Day .31- JAWAHARLAL NEHRU - The Discovery of India (Continued)

Development of a Common Culture

Akbar had built so well that the edifice he had erected lasted for another 100 years in spite of inadequate successors. After almost every Mughal reign there were wars between the princes for the throne, thus weakening the central power. But the court continued to be brilliant and the fame of the Grand Mughal spread all over Asia and Europe. Beautiful buildings combining the old Indian ideals in architecture with a new simplicity and a nobility of line grew up in Agra and Delhi. This Indo-Mughal art was in marked contrast with the decadent, over-elaborate and heavily ornamented temples and other buildings of the north and south. Inspired architects and builders put up with loving hands the Taj Mahal at Agra The last of the so-called 'Grand Mughals,' Aurungzeb, tried to put back the clock, and in this attempt stopped it and broke it up. The Mughal rulers were strong so long as they put themselves in line with the genius of the nation and tried to work for a common nationality and a synthesis of the various elements in the country. When Aurungzeb began to oppose this movement and suppress it and to function more as a Moslem than an Indian ruler, the Mughal Empire began to break up. The work of Akbar, and to some extent his successors, was undone and the various forces that had been kept in check by Akbar's policy broke loose and challenged that empire. New movements arose, narrow in outlook but representing a resurgent nationalism, and though they were not strong enough to build permanently, and circumstances were against them, they were capable of destroying the Empire of the Mughals. The impact of the invaders from the north-west and of Islam on India had been considerable. It had pointed out and shown up the abuses that had crept into Hindu society—the petrifaction of caste, untouchability, exclusiveness carried to fantastic lengths. The idea of the brotherhood of Islam and of the theoretical equality of its adherents made a powerful appeal, especially to those in the Hindu fold who were denied any semblance of equal treatment. From this ideological impact grew up various movements aiming at a religious synthesis. Many conversions also took place but the great majority of these were from the lower castes, especially in Bengal. Some individuals belonging to the higher castes also adopted the new faith, either because of a real change of belief, or, more often, for political and economic reasons. There were obvious advantages in accepting the religion of the ruling power.In spite of these widespread conversions, Hinduism, in all its varieties, continued as the dominant faith of the land, solid, exclusive, self-sufficient, and sure of itself. The upper castes had no doubt about their own superiority in the realm of ideas and thought and considered Islam as a rather crude approach to the problems of philosophy and metaphysics. Even the monotheism of Islam they found in their own religion, together with monism which was the basis of much of their philosophy. Each person could take his choice of these or of more popular and simpler forms of worship. He could be a Vaishnavite and believe in a personal God and pour out his faith to him. Or more philosophically inclined, he could wander in the tenuous realms of metaphysics and high philosophy. Though all their social structure was based on the group, in matters of religion they were highly individualistic, not believing in proselytization themselves and caring little if some people were converted to another faith. What was objected to was in interference with their own social structure and ways of living. If another group wanted to function in its own way, it was at liberty to do so. It is worth noting that, as a rule, conversions to Islam were group conversions, so powerful was the influence of the group. Among the upper castes individuals might change their religion, but lower down the scale a particular caste in a locality, or almost an entire village would be converted. Thus their group life as well as their functions continued as before with only minor variations as regards worship, etc. Because of this we find to-day particular occupations and crafts almost entirely monopolized by Moslems. Thus the class of weavers is predominantly, and in large areas wholly Moslem. So also used to be shoe-merchants and butchers. Tailors are almost always Moslems. Various kinds of artisans and craftsmen are Moslems. Owing to the breaking up of the group system, many individuals have taken to other occupations and this has somewhat obliterated the line dividing the various occupational groups.

The destruction of crafts and village industries, originally deliberately undertaken under early British rule and later resulting from the development of a new colonial economy, led to vast numbers of these artisans and craftsmen, more especially the weavers, being deprived of their occupations and livelihood. Those who survived this catastrophe drifted to the land and became landless labourers or shared a tiny patch of land with their relations. Conversions to Islam in those days, whether individual or group, probably aroused no particular opposition, except when force or some kind of compulsion was used. Friends and relatives or neighbors might disapprove, but the Hindu community as such apparently attached little importance to this. In contrast with this indifferent attitude, conversions to-day attract widespread attention and are resented, whether they are to Islam or Christianity. This is largely due to political factors and especially to the introduction of separate religious electorates. Each convert is supposed to be a gain to the communal group leading ultimately to greater representation and more political power. Attempts are even made to manipulate the census to this end. Apart from political reasons, there has also been a growth in Hinduism of a tendency to proselytize and convert non-Hindus to Hinduism. This is one of the direct effects of Islam on Hinduism, though in practice it brings it into conflict with Islam in India. Orthodox Hindus still do not approve of it. In Kashmir a long-continued process of conversion to Islam had resulted in 95 per cent of the population becoming Moslems, though they retained many of their old Hindu customs. In the middle nineteenth century the Hindu ruler of the state found that very large numbers of these people were anxious or willing to return en bloc to Hinduism. He sent a deputation to the pundits of Benares inquiring if this could be done. The pundits refused to countenance any such change of faith and there the matter ended. The Moslems who came to India from outside brought no new technique or political and economic structure. In spite of a religious belief in the brotherhood of Islam, they were class bound and feudal in outlook. In technique and in the methods of production and industrial organization, they were inferior to what prevailed then in India. Thus their influence on the economic life of India and the social structure was very little.

