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Gist of History NCERT VIII Class (Our Pasts III PartI)

Modern Indian History NCERT

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Chapter 1
How, When and Where

Warren Hastings became the first Governor-General of India in 1773
In 1817, James Mill, a Scottish economist and political philosopher, published a massive three-volume work, A History of British India.
In this he divided Indian history into three periods – Hindu, Muslim and British.

Administration produces records

British believed in writing
So, every instruction, plan, policy decision, agreement, investigation had to be clearly written up.
This conviction produced an administrative culture of memos, notings and reports.
The British also felt that all important documents and letters needed to be carefully preserved.
So they set up record rooms attached to all administrative institutions.
The village tahsildar’s office, the collectorate, the commissioner’s office, the provincial secretariats, the lawcourts – all had their record rooms.
Specialised institutions like archives and museums were also established to preserve important records.
The National Archives of India came up in the 1920s
When New Delhi was built, the National Museum and the National Archives were both located close to the Viceregal Palace.
This location reflects the importance these institutions had in British imagination.

Surveys become important-

British believed- a country had to be properly known before administration
By the early 19^th century detailed surveys were being carried out to map the entire country
In the villages, revenue surveys were conducted.
The effort was to know the topography, the soil quality, the flora, the fauna, the local histories, and the cropping pattern – all the facts seen as necessary to know about to administer the region.
From the end of 19^th century, Census operations were held every 10 years.
These prepared detailed records of the number of people in all the provinces of India, noting information on castes, religions and occupation.

Chapter 2
From Trade to Territory- The Company Establishes Power

Aurangzeb was the last of the powerful Mughal rulers.
He established control over a very large part of the territory that is now known as India.
After his death in 1707, many Mughal governors (subadars) and big zamindars began asserting their authority and establishing regional kingdoms.
As powerful regional kingdoms emerged in various parts of India, Delhi could no longer function as an effective centre.
By the second half of the 18^th century, however, a new power was emerging on the political horizon– the British.
After Aurangzeb there was no powerful Mughal ruler, but Mughal emperors continued to be symbolically important.
In fact, when a massive rebellion against British rule broke out in 1857, Bahadur Shah Zafar, the Mughal emperor at the time, was seen as the natural leader.
Once the revolt was put down by the company, Bahadur Shah Zafar was forced to leave the kingdom, and his sons were shot in cold blood.

Routes to India in the eighteenth century

East India Company (EIC) Comes East

In 1600, the EIC acquired a charter from the ruler of England, Queen Elizabeth I, granting it the sole right to trade with the East.
This meant that no other trading group in England could compete with the EIC.
With this charter the Company could venture across the oceans, looking for new lands from which it could buy goods at a cheap price, and carry them back to Europe to sell at higher prices.
The Company did not have to fear competition from other English trading companies.
The royal charter, however, could not prevent other European powers from entering the Eastern markets.
By the time 1^st English ships sailed down the west coast of Africa, round the Cape of Good Hope, and crossed the Indian Ocean, the Portuguese had already established their presence in the western coast of India, and had their base in Goa.
In fact, it was Vasco da Gama, a Portuguese explorer, who had discovered this sea route to India in 1498.
By the early seventeenth century, the Dutch too were exploring the possibilities of trade in the Indian Ocean.
Soon the French traders arrived on the scene.
The problem was that all the companies were interested in buying the same things.
The fine qualities of cotton and silk produced in India had a big market in Europe.
Pepper, cloves, cardamom and cinnamon too were in great demand.
Competition amongst the European companies inevitably pushed up the prices at which these goods could be purchased, and this reduced the profits that could be earned.
The only way the trading companies could flourish was by eliminating rival competitors.
The urge to secure markets therefore led to fierce battles between the trading companies.
Through the 17^th & 18^th centuries they regularly sank each other’s ships, blockaded routes, and prevented rival ships from moving with supplies of goods.
Trade was carried on with arms and trading posts were protected through fortification.
This effort to fortify settlements and carry on profitable trade also led to intense conflict with local rulers.
The company therefore found it difficult to separate trade from politics.

East India Company begins trade in Bengal

1^st English factory was set up on the banks of the river Hugli in 1651.
This was the base from which the Company’s traders, known at that time as “factors”, operated.
The factory had a warehouse where goods for export were stored, and it had offices where Company officials sat.
As trade expanded, the Company persuaded merchants and traders to come and settle near the factory.
By 1696 it began building a fort around the settlement.
2 years later it bribed Mughal officials into giving the Company zamindari rights over three villages.
One of these was Kalikata, which later grew into the city of Calcutta or Kolkata
It also persuaded the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb to issue a farman granting the Company the right to trade duty free.
Farman – A royal edict, a royal order
The Company tried continuously to press for more concessions and manipulate existing privileges.
Aurangzeb’s Farman, for instance, had granted only the Company the right to trade duty free.
But officials of the Company, who were carrying on private trade on the side, were expected to pay duty.
This they refused to pay, causing an enormous loss of revenue for Bengal.

How trade led to battles

Early 18^th century- conflict between the Company and the nawabs of Bengal intensified.
Death of Aurangzeb- Bengal nawabs asserted their power and autonomy
Murshid Quli Khan was followed by Alivardi Khan and then Sirajuddaulah as the Nawab of Bengal.
They refused to grant the Company concessions, demanded large tributes for the Company’s right to trade, denied it any right to mint coins, and stopped it from extending its fortifications.
Accusing the Company of deceit, they claimed that the Company was depriving the Bengal government of huge amounts of revenue and undermining the authority of the nawab.
It was refusing to pay taxes, writing disrespectful letters, and trying to humiliate the nawab and his officials.
The Company on its part declared that the unjust demands of the local officials were ruining the trade of the Company, and trade could flourish only if the duties were removed.
It was also convinced that to expand trade it had to enlarge its settlements, buy up villages, and rebuild its forts.
The conflicts led to confrontations and finally culminated in the famous Battle of Plassey.

The Battle of Plassey

A decisive victory of the British East India Company over the Nawab of Bengal and his French allies on 23 June 1757.
The battle consolidated the Company's presence in Bengal, which later expanded to cover much of India over the next hundred years.
The battle took place at Palashi (Anglicised version: Plassey) on the banks of the Bhagirathi River (West Bengal).
After the defeat at Plassey, Sirajuddaulah was assassinated and Mir Jafar made the nawab.
The Company was still unwilling to take over the responsibility of administration.
Its prime objective was the expansion of trade.
If this could be done without conquest, through the help of local rulers who were willing to grant privileges, then territories need not be taken over directly.
Soon the Company discovered that this was rather difficult.
For even the puppet nawabs were not always as helpful as the Company wanted them to be.
After all, they had to maintain a basic appearance of dignity and sovereignty if they wanted respect from their subjects.
When Mir Jafar protested, the Company deposed him and installed Mir Qasim in his place.
When Mir Qasim complained, he in turn was defeated in a battle fought at Buxar (1764), driven out of Bengal, and Mir Jafar was reinstalled.
The Nawab had to pay Rs 500,000 every month but the Company wanted more money to finance its wars, and meet the demands of trade and its other expenses.
It wanted more territories and more revenue.
By the time Mir Jafar died in 1765 the mood of the Company had changed.
Having failed to work with puppet nawabs, Clive declared: “We must indeed become nawabs ourselves.”
Finally, in 1765 the Mughal emperor appointed the Company as the Diwan of the provinces of Bengal.
The Diwani allowed the Company to use the vast revenue resources of Bengal.
This solved a major problem that the Company had earlier faced.
From the early eighteenth century its trade with India had expanded.
But it had to buy most of the goods in India with gold and silver imported from Britain.
This was because at this time Britain had no goods to sell in India.
The outflow of gold from Britain slowed after the Battle of Plassey, and entirely stopped after the assumption of Diwani.
Now revenues from India could finance Company expenses.
These revenues could be used to purchase cotton and silk textiles in India, maintain Company troops, and meet the cost of building the Company fort and offices at Calcutta.
When Alivardi Khan died in 1756, Sirajuddaulah became the nawab of Bengal.
The Company was worried about his power and keen on a puppet ruler who would willingly give trade concessions and other privileges.
So it tried, though without success, to help one of Sirajuddaulah’s rivals become the nawab.
An infuriated Sirajuddaulah asked the Company to stop meddling in the political affairs of his dominion, stop fortification, and pay the revenues.
After negotiations failed, the Nawab marched with 30,000 soldiers to the English factory at Kassimbazar, captured the Company officials, locked the warehouse, disarmed all Englishmen, and blockaded English ships.
Then he marched to Calcutta to establish control over the Company’s fort there.
On hearing the news of the fall of Calcutta, Company officials in Madras sent forces under the command of Robert Clive, reinforced by naval fleets.
Prolonged negotiations with the Nawab followed. Finally, in 1757, Robert Clive led the Company’s army against Sirajuddaulah at Plassey.
One of the main reasons for the defeat of the Nawab was that the forces led by Mir Jafar, one of Sirajuddaulah’s commanders, never fought the battle.
Clive had managed to secure his support by promising to make him nawab after crushing Sirajuddaulah.
The Battle of Plassey became famous because it was the first major victory the Company won in India

