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SOCIAL SCIENCE
OUR PASTS – III

Textbook in History
for Class VIII
2019-200
Contents
Foreword iii
1. How, When and Where 1

2. From Trade to Territory The Company Establishes Power 9
3. Ruling the Countryside 26
4. Tribals, Dikus and the Vision of a Golden Age 39
5. When People Rebel 1857 and After 51
6. Weavers, Iron Smelters and Factory Owners 65
7. Civilising the “Native”, Educating the Nation 81
8. Women, Caste and Reform 94
9. The Making of the National Movement: 1870s--1947 109
10. India After Independence 128
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1 How, When and Where
How Important are Dates?

There was a time when historians were
fascinated with dates. There were heated
debates about the dates on which rulers
were crowned or battles were fought.
In the common-sense notion, history was
synonymous with dates. You may have
heard people say, “I find history boring
because it is all about memorising
dates.” Is such a conception true?
History is certainly about changes
that occur over time. It is about finding
out how things were in the past and
how things have changed. As soon as
we compare the past with the present
we refer to time, we talk of “before” and
“after”.
Living in the world we do not always
ask historical questions about what we
see around us. We take things for granted,
as if what we see has always been in the
world we inhabit. But most of us have our
moments of wonder, when we are curious, and we ask
questions that actually are historical. Watching Fig. 1 – Brahmans offering the
someone sip a cup of tea at a roadside tea stall you Shastras to Britannia, frontispiece
to the first map produced by
may wonder – when did people begin to drink tea or James Rennel, 1782
coffee? Looking out of the window of a train you may Rennel was asked by Robert
ask yourself – when were railways built and how did Clive to produce maps of
people travel long distances before the age of railways? Hindustan. An enthusiastic
Reading the newspaper in the morning you may be supporter of British conquest of
India, Rennel saw preparation
curious to know how people got to hear about things
of maps as essential to the
before newspapers began to be printed. process of domination. The
picture here tries to suggest that
Activity Indians willingly gave over their

ancient texts to Britannia – the
Look carefully at Fig.1 and write a paragraph explaining symbol of British power – as if
asking her to become the
how this image projects an imperial perception.
protector of Indian culture.
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All such historical questions refer us back to notions
of time. But time does not have to be always precisely
dated in terms of a particular year or a month.
Sometimes it is actually incorrect to fix precise dates
to processes that happen over a period of time. People
in India did not begin drinking tea one fine day; they
developed a taste for it over time. There can be no one
clear date for a process such as this. Similarly, we
cannot fix one single date on which British rule was
established, or the national movement started, or
changes took place within the economy and society. All
these things happened over a stretch of time. We can
only refer to a span of time, an approximate period over
which particular changes became visible.
Why, then, do we continue to associate history
with a string of dates? This association has a reason.
There was a time when history was an account of
battles and big events. It was about rulers and their
policies. Historians wrote about the year a king was
crowned, the year he married, the year he had a child,
the year he fought a particular war, the year he died,
and the year the next ruler succeeded to the throne.
For events such as these, specific dates can be
determined, and in histories such as these, debates
about dates continue to be important.
As you have seen in the history textbooks of the past
two years, historians now write about a host of other
issues, and other questions. They look at how people
earned their livelihood, what they produced and ate,
how cities developed and markets came up, how
kingdoms were formed and new ideas spread, and how
cultures and society changed.
Which dates?
Fig. 2 – Advertisements help create By what criteria do we choose a set of dates as
taste
important? The dates we select, the dates around which
Old advertisements help us
understand how markets for new
we compose our story of the past, are not important on
products were created and new their own. They become vital because we focus on a
tastes were popularised. This particular set of events as important. If our focus of
1922 advertisement for Lipton study changes, if we begin to look at new issues, a new
tea suggests that royalty all over
set of dates will appear significant.
the world is associated with this
tea. In the background you see Consider an example. In the histories written by
the outer wall of an Indian British historians in India, the rule of each Governor-
palace, while in the foreground, General was important. These histories began with the
seated on horseback is the third
son of Queen Victoria of Britain,
rule of the first Governor- General, Warren Hastings,
Prince Arthur, who was given the and ended with the last Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten. In
title Duke of Connaught. separate chapters we read about the deeds of others –
2 OUR PASTS – III
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Hastings, Wellesley, Bentinck, Dalhousie, Canning,
Lawrence, Lytton, Ripon, Curzon, Harding, Irwin. It was
a seemingly never -ending succession of Governor -
Generals and Viceroys. All the dates in these history
books were linked to these personalities – to their
activities, policies, achievements. It was as if there was
nothing outside their lives that was important for us to
know. The chronology of their lives marked the different
chapters of the history of British India.
Can we not write about the history of this period in
a different way? How do we focus on the activities of
different groups and classes in Indian society within
the format of this history of Governor-Generals?
When we write history, or a story, we divide it into
chapters. Why do we do this? It is to give each chapter
some coherence. It is to tell a story in a way that makes
some sense and can be followed. In the process we focus
only on those events that help us to give shape to the Fig. 3 – Warren Hastings became
the first Governor-General of India
story we are telling. In the histories that revolve around in 1773
the life of British Governor-Generals, the activities of While history books narrated the
Indians simply do not fit, they have no space. What, deeds of Governor-Generals,
then, do we do? Clearly, we need another format for biographies glorified them as
our history. This would mean that the old dates will no persons, and paintings projected
them as powerful figures.
longer have the significance they earlier had. A new
set of dates will become more important for us to know.
How do we periodise?
In 1817, James Mill, a Scottish economist and political
philosopher, published a massive three-volume work,
A History of British India. In this he divided Indian
history into three periods – Hindu, Muslim and British.
This periodisation came to be widely accepted. Can
you think of any problem with this way of looking at
Indian history?
Why do we try and divide history into different
periods? We do so in an attempt to capture the
characteristics of a time, its central features as they
Activity
Interview your mother
appear to us. So the terms through which we periodise
or another member of
– that is, demarcate the difference between periods –
your family to find out
become important. They reflect our ideas about the past.
about their life. Now
They show how we see the significance of the change
divide their life into
from one period to the next.
different periods and
Mill thought that all Asian societies were at a lower list out the significant
level of civilisation than Europe. According to his telling events in each period.
of history, before the British came to India, Hindu and Explain the basis of
Muslim despots ruled the country. Religious intolerance, your periodisation.
caste taboos and superstitious practices dominated
HOW, WHEN AND WHERE 3
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social life. British rule, Mill felt, could civilise India. To do
this it was necessary to introduce European manners, arts,
institutions and laws in India. Mill, in fact, suggested that
the British should conquer all the territories in India to ensure
the enlightenment and happiness of the Indian people. For
India was not capable of progress without British help.
In this idea of history, British rule represented all the forces
of progress and civilisation. The period before British rule
was one of darkness. Can such a conception be accepted today?
In any case, can we refer to any period of history as “Hindu”
or “Muslim”? Did not a variety of faiths exist simultaneously
in these periods? Why should we characterise an age only
through the religion of the rulers of the time? To do so is to
suggest that the lives and practices of the others do not
really matter. We should also remember that even rulers in
ancient India did not all share the same faith.
Moving away from British classification, historians have
usually divided Indian history into ‘ancient’, ‘medieval’ and
‘modern’. This division too has its problems. It is a
periodisation that is borrowed from the West where the
modern period was associated with the growth of all the
forces of modernity – science, reason, democracy, liberty and
equality. Medieval was a term used to describe a society
where these features of modern society did not exist. Can we
uncritically accept this characterisation of the modern period
to describe the period of our study? As you will see in this
book, under British rule people did not have equality, freedom
or liberty. Nor was the period one of economic growth
and progress.
Many historians therefore refer to this period as ‘colonial’.
What is colonial?
In this book you will read about the way the British came to
conquer the country and establish their rule, subjugating
local nawabs and rajas. You will see how they established
control over the economy and society, collected revenue to
meet all their expenses, bought the goods they wanted at
low prices, produced crops they needed for export, and
you will understand the changes that came about as a
consequence. You will also come to know about the changes
British rule brought about in values and tastes, customs
and practices. When the subjugation of one country by another
leads to these kinds of political, economic, social and cultural
changes, we refer to the process as colonisation.
You will, however, find that all classes and groups did not
experience these changes in the same way. That is why the
book is called Our Pasts in the plural.
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Source 1
How do We Know?
What sources do historians use in writing about the Reports to the
last 250 years of Indian history?
Home Department
Administration produces records
One important source is the official records of the British In 1946 the colonial
administration. The British believed that the act of government in India
writing was important. Every instruction, plan, policy was trying to put down a
decision, agreement, investigation had to be clearly mutiny that broke out
written up. Once this was done, things could be properly on the ships of the
studied and debated. This conviction produced an Royal Indian Navy. Here
administrative culture of memos, notings and reports. is a sample of the kind
of reports the Home
The British also felt that all important documents
Department got from
and letters needed to be carefully preserved. So they
the different dockyards:
set up record rooms attached to all administrative
institutions. The village tahsildar’s office, the Bombay: Arrangements
collectorate, the commissioner’s office, the provincial have been made for
secretariats, the lawcourts – all had their record rooms. the Army to take over
Specialised institutions like archives and museums were ships and establishment.
also established to preserve important records. Royal Navy ships are
remaining outside the
Letters and memos that moved from one branch harbour.
of the administration to another in the early years
of the nineteenth century can still be read in the Karachi: 301 mutineers
archives. You can also study the notes and reports that are under arrest and
district officials prepared, or the instructions and a few more strongly
suspected are to
directives that were sent by officials at the top to
be arrested … All
provincial administrators.
establishments … are
In the early years of the nineteenth century these under military guard.
documents were carefully copied out and beautifully
Vizagapatnam: The
written by calligraphists – that is, by those who
position is completely
specialised in the art of beautiful writing. By the middle
under control and no
of the nineteenth century, with the spread of printing,
violence has occurred.
multiple copies of these records were printed as
Military guards have
proceedings of each government department. been placed on ships
and establishments.
No further trouble is
expected except that
a few men may refuse
to work.
Director of Intelligence, HQ.
India Command, Situation
Report No. 7. File No. 5/21/46
Home (Political),
Government of India
Fig. 4 – The National Archives of India came up in the 1920s
When New Delhi was built, the National Museum and the National
Archives were both located close to the Viceregal Palace. This location
reflects the importance these institutions had in British imagination.
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Surveys become important
The practice of surveying also became common under
the colonial administration. The British believed that
a country had to be properly known before it could be
effectively administered.
By the early nineteenth century detailed surveys
were being carried out to map the entire country.
In the villages, revenue surveys were conducted.
The effort was to know the topography, the soil
quality, the flora, the fauna, the local histories,
and the cropping pattern – all the facts seen as
necessary to know about to administer the region.
Fig. 5 – A
custard-apple From the end of the nineteenth century, Census
plant, 1770s operations were held every ten years. These prepared
Botanical gardens detailed records of the number of people in all the
and natural history provinces of India, noting information on castes,
museums established by the religions and occupation. There were many other surveys
British collected plant specimens
– botanical surveys, zoological surveys, archaeological
and information about their
uses. Local artists were asked to surveys, anthropological surveys, forest surveys.
draw pictures of these specimens.
Historians are now looking at What official records do not tell
the way such information From this vast corpus of records we can get to know a
was gathered and what this
information reveals about the
lot, but we must remember that these are official
nature of colonialism. records. They tell us what the officials thought, what
Fig. 6 – Mapping and survey operations in progress in Bengal, a drawing by James Prinsep, 1832
Note how all the instruments that were used in surveys are placed in the foreground to
emphasise the scientific nature of the project.
6 OUR PASTS – III
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Source 2
“Not fit for human