This life continued as of old and all the people, Hindu or Moslem or others, fitted into it. The position of women deteriorated. Even the ancient laws had been unfair to them in regard to inheritance and their position in the household—though even so they were fairer than nineteenth-century English law. Those laws of inheritance derived from the Hindu joint family system and sought to protect joint property from transfer to another family. A woman by marriage changed her family. In an economic sense she was looked upon as a dependant of her father or husband or son, but she could and did hold property in her own right. In many ways she was honored and respected and had a fair measure of freedom, taking part in social and cultural activities. Indian history is full of the names of famous women, including thinkers and philosophers, rulers and warriors. This freedom grew progressively less. Islam had a fairer law of inheritance but this did not affect Hindu women. What did affect many of them to their great disadvantage, as it affected Moslem women to a much greater degree, was the intensification of the custom of seclusion of women. This spread among the upper classes all over the north and in Bengal, but the south and west of India escaped this degrading custom. Even in the north, only the upper classes indulged in it and the masses were happily free from it. Women now had less chances of education and their activities were largely confined to the household [And yet many instances of notable women, scholars as well as rulers, occur even during this period and later. In the eighteenth century Lakshmi Devi wrote a great legal commentary on the Mitakshara, a famous law book of the medieval period]. Lacking most other ways of distinguishing themselves, living a confined and restricted life, they were told that their supreme virtue lay in chastity and the supreme sin in a loss of it. Such was the man-made doctrine, but man did not apply it to himself. Tulsidas in his deservedly famous poems, the Hindi Ramayana, written during Jehangir's time, painted a picture of woman which is grossly unfair and prejudiced. Partly because the great majority of Moslems in India were converts from Hinduism, partly because of long contact, Hindus and Moslems in India developed numerous common traits, habits, ways of living and artistic tastes, especially in northern India—in music, painting, architecture, food, clothes, and common traditions. They lived together peacefully as one people, joined each other's festivals and celebrations, spoke the same language, lived in more or less the same way, and faced identical economic problems. The nobility and the landed gentry and their numerous hangers-on took their cue from the court. (These people were not landlords or owners of the land. They did not take rent but were allowed to collect and retain the state revenue for a particular area. These grants were usually for life.) They developed a highly intricate and sophisticated common culture. They wore the same kind of clothes, ate the same type of food, had common artistic pursuits, military pastimes, hunting, chivalry, and games. Polo was a favorite game and elephant fights were popular.

