The British in India

 

Originally posted by Sparten Actually, GLCE2003, British rule in India can be divided into three statges, i) company raj, which was brutal, extermely brutal even by the standards of the age as attested by contemporys, ii) crown rule from circa 1860-1914, which was chracterised by a "pretend we are not here"approach, the British let the locals do whatever, if they got too big for their boots lauch a punative expedition/measures depending on area, iii) 1914 to 1947, characterised by repression like the Defense of India Act and the Rowlett Act, though incidentally it was only here that the Brits wanted India to take a role of its own, as evidenced by the creation of a national flag, and Indian embassys/ missions in most countrys. So ironically, the time when Britain wanted India more independant was when the rule was even more repressive.

 

Apart from the emotive words like extremely brutal I can agree with most of that and it's doesn't affect my point.

 

India was undemocratic under the British because it was undemocratic in the first place, and the British just took over / inserted themselves in the existing system, which was also marked for its brutality.

 

 Their share of honours per capita was also one of the highest, either native or foreign.  

 

I agree, I think the modern country called ''india'' today should be very thankful to the British for creating the country that they have right now for them..

 

Sure, various foreign rulers did form empires similar in geography as to what we see today, they were very much ''Empires'' ruled and run by non-indians. 

 

british infrastructure, government/civic developments and the culture/identity fournished by british colonial rule and then handed to the natives are often overlooked and have not been given due attention by most scholars particularly by the native inhabitants of the country itself.

 

You may refer to this from the Congressional movements of the 1880's onwards, but to unify the sub-continent under the British, particularly the Company, as 'India' or 'Indians' is far too simplistic to make any kind of moral judgements (if you really have to, I personally think its a waste of time).

 

British rule was so successful in the sub-continent as it was so ethnically, culturally and religiously divided. After the break-down of Mogul authority India was far too factional to resemble a unified entity. Under the British it was kept predominantly that way. Indeed, as John Malcolm pointed out, Company policy was to retain Princely states as a tool for authority and continuity. There could be no 'India' while it remained a fractured and seperated entity.

 

So to say "Britain was mean to Indians because so and so, and Britain did this to India so its bad, etc etc" is really far too general and discriminative.

 

British policy in the Indian states, for example, was far from 'careless about Indian beliefs'.  Ritual, display and ceremony were upheld and respected in the majority of cases. Residency kitchens, for example, were kept stiffly along religious and cultural caste lines. As were military cantonments and regimental camps in the field. As well as messes in British Presidencies.

 

The causes of the Indian Mutiny of 1857 were not directly the result of disrespect for Indian religions or customs, but more the perceived threat to those factors. There was never a strong Christian missionary force at work, there was no great plan to introduce forced use of pig or cow fat in the cartridges of guns, and the enforcement of certain anti-religious or caste regulations in the military were quickly repealed.

 

Furthermore, the accusation that Britons were brutal is so general and unsupportable as to be laughable. Remember, at any one point in the British Raj there were very few Britons at all. In a population of some hundred millions, there were only ever about 150,000-200,000 British souls in the sub-continent, half of those soldiers. If you mean brutality in war, the British were benign in comparison to the Marathas, the Pathans, the Moguls, or Mysore. Outrages committed by the military of a power is a universal phenomenon, and you must remember in the case of Britisih power in India, it was predominantly composed of Indians.

 

In the cases of industrialisation or general economic trends, indeed during the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century there was a trend to enrich Britain over India. Indeed that is the pattern of every earthly empire in history. The reason it flowed out of India, however, is because the central authority of the British empire did not reside in India, but in Britain. However, from the mid-nineteenth century onward a vast amount of investment, unknown before in the history of the subcontinent, poured in through the medium of canals, irrigation, roads, bridges, telegraphs, tanks, schools, civic institutions, medicine and communication. Before British rule the Punjab was an under-cultivated, dry land. After its annexation it became the granary of the empire.

 

Anyway, I promised myself I would not get dragged in to this kind of argument. But to assume one action offended all Indians under British rule is to assume a uniform, common Indian society. What the banning of Sutti meant in Awadh is not the same as it meant in Nagpur. What the Mutiny of 1857 meant in the Delhi territories is not the same as what it meant in the Punjab.