The Colonial Context

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THE COLONIAL CONTEXT

(A) A BRIEF OUTLINE OF THE PROCESS OF ESTABLISHMENT AND CONSOLIDATION OF BRITISH POWER BETWEEN 1757-1857 EMPHASIZING THE TRANSFORMED NATURE OF BRITISH IMPERIALISM AFTER 1818.
The growth of the British Empire in India for a period of a century from 1757 to 1857 is an interesting phenomenon of Indian history. It is a good fortune of the British that during this period they did not encounter any national opposition of their rule except in 1857 when a large part of India remained aloof. Instead of facing any united opposition of the Indian powers, the British had only to deal with them piecemeal. The deep-rooted jealously among the Indian powers could not be overcome by the aggressive policy of the Company. In the beginning the British had to face the opposition of the Mysoreans and the Marathas but except for a short-lived unity among them in 1780, they were sharply divided between themselves. Hence the British succeeded in securing the cooperation of the Marathas in subduing the Mysoreans in 1790-92. After four encounters the British were freed from the Mysoreans in 1799. The three Maratha wars strained the resources of the Company. But here again the Maratha Confederacy showed utter lack of unity and facilitated the British to establish their sway over them in 1818. The Pindaris were exterminated and the Rajputs, long held under Maratha subjugation, came within the orbit of British imperialism. The warlike Sikhs held their ground under the leadership of Ranjit Singh but could not resist the British dominance for long. Punjab became a British territory in 1849. The British did not neglect the Himalayan frontier and beyond it, Afghanistan. By 1857 with the exception of northern Burma and Afghanistan, they became masters of the vast subcontinent. In establishing their control over the Indian States, the British invented various expedients like the Subsidiary Alliance, the Doctrine of Lapse and the plea of misgovernment. With rare exceptions the Company Government were served by able Governors-General and seasoned diplomats at the courts of Indian powers. They contributed not a little to the building up of Britains magnificent Indian empire.
ANGLO-MYSORE WARS
In the second half of the eighteenth century the small state of Mysore assumed importance owing partly to the genius of Haidar Ali and partly to its central position on the Deccan plateau. The third battle of Panipat (1761) which crippled Maratha power in the north and weakened its hold in the south also contributed to the rise of Haidar Ali. Beginning his 1
INDIAN HISTORY (1857-1964)
career as a naik in the army, he usurped political power in 1758 and became the unchallenged ruler of the state in 1761.
First Anglo-Mysore War (1767-69)

In the beginning Haider looked upon the British power as hostile to him. There was enmity between Haidar and Muhammad Ali, Nawab of Arcot, the latter being a subordinate ally of the English. In 1766 the Madras Government entered into an alliance with the Nizam and offered him military aid to invade Mysore. Haidar detached the Nizam from the British alliance and made peace with the Marathas. He then suddenly made a dash on Madras in March 1769. The English made peace in the next month providing for mutual restoration of conquest and a defensive alliance.
Second Anglo-Mysore War (1780-84)

As a realist Haidar felt that the defensive alliance of 1769 must be the basis of his foreign policy. The Nizam was his traditional enemy and the Marathas a dangerous neighbour. But he was sadly disappointed. The English gave him no aid during the Maratha invasion of 1769-72. He had come to realise that sooner or later he would have to enter into hostilities with the English. During the first Anglo-Maratha War, Haidar joined the Peshwa, the Nizam and Bhonsle in a common struggle against the English. After varying fortunes in the war Haidar died in December 1782. But his son, Tipu Sultan, continued the war. Since neither side was capable of overpowering the other, peace was signed by them in March 1784. The Treaty of Mangalore restored peace on the basis of mutual restoration of conquests and release of prisoners.
Third Anglo-Mysore War (1789-92)

Mysore under Tipu continued to grow as a formidable power. The peace of 1784 had not removed the grounds for struggle between Tipu and the English. The new GovernorGeneral, Lord Cornwallis, from the moment of his arrival, considered that a war with Tipu was inevitable. War began in December 1789 by Tipus attack on Travancore, a small state which was in alliance with the Company. Cornwallis, by his clever diplomacy succeeded in forming an alliance with the Peshwa and the Nizam in 1790. He assumed chief command and defeated Tipu. The treaty of Seringapatam (March 1792) deprived Tipu of his territories. The British acquired the districts of Baramahal, Dindigul, Salem, a large slice of the Malabar Coast, including the ports of Calicut and Cannanore and the territory of Coorg.
Fourth Anglo-Mysore War (1799)

Instead of being crippled by the British, Tipu showed unexpected signs of recovery. He strengthened the fortifications of Seringapatnam, reorganised the army and tried to establish contact with the French. Wellesley, thereupon called Tipu to sever his connections with the French and enter into a Subsidiary alliance with the British. Tipu was not prepared to accept these stern conditions. The war was brief but decisive. By April 1799 Tipu was besieged in Serigapatam which was taken by assault on May 4. Tipu was himself killed in action and his son surrendered. The Company annexed Kanara, Coimbatore and Seringapatam with other territories in the east. A chief of the old Hindu dynasty was made King of Mysore. The new Mysore State entered into a subsidiary treaty (July 1799) with the British which reduced it to the position of a dependency of the Company.
Causes of the Downfall of the Mysoreans

An observation has become proverbial in Mysore that Haidar was born to create an empire, Tipu to lose one. Tipu has been criticised for his anti-English policy and for his failure to win the Marathas and the Nizam over to his side. But it should not be forgotten that the English were hostile towards him. As Munro wrote on September 18, 1798: Our first care ought to be directed to the total subversion of Tipu. While Haidars strategy had been offensive, Tipus had been defensive. Tipu neglected his cavalry which was a terror to Madras. He fought a campaign of walls and ditches. He placed too much reliance on the defences of the fort of Seringapatam. While, Haidar was never without allies in his wars against the English, Tipu had to confront the English alone. Moreover, Tipus operations in his last war were not characterised by the same dash and brilliance which he had shown in his previous wars. Tipu was handicapped by the treachery of his officers, his poor organisation while the resources of the English were much superior. Unlike Haidar, Tipu had little capacity of taking a broader view of a thing. With his restless spirit of innovation, he was not successful as an administrator. Haidar was an improving monarch and exhibited few innovations. Tipu was an innovating monarch and made no improvements.
ANGLO-MARATHA WARS
The third battle of Panipat (1761) dealt a cruel blow to Maratha supremacy in the north. The situation became worse when the Peshwas uncle, Raghunathrao secretly intrigued to become the Peshwa. Madhavarao who became the Peshwa in 1761 surmounted all difficulties.
First Anglo-Maratha War (1775-82)

In 1772 the promising young Peshwa Madhvarao died and the Pune government was plunged into a series of succession struggle. In 1773 Madhavaraos brother and his successor, Narayanrao was murdered with the connivance of his uncle, Raghunathrao. Though Raghunathrao became the Peshwa, he was not destined to enjoy it owing to the birth of Narayanraos posthumous son, Savai Madhavrao. Bombay supported Raghunathrao and its army was forced to capitulate at Wadgaon in 1779. The war dragged on for three more years. In October 1781 Warren Hastings was able to detach Mahadji Sindhia and through his mediation concluded peace with the Peshwa at Salbai (May 1782). The Treaty of Salbai gave the British twenty years of peace with the Marathas, the strongest Indian power. The treaty also enabled the British to secure the assistance of the Peshwa to put pressure on Mysore.
Second Anglo-Maratha War (1803-05)

During the post-Salbai period the two towering personalitiesNana Phadnis and Mahadji Sindhiadominated the Maratha scene. The death of Mahadji Sindhia in 1794 and the young Peshwa Madhavrao in October 1795 weakened the Marathas. After endless intrigue, Bajirao-II, son of Raghunathrao, secured the Peshwaship in December 1796. The death of Nana Phadnis in 1800 was followed by a struggle between Sindhia and Holkar for the control of Peshwa Bajirao II. In October 1802, Yashwantras Holkar defeated the combined troops of Sindhia and Bajirao near Pune. Bajirao fled to Bassein and concluded on the last day of December 1802 a subsidiary treaty with the Company. He acknowledged British Paramountcy and was installed in Pune by the British troops. His action was a shattering blow to Maratha pride. In 1803
Sindhia and Bhonsle went to war, to be defeated by Arthur Wellesley and Lord Lake. By the treaty of Deogaon (December 17, 1803), Raghuji Bhonsle II gave up the province of Cuttack including Balasore. By the treaty of Surji-Anjangaon (December 30, 1803), Daulatrao Sindhia ceded to the British Ganges-Jumna Doab, the Delhi-Agra region, parts of Bundelkhand, Broach, some districts of Gujarat, fort of Ahmmadnagar. Yashwantrao Holkar, however began hostilities with the English by securing the alliance of the Raja of Bharatpur. By the treaty of Rajghat (January 1806), Holkar got back most of his territories.
Third Anglo Maratha War (1817-18)

The second Anglo-Maratha war had shattered the power of the Maratha Chiefs but they still remained active. They made a desperate attempt to regain their lost independence. The lead was taken by the Peshwa who was smarting under the rigid control of the British. But Elphinstone, British Resident at Pune, compelled the Peshwa to sign the treaty of Poona on June 13, 1817. The Peshwa renounced his claim as the Peshwa. Lord Hastings also compelled Daulatrao Sindhia to conclude the treaty of Gwalior on November 5, 1817. Hardly had Sindhia signed the treaty of Gwalior when the Peshwa Bajirao II attacked the British at Kirki, near Pune. The British forces retaliated and occupied Pune. Within a few days Appa Sahib of Nagpur and Malharao II of Holkar also rose in arms against the British. But they were respectively defeated in November and December 1817. The Peshwa surrendered to John Malcolm on June 2, 1818. The Peshwas dominions were annexed to the British empire and Bajirao was pensioned off. Sindhia had to cede Ajmer to the Company while Holkar renounced his claim on the Rajput states. Freed from Maratha control, the Rajput states hastened to conclude subsidiary treaties with the Company. Thus, in 1818 the British hegemony in India extended from Cape Comorin to the banks of the Sutlej.
ANGLO-SIKH WARS Rise of the Sikhs under Ranjit Singh

The Sikhs came into prominence in the middle of the eighteenth century. During the years of struggle against the Mughals and the Afghans, the Sikhs evolved a peculiar constitution of their own. They formed bands called misls under misaldar. The misls grew larger in number and divided most of the Punjab between them. Born in 1780, as the head of the Sukerchakia misl, Ranjit Singh united the misls and established a Sikh monarchy. Ranjit joined Zaman Shah (grandson of Ahmad Shah Abdali) during the latters invasion of the Punjab in 1789. The invasion failed, but Ranjit seized Lahore in 1799. The grateful Afghan King conferred on him the title of Raja with possession of Lahore. In 1802 Ranjit captured Amritsar. He soon threw off the Afghan yoke and gradually brought under his authority all the Sikh misls west of the Punjab. But Ranjit Singh failed to bring under his control Cis-Sutlej misls excepting Ludhiana. Alarmed at Ranjits aggression, some of the Sikh chiefs solicited British protection. The fear of British arms and the possibility of the Sikh chiefs taking up arms against him in alliance with the British, unnerved Ranjit. He concluded a treaty of perpetual friendship with the English at Amritsar on April 25, 1807. The treaty brought the Cis-Sutlej states under British protection and pushed the latters frontier from the Jumna to the Sutlej.
First Anglo-Sikh War (1845-46)

