topics: |  history | india |

A balanced and erudite work, attempting to cover a vast range, while being inclusive of the concerns of the less-empowered groups.

In the spirit of modern historiography, Robb skims lightly over kings and conquests, and enters into the details of the organization of the government and factors that affected the general population. While staying away from leftist positions, the text seeks to follow the economics of rural areas and larger groups of the population.

Excerpts

The continuities of a civilization are like a storehouse in which things decay or are lost, to which things are added, and from which things are selected. Civilizations differ because these inheritances do, because of different experiences, preferences and possibilities. Civilizations may draw together and even merge, or they may draw apart, but their being civilizations means that they have developed with some degree of separation, and within some limits of similarity – physical, economic and ideological.

For example, across greater India some features we now call ‘Hindu’ have been very persistent. To say this is not to endorse the recent equation of ‘Indian’ with ‘Hindu’, which has encouraged religio-political schisms in the subcontinent, helped separate off Pakistan and Bangladesh, and led certain factions to contest the Indianness both of India’s many millions of Muslims, and of certain colonial legacies (including secular government, even the rule of law).

This book hopes to give due weight to the experience of different regions
and to subordinate as well as dominant levels of society.

It will examine some aspects of its three main subject areas successively
over four different periods.  

subject areas: 
 	- rule and protest; 
	- customs and belief; 
	- material culture, production and trade. 

periods 

(1) early (prehistorical, from, say, 7500 BCE (before the Common Era),
	ancient, and early mediaeval); 
(2) mediaeval (roughly 1000–1560 CE); 
(3) early modern (roughly 1560–1860); and 
(4) modern (the ‘high colonial’ years, 1860–1920, plus decolonization and
	early independence to about 1970).

Mughal economics

It was crucial to their success that Akbar and his successors supplemented
military control by a bureaucratic and intelligence structure, mainly paid
for in cash. Such payments were possible, in addition to the huge proportion
of salaries provided through jagirs, because of large inflows of foreign
silver, treasure seized by an ever-conquering empire, large returns from the
emperors’ crown lands (khalisa), and increased imperial control over the
currency. For a hundred years or more the empire had huge income and vast
reserves. Akbar minted and re-minted pure copper, silver and gold coins,
without charge to those supplying the metal but under close official
supervision, and in such quantities that even poor workers in the towns could
be paid in cash.

A central treasury was established, manned mainly by Hindu service castes, to
manage the salaries and jagirs, and audit expenditure, under the supervision
of the wazir (finance minister) and the bakhshi (military
paymaster). Governors (themselves mansabdars) were placed over each province
(subah), with similar establishments – a diwan to manage the revenue and
bakhshis to inspect and certify the quality of the troops. Officers were
placed over each district (sarkar), and a judge (qazi) and a magistrate and
police officer (kotwal) appointed in every town. Information was provided
from every corner of the empire by runners and spies (harkaras) reporting to
the bakshi, official news-recorders, and record-keepers. Paper documentation
was newly significant.

Nowhere was the administration more fully developed than in Akbar’s
revolution of the land-revenue system. At all levels power rested both upon
direct cultivation (often using forced labour) and upon taxing the output of
others. It was expressed in control over and tolls upon land, markets,
artisans, and the movement of goods and persons. In the localities, such
control was held by dominant lineages and office-holders, including the
often-hereditary headmen (chaudhuris in north India and deshmukhs in the
Deccan). Successive rulers created posts and regulations to try to reach
through the magnates and intermediaries directly to the actual producers.

The Sur kings had attempted to apply uniform rates of land tax, which was too
inflexible a system. In 1580, therefore, Akbar instituted a major
overhaul. His finance minister, Raja Todar Mal, began to collect statistics
from the local record-keepers (qanungos), and to compile lists of prices
according to standardized measures, within comparable assessment areas or
circles. Survey parties were sent out to measure lands and to collect
information on yields and prices over ten-year periods. These data were
tabulated for each circle, and a final settlement of the land revenue
calculated on the ten-year averages. The demand was set in cash terms, at the
equivalent of about one-half of the food grains, and one-fifth of the cash
crops such as indigo or cotton, plus set amounts for orchards, cattle and so
on. Villages were required to accept joint responsibility for these
settlements, under the supervision of their headmen and the revenue
officers. Jagirs were then recalculated at the revised rates. Payments were
to be made directly to the revenue officials, and records were kept of the
remittances made for separate cultivating holdings.  Local land-controllers
and revenue-collectors, the zamindars, were allowed a fixed 10 per cent of
collections. These rights, thus relatively standardized, became transferable
as a form of property, and the landholders (of whatever origin) gained a
recognizable and defined status with several grades.

