03-25-2005, 07:19 AM
Source: "The people of India"
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->THE BRITISH CONQUER INDIA
EVEN BEFORE Aurangzeb's death, signs of the upheaval to come were not lacking. In 1669 the peasantry in Mathura, not far from the Moghul capital, rose in rebellion and continued fighting for over thirty years. They were followed by the Satnamis, a Hindu sect composed of poor artisans and peasants, which included many Untouchables. The people participating in these rebellions were called by a Moghul noble of this period "a gang of bloody miserable rebels, goldsmiths, carpenters, sweepers, tanners, and other ignoble beings." But the Moghul power was still too strong for these rebellions to succeed.
In the southwest, the rebellious people found a leader in a nineteen year old boy named Sivaji, who belonged to the Maratha tribe of Hindus. Sivaji grew up to be one of the greatest guerilla leaders of all time. From 1646 onward, he carried on guerilla warfare against Aurangzeb, constantly enlarging his territory in the west and in the south.
Traditionally, invaders had entered India by the land route in the northwest. Hence, although ship building had been a major industry in India for a long time, and Indian merchants had sailed to other parts of Asia, no attempt had been made to build up a strong naval power either for offensive or defensive purposes. The Moghul navy was weak in comparison to that of the Europeans. Sivaji was astute enough to recognize the power of the British navy. He made friends with the British traders, in order to utilize them as allies, until he had built up his own navy.
In 1674, Sivaji crowned himself king of a large territory in the southwest, establishing the Marathas as a power to be reckoned with. He died in 1680, and the legend of his invinci
bility had grown so great that the British trading company wrote: "Sevagie hath died so often that some begin to thincke him immortell. 'Tis certaine little beliefe can be given to any report of his death till experience shews it per the waning of his hitherto prosperous affaires."
At the time of Sivaji's death, the Marathas were looked upon as the rising power in India. Though grounded mainly upon the discontent of the Hindus, it had some aspects of catholicity in it. The Maratha armies under Sivaji gave employment to Hindus, Moslems and even Untouchables, and the Maratha navy was often officered by Moslems.
Sivaji's son, Sambhaji, followed in his father's footsteps for a time, but later sank into the habit of drunkenness and was betrayed to Aurangzeb, who put him to death in 1689. Internal dissension broke out among the Maratha chieftains, which was not healed until after the death of Aurangzeb.
1
Aurangzeb died in 1707, and the Moghul empire literally fell to pieces like a house of cards.
The Marathas, who had recovered by this time, began to extend their power over wider areas. In other parts of India, however, all parties kept up a pretense of allegiance to Aurangzeb's successor, Farakhsiyar. When some ambitious officer made himself governor of a province, he notified the Emperor, declaring his allegiance to him. When one governor or rajah fought another, it was on the pretext of the opponent having violated some rule established by the emperor. The British also tried to gain certain rights from the emperor, which would give them a legal pretext for joining the scramble for power.
In 1717, the British East India Company procured from Farakhsiyar a farman, or permit, which confirmed their privilege of trading duty-free and gave them the right to rent more land in Bengal and to buy land at Surat.
Bengal, however, had become practically independent, and the nawab saw no reason why he should acknowledge the emperor's farman to the British. But the farman eventually gave the Company the excuse to become the nawab-makers of Bengal. "It legalised the whole of the English position in India," wrote C. R. Wilson. "In Bengal it placed the local government technically in the wrong . . . and it consequently furnished the English with a standing quarrel which they might take up at any time."
The pretense of legality, of right and wrong, was kept up in other spheres as well. Whenever a rajah or a nawab died, there arose different claimants to the succession. The British and the French supported different claimants, each contending that they were merely assisting justice by helping the rightful heir. Their support was given in return for pecuniary and territorial gains. Thus, "two enlightened European nations," writes Colonel Mark Wilks, "wasted their ingenuity in volumes of political controversy; rendering homage to virtue and justice, in respectively claiming the reputation of supporting the rightful cause; but adding to the numerous examples of failure in attempting to reconcile the discordant elements of politics and morals; without daring to avow the plain and barbarous truth, that the whole was a trial of strength among bands of foreign usurpers, in which the English and French had as much right to be principals as any one of the pageants whom they supported."