The death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh in June 1839 was followed by a period of utter confusion in the Sikh Kingdom. The army became the arbiter of politics. Two rulers died violently till Dalip Singh, a minor and the youngest son of Ranjit Singh was raised to the throne with his mother Rani Jhindan, as the Queen Regent (September 1843). But the situation did not improve. Thus towards the end of 1845 Punjab showed the spectacles of a boy King under a licentious queen-regent and an equally licentious and treacherous Prime Minister : an unruly, arrogant and unscrupulous army posing as the all-powerful dictator in both civil and military affairs of the State; and a group of selfish chiefs who looked only after their own interest and cared little for the true welfare of the state. The Lahore Darbar was anxious to be free from the control of the army. It encouraged the army to fight against the English in the hope that its strength would be exhausted. In December 1845 the Sikh army crossed the Sutlej and invaded the Companys territory. But the Sikhs were defeated in repeated encounters. The British army occupied Lahore on February 20, 1846. The Sikhs concluded the treaty of Lahore on March 9 with the British. The treaty ceded Jalandhar Doab, Kashmir and its dependencies to the British. The minor Dalip Singh was recognised as the Maharaja and a British Resident established at Lahore. A supplementary treaty was signed on December 16, 1846. A Regent Council of eight Sardars was to conduct the administration under the control of Sir Henry Lawrence, the British Resident.
Second Anglo-Sikh War (1848-49)

The arrangement did not last long. In April 1848, Diwan Mulraj, Governor of Multan, took up arms against the British. The crisis became acute in September when a large Sikh force joined Mulraj. The local rising had now become a national one. On October 10, 1848, Lord Dalhousie declared war. The two costly battles of Ramnagar and Chillianwala led to the decisive battle of Gujarat (February 1849). On March 29, 1849, Dalhousie annexed the whole of Punjab by proclamation. Dalip Singh was pensioned off. The pacification of the country which followed must be regarded as one of the greatest triumphs of the British administrative system.
Causes of the Downfall of the Sikhs

Ranjit Singhs death was followed by a period of anarchy in the Sikh Kingdom. The army which became the arbiter of political destiny had no regard for national unity. Ranjit Singh built a mighty Kingdom, but did not care to maintain it. Hence the Sikh Kingdom was destroyed within ten years of his death. The Sikh army after 1839 was not actuated by any national ideal. Ranjit created one of the finest armies India has ever seen. But all the able generals of the Sikh army died during the life-time of Ranjit Singh and only crafty designing men, either weaklings or traitors, survived to command his forces. The Sikhs by their own folly threw away the first chance of uniting the Punjab.
Political and Economic Organisations of the Sikhs

The most important feature of the Sikh polity during the misl period was the meeting of the Sarbat Khalsa (assembly) twice a year at Amritsar. Here the Sardars of different misls discussed matters of common interest. Each individual chief considered himself as a member
of the Khalsa. Ranjit Singh always acted in the name of the Khalsa. The whole structure of the government revolved round the Maharaja. The civil and military business of the government was divided into twelve departments. From the financial point of view, Punjab was divided into districts leased out, granted or directly administered. The government share of the land tax was half of the gross produce. Ranjit was interested to promote trade and commerce. After the capture of Multan, he began to encourage the silk manufacture of the city. Towns like Amritsar and Lahore prospered. Manufacture and trade were more thriving and the people were not at all anxious to migrate to British territories.
Brief Notes on other conquests

The British had to deal with Nepal, a country conquered by the Gurkhas in 1768. In 1792 a commercial treaty was concluded with the Gurkhas. During the year 1802-04, Captain Knox served as Resident at Kathmandu. With the occupation of Gorakhpur by the Company in 1801, the territories of the Gurkhas ran along the northern frontier of the British dominion. The Gurkhas made frequent raids across the border. In the Anglo-Nepal War, 1814-16, the Gurkhas after stubborn resistance, suffered defeat. By the treaty of Sagauli (November 28, 1815) ratified by the Gurkhas in March 1816, the Gurkhas ceded to the British the districts of Garhwal and Kumaon and gave up their claims on Sikkim. The annexations of Burma were broadly due to the security motive. In the second half of the eighteenth century an aggressive Burmese King brought Arakan, Pegu, Tennaserim and the whole basin of the Irrawaddy under his control. He annexed Siam (1768), Arakan (1784), Manipur (1813) and Assam (1816). In 1818 the Burmese demanded from Lord Hastings the surrender of Chittagong, Dacca, Murshidabad and Cossimbazar. War became inevitable. A badly mismanaged war ended in 1820 with the Treaty of Yandaboo. The Burmese King ceded the provinces of Arakan and Tenasserim, withdrew from Assam, Cachar and Jaintia and recognised the independence of Manipur. During the next twenty-six years British relations with Burma were not cordial. In 1852 a commercial dispute flared up. Dalhousie organised a model campaign and himself went to Rangoon. The war ended with the annexation of lower Burma or Pegu. By the annexation of lower Burma an entire coast of the Bay of Bengal from Chittagong to Singapore came under British control. Dalhousie considered Upper Burma as the real seat of the Burman race. But its final conquest was delayed till 1886 in the time of Lord Dufferin. In the north-west the British had to encounter the Sikhs, the Afghans and the Sind Amirs. The British realised the political importance of Sind as a counterpoise against the Russian ambition in India. In April 1838 Lord Auckland concluded a treaty with the Amirs of Sind in which the latter agreed to receive a British Resident at Hyderabad. During the Afghan war, Sind was the British base of operations. In February 1839 the Amirs were made to sign a subsidiary treaty with the British. Finally, in spite of previous assurances that its territorial integrity would be respected, Sind was annexed in 1843.
Subsidiary Alliance
During the administration of Warren Hastings the Company had no decided policy with respect to the Indian States except that of using them as the first line of defence for the protection of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. It was Wellesley who evolved a definite policy towards the Indian States. The most striking feature of this policy was the Subsidiary
Alliance. The policy was not entirely novel. Clive concluded the first subsidiary treaty with Shuja-ud-daula in 1765. The successor of Connwallis, Sir John Shore followed a policy of non-intervention in the affairs of the Indian states. With the arrival of Lord Mornington (Lord Wellesley) a dramatic change occurred. In Europe, Napolean Bonaparte posed a threat to England and even menaced India. In India itself the Company had a declared enemy, Tipu Sultan of Mysore and the Marathas. Wellesleys two main instruments of policy were war and diplomacy leading to the subsidiary treaty. Wellesley never had any doubts as to the legality and morality of his proceedings. His main object was to establish British supremacy. The nature of Subsidiary Alliance was simple. The Indian States were to make no wars and to carry on no negotiations with any other State, without the knowledge of the British Government. The ruler of the Indian State was compelled to accept the permanent stationing of a British force within his own territory. The ruler undertook to defray the expenses of the troops or to give up a portion of his territory to British control. This was the most developed kind of subsidiary alliance which could be found in the treaty with Hyderabad of 1800 and the treaty with Oudh of 1801. The Subsidiary Alliance also provided that the Indian ruler would accept a British Resident at his court. The Indian ruler should take no Europeans into his service, except with the consent of the English. In return the British undertook to protect him against all his enemies. The British also promised non-interference in the internal affairs of the allied state. As for the advantages, the system enabled the British to throw forward their military, considerably in advance of their political frontier. It also enabled the British to maintain, without cost to themselves, considerable armies for immediate action. As Arthur Wellesley wrote: By the establishment of our subsidiary forces at Hyderabad, and Poona, with the Gaikwar, Daulat Rao Sindhia and the Rana of Gohud, an efficient army of 22,000 men is stationed within the territories, or on the frontier of foreign states, and is paid by foreign subsidies. ...This force may be directed against any of the principal states of India, without the hazard of disturbing the tranquillity of the Companys possession, and without requiring any considerable increase to the permanent military expenses of the Government of India. Finally, the system enabled the British government to preserve the tranquillity of India by exercising a general control over the restless spirit of ambition and violence which is characteristic of every Asiatic government. There were many disadvantages of the system. First, the subsidy demanded from the Indian rulers was totally out of proportion to their revenue. The Duke of Wellington found that the subsidy of the Nawab of the Carnatic was out of proportion to the revenues which the country could afford. Secondly, the system tended to bring about the internal decay of the Indian state, the ruler of which lost all spirit of energy. Munro, rightly pointed out that the security of the allied state was only purchased by the sacrifice of independence, of national characterand of whatever renders a people respectable. Moreover, the system supported weak rulers and deprived their subjects of the natural remedy of revolution. In reality, the Subsidiary Alliance had a tendency to bring every state under the exclusive possession of British government. A speaker in the House of Commons admitted in March 1806. All the native powers of India were forced to receive British garrisons, and
were kept in greater subjection in their own capitals, than the Kings of Wurtemberg and Bavaria are at this moment by the Emperor of France. Despite the pious wish of the British government not to interfere in the domestic affairs of the state, interference was often in practice inevitable. Munro likens the subsidiary armies to the Praetorian bands of Rome, always ready in the neighbourhood of the capital, to dictate terms to, or to depose, the prince whom it was stationed there to defend. Arthur Wellesley was perhaps right in observing : Our policy and our arms have reduced all the powers of India to the state of mere cyphers. Finally, the Court of Directors condemned the policy. The first Indian ruler who accepted the Subsidiary Alliance was the Nizam of Hyderabad in 1798. The Nawab of Avadh was forced to accept the alliance in 1801 and the Peshwa signed the treaty in December 1802 (Treaty of Bassein).
Doctrine of Lapse
The administration of Lord Dalhousie marked the growth of the British empire at an unprecedented scale. He considered that annexation was desirable when possible. The first part of Dalhousies policy of annexation was the Doctrine of Lapse. This doctrine meant that, in the absence of natural heir, the sovereignty of dependent state or states created by the British were to lapse to the Company. There is a long-standing usage, by which a Hindu, without any male issue, may adopt a son. This was the prevailing custom and recognised by the British rulers. In 1835 the British Government recognised the right of the Sovereign princes to adopt and that the British Government was bound to acknowledge the adoption. Later they modified the principle to the effect that so far as dependent ruling chief was concerned, the adoption was subject to the consent of the suzerain authority. The obvious implication was that no subordinate Indian ruler could adopt a son without the previous consent of the British Government. In 1834 the Court of Directors issued the following directive to the Indian Government: Whenever it is optional with you to give or to withold your consent to adoption, the indulgence should be the exception, not the rule, and should never be granted but as a special mark of favour and approbation. The practical application of this theory was, however, open to dispute. In a large number of cases the Indian ruler and even his eldest widow, was allowed to adopt a son. Daulatrao Sindhia died on March 20, 1827, without having adopted a son, but his widow Baiza Bai adopted Jankojirao on June 18, 1827. The British Government recognised the right of adoption by succession and between the years 1826 and 1848 fifteen instances of adoption were sanctioned by the British. However, there were few instances in which adoption was set aside. In 1835 the ruler of Jhansi died after adopting a son without the sanction of the British Government. But it was set aside by the authorities. In 1832 the ruler of Jalaun in Bundelkhand adopted a son, but in 1840 Ellenborough refused to sanction a second adoption and the State lapsed to the British Government. In the case of Kolaba where the right of investiture was expressly reserved to the British Government, Lord Auckland in 1841 refused to permit an adopted son to succeed. When Dalhousie became Governor-General, he divided the Indian States into three categories : 1. 2. creation of the British Government. tributary and subordinate; and
3.
independent. He emphasised as a general principle that no adoption should be permitted in the first, no adoption without express permission in the case of the second and no interference in the case of the third. Dalhousie claimed that since succession had to be recognised by the Paramount Power, adoptions could only be valid if ratified by the supreme government. But the policy has been refuted by Major Bell by his cogent argument: The prerogative of recognising or refusing to recognise the adopted son of a native prince never belonged to the paramount power in India. The assumption of such prerogative is historically false. Neither the doctrine nor the practice has yet been proved by any authentic record.
When the legal point involved in the Doctrine of Lapse came for decision before a judicial tribunal (Bhaskar Buchajee Vs Naroo Rugonath) it was decided that want of the permission of the ruling authorities is an insufficient ground for setting aside an adoption once made with the proper ceremonies. Dalhousie had no qualm to apply the Doctrine of Lapse vigorously. There was, observes Innes fully adequate precedent for every one of his annexations. But his predecessors had acted on the general principle of avoiding annexation if it could be avoided; Dalhousie acted on the general principle of annexing if he could do so legitimately. Dalhousie by invoking the Doctrine of Lapse annexed Satara in 1848, Jaitpur and Sambalpur in 1849, Baghat, a CisSutlej hill-state in 1850, Udaipur in 1852, Nagpur in 1853 and Jhansi in 1854. The Raja of Satara having no issue adopted a son, before his death in 1848 without the consent of the British Government. Dalhousie considered this adoption as invalid and annexed Satara. The Court of Directors supported the annexation as being in accordance with the general law and custom of India. The Raja of Nagpur died in 1853 without any male heir or adopted son. Dalhousie regarded Nagpur as a creation of the Company and annexed it. The annexation of Satara was a blow to British reputation and Elphinstone was shocked beyond measure. The true motive behind these annexations was undoubtedly imperialistic. Lee-Warner, a strong apologist of Dalhousie, was constrained to admit that with regard to Satara and Nagpur imperial considerations weighed with him....they were placed right across the main lines of communication between Bombay and Madras and Bombay and Calcutta. Jhansi in Bundelkhand was a dependent of the British. Its ruler died in November 1853 without any male issue but made a last-minute adoption. But Dalhousie refused to acknowledge the succession and annexed it. Sambalpur was annexed in 1849 on the death of its ruler without any heir. Dalhousies annexation of Baghat and Udaipur respectively in 1851 and 1852 was reversed by Lord Canning. The Court of Directors did not approve of Dalhousies proposal of annexing Karauli in Rajputana on the ground that it was a protected ally. Thus, Dalhousies policy was to absorb Kingdoms wherever they made a gap in the red line running round his dominions, or broke its internal continuity. Dalhousie also abolished the titles of many titular sovereigns. Thus, the titles of the Nawab of the Carnatic and Raja of Tanjore were extinguished. On the death of the exPeshwa, Bajirao II in 1853, Dalhousie refused to continue the pension to his adopted son, Nana Sahib. On the pretext of misgovernment, Dalhousie annexed Avadh in 1856. The annexation of Avadh by the British was an instance of territorial aggrandisement which, Dalhousie himself admitted, could not be sanctioned by international law. Thus, Dalhousie put the coping stone on the edifice, the foundation stone of which had been laid by Clive and which Warren Hastings, Wellesley and Marquis Hastings had reared up. The treaty map
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of India was complete and he has the satisfaction of knowing that the whole of India from Cape Comorin to Kashmir acknowledge the suzerainty of the Queen.
FROM SUBSIDIARY ALLIANCE TO PARAMOUNTCYEFFECTS ON INDIAN STATES