Company Rule Expands

If we analyse the process of annexation of Indian states by the EIC from 1757 to 1857, certain key aspects emerge.
The Company rarely launched a direct military attack on an unknown territory.
Instead it used a variety of political, economic and diplomatic methods to extend its influence before annexing an Indian kingdom.
After the Battle of Buxar (1764), the Company appointed Residents in Indian states.
They were political or commercial agents and their job was to serve and further the interests of the Company.
Through the Residents, the Company officials began interfering in the internal affairs of Indian states.
They tried to decide who was to be the successor to the throne, and who was to be appointed in administrative posts.
Sometimes the Company forced the states into a “subsidiary alliance”.
According to the terms of this alliance, Indian rulers were not allowed to have their independent armed forces.
They were to be protected by the Company, but had to pay for the “subsidiary forces” that the Company was supposed to maintain for the purpose of this protection.
If the Indian rulers failed to make the payment, then part of their territory was taken away as penalty.
For example, when Richard Wellesley was Governor- General (1798-1805), the Nawab of Awadh was forced to give over half of his territory to the Company in 1801, as he failed to pay for the “subsidiary forces”.
Hyderabad was also forced to cede territories on similar grounds.

Company officials become “nabobs”

Company acquired more power and authority.
Each company servant began to have visions of living like nawabs.
After the Battle of Plassey the actual nawabs of Bengal were forced to give land and vast sums of money as personal gifts to Company officials.
Robert Clive himself amassed a fortune in India.
He had come to Madras (now Chennai) from England in 1743 at the age of 18.
When in 1767 he left India his Indian fortune was worth £401,102. Interestingly, when he was appointed Governor of Bengal in 1764, he was asked to remove corruption in Company administration but he was himself cross-examined in 1772 by the British
Parliament which was suspicious of his vast wealth.
Although he was acquitted, he committed suicide in 1774.
However, not all Company officials succeeded in making money like Clive.
Many died an early death in India due to disease and war and it would not be right to regard all of them as corrupt and dishonest.
Many of them came from humble backgrounds and their uppermost desire was to earn enough in India, return to Britain and lead a comfortable life.
Those who managed to return with wealth led flashy lives and flaunted their riches.
They were called “nabobs”– an anglicised version of the Indian word nawab.
They were often seen as upstarts and social climbers in British society and were ridiculed or made fun of in plays and cartoons.

Tipu Sultan – The “Tiger of Mysore”

The Company resorted to direct military confrontation when it saw a threat to its political or economic interests.
This can be illustrated with the case of the southern Indian state of Mysore.
Mysore had grown in strength under the leadership of powerful rulers like Haidar Ali (ruled from 1761 to 1782) and his famous son Tipu Sultan (ruled from 1782 to 1799).
Mysore controlled the profitable trade of the Malabar coast where the Company purchased pepper and cardamom.
In 1785 Tipu Sultan stopped the export of sandalwood, pepper and cardamom through the ports of his kingdom, and disallowed local merchants from trading with the Company.
He also established a close relationship with the French in India, and modernised his army with their help.
The British were furious.
They saw Haidar and Tipu as ambitious, arrogant and dangerous – rulers who had to be controlled and crushed.
Four wars were fought with Mysore (1767-69, 1780-84, 1790-92 and 1799).
Only in the last – the Battle of Seringapatam – did the Company ultimately win a victory.
Tipu Sultan was killed defending his capital Seringapatam, Mysore was placed under the former ruling dynasty of the Wodeyars and a subsidiary alliance was imposed on the state.
The Company forces were defeated by Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan in several battles.
But in 1792, attacked by the combined forces of the Marathas, the Nizam of Hyderabad and the Company, Tipu was forced to sign a treaty with the British by which two of his sons were taken away as hostages.
British painters always liked painting scenes that showed the triumph of British power
Kings are often surrounded by legend and their powers glorified through folklore.
Here is a legend about Tipu Sultan who became the ruler of Mysore in 1782.
It is said that once he went hunting in the forest with a French friend.
There he came face to face with a tiger.
His gun did not work and his dagger fell to the ground.
He battled with the tiger unarmed until he managed to reach down and pick up the dagger.
Finally he was able to kill the tiger in the battle.
After this he came to be known as the “Tiger of Mysore”.
He had the image of the tiger on his flag.

War with the Marathas

From the late 18^th century the Company also sought to curb and eventually destroy Maratha power.
With their defeat in the Third Battle of Panipat in 1761, the Marathas’ dream of ruling from Delhi was shattered.
They were divided into many states under different chiefs (sardars) belonging to dynasties such as Sindhia, Holkar, Gaikwad and Bhonsle.
These chiefs were held together in a confederacy (alliance) under a Peshwa (Principal Minister) who became its effective military and administrative head based in Pune.
Mahadji Sindhia and Nana Phadnis were two famous Maratha soldiers and statesmen of the late eighteenth century.
The Marathas were subdued in a series of wars.
In the first war that ended in 1782 with the Treaty of Salbai, there was no clear victor.
The Second Anglo- Maratha War (1803-05) was fought on different fronts, resulting in the British gaining Orissa and the territories north of the Yamuna river including Agra and Delhi.
Finally, the Third Anglo-Maratha War of 1817-19 crushed Maratha power.
The Peshwa was removed and sent away to Bithur near Kanpur with a pension.
The Company now had complete control over the territories south of the Vindhyas

The claim to paramountcy

The early 19^th century the Company pursued an aggressive policy of territorial expansion.
Under Lord Hastings (Governor- General from 1813 to 1823) a new policy of “paramountcy” was initiated.
Now the Company claimed that its authority was paramount or supreme, hence its power was greater than that of Indian states.
In order to protect its interests it was justified in annexing or threatening to annex any Indian kingdom.
This view continued to guide later British policies as well.
This process, however, did not go unchallenged.
For example, when the British tried to annex the small state of Kitoor (in Karnataka today), Rani Channamma took to arms and led an anti-British resistance movement
She was arrested in 1824 and died in prison in 1829.
But Rayanna, a poor chowkidar of Sangoli in Kitoor, carried on the resistance.
With popular support he destroyed many British camps and records. He was caught and hanged by the British in 1830.
In the late 1830s the East India Company became worried about Russia.
It imagined that Russia might expand across Asia and enter India from the north-west.
Driven by this fear, the British now wanted to secure their control over the north-west.
They fought a prolonged war with Afghanistan between 1838 and 1842 and established indirect Company rule there.
Sind was taken over in 1843.
Next in line was Punjab. But the presence of Maharaja Ranjit Singh held back the Company.
After his death in 1839, two prolonged wars were fought with the Sikh kingdom.
Ultimately, in 1849, Punjab was annexed.

The Doctrine of Lapse

The final wave of annexations occurred under Lord Dalhousie who was the Governor-General from 1848 to 1856.

He devised a policy that came to be known as the Doctrine of Lapse.

The doctrine declared that if an Indian ruler died without a male heir his kingdom would “lapse”, that is, become part of Company territory.

One kingdom after another was annexed simply by applying this doctrine: Satara (1848), Sambalpur (1850), Udaipur (1852), Nagpur (1853) and Jhansi (1854).

Finally, in 1856, the Company also took over Awadh.

This time the British had an added argument – they said they were “obliged by duty” to take over Awadh in order to free the people from the “misgovernment” of the Nawab!

Enraged by the humiliating way in which the Nawab was deposed, the people of Awadh joined the great revolt that broke out in 1857.