consumption”
Newspapers provide
accounts of the movements
in different parts of the
country. Here is a report
of a police strike in 1946.
More than 2000
policemen in Delhi
refused to take their
food on Thursday
morning as a protest
against their low
salaries and the
Fig. 7 – The rebels of 1857 bad quality of food
Images need to be carefully studied for they project the viewpoint supplied to them
of those who create them. This image can be found in several from the Police Lines
illustrated books produced by the British after the 1857 rebellion.
kitchen.
The caption at the bottom says: “Mutinous sepoys share the loot”.
In British representations the rebels appear as greedy, vicious and As the news spread
brutal. You will read about the rebellion in Chapter 5. to the other police
stations, the men there
they were interested in, and what they wished to also refused to take
food … One of the
preserve for posterity. These records do not always help
strikers said: “The
us understand what other people in the country felt,
food supplied to us
and what lay behind their actions.
from the Police Lines
For that we need to look elsewhere. When we begin kitchen is not fit for
to search for these other sources we find them in plenty, human consumption.
though they are more difficult to get than official records. Even cattle would
We have diaries of people, accounts of pilgrims and not eat the chappattis
travellers, autobiographies of important personalities, and dal which we
and popular booklets that were sold in the local bazaars. have to eat.”
As printing spread, newspapers were published and Hindustan Times,
issues were debated in public. Leaders and reformers 22 March, 1946
wrote to spread their ideas, poets and novelists wrote
to express their feelings.
All these sources, however, were produced by those
who were literate. From these we will not be able to
understand how history was experienced and lived by
the tribals and the peasants, the workers in the mines
Activity
Look at Sources 1 and 2.
or the poor on the streets. Getting to know their lives is
Do you find any
a more difficult task.
differences in the nature
Yet this can be done, if we make a little bit of effort. of reporting? Explain
When you read this book you will see how this can what you observe.
be done.
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Let’s imagine Let’s recall
1. State whether true or false:
Imagine that you are
a historian wanting (a) James Mill divided Indian history into three
to find out about periods – Hindu, Muslim, Christian.
how agriculture
changed in a remote (b) Official documents help us understand what
tribal area after the people of the country think.
independence. List
the different ways in (c) The British thought surveys were important
which you would find for effective administration.
information on this.
Let’s discuss
2. What is the problem with the periodisation of Indian
history that James Mill offers?
3. Why did the British preserve official documents?
4. How will the information historians get from old
newspapers be different from that found in police
reports?
Let’s do
5. Can you think of examples of surveys in your world
today? Think about how toy companies get
information about what young people enjoy playing
with or how the government finds out about the
number of young people in school. What can a
historian derive from such surveys?
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2 From Trade to Territory
The Company Establishes Power
Aurangzeb was the last of the powerful Mughal rulers.

He established control over a very large part of the
territory that is now known as India. After his death in
1707, many Mughal governors (subadars) and big
zamindars began asserting their authority and
establishing regional kingdoms. As powerful regional
kingdoms emerged in various parts of India, Delhi could
no longer function as an effective centre.
By the second half of the eighteenth century, however,
a new power was emerging on the political horizon –
the British. Did you know that the British originally
came as a small trading company and were reluctant to
acquire territories? How then did they come to be masters
of a vast empire? In this chapter you will see how this
came about.
Fig. 1 – Bahadur Shah Zafar

and his sons being arrested by
Captain Hodson
After Aurangzeb there was no
powerful Mughal ruler, but
Mughal emperors continued to
be symbolically important.
In fact, when a massive rebellion
against British rule broke out in
1857, Bahadur Shah Zafar,
the Mughal emperor at the time,
was seen as the natural leader.
Once the revolt was put down by
the company, Bahadur Shah
Zafar was forced to leave the
kingdom, and his sons were shot
in cold blood.
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East India Company
Comes East
In 1600, the East India
Company acquired a charter
from the ruler of England,
Queen Elizabeth I, granting it
the sole right to trade with the
East. This meant that no other
trading group in England could
compete with the East India
Company. With this charter
the Company could venture
across the oceans, looking
for new lands from which it
Fig. 2 – Routes to India in the could buy goods at a cheap price, and carry them
eighteenth century back to Europe to sell at higher prices. The Company
did not have to fear competition from other English
trading companies. Mercantile trading companies
in those days made profit primarily by excluding
competition, so that they could buy cheap and sell dear.
The royal charter, however, could not prevent other
European powers from entering the Eastern markets.
By the time the first English ships sailed down the
Mercantile – A business
west coast of Africa, round the Cape of Good Hope, and
enterprise that makes
crossed the Indian Ocean, the Portuguese had already
profit primarily through
established their presence in the western coast of
trade, buying goods
India, and had their base in Goa. In fact, it was Vasco
cheap and selling them
da Gama, a Portuguese explorer, who had discovered
at higher prices
this sea route to India in 1498. By the early seventeenth
century, the Dutch too were exploring the possibilities
of trade in the Indian Ocean. Soon the French traders
arrived on the scene.
The problem was that all the companies were
interested in buying the same things. The fine qualities
of cotton and silk produced in India had a big market
in Europe. Pepper, cloves, cardamom and cinnamon too
were in great demand. Competition amongst the
European companies inevitably pushed up the prices
at which these goods could be purchased, and this
reduced the profits that could be earned. The only way
the trading companies could flourish was by eliminating
rival competitors. The urge to secure markets therefore
led to fierce battles between the trading companies.
Through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries they
regularly sank each other’s ships, blockaded routes,
and prevented rival ships from moving with supplies of
10 OUR PASTS – III
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goods. Trade was carried on with arms and trading
posts were protected through fortification.
This effort to fortify settlements and carry on profitable
trade also led to intense conflict with local rulers. The
company therefore found it difficult to separate trade
from politics. Let us see how this happened.
East India Company begins trade in Bengal