During the administration of Warren Hastings, the Company had no decided policy with regard to Indian States except that of using them as the first line of defence for the protection of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. It was Wellesley who evolved a definite policy towards the Indian States. By the application of Subsidiary Alliance, Wellesley, in fact, established British paramountcy over some of the Indian States. The fundamental principle of the Governor-Generals policy in establishing the subsidiary alliance is to place the States in such a degree of dependence on the British power as may deprive them of the means of prosecuting any measure hazardous to the security of the British Empire. But these states did not hereby become subject to British paramountcy as they retained their independence in matters of internal administration. Before Wellesleys departure, the Company, though not yet supreme, was still the predominant power in India. Mysore had been conquered, the Nizam had become a subsidiary ally and the Carnatic had been annexed. The Maratha Confederacy had been broken diplomatically at Bassein. The Court of Directors disliked Wellesleys policy of annexation and recalled him in August 1805. The Company, therefore, withdrew from the proposed subordination alliances with the Maratha Chiefs. Cornwallis postponed the negotiations of alliance with the Rajput States and left the Maratha States to themselves. Lord Minto, who followed Barlow, continued the policy of non-intervention. It was only in the case of Ranjit Singh who was rapidly expanding his dominion that the Governor-General deviated from the settled policy and brought the Sutlej states under the Company. Metcalfe described the policy of non-intervention as monstrous. It was Lord Hastings who effectively brought under British supremacy most of the Indian States. He compelled them to surrender their sovereign rights of making war or peace and negotiating treaties with other powers. The states retained their internal sovereignty, but frequent interference was resorted to by the Company. Though an aggressive champion of extending British authority in India, Hastings was not an annexationist. As he himself observed. Our object ought to be to render the British Government paramount in effect, if not declaredly so. We should hold the other states as vassals, in substance, though not in name. The period of alliance practically came to an end with the Marquis of Hastings. The Company had become predominant in India and had displaced the Mughal and the Maratha in the claim of a general supremacy over India. The Governors-General that followed were frankly annexationist in their policy. The period also saw the growth of the controlling authority of the Residents in the matter of internal administration. Though tied to the policy of let alone, Bentinck did not hesitate to depart from it in some cases. In 1831, Mysore was put under British administration on the plea of misrule. The principality of Cachar was annexed in August 1832 on the charge of maladministration. Coorg, near Mysore, was annexed in 1834, at the request of its inhabitants, the latter being ruled by an insane tyrant. In 1834, the Court of Directors formulated the policy of annexation and emphasized it more forcefully in 1841. Lord Auckland, Lord Ellenborough and Lord Dalhousie were ardent advocates of this policy of annexation. During their administration Sindh, Awadh, Satara, Nagpur, Punjab, Jhansi, Tanjore, Jaipur and numerous other states were annexed to the territories of the Company. Sindhia was deprived of a large portion of his territories and
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brought within the Subsidiary Alliance. In executing the policy of annexation, the Company applied the claims of lapse, escheat and confiscation. Morvi was declared escheat in 1839; Kolaba lapsed in 1840; Surat was annexed in 1842. The administration of Dalhousie saw the culmination of the policy of annexation. He did not want to miss any opportunity of bringing territories directly under British rule and permitted no considerations of treaty or law to stand in his way. Dalhousie certainly put the coping stone on the edifice, the foundation stone of which had been laid by Clive and which Warren Hastings, Wellesley and Marquis Hastings had reared up. The treaty map of India was complete and he had the satisfaction of knowing that the whole of India from Cape Comorin to Kashmir acknowledged the suzerainty of the Queen.
(B) EMERGENCE OF A COLONIAL STRUCTURE OF GOVERNMENT (CIVIL SERVICE, ARMY, POLICE AND JUDICIARY) CIVIL SERVICE
It has been observed that India was ruled not so much by the Directors of the East India Company or the British Crown, as by the Governor-General acting through the officials in the Civil Service. Truly did Macaulay observe : Even the character of the Governor-General was less important that the character and spirit of the servants by whom the administration of India was carried on. As early as 1731 the writers who performed commercial as well as administrative duties were selected by the Court of Directors. But the selection was practically confined to certain families and the Directors exercised undue patronage in the matter of selection. It was Cornwallis who laid down the basis of the Companys Civil Service. The Charter Act of 1793 excluded Indians for all high office and confined all posts worth more than 500 a year to the covenanted servants of the Company. The Companys servants had been ill-paid and corrupt. But now Cornwallis provided them with liberal salaries and opened before them avenues of promotion to higher posts with superior grades. Thus the service attained a high standard of duty and with the turn of the century we find a galaxy of admirable civil servants Metcalfe, Elphinstone, Malcolm and Lawrenceknown for their integrity. The Governor-Generalship of Lord Wellesley marked an important landmark in the history for the British Civil Service in India. Wellesley felt the need for providing adequate training to the civil servants in India. The education of the civil servants, according to Wellesley, must be of a mixed character, its foundations must be judiciously laid in England and the superstructure systematically completed in India. With this intention Wellesley founded the Fort William College in Calcutta on 24 November 1800 where the civil servants of the Company were to receive specialised training in liberal arts, law and language. The College was served by such eminent Professors as G.H. Barlow, J.H. Harrington, H.T. Colebrooke, Lt. John Baillie, Francis Gladwin, Rev. Buchanan and Rev. W. Carey of Serampore. Between 1801 and 1805 Wellesleys dream of a University of the East was in large part realised through the phenomenal growth of the Fort William College. It became the centre of linguistic research and compiled dictionaries in various languages. During the early years the classes in the Fort William College were attended by Charles Metcalfe, William Bailey, William Martin, William Brid, John Digby, Thomas Fortesque and many others. Most of them had six or seven years of formal education that enabled them to organise data and to formulate policies for the government.
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Wellesleys policy of encouraging bright students with monetary awards and the promise of responsible posts in the government was continued by Lord Minto (1807-13). Among the best students who graduated during this period from the Fort William College were Henry Prinsep, Holt Mackenzie, James Sutherland and Andrew Stirling. The Persian Department of the Government was staffed with the best students of the Fort William College. Some of them were assigned as residents in various places. Metcalfe served as Delhi Resident from 1811 to 1819 and as Hyderabad Resident from 1820 to 1825. During his eight years at Delhi, there was not one case of capital punishment. Metcalfe abolished slavery in Delhi in 1812. The scheme had to be abandoned after a few years when it was felt that training at Fort William College might Indianize the British youth. Charles Grant wanted to shift the burden of training from the shoulders of the Orientalists to those of Cambridge clergymen who were expected to nurture the boys in England before sending them to India. In 1806 the Company established a college at Haileybury, near London, where young officers nominated for service in the East were given two years training. Haileybury was the first attempt in England to secure a supply of properly qualified men for administrative work in India. No other arrangement was made again until the introduction of competitive civil service examination. During its early years, Haileybury College became the subject of a variety of criticism. In his famous speech on India in 1813, Lord Grenville criticised the Company for giving the future administrators of India an education that cut them off from the main stream of the English national life. Another criticism was that too much emphasis was given to English literature. Charles Grant refuted these criticisms by maintaining that Haileybury produced men who were not only good servants of the Company, but also good citizens and enlightened patriots. While great territories might be conquered by arms, he said in 1819, the due administration of them ... must depend on the principles, the talents and the zeal of the civil servants. The Charter Act of 1833 accepted the principle of competition in appointing the civil servants. But nothing was done to introduce arrangements for holding a competitive examination. For twenty years the Directors retained their right of patronage, but during this time new ideas were suggested. Sir Charles Wood, President of the Board of Control, proposed in 1853 the introduction of an open competitive examination for recruitment to civil services. This proposal was strongly supported by Macaulay and received the sanction of the Parliament. It was provided in the Charter Act of 1853 that admission to Haileybury and to the covenanted civil service should be open to all naturalborn subjects of Her Majesty, whether European, Indian, or men of mixed race, who could establish their claim by success in competitive examination held in England. The examination would be only in liberal subjects and the standard would be that of Honours examinations in British universities. Introduced in 1853 the system of an open competitive examination was reaffirmed in 1858. The maximum age for admission was at first 23. In 1859 it was lowered to 22 and in 1866 to 21 and the probationers had to go through a special course of training at an approved University for two years. It was not until 1864 that first Indian, Satyendranath Tagore entered the Indian Civil Service. In 1869 three IndiansSurendranath Banerjee, Biharilal Gupta and Ramesh Chunder Duttwere successful. Fort William College served as an effective training centre for civil servants. When it was proposed to abolish the College in the 1820s, Henry Shakespeare, officiating Chief Secretary of the Government, defended the existence of the College in the following words on 24 June 1828.
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When I see around me, in every department of the service, so many men whose career of service sheds a lustre on the institution in which they were trained to habits of application, and a knowledge of the languages which are essential to the efficient conduct of the principal officers, under the Government, I confess I contemplate the abolition of the College with feelings of deep regret. The College lingered till January 1854 when it was dissolved. The products of Haileybury carried the excellent spirit of comradeship of India where they claimed identity with the state. A tradition of civil servants grew up wich bequeathed to India some of its devoted men. But the Civil Service tended to become exclusive in character and conservative in outlook. An Act of 1855 prohibited admission of students of Haileybury College and the College was finally closed on 31 January 1858.
ARMY
The Companys armies consisted of both Europeans and Indians. At the close of the Mutiny, the Europeans numbered about 16,000 men. At the outset, the European branch was poor in quality, but gradually it improved in discipline and efficiency. The bulk of the army consisted of the Sepoy regiments. In 1830 they numbered about 187,000 which rose to 200,000 in 1857. The army was officered by Europeans. With the growth of Companys territories, there was felt a necessity of appointing men of resource and ability to the army. Wellesley was the first who utilised the services of the able civilians in the army. The Soldier-Civilian and Soldier-Politician became important elements in the Companys services. They provided a valuable link between the civil and military departments. But it meant a weakening of the civil administration as many of the best officers were taken away from purely administrative duties. The officers of the Companys army, both European and Indian, were recruited from the ranks of the Companys writers (like Clive) and from royal regiments. The motley collection of officers were inferior to the royal officers both in technique and morales. But they improved considerably with the passage of time and produced outstanding leaders, like Sir John Malcolm, Sir Thomas Munro, General Nott, Pollock and Havelock. If they lacked anything of the Kings troops, they yielded nothing in professional skill. The Indian troops formed the bulk of the Companys army. The regular pay, the comparatively good conditions and the usual practice of paying regards to Indian custom, attracted the people to take up military profession. The Companys Indian troops were by far the most efficient army in India. They were loyal and faithful to their European masters. But all hopes of high promotion were denied to them. The highest Indian officer was a Subedar. They were brave and steadfast in battle, but they felt hurt whenever any insult was made to their traditional customs. There was murmur of discontent among the army when the wind of innovation from the west blew over India. The Sepoy Mutiny took place at Vellore in 1806 and at Barrackpore in 1824. These were more serious than the parallel White Mutiny of the Companys Europeans. The armed forces were reinforced by a number of irregular corps raised to maintain the integrity of the Companys expanding territories. These were Skinners Horse, Gurkha battalions, and the Punjab Frontier Force with the famous Corps of Guides.
POLICE
The police system really began when Cornwallis, in 1791, created a Superintendent of
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Police for Calcutta. In the district which was divided into a number of thanas, Cornwallis relieved the landlords of their police duties. Instead a Daroga with a number of ranked men was placed in charge of each thana. This system proved to be an expensive failure. The Daroga with their limited resources could not check crimes and their conduct was often reproachable. In 1808 Lord Minto appointed a Superintendent of Police for a Division who had to work with the help of spies or goyendas. But the goyendas actually committed depredations on the peaceable inhabitants, of the same nature as those practised by the dacoits whom they were employed to suppress. According to the orders of the Court of Directors in 1814, the establishment of darogas and their subordinates was abolished in all other possessions of the Company except in Bengal. During the administration of Lord William Bentinck the Divisional Commissioners or Commissioners of Revenue and Circuit were first appointed and the office of Superintendent of Police was abolished. The Collector-Magistrate became the head of the police in his jurisdiction and the Commissioner for each Division performed the function of the Superintendent of Police. The principal defects of the existing system were that the police force was badly organised. The Collector-Magistrate, who was the head of the Police, could not discharge his duties satisfactorily as he was overburdened with duties. It was in the presidency towns that the duties of the Magistrate and the Police Superintendent were first separated. The inefficiency and corruption of the police became so glaring that people ventilated their grievances through the Press. In one contempoary vernacular paper Chandrika, it has been written Whenever a theft has been committed in the dwelling of a householder he labours in every possible mode to conceal it from the public office; for if it should get wind, that which the thieves have left, the officers will seize. Bentinck himself wrote on 21 December 1832: As for the police so far from being a protector to the people, I cannot better illustrate the public feeling regarding it, than by the following fact, that nothing can exceed the popularity of a recent regulation by which, if a robbery has been committed, the police are prevented from making any enquiry into it, except upon the requisition of the persons robbed; that is to say, the shepherd is a more ravenous beast of prey than the wolf. Bentincks successor, Lord Auckland, improved the pay and standing of the darogas. Sir George Campbell wrote in his Modern India in 1852 that the Bengal Police has attained an unfortunate notoriety as being more active for evils than good. The misdeeds of the Bengal Police may be a good deal exaggerated, but they are doubtless inefficient and apt to be corrupt. Sir Frederick Halliday who became the first Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal suggested in April 1855 to improve the salary of the lower grades of police. But it was not until after 1858 that his suggestions were acted upon. In 1860 the Government of India appointed a Commission to enquire into the police administration. It recommended the establishment of a well-organised civil constabulary, supervised by European officers. The village police was to be retained on its existing footing and be brought into direct relationship with the General Constabulary. At the head of the police organisation in the province there would be an Inspector-General. The Deputy Inspector-General would be placed in each range (the province was divided into ranges) and at the head of each district there would be a Superintendent of Police. These recommendations formed the basis of the Police Act of 1861.
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JUDICIAL ORGANISATION
The old system of justice was very simple as Zamindars decided all petty cases. This was open to abuses and gave enough scope for the rich to oppress the poor. Hastings set himself to reform the judicial system. He established two courts in each district, the Diwani Adalat to decide civil cases and the Faujdari Adalat to try criminal cases. In the Diwani Adalat the Collector was to preside assisted by his native dewan. The Faujdari Adalat was to be presided over by the Qazi or Mufti of the district and two maulavis subject to the supervision of the Collector. In addition to these, two superior Courts were established at Calcutta Sadar Diwani Adalat, as a Court of Appeal in civil cases and Sadar Nizamat Adalat to hear criminal appeals. In 1774 the district courts were placed in charge of Indian officers called Amins. In the same year the Sadar Diwani Adalat was discontinued and the Sadar Nizamat Adalat was transferred to Murshidabad. The Regulating Act brought in a Supreme Court in Calcutta in 1774 which administered English law but whose jurisdiction was undefined. The Act of 1781 restricted English law to the English and defined the Courts jurisdiction. In September 1780 Hastings revived the Sadar Diwani Adalat and Impey, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, accepted to discharge the function of the head of this court. In 1781 Hastings created a number of new district courts which totalled about eighteen. Covenanted servants who were designated as judges decided civil cases. Judicial proceedings from these district courts were submitted to Sadar Diwani Adalat. Impey framed some regulations for the conduct of judicial business in the district judicial courts. The necessity of administering justice according to the law of the land was duly recognised and a Code of Hindu Law was compiled and translated into English and a translation of Muslim Law was also made available. After the recall of Impey in 1782 the Governor-General and Council began to function as the Court of Sadar Diwani Adalat.
JUDICIAL REFORMS OF CORNWALLIS