5: Company Raj

The British, centred mainly in Fort St George, Madras (Chennai), and the
French at Pondicherry, seemed important initially because of the aid they
could offer to participants in purely Indian struggles. However, under the
governorship of Joseph Dupleix (1742–54), the French tried to create a south
Indian empire, by intervening in regional and dynastic politics. Dupleix
began this policy when it appeared that there was no longer any strong
indigenous power in the south. 116
	     

1857

In part, [the mutiny] was just the most serious of several mutinies by
Company troops, objecting to their conditions, at a time of reduced European
manpower. 145

The mutiny was also yet another rejection of the disturbing force of British
rule, and of its (by this time) possibly Christianizing agenda. Open
proselytizing was being undertaken by certain evangelical officers, and the
missionary presence was growing in north India, as a result of increased
enthusiasm and organization in Britain, of the relaxation of restrictions in
India, and of charitable work during and after famines.

The British belief in their ‘civilizing mission’, their confidence
in the benefits of their rule, and their slowly growing willingness to
interfere, help explain both the extent of the violence by Indians,
and the spirit of revenge behind the brutality with which the rebellion
was suppressed.

In part it was a final upheaval of the old order in north India, reacting to
the cessation of formal tribute to the Mughal King of Delhi (1844) and the
gradual decline of the old elites, and to the peremptory annexation of Awadh
(1856) and a new land settlement there with village zamindars which sought to
bypass the local chiefs or taluqdars (ta1alluqdars).

The British explained the uprisings with a stereotype of fanatical Muslims
eager to fight for their faith (though a majority of those involved was
Hindu). As said, religion and religious leaders had influenced the revolt;
British commentators inflated their part into a general Islamic
conspiracy. Strident calls came from Britain for Muslims to be punished in
person and through property. As British rule was restored, there were summary
executions and some symbolic destruction.

Leaders in 1857 both evoked Mughal forms, and instituted command structures
on the model of the Company’s army and administration. Local loyalties
remained to the fore, despite some larger claims. Arguably the focus of
revolt upon a few hubs, such as Delhi or Lucknow, and the failure to
consolidate across wider areas except through alliance with lesser centres or
power-brokers, repeated a tendency of the pre-colonial regimes, and
facilitated the colonial reconquest. ‘India’ did not rise, nor was a
‘national’ revolt conceivable. Such ideas would emerge later, mainly in
towns, from a mix of earlier civic traditions and a newer public culture, and
of indigenous allegiances and borrowed concepts. Part of the prerequisites
for the change was the building of larger standardized identities, of classes
and castes, which provide an important subject in the following chapters.

What is "modern" about Modern India

At first, the East India Company ruled as little more than a collection of
regional powers; and many Mughal relics were always to be found in its
government also. From the 1790s, however, it was becoming strong enough, in
military force, alliances and administration, to think of dictating
events. The result was a new imperium.  By the middle of the nineteenth
century this regime and its influence may be described as ‘modern’. 149

What made it so? ... Over five thousand years the great world empires rose
and fell, their urban centres by the Nile or Indus, in Mesopotamia or
China. They too had centralized bureaucracy, taxation, records and
armies. They too had religious and intellectual traditions, long-distance
connections, and means of extracting and storing wealth.  How then should we
distinguish modern states from all other kinds?

The most familiar answer, downplaying any continuities, is a narrative of
evolving state capabilities, drawn from European history.  This traces the
slow separation of the royal household, the sovereign’s person and the state,
and the extensions of the king’s law and sovereignty – as in the thirteenth
century, under Philip IV of France and Edward I of England.

Many accounts discuss the emergence of private rights out of feudal property,
for example after the aristocratic reaction of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries; and hence the development of the king’s contract with his
subjects, of objective bureaucracy, and of consent and representation.  These
topics are related in turn to national interest and national rivalries, to
‘internal colonization’, as in Britain and France from the fifteenth to the
nineteenth centuries, and then to the creation of citizens, through regulated
conduct, language and education, and through improved internal
communications. A growing tax base from expanding production and trade also
enabled increasing, or better-regulated, state responsibilities.

Others eventually shared the experience. The Ottomans under Sultan Abdulhamid
II (r. 1876–1909) sought a renewed state control of language, religion,
information and national symbols. In Japan the Meiji restoration of 1868
increased uniformity and professionalism in administration, emphasized
national loyalty and liberty rather than interpersonal ties, and sought the
growth of a national economy and of ‘civilization’ and ‘enlightenment’. But
Europe most commonly defines the criteria of modernity, an assumption partly
justified by its direct influence. In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
England, for example, war, trade and empire sponsored an investment in people
– facilities for orphans, public health and education – and in institutions
such as equity markets, banking, standard currency, more certain law,
departments of state under Treasury control, salaried officials, and so
on. The East India Company assumed that similar measures were proper for
India. The bureaucratic framework begun with Pitt’s customs office, for
example, was replicated in India under Cornwallis in the 1790s.