The first English factory was set up on the banks of
the river Hugli in 1651. This was the base from which
the Company’s traders, known at that time as “factors”,
operated. The factory had a warehouse where goods
for export were stored, and it had offices where Company
officials sat. As trade expanded, the Company persuaded
merchants and traders to come and settle near the
factory. By 1696 it began building a fort around the
settlement. Two years later it bribed Mughal officials
into giving the Company zamindari rights over three
villages. One of these was Kalikata, which later grew
into the city of Calcutta or Kolkata as it is known today.
It also persuaded the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb to
issue a farman granting the Company the right to trade Farman – A royal edict,
duty free. a royal order
The Company tried continuously to press for more
concessions and manipulate existing privileges.
Aurangzeb’s farman, for instance, had granted only
the Company the right to trade duty free. But officials
of the Company, who were carrying on private trade on
the side, were expected to pay duty. This they refused
to pay, causing an enormous loss of revenue for Bengal.
How could the Nawab of Bengal, Murshid Quli Khan,
not protest?
Fig. 3 – Local boats bring goods

from ships in Madras, painted by
William Simpson, 1867
FROM TRADE TO TERRITORY 11
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How trade led to battles
Through the early eighteenth century the conflict between
the Company and the nawabs of Bengal intensified.
After the death of Aurangzeb, the Bengal nawabs asserted
their power and autonomy, as other regional powers were
doing at that time. Murshid Quli Khan was followed by
Alivardi Khan and then Sirajuddaulah as the Nawab of
Bengal. Each one of them was a strong ruler. They refused
to grant the Company concessions, demanded large
tributes for the Company’s right to trade, denied it any
right to mint coins, and stopped it from extending its
fortifications. Accusing the Company of deceit, they
claimed that the Company was depriving the Bengal
government of huge amounts of revenue and
Fig. 4 – Robert Clive undermining the authority of the nawab. It was refusing
to pay taxes, writing disrespectful letters, and trying to
humiliate the nawab and his officials.
The Company on its part declared that the unjust
demands of the local officials were ruining the trade of
the Company, and trade could flourish only if the duties
were removed. It was also convinced that to expand
trade it had to enlarge its settlements, buy up villages,
and rebuild its forts.
The conflicts led to confrontations and finally
culminated in the famous Battle of Plassey.
Puppet – Literally, a toy
that you can move with
The Battle of Plassey
strings. The term is used When Alivardi Khan died in 1756, Sirajuddaulah became
disapprovingly to refer to the nawab of Bengal. The Company was worried about
a person who is controlled his power and keen on a puppet ruler who would
by someone else. willingly give trade concessions and other privileges.
So it tried, though without success, to help one of
Sirajuddaulah’s rivals become the nawab. An infuriated
Sirajuddaulah asked the Company to stop meddling in
the political affairs of his dominion, stop fortification,
and pay the revenues. After negotiations failed, the
Did you know?
Nawab marched with 30,000 soldiers to the English
Did you know how Plassey factory at Kassimbazar, captured the Company officials,
got its name? Plassey is an locked the warehouse, disarmed all Englishmen, and
anglicised pronunciation blockaded English ships. Then he marched to Calcutta
of Palashi and the place to establish control over the Company’s fort there.
derived its name from the On hearing the news of the fall of Calcutta, Company
palash tree known for its officials in Madras sent forces under the command of
beautiful red flowers that Robert Clive, reinforced by naval fleets. Prolonged
yield gulal, the powder negotiations with the Nawab followed. Finally, in 1757,
used in the festival of Holi. Robert Clive led the Company’s army against
Sirajuddaulah at Plassey. One of the main reasons for
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Fig. 5 – The General
Court Room, East
India House,
Leadenhall Street
The Court of
Proprietors of the
East India Company
had their meetings
in the East India
House on Leadenhall
Street in London.
This is a picture of
one of their meetings
in progress.
the defeat of the Nawab was that the forces led by Mir Jafar, one of
Sirajuddaulah’s commanders, never fought the battle. Clive had
managed to secure his support by promising to make him nawab
after crushing Sirajuddaulah.
The Battle of Plassey became famous because it was the first
major victory the Company won in India.
Source 1
The promise of riches Fig. 6 – Sirajuddaulah
The territorial ambitions of the mercantile East India

Company were viewed with distrust and doubt in England.
After the Battle of Plassey, Robert Clive wrote to William
Pitt, one of the Principal Secretaries of State to the English
monarch, on 7 January 1759 from Calcutta:
But so large a sovereignty may possibly be an object
too extensive for a mercantile Company … I flatter
myself … that there will be little or no difficulty in
obtaining the absolute possession of these rich
kingdoms: ... Now I leave you to judge, whether an
income yearly of two million sterling with the
possession of three provinces … be an object deserving
the public attention ...
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Source 2
After the defeat at Plassey, Sirajuddaulah was
assassinated and Mir Jafar made the nawab. The
The Nawab Company was still unwilling to take over the
complains responsibility of administration. Its prime objective was
the expansion of trade. If this could be done without
In 1733 the Nawab of conquest, through the help of local rulers who were
Bengal said this about the willing to grant privileges, then territories need not be
English traders: taken over directly.
When they first came Soon the Company discovered that this was rather
into the country they difficult. For even the puppet nawabs were not always
petitioned the then as helpful as the Company wanted them to be. After all,
government in a they had to maintain a basic appearance of dignity and
humble manner for sovereignty if they wanted respect from their subjects.
liberty to purchase a What could the Company do? When Mir Jafar
spot of ground to protested, the Company deposed him and installed Mir
build a factory house Qasim in his place. When Mir Qasim complained, he in
upon, which was no turn was defeated in a battle fought at Buxar (1764),
sooner granted but
driven out of Bengal, and Mir Jafar was reinstalled. The
they built a strong
Nawab had to pay Rs 500,000 every month but the
fort, surrounded it
Company wanted more money to finance its wars, and
with a ditch which has
meet the demands of trade and its other expenses. It
communication with
the river and mounted wanted more territories and more revenue. By the time
a great number of Mir Jafar died in 1765 the mood of the Company had
guns upon the walls. changed. Having failed to work with puppet nawabs, Clive
They have enticed declared: “We must indeed become nawabs ourselves.”
several merchants Finally, in 1765 the Mughal emperor appointed the
and others to go and Company as the Diwan of the provinces of Bengal. The
take protection under Diwani allowed the Company to use the vast revenue
them and they collect resources of Bengal. This solved a major problem that
a revenue which the Company had earlier faced. From the early eighteenth
amounts to Rs 100, 000 century its trade with India had expanded. But it had
… they rob and to buy most of the goods in India with gold and silver
plunder and carry imported from Britain. This was because at this time
great number of the
Britain had no goods to sell in India. The outflow of
king’s subjects of both
gold from Britain slowed after the Battle of Plassey,
sexes into slavery into
and entirely stopped after the assumption of Diwani.
their own country …
Now revenues from India could finance Company
expenses. These revenues could be used to purchase
cotton and silk textiles in India, maintain Company
troops, and meet the cost of building the Company fort
and offices at Calcutta.
Company officials become “nabobs”

What did it mean to be nawabs? It meant of course that
the Company acquired more power and authority. But
it also meant something else. Each company servant
began to have visions of living like nawabs.
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Source 3
After the Battle of Plassey the actual nawabs of
Bengal were forced to give land and vast sums of money
as personal gifts to Company officials. Robert Clive How did Clive
himself amassed a fortune in India. He had come to see himself?
Madras (now Chennai) from England in 1743 at the
age of 18. When in 1767 he left India his Indian fortune
At his hearing in front of
was worth £401,102. Interestingly, when he was
a Committee in Parliament,
appointed Governor of Bengal in 1764, he was asked to
Clive declared that he had
remove corruption in Company administration but he
shown admirable restraint
was himself cross-examined in 1772 by the British
after the Battle of Plassey.
Parliament which was suspicious of his vast wealth.
This is what he said:
Although he was acquitted, he committed suicide
in 1774. Consider the situation
in which the victory at
However, not all Company officials succeeded in
Plassey had placed
making money like Clive. Many died an early death
me! A great prince was
in India due to disease and war and it would not be
dependent on my
right to regard all of them as corrupt and dishonest. pleasure; an opulent
Many of them came from humble backgrounds and city lay at my mercy;
their uppermost desire was to earn enough in India, its richest bankers bid
return to Britain and lead a comfortable life. Those against each other
who managed to return with wealth led flashy lives for my smiles; I
and flaunted their riches. They were called “nabobs” walked through vaults
– an anglicised version of the Indian word nawab. which were thrown
They were often seen as upstarts and social climbers open to me alone,
in British society and were ridiculed or made fun of piled on either hand
in plays and cartoons. with gold and jewels!
Mr Chairman, at
Company Rule Expands this moment I stand
astonished at my
If we analyse the process of annexation of Indian states moderation.
by the East India Company from 1757 to 1857, certain
key aspects emerge. The Company rarely launched a
direct military attack on an unknown territory. Instead
it used a variety of political, economic and diplomatic
methods to extend its influence before annexing an
Indian kingdom.
After the Battle of Buxar (1764), the Company
appointed Residents in Indian states. They were political
Activity
or commercial agents and their job was to serve and Imagine that you are a
further the interests of the Company. Through the young Company official
Residents, the Company officials began interfering in who has been in India
the internal affairs of Indian states. They tried to decide for a few months.
who was to be the successor to the throne, and who Write a letter home to
was to be appointed in administrative posts. Sometimes your mother telling her
the Company forced the states into a “subsidiary about your luxurious
alliance”. According to the terms of this alliance, Indian life and contrasting it
rulers were not allowed to have their independent armed with your earlier life in
forces. They were to be protected by the Company, but Britain.
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had to pay for the “subsidiary forces” that the Company
was supposed to maintain for the purpose of this
protection. If the Indian rulers failed to make the payment,
then part of their territory was taken away as penalty.
For example, when Richard Wellesley was Governor -
General (1798-1805), the Nawab of Awadh was forced
to give over half of his territory to the Company in 1801,
as he failed to pay for the “subsidiary forces”. Hyderabad
was also forced to cede territories on similar grounds.
Source 4
What power did the Resident have?