In the legal sphere Cornwallis made a thorough change. He had found that the administration of criminal justice was left largely in Indian hands. In a minute of 3 December 1789 he expressed his opinion: We ought not, I think, to leave the future control of so important a branch of government to the sole discretion of any native, or indeed, of any single person whatsoever. Muhammad Reza Khan who presided over the chief criminal court (Sadar Nizamat Adalat) was removed from office in 1790. The court was shifted to Calcutta and the Governor-General and members of the Supreme Council presided over it. In addition to a central criminal court in Calcutta, four circuit courts were established at Calcutta, Murshidabad, Dacca and Patna. Two covenanted servants presided over each of them, assisted by Indian advisers, who were to tour twice a year through their divisions. Cornwallis divested Collectors of magisterial power. Diwani Adalats renamed as District or Zillah Courts were established in 23 districts. These courts, presided over by English judges, dealt with both civil and revenue cases. Above them were established, like the criminal courts, four Provincial Courts of Appeal at the same centres Calcutta, Dacca, Patna and Murshidabad. At the top of the hierarchy was the Sadar Diwani Adalat at Calcutta, presided over by the Governor-General and Councillors. The three judges who presided over the four Provincial Courts of Appeal were also required to preside over the criminal circuit courts stationed at the same towns. Thus the same judicial officer united both the civil and criminal power.
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The system was regular and imposing. But the judges were European who were quite often influenced by their expert advisers. The legal process was at first cumbrous as, although the procedures of the new courts were British, the law administered was either Hindu or Muhammadan. Cornwallis deprived the Indians of any real power in the administration of criminal justice over which they had formerly almost absolute control. He also deprived the Zamindars of the responsibility of maintaining peace within their jurisdiction and their duties were entrusted to a number of Darogas in every district, each working under the direct supervision of the Magistrate. Cornwallis framed an elaborate Code of Regulations known as the Cornwallis Code of 1793 for the guidance of the officers of the new judicial system. Cornwallis held a favourable opinion of the working of the new courts of justice which was far from the truth. It might have removed some abuses of the old order but it was yet by no means perfect. Justice did not at once become cheap and immediate effects were seen in the multiplication of suits. By 1812 the pending cases in the Bengal courts alone amounted to 163,000. Bentinck had found that the courts had become resting places for those members of the service who were deemed unfit for higher responsibilities. He abolished the four Provincial Courts of Appeal and transferred their duties to the Commissioners of Revenue. In addition to these, the Commissioners were to supervise the work of the collectors, magistrates and judges. This was too much for a single individual to bear and the duties of the sessions judge were transferred to the District judge. For hearing civil cases a new post of Principal Sadar Amin was created, from whose decisions, in certain cases, an appeal could be made to the Sadar Diwani Adalat. Racial discrimination was vigorously maintained. Until 1836 European British subjects were under the control of the Supreme Courts alone for both civil and criminal matters. But liberal minded Macaulay partially succeeded in breaking this racial superiority by Act XI of 1836 commonly known as Macaulays Black Act. As far as civil matters were concerned, Europeans could now be tried by the Companys Courts. But they continued to enjoy immunity in criminal cases which were tried only in the Supreme Courts. A writer in the Calcutta Review of 1846 observed. Unrestrained in their actions with large sums at their command ... and forgetful of their God, they (British European subjects) had been known to equal the worst zamindars in cruelty and oppression. The Indians protested strongly against this glaring inequity and pleaded for the abolition of the special privileges enjoyed by the British born subjects. A minimum concession was given in September 1861 to satisfy the Indian aspirations. The British born subjects henceforth could not claim any special privileges but they could not be tried by any officer of Indian birth.
THE RULE OF LAW