All this intercourse and common living took place in spite of the caste system which prevented fusion. There were no intermarriages except in rare instances and even then it was not fusion but usually the transfer of a Hindu woman to the Moslem fold. Nor was there inter-dining but this was not so strict. The seclusion of women prevented the development of social life. This applied even more to Moslems inter se for purdah among them was stricter. Though Hindu and Moslem men met each other frequently, such opportunities were lacking to the women of both groups. These women of the nobility and upper classes were thus far more cut off from each other and developed much more marked separate ideological groups, each largely ignorant of the other. Among the common people in the villages, and that means the vast majority of the population, life had a much more corporate and joint basis. Within the limited circle of the village there was an intimate relationship between the Hindus and Moslems. Caste did not come in the way and the Hindus looked upon the Moslems as belonging to another caste. Most of the Moslems were converts who were still full of their old traditions. They were well acquainted with the Hindu background, mythology, and epic stories. They did the same kind of work, lived similar lives, wore the same kind of clothes, spoke the same language. They joined each other's festivals, and some semi religious festivals were common to both. They had common folk-songs. Mostly these people were peasants and artisans and craftsmen. The third large group, in between the nobility and the peasantry and artisans, was the merchant and trader class. This was predominantly Hindu and though it had no political power, the economic structure was largely under its control. This class had fewer intimate contacts with the Moslems than any other class, above it or below. The Moslems who had come from outside India were feudal in outlook and did not take kindly to trade. The Islamic prohibition against the taking of interest also came in the way of trade. They considered themselves the ruling class, the nobility and functioned as state officials, holders of grants of land or as officers in the army. There were also many scholars attached to the court or in charge of theological and other academies. During the Mughal period large numbers of Hindus wrote books in Persian which was the official court language. Some of these books have become classics of their kind. At the same time Moslem scholars translated Sanskrit books into Persian and wrote in Hindi. Two of the best-known Hindi poets are Malik Mohammad Jaisi who wrote the 'Padmavat' and Abdul Rahim Khankhana, one of the premier nobles of Akbar's court and son of his guardian. Khankhana was a scholar in Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit, and his Hindi poetry is of a high quality. For sometime he was the commander-in-chief of the imperial army, and yet he has written in praise and admiration of Rana Pratap of Mewar, who was continually fighting Akbar and never submitted to him. Khankhana admires and commends the patriotism and high sense of honor and chivalry of his enemy on the battlefield. It was this chivalrous and friendly approach on which Akbar based his policy and which many of his counselors and ministers learned from him. He was particularly attached to the Rajputs, for he admired in them qualities which he himself possessed — reckless courage, a sense of honor and chivalry, and an adherence to the pledged word. He won over the Rajputs, but.the Rajputs for all their admirable qualities, represented a medieval type of society which was already becoming out of date as new forces were arising. Akbar was not conscious of these new forces, for he himself was a prisoner of his own social inheritance. Akbar's success is astonishing, for he created a sense of oneness among the diverse elements of north and central India.

There was the barrier of a ruling class, mainly of foreign origin, and there were the barriers of religion and caste, a proselytizing religion opposed to the static but highly resistant system. These barriers did not disappear, but in spite of them that feeling of oneness grew. It was not merely an attachment to his person; it was an attachment to the structure he had built. His son and grandson, Jehangir and Shah Jehan, accepted that structure and functioned within its framework They were men of no outstanding ability, but their reigns were successful because they continued on the lines so firmly laid down by Akbar. The next comer, Aurungzeb, much abler but of a different mould, swerved and left that beaten track, undoing Akbar's work. Yet not entirely, for it is extraordinary how, in spite of him and his feeble and pitiful successors, the feeling of reverence for that structure continued. That feeling was largely confined to the north and centre; it did not extend to the south or west. And it was from western India, therefore, that the challenge to it came.

Aurangzeb puts the Clock Back.

Growth of Hindu Nationalism. 

Shivaji

Shah Jehan was a contemporary of Louis XIV of France, le Grand Monarque, and the Thirty Years War was then ravaging central Europe. As Versailles took shape, the Taj Mahal and the Pearl Mosque grew up in Agra, and the Jame Masjid of Delhi and the Diwan-i-Am and the Diwan-i-Khas in the imperial palace. These lovely buildings with a fairy-like beauty represent the height of Mughal splendor. The Delhi court, with its Peacock Throne, was more magnificent and luxurious than Versailles, but, like Versailles, it rested on a poverty-stricken and exploited people. There was a terrible famine in Gujarat and the Dekhan. Meanwhile the naval power of England was rising and spreading. The only Europeans that Akbar knew were the Portuguese. During his son Jehangir's time the British navy defeated the Portuguese in Indian seas and Sir Thomas Roe, an ambassador of James I of England, presented himself at Jehangir's court in 1615. He succeeded in getting permission to start factories. The Surat factory was started, and Madras was founded in 1639. For over 100 years no one in India attached any importance to the British. The fact that the British now controlled the sea routes and had practically driven away the Portuguese had no significance for the Mughal rulers or their advisers. When the Mughal Empire was visibly weakening during Aurungzeb's reign, the British made an organized attempt to increase their possessions in India by war. This was in 1685. Aurungzeb, weak as he was growing and beset by enemies, succeeded in defeating the British. Even before this the French had stablished footholds in India. The overflowing energies of Europe were spreading out in India and the east just when India's political and economic condition was rapidly declining. In France, Louis XIV was still continuing his long reign, laying the seeds of future revolution. In England, the rising middle classes had cut off the head of their king, Cromwell's brief-lived republic had flourished, Charles II had come and gone, and James II had run away. Parliament, representing to a large extent a new mercantile class, had curbed the king and established its supremacy. It was during this period that Aurungzeb succeeded to the throne of the Mughals after a civil war, having imprisoned his own father, Shah Jehan. Only an Akbar might have understood the situation and controlled the new forces that were rising. Perhaps even he could have only postponed the dissolution of his empire unless his curiosity and thirst for knowledge led him to understand the significance of the new techniques that were arising, and of the shift in economic conditions that was taking place. Aurungzeb, far from understanding the present, failed even to appreciate the immediate past; he was a throw-back and, for all his ability and earnestness, he tried to undo what his predecessors had done. A bigot and an austere puritan, he was no lover of art or literature. He infuriated the great majority of his subjects by imposing the old hated jeziya poll-tax on the Hindus and destroying many of their temples. He offended the proud Rajputs who had been the props and pillars of the Mughal Empire. In the north he roused the Sikhs, who, from being a peaceful sect representing some kind of synthesis of Hindu and Islamic ideas, were converted by repression and persecution into a military brotherhood. Near the west coast of India, he angered the warlil-e Marathas, descendants of the ancient Rashtrakutas, just when a brilliant captain had risen amongst them.