Fig. 7 – Nawab Shujauddaulah
of Awadh, with his sons and the
This is what James Mill, the famous economist and
British Resident, painted by Tilly
Kettle (oil, 1772) political philosopher from Scotland, wrote about the
The treaties that followed the residents appointed by the Company.
Battle of Buxar forced Nawab We place a resident, who really is king of the
Shujauddaulah to give up much
country, whatever injunctions of non-interference
of his authority. Here, however,
he poses in regal splendour, he may act under. As long as the prince acts in
towering over the Resident. perfect subservience, and does what is agreeable
to the residents, that is, to the British Government,
things go on quietly; they are managed without
the resident appearing much in the administration
of affairs … but when anything of a different
nature happens, the moment the prince takes a
Injunction – Instruction course which the British Government think wrong,
Subservience – then comes clashing and disturbance.
Submissiveness James Mill (1832)
Tipu Sultan – The “Tiger of Mysore”

The Company resorted to direct military confrontation
when it saw a threat to its political or economic interests.
This can be illustrated with the case of the southern
Indian state of Mysore.
Mysore had grown in strength under the leadership
of powerful rulers like Haidar Ali (ruled from 1761 to
1782) and his famous son Tipu Sultan (ruled from 1782
to 1799). Mysore controlled the profitable trade of the
Malabar coast where the Company purchased pepper
and cardamom. In 1785 Tipu Sultan stopped the export
of sandalwood, pepper and cardamom through the ports
of his kingdom, and disallowed local merchants from
Fig. 8 – Tipu Sultan trading with the Company. He also established a close
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Fig. 9 – Cornwallis receiving the
sons of Tipu Sultan as hostages,
painted by Daniel Orme, 1793
The Company forces were
defeated by Haidar Ali and Tipu
Sultan in several battles. But in
1792, attacked by the combined
forces of the Marathas, the
Nizam of Hyderabad and the
Company, Tipu was forced to
sign a treaty with the British
by which two of his sons were
taken away as hostages. British
painters always liked painting
scenes that showed the triumph
of British power.
relationship with the French in India, and modernised

his army with their help.
The British were furious. They saw Haidar and Tipu
as ambitious, arrogant and dangerous – rulers who had
to be controlled and crushed. Four wars were fought
with Mysore (1767- 69, 1780-84, 1790-92 and 1799).
Only in the last – the Battle of Seringapatam – did the The legend of Tipu
Company ultimately win a victory. Tipu Sultan was
killed defending his capital Seringapatam, Mysore was Kings are often surrounded
placed under the former ruling dynasty of the Wodeyars by legend and their powers
and a subsidiary alliance was imposed on the state. glorified through folklore.
Here is a legend about Tipu
Sultan who became the
ruler of Mysore in 1782. It
is said that once he went
hunting in the forest with a
French friend. There he
came face to face with a
tiger. His gun did not work
and his dagger fell to the
ground. He battled with the
tiger unarmed until he
managed to reach down
and pick up the dagger.
Fig. 10 – Tipu’s toy tiger Finally he was able to kill
This is the picture of a big mechanical toy that Tipu possessed. the tiger in the battle. After
You can see a tiger mauling a European soldier. When its handle this he came to be known
was turned the toy tiger roared and the soldier shrieked. This toy- as the “Tiger of Mysore”. He
tiger is now kept in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
had the image of the tiger
The British took it away when Tipu Sultan died defending his
capital Seringapatam on 4 May 1799. on his flag.
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. Activity War with the Marathas
Imagine that you have From the late eighteenth century the Company also
come across two old sought to curb and eventually destroy Maratha power.
newspapers reporting With their defeat in the Third Battle of Panipat in 1761,
on the Battle of the Marathas’ dream of ruling from Delhi was shattered.
Seringapatam and the They were divided into many states under different
death of Tipu Sultan. chiefs (sardars) belonging to dynasties such as Sindhia,
One is a British paper Holkar, Gaikwad and Bhonsle. These chiefs were held
and the other is from together in a confederacy under a Peshwa (Principal
Mysore. Write the Minister) who became its effective military and
headline for each of administrative head based in Pune. Mahadji Sindhia
the two newspapers. and Nana Phadnis were two famous Maratha soldiers
and statesmen of the late eighteenth century.
The Marathas were subdued in a series of wars. In
Confederacy – Alliance the first war that ended in 1782 with the Treaty of
Salbai, there was no clear victor. The Second Anglo-
Maratha War (1803-05) was fought on different fronts,
resulting in the British gaining Orissa and the
territories north of the Yamuna river including Agra
and Delhi. Finally, the Third Anglo-Maratha War of
1817-19 crushed Maratha power. The Peshwa was
removed and sent away to Bithur near Kanpur with a
pension. The Company now had complete control over
the territories south of the Vindhyas.
The claim to paramountcy

It is clear from the above that from the early nineteenth
century the Company pursued an aggressive policy of
territorial expansion. Under Lord Hastings (Governor-
General from 1813 to 1823) a new policy of “paramountcy”
Fig. 11 – Lord Hastings
was initiated. Now the Company claimed that its authority
was paramount or supreme, hence its power was greater
than that of Indian states. In order to protect its interests
it was justified in annexing or threatening to annex
any Indian kingdom. This view continued to guide later
British policies as well.
This process, however, did not go unchallenged. For
example, when the British tried to annex the small state
of Kitoor (in Karnataka today), Rani Channamma took
to arms and led an anti-British resistance movement.
She was arrested in 1824 and died in prison in 1829.
Fig. 12 – A Statue of the Queen of But Rayanna, a poor chowkidar of Sangoli in Kitoor,
Kitoor (Karnataka) carried on the resistance. With popular support he
destroyed many British camps and records. He was
caught and hanged by the British in 1830. You will
read more about several cases of resistance later in
the book.
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In the late 1830s the East India
Company became worried about Russia.
It imagined that Russia might expand
across Asia and enter India from the
north-west. Driven by this fear, the
British now wanted to secure their
control over the north-west. They fought
a prolonged war with Afghanistan
between 1838 and 1842 and established
indirect Company rule there. Sind was
taken over in 1843. Next in line was
Punjab. But the presence of Maharaja
Ranjit Singh held back the Company.
After his death in 1839, two prolonged
wars were fought with the Sikh
kingdom. Ultimately, in 1849, Punjab
was annexed.
The Doctrine of Lapse

The final wave of annexations occurred
under Lord Dalhousie who was the
Governor-General from 1848 to 1856.
He devised a policy that came to be
known as the Doctrine of Lapse. The
doctrine declared that if an Indian ruler
died without a male heir his kingdom
would “lapse”, that is, become part of
Company territory. One kingdom after
another was annexed simply by Fig. 13 – Maharaja Ranjit Singh
applying this doctrine: Satara (1848), Sambalpur (1850), holding court
Udaipur (1852), Nagpur (1853) and Jhansi (1854).
Finally, in 1856, the Company also took over Awadh.
This time the British had an added argument – they
said they were “obliged by duty” to take over Awadh in
order to free the people from the “misgovernment” of
the Nawab! Enraged by the humiliating way in which
the Nawab was deposed, the people of Awadh joined
the great revolt that broke out in 1857.
Activity
Imagine that you are a nawab’s nephew and have been
brought up thinking that you will one day be king. Now
you find that this will not be allowed by the British
Fig. 14 – A portrait of Veer
because of the new Doctrine of Lapse. What will be
Surendra Sai
your feelings? What will you plan to do so that you can
inherit the crown?
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Fig. 14 a – India, 1797 Fig. 14 b – India, 1840
Fig. 11 a, b, c – Expansion of British

territorial power in India
Look at these maps along with a present-
day political map of India. In each of these
maps, try and identify the different parts of
India that were not under British rule.
Fig. 14c – India, 1857
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Setting up a New Administration
Warren Hastings (Governor-General from 1773 to 1785)
was one of the many important figures who played a
significant role in the expansion of Company power. By
his time the Company had acquired power not only Qazi – A judge
in Bengal, but also in Bombay and Madras. British Mufti – A jurist of the
territories were broadly divided into administrative Muslim community
units called Presidencies. There were three Presidencies: responsible for
Bengal, Madras and Bombay. Each was ruled by a expounding the law
Governor. The supreme head of the administration that the qazi would
was the Governor-General. Warren Hastings, the first administer
Governor-General, introduced several administrative
Impeachment – A trial
reforms, notably in the sphere of justice.
by the House of Lords
From 1772 a new system of justice was established. in England for charges
Each district was to have two courts – a criminal court of misconduct brought
( faujdari adalat ) and a civil court (diwani adalat ). against a person in the
Maulvis and Hindu pandits interpreted Indian laws for House of Commons
the European district collectors who presided over civil
courts. The criminal courts were still under a qazi and
a mufti but under the supervision of the collectors.
Fig. 15 – The trial of Warren Hastings, painted by R.G. Pollard, 1789