2
In Bengal, which was most advanced in trade and industry, big Indian bankers like the Seths began to conspire with the English for the overthrow of the nawab, Siraj-ud-Daula. They wanted to put the nawab's minister, Mir Jafar, in power, in order to secure special privileges for themselves. The English, in preparation, fortified their stations in Bengal.
In June, 1757, after protracted warfare, Siraj-ud-Daula was defeated at the battle of Plassey, and Mir Jafar was proclaimed nawab. It was not much of a battle. The British lost
65 men, and the nawab's casualties amounted to less than 500. The decisive factor was that Mir Jafar, as minister, kept the bulk of the nawab's forces neutral.
There was great jubilation at the house of the bankers, the Seths. The English company was made landlord of 880 square miles of territory south of Calcutta, with rents estimated at £150,000. Robert Clive, who led the English forces, received £234,000, and his colleagues, Watts, Walsh and Scrafton, received £80,000, £50,000 and £20,000 respectively. According to Clive's own estimate, the Company and private persons netted three millions sterling. "To engineer a revolution," write Thompson and Garratt, "had been revealed as the most paying game in the world. A gold-lust unequalled since the hysteria that took hold of the Spaniards of Cortes' and Pizzaro's age filled the English mind. Bengal in particular was not to know peace again until it had been bled white." British rule in India is generally dated from the Battle of Plassey. For, although they did not technically control Bengal, they were in effect its real rulers.
All pretense was thrown overboard from then on. If no contesting claimants were asking for English help, the Company put up one of its own, at a price that increased with each new candidate. When the new nawab or rajah could not keep up his obligations to the full, a newer claimant was found. And if the newer claimant did meet his obligations in full, added demands were made on him, and if he failed to meet them, a still newer claimant was found, or his territory was completely annexed. For a while, however, the British East India Company went on paying lip service to the shadow of the emperor.
The Company's demands on Mir Jafar's treasury multiplied until it was completely empty. They then unceremoniously pushed him aside. In his place they put his son-in-law, Mir Qasim. The new nawab turned out to be unexpectedly hard to handle.
Mir Qasim found Bengal in utter disorder. Ile retrenched expenditure, reorganized the government, and suppressed
abuses. He discovered that, although the emperor's farman to the Company gave it the right to trade duty-free at seaports, they were also engaging in internal trade without paying the customary tariff. The farman granted the Company only the privilege of bringing in European goods or taking out Indian commodities free of duty. But not only the Company, but its employees too, carried on an inland trade free of customs duties which the Indian traders had to pay. Thus the English had secured a monopoly of internal as well as external trade, ruining the Indian trader completely, and wrecking the economy of the country.
Mir Qasim protested to the English, alternating politeness with sarcasm. But the protests produced no results. In desperation be declared what was within his rights--that all trade could be carried on duty-free by everyone. Since this affected the Company's monopoly, he foresaw the outcome. He prepared for war.
And war did follow. Mir Qasim was eventually defeated and his father-in-law reinstated. This cost Mir Jafar £1,080,000. Before he could meet this staggering demand in full, he died.
Clive thereupon persuaded the emperor, who was but a figurehead by now, to grant the Company the Dewani, i.e., the right to collect revenue and discharge civil administration, in the three provinces of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. The Company promised to pay him £260,000 annually in return.
The Company did not yet feel secure enough to take direct possession of these three provinces, for the French were also gaining power in similar manner. In an attempt to avoid an open conflict with the French, which was bound to have repercussions in European wars, Clive developed his famous Dual System. His directions to the Company on January 16, 1767 stated:
"The flrst point in Politics which I offer to your Consideration is the Form of Government. We are sensible that since the Acquisition of the Dewanni, the Power formerly belonging to the Soubah
of these Provinces is Totally, in Fact, vested in the East India Company. Nothing remains to him but the Name and Shadow of Authority. This Name, however, this Shadow, it is indispensably necessary we should seem to venerate; every Mark of Distinction and Respect must be shown him, and he himself encouraged to shew his Resentment upon the least want of Respect from other Nations. Under the Sanction of a Soubah every encroachment that may be attempted by Foreign Powers can effectually be crushed without any apparent Interposition of our own Authority; and all real Grievances complained of by them, can, through the same channel, be examined into and redressed. Be it therefore always remembered that there is a Soubah, that we have allotted him a Stipend, which must be regularly paid, in support of his Dignity, and that though the Revenues belong to the Company, the territorial Jurisdiction must still rest in the Chiefs of the Country acting under him and this Presidency in Conjunction."
