b. 599 bc) who, like the Buddha, rejected
	the authority of Brahmanic ritual, and taught an ascetic, world-denying
	philosophical and ethical system. Particularly successful in business, Jains
	are a small community resident mostly in Gujarat and Bombay
Jat A north Indian peasant and agriculturist community
Jesuit A member of the Society of Jesus of the Roman Catholic Church,
	founded by St Ignatius Loyola in 1534; present in India from its earliest
	years with the establishment of Portuguese trading enclaves
jizya A poll tax levied on non-Muslims that entitled them to protection
	and freed them from military service
jotedar A revenue collecting intermediary in Bengal, between the peasant
	cultivator and the zamindar
Kayasth North Indian caste group, many of whose members served from
	Mughal times in government bureaucracy and other institutions requiring
	literacy, accountancy, etc.
Khalifa (caliph) A successor, particularly used for successors of the
	Prophet Muhammad
Khatri North Indian caste group, many of whose members served from
	Mughal times in government bureaucracies and other institutions requiring
	literacy, accountancy, etc.
Khilafat (caliphate) The office or dignity of the caliph; as ‘Khilafat Movement’,
	an organization that sought to secure the position of the Ottoman
	sultan as spiritual leader of all Muslims
Kshatriya The varna or status category identified in the classical Sanskrit
	tradition as those entitled to exercise military power and perform
	sacrifices
mansab A rank within the Mughal state system, carrying with it the obligation
	to supply in a number commensurate with the rank; the holder of
	a mansab is a mansabdar
nabob see nawab
naib A deputy, as of a governor of a province under the Mughals; title of
	respect

nawab Mughal governor; conventionally used in British India as a title
	for Muslim princes, chiefs, etc. The term nabob, a corruption of nawab,
	was used for Englishmen who gained sudden riches in India
Ottoman A vast empire in Asia Minor and the Balkans conquered in the
	fourteenth to sixteenth centuries by Osmanli Turks, who ruled until the
	empire’s dissolution in 1918 following World War One
Pandit Title of respect for learned Brahman; passes into English as
	‘pundit’, an expert or authority on some subject
panchayat Council, court for arbitration of disputes, for villages, castes
	or other groups; from traditional gathering of five (panch) elders
Parsi see Zoroastrian
Persian The literary and government language of the Delhi Sultanate, the
	Mughal Empire, and other pre-modern Indian states
peshwa Hereditary Maratha chief minister; from 1720 de facto ruler of
	the Maratha confederacy
pir ‘elder’, founder or head of a sufi order or shrine
presidency The residence of a ‘president’; here used for the three East
	India Company centres of Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta established in
	the seventeenth century
Rajput A ‘prince’. Rajput clans, based in northern and north-western
	India, emerged in the medieval and Mughal period as warrior princes
	and frequent allies of the Mughals
raja ‘Ruler’. A title widely used in British India not only for princes
	but by chiefs, zamindars, etc.; customarily (but not always) confined to
	Hindus
sabha Association or society; assembly, council, court
Sanskrit An Indo-European language which emerged in ancient times as
	the sacred language of legal and ritual tradition cultivated by Brahmans
satyagraha ‘Truth force’, a Gandhian neologism to describe his method of
	dispute settlement based on a shared pursuit of ‘truth’ with an opponent,
	together with mutual respect
Sayyid Muslims who claim descent from the Prophet Muhammad
settlement In British India a revenue term used in the context of
	agricultural taxation to specify an agreement with an individual or
	group for the responsibility to pay a fixed amount of tax on a given
	tract of land; often carried with it effective ownership of the land
Shaikh (1) A title for a sufi (q.v.) master; (2) a Muslim claiming descent
	from the Companions of the Prophet
shari‘at The whole body of rules guiding the life of a Muslim in law, ethics,
	and etiquette
Shi‘a The minority of Muslims who reject the succession of the first four
	caliphs in favour of the rights of the Prophet Muhammad’s son-in-law
	‘Ali and his descendants, the imams
Shudra The lowest varna or status category identified in the classical Sanskrit
	tradition; required to perform services for the three higher and pure
	varnas
Sikh A ‘Disciple’, used in this case for the followers of the path (panth) of
	the teacher Guru Nanak. Also see bhakti
sufi Those who cultivate the inner dimension of Islam through moral practices,
	disciplines, and association with sufi masters who act as guides,
	teachers, and mediators; a ‘mystic’
Sunni The majority of Muslims who accept the authority of the first four
	caliphs and the principle of consensus for choosing successors to the
	Prophet Muhammad (570–632 ce)
swadeshi Of ‘one’s own land’; used by nationalists to encourage the production
	and use of products made within India
swaraj Self-rule, self-government
‘ulama (sg: ‘alim) Authorities learned in Islamic legal and religious studies
Vaisya The varna or status category identified in the classical Sanskrit
	tradition as businessmen and merchants and as men entitled to perform
	sacrifices
varna The four ideal hierarchic categories comprising human society (Brahman,
	Kshatriya, Vaisya, and Shudra, q.v.) in the Brahmanic Sanskritic
	traditions, articulated above all the dharmasastra texts of Manu at
	the turn of the first millennium
yogi A Hindu ascetic who practices disciplines intended to discipline the
	consciousness to achieve control and tranquility
zamindar A ‘landholder’, the person who collects and transmits the
	revenue or tax claim to the government
zenana The women’s quarters of an Indian household
Zoroastrian A follower of the Iranian teacher Zoroaster (b. 660 bc), roughly
	contemporary with the Buddha, Mahavira Jain, and the authors of the
	Upanishads, whose ethical monotheism, focused on the deity Ormazd, is
	predicated on a universal struggle between light and dark.  Only
	small communities of Zoroastrians continued after the advent of
	Islam, including groups on the western coast of India known as
	‘Parsis’ (‘Persians’).

Place names: British and Current usage

Banaras 	Varanasi
Bombay 		Mumbai
Calcutta 	Kolkata
Cawnpore 	Kanpur
Ceylon 		Sri Lanka
Dacca 		Dhaka
Ganges 		Ganga
Jumna 		Yamuna
Madras 		Chennai
Oudh 		Awadh
Poona 		Pune
Simla 		Shimla