When Warren Hastings went back to England in 1785, Edmund Burke accused him
of being personally responsible for the misgovernment of Bengal. This led to an
impeachment proceeding in the British Parliament that lasted seven years.
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Source 5
A major problem was that the Brahman pandits
“I impeach the gave different interpretations of local laws based on
common enemy and different schools of the dharmashastra. To bring about
uniformity, in 1775 eleven pandits were asked to compile
oppressor of all.” a digest of Hindu laws. N.B. Halhed translated this
digest into English. By 1778 a code of Muslim laws was
Here is a passage from also compiled for the benefit of European judges. Under
Edmund Burke’s eloquent the Regulating Act of 1773, a new Supreme Court was
opening speech during established, while a court of appeal – the Sadar Nizamat
the impeachment of Adalat – was also set up at Calcutta.
Warren Hastings: The principal figure in an Indian district was the
I impeach him in the Collector. As the title suggests, his main job was to
name of the people of collect revenue and taxes and maintain law and order
India, whose rights he in his district with the help of judges, police officers
has trodden under and darogas. His office – the Collectorate – became the
his foot and whose new centre of power and patronage that steadily
country he has turned replaced previous holders of authority.
into a desert. Lastly in
the name of human The Company army
nature itself, in the Colonial rule in India brought in some new ideas of
name of both the administration and reform but its power rested on its
sexes, in the name of military strength. The Mughal army was mainly
every age, in the composed of cavalry (sawars: trained soldiers on
name of every rank, I horseback) and infantry, that is, paidal (foot) soldiers.
impeach the common They were given training in archery (teer-andazi) and
enemy and oppressor
the use of the sword. The cavalry dominated the army
of all.
and the Mughal state did not feel the need to have a large
professionally trained infantry. The rural areas had a
large number of armed peasants and the local zamindars
often supplied the Mughals with paidal soldiers.
A change occurred in the eighteenth century when
Mughal successor states like Awadh and Benaras started
Dharmashastras – recruiting peasants into their armies and training them
Sanskrit texts as professional soldiers. The East India Company adopted
prescribing social rules the same method when it began recruitment for its own
and codes of behaviour, army, which came to be known as the sepoy army (from
composed from c. 500 BCE the Indian word sipahi, meaning soldier).
onwards As warfare technology changed from the 1820s, the
Sawar – Men on horses cavalry requirements of the Company’s army declined.
This is because the British empire was fighting in
Musket – A heavy gun
Burma, Afghanistan and Egypt where soldiers were
used by infantry soldiers
armed with muskets and matchlocks. The soldiers of
Matchlock – An early the Company’s army had to keep pace with changing
type of gun in which the military requirements and its infantry regiments now
powder was ignited by a became more important.
match In the early nineteenth century the British began
to develop a uniform military culture. Soldiers were
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Fig. 16 – A sawar of Bengal in
the service of the Company,
painted by an unknown Indian
artist, 1780
After the battles with the
Marathas and the Mysore rulers,
the Company realised the
importance of strengthening its
cavalry force.
increasingly subjected to European-style training, drill

and discipline that regulated their life far more than
before. Often this created problems since caste and
community feelings were ignored in building a force of
professional soldiers. Could individuals so easily
give up their caste and religious feelings? Could they
see themselves only as soldiers and not as members
of communities?
What did the sepoys feel? How did they react to the
changes in their lives and their identity – that is, their
sense of who they were? The Revolt of 1857 gives us a
glimpse into the world of the sepoys. You will read about
this revolt in Chapter 5.
Conclusion
Thus the East India Company was transformed from a
trading company to a territorial colonial power. The
arrival of new steam technology in the early nineteenth
century also aided this process. Till then it would take
anywhere between six and eight months to travel to
India by sea. Steamships reduced the journey time to
three weeks enabling more Britishers and their families
to come to a far- off country like India.
By 1857 the Company came to exercise direct rule
over about 63 per cent of the territory and 78 per cent
of the population of the Indian subcontinent. Combined
with its indirect influence on the remaining territory
and population of the country, the East India Company
had virtually the whole of India under its control.
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ELSEWHERE
Slave Trade in South Africa

The Dutch trading ships reached southern
Africa in the seventeenth century. Soon a
slave trade began. People were captured,
chained, and sold in slave markets. When
slavery ended in 1834 there were 36,774
privately owned slaves at the Cape –
located at the southern most tip of Africa.
A visitor to the Cape in 1824 has left
a moving account of what he saw at a
slave auction:
Having learned that there was to be
sale of cattle, farm-stock, etc by auction, … we halted our wagon for the purpose of
procuring fresh oxen. Among the stock … was a female slave and her three children.
The farmers examined them, as if they had been so many head of cattle. They were
sold separately, and to different purchasers. The tears, the anxiety, the anguish of the
mother, while she … cast heart-rending look upon her children, and the simplicity and
touching sorrow of the poor young ones while they clung to their distracted parent …
contrasted with the marked insensitivity and jocular countenances of the spectators
Quoted in Nigel Wordon et. al., The Chains that Bind us: a History of Slavery at the Cape, 1996.
Let’s imagine
You are living in
Let’s recall
England in the late
eighteenth or early 1. Match the following:
nineteenth century.
Diwani Tipu Sultan
How would you have
reacted to the stories “Tiger of Mysore” right to collect land revenue
of British conquests?
faujdari adalat Sepoy
Remember that you
would have read Rani Channamma criminal court
about the immense
sipahi led an anti-British
fortunes that many
movement in Kitoor
of the officials were
making.
2. Fill in the blanks:
(a) The British conquest of Bengal began with the
Battle of ___________.
(b) Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan were the rulers of
___________.
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(c) Dalhousie implemented the Doctrine of ___________.
(d) Maratha kingdoms were located mainly in the
___________ part of India.

(a) The Mughal empire became stronger in the
eighteenth century.
(b) The English East India Company was the only
European company that traded with India.
(c) Maharaja Ranjit Singh was the ruler of Punjab.
(d) The British did not introduce administrative
changes in the territories they conquered.
Let’s discuss
4. What attracted European trading companies to India?
5. What were the areas of conflict between the
Bengal nawabs and the East India Company?
6. How did the assumption of Diwani benefit the East
India Company?
7. Explain the system of “subsidiary alliance”.
8. In what way was the administration of the Company
different from that of Indian rulers?
9. Describe the changes that occurred in the composition
of the Company’s army.
Let’s do
10. After the British conquest of Bengal, Calcutta grew from
a small village to a big city. Find out about the culture,
architecture and the life of Europeans and Indians of the
city during the colonial period.
11. Collect pictures, stories, poems and information about
any of the following – the Rani of Jhansi, Mahadji Sindhia,
Haidar Ali, Maharaja Ranjit Singh, Lord Dalhousie or
any other contemporary ruler of your region.
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3 Ruling the Countryside
Fig. 1 – Robert Clive

accepting the Diwani
of Bengal, Bihar and
Orissa from the Mughal
ruler in 1765
The Company Becomes the Diwan