Setting up a New Administration

Warren Hastings (Governor-General from 1773 to 1785) was one of the many important figures who played a significant role in the expansion of Company power.
By his time the Company had acquired power not only in Bengal, but also in Bombay and Madras. British territories were broadly divided into administrative units called Presidencies.
There were three Presidencies: Bengal, Madras and Bombay.
Each was ruled by a Governor. The supreme head of the administration was the Governor-General.
Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General, introduced several administrative reforms, notably in the sphere of justice.

From 1772 a new system of justice was established.

Each district was to have two courts – a criminal court ( faujdari adalat ) and a civil court (diwani adalat ).
Maulvis and Hindu pandits interpreted Indian laws for the European district collectors who presided over civil courts.
The criminal courts were still under a qazi and a mufti but under the supervision of the collectors.
A major problem was that the Brahman pandits gave different interpretations of local laws based on different schools of the dharmashastra.
To bring about uniformity, in 1775 eleven pandits were asked to compile a digest of Hindu laws.
N.B. Halhed translated this digest into English.
By 1778 a code of Muslim laws was also compiled for the benefit of European judges.
Under the Regulating Act of 1773, a new Supreme Court was established, while a court of appeal – the Sadar Nizamat Adalat – was also set up at Calcutta.
The principal figure in an Indian district was the Collector.
As the title suggests, his main job was to collect revenue and taxes and maintain law and order in his district with the help of judges, police officers and darogas.
His office – the Collectorate – became the new centre of power and patronage that steadily replaced previous holders of authority.
When Warren Hastings went back to England in 1785, Edmund Burke accused him of being personally responsible for the misgovernment of Bengal. This led to an impeachment proceeding in the British Parliament that lasted seven years.

The Company army

Colonial rule in India brought in some new ideas of administration and reform but its power rested on its military strength.
The Mughal army was mainly composed of cavalry (sawars: trained soldiers on horseback) and infantry, that is, paidal (foot) soldiers.
They were given training in archery (teer-andazi) and the use of the sword.
The cavalry dominated the army and the Mughal state did not feel the need to have a large professionally trained infantry.
The rural areas had a large number of armed peasants and the local zamindars often supplied the Mughals with paidal soldiers.
A change occurred in the eighteenth century when
Mughal successor states like Awadh and Benaras started recruiting peasants into their armies and training them as professional soldiers.
The East India Company adopted the same method when it began recruitment for its own army, which came to be known as the sepoy army (from the Indian word sipahi, meaning soldier).
As warfare technology changed from the 1820s, the cavalry requirements of the Company’s army declined.
This is because the British empire was fighting in Burma, Afghanistan and Egypt where soldiers were armed with muskets and matchlocks.
The soldiers of the Company’s army had to keep pace with changing military requirements and its infantry regiments now became more important.
In the early nineteenth century the British began to develop a uniform military culture.
Soldiers were increasingly subjected to European-style training, drill and discipline that regulated their life far more than before.
Often this created problems since caste and community feelings were ignored in building a force of professional soldiers

Conclusion

Thus the EIC was transformed from a trading company to a territorial colonial power.

The arrival of new steam technology in the early nineteenth century also aided this process.

Till then it would take anywhere between six and eight months to travel to India by sea.

Steamships reduced the journey time to three weeks enabling more Britishers and their families to come to a far-off country like India.

By 1857 the Company came to exercise direct rule over about 63 per cent of the territory and 78 % of the population of the Indian subcontinent.

Combined with its indirect influence on the remaining territory and population of the country, the EIC had virtually the whole of India under its control.

Chapter 3
Ruling the Countryside

The Company Becomes the Diwan

On 12 August 1765, the Mughal emperor appointed the East India Company as the Diwan of Bengal. The actual event most probably took place in Robert Clive’s tent, with a few Englishmen and Indians as witnesses.
But in the painting above, the event is shown as a majestic occasion, taking place in a grand setting.
The painter was commissioned by Clive to record the memorable events in Clive’s life. The grant of Diwani clearly was one such event in British imagination.
As Diwan, the Company became the chief financial administrator of the territory under its control.
Now it had to think of administering the land and organising its revenue resources.
This had to be done in a way that could yield enough revenue to meet the growing expenses of the company.
A trading company had also to ensure that it could buy the products it needed and sell what it wanted.
Over the years the Company also learnt that it had to move with some caution.
Being an alien power, it needed to pacify those who in the past had ruled the countryside, and enjoyed authority and prestige.
Those who had held local power had to be controlled but they could not be entirely eliminated.

Revenue for the Company

The Company wanted a large revenue income but was unwilling to set up any regular system of assessment and collection.
The effort was to increase the revenue as much as it could and buy fine cotton and silk cloth as cheaply as possible.
Within five years the value of goods bought by the Company in Bengal doubled.
Before 1865, the Company had purchased goods in India by importing gold and silver from Britain.
Now the revenue collected in Bengal could finance the purchase of goods for export.
Soon it was clear that the Bengal economy was facing a deep crisis.
Artisans were deserting villages since they were being forced to sell their goods to the Company at low prices.
Peasants were unable to pay the dues that were being demanded from them.
Artisanal production was in decline, and agricultural cultivation showed signs of collapse.
Then in 1770 a terrible famine killed ten million people in Bengal.
About 1/3^rd of the population was wiped out.

The need to improve agriculture

Company introduced the Permanent Settlement in 1793.
By the terms of the settlement, the rajas and taluqdars were recognised as zamindars.
They were asked to collect rent from the peasants and pay revenue to the Company.
The amount to be paid was fixed permanently, that is, it was not to be increased ever in future.
It was felt that this would ensure a regular flow of revenue into the Company’s coffers and at the same time encourage the zamindars to invest in improving the land.
Since the revenue demand of the state would not be increased, the zamindar would benefit from increased production from the land.
Cornwallis was the Governor- General of India when the Permanent Settlement was introduced.

The problem

The Permanent Settlement, however, created problems.
Company officials soon discovered that the zamindars were in fact not investing in the improvement of land.
The revenue that had been fixed was so high that the zamindars found it difficult to pay. Anyone who failed to pay the revenue lost his zamindari. Numerous zamindaris were sold off at auctions organised by the Company.
By the first decade of the nineteenth century the situation changed.
The prices in the market rose and cultivation slowly expanded. This meant an increase in the income of the zamindars but no gain for the Company since it could not increase a revenue demand that had been fixed permanently
Even then the zamindars did not have an interest in improving the land.
Some had lost their lands in the earlier years of the settlement; others now saw the possibility of earning without the trouble and risk of investment.
As long as the zamindars could give out the land to tenants and get rent, they were not interested in improving the land.
On the other hand, in the villages, the cultivator found the system extremely oppressive.
The rent he paid to the zamindar was high and his right on the land was insecure.
To pay the rent he had to often take a loan from the moneylender, and when he failed to pay the rent he was evicted from the land he had cultivated for generations.

A new system is devised

By the early 19^th century many of the Company officials were convinced that the system of revenue had to be changed again. In the North Western Provinces of the Bengal
Presidency (most of this area is now in UP), an Englishman called Holt Mackenzie devised the new system which came into effect in 1822.
He felt that the village was an important social institution in north Indian society and needed to be preserved.
Under his directions, collectors went from village to village, inspecting the land, measuring the fields, and recording the customs and rights of different groups.
The estimated revenue of each plot within a village was added up to calculate the revenue that each village (mahal) had to pay.
This demand was to be revised periodically, not permanently fixed.
The charge of collecting the revenue and paying it to the Company was given to the village headman, rather than the zamindar.
This system came to be known as the mahalwari settlement.

The Munro system

In the British territories in the south there was a similar move away from the idea of Permanent Settlement.
The new system that was devised came to be known as the ryotwar (or ryotwari).
It was tried on a small scale by Captain Alexander Read in some of the areas that were taken over by the Company after the wars with Tipu Sultan.
Subsequently developed by Thomas Munro, this system was gradually extended all over south India.
Read and Munro felt that in the south there were no traditional zamindars.
The settlement, they argued, had to be made directly with the cultivators (ryots) who had tilled the land for generations.
Their fields had to be carefully and separately surveyed before the revenue assessment was made.
Munro thought that the British should act as paternal father figures protecting the ryots under their charge.