All over the widespread domains of the Mughal Empire there was a ferment and a growth of revivalist sentiment, which was a mixture of religion and nationalism. That nationalism was certainly not of the modern secular type, nor did it, as a rule, embrace the whole of India in its scope. It was coloured by feudalism, by local sentiment and sectarian feeling. The Rajputs, more feudal than the rest, thought of their clan loyalties; the Sikhs, a comparatively small group in the Punjab, were absorbed in their own self-defense and could hardly look beyond the Punjab. Yet the religion itself had a strong national background and all its traditions were connected with India. 'The Indians,' writes Professor  Macdonell, 'are the only division of the Indo-European family which has created a great national religion—Brahmanism—and a great world religion—Buddhism; while all the rest far from displaying originality in this sphere have long since adopted a foreign faith.' That combination of religion and nationalism gained strength and cohesiveness from both elements, and yet its ultimate weakness and insufficiency were also derived from that mixture. For it could only be an exclusive and partial nationalism, not including the many elements in India that lay outside that religious sphere. Hindu nationalism was a natural growth from the soil of India, but inevitably it comes in the way of the larger nationalism which rises above differences of religion or creed. It is true that during this period of disruption, when a great empire was breaking up and many adventurers, Indian and foreign, were trying to carve out principalities for themselves, nationalism, in its present sense, was hardly in evidence at all. Each individual adventurer sought to augment his own power; each group fended for itself. Such history as we have only tells us of these adventurers, attaching more importance to them than to more significant happenings below the surface of events. Yet there are glimpses to show that it was not all adventurism, though many adventurers held the field. The Marathas, especially, had a wider conception and as they grew in power this conception also grew. 

Warren Hastings wrote in 1784: 'The Marathas possess, alone of all the people of Hindostan and Deccan, a principle of national attachment, which is strongly impressed on the minds of all individuals of the nation, and would probably unite their chiefs, as in one common cause, if any great danger were to threaten the general state.' Probably this national sentiment of their was largely confined to the Marathi-speaking area. Nevertheless the Marathas were catholic in their political and military system as well as their habits, and there was a certain internal democracy among them.

All this gave strength to them. Shivaji, though he fought Aurungzeb, freely employed Moslems.

An equally important factor in the break-up of the Mughal Empire was the cracking up of the economic structure. There were repeated peasant risings, some of them on a big scale. From 1669 onwards the Jat peasantry, not far fram the capital itself, rose again and again against the Delhi Government. Yet another revolt of poor people was that of the Satnamis who were described  by a Mughal noble as 'a gang of bloody miserable rebels, goldsmiths, carpenters, sweepers, tanners, and other ignoble beings.' Thus far revolts had been confined to princes and nobles and others of high degree. Quite another class was now experimenting with them. While the empire was rent by strife and revolt, the new Maratha power was growing and consolidating itself in western India. Shivaji, born in 1627, was the ideal guerilla leader of hardened mountaineers and his cavalry went far and wide, sacking the city of Surat, where the English had their factory, and enforcing the chowth tax payment over distant parts of the Mughal dominions.

Shivaji was the symbol of a resurgent Hindu nationalism, drawing inspiration from the old classics, courageous, and possessing high qualities of leadership. He built up the Marathas as a strong unified fighting group, gave them a nationalist background, and made them a formidable power which broke up the Mughal Empire. He died in 1680, but the Maratha power continued to grow till it dominated India.