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

The Company had become the Diwan, but it still saw itself
primarily as a trader. It wanted a large revenue income but
was unwilling to set up any regular system of assessment
and collection. The effort was to increase the revenue as much
as it could and buy fine cotton and silk cloth as cheaply as
possible. Within five years the value of goods bought by the
Company in Bengal doubled. Before 1865, the Company had
purchased goods in India by importing gold and silver from
Britain. Now the revenue collected in Bengal could finance
the purchase of goods for export.
Fig. 2 – A weekly market
Soon it was clear that the Bengal economy was facing in Murshidabad in Bengal
a deep crisis. Artisans were deserting villages since they Peasants and artisans
were being forced to sell their goods to the Company at low from rural areas regularly
prices. Peasants were unable to pay the dues that were being came to these weekly
demanded from them. Artisanal production was in decline, markets (haats) to sell
their goods and buy what
and agricultural cultivation showed signs of collapse. Then they needed. These markets
in 1770 a terrible famine killed ten million people in Bengal. were badly affected during
About one-third of the population was wiped out. times of economic crisis.
RULING THE COUNTRYSIDE 27
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The need to improve agriculture
If the economy was in ruins, could the Company be
certain of its revenue income? Most Company officials
began to feel that investment in land had to be
encouraged and agriculture had to be improved.
How was this to be done? After two decades of debate
on the question, the Company finally introduced the
Permanent Settlement in 1793. By the terms of the
settlement, the rajas and taluqdars were recognised
as zamindars. They were asked to collect rent from
Fig. 3 – Charles Cornwallis
the peasants and pay revenue to the Company. The
amount to be paid was fixed permanently, that is, it
Cornwallis was the Governor-
General of India when the was not to be increased ever in future. It was felt that
Permanent Settlement was this would ensure a regular flow of revenue into the
introduced. Company’s coffers and at the same time encourage
the zamindars to invest in improving the land. Since
Source 1 the revenue demand of the state would not be
increased, the zamindar would benefit from increased
Colebrook on production from the land.
Bengal ryots
The problem
In many villages of The Permanent Settlement, however, created problems.
Bengal, some of the Company officials soon discovered that the zamindars
powerful ryots did not were in fact not investing in the improvement of land.
cultivate, but instead The revenue that had been fixed was so high that the
gave out their lands to zamindars found it difficult to pay. Anyone who failed to
others (the under-tenants), pay the revenue lost his zamindari. Numerous zamindaris
taking from them very were sold off at auctions organised by the Company.
high rents. In 1806, H. T. By the first decade of the nineteenth century the
Colebrook described the situation changed. The prices in the market rose and
conditions of these under- cultivation slowly expanded. This meant an increase in
tenants in Bengal: the income of the zamindars but no gain for the
The under-tenants, Company since it could not increase a revenue demand
depressed by an that had been fixed permanently
excessive rent in kind, Even then the zamindars did not have an interest in
and by usurious returns improving the land. Some had lost their lands in the
for the cattle, seed, and earlier years of the settlement; others now saw the
subsistence, advanced possibility of earning without the trouble and risk of
to them, can never investment. As long as the zamindars could give out the
extricate themselves land to tenants and get rent, they were not interested in
from debt. In so abject improving the land.
a state, they cannot
labour in spirit, while
they earn a scanty
subsistence without
Activity
Why do you think Colebrook is concerned with the
hope of bettering their
situation. conditions of the under-ryots in Bengal? Read the
preceding pages and suggest possible reasons.
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H.T.
On the other hand, in the villages, the cultivator
found the system extremely oppressive. The rent he paid Mahal – In British
to the zamindar was high and his right on the land was revenue records mahal
insecure. To pay the rent he had to often take a loan is a revenue estate
from the moneylender, and when he failed to pay the which may be a village
rent he was evicted from the land he had cultivated or a group of villages.
for generations.
A new system is devised

By the early nineteenth century many of the Company
officials were convinced that the system of revenue
had to be changed again. How could revenues be fixed
permanently at a time when the Company needed
more money to meet its expenses of administration
and trade?
In the North Wester n Provinces of the Bengal
Presidency (most of this area is now in Uttar Pradesh),
an Englishman called Holt Mackenzie devised the new
system which came into effect in 1822. He felt that Fig. 4 – Thomas Munro, Governor
the village was an important social institution in north of Madras (1819 -26)
Indian society and needed to be preserved. Under
his directions, collectors went from village to village,
inspecting the land, measuring the fields, and recording
the customs and rights of different groups. The
estimated revenue of each plot within a village
was added up to calculate the revenue that each
village (mahal) had to pay. This demand was to be
revised periodically, not permanently fixed. The charge
of collecting the revenue and paying it to the Company
was given to the village headman, rather than the
zamindar. This system came to be known as the
mahalwari settlement.
The Munro system

In the British territories in the south there was a similar
move away from the idea of Permanent Settlement. The
new system that was devised came to be known as the
ryotwar (or ryotwari ). It was tried on a small scale by
Captain Alexander Read in some of the areas that were
taken over by the Company after the wars with Tipu
Sultan. Subsequently developed by Thomas Munro, this
system was gradually extended all over south India.
Read and Munro felt that in the south there were no
traditional zamindars. The settlement, they argued, had
to be made directly with the cultivators (ryots) who had
tilled the land for generations. Their fields had to be
carefully and separately surveyed before the revenue
assessment was made. Munro thought that the British
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Activity should act as paternal father figures protecting the ryots
under their charge.
Imagine that you are a
Company representative All was not well
sending a report back Within a few years after the new systems were imposed
to England about the it was clear that all was not well with them. Driven by
conditions in rural areas the desire to increase the income from land, revenue
under Company rule. officials fixed too high a revenue demand. Peasants were
What would you write? unable to pay, ryots fled the countryside, and villages
became deserted in many regions. Optimistic officials
had imagined that the new systems would transform
the peasants into rich enterprising farmers. But this
did not happen.
Crops for Europe

The British also realised that the countryside could
not only yield revenue, it could also grow the crops
that Europe required. By the late eighteenth century
the Company was trying its best to expand the
cultivation of opium and indigo. In the century and a
half that followed, the British persuaded or forced
cultivators in various parts of India to produce other
crops: jute in Bengal, tea in Assam, sugarcane in the
United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh), wheat in Punjab,
cotton in Maharashtra and Punjab, rice in Madras.
How was this done? The British used a variety of
methods to expand the cultivation of crops that they
needed. Let us take a closer look at the story of one such
crop, one such method of production.
Does colour have a

history?
Figs. 5 and 6 are two
images of cotton prints.
The image on the
left (Fig. 5) shows a
kalamkari print created
by weavers of Andhra
Pradesh in India. On
the right is a floral
cotton print designed
and produced by
William Morris, a
famous poet and artist
of nineteenth-century
Fig. 5 – A kalamkari print, Fig. 6 – A Morris cotton print, late-
twentieth- century India nineteenth-century England Britain. There is one
thing common in the
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two prints: both use a rich blue colour – commonly called
indigo. Do you know how this colour was produced?
The blue that you see in these prints was produced
from a plant called indigo. It is likely that the blue dye
used in the Morris prints in nineteenth-century Britain
was manufactured from indigo plants cultivated in India.
For India was the biggest supplier of indigo in the world
at that time.
Why the demand for Indian indigo?

The indigo plant grows primarily in the tropics. By the
thirteenth century Indian indigo was being used by cloth
manufacturers in Italy, France and Britain to dye cloth.
However, only small amounts of Indian indigo reached
the European market and its price was very high.
European cloth manufacturers therefore had to depend
on another plant called woad to make violet and blue
dyes. Being a plant of the temperate zones, woad was
more easily available in Europe. It was grown in northern
Italy, southern France and in parts of Germany and
Britain. Worried by the competition from indigo, woad Plantation – A
producers in Europe pressurised their governments to large farm operated
ban the import of indigo. by a planter
Cloth dyers, however, preferred indigo as a dye. Indigo employing various
produced a rich blue colour, whereas the dye from woad forms of forced
was pale and dull. By the seventeenth century, European labour. Plantations
cloth producers persuaded their governments to relax are associated with
the ban on indigo import. The French began cultivating the production of
indigo in St Domingue in the Caribbean islands, the coffee, sugarcane,
Portuguese in Brazil, the English in Jamaica, and the tobacco, tea and
Spanish in Venezuela. Indigo plantations also came up cotton.
in many parts of North America.
By the end of the eighteenth century, the demand for
Indian indigo grew further. Britain began to industrialise,
and its cotton production expanded dramatically, creating
an enormous new demand for cloth dyes. While the
demand for indigo increased, its existing supplies from
the West Indies and America collapsed for a variety of
reasons. Between 1783 and 1789 the production of
indigo in the world fell by half. Cloth dyers in Britain
now desperately looked for new sources of indigo supply.
From where could this indigo be procured?
Britain turns to India

Faced with the rising demand for indigo in Europe, the
Company in India looked for ways to expand the area
under indigo cultivation.
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From the last decades
of the eighteenth century
indigo cultivation in
Bengal expanded rapidly
and Bengal indigo came
to dominate the world
market. In 1788 only about
30 per cent of the indigo
imported into Britain was
from India. By 1810, the
proportion had gone up to
95 per cent.
As the indigo trade
grew, commercial agents
and officials of the
Company began investing
in indigo production. Over
the years many Company
officials left their jobs to
look after their indigo
Fig. 7 – The Slave Revolt in business. Attracted by the prospect of high profits,
St Domingue, August 1791, numerous Scotsmen and Englishmen came to India and
painting by January Scuhodolski
became planters. Those who had no money to produce
In the eighteenth century,
French planters produced indigo
indigo could get loans from the Company and the banks
and sugar in the French colony that were coming up at the time.
of St Domingue in the Caribbean
islands. The African slaves who How was indigo cultivated?
worked on the plantations rose There were two main systems of indigo cultivation – nij
in rebellion in 1791, burning the
plantations and killing their rich and ryoti. Within the system of nij cultivation, the
planters. In 1792 France abolished planter produced indigo in lands that he directly
slavery in the French colonies. controlled. He either bought the land or rented it from
These events led to the collapse other zamindars and produced indigo by directly
of the indigo plantations on the
Caribbean islands.
employing hired labourers.
The problem with nij cultivation