If the camouflage of the Soubah--the Emperor's representative--were discarded, "Foreign nations would immediately take Umbrage," said Clive. "An element of sham runs through all administrations everywhere," write Thompson and Garratt, "but the Indian Government has often almost seemed to have preferred that fiction should occupy the public attention, while fact (a very different fact) got the actual ruling done." This policy was not to change even in 1943, when the Japanese were entrenched in Burma.
Clive picked a boy of eighteen, who made a malleable nawab. The French, of course, saw through the scheme, and pursued the same policy as the British.
3
The whole checkered history of other sections of India up to 1858 followed the pattern set by Bengal. Being strong naval powers, with possibilities of bringing reinforcements by sea, the British and French crept into power through the coastal regions. They remained confined to the east and south
coasts, however, for the Marathas, under their Admiral Kanhoji, had built up a powerful navy of their own, and repeatedly defeated the Europeans on the west coast.
In 1761, the French were finally defeated and eliminated as competitors by the Peace of Paris. Their defeat was largely due to the fact that the French commercial class had less political power at home than the British. The British commercial class had gained a political foothold at home long before this period; and the flow of wealth from India gave them even greater control over their home government. It was possible for the British East India Company to get more help from home than the French could muster. French trading voyages were organized on the basis of each voyage paying for itself; there was no merchant class as such behind them at home as there was in England behind the British company. Under Louis XV, the French traders in India were strictly subordinated to state politics; the British merchants could--and did --influence Parliament, which gave them a decided edge over their rivals in India.
4
While the British were painting the east and south coast red, the Marathas were expanding their supremacy through northern, central and western India. As the British penetrated further into the interior, they were bound to clash with the Marathas. They did, in 1775.
The Maratha power was not based upon a centralized state. It was a federation of several independent kingdoms, loosely bound by nominal allegiance to Sivaji's descendants. Whenever the Marathas conquered a principality, they remained satisfied with merely forcing the local prince's or governor's allegiance, and exacting the chauth, or fourth part of the revenue. Potential grounds for internal conflicts never ceased to exist among the various kingdoms of the Maratha federation. As the war dragged on for sixty-eight years, the British took full advantage of these potentialities and never had to
face the combined force of the Maratha federation at any one time. The Marathas won many battles, but lost campaigns, simply because there never was a totally unified Maratha military campaign.
Maratha resistance ended in 1843. By 1856, the East India Company had given up All pretense of nominal allegiance to the emperor, and had discarded the flimsy front of puppet nawabs. It was the supreme power in the whole of India, from Kashmir in the north to Cape Comorin in the south, although there were a few isolated spots left nominally in the hands of Indian princes. It had fully realized its potentialities of 1757 --that of becoming "the most formidable commercial republic . . . known in the world since the demolition of Carthage."
But the British still had one more shock in store for them-the great revolt of 1857, mistakenly called the Sepoy Mutiny. This was to bring in its wake many basic changes in the relationship between India and Britain.
5
The revolt of 1857 started with many handicaps, and was foredoomed to failure.
It was not a coherent, concerted effort on the part of all Indians to overthrow a usurping foreign power. It was not a revolution against an existing government. It did not have a national character, for national consciousness, in the political sense, had not yet developed in India; arising from different causes in different parts of the country, from the beginning it had a mixed composition. Even in Europe, the concept of nationhood, a national state, was of recent origin; only in the seventeenth century was it felt strongly enough to give European countries a national will and popular support behind their political, economic and military enterprises.
There was no uniform economy in India. The people of the north, under puppet princes, were still living in a feudal state. Mercantilism had developed in Bengal, but the south was still partly feudal. The rising commercial class had either been
thwarted or diverted into landlordism. Under the circumstances, it was historically impossible to gain united Indian support for the revolt of 1857.