The Marathas and the British Struggle for Supremacy. Triumph of the British

The 100 years that followed the death of Aurungzeb in 1707 saw a complicated and many-sided struggle for mastery over India. The Mughal Empire rapidly fell to pieces and the imperial viceroys and governors began to function as semi-independent rulers, though so great was the prestige of the descendant of the Mughals in Delhi that a formal allegiance was paid to him even when he was powerless and a prisoner of others. These satrapies had no real power or importance, except in so far as they helped or hindered the main protagonists for power. The Nizam of Hydrabad, by virtue of the strategic position of his state in the south, appeared to have a certain importance in the beginning. But it soon transpired that this importance was entirely fictitious and the state was 'straw stuffed and held upright' by external forces. It showed a peculiar capacity for duplicity and for profiting by the misfortunes of others while avoiding all risk and dangers. Sir John Shore described it as 'incorrigibly depraved, devoid of energy.. .consequently liable to sink into vassalage.' The Marathas looked upon the Nizam as one of their subordinate chieftains paying tribute to them. An attempt by him to avoid this and to show independence met with swift retribution and the Marathas put to flight his feeble and none-too-brave army. He took refuge under the protecting wings of the growing power of the British East India Company and survived as a state because of this vassalage. Indeed the Hyderabad state enlarged its area considerably, without any remarkable effort on its part, by the British victory over Tipu Sultan of Mysore. Warren Hastings, writing in 1784, refers to the Nizam of Hyderabad : 'His dominions are of small extent and scanty revenue; his military strength is represented to be most contemptible; nor was he at any period of his life distinguished for personal courage or the spirit of enterprise. On the contrary, it seems to have been his constant and ruling maxim to foment the incentives of war among his neighbors, to profit by their weakness and embarrassments, but to avoid being a party himself in any of their contests, and to submit even to humiliating sacrifices rather than subject himself to the chances of war ['Quoted in Edward Thompson's 'The Making of the Indian Princes' (1943),p. 1]. The real protagonists for power in India during the eighteenth century were four: two of these were Indian and two foreign. The Indians were the Marathas and Haidar Ali and his son Tipu Sultan in the south; the foreigners were the British and the French. Of these, it appeared almost inevitable, during the first half of the century, that the Marathas were destined to establish their supremacy over India as a whole and to be the successors of the Mughal Empire. Their troops appeared at the very gates of Delhi as early as 1737 and there was no power strong enough to oppose them.

Just then (in 1739) a new eruption took place in the northwest and Nadir Shah of Persia swept down to Delhi, killing and plundering, and carrying off enormous treasure including the famous Peacock Throne. It was an easy raid for him for the Delhi rulers were effete and effeminate, wholly unused to warfare, and Nadir Shah did not come into conflict with the Marathas. In a sense, his raid facilitated matters for the Marathas, who in subsequent years spread to the Punjab. Again Maratha supremacy of India was in sight. Nadir Shah's raid had two consequences . He put an end completely to any pretensions that the Delhi Mughal rulers had to power and dominion; henceforth they became vague shadows enjoying a ghostly sovereignty, puppets in the hands of any one who was strong enough to hold them. To a large extent they had arrived at that stage even before Nadir Shah came; he completed the process. And yet, so strong is the hold of tradition and long-established custom, the British East India Company as well as others, continued to send humble presents to them in token of tribute right up to the eve of Plassey; and even afterwards for a long time the Company considered itself and functioned as the agent of the Delhi emperor, in whose name money was coined till 1835. The second consequence of Nadir Shah's raid was the separation of Afghanistan from India. Afghanistan, which for long ages past had been part of India, was now cut off and became part of Nadir Shah's dominions. Sometime afterwards a local rebellion resulted in the murder of Nadir Shah by a group of his own officers and Afghanistan became an independent state. The Marathas had in no way been weakened by Nadir Shah and they continued to spread in the Punjab. But in 1761 they met with a crushing defeat at Panipat from an Afghan invader,Ahmad Shah Durrani, who was ruling Afghanistan then. The flower of the Maratha forces perished in this disaster and, for a while, their dreams of empire faded away. They recovered gradually and the Maratha dominions were divided into a number of independent states joined together in a confederacy under the leadership of the Peshwa at Poona. The chiefs of the bigger states were Scindia of Gwalior, Holkar of Indore, and the Gaekwar of Baroda. This confederacy still dominated a vast area in western and central India. But the Panipat defeat of the Marathas by Ahmad Shah had weakened them just when the English Company was emerging as an important territorial power of India.