The Supreme Court created in 1774, administered English law to English persons. Cornwallis, through his regulations, divested the Islamic criminal law of its harsher features and made Indian law more humane. But as British judges replaced Indians and in the absence of a definite code, the rule of law became somewhat retarded. The creation of Indian Law Commission under Lord Macaulay in 1833 was a significant step. In 1860 was enacted the Indian Penal Code and was followed by the Code of Criminal Procedure in the following year. Along with some reorganisation of the law courts and the judges, a proportion of which were to be the members of the Indian Civil Service, these codes are the main foundation of the Indian legal system. The British introduced the modern concept of the rule of law. It not only guaranteed the personal liberty of a person but also made the bureaucracy responsible for any acts done
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contrary to law. Under British administration, the enforcement of law was largely in the hands of the civil servants and the Police.
EQUALITY BEFORE LAW

Legal system under the British was based on the concept of equality before law. Previously, the judicial system was based in such a way that highborn castes got preferential treatment from the Courts. Zamindars and nobles were also not judged as harshly as the commoner. In the beginning, the Europeans and their descendants were subjected to separate courts and even separate laws. They were given protection and even were given light punishment by many of the European judges before whom alone they could be tried. In Companys administration, justice became quite expensive and cases were not decided even during the lifetime of the suitors. Poor people had to suffer during this longdrawn legal battle as the rich could turn the laws in their favour. The protracted litigation and widespread prevalence of corruption in the administrative machinery often led to the denial of justice. In pre-British days the system of justice was comparatively informal, speedy and inexpensive. The new judicial system under the British marked a step forward as it was based on rational and legalistic principles. But it was now expensive and involved long days.
(C) THE CHANGING STRUCTURE OF INDIAN ECONOMY (DRAIN OF WEALTH, DE-INDUSTRIALISATION, LAND REVENUE EXPERIMENTS AND CONDITION OF PEASANTRY, POVERTY AND FAMINES DRAIN OF WEALTH
An Englishman once remarked, We opened the coffer of the Mughals and released the hoarded wealth of ages. But during the whole period of British rule the plunder of Indian wealth went on unchecked. Clives Plassey plunder was rivalled in later years by Francis Sykes Rs. 12 lakhs in two years at Murshidabad and Barwells Rs. 80 lakhs. In 1780 Warren Hastings made an estimate that about Rs. 40 lakhs worth of bullion was sent to England. In 1772 Lord Clive described how the wealth from India was transferred. There were only two ways by which a servant of the Company could wish propriety, remit his fortune to England; by bills on the Company or by diamonds. The process was simple. The private fortune which the Companys servants amassed in India was given to the Company in India to receive it back in England. The Company utilised the amount to purchase Indian goods for export. There was another method to the economic drain. The surplus revenue which the Company obtained from India was utilised for trade purposes. Out of Indian revenues it met the home demands. Curiously enough Indian money were not spent on irrigation and other development works in India. Instead it went as a ceaseless tribute to England to pay dividends to the Companys shareholders. But as the flow of money from India was not sufficient to pay the dividends, there was an increasing debt called the Public Debt of India. In 1792 the Indian Debt along with interest exceeded Rs. 7 million, rising to Rs. 10 million in 1799. In 1807 it had risen to Rs. 27 million due to Wellesleys costly wars rising to Rs. 30 million in 1829.
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Under an equitable arrangement, India should have paid for her own administration and England should have remunerated the Company for building up an empire. But a different policy was pursued by the British in India and the result was a continuous economic drain from India. Writing in 1838 Montgomery Martin observed: For half a century we have gone on draining from two to three and sometimes four million pounds sterling a year from India, which has been remitted to Great Britain to meet the deficiencies of commercial speculations, to pay the interest of debts, to support the home establishment, and to invest on Englands soil the accumulated wealth of those whose lives have been spent in Hindustan. I do not think it possible for human ingenuity to avert entirely the evil effects of a continued drain of three or four million pounds a year from a distant country like India and which is never returned to it in any shape. In referring to the drain of wealth from India, F.J. Shore, one of the best of the Bengal administrators in the thirties of the nineteenth century, wrote: The halcyon days of India are over; she has been drained of a large proportion of the wealth she once possessed; and her energies have been cramped by a sordid system of misrule to which the interests of millions have been sacrificed for the benefit of the few. The end of the Companys rule did not bring in a change of policy. In the words of R.C. Dutt: Within twelve years after the change in administration, the Economic Drain from India had increased fourfold. India suffered this steady and increasing drain and prepared herself for those frequent and widespread famines which marked the last quarter of the nineteenth century. They were the natural economic results of a continuous drain such as no country, no earth could bear. In a work on Our Financial Relations with India (1959), Sir George Wingate suggested equitable adjustment: India should defray all the expenses of civil and military administration incurred in India, while Britain should meet the expenses incurred in England. The English East India Companys trade with Europe amounted on an average to about Rs. 33 lakhs a year. After 1757 the Companys servants struck at the root of the country traders by trading in salt, betelnut and tobacco. The English virtually monopolized the whole trade either by not paying any duty or by paying a nominal one to the Nawab. The grant of Diwani in August 1765 strengthened the position of the Company and the revenues flowed into their treasury. In 1767 the Companys investment amounted to about six million rupees which reached ten million in 1777. The two principal commodities cotton piece goods and raw silks formed ninetenths of the investment. In 1774 the Court of Directors established a 11 member Board of Trade. The Companys servants now became contractors for investment under the Board of Trade. The Companys trade suffered a setback due to Wellesleys ambitious policy of imperialism, the outbreak of Napoleons oriental venture. Its profits, therefore, were absorbed by the costs of administration. The Companys profits came principally from China where the tea trade increased rapidly. While China provided tea for the Company it was willing to take opium from India. The opium sale proceeds exceeded the tea investment of the Company. Opium has been described as the favourite concubine for many years of the Indian government. In 1833 it was declared that trade between India and China was three times the value of that between England and China.
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The opposition to the Companys monopoly of trade came from the British manufacturers and merchants. In the wake of an Industrial Revolution, they wanted to establish trade relations with India and criticised the Company and their administration. They pointed out that under the administration of the Company, India could not be developed as a market for the manufactured British goods, or as a source of raw materials for the British industry. The campaign for the abolition of Companys privileges received inpetus from the sweeping tide of Liberalism then triumphant in England. The free traders won their first victory when the Charter Act of 1813 abolished East India Companys monopoly of trade with India. The export trade of Britain received a considerable fillip after 1813. In 1814 the value of British exports to India amounted to 1.4 millions. In 1828 it had increased threefold amounting to 4.5 millions. By 1830 instead of being the worlds largest exporter of cotton textile, India had been converted into a net importer of cottons from Manchester. Thus the Company which had been making so much profit from its Indian trade, now lost it. In 1833 the Charter Act abolished the Companys monopoly of China trade and the Indian market was thrown open for free investment of British capital. After 1846 British capital began to flow into India in railways, mining and plantations. The importance of India as a source of supply of cotton and other raw materials came to be realised with the outbreak of the American Civil War when supplies from North America ceased. The opening of Suez Canal in 1869 brought Europe and India into closer contact than ever before. Though India was dominantly an agricultural country, her customary industrial activity comprised in village industries and cotton piece goods. The flourishing trade in cotton piece goods continued during most of the eighteenth century. As soon as cotton and silk goods of India became popular in England, the jealous British manufacturers prohibited their use by strict legislative measures. By the two laws passed by Parliament in 1700 and 1720 Indian cotton goods could not be used in England. Hence all goods imported by the Company to England used to be re-exported to various countries in Europe. But in 1740 England had begun to export her own handmade cotton piece goods to Europe. In 1769 the Directors decided to encourage raw silk production and discourage wrought silk production in Bengal. Silk winders were required to work in the Companys factories and were prohibited from working outside under severe penalities. By a series of inventions the English cotton manufacturers improved the quality of their goods and in 1800 England was exporting machinemade coton goods to India. At the same time the protracted French wars seriously affected the re-export trade to Europe of Indian cottons. The commercial policy of the British in the eighteenth and the early nineteenth century was to extend British manufactures at the cost of Indian manufactures. The import of Indian goods to Europe was repressed by prohibitive tariffs while British manufactures were forced into India at almost nominal duties. The British manufacturer employed the arm of political injustice to keep down and ultimately strangle a competitor with whom he could not have contended on equal terms. Thomas Munro deposed that in the Baramahal the Companys servants assembled the principal weavers and forced them to enter into contracts to supply the Company alone. Britain inundated the very mother country of cotton with cottons. An economic revolution took place in which weavers, spinners, dyers, cotton producers suffered woefully. In different rural areas cottage industries were on the point of extinction. The population of Dacca, the Manchester of India, was considerably reduced in 16 years. The Parliamentary enquiries of 1813 brought no relief to Indian manufacturers. The prohibitive duties were neither reduced nor were the Companys investments stopped.
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The principle of free trade deprived the Indian handicraft industry of any hope of protection. Writing five years after the Parliamentary Enquiry of 1832, Montgomery Martin decried the British commercial policy in the most uncharitable way; ... We have done everything possible to impoverish still further the miserable beings (Indians) subject to the cruel selfishness of English commerce ... Under the pretence of Free Trade, England has compelled the Hindus to receive the products of the steam-looms of Lancashire, Yorkshire, Glasgow and Co., at mere nominal duties; while the hand-wrought manufactures of Bengal and Bihar, beautiful in fabric and durable in wear, have had heavy and almost protective duties imposed on their importation to England. The first century of British rule in India witnessed the decay of her flourishing trade and industry. After the battle of Plassey the Companys servants monopolised the inland trade of Bengal and amassed huge fortunes. While the Indian traders suffered due to unfair competition, the Company enjoyed virtual monopoly and oppressed the Indian weavers by forcing them to supply stipulated quantities of cloth at reduced rates. The Court of Directors was aware of all the facts, but they did nothing to check the abuse. The Companys servants continued to satisfy their greed. At times the prices given to the weavers for their cloth amounted to no more and in some instances less than the cost of the materials and their labour is extracted from them without any repayment. Writing in 1767, Verelst refers to the dearth of weavers, a great number of whom took to other professions. Thus the two flourishing industries of Bengal cloth and silk weaving were on the point of extinction owing to the monopolistic control of the Company and the oppression of its servants. The unfavourable competition of British manufacturers, and the outbreak of hostilities between England and other powers, during the American War of Independence and the Napoleonic wars, caused a severe setback to Bengals cotton trade. The application of powerloom to British cotton manufacturing industries in Manchester and Lancashire made the revival of Bengals cotton industry almost impossible. Countless weavers were reduced to a state of helplessness and misery. The situation in 1834 was summed up by Lord William Bentinck as follows: The misery hardly finds a parallel in the history of commerce. The bones of the cotton weavers are bleaching the plains of India. Thus within half a century of the battle of Plassey, Bengal lost its phenomenal prosperity. The economic atmosphere proved unwelcome for the revival of Indian trade and industry. The Company bought their merchandise out of the revenues of India and sold it in Europe for their own profit. While trade and industry remained virtually at the hands of the Company and its servants, the Permanent Settlement gave an impetus to agriculture. Long before 1858, when the East India Companys rule ended, India had ceased to be a great manufacturing country. Agriculture had become the mainstay of the countrys subsistence. But here too the Company appropriated the surplus wealth from the soil. In India the State virtually interferes with the accumulation of wealth from the soil, intercepts the incomes and gains of the tillers and generally adds to its land revenue demand at each recurring settlement, leaving the cultivators permanently poor. In England, in Germany, in the United States, in France and other countries, the State widens the income of the people, extends their markets, opens out new sources of wealth, identifies itself with the nation grows richer with the nation.
LAND REVENUE POLICY