All was not well

Within a few years after the new systems were imposed it was clear that all was not well with them.
Driven by the desire to increase the income from land, revenue officials fixed too high a revenue demand.
Peasants were unable to pay, ryots fled the countryside, and villages became deserted in many regions.
Optimistic officials had imagined that the new systems would transform the peasants into rich enterprising farmers.
But this did not happen.

Crops for Europe

The British also realised that the countryside could not only yield revenue, it could also grow the crops that Europe required.
By the late 18^th century the Company was trying its best to expand the cultivation of opium and indigo.
In the century and a half that followed, the British persuaded or forced cultivators in various parts of India to produce other crops: jute in Bengal, tea in Assam, sugarcane in the United Provinces (now UP), wheat in Punjab, cotton in Maharashtra and Punjab, rice in Madras.
The British used a variety of methods to expand the cultivation of crops that they needed

The image on the left shows a kalamkari print created by weavers of Andhra Pradesh in India.

On the right is a floral cotton print designed and produced by William Morris, a famous poet and artist of nineteenth-century Britain.
There is one thing common in the two prints: both use a rich blue colour – commonly called indigo.
The blue that you see in these prints was produced from a plant called indigo.
It is likely that the blue dye used in the Morris prints in nineteenth-century Britain was manufactured from indigo plants cultivated in India.
For India was the biggest supplier of indigo in the world at that time.
The French began cultivating indigo in St Dominguez in the Caribbean islands, the Portuguese in Brazil, the English in Jamaica, and the Spanish in Venezuela.
Indigo plantations also came up in many parts of North America.
By the end of the eighteenth century, the demand for Indian indigo grew further.
Britain began to industrialise, and its cotton production expanded dramatically, creating an enormous new demand for cloth dyes.
While the demand for indigo increased, its existing supplies from the West Indies and America collapsed for a variety of reasons.
Between 1783 and 1789 the production of indigo in the world fell by half.
Cloth dyers in Britain now desperately looked for new sources of indigo supply.

Why the demand for Indian indigo?

The indigo plant grows primarily in the tropics.
By 13^th century Indian indigo was being used by cloth manufacturers in Italy, France and Britain to dye cloth.
However, only small amounts of Indian indigo reached the European market and its price was very high.
European cloth manufacturers therefore had to depend on another plant called woad to make violet and blue dyes.
Being a plant of the temperate zones, woad was more easily available in Europe.
It was grown in northern Italy, southern France and in parts of Germany and Britain.
Worried by the competition from indigo, woad producers in Europe pressurised their governments to ban the import of indigo.
Cloth dyers, however, preferred indigo as a dye.
Indigo produced a rich blue colour, whereas the dye from woad was pale and dull. By the 17^th century, European cloth producers persuaded their governments to relax the ban on indigo import.

How was indigo cultivated?

There were two main systems of indigo cultivation – nij and ryoti.
Within the system of nij cultivation, the planter produced indigo in lands that he directly controlled.
He either bought the land or rented it from other zamindars and produced indigo by directly employing hired labourers.

Britain turns to India

Faced with the rising demand for indigo in Europe, the Company in India looked for ways to expand the area under indigo cultivation.
From the last decades of the eighteenth century indigo cultivation in Bengal expanded rapidly and Bengal indigo came to dominate the world market.
In 1788 only about 30 per cent of the indigo imported into Britain was from India.
By 1810, the proportion had gone up to 95 per cent.
As the indigo trade grew, commercial agents and officials of the Company began investing in indigo production.
Over the years many Company officials left their jobs to look after their indigo business.
Attracted by the prospect of high profits, numerous Scotsmen and Englishmen came to India and became planters.
Those who had no money to produce indigo could get loans from the Company and the banks that were coming up at the time.

The problem with nij cultivation

The planters found it difficult to expand the area under nij cultivation.
Indigo could be cultivated only on fertile lands, and these were all already densely populated.
Only small plots scattered over the landscape could be acquired.
Planters needed large areas in compact blocks to cultivate indigo in plantations.
Where could they get such land from?
They attempted to lease in the land around the indigo factory, and evict the peasants from the area.
But this always led to conflicts and tension.
Nor was labour easy to mobilise.
A large plantation required a vast number of hands to operate.
And labour was needed precisely at a time when peasants were usually busy with their rice cultivation.
Nij cultivation on a large scale also required many ploughs and bullocks.
One bigha of indigo cultivation required two ploughs.
This meant that a planter with 1,000 bighas would need 2,000 ploughs.
Investing on purchase and maintenance of ploughs was a big problem.
Nor could supplies be easily got from the peasants since their ploughs and bullocks were busy on their rice fields, again exactly at the time that the indigo planters needed them.
Till the late nineteenth century, planters were therefore reluctant to expand the area under nij cultivation.
Less than 25 per cent of the land producing indigo was under this system.
The rest was under an alternative mode of cultivation – the ryoti system.
Bigha – A unit of measurement of land. Before British rule, the size of this area varied. In Bengal the British standardised it to about one-third of an acre.

Indigo on the land of ryots

Under the ryoti system, the planters forced the ryots to sign a contract, an agreement (satta).
At times they pressurised the village headmen to sign the contract on behalf of the ryots.
Those who signed the contract got cash advances from the planters at low rates of interest to produce indigo.
But the loan committed the ryot to cultivating indigo on at least 25 per cent of the area under his holding.
The planter provided the seed and the drill, while the cultivators prepared the soil, sowed the seed and looked after the crop
When the crop was delivered to the planter after the harvest, a new loan was given to the ryot, and the cycle started all over again.
Peasants who were initially tempted by the loans soon realised how harsh the system was.
The price they got for the indigo they produced was very low and the cycle of loans never ended.
There were other problems too.
The planters usually insisted that indigo be cultivated on the best soils in which peasants preferred to cultivate rice.
Indigo, moreover, had deep roots and it exhausted the soil rapidly.
After an indigo harvest the land could not be sown with rice.

The “Blue Rebellion” and After

In March 1859 thousands of ryots in Bengal refused to grow indigo.
As the rebellion spread, ryots refused to pay rents to the planters, and attacked indigo factories armed with swords and spears, bows and arrows.
Women turned up to fight with pots, pans and kitchen implements.
Those who worked for the planters were socially boycotted, and the gomasthas – agents of planters – who came to collect rent were beaten up.
Ryots swore they would no longer take advances to sow indigo nor be bullied by the planters’ lathiyals – the lathi-wielding strongmen maintained by the planters.
In 1859, the indigo ryots felt that they had the support of the local zamindars and village headmen in their rebellion against the planters.
In many villages, headmen who had been forced to sign indigo contracts, mobilised the indigo peasants and fought pitched battles with the lathiyals.
In other places even the zamindars went around villages urging the ryots to resist the planters.
These zamindars were unhappy with the increasing power of the planters and angry at being forced by the planters to give them land on long leases.
The indigo peasants also imagined that the British government would support them in their struggle against the planters.
After the Revolt of 1857 the British government was particularly worried about the possibility of another popular rebellion.
When the news spread of a simmering revolt in the indigo districts, the Lieutenant Governor toured the region in the winter of 1859.
The ryots saw the tour as a sign of government sympathy for their plight.
When in Barasat, the magistrate Ashley Eden issued a notice stating that ryots would not be compelled to accept indigo contracts, word went around that Queen Victoria had declared that indigo need not be sown.
Eden was trying to placate the peasants and control an explosive situation, but his action was read as support for the rebellion.
As the rebellion spread, intellectuals from Calcutta rushed to the indigo districts.
Worried by the rebellion, the government brought in the military to protect the planters from assault, and set up the Indigo Commission to enquire into the system of indigo production.
The Commission held the planters guilty, and criticised them for the coercive methods they used with indigo cultivators.
It declared that indigo production was not profitable for ryots.
The Commission asked the ryots to fulfil their existing contracts but also told them that they could refuse to produce indigo in future.
After the revolt, indigo production collapsed in Bengal.
But the planters now shifted their operation to Bihar. With the discovery of synthetic dyes in the late nineteenth century their business was severely affected, but yet they managed to expand production.
When Mahatma Gandhi returned from South Africa, a peasant from Bihar persuaded him to visit Champaran and see the plight of the indigo cultivators there.
Mahatma Gandhi’s visit in 1917 marked the beginning of the Champaran movement against the indigo planters.