In Bengal, Clive, by promoting treason and forgery and with very little fighting, had won the battle of Plassey in 1757, a date which is sometimes said to mark the beginning of the British Empire in India. It was an unsavory beginning and something of that bitter taste has clung to it ever since. Soon the British held the whole of Bengal and Bihar and one of the early consequences of their rule was a terrible famine which ravaged these two provinces in 1770, killing ever a third of the population of this rich, vast, and densely populated area. In south India, the struggle between the English and the French, a part of the world struggle between the two, ended in the triumph of the English, and the French were almost eliminated from India. With the elimination of the French power from India, three contestants for supremacy remained—the Maratha confederacy, Haider Ali in the south, and the British. In spite of their victory at Plasssey and their spreading out over Bengal and Bihar, few, if any, people in India then looked upon the British as a dominant power, destined to rule over the whole of India. An observer would still have given the first place to the Marathas who sprawled all over western and central India right up to Delhi and whose courage and fighting qualities were well-known. Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan were formidable adversaries who inflicted a severe defeat on the British and came near to breaking the power of the East India Company. But they were confined to the south and did

not directly affect the fortunes of India as a whole. Haider Ali was a remarkable man and one of the notable figures in Indian history. He had some kind of a national ideal and possessed the qualities of a leader with vision. Continually suffering from a painful disease, his self-discipline and capacity for hard work were astonishing. He realized, long before others did so, the importance of sea power and the growing menace of the British based on naval strength. He tried to organize a joint effort to drive them out and, for this purpose, sent envoys to the Marathas, the Nizam, and Shuja-ud-Dowla of Oudh. But nothing came of this. He started building his own navy and, capturing the Maldive Islands, made them his headquarters for ship building and naval activities. He died by the wayside as he was marching with his army. His son Tipu continued to strengthen his navy. Tipu also sent messages to Napoleon and to the Sultan in Constantinople. In the north a Sikh state under Ranjit Singh was growing up in the Punjab, to spread later to Kashmir and the North West Frontier Province; but that too was a marginal state not affecting the real struggle for supremacy. This struggle, it became clear as the eighteenth century approached its end, lay between the only two powers that counted—the Marathas and the British. All the other states and principalities were subordinate and subsidiary to these two. 

Tipu Sultan of Mysore was finally defeated by the British in 1799, and that left the field clear for the final contest between the Marathas and the British East India Company. Charles Metcalfe, one of the ablest of the British Officials in India, wrote in 1806: 'India contains no more than two great powers, British and Maratha, and every other state acknowledges the influence of one or the other. Every inch that we recede will be occupied by them.' But there was rivalry amongst the Maratha chieftains, and they fought and were defeated separately by the British. They won some notable victories and especially inflicted a severe defeat on the British near Agra in 1804 , but by 1818 the Maratha power was finally crushed and the great chiefs that represented it in central India submitted and accepted the overlordship of the East India Company. The British became then the unchallenged sovereigns of a great part of India, governing the country directly or through puppet and subsidiary princes.The Punjab and some outlying parts were still beyond their control, but the British Empire in India had become an established fact, and subsequent

wars with the Sikhs and Gurkhas and in Burma merely rounded it off on the map.

The Backwardness of India and the Superiority of the English in Organization and Technique

Looking back over this period, it almost seems that the British succeeded in dominating India by a succession of fortuitous circumstances and lucky flukes. With remarkably little effort, considering the glittering prize, they won a great empire and enormous wealth, which helped to make them the leading power in the world. It seems easy for a slight turn in events to have taken place which would have dashed their hopes and ended their ambitions. They were defeated on many occasions—by Haider Ali and Tipu, by the Marathas, by the Sikhs, and by the Gurkhas. A little less good fortune and they might have lost their foothold in India, or at the most held on to certain coastal territories only. And yet a closer scrutiny reveals, in the circumstances then existing, a certain inevitability in what happened. Good fortune there certainly was, but there must be an ability to profit by good fortune. India was then in a fluid and disorganized state, following the break-up of the Mughal Empire; for many centuries it had not been so weak and helpless. Organized power having broken down, the field was left open to adventurers and new claimants for dominion. Among these adventurers and claimants, the British, and the British alone at the time, possessed many of the qualities necessary for success. Their major disadvantage was that they were foreigners coming from a far country. Yet that very disadvantage worked in their favor, for no one took them very seriously or considered them as possible contestants for the sovereignty of India. It is extraordinary how this delusion lasted till long after Plassey, and their functioning in formal matters as the agents of the shadow Emperor at Delhi helped to further this false impression. The plunder that they carried away from Bengal and their peculiar methods of trade led to the belief that these foreigners were out for money and treasure and not so much for dominion; that they were a temporary though painful infliction, rather like Timur or Nadir Shah, who came and plundered and  went back to his homeland. The East India Company had originally established itself for trading purposes, and its military establishment was meant to protect this trade. Gradually, and almost unnoticed by others, it had extended the territory under its control, chiefly by taking sides in local disputes, helping one rival against another. The company's troops were better trained and were an asset to any side, and the company extracted heavy payment for the help. So the company's power grew and its military establishment increased . People looked upon these troops as mercenaries to be hired. When it was realized that the British were playing nobody's game but their own, and were out for the political domination of India, they had already established themselves firmly in the country. Anti-foreign sentiment there undoubtedly was, and this grew in later years; but it was far removed from any general or widespread national feeling. The background was feudal and loyalty went to the local chief. Widespread distress, as in China during the days of the war lords, compelled people to join any military leader who offered regular pay or opportunities of loot. The East India Company's armies largely consisted of Indian sepoys. Only the Marathas had some national sentiment, something much more than loyalty to a leader, behind them, but even this was narrow and limited. They managed to irritate the brave Rajputs by their treatment of them. Instead of gaining them as allies, they had to deal with them as opponents or as grumbling and dissatisfied feudatories . Among the Maratha chiefs themselves there was bitter rivalry, and occasionally civil war, in spite of a vague alliance under the Peshwa's leadership. At critical moments they failed to support each other, and were separately defeated. Yet the Marathas produced a number of very able men, statesmen and warriors, among them being Nana Farnavis, the Peshwa Baji Rao I, Mahadaji Scindhia of Gwalior, and Yaswant Rao Holkar of Indore, as also that remarkable woman, Princess Ahalya