Another justification of Eurocentrism may be that Enlightenment science –
emphasizing visibility, empiricism and progress – seems crucial to the
state’s modernity, though in this respect influences went from India to
Britain as well as in the other direction.  In an alien land, there was a
specially strong incentive for a foreign state to acquire knowledge, through
surveys, reports, and categorizations, methods which found favour
increasingly in Britain as well as abroad. ‘Inscrutable’ India was the India
thought most in need of (or alternatively beyond) ‘improvement’. There were
also particular Indian problems of non-standard law, ethnography and official
incompetence or corruption. Legal, social and civil-service reforms were
copied and recopied from one country to the other.

9: Modern India IV: Economy

de-industrialization, dualism, economic decline

Three common interpretations may be briefly noted.  

The first is the suggestion that Indians lacked a ‘spirit of enterprise’ –
from alleged fatalism, the impact of caste and religion, and so on. Ethics,  
belief systems and social institutions certainly do influence economic
efficiency, but it is plain both that Indians had developed sophisticated
and ‘maximizing’ economic strategies, and that the institutional conditions
which inhibited further development were mostly produced by colonialism and
European industrialization.  The question is not why India was ‘backward’ in
the eighteenth century – it was not, on international comparisons – but why
its share of world trade and the comparative wealth of its people declined
so dramatically during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

A second suggestion is that India’s relative decline may be attributed
to ‘de-industrialization’ or at least to ‘arrested development’.
... [T]his supposes that pre-conditions for an
industrial revolution existed in India from the eighteenth century,
ideas that seem outdated in the light of recent studies of British and
comparative industrialization.  

Measurements of a fall in artisanal production during the nineteenth century
have been made, but for one area of India only, and based on estimates of
occupational distribution which probably do not bear the weight that has been
placed upon them. (The original claim, by Amiya Bagchi, was a reduction in
the ‘industrial workforce’ from 18.6 to 8.5 per cent of the population. Some
deny significant changes in occupational distribution. Others have no
difficulty in believing data errors could explain the variation. One reaction
– odd, since comparing statistics is the issue – is that accuracy and
comparability are not worth debating because no better figures are
obtainable. Agreed is the large decline in professional weavers, and
especially spinners, in some areas.) What matters in this debate is not the
counterfactuals, the ‘might-have-beens’, but the actual outcome. As said,
India experienced industrialization at this time, sometimes in competition
with English manufacturers. During the first half of the twentieth century,
factory production continued to increase rapidly, from a low base – one
estimate puts the rate at 14.5 per cent per annum from 1900 to the
consumption of manufactured and industrially processed goods, even in rural
areas, from home production as well as imports – examples are cotton cloth
and, somewhat later, sugar. Towns also grew. Whether or not there was a
matching decline in small-scale and artisanal processing and manufacture
differs from case to case and area to area. 253

A. K. Bagchi, ‘Deindustrialisation in Gangetic Bihar, 1809–1901’ in Barun De,
	ed., Essays in Honour of Prof. S. C. Sarkar (1976);
	‘De-industrialisation in India and some of its theoretical
	implications’, Journal of Development Studies, 12, 2 (1976); 

A third argument suggests that the ‘modern’ colonial economy was a mere
enclave and therefore did not pull up India as a whole.  Supporting this,
many local ‘bazaar’ economies did continue to flourish – merchants such as
the Chettiars with their south-east Asian connections, some hand-producers of
cloth for ‘niche’ markets, specialist jewellers, sweet-makers, and so on –
and existing modes (credit networks, agricultural methods, labour recruitment
and management) continued to be the backbone of production, even for most
export commodities and, for a long time, in factories as well as
farms. Secondly, multiplier effects were lacking from certain developments,
most notably the railways. Though forests were sacrificed for sleepers, and
railway workshops became important sources of employment and training, yet
the first few generations of engines and rolling stock were all imported, the
lines mostly had an export (or otherwise a strategic) orientation, and rates
for freight were cheapest for long-haul bulk commodities directed to the main
ports (Calcutta and Bombay). Similarly some important Europeandominated
production, especially tea, had weak linkages into local economies, and some
major exported commodities had only limited internal markets (including
opium, indigo and jute, for different reasons).  254

[A more detailed investigation of the textile production system, handloom vs
factory, follows]