The revolt arose primarily out of the discontent of several Indian princes whose territories had been swallowed up by the British in their relentless pursuit of conquest. These dispossessed nobles were for the first time convinced that their interests could be restored only by ousting the foreigners completely from the soil of India; only to this degree did the revolt have a national character.
But what they wished to restore was the previous feudal form, which had already become archaic. The growing middle class, which desired to develop Indian commerce and industry, would not support them, since the nobles had no such program to offer. Nor could they gain the wholehearted support of the peasantry, since they had no plan to mitigate the acute suffering of the peasants.
The peasants had by no means been taking their oppression in the "traditionally fatalistic manner of the East." Beginning with the Jat peasant uprising in Aurangzeb's reign, there have been periodic peasant revolts down to the present day, although in the twentieth century the character of their protest has changed considerably. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the peasantry of Bengal, Benares, Central India and other parts of the country rebelled. But still bound by the tradition of the village system, these rebellions remained confined to isolated localities, where they were brutally suppressed.
Even in 1857, many peasants joined the revolt, but again locally. They had either suffered directly at the hands of the British, or felt some loyalty to a prince who had been, in his own way, decent to them. An example of the latter case was the support given by the people of Jhansi to their widowed princess, the twenty-year-old Lakshmi Bai, who, dressed in man's attire, fought and died at the head of her troops.
The same weakness which made the Maratha bid for power so vulnerable was inherent in this revolt. Because it was led by
feudal princes, it alienated many other similarly disaffected nobles who were jealous of these leaders. Some of these nobles remained passively watchful spectators; others actively supported the British, sensing in them a bulwark of their existence --a trust to be amply justified later.
Also like the Marathas, the rebels could not agree upon one leader. They carried on their campaigns sometimes together, but often separately, and separately they were hanged.
6
The revolt started in May, 1857, and by July 1858 it was crushed. It was a bitter struggle, but only during the first four months was the outcome in doubt. It was shot through with incredible brutality and savagery on both sides. The Indian soldiers were guilty of murdering some English men and women, and the English burned down villages on their way, lynching and shooting every Indian in their path, regardless of sex or age.
On July 8, 1858, the revolt came to an end. It was the last flaming outburst of the dying order of feudalism in India. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->THE BRITISH CONQUER INDIA
EVEN BEFORE Aurangzeb's death, signs of the upheaval to come were not lacking. In 1669 the peasantry in Mathura, not far from the Moghul capital, rose in rebellion and continued fighting for over thirty years. They were followed by the Satnamis, a Hindu sect composed of poor artisans and peasants, which included many Untouchables. The people participating in these rebellions were called by a Moghul noble of this period "a gang of bloody miserable rebels, goldsmiths, carpenters, sweepers, tanners, and other ignoble beings." But the Moghul power was still too strong for these rebellions to succeed.
In the southwest, the rebellious people found a leader in a nineteen year old boy named Sivaji, who belonged to the Maratha tribe of Hindus. Sivaji grew up to be one of the greatest guerilla leaders of all time. From 1646 onward, he carried on guerilla warfare against Aurangzeb, constantly enlarging his territory in the west and in the south.
Traditionally, invaders had entered India by the land route in the northwest. Hence, although ship building had been a major industry in India for a long time, and Indian merchants had sailed to other parts of Asia, no attempt had been made to build up a strong naval power either for offensive or defensive purposes. The Moghul navy was weak in comparison to that of the Europeans. Sivaji was astute enough to recognize the power of the British navy. He made friends with the British traders, in order to utilize them as allies, until he had built up his own navy.
In 1674, Sivaji crowned himself king of a large territory in the southwest, establishing the Marathas as a power to be reckoned with. He died in 1680, and the legend of his invinci
bility had grown so great that the British trading company wrote: "Sevagie hath died so often that some begin to thincke him immortell. 'Tis certaine little beliefe can be given to any report of his death till experience shews it per the waning of his hitherto prosperous affaires."
At the time of Sivaji's death, the Marathas were looked upon as the rising power in India. Though grounded mainly upon the discontent of the Hindus, it had some aspects of catholicity in it. The Maratha armies under Sivaji gave employment to Hindus, Moslems and even Untouchables, and the Maratha navy was often officered by Moslems.