As land revenue was the main source of income, the Company tried to make the maximum out of it. In 1762 they had begun a novel experiment in the districts of Burdwan
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and Midnapur. In order to get the maximum revenue from those territories they sold the estates by public auction. Lands were sold for a short term of three years. Though the system was profitable to the state, it harmed the interests of the peasants. In 1765 the East India Company obtained the Diwani of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa from the Mughal Emperor. Clive described it as the superintendency of all the lands and the collection of all the revenue of the Provinces of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. The land-revenue was collected up to 1772 by the two Naib Diwans. In 1769 Supervisors were appointed to study the method of collecting the revenue. In 1772 under instructions from the Court of Directors, Warren Hastings removed the two Naib-Diwans, Muhammad Reza Khan and Shitab Rai and abolished their offices. The Company stood forth as Diwan and took upon itself the management of the revenue. In October 1772 a Revenue Board consisting of the Governor and Council was constituted at Calcutta. Assessment was made for a period of five years, lands being farmed out to highest bidders by public auction. Many of the Zamindars became farmers of revenue. A Collector and an Indian Diwan were appointed in each district to supervise the revenue administration. The Five-year farming system impoverished the Zamindars, farmers and ryots while the Company suffered serious losses. In November 1773 the Collectors were removed and five Provincial Councils were set up for the collection of revenue. The headquarters of the Provincial Council were at Murshidabad, Burdwan, Dinajpur, Dacca and Patna. A Committee of Revenue was established at Calcutta. The change did not improve matters and therefore, the five years settlement was abolished in 1777. The Company adopted the method of annual settlement preferably with the Zamindars which continued up to 1789. But its evil effects were soon felt. As an experienced revenue servant put it: The fluctuations of the revenue since the English ... have opened the largest field for abuses. In 1781 the Provincial Councils were abolished and European Collectors returned to the districts with lesser power. A Committee of Revenue was set up in Calcutta under the supervision of the Governor-General in Council.
PERMANENT SETTLEMENT
Land revenue was the main prop of the Governmental finance and governments claim to a share of it was universally accepted. According to the Laws of Manu the State demand was usually one-sixth of the gross produce which could rise to one-fourth in times of emergency. Under Akbar it was fixed at one-third while in the Deccan it was as high as one half. Despite the semblance of uniformity, due to the infinite variety of practice no definite figure could be gathered. The British now set themselves to evolve a system which was likely to secure a maximum stable revenue. The experiment of Warren Hastings quinquennial and annual settlements proved to be costly. The authorities in London and India decided that a moderate assessment and a hereditary ownership for the zamindar in return for a strictly punctual payment alone could bring the much needed revenue to the Company. They thought of a ten year settlement at the first instance before it was made permanent. It was left to Cornwallis, ably assisted by Sir John Shore to initiate the system of Permanent Settlement in 1793. Land was held by a zamindar or landlord who paid a fixed revenue and relations between him and his tenants were left to mutual contract. The landlords had also the right to transfer, sell or mortgage the land in their possession. But all their rights ceased with their failure to pay the fixed revenue on the fixed date at the government treasury.
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The great merit of the Permanent Settlement was that it ensured to the state a regular flow of income without the responsibility of collecting it from individual peasants. The peasant also knew before hand the amount of revenue to be paid. The zamindars, now secure in their lands, increased the cultivation. A century after the introduction of the Permanent Settlement, a noted economist R.C. Dutt remarked: If the prosperity and happiness of a nation be the criterion of wisdom and success, Lord Cornwalliss Permanent Settlement of 1793 is the wisest and most successful measure which the British nation has ever adopted in India. But from an economic point of view the assessment was arbitrary. No account was taken of the fertility of the soil and the area of the land. The assessment was at first too high for many of them and their estates were sold for the benefit of the government. Again, some of the zamindars, unable to meet their dues, leased parts of their estates to middlemen. This created a number of absentee landlords in place of resident zamindars, snapping the personal link between them and the cultivators. The rights of the ryots were sacrificed and the zamindar was left to make his settlement with them on such terms as he might choose to require. In the words of llbert, the legislation of 1793 left the ryots right outstanding and undefined and by solving them it tended to obscure them, so efface them and in many cases to destroy them. Efforts to protect the ryots from landlords were made half-heartedly in subsequent years. It was not till 1859 that the Bengal Land Act did something to protect their interests. The Permanent Settlement restored rural order in Bengal and improved agricultural but it embittered the relations between the landlord and the ryot. The British Government regarded the zamindars as the main props in their imperial structure and upheld their authority at the expense of the peoples interests. The Permanent Settlement was extended to Orissa, Benares and to the Northern Sarkars in 1802-5. But by then its manifest evils had already begun to be felt by the administrators. The Utilitarians like James Mill, John Stuart Mill, Thackeray and Munro opposed the extension of the Bengal system to other parts of India. Thackeray opposed it on the grounds: But in India that haughty spirit of independence, deep thought which the possession of great wealth sometimes gives, ought to be suppressed... We do not want generals, statesmen and legislators; we want industrious husbandmen.
RYOTWARI SETTLEMENT
In the Madras presidency a different system of settlement the ryotwari system was adopted. Associated with the name of Sir Thomas Munro (who acted as Governor from 1820 to 1827) the settlement was made directly with the cultivator for a period of years, the standard being thirty. By the ryotwari system a direct relationship was established between the government and the cultivator. The share of the government was usually fixed at half the estimated net value of the crop, with remissions in times of drought and famine. The ryotwari system increased the security of the cultivator, but it left the cultivator at the mercy of the heavy demands of government officers. Whatever may be the merits and demerits of the system, it is not easy to forget the prophetic observation of Munro: The Ryot is the real proprietor, for whatever land does not belong to the Sovereign belongs to him. In Bombay the revenue system associated with the name of Mountsturt Elphinstone followed more or less the ryotwari system. The initial defects were removed by an elaborate survey began in 1835 by Goldsmith and Wingate. The total amount assessed on each district was distributed among the cultivated fields according to their relative values. The settlement was made for thirty years, the government retaining the power to vary the demand at the
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end of each settlement. One great defect of the system was that the cultivator had no voice in the settlement; he was simply called to pay the tax or to quit his land: Under such a system, where the cultivators were not consulted, and could appeal to no Land Courts, the revenue demand was increased at each recurring settlement, and the peasantry remained resourceless and poor.
MAHALWARI OR VILLAGE SETTLEMENT

In the great area of the northwest comprising Awadh, the territories between the Ganges and the Jamuna, Delhi and Punjab, settlements were made for a short period. Overassessment and other difficulties led to vital change in the system. During the period 1833 to 1853 R.M. Bird and James Thomson carried out a detailed survey and fixed the assessment for 30 years. This was known as Mahalwari or villagewise settlement. The settlement was not made with individual landlords but with the village as such. The villagers as a whole, both collectively and individually, became responsible for the payment of revenue for the whole village. The village headman, known as the lambardar, on behalf of the entire village, stipulated to pay the fixed sum to the government. The government settlement officers, in consultation with the lambardar and village bodies, fixed the revenue. The chief demerit of the Mahalwari system was the undue privilege the lambardar and the village bodies enjoyed which they used for their own interest.
EFFECTS OF THE NEW REVENUE SETTLEMENTS Their Impact on the Agrarian Society
The main motive force behind the introduction of the Zamindari, Mahalwari and Ryotwari systems of revenue by the British was to augment the revenue of the Government. The old revenue system which revolved round the Zamindar came to an end. A new class of Zamindars emerged who was bound by strong ties of interest to the ruling power. The Zamindars became the owners of the land and the cultivators became only the rent-paying tenants and subject to eviction. Under the Mahalwari and Ryotwari systems although ryots theoretically became the owners of land, their right on land was doubtful. The tenant remained in perpetual fear of the Zamindar, the lambardar and the tax-collector. Moreover, many of the Zamindars being unable to become punctual tax collectors, leased their lands. The permanent settlement had prohibited the Zamindars from giving any lease more than 12 years. But the restriction was abolished in 1812 and sub-infeudation was carried to the further limit. The fragmentation of land led to the growth of uneconomic holdings. Many of the Zamindars were sympathetic to their tenants and granted takavi loans to the latter. But the pressure of new revenue demand made it impossible for them to continue the practice. Henceforth a new classmoney-lenders or mahajansappeared in the countryside and the poor peasants fell into their clutches. The peasant had to lose his land to the money lender when he failed to return the money with interest. By the middle of the nineteenth century the mahajan became as important as the landlord. The Mahalwari or Ryotwari system improved the position of the ryots by making them the owners of the land, but for all practical purposes their right on lands was uncertain and undefined. The decline of indigenous industries led people to fall back upon agriculture for their livelihood. With primitive tools in the hands of the peasants for cultivation and the govern-
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ments making no efforts to improve agriculture, a rapid degeneration of agriculture became visible. As the British influence widened over large areas, a corresponding improvement of agriculture had not taken place. The most important result of the new revenue settlements was the creation of a new form of private property which benefitted the government. Land was now saleable and mortgageable. The British by making land a commodity which could be freely bought and sold introduced a fundamental change in the existing land systems of the country. The stability and the continuity of the Indian villages were shaken. In fact, the entire structure of rural society began to break up.
POVERTY AND FAMINES