Chapter 4
Tribals, Dikus and the Vision of a Golden Age

Mundas – a tribal group that lived in Chotanagpur

Dongria Kandha tribe in Orissa

How Did Tribal Groups Live?

By the nineteenth century, tribal people in different parts of India were involved in a variety of activities.

Some were jhum cultivators

Some of them practised jhum cultivation that is, shifting cultivation.
This was done on small patches of land, mostly in forests.
The cultivators cut the treetops to allow sunlight to reach the ground, and burnt the vegetation on the land to clear it for cultivation.
They spread the ash from the firing, which contained potash, to fertilise the soil.
They used the axe to cut trees and the hoe to scratch the soil in order to prepare it for cultivation.
They broadcast the seeds, that is, scattered the seeds on the field instead of ploughing the land and sowing the seeds.
Once the crop was ready and harvested, they moved to another field.
A field that had been cultivated once was left fallow for several years, Shifting cultivators were found in the hilly and forested tracts of north-east and central India.
The lives of these tribal people depended on free movement within forests and on being able to use the land and forests for growing their crops.
That is the only way they could practise shifting cultivation.

What happened to the shifting cultivators?

The British were uncomfortable with groups who moved about and did not have a fixed home.
They wanted tribal groups to settle down and become peasant cultivators.
Settled peasants were easier to control and administer than people who were always on the move.
The British also wanted a regular revenue source for the state.
So they introduced land settlements – that is, they measured the land, defined the rights of each individual to that land, and fixed the revenue demand for the state.
Some peasants were declared landowners, others tenants.
The tenants were to pay rent to the landowner who in turn paid revenue to the state.
The British effort to settle jhum cultivators was not very successful.
Settled plough cultivation is not easy in areas where water is scarce and the soil is dry.
In fact, jhum cultivators who took to plough cultivation often suffered, since their fields did not produce good yields.
So the jhum cultivators in north-east India insisted on continuing with their traditional practice.
Facing widespread protests, the British had to ultimately allow them the right to carry on shifting cultivation in some parts of the forest.

Birsa Munda

Birsa was born in the mid-1870s.
The son of a poor father, he grew up around the forests of Bohonda, grazing sheep, playing the flute, and dancing in the local akhara.
Forced by poverty, his father had to move from place to place looking for work.
As an adolescent, Birsa heard tales of the Munda uprisings of the past and saw the sirdars (leaders) of the community urging the people to revolt.
They talked of a golden age when the Mundas had been free of the oppression of dikus, and said there would be a time when the ancestral right of the community would be restored.
They saw themselves as the descendants of the original settlers of the region, fighting for their land (mulk ki larai), reminding people of the need to win back their kingdom.
Birsa went to the local missionary school, and listened to the sermons of missionaries.
There too he heard it said that it was possible for the Mundas to attain the Kingdom of Heaven, and regain their lost rights.
This would be possible if they became good Christians and gave up their “bad practices”.
Later Birsa also spent some time in the company of a prominent Vaishnav preacher.
He wore the sacred thread, and began to value the importance of purity and piety.
Birsa was deeply influenced by many of the ideas he came in touch with in his growing-up years.
His movement was aimed at reforming tribal society.
He urged the Mundas to give up drinking liquor, clean their village, and stop believing in witchcraft and sorcery.
But we must remember that Birsa also turned against missionaries and Hindu landlords.
He saw them as outside forces that were ruining the Munda way of life.
In 1895 Birsa urged his followers to recover their glorious past.
He talked of a golden age in the past – a satyug (the age of truth) – when Mundas lived a good life, constructed embankments, tapped natural springs, planted trees and orchards, practised cultivation to earn their living.
They did not kill their brethren and relatives. They lived honestly.
Birsa also wanted people to once again work on their land, settle down and cultivate their fields.
What worried British officials most was the political aim of the Birsa movement, for it wanted to drive out missionaries, moneylenders, Hindu landlords, and the government and set up a Munda Raj with Birsa at its head.
The movement identified all these forces as the cause of the misery the Mundas were suffering.
The land policies of the British were destroying their traditional land system, Hindu landlords and moneylenders were taking over their land, and missionaries were criticising their traditional culture.
As the movement spread the British officials decided to act.
They arrested Birsa in 1895, convicted him on charges of rioting and jailed him for two years.
When Birsa was released in 1897 he began touring the villages to gather support.
He used traditional symbols and language to rouse people, urging them to destroy “Ravana” (dikus and the Europeans) and establish a kingdom under his leadership.
Birsa’s followers began targeting the symbols of diku and European power.
They attacked police stations and churches, and raided the property of moneylenders and zamindars.
They raised the white flag as a symbol of Birsa Raj.
In 1900 Birsa died of cholera and the movement faded out.
However, the movement was significant in at least two ways.
First – it forced the colonial government to introduce laws so that the land of the tribals could not be easily taken over by dikus.
Second – it showed once again that the tribal people had the capacity to protest against injustice and express their anger against colonial rule.
They did this in their own specific way, inventing their own rituals and symbols of struggle.

Some were hunters and gatherers

In many regions tribal groups lived by hunting animals and gathering forest produce.
They saw forests as essential for survival.
The Khonds were such a community living in the forests of Orissa.
They regularly went out on collective hunts and then divided the meat amongst themselves.
They ate fruits and roots collected from the forest and cooked food with the oil they extracted from the seeds of the sal and mahua.
They used many forest shrubs and herbs for medicinal purposes, and sold forest produce in the local markets.
The local weavers and leather workers turned to the Khonds when they needed supplies of kusum and palash flowers to colour their clothes and leather.
From where did these forest people get their supplies of rice and other grains? At times they exchanged goods – getting what they needed in return for their valuable forest produce.
At other times they bought goods with the small amount of earnings they had.
Some of them did odd jobs in the villages, carrying loads or building roads, while others laboured in the fields of peasants and farmers.
When supplies of forest produce shrank, tribal people had to increasingly wander around in search of work as labourers.
But many of them – like the Baigas of central India – were reluctant to do work for others.
The Baigas saw themselves as people of the forest, who could only live on the produce of the forest.
It was below the dignity of a Baiga to become a labourer.
Tribal groups often needed to buy and sell in order to be able to get the goods that were not produced within the locality.
This led to their dependence on traders and moneylenders.
Traders came around with things for sale, and sold the goods at high prices.
Moneylenders gave loans with which the tribals met their cash needs, adding to what they earned.
But the interest charged on the loans was usually very high.
So for the tribals, market and commerce often meant debt and poverty.
They therefore came to see the moneylender and trader as evil outsiders and the cause of their misery.

Location of some tribal groups in India

Some herded animals

Many tribal groups lived by herding and rearing animals.
They were pastoralists who moved with their herds of cattle or sheep according to the seasons.
When the grass in one place was exhausted, they moved to another area.
The Van Gujjars of the Punjab hills and the Labadis of Andhra Pradesh were cattle herders, the Gaddis of Kulu were shepherds, and the Bakarwals of Kashmir reared goats.

Some took to settled cultivation

Even before the nineteenth century, many from within the tribal groups had begun settling down, and cultivating their fields in one place year after year, instead of moving from place to place.
They began to use the plough, and gradually got rights over the land they lived on.
In many cases, like the Mundas of Chotanagpur, the land belonged to the clan as a whole.
All members of the clan were regarded as descendants of the original settlers, who had first cleared the land.
Therefore, all of them had rights on the land.
Very often some people within the clan acquired more power than others, some became chiefs and others followers.
Powerful men often rented out their land instead of cultivating it themselves.
British officials saw settled tribal groups like the Gonds and Santhals as more civilised than hunter- gatherers or shifting cultivators.
Those who lived in the forests were considered to be wild and savage: they needed to be settled and civilised.

How Did Colonial Rule Affect Tribal Lives?

What happened to tribal chiefs?