Sivaji's son, Sambhaji, followed in his father's footsteps for a time, but later sank into the habit of drunkenness and was betrayed to Aurangzeb, who put him to death in 1689. Internal dissension broke out among the Maratha chieftains, which was not healed until after the death of Aurangzeb.
1
Aurangzeb died in 1707, and the Moghul empire literally fell to pieces like a house of cards.
The Marathas, who had recovered by this time, began to extend their power over wider areas. In other parts of India, however, all parties kept up a pretense of allegiance to Aurangzeb's successor, Farakhsiyar. When some ambitious officer made himself governor of a province, he notified the Emperor, declaring his allegiance to him. When one governor or rajah fought another, it was on the pretext of the opponent having violated some rule established by the emperor. The British also tried to gain certain rights from the emperor, which would give them a legal pretext for joining the scramble for power.
In 1717, the British East India Company procured from Farakhsiyar a farman, or permit, which confirmed their privilege of trading duty-free and gave them the right to rent more land in Bengal and to buy land at Surat.
Bengal, however, had become practically independent, and the nawab saw no reason why he should acknowledge the emperor's farman to the British. But the farman eventually gave the Company the excuse to become the nawab-makers of Bengal. "It legalised the whole of the English position in India," wrote C. R. Wilson. "In Bengal it placed the local government technically in the wrong . . . and it consequently furnished the English with a standing quarrel which they might take up at any time."
The pretense of legality, of right and wrong, was kept up in other spheres as well. Whenever a rajah or a nawab died, there arose different claimants to the succession. The British and the French supported different claimants, each contending that they were merely assisting justice by helping the rightful heir. Their support was given in return for pecuniary and territorial gains. Thus, "two enlightened European nations," writes Colonel Mark Wilks, "wasted their ingenuity in volumes of political controversy; rendering homage to virtue and justice, in respectively claiming the reputation of supporting the rightful cause; but adding to the numerous examples of failure in attempting to reconcile the discordant elements of politics and morals; without daring to avow the plain and barbarous truth, that the whole was a trial of strength among bands of foreign usurpers, in which the English and French had as much right to be principals as any one of the pageants whom they supported."
2
In Bengal, which was most advanced in trade and industry, big Indian bankers like the Seths began to conspire with the English for the overthrow of the nawab, Siraj-ud-Daula. They wanted to put the nawab's minister, Mir Jafar, in power, in order to secure special privileges for themselves. The English, in preparation, fortified their stations in Bengal.
In June, 1757, after protracted warfare, Siraj-ud-Daula was defeated at the battle of Plassey, and Mir Jafar was proclaimed nawab. It was not much of a battle. The British lost
65 men, and the nawab's casualties amounted to less than 500. The decisive factor was that Mir Jafar, as minister, kept the bulk of the nawab's forces neutral.
There was great jubilation at the house of the bankers, the Seths. The English company was made landlord of 880 square miles of territory south of Calcutta, with rents estimated at £150,000. Robert Clive, who led the English forces, received £234,000, and his colleagues, Watts, Walsh and Scrafton, received £80,000, £50,000 and £20,000 respectively. According to Clive's own estimate, the Company and private persons netted three millions sterling. "To engineer a revolution," write Thompson and Garratt, "had been revealed as the most paying game in the world. A gold-lust unequalled since the hysteria that took hold of the Spaniards of Cortes' and Pizzaro's age filled the English mind. Bengal in particular was not to know peace again until it had been bled white." British rule in India is generally dated from the Battle of Plassey. For, although they did not technically control Bengal, they were in effect its real rulers.
All pretense was thrown overboard from then on. If no contesting claimants were asking for English help, the Company put up one of its own, at a price that increased with each new candidate. When the new nawab or rajah could not keep up his obligations to the full, a newer claimant was found. And if the newer claimant did meet his obligations in full, added demands were made on him, and if he failed to meet them, a still newer claimant was found, or his territory was completely annexed. For a while, however, the British East India Company went on paying lip service to the shadow of the emperor.
The Company's demands on Mir Jafar's treasury multiplied until it was completely empty. They then unceremoniously pushed him aside. In his place they put his son-in-law, Mir Qasim. The new nawab turned out to be unexpectedly hard to handle.