There was undoubtedly displacement in the early nineteenth century of those
whose handloom production had been geared to export. But it is hard to sum
up the overall effects on craft communities in general. Perhaps the major
consequence of factory competition was the increasing specialization of
employment. This affected agriculturists as well as specialist
cloth-workers: many cultivators or members of their households had been
able to spend time in the off-seasons spinning and weaving. 256

Religious reform movements and education

In the Punjab, a former Brahmo, Shiv Narayan Agnihotri
(1850–1929) formed the Dev Samaj in 1887, proposing radical
social reforms and new patterns of worship. More important was
the Arya Samaj (Noble Society) begun in Bombay in 1875 and in
Lahore in 1877 by Dayanand Saraswati (1824–83), who called for
a kind of protestant Vedic Hinduism. He attacked idolatry, Brahmanism
and pilgrimage, and advocated social reform, including widow
remarriage. After his death, the Lahore Samaj and other societies he
had formed across northern India came together to found a school
in his memory, the Dayanand Anglo-Vedic College in Lahore (1886).
This and other bodies helped unite the various societies, though
educational issues also helped promote a split (in 1893) between
more moderate and more radical members.

The first College Principal, Lala Hans Raj, backed by other
moderates, favoured a mixture of English and traditional education
acceptable to the Punjab University, to which the College had affiliated
in 1889. After the split, the moderates greatly expanded the
Arya schools and charities. The radicals, led by Guru Datta Vidyarthi,
Lekh Ram and Munshi Ram (or Swami Shraddhanand), wanted to
focus on Sanskrit and Vedic learning; they also insisted that vegetarianism
was obligatory for Aryas. After the split, they established
a girls’ school and then a women’s college (Kanya Mahavidyalaya,
1896), and later a Vedic men’s college, the Gurukula Kangri at
Hardwar (1902). But they concentrated on cow protection, ved prachar
(preaching and proselytizing), and shuddhi (conversion or baptism). 235

Gender

Gender provided another vitally important area for debate and
influence in modern India. As may have been apparent in earlier
discussions, masculinity was contentious in very many ways. There
were concerns about physical strength, sexual potency, patriarchal
authority, the bearing of arms, and so on. For reasons of space,
however, we will focus here on questions relating to women. 237

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements xi
Indian Words and Names xiv

1 Introduction: Region and Civilization 1
    India and its history — Rule — Region and unity — Belief —
    Customs: the problem of caste — Islam and Indian plurality
    — Environment, technology and socio-economic change

2 Early India 27
    Cultures and peoples — Land — Social order — Communities —
    Kingship — Invasions and empires — Culture and its
    transmission — Production (slaves, rice and bankers) —
    Empires, religions and regions

3 Mediaeval India 55
    Regionalism — Empires: the Delhi sultans — Empires:
    Vijayanagara — Statecraft — Kings and sultans — Lords,
    officials and localities — Culture and belief — Production
    and society — Region versus empire

4 Early Modern India I: Mughals and Marathas 81
    The Mughals — Mughal rule — Early modern society and
    economy — Eighteenth-century politics — Merchants and
    states — Rival economies on the eve of conquest —
    Administration, 1580–1765: some comparisons

5 Early Modern India II: Company Raj 116
    The East India Company in Madras and Calcutta — The
    Company’s rise to power — Revenue settlements under the
    Company — Transitions, 1770s to 1860s: trade — Law —
    Education — Features of Company rule — Some early modern
    Indian responses

6 Modern India I: Government 148
    Modern government — Councils and departments — Financial
    problems — Benevolence and intervention — Policy goals:
    Britain and India — Political policies under colonialism —
    Decolonization

7 Modern India II: Politics 177
    Modern politics — The Indian National Congress — Political
    Islam — Popular protest — Popular nationalism — Communal
    separatism — Partition — Community and class — The
    aftermath of colonialism — Roads to independence and to
    modern politics

8 Modern India III: Society 218
    Categorizations — New environments: Calcutta — Caste and
    class — Low-caste movements — Islam — Hindu and Sikh
    religious movements — Women — The British raj and after

9 Modern India IV: Economy 246
    Decline and European dominance — Values, de-industrialization, 
    dualism, economic decline — Agriculture — Rural labour
    regimes — The ‘landless’ — The ‘landed’ — Land control —
    The use of credit — Access to the market — Purchasing power
    — Differentiation — Food and health — Colonial legacies

10 Epilogue: After Modernity? 296
    Caste, community and nation — A Hindu India? — Transitions
    and prospects

author bio

Peter Robb is Research Professor in the History of India at the School of
Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London, UK. He has published widely on
the history of India and South Asia.