Before the arrival of the British, in many areas the tribal chiefs were important people.
They enjoyed a certain amount of economic power and had the right to administer and control their territories.
In some places they had their own police and decided on the local rules of land and forest management.
Under British rule, the functions and powers of the tribal chiefs changed considerably.
They were allowed to keep their land titles over a cluster of villages and rent out lands, but they lost much of their administrative power and were forced to follow laws made by British officials in India.
They also had to pay tribute to the British, and discipline the tribal groups on behalf of the British.
They lost the authority they had earlier enjoyed amongst their people, and were unable to fulfil their traditional functions

Forest laws and their impact

The life of tribal groups was directly connected to the forest. So changes in forest laws had a considerable effect on tribal lives.
The British extended their control over all forests and declared that forests were state property.
Some forests were classified as Reserved Forests for they produced timber which the British wanted.
In these forests people were not allowed to move freely, practise jhum cultivation, collect fruits, or hunt animals.
Many were therefore forced to move to other areas in search of work and livelihood.
But once the British stopped the tribal people from living inside forests, they faced a problem.
Colonial officials decided that they would give jhum cultivators small patches of land in the forests and allow them to cultivate these on the condition that those who lived in the villages would have to provide labour to the Forest Department and look after the forests.
So in many regions the Forest Department established forest villages to ensure a regular supply of cheap labour.
Many tribal groups reacted against the colonial forest laws.
They disobeyed the new rules, continued with practices that were declared illegal, and at times rose Songram Sangma in 1906 in Assam, and the forest satyagraha of the 1930s in the Central Provinces.

The problem with trade

During 19^TH century, tribal groups found that traders and moneylenders were coming into the forests more often, wanting to buy forest produce, offering cash loans, and asking them to work for wages.
It took tribal groups some time to understand the consequences of what was happening.
In 18^th century, Indian silk was in demand in European markets.
The fine quality of Indian silk was highly valued and exports from India increased rapidly.
As the market expanded, East India Company officials tried to encourage silk production to meet the growing demand.
Hazaribagh, in present-day Jharkhand, was an area where the Santhals reared cocoons.
The traders dealing in silk sent in their agents who gave loans to the tribal people and collected the cocoons.
The growers were paid Rs 3 to Rs 4 for a thousand cocoons.
These were then exported to Burdwan or Gaya where they were sold at five times the price.
The middlemen – so called because they arranged deals between the exporters and silk growers – made huge profits.
The silk growers earned very little.
Understandably, many tribal groups saw the market and the traders as their main enemies.

The search for work

The plight of the tribals who had to go far away from their homes in search of work was even worse.
From the late 19^th century, tea plantations started coming up and mining became an important industry.
Tribals were recruited in large numbers to work the tea plantations of Assam and the coal mines of Jharkhand.
They were recruited through contractors who paid them miserably low wages, and prevented them from returning home.
Through 19^th & 20^th centuries, tribal groups in different parts of the country rebelled against the changes in laws, the restrictions on their practices, the new taxes they had to pay, and the exploitation by traders and moneylenders.
The Kols rebelled in 1831-32, Santhals rose in revolt in 1855, the Bastar Rebellion in central India broke out in 1910 and the Warli Revolt in Maharashtra in 1940.
The movement that Birsa led was one such movement.

Chapter 5
When People Rebel 1857 and After

Policies and the People-

Kings, queens, peasants, landlords, tribals, soldiers were all affected in different ways

Nawabs lose their power

Since the mid-eighteenth century, nawabs and rajas had seen their power erode.
They had gradually lost their authority and honour.
Residents had been stationed in many courts, the freedom of the rulers reduced, their armed forces disbanded, and their revenues and territories taken away by stages.
Many ruling families tried to negotiate with the Company to protect their interests.
For example, Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi wanted the Company to recognise her adopted son as the heir to the kingdom after the death of her husband.
Nana Saheb, the adopted son of Peshwa Baji Rao II, pleaded that he be given his father’s pension when the latter died.
However, the Company, confident of its superiority and military powers, turned down these pleas.
Awadh was one of the last territories to be annexed.
In 1801, a subsidiary alliance was imposed on Awadh, and in 1856 it was taken over.
Governor-General Dalhousie declared that the territory was being misgoverned and British rule was needed to ensure proper administration.
The Company even began to plan how to bring the Mughal dynasty to an end.
The name of the Mughal king was removed from the coins minted by the Company.
In 1849, GG Dalhousie announced that after the death of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the family of the king would be shifted out of the Red Fort and given another place in Delhi to reside in.
In 1856, GG Canning decided that Bahadur Shah Zafar would be the last Mughal king and after his death none of his descendants would be recognised as kings – they would just be called princes.

The peasants and the sepoys

In the countryside peasants and zamindars resented the high taxes and the rigid methods of revenue collection.
Many failed to pay back their loans to the moneylenders and gradually lost the lands they had tilled for generations.
The Indian sepoys in the employ of the Company also had reasons for discontent.
They were unhappy about their pay, allowances and conditions of service.
Some of the new rules, moreover, violated their religious sensibilities and beliefs.
In 1824 the sepoys were told to go to Burma by the sea route to fight for the Company, they refused to follow the order, though they agreed to go by the land route.
They were severely punished, and since the issue did not die down, in 1856 the Company passed a new law which stated that every new person who took up employment in the Company’s army had to agree to serve overseas if required.
Sepoys also reacted to what was happening in the countryside.
Many of them were peasants and had families living in the villages.
So the anger of the peasants quickly spread among the sepoys.

Responses to reforms

The British believed that Indian society had to be reformed.
Laws were passed to stop the practice of sati and to encourage the remarriage of widows.
English-language education was actively promoted.
After 1830, the Company allowed Christian missionaries to function freely in its domain and even own land and property.
In 1850, a new law was passed to make conversion to Christianity easier.
This law allowed an Indian who had converted to Christianity to inherit the property of his ancestors.
Many Indians began to feel that the British were destroying their religion, their social customs and their traditional way of life.
There were of course other Indians who wanted to change existing social practices.

A Mutiny Becomes a Popular Rebellion

Though struggles between rulers and the ruled are not unusual, sometimes such struggles become quite widespread as a popular resistance so that the power of the state breaks down.
A very large number of people begin to believe that they have a common enemy and rise up against the enemy at the same time.
For such a situation to develop people have to organise, communicate, take initiative and display the confidence to turn the situation around.
Such a situation developed in the northern parts of India in 1857.
After a hundred years of conquest and administration, the English East India Company faced a massive rebellion that started in May 1857 and threatened the Company’s very presence in India.
Sepoys mutinied in several places beginning from Meerut and a large number of people from different sections of society rose up in rebellion.
Some regard it as the biggest armed resistance to colonialism in the nineteenth century anywhere in the world.

From Meerut to Delhi

On 29 March 1857, a young soldier, Mangal Pandey, was hanged to death for attacking his officers in Barrackpore.
Some days later, some sepoys of the regiment at Meerut refused to do the army drill using the new cartridges, which were suspected of being coated with the fat of cows and pigs.
85 sepoys were dismissed from service and sentenced to ten years in jail for disobeying their officers.
This happened on 9 May 1857.
The response of the other Indian soldiers in Meerut was quite extraordinary.
On 10 May, the soldiers marched to the jail in Meerut and released the imprisoned sepoys.
They attacked and killed British officers.
They captured guns and ammunition and set fire to the buildings and properties of the British and declared war on the firangis.
The soldiers were determined to bring an end to their rule in the country.
The sepoys of Meerut rode all night of 10 May to reach Delhi in the early hours next morning.
As news of their arrival spread, the regiments stationed in Delhi also rose up in rebellion.
Again British officers were killed, arms and ammunition seized, buildings set on fire.
Triumphant soldiers gathered around the walls of the Red Fort where the Badshah lived, demanding to meet him.
The emperor was not quite willing to challenge the mighty British power but the soldiers persisted.
They forced their way into the palace and proclaimed Bahadur Shah Zafar as their leader.
The ageing emperor had to accept this demand.
He wrote letters to all the chiefs and rulers of the country to come forward and organise a confederacy of Indian states to fight the British.
This single step taken by Bahadur Shah had great implications.
The Mughal dynasty had ruled over a very large part of the country.
Most smaller rulers and chieftains controlled different territories on behalf of the Mughal ruler.
Threatened by the expansion of British rule, many of them felt that if the Mughal emperor could rule again, they too would be able to rule their own territories once more, under Mughal authority.
The British had not expected this to happen.
They thought the disturbance caused by the issue of the cartridges would die down.
But Bahadur Shah Zafar’s decision to bless the rebellion changed the entire situation dramatically.
Often when people see an alternative possibility they feel inspired and enthused.
It gives them the courage, hope and confidence to act.