Mir Qasim found Bengal in utter disorder. Ile retrenched expenditure, reorganized the government, and suppressed
abuses. He discovered that, although the emperor's farman to the Company gave it the right to trade duty-free at seaports, they were also engaging in internal trade without paying the customary tariff. The farman granted the Company only the privilege of bringing in European goods or taking out Indian commodities free of duty. But not only the Company, but its employees too, carried on an inland trade free of customs duties which the Indian traders had to pay. Thus the English had secured a monopoly of internal as well as external trade, ruining the Indian trader completely, and wrecking the economy of the country.
Mir Qasim protested to the English, alternating politeness with sarcasm. But the protests produced no results. In desperation be declared what was within his rights--that all trade could be carried on duty-free by everyone. Since this affected the Company's monopoly, he foresaw the outcome. He prepared for war.
And war did follow. Mir Qasim was eventually defeated and his father-in-law reinstated. This cost Mir Jafar £1,080,000. Before he could meet this staggering demand in full, he died.
Clive thereupon persuaded the emperor, who was but a figurehead by now, to grant the Company the Dewani, i.e., the right to collect revenue and discharge civil administration, in the three provinces of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. The Company promised to pay him £260,000 annually in return.
The Company did not yet feel secure enough to take direct possession of these three provinces, for the French were also gaining power in similar manner. In an attempt to avoid an open conflict with the French, which was bound to have repercussions in European wars, Clive developed his famous Dual System. His directions to the Company on January 16, 1767 stated:
"The flrst point in Politics which I offer to your Consideration is the Form of Government. We are sensible that since the Acquisition of the Dewanni, the Power formerly belonging to the Soubah
of these Provinces is Totally, in Fact, vested in the East India Company. Nothing remains to him but the Name and Shadow of Authority. This Name, however, this Shadow, it is indispensably necessary we should seem to venerate; every Mark of Distinction and Respect must be shown him, and he himself encouraged to shew his Resentment upon the least want of Respect from other Nations. Under the Sanction of a Soubah every encroachment that may be attempted by Foreign Powers can effectually be crushed without any apparent Interposition of our own Authority; and all real Grievances complained of by them, can, through the same channel, be examined into and redressed. Be it therefore always remembered that there is a Soubah, that we have allotted him a Stipend, which must be regularly paid, in support of his Dignity, and that though the Revenues belong to the Company, the territorial Jurisdiction must still rest in the Chiefs of the Country acting under him and this Presidency in Conjunction."
If the camouflage of the Soubah--the Emperor's representative--were discarded, "Foreign nations would immediately take Umbrage," said Clive. "An element of sham runs through all administrations everywhere," write Thompson and Garratt, "but the Indian Government has often almost seemed to have preferred that fiction should occupy the public attention, while fact (a very different fact) got the actual ruling done." This policy was not to change even in 1943, when the Japanese were entrenched in Burma.
Clive picked a boy of eighteen, who made a malleable nawab. The French, of course, saw through the scheme, and pursued the same policy as the British.
3
The whole checkered history of other sections of India up to 1858 followed the pattern set by Bengal. Being strong naval powers, with possibilities of bringing reinforcements by sea, the British and French crept into power through the coastal regions. They remained confined to the east and south
coasts, however, for the Marathas, under their Admiral Kanhoji, had built up a powerful navy of their own, and repeatedly defeated the Europeans on the west coast.
In 1761, the French were finally defeated and eliminated as competitors by the Peace of Paris. Their defeat was largely due to the fact that the French commercial class had less political power at home than the British. The British commercial class had gained a political foothold at home long before this period; and the flow of wealth from India gave them even greater control over their home government. It was possible for the British East India Company to get more help from home than the French could muster. French trading voyages were organized on the basis of each voyage paying for itself; there was no merchant class as such behind them at home as there was in England behind the British company. Under Louis XV, the French traders in India were strictly subordinated to state politics; the British merchants could--and did --influence Parliament, which gave them a decided edge over their rivals in India.
4
While the British were painting the east and south coast red, the Marathas were expanding their supremacy through northern, central and western India. As the British penetrated further into the interior, they were bound to clash with the Marathas. They did, in 1775.