The continuous drain of wealth from India to England hastened the growth of poverty. In the last decade of the nineteenth century the annual average remittance to England was 20 million sterling. The people of India at the end of the 19th century lived below the poverty line. Lord Dufferins Government instituted an enquiry into the condition of the people. But its report was regarded confidential and never published. But William Digby, however, published a large portion of the confidential report in Prosperous British India in 1901. In the Ratnagiri district, with its miserable soul and heavy payments for land, there was hardly a season in which this population did not endure without a murmur the hardship of a Deccan famine. Even in the favoured division of Gujarat the cultivator gets only six or nine months supply from his field, and most of it goes to the moneylender as soon as the harvest is reaped. And some of the numerous deaths assigned to fever are caused by bad or insufficient clothing, food and housing. In Punjab the condition of the agriculturists and labourers was no better. In Gurgaon district the standard of living is perilously low; herbs and berries are consumed for want of better food, and short food is the cause of migration. In the Central Provinces in Sagar, Damoh, Narasinghpur, Hoshangabad, Nimar and Nagpur districts three-quarters of the tenants are reported to be in debt. The Commissioner of Fyzabad wrote in the Pioneer that. It has been calculated that about 60 per cent of the entire native population are sunk in such abject poverty that, unless the small earnings of child-labour are added to the small general stock by which the families kept alive, some members of the family would starve. The Deputy Commissioner of Rai Bareli wrote; Hunger as already marked, is very much a matter of habit. I believe, writes the Commissioner of Allahabad, there is very little between the poorer classes of the people and semi-starvation, but what is the remedy? The following observation of R.C. Dutt portrayed an accurate picture of the economic condition at the beginning o the twentieth century: It is literally a fact, and not a figure of speech, that agricultural labourers and their families in India generally suffer from insufficient food from years end to years end. They are brought up from childhood on less nourishment than is required in the tropics, and grow up to be a nation, weak in physique, stunted in growth, easy victims to disease, plague or famine. India has frequently been subjected to horrors of famine. In 1770 a terrible famine broke out in Bengal. From 1858 to the end of the nineteenth century, more than twenty famines occurred in India. In 1866-67 a severe famine broke out in Orissa, known as the Orissa Famine. This has been regarded as the turning point in the history of Indian famines,
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for it led to the appointment of a Commission of Inquiry headed by Sir George Campbell. The Commission reported that timely measures had not been taken to meet the terrible emergency. It made certain recommendations regarding measures to be adopted for prevention of famine disasters in future. The Commission stressed that the Government must undertake famine relief works. During the next ten years local famines occurred in the United Provinces, the Punjab, Rajputana and northern Bihar. In 1876 another terrible famine took place which covered a wide area of Madras, Mysore, Hyderabad, Bombay and the United Provinces. Lord Lytton rightly decided to formulate general principles of famine relief. In 1878 he appointed a Commission for this purpose under the chairmanship of General Sir Richard Strachey. The Commission recognised the duty of the state to offer relief to the needy in times of famine. The relief was to be administered in the shape of providing employment for the able-bodied and distributing food and money to the destitute. Schemes of relief were to be prepared well in advance so that these could be put into operation at the outbreak of a famine. Government was to rely on private trade for supply and distribution of food. The Commission made suggestions in regard to suspensions and remission of land-revenue and rents. Loans were also to be given for purchase of seedgrain and cattle. The Government provided Rs. 15 million every year in the Budget under the head Famine Relief and Insurance to meet unforeseen expenditure on account of famines. In 1883 the Provisional Famine Code was promulgated. It formed a guide for the various provincial famine codes which were subsequently prepared. In 1896-97 a large area, covering the North-Western Provinces, Awadh, Bihar, the Central Provinces, Madras, Bombay, the Punjab, Berar was affected by a great famine caused by the failure of rains. After this famine another Commission was appointed in 1898, with Sir James Lyall, ex-Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab, as its President. It fully approved of the principles adopted in 1880, suggesting certain changes in the detailed working of the scheme. Hardly had India recovered from the shock of the famine of 1896-97, when she was visited by an even worse drought in 1899-1900. One million people are said to have perished in British territory alone. Another Famine Commission was appointed in 1900 with Sir Anthony MacDonnel, as Chairman. Submitting its report in 1901, the Commission put emphasis on the benefits of a policy of moral strategy for putting heart into the people. The Commission recommended early distribution of advances for purchase of seed and cattle, the sinking of temporary wells, and the appointment of Famine Commissioner. Among other recommendations were stricter regulation of a famine relief, efforts to enlist non-official assistance on a large scale, and preference of village works to the large public works. Agricultural banks should be established; irrigation works should be pushed on and measures taken to foster improved methods of agriculture. Side by side with the growth of the machinery for famine relief developed the policy on famine prevention through railway and irrigation works and improvement of agriculture. In 1919 there were 31,800 agricultural credit societies in British India. Under the Government of India Act, 1919, each Provincial Government was required to contribute every year, out of its resources, a definite sum for expenditure of famine. The Famine Code worked successfully for sixty years. But in 1943 the Bengal Famine upset all calculations. It was only on the arrival of Lord Wavell in October 1943 that the feeling of confidence returned.
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(D) SOCIAL AND CULTURAL POLICY OF BRITISH (SOCIAL REFORM MEASURES, SPREAD OF ENGLISH EDUCATION) SOCIAL REFORM MEASURES
In the first quarter of the nineteenth century the British social policy was one of patience and caution. They first attacked the abuses, which were considered to violate the universal moral law. In 1803 Lord Wellesley suppressed infanticide, i.e., sacrifice of children at the mouth of the Ganges in fulfillment of religious vows. As the birth of female child was considered inauspicious, that inhuman practice of putting them to death either at birth or at infancy, was widely practised. It was widely prevalent among the Jharija Rajputs in Cutch and Gujarat in the beginning of the nineteenth century. Several British officialsDuncan and Walkertried to put an end to this horrid practice. In August 1853 Lord Dalhousie proclaimed that the destruction of a female child was murder and decreed severe punishment in case of conviction. The abolition of Sati or the practice of a wife burning herself on the funeral pyre of her husband was the most salutary measure of the Company Government. The main areas were in Punjab, Rajputana, Madura and the Ganges valley. Since 1789 the English had tried to stop this evil practice. But they were handicapped from doing so for fear of Hindu opinion. Rammohun Roy devoted all his energies to save women from this cruel death. He submitted a memorandum to the Government in August 1818 in which he forcefully challenged the contention that sati was a religious observance. During 1818-19 the Raja wrote a series of tracts in Bengali and English to show that the Hindu Shastras had nowhere enjoined the practice of sati. Manu, the greatest law-giver of the Hindus, he pointed out, has recommended an ascetic life for the widows and not the rite of self-immolation. Rammohuns movement against sati gathered momentum every day and Lord Hastings Government recognised its importance. In the decade 1817-26 the number of widow burning varied from 500 to 850 annually. But Bentinck was determined to abolish this horrid practice and consulted Rammohun Roy, the great Indian champion of anti-sati movement. On December 2, 1829, he declared the custom of sati illegal and punishable by law. The courts were empowered to pass the death sentence on persons held responsible for sati. The opposition led by Raja Radhakanta Deb was of no avail and an appeal to the Privy Council was dismissed in 1833. The abolition of sati brought with it the problems and fate of the young widows. It was Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar, the great Sanskrit scholar and social reformer, who began a campaign for widow remarriage. On July 26, 1856 an Act was passed which legalised widow remarriage and gave legitimacy to the children of the married widows. Through Vidyasagars efforts, twenty five widow remarriage were performed between 1855 and 1860. Jotiba Phule was also a pioneer of the widow remarriage movement in Maharashtra. Another prominent worker in this field was Karsondas Mulji who advocated widow remarriage through Satya Prakash in Gujarati in 1852. A Widow Remarriage Association was started in Bombay in 1866. Slavery was a recognised institution in India since early times. In 1807 the British Parliament abolished slave trade. In 1811 the importation of slave into India from outside was made illegal. Slavery was abolished in Britain in 1833 and the Charter Act of 1833 directed the Company to take suitable action for its abolition. The result was the passing of the Act-V of 1843 which made slavery illegal in India. But it was only in 1860 that slave holding became an offence under the Indian Penal Code.
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The abolition of the practice of human sacrifice in the hill tracts of Orissa, Madras and then the Central provinces was another humane act of the Company Government in India. It was in 1845 during the administration of First Lord Hardinge that this abominable practice was ultimately abolished. Female education in the first half of the nineteenth century made little progress. The pioneer effort for female education was made by the Female Juvenile Society in 1819. In 1845 the British Indian Society urged the need of female education. But it was John Elliot Drinkwater Bethune, a member of the Governor Generals Council and President of the Council of Education, who gave great impetus to the cause of female education. He started the Calcutta Female School on May 7, 1849 with only 11 pupils. In this effort, Bethune secured the hearty cooperation of Ramgopal Ghosh and Dakshinaranjan Mukherjee and enlisted the assistance of Vidyasagar and Madanmohan Tarkalankar. The school was subsequently known as the Bethune Female School.
REFORM MOVEMENTS IN OTHER PARTS OF INDIA

Reform movements soon spread to other parts of India. In Maharashtra, the lead was given by Students Literacy and Scientific Society in 1848. The Society organised lectures on popular science and social questions. It tried to promote the cause of female education. In 1847 was founded Paramahansa Mandali in Maharashtra. It believed in one God and took lead in breaking caste rules. In 1851 Jotiba Phule and his wife started a girls school at Pune. An outstanding champion of new learning and social reform in Maharashtra was Gopal Hari Deshmukh, letter known as Lokahitawadi.
SPREAD OF WESTERN EDUCATION

In the beginning the East India Company did not develop any educational policy in India. Its early efforts were spent in the promotion of oriental learning. In 1781, Warren Hastings founded the Calcutta Madrasa. In 1784, William Jones founded the Asiatic Society and in 1791, Jonathan Duncan, the Companys Resident at Banaras, started a Sanskrit College there. Towards the close of the eighteenth century numerous missionary groups urged the Company to introduce Christianity and English education in India. The lead was taken by Charles Grant. In 1792 Grant published a pamphlet in which he pleaded for the introduction of the English language in India. He observed the true cure of darkness is the introduction of light and by the introduction of light, he meant the introduction of the western education. But his effort were of no avail. What Grant failed to do through government agency, the Christian missionaries in India especially the Baptist missionaries like William Carey, Marshman and Ward accomplished through private efforts. They took keen interest in promoting English education. In 1800 Governor-General Wellesley established in Calcutta, the famous Fort William College for the training of young civilians. The Charter Act of 1813 provided that a lakh of rupees should be set apart for the revival and improvement of literature and for the introduction and promotion of a knowledge of the sciences among the inhabitants of the British territories in India. While the government efforts for the promotion of Western education proceeded in a halting manner, private individuals took the lead. Robert May, a well-known missionary established a school at Chinsurah in 1814. Within a few months the surrounding district had
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as many as 16 schools founded mainly through his initiative. But the most significant landmark in the growth of Western education was the foundation of the Hindu College in 1817 which afterwards became the Presidency College. The Hindu College which was the brain-child of David Hare and Rammohan Roy became the first English seminary in Bengal. The Serampore missionariesCarey, Marshman and Wardestablished the Serampore College in 1818. In the same year a missionary college was founded at Calcutta which became famous as the Bishops College. The School Book Society founded in 1817 enjoyed a government grant and distributed textbooks in English and vernaculars. Within a few months another Society was formed in 1818 called the Calcutta School Society. The Society restricted its activities to Calcutta. In 1819 it decided to pursue a three-fold policy: the first, to establish and supervise a limited number of model schools; secondly to imporve the existing indigenous schools; and thirdly to facilitate the learning of English and higher education generally. It was not until 1813 that the Company had formulated any educational policy. But even the money sanctioned remained unspent till the formation of the General Committee of Public Instruction on July 17, 1823. The general policy of the East India Company was to encourage oriental learning and in 1823, Lord Amherst founded the Sanskrit College at Calcutta. But a wind of change was felt in England where the Court of Directors, under the influence of James Mill, advocated Western education. In 1829 it was declared that the policy of the British Government was to render its own language gradually and eventually the language of public business thoroughout the country. For several years there was a lively controversy between the supporters of oriental and western learning. But when Bentinck came to India in 1828 he had already been convinced that the English language was the key to all improvements. In England he found support in James Mill and in Calcutta, in Rammohan Roy. The urge for English education had become so insistent that Rammohan wrote two-thirds of the native population of Bengal would be exceedingly glad to see their children educated in English learning. In 1830 Alexander Duff established the General Assembly Institution of the Church of Scotland which later on came to be known as the Scottish Church College. Duff decided to introduce English as a medium of Indian illumination. In 1834 Bentinck was strengthened by the arrival of Thomas Babington Macaulay who became the first Law Member of the Governor-Generals Council. Bentinck had formed a very favourable opinion about Macaulays qualification. In a letter to Lord Bishop of Calcutta, Bentinck wrote on 1 May 1834: I cannot tell you how much I am delighted with Macaulays appointment. I think he has more power of doing good to India than any other man, Governor-General or other, who ever came to India... We want a giant like him to conquer prejudices, European and native. Macaulay advocated a root and branch policy to sweep away everything of the past and to write afresh. He maintained that the Act of 1813 did not direct any particular manner in which the funds allotted for education were to be used; that the Government should use them for teaching English which was worth knowing than Sanskrit or Arabic. His main thesis was that all the learning of the East was nothing beside the poetry of Milton, the metaphysics of Locke and the physics of Newton. In trying to prove the superiority of English, Macaulay showed unlimited contempt on the classical language of India. In his famous Minute of February 2, 1835, Macaulay questioned the utility of oriental learning and
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advocated the value of English learning. But his contempt for oriental learning was almost indecent. A single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole literature of India and Arabia. Macaulay was aware of the limitations that English could not be carried to the vast masses of the Indian people. But the purpose was to meet imperial needs, rather than popular needs. We must at present do our best, he said to form a class.... who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect. Bentinck grasped the reality and intensity of the situation and fully agreed to the sentiments expressed in Macaulays Minute. Bentinck took the fateful decision when in the famous Resolution of March 7, 1835, he declared: The great object of the British government ought to be the promotion of European literature and science among the natives of India and that all the funds appropriated for the purpose of education would be best employed on English education alone. Although the study of Arabic and Sanskrit continued under government auspices, Bentincks famous Resolution gave a great impetus to the progress of English education. The Calcutta Medical College and Elphinstone Institution of Bombay were established in 1835. The Hooghly College which had done much to promote English education among the Muhammadans, was founded in 1836. The Commitee of Public Instruction which was in charge of 14 schools and colleges before 1835, became burdened with 48 institutions in 1837. In 1839, the Governor-General, Lord Auckland emphasised that it was his aim to communicate through the means of the English language a complete education in European literature, philosophy and science to the greatest number of students. From 1837 English replaced Persian as the official language in the higher branches of administration. In district administration vernacular languages became the official medium in place of Persian. In 1842 the General Committee of Public Instruction was replaced by a more powerful body, the Council of Education. It continued to function with wide powers till 1854. In 1844 the Governor General, Lord Hardinge further promoted the spread of English education by making the language a passport to public employment. In 1845, the Council of Education under the presidentship of Charles Hay Cameron, drew up a plan for a University in Calcutta. But it was not favoured by the authorities in England. The introduction of English education left its impact on Bombay and Madras as well. In Bombay a Board of Education was instituted in 1840. The Grant Medical College was founded in 1845. The next year, Elphinstone Institute began to impart learning in higher branches of science. In the Madras Presidency, an English school was started in 1837. Within a few years, a number of Christian missionary organisations established several schools. Meanwhile, the first Engineering College in India was founded in Roorkee in 1847. In 1854 appeared the famous Education despatch of Sir Charles Wood, President of the Board of Control. This laid down the principle of graded educational system from the primary school to the University. Described as the Magna Carta of English education in India, the Education Despatch of 1854 laid down the broad principle of English for the select few and vernaculars for the masses. It also introduced the system of grant-in-aid which were considered favourable for running numerous institutions. For a systematic supervision of education system, a Director of Public Instruction was appointed in each of the five provinces Bengal, Bombay, Madras, the North-Western Provinces and the Punjab. The Directors were to be assisted by a number of Inspectors. The whole system was to be crowned by a number
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of Universities on the model of London. In 1857 were founded the three Universities at Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. The Universities were not the teaching bodies, they were all affiliating Universities. The educational policy of the Company had limited success. The Government did little to spread education among the masses. Attention was concentrated in high schools and colleges and primary vernacular education was neglected. The main motive of the Company by introducing Western education was to get a cheap supply of educated Indians to man the subordinate posts in administration and British business concerns. Another motive was to create a body of educated classes who would be reconciled to British rule. Macaulay was forthright in his observation. We must do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indians in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. Moreover, while the Government laid down elaborate principles of education, in substance, education was left mostly to private enterprise. The supervision of institutions was as inadequate as the financial assistance was insufficient. In the interests of popularising Western education, standards were relaxed. It served the immediate purpose of spreading Western knowledge but failed to produce a new intellectual elite.
EXERCISES Essay-Type Questions