Bai of Indore. Their rank and file was good, seldom deserting a post and often facing certain death unmoved; but behind all this courage there was often an adventurism and amateurishness, both in peace and war, which were surprising. Their ignorance of the world was appalling, and even their knowledge of India's geography was strictly limited. What is worse, they did not take the trouble to find out what was happening elsewhere and what their enemies were doing. There could be no far-sighted statesmanship or effective strategy with these limitations. Their speed of movement and mobility often surprised and unnerved the enemy, but essentially war was looked upon as a series of gallant charges and little more. They were ideal guerrilla fighters. Later they reorganized their armies on more orthodox lines, with the result that what they gained in armor they lost in speed and mobility, and they could not adjust themselves easily to these new conditions. They considered themselves clever, and so they were, but it was not difficult to overreach them in peace or war, for their thought was imprisoned in an old and out-of-date framework and could not go beyond it. 

The superiority in discipline and technique of foreign-trained armies had, of course, been noticed at an early stage by Indian rulers. They employed French and English officers to train their own armies, and the rivalry between these two helped to build up Indian armies. Haider Ali and Tipu also had some conception of the importance of sea-power, and they tried, unsuccessfully and too late, to build up a fleet in order to challenge the British at sea. The Marathas also made a feeble attempt in this direction. India was then a shipbuilding country, but it was not easy to build up a navy within a short time and in the face of constant opposition. With the elimination of the French many of their officers in the armies of the Indian powers had to go.

The foreign officers who remained, chiefly British, often deserted their employers at critical stages, and, on some occasions, betrayed them, surrendering and marching over to their enemies (the British) with their armies and treasure. This reliance on foreign officers not only indicates the backwardness of the army organization of the Indian powers, but was also a constant source of danger owing to their unreliability. The British often had a powerful fifth column both in the administration and in the armies of the Indian rulers. If the Marathas, with their homogeneity and group patriotism, were backward in civil and military organization, much more so were the other Indian powers. The Rajputs, for all their courage, functioned in the old feudal way, romantic but thoroughly inefficient, and were rent among themselves by tribal feuds. Many of them, from a sense of feudal loyalty to an overlord, and partly as a consequence of Akbar's policy in the past, sided with the vanishing power of Delhi. But Delhi was too feeble to profit by this, and the Rajputs deteriorated and became the playthings of others, ultimately falling into the orbit of Scindia, the Maratha. Some of their chiefs tried to play a careful balancing game in order to save themselves. The various Moslem rulers and chiefs in northern and central India were as feudal and backward in their ideas as the Rajput. They made no real difference, except to add to the confusion and the misery of the mass of the people. Some of them acknowledged the suzerainty of the Marathas.

The Gurkhas of Nepal were splendid and disciplined soldiers, the equals, if not the superiors, of any troops that the East India Company could produce. Although completely feudal in organization, their attachment to their homelands was great, and this sentiment made them formidable fighters in its defense . They gave a fright to the British, but made no difference to the issue of the main struggle in India.