The Maratha power was not based upon a centralized state. It was a federation of several independent kingdoms, loosely bound by nominal allegiance to Sivaji's descendants. Whenever the Marathas conquered a principality, they remained satisfied with merely forcing the local prince's or governor's allegiance, and exacting the chauth, or fourth part of the revenue. Potential grounds for internal conflicts never ceased to exist among the various kingdoms of the Maratha federation. As the war dragged on for sixty-eight years, the British took full advantage of these potentialities and never had to
face the combined force of the Maratha federation at any one time. The Marathas won many battles, but lost campaigns, simply because there never was a totally unified Maratha military campaign.
Maratha resistance ended in 1843. By 1856, the East India Company had given up All pretense of nominal allegiance to the emperor, and had discarded the flimsy front of puppet nawabs. It was the supreme power in the whole of India, from Kashmir in the north to Cape Comorin in the south, although there were a few isolated spots left nominally in the hands of Indian princes. It had fully realized its potentialities of 1757 --that of becoming "the most formidable commercial republic . . . known in the world since the demolition of Carthage."
But the British still had one more shock in store for them-the great revolt of 1857, mistakenly called the Sepoy Mutiny. This was to bring in its wake many basic changes in the relationship between India and Britain.
5
The revolt of 1857 started with many handicaps, and was foredoomed to failure.
It was not a coherent, concerted effort on the part of all Indians to overthrow a usurping foreign power. It was not a revolution against an existing government. It did not have a national character, for national consciousness, in the political sense, had not yet developed in India; arising from different causes in different parts of the country, from the beginning it had a mixed composition. Even in Europe, the concept of nationhood, a national state, was of recent origin; only in the seventeenth century was it felt strongly enough to give European countries a national will and popular support behind their political, economic and military enterprises.
There was no uniform economy in India. The people of the north, under puppet princes, were still living in a feudal state. Mercantilism had developed in Bengal, but the south was still partly feudal. The rising commercial class had either been
thwarted or diverted into landlordism. Under the circumstances, it was historically impossible to gain united Indian support for the revolt of 1857.
The revolt arose primarily out of the discontent of several Indian princes whose territories had been swallowed up by the British in their relentless pursuit of conquest. These dispossessed nobles were for the first time convinced that their interests could be restored only by ousting the foreigners completely from the soil of India; only to this degree did the revolt have a national character.
But what they wished to restore was the previous feudal form, which had already become archaic. The growing middle class, which desired to develop Indian commerce and industry, would not support them, since the nobles had no such program to offer. Nor could they gain the wholehearted support of the peasantry, since they had no plan to mitigate the acute suffering of the peasants.
The peasants had by no means been taking their oppression in the "traditionally fatalistic manner of the East." Beginning with the Jat peasant uprising in Aurangzeb's reign, there have been periodic peasant revolts down to the present day, although in the twentieth century the character of their protest has changed considerably. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the peasantry of Bengal, Benares, Central India and other parts of the country rebelled. But still bound by the tradition of the village system, these rebellions remained confined to isolated localities, where they were brutally suppressed.
Even in 1857, many peasants joined the revolt, but again locally. They had either suffered directly at the hands of the British, or felt some loyalty to a prince who had been, in his own way, decent to them. An example of the latter case was the support given by the people of Jhansi to their widowed princess, the twenty-year-old Lakshmi Bai, who, dressed in man's attire, fought and died at the head of her troops.
The same weakness which made the Maratha bid for power so vulnerable was inherent in this revolt. Because it was led by
feudal princes, it alienated many other similarly disaffected nobles who were jealous of these leaders. Some of these nobles remained passively watchful spectators; others actively supported the British, sensing in them a bulwark of their existence --a trust to be amply justified later.
Also like the Marathas, the rebels could not agree upon one leader. They carried on their campaigns sometimes together, but often separately, and separately they were hanged.
6
The revolt started in May, 1857, and by July 1858 it was crushed. It was a bitter struggle, but only during the first four months was the outcome in doubt. It was shot through with incredible brutality and savagery on both sides. The Indian soldiers were guilty of murdering some English men and women, and the English burned down villages on their way, lynching and shooting every Indian in their path, regardless of sex or age.
On July 8, 1858, the revolt came to an end. It was the last flaming outburst of the dying order of feudalism in India. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->