The planters found it difficult to expand the area under
nij cultivation. Indigo could be cultivated only on fertile
lands, and these were all already densely populated.
Only small plots scattered over the landscape could be
acquired. Planters needed large areas in compact blocks
to cultivate indigo in plantations. Where could they get
Slave – A person who is such land from? They attempted to lease in the land
owned by someone else – around the indigo factory, and evict the peasants from
the slave owner. A slave the area. But this always led to conflicts and tension.
has no freedom and is Nor was labour easy to mobilise. A large plantation
compelled to work for required a vast number of hands to operate. And labour
the master. was needed precisely at a time when peasants were
usually busy with their rice cultivation.
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Nij cultivation on a large scale also required many
Bigha – A unit of
ploughs and bullocks. One bigha of indigo cultivation
measurement of land.
required two ploughs. This meant that a planter with
Before British rule, the
1,000 bighas would need 2,000 ploughs. Investing on
size of this area varied.
purchase and maintenance of ploughs was a big
In Bengal the British
problem. Nor could supplies be easily got from the
standardised it to about
peasants since their ploughs and bullocks were busy
one-third of an acre.
on their rice fields, again exactly at the time that the
indigo planters needed them.
Till the late nineteenth century, planters were therefore
reluctant to expand the area under nij cultivation. Less
than 25 per cent of the land producing indigo was under
this system. The rest was under an alternative mode of
cultivation – the ryoti system.
Indigo on the land of ryots

Under the ryoti system, the planters
forced the ryots to sign a contract,
an agreement (satta). At times
they pressurised the village
headmen to sign the contract
on behalf of the ryots. Those
who signed the contract got
cash advances from the
planters at low rates of interest
to produce indigo. But the loan
committed the ryot to cultivating
indigo on at least 25 per cent of
the area under his holding. The
planter provided the seed and the
drill, while the cultivators prepared
the soil, sowed the seed and looked after the crop. Fig. 8 – Workers harvesting
indigo in early-nineteenth-century
Bengal. From Colesworthy Grant,
Rural Life in Bengal, 1860
In India the indigo plant was
cut mostly by men.
Fig. 9 – The Indigo plant being

brought from the fields to the
factory
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How was indigo produced?
Fermenting
Vat
Beater
Vat
Fig. 10 – An indigo factory located near indigo fields, painting by

William Simpson, 1863
The indigo villages were usually around indigo factories owned
by planters. After harvest, the indigo plant was taken to the
vats in the indigo factory. Three or four vats were needed to
manufacture the dye. Each vat had a separate function. The
leaves stripped off the indigo plant were first soaked in warm
water in a vat (known as the fermenting or steeper vat) for several
hours. When the plants fermented, the liquid began to boil and
bubble. Now the rotten leaves were taken out and the liquid
drained into another vat that was placed just below the first vat.
In the second vat (known as the beater vat) the solution was
continuously stirred and beaten with paddles. When the liquid
Fig. 11 – Women usually gradually turned green and then blue, lime water was added to
carried the indigo plant to the vat. Gradually the indigo separated out in flakes, a muddy
the vats. sediment settled at the bottom of the vat and a clear liquid rose
to the surface. The liquid was drained off and the sediment –
the indigo pulp – transferred
Fig. 12 – The Vat-Beater
to another vat (known as
The indigo worker the settling vat), and
here is standing with then pressed and
the paddle that was dried for sale.
used to stir the
solution in the vat.
These workers had to
remain in waist-deep
water for over eight
hours to beat the
indigo solution. Fig. 13 – The indigo
is ready for sale
Here you can see the last stage of the production –
Vat – A fermenting workers stamping and cutting the indigo pulp that
or storage vessel has been pressed and moulded. In the background you
can see a worker carrying away the blocks for drying.
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Fig. 8
When the crop was delivered to the planter after the
harvest, a new loan was given to the ryot, and the cycle
started all over again. Peasants who were initially
tempted by the loans soon realised how harsh the system
was. The price they got for the indigo they produced
was very low and the cycle of loans never ended.
There were other problems too. The planters usually
insisted that indigo be cultivated on the best soils in
which peasants preferred to cultivate rice. Indigo,
moreover, had deep roots and it exhausted the soil
rapidly. After an indigo harvest the land could not be
sown with rice. Source 2
The “Blue Rebellion” and After A song from an

In March 1859 thousands of ryots in Bengal refused to
indigo-producing
grow indigo. As the rebellion spread, ryots refused to village
pay rents to the planters, and attacked indigo factories
armed with swords and spears, bows and arrows. In moments of struggle
Women turned up to fight with pots, pans and kitchen people often sing songs
implements. Those who worked for the planters were to inspire each other
socially boycotted, and the gomasthas – agents of and to build a sense of
planters – who came to collect rent were beaten up. collective unity. Such
Ryots swore they would no longer take advances to sow songs give us a glimpse
indigo nor be bullied by the planters’ lathiyals – the of their feelings. During
lathi-wielding strongmen maintained by the planters. the indigo rebellion
Why did the indigo peasants decide that they would many such songs could
no longer remain silent? What gave them the power be heard in the villages
to rebel? Clearly, the indigo system was intensely of lower Bengal. Here is
oppressive. But those who are oppressed do not always one such song:
rise up in rebellion. They do so only at times. The long lathis
In 1859, the indigo ryots felt that they had the wielded by the
support of the local zamindars and village headmen in planter of Mollahati /
their rebellion against the planters. In many villages, now lie in a cluster
headmen who had been forced to sign indigo contracts, The babus of Kolkata
mobilised the indigo peasants and fought pitched have sailed down /
battles with the lathiyals. In other places even the to see the great fight
zamindars went around villages urging the ryots to
This time the raiyats
resist the planters. These zamindars were unhappy with
are all ready, / they
the increasing power of the planters and angry at being
will no longer be
forced by the planters to give them land on long leases.
beaten in silence
The indigo peasants also imagined that the British
They will no longer
government would support them in their struggle
give up their life /
against the planters. After the Revolt of 1857 the
without fighting the
British government was particularly worried about the
lathiyals.
possibility of another popular rebellion. When the news
spread of a simmering revolt in the indigo districts,
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the Lieutenant Governor toured the region in the winter
of 1859. The ryots saw the tour as a sign of government
sympathy for their plight. When in Barasat, the
magistrate Ashley Eden issued a notice stating that
ryots would not be compelled to accept indigo contracts,
word went around that Queen Victoria had declared
that indigo need not be sown. Eden was trying to placate
the peasants and control an explosive situation, but
his action was read as support for the rebellion.
As the rebellion spread, intellectuals from Calcutta
rushed to the indigo districts. They wrote of the misery
of the ryots, the tyranny of the planters, and the horrors
of the indigo system.
Worried by the rebellion, the government brought
in the military to protect the planters from assault,
and set up the Indigo Commission to enquire into the
system of indigo production. The Commission held the
planters guilty, and criticised them for the coercive
methods they used with indigo cultivators. It declared
that indigo production was not profitable for ryots. The
Commission asked the ryots to fulfil their existing
contracts but also told them that they could refuse to
produce indigo in future.
Source 3
“I would rather beg than sow indigo”

Hadji Mulla, an indigo cultivator of Chandpore, Thana
Hardi, was interviewed by the members of the Indigo
Commission on Tuesday, 5 June 1860. This is what he
said in answer to some of the questions:
W. S. Seton Karr, President of the Indigo
Commission: Are you now willing to sow indigo;
and if not on what fresh terms would you be willing
to do it?
Activity Hadji Mulla: I am not willing to sow, and I don’t
know that any fresh terms would satisfy me.
Imagine you are a
witness giving evidence Mr Sale: Would you not be willing to sow at a
before the Indigo rupee a bundle?
Commission. W.S. Seton Hadji Mulla: No I would not; rather than sow
Karr asks you “On what indigo I will go to another country; I would rather
condition will ryots grow beg than sow indigo.
indigo?” What will your Indigo Commission Report, Vol. II, Minutes of Evidence, p. 67
answer be?
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After the revolt, indigo production collapsed in Bengal. But
the planters now shifted their operation to Bihar. With the
discovery of synthetic dyes in the late nineteenth century their
business was severely affected, but yet they managed to expand
production. When Mahatma Gandhi returned from South
Africa, a peasant from Bihar persuaded him to visit Champaran
and see the plight of the indigo cultivators there. Mahatma
Gandhi’s visit in 1917 marked the beginning of the Champaran
movement against the indigo planters.
ELSEWHERE
Indigo making in the West Indies
In the early eighteenth century, a French missionary, Jean Baptiste Labat,
travelled to the Caribbean islands, and wrote extensively about the region.
Published in one of his
books, this image shows
all the stages of indigo
production in the French
slave plantations of
the region.
You can see the slave
workers putting the
indigo plant into the
settler vat on the left.
Another worker is
churning the liquid with
a mechanical churner
in a vat (second from
right). Two workers are Fig. 14 – Making indigo in a Caribbean slave plantation
carrying the indigo pulp
hung up in bags to be dried. In the foreground two others are mixing the indigo
pulp to be put into moulds. The planter is at the centre of the picture standing on
the high ground supervising the slave workers.
Let’s recall
1. Match the following:
ryot village
mahal peasant
nij cultivation on ryot’s lands
ryoti cultivation on planter’s own land
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Let’s imagine (a) Growers of woad in Europe saw __________
as a crop which would provide competition to
Imagine a their earnings.
conversation between
a planter and a (b) The demand for indigo increased in late-
peasant who is being eighteenth-century Britain because of __________.
forced to grow indigo.
What reasons would (c) The international demand for indigo was
the planter give to affected by the discovery of __________.
persuade the peasant?
What problems would (d) The Champaran movement was against
the peasant point __________.
out? Enact their
conversation.
Let’s discuss
3. Describe the main features of the Permanent
Settlement.
4. How was the mahalwari system different from the
Permanent Settlement?
5. Give two problems which arose with the new Munro
system of fixing revenue.
6. Why were ryots reluctant to grow indigo?
7. What were the circumstances which led to the
eventual collapse of indigo production in Bengal?
Let’s do
8. Find out more about the Champaran movement
and Mahatma Gandhi’s role in it.
9. Look into the history of either tea or coffee
plantations in India. See how the life of workers in
these plantations was similar to or different from
that of workers in indigo plantations.
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4 Tribals, Dikus and the
Vision of a Golden Age
In 1895, a man named Birsa was seen roaming the forests