The rebellion spreads

After the British were routed from Delhi, there was no uprising for almost a week. It took that much time for news to travel.
Then, a spurt of mutinies began.
Regiment after regiment mutinied and took off to join other troops at nodal points like Delhi, Kanpur and Lucknow.
After them, the people of the towns and villages also rose up in rebellion and rallied around local leaders, zamindars and chiefs who were prepared to establish their authority and fight the British.
Nana Saheb, the adopted son of the late Peshwa Baji Rao who lived near Kanpur, gathered armed forces and expelled the British garrison from the city.
He proclaimed himself Peshwa.
He declared that he was a governor under Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar.
In Lucknow, Birjis Qadr, the son of the deposed Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, was proclaimed the new Nawab.
He too acknowledged the suzerainty of Bahadur Shah Zafar.
His mother Begum Hazrat Mahal took an active part in organising the uprising against the British.
In Jhansi, Rani Lakshmibai joined the rebel sepoys and fought the British along with Tantia Tope, the general of Nana Saheb.
In the Mandla region of Madhya Pradesh, Rani Avantibai Lodhi of Ramgarh raised and led an army of four thousand against the British who had taken over the administration of her state.
The British were greatly outnumbered by the rebel forces.
They were defeated in a number of battles.
This convinced the people that the rule of the British had collapsed for good and gave them the confidence to take the plunge and join the rebellion.
A situation of widespread popular rebellion developed in the region of Awadh in particular.
On 6 August 1857, we find a telegram sent by Lieutenant Colonel Tytler to his Commander-in-Chief expressing the fear felt by the British: “Our men are cowed by the numbers opposed to them and the endless fighting.
Every village is held against us, the zamindars have risen to oppose us.”
Many new leaders came up.
For example, Ahmadullah Shah, a maulvi from Faizabad, prophesied that the rule of the British would come to an end soon.
He caught the imagination of the people and raised a huge force of supporters.
He came to Lucknow to fight the British.
In Delhi, a large number of ghazis or religious warriors came together to wipe out the white people.
Bakht Khan, a soldier from Bareilly, took charge of a large force of fighters who came to Delhi.
He became a key military leader of the rebellion.
In Bihar, an old zamindar, Kunwar Singh, joined the rebel sepoys and battled with the British for many months.
Leaders and fighters from across the land joined the fight.

The Company Fights Back

Unnerved by the scale of the upheaval, the Company decided to repress the revolt with all its might.
It brought reinforcements from England, passed new laws so that the rebels could be convicted with ease, and then moved into the storm centres of the revolt.
Delhi was recaptured from the rebel forces in September 1857.
The last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar was tried in court and sentenced to life imprisonment.
He and his wife Begum Zinat Mahal were sent to prison in Rangoon in October 1858.
Bahadur Shah Zafar died in the Rangoon jail in November 1862.
The recapture of Delhi, however, did not mean that the rebellion died down after that.
People continued to resist and battle the British.
The British had to fight for two years to suppress the massive forces of popular rebellion. Lucknow was taken in March 1858.
Rani Lakshmibai was defeated and killed in June 1858.
A similar fate awaited Rani Avantibai, who after initial victory in Kheri, chose to embrace death when surrounded by the British on all sides.
Tantia Tope escaped to the jungles of central India and continued to fight a guerrilla war with the support of many tribal and peasant leaders.
He was captured, tried and killed in April 1859.
Just as victories against the British had earlier encouraged rebellion, the defeat of rebel forces encouraged desertions.
The British also tried their best to win back the loyalty of the people.
They announced rewards for loyal landholders would be allowed to continue to enjoy traditional rights over their lands.
Those who had rebelled were told that if they submitted to the British, and if they had not killed any white people, they would remain safe and their rights and claims to land would not be denied.
Nevertheless, hundreds of sepoys, rebels, nawabs and rajas were tried and hanged.

Aftermath

The British had regained control of the country by the end of 1859, but they could not carry on ruling the land with the same policies any more.
Given below are the important changes that were introduced by the British.
The British Parliament passed a new Act in 1858 and transferred the powers of the EIC to the British Crown in order to ensure a more responsible management of Indian affairs.
A member of the British Cabinet was appointed Secretary of State for India and made responsible for all matters related to the governance of India.
He was given a council to advise him, called the India Council.
The Governor-General of India was given the title of Viceroy, that is, a personal representative of the Crown.
Through these measures the British government accepted direct responsibility for ruling India.

2. All ruling chiefs of the country were assured that their territory would never be annexed in future.

They were allowed to pass on their kingdoms to their heirs, including adopted sons.
However, they were made to acknowledge the British Queen as their Sovereign Paramount. Thus the Indian rulers were to hold their kingdoms as subordinates of the British Crown.

3. It was decided that the proportion of Indian soldiers in the army would be reduced and the number of European soldiers would be increased.

It was also decided that instead of recruiting soldiers from Awadh, Bihar, central India and south India, more soldiers would be recruited from among the Gurkhas, Sikhs and Pathans.

4. The land and property of Muslims was confiscated on a large scale and they were treated with suspicion and hostility.

The British believed that they were responsible for the rebellion in a big way.

5. The British decided to respect the customary religious and social practices of the people in India.

6. Policies were made to protect landlords and zamindars and give them security of rights over their lands.

Thus a new phase of history began after 1857.

Some important centres of the Revolt in North India

Chapter 6
Colonialism and the City- The Story of an Imperial Capital

What Happened to Cities Under Colonial Rule?

In most parts of the Western world modern cities emerged with industrialisation.
In Britain, industrial cities like Leeds and Manchester grew rapidly in the nineteenth and twentieth century’s, as more and more people sought jobs, housing and other facilities in these places.
However, unlike Western Europe, Indian cities did not expand as rapidly in the nineteenth century.
Machlipatnam developed as an important port town in the seventeenth century.
Its importance declined by the late 18^th century as trade shifted to the new British ports of Bombay, Madras and Calcutta.
In the late eighteenth century, Calcutta, Bombay and Madras rose in importance as Presidency cities.
They became the centres of British power in the different regions of India.
At the same time, a host of smaller cities declined.
Many towns manufacturing specialised goods declined due to a drop in the demand for what they produced.
Old trading centres and ports could not survive when the flow of trade moved to new centres.
Similarly, earlier centres of regional power collapsed when local rulers were defeated by the British and new centres of administration emerged.
This process is often described as de-urbanisation.
Cities such as Machlipatnam, Surat and Seringapatam were deurbanised during the nineteenth century.
By the early twentieth century, only 11 per cent of Indians were living in cities.
The city of Bombay began to grow when the East India Company started using Bombay as its main port in western India.
The historic imperial city of Delhi became a dusty provincial town in the nineteenth century before it was rebuilt as the capital of British India after 1912.
Delhi during Shah Jahan’s time was also an important centre of Sufi culture.
It had several dargahs, khanqahs and idgahs.
Open squares, winding lanes, quiet cul-desacs and water channels were the pride of Delhi’s residents.
No wonder the poet Mir Taqi Mir said, “The streets of Delhi aren’t mere streets; they are like the album of a painter.”

Dargah – The tomb of a Sufi saint

Khanqah – A sufi lodge, often used as a rest house for travellers and a place where people come to discuss spiritual matters, get the blessings of saints, and hear sufi music

Idgah – An open prayer place of Muslims primarily meant for id prayers

Cul-de-sac – Street with a dead end

Yet, even this was no ideal city, and its delights were enjoyed only by some.
There were sharp divisions between rich and poor.
Havelis or mansions were interspersed with the far more numerous mud houses of the poor.
The colourful world of poetry and dance was usually enjoyed only by men.
Furthermore, celebrations and processions often led to serious conflicts.
Jama Masjid in Delhi- first mosque in India with minarets and full domes

The Making of New Delhi

In 1803, the British gained control of Delhi after defeating the Marathas.
Since the capital of British India was Calcutta, the Mughal emperor was allowed to continue living in the palace complex in the Red Fort.
The modern city as we know it today developed only after 1911 when Delhi became the capital of British India.