The Marathas did not consolidate themselves in the vast areas in northern and central India where they had spread. They came and went, taking no root. Perhaps nobody could take root just then owing to the alternating fortunes of war, and indeed many territories under British control, or acknowledging British suzerainty were in a far worse condition, and the British or their administration had not taken root there. If the Marathas (and much more so the other Indian powers) were amateurish and adventurist in their methods, the British in India were thoroughly professional. Many of the British leaders were adventurous enough but they' were in no way adventurist in the policy for which they all worked in their separate spheres. 'The East India Company's secretariat,' writes Edward Thompson, 'was served in the courts of native- India by a succession and galaxy of men such as even the British Empire has hardly ever possessed together at any other time.' One of the chief duties of the British residents at these courts was to bribe and corrupt the ministers and other officials. Their spy system was perfect, says a historian. They had complete information of the courts and armies of their adversaries, while those adversaries lived in ignorance of what the British were doing or were going to do. The fifth column of the British functioned continuously and in moments of crisis and in the heat of war there would be defections in their favor which made a great difference. They won most of their battles before the actual fighting took place. That had been so at Plassey and was repeated again and again right up to the Sikh wars. A notable instance of desertion was that of a high officer in the service of Scindia of Gwalior, who had secretly come to terms with the British and went over to them with his entire army at the moment of battle. He was awarded for this later by being made the ruler of a new Indian state carved out of the territories of Scindia whom he had betrayed. That state still exists, but the man's name became a byword for treason and treachery, just as Quisling's in recent years. The British thus represented a higher political and military organization, well knit together and having very able leaders.

They were far better informed than their adversaries and they took full advantage of the disunity and rivalries of the Indian powers. Their command of the seas gave them safe bases and opportunities to add to their resources. Even when temporarily defeated, they could recuperate and assume the offensive again. Their possession of Bengal after Plassey gave them enormous wealth and resources to carry on their warfare with the Marathas and others, and each fresh conquest added to these resources. For the Indian powers defeat often meant a disaster which could not be remedied. This period of war and conquest and plunder converted Central India and Rajputana and some parts of the south and west into derelict areas full of violence and unhappiness and misery. Armies marched across them and in their train came highway robbers, and no one cared for the miserable human beings who lived there, except to despoil them of their money and goods. Parts of India became rather like central Europe during the Thirty Years War. Conditions were bad almost everywhere but they were worst of all in the areas under British control or suzerainty: '...nothing could be more fantastic than the picture presented by Madras or by the vassal states of Oudh and Hyderabad, a seething delirium of misery. In comparison, the regions where the Nana (Farnavis, the Maratha statesman) governed were an oasis of gentle security'—so writes Edward Thomspson. Just prior to this period, large parts of India were singularly free from disorder, in spite of the disruption of the Mughal Empire. In Bengal during the long reign of Allawardi, the semi independent Mughal Viceroy, peaceful and orderly government prevailed and trade and business flourished, adding to the great wealth of the province. Some little time after Allawardi's death the battle of Plassey (1757) took place and the East India Company constituted themselves the agents of the Delhi Emperor, though in reality they were completely independent and could do what they willed. Then began the pillage of Bengal on behalf of the company and their agents and factors. Some years after Plassey began the reign of Ahalya Bai, of Indore in central India, and it lasted for thiry years (1765-1795). This has become almost legendary as a period during which perfect order and good government prevailed and the people prospered. She was a very able ruler and organizer, highly respected during her lifetime, and considered as a saint by a grateful people after her death. Thus during the very period when Bengal and Bihar, under the new rule of the East India Company, deteriorated and there was organized plunder and political and economic chaos, leading .to terrible famines, central India as well as many other parts of the country were in a prosperous condition.

The British had power and wealth but felt no responsibility for good government or any government. The merchants of the East India Company were interested in dividends and treasure and not in the improvement or even protection of those who had come under their sway. In particular, in the vassal states there was a perfect divorce between power and responsibility. When the British had finished with the Marathas and were secure in their conquests, they turned their minds towards civil government and some kind of order was evolved. In the subsidiary states, however, the change was very slow, for in those so-called protected areas there was a permanent divorce between responsibility and power. We are often reminded, lest we forget, that the British rescued India from chaos and anarchy. That is true in so far as they established orderly government after this period, which the Marathas have called 'the time of terror.' But that chaos and anarchy were partly at least due to the policy of the East India Company and their representatives in India. It is also conceivable that even without the good offices of the British, so eagerly given, peace and orderly government might have been established in India after the conclusion of the struggle for supremacy. Such developments had been known to have taken place in India, as in other countries, in the course of her 5,000 years of history.