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. Review the Anglo-Mysore relations from 1767 to 1799. Give an account of Anglo-Maratha relations from 1775 to 1818. Trace the rise of the Sikh power in India. What were the causes of the rapid decline of the Sikh power after Ranjit Singhs death? Give an estimate of Dalhousie as an imperialist. Review the Companys State Policy from Subsidiary Alliance to Doctrine of Lapse. Indicate the rise and development of the Civil Service In India. Did it satisfy the aspirations of the Indians for employment in higher public Service? Review the judicial reforms of the Company from Warren Hastings to Dalhousie. Discuss the chief features of the police system in Bengal. Examine critically the Companys economic policies in India from 1757 to 1857. What led to the introduction of Permanent Settlement in India? What were its basic features? Discuss its merits and demerits. Write notes on Ryotwari and Mahalwari Settlement. Describe the famine policy of the Government in India. Give an account of the spread of English education in the nineteenth century. Discuss the social reform measures of the Companys Government till 1857.
Short-Answer Type Questions

15. 16. 17. How did Warren Hastings deal with the Marathas? What were the basic features of the Subsidiary Alliance? What were its defects? How did Wellesley deal with the Marathas?
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18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.
Trace the British policy of expansion under Lord Hastings (1813-23). Analyse the circumstances that led to the decline of the Sikh power after Ranjit Singh. What was Doctrine of Lapse? How was it applied by Dalhousie in the case of various States? Why did the Governor-Generalship of Wellesley mark an important landmark in the history of the British Civil Service in India? Examine the rise and growth of the Fort William College. When was it dissolved? Trace the rise of the Haileybury College. Did it serve its purpose? Mention the basic features of the Companys military organisation. Who began the police system? What were the basic defects in the functioning of the police force? What were the reform measures introduced by Warren Hastings in the judicial system? Discuss the judicial reforms of Lord Cornwallis. What is Drain of Wealth? Do you notice any change in Indias economic condition after 1858? What led to the decline of Indian trade and industry in the first century of British rule in India? What were the chief merits of the Permanent Settlement? What was the status of the cultivator in the Ryotwari system? What do you understand by the Anglicist-Orientalist Controversy? Why the Education Dispatch of Wood has been called the Magna Carta of English education in India? Discuss the early efforts made by the British in India to abolish sati till its extinction in 1829.
Objective-Type Questions
35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. Name the treaty which ended the second Anglo-Mysore War. When and between whom was the Treaty of Bassein signed? Who introduced the Subsidiary Alliance? What was Doctrine of Lapse? Who invented it? Name the first Indian ruler who accepted the Subsidiary Alliance? How did Wellesley deal with Tipu? Name the Maratha Powers who were involved in conflict with Wellesley? Name the treaty which the Bhonsle Raja concluded with the British. Name the treaty which Shinde concluded with the British. What was the Tipartite Treaty? When was it signed? Who annexed the Punjab? How far the Doctrine of Lapse was applied before Lord Dalhousie? On what plea Awadh was annexed and by whom? Did Bentinck adopt the policy of annexation? When was the open competition introduced for entry into the Civil Service? When was the Fort William College founded?
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51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70.
Who was the first Indian to enter the Civil service? Who initiated the police system in Bengal? When was the first superintendent of police appointed? Who introduced Sadar Diwani Adalat and Sadar Nizamat Adalat? When was the Supreme Court established? When was the Code of Criminal Procedure enacted? When was the Permanent Settlement introduced? What was Ryotwari Settlement? Who introduced it? What was Mahalwari Settlement? Who was infanticide prohibited? Who abolished Sati and when? Who championed the cause of the Widow Remarriage? Who suppressed Thugi and When? When was the practice of human sacrifice abolished? Who founded the Fort William College and when? When and by whom was the Asiatic Society founded? When was the Calcutta University established? When was the Calcutta Medical College founded? When was the English education introduced officially and by whom? Who was the pioneer of Widow Remarriage Movement in Maharashtra?
Important Dates
71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 1781 May 1872 1784 March 1784 1791 March 1792 1793 1798 1799 1800 1800 December 31, 1802 December 17, 1803 December 30, 1803 1806 1815-1816 1817 : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : Calcutta Madrasa Treaty of Salbai Asiatic Society of Bengal. Treaty of Mangalore Superintendent for Police, Calcutta. Treaty of Seringapatam Permanent Settlement Subsidiary Alliance with the Nizam Death of Tipu Sultan Death of Nana Phadnis Fort William College Treaty of Bassein Treaty of Deogaon (with Bhonsle) Treaty of Surji Anjangaon (with Shinde) Haileybury College The Gurkha War Hindu College
33
87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104.
June 2, 1818 December 4, 1829 March 7, 1835 1835 1836 June 26, 1838 June 1939 1843 1845 1845-46 1847 1848-49 1848 1856 July 26, 1858 1859 1860 1861
: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :
Peshwa Bajirao IIs surrender Abolition of Sati Introduction of English Education Calcutta Medical College Suppression of Thugi Tripartite Treaty between Shah Shuja, English and Ranjit Singh Death of Ranjit Singh Slavery prohibited in India. Human Sacrifice abolished. First Anglo-Sikh War. First Engineering College at Roorkee Second Anglo-Sikh War. Annexation of Satara Annexation of Awadh. Widow Remarriage Act Code of Civil Procedure Indian Penal Code Code of Criminal procedure

The Colonial Context

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The Colonial Context

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1

THE COLONIAL CONTEXT

INDIAN HISTORY (1857-1964)

First Anglo-Mysore War (1767-69)

Second Anglo-Mysore War (1780-84)

Third Anglo-Mysore War (1789-92)

Fourth Anglo-Mysore War (1799)

THE COLONIAL CONTEXT

Causes of the Downfall of the Mysoreans

First Anglo-Maratha War (1775-82)

Second Anglo-Maratha War (1803-05)

INDIAN HISTORY (1857-1964)

Third Anglo Maratha War (1817-18)

ANGLO-SIKH WARS Rise of the Sikhs under Ranjit Singh

THE COLONIAL CONTEXT

First Anglo-Sikh War (1845-46)

Second Anglo-Sikh War (1848-49)

Causes of the Downfall of the Sikhs

Political and Economic Organisations of the Sikhs

INDIAN HISTORY (1857-1964)

Brief Notes on other conquests

THE COLONIAL CONTEXT

INDIAN HISTORY (1857-1964)

THE COLONIAL CONTEXT

INDIAN HISTORY (1857-1964)

FROM SUBSIDIARY ALLIANCE TO PARAMOUNTCYEFFECTS ON INDIAN STATES

THE COLONIAL CONTEXT

INDIAN HISTORY (1857-1964)

THE COLONIAL CONTEXT

INDIAN HISTORY (1857-1964)

THE COLONIAL CONTEXT

JUDICIAL REFORMS OF CORNWALLIS

INDIAN HISTORY (1857-1964)

THE RULE OF LAW

THE COLONIAL CONTEXT

EQUALITY BEFORE LAW

INDIAN HISTORY (1857-1964)

THE COLONIAL CONTEXT

INDIAN HISTORY (1857-1964)

LAND REVENUE POLICY

THE COLONIAL CONTEXT

INDIAN HISTORY (1857-1964)

THE COLONIAL CONTEXT

MAHALWARI OR VILLAGE SETTLEMENT

INDIAN HISTORY (1857-1964)

POVERTY AND FAMINES

THE COLONIAL CONTEXT

INDIAN HISTORY (1857-1964)

THE COLONIAL CONTEXT

REFORM MOVEMENTS IN OTHER PARTS OF INDIA

SPREAD OF WESTERN EDUCATION

INDIAN HISTORY (1857-1964)

THE COLONIAL CONTEXT

INDIAN HISTORY (1857-1964)

EXERCISES Essay-Type Questions

Short-Answer Type Questions

THE COLONIAL CONTEXT

INDIAN HISTORY (1857-1964)

THE COLONIAL CONTEXT

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