Demolishing a past

Before 1857, developments in Delhi were somewhat different from those in other colonial cities.
In Madras, Bombay or Calcutta, the living spaces of Indians and the British were sharply separated.
Indians lived in the “black” areas, while the British lived in well-laid out “white” areas
In Delhi, especially in the first half of the nineteenth century, the British lived along with the wealthier Indians in the Walled City.
The British learned to enjoy Urdu/Persian culture and poetry and participated in local festivals.
The establishment of the Delhi College in 1792 led to a great intellectual flowering in the sciences as well as the humanities, largely in the Urdu language.
Many refer to the period from 1830 to 1857 as a period of the Delhi renaissance.
All this changed after 1857.
During the Revolt, the rebels gathered in the city, and persuaded Bahadur Shah to become the leader of the uprising. Delhi remained under rebel control for four months.
When the British regained the city, they embarked on a campaign of revenge and plunder.
The famous poet Ghalib witnessed the events of the time. This is how he described the ransacking of Delhi in 1857: “When the angry lions (the British) entered the town, they killed the helpless … and burned houses.
Hordes of men and women, commoners and noblemen, poured out of Delhi from the three gates and took shelter in small communities, and tombs outside the city.”
To prevent another rebellion, the British exiled Bahadur Shah to Burma (now Myanmar), dismantled his court, razed several of the palaces, closed down gardens and built barracks for troops in their place.
The British wanted Delhi to forget its Mughal past.
The area around the Fort was completely cleared of gardens, pavilions and mosques (though temples were left intact).
The British wanted a clear ground for security reasons.
Mosques in particular were either destroyed, or put to other uses.
The buildings all around the Masjid were cleared after the Revolt of 1857.
For instance, the Zinatal- Masjid was converted into a bakery. No worship was allowed in the Jama Masjid for five years.
One-third of the city was demolished, and its canals were filled up.
In the 1870s, the western walls of Shahjahanabad were broken to establish the railway and to allow the city to expand beyond the walls.
The British now began living in the sprawling Civil Lines area that came up in the north, away from the Indians in the Walled City.
The Delhi College was turned into a school, and shut down in 1877.

Planning a new capital

The British were fully aware of the symbolic importance of Delhi. After the Revolt of 1857, many spectacular events were held there.
In 1877, Viceroy Lytton organised a Durbar to acknowledge Queen Victoria as the Empress of India.
Calcutta was still the capital of British India, but the grand Durbar was being held in Delhi.

Why was this so?

During the Revolt, the British had realised that the Mughal emperor was still important to the people and they saw him as their leader.
It was therefore important to celebrate British power with pomp and show in the city the Mughal emperors had earlier ruled, and the place which had turned into a rebel stronghold in 1857.
In 1911, when King George V was crowned in England, a Durbar was held in Delhi to celebrate the occasion.
The decision to shift the capital of India from Calcutta to Delhi was announced at this Durbar.
New Delhi was constructed as a 10-square-mile city on Raisina Hill, south of the existing city.
Two architects, Edward Lutyens and Herbert Baker, were called on to design New Delhi and its buildings.
The government complex in New Delhi consisted of a two-mile avenue, Kingsway (now Rajpath), that led to the Viceroy’s Palace (now Rashtrapati Bhavan), with the Secretariat buildings on either sides of the avenue.
The features of these government buildings were borrowed from different periods of India’s imperial history, but the overall look was Classical Greece (fifth century BCE).
For instance, the central dome of the Viceroy’s Palace was copied from the Buddhist stupa at Sanchi, and the red sandstone and carved screens or jalis were borrowed from Mughal architecture.
But the new buildings had to assert British importance: that is why the architect made sure that the Viceroy’s Palace was higher than Shah Jahan’s Jama Masjid!

Life in the time of Partition

The population of Delhi swelled, the kinds of jobs people did changed, and the culture of the city became different.
Days after Indian Independence and Partition, fierce rioting began.
Thousands of people in Delhi were killed and their homes looted and burned.
As streams of Muslims left Delhi for Pakistan, their place was taken by equally large numbers of Sikh and Hindu refugees from Pakistan.
Refugees roamed the streets of Shahjahanabad, searching for empty homes to occupy.
At times they forced Muslims to leave or sell their properties.
Over 2/3^rd of the Delhi Muslims migrated
Terrorised Muslims lived in makeshift camps till they could leave for Pakistan.
Delhi became a city of refugees; Most of these migrants were from Punjab.
They stayed in camps, schools, military barracks and gardens, hoping to build new homes. Some got the opportunity to occupy residences that had been vacated; others were housed in refugee colonies.
New colonies such as Lajpat Nagar and Tilak Nagar came up at this time.
The skills and occupations of the refugees were quite different from those of the people they replaced.
The new migrants coming to Delhi were rural landlords, lawyers, teachers, traders and small shopkeepers.
They had to take up new jobs as hawkers, vendors, carpenters and ironsmiths.
The large migration from Punjab changed the social milieu of Delhi.
An urban culture largely based on Urdu was overshadowed by new tastes and sensibilities, in food, dress and the arts.

Inside the Old City

In the past, Mughal Delhi’s famed canals had brought not only fresh drinking water to homes, but also water for other domestic uses.
This was neglected in the nineteenth century.
The system of wells (or baolis) also broke down, and channels to remove household waste (called effluents) were damaged.
The broken-down canals could not serve the needs of rapidly increasing population.
At the end of 19^th century, the Shahjahani drains were closed and a new system of open surface drains was introduced.
This system too was soon overburdened, and many of the wealthier inhabitants complained about the stench from roadside privies and overflowing open drains.
The Delhi Municipal Committee was unwilling to spend money on a good drainage system.
At the same time, though, millions of rupees were being spent on drainage systems in the New Delhi area.

The decline of havelis

The Mughal aristocracy in 17^th & 18^th centuries lived in grand mansions called havelis.
A map of the mid 19^th century showed at least a hundred such havelis, which were large walled compounds with mansions, courtyards and fountains.
On entering the haveli through a beautiful gateway, an open courtyard, surrounded by public rooms meant for visitors and business, used exclusively by males.
The inner courtyard with its pavilions and rooms was meant for the women of the household. Rooms in the havelis had multiple uses, and very little by way of furniture.
Even in the mid 19^th century Qamr-al-din Khan’s haveli had several structures within it, and included housing for the cart drivers, tent pitchers, torchbearers, as well as for accountants, clerks and household servants.
Many of the Mughal amirs (A nobleman) were unable to maintain these large establishments under conditions of British rule.
Havelis therefore began to be subdivided and sold.
Often the street front of the havelis became shops or warehouses.

Colonial bungalow-

Meant for one nuclear family, it was a large single storeyed structure with a pitched roof, and usually set in one or two acres of open ground.
It had separate living and dining rooms and bedrooms, and a wide veranda running in the front, and sometimes on three sides.
Kitchens, stables and servants’ quarters were in a separate space from the main house.

The Municipality begins to plan

The walled city area was horribly crowded with as many as 90 persons per acre, while New Delhi had only about 3 persons per acre.
In 1888 an extension scheme called the Lahore Gate Improvement Scheme was planned by Robert Clarke for the Walled City residents.
Streets in this redevelopment strictly followed the grid pattern, and were of identical width, size and character.
Land was divided into regular areas for the construction of neighbourhoods.
Clarkegunj, as the development was called, remained incomplete and did not help to decongest the Old City.
Even in 1912, water supply and drainage in these new localities was very poor.
The Delhi Improvement Trust was set up 1936, and it built areas like Daryaganj South for wealthy Indians.
Houses were grouped around parks.
Within the houses, space was divided according to new rules of privacy.
Instead of spaces being shared by many families or groups, now different members of the same family had their own private spaces within the home.

Important Terminologies

Qazi – A judge

Mufti – A jurist of the Muslim community responsible for expounding the law that the qazi would administer

Impeachment – A trial by the House of Lords in England for charges of misconduct brought against a person in the House of Commons

Dharmashastras – Sanskrit texts prescribing social rules and codes of behaviour, composed from c. 500 BCE onwards

Mahal – In British revenue records mahal is a revenue estate which may be a village or a group of villages

Musket – A heavy gun used by infantry soldiers

Matchlock – An early type of gun in which the powder was ignited by a match

Bewar – A term used in Madhya Pradesh for shifting cultivation

Fallow – A field left uncultivated for a while so that the soil recovers fertility

Sal – A tree

Mahua – A flower that is eaten or used to make alcohol

Bhil Tribe- Gujarat

Presidency – For administrative purposes, colonial India was divided into three “Presidencies” (Bombay, Madras and Bengal), which developed from the East India Company’s “factories” (trading posts) at Surat, Madras and Calcutta.

Renaissance – Literally, rebirth of art and learning. It is a term often used to describe a time when there is great creative activity.