and villages of Chottanagpur in Jharkhand. People said he
had miraculous powers – he could cure all diseases and
multiply grain. Birsa himself declared that God had
appointed him to save his people from trouble, free them
from the slavery of dikus (outsiders). Soon thousands began
following Birsa, believing that he was bhagwan (God) and
had come to solve all their problems.
Birsa was born in a family of Mundas – a tribal group that
lived in Chottanagpur. But his followers included other Fig. 1 – Women of the
tribals of the region – Santhals and Oraons. All of them in Dongria Kandha tribe in
Orissa wade through
different ways were unhappy with the changes they the river on the way to
were experiencing and the problems they were facing under the market
British rule. Their familiar ways of life
seemed to be disappearing, their livelihoods
were under threat, and their religion appeared
to be in danger.
What problems did Birsa set out to
resolve? Who were the outsiders being
referred to as dikus, and how did they enslave
the people of the region? What was happening
to the tribal people under the British? How
did their lives change? These are some of the
questions you will read about in this chapter.
You have read about tribal societies last
year. Most tribes had customs and rituals
that were very different from those laid
down by Brahmans. These societies also
did not have the sharp social divisions that
were characteristic of caste societies. All
those who belonged to the same tribe thought
of themselves as sharing common ties
of kinship. However, this did not mean
that there were no social and economic
differences within tribes.
39
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How Did Tribal Groups Live?
By the nineteenth century, tribal people in different
parts of India were involved in a variety of activities.
Some were jhum cultivators

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

In many regions tribal groups lived by hunting animals
and gathering forest produce. They saw forests as
Fig. 2 – Dongria Kandha women essential for survival. The Khonds were such a
in Orissa take home pandanus community living in the forests of Orissa. They regularly
leaves from the forest to make went out on collective hunts and then divided the
plates
meat amongst themselves. They ate fruits and roots
collected from the forest
and cooked food with the
oil they extracted from
the seeds of the sal and
mahua. They used many
forest shrubs and herbs
for medicinal purposes,
and sold forest produce in
the local markets. The
local weavers and leather
workers turned to the
Khonds when they needed
supplies of kusum and
palash flowers to colour
their clothes and leather.
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From where did these forest
people get their supplies of rice
and other grains? At times they
exchanged goods – getting what
they needed in return for their
valuable forest produce. At other
times they bought goods with the
small amount of earnings they
had. Some of them did odd jobs
in the villages, carrying loads or
building roads, while others
laboured in the fields of peasants
and farmers. When supplies of
forest produce shrank, tribal
people had to increasingly
wander around in search of work
as labourers. But many of
them – like the Baigas of central
India – were reluctant to do
work for others. The Baigas saw
themselves as people of the
forest, who could only live on the
produce of the forest. It was
below the dignity of a Baiga to
become a labourer.
Tribal groups often needed to
buy and sell in order to be able Fig. 3 – Location of some tribal
to get the goods that were not produced within the groups in India
locality. This led to their dependence on traders and
moneylenders. Traders came around with things for
sale, and sold the goods at high prices. Moneylenders
gave loans with which the tribals met their cash needs,
adding to what they earned. But the interest charged
on the loans was usually very high. So for the tribals,
market and commerce often meant debt and poverty.
They therefore came to see the moneylender and trader
as evil outsiders and the cause of their misery.
Some herded animals

Many tribal groups lived by herding and rearing animals.
They were pastoralists who moved with their herds of
cattle or sheep according to the seasons. When the grass
in one place was exhausted, they moved to another area.
The Van Gujjars of the Punjab hills and the Labadis of
Andhra Pradesh were cattle herders, the Gaddis of Kulu
were shepherds, and the Bakarwals of Kashmir reared
goats. You will read more about them in your history
book next year.
TRIBALS, DIKUS AND THE VISION OF A GOLDEN AGE 41
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Source 1
A time to hunt, a time to sow, a time to move to a new field

Have you ever noticed that people living in different types of societies do not
share the same notion of work and time? The lives of the shifting cultivators and
hunters in different regions were regulated by a calendar and division of tasks
for men and women.
Verrier Elwin, a British anthropologist who lived among the Baigas and
Khonds of central India for many years in the 1930s and 1940s, gives us a picture
of what this calendar and division of tasks was like. He writes:
In Chait women went to clearings to ... cut stalks that were already reaped;
men cut large trees and go for their ritual hunt. The hunt began at full moon
from the east. Traps of bamboo were used for hunting. The women gathered
fruits like sago, tamarind and mushroom. Baiga women can only gather roots
or kanda and mahua seeds. Of all the adivasis in Central India, the Baigas
were known as the best hunters … In Baisakh the firing of the forest took
place, the women gathered unburnt wood to burn. Men continued to hunt,
but nearer their villages. In Jeth sowing took place and hunting still went on.
From Asadh to Bhadon the men worked in the fields. In Kuar the first fruits of
beans were ripened and in Kartik kutki became ripe. In Aghan every crop was
ready and in Pus winnowing took place.
Pus was also the time for dances and
marriages. In Magh shifts were made to
new bewars and hunting-gathering was
the main subsistence activity.
The cycle described above took place
in the first year. In the second year there
was more time for hunting as only a few
crops had to be sown and harvested. But
since there was enough food the men
lived in the bewars. It was only in the
third year that the diet had to be
supplemented with the forest products.
Adapted from Verrier Elwin, Baiga (1939) and
Elwin’s unpublished ‘Notes on the Khonds’ (Verrier
Elwin Papers, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library)
Activity
Look carefully at the tasks that
Baiga men and women did. Do you
Fig. 4 – A Santhal girl carrying firewood,
see any pattern? What were the
Bihar, 1946
differences in the types of work
Children go with their mothers to the
forest to gather forest produce. that they were expected to perform?
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Some took to settled cultivation
Bewar – A term used
Even before the nineteenth century, many from within in Madhya Pradesh for
the tribal groups had begun settling down, and shifting cultivation
cultivating their fields in one place year after year,
instead of moving from place to place. They began to
use the plough, and gradually got rights over the land
they lived on. In many cases, like the Mundas of
Chottanagpur, the land belonged to the clan as a whole.
All members of the clan were regarded as descendants
of the original settlers, who had first cleared the land.
Therefore, all of them had rights on the land. Very often
some people within the clan acquired more power
than others, some became chiefs and others followers.
Powerful men often rented out their land instead of
cultivating it themselves.
British officials saw settled tribal groups like the
Gonds and Santhals as more civilised than hunter -
gatherers or shifting cultivators. Those who lived in
the forests were considered to be wild and savage: they
needed to be settled and civilised.
How Did Colonial Rule Affect Tribal

Lives?
The lives of tribal groups changed during British rule.
Let us see what these changes were.
What happened to tribal chiefs?

Before the arrival of the British, in many areas the
tribal chiefs were important people. They enjoyed a
certain amount of economic power and had the right to
administer and control their territories. In some places
they had their own police and decided on the local rules
of land and forest management. Under British rule,
the functions and powers of the tribal chiefs changed
considerably. They were allowed to keep their land titles
over a cluster of villages and rent out lands, but they
lost much of their administrative power and were forced
to follow laws made by British officials in India. They
also had to pay tribute to the British, and discipline
the tribal groups on behalf of the British. They lost the
authority they had earlier enjoyed amongst their people,
and were unable to fulfil their traditional functions.
Fig. 5 – A log house being built in
a village of the Nishi tribes of
What happened to the shifting cultivators? Arunachal Pradesh.
The British were uncomfortable with groups who moved The entire village helps when log
about and did not have a fixed home. They wanted tribal huts are built.
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Fig. 6 – Bhil women cultivating in groups to settle down and become peasant cultivators.
a forest in Gujarat Settled peasants were easier to control and administer
Shifting cultivation continues than people who were always on the move. The British
in many forest areas of Gujarat. also wanted a regular revenue source for the state. So
You can see that trees have been
cut and land cleared to create they introduced land settlements – that is, they
patches for cultivation. measured the land, defined the rights of each individual
to that land, and fixed the revenue demand for the state.
Some peasants were declared landowners, others
tenants. As you have seen (Chapter 2), the tenants
were to pay rent to the landowner who in turn paid
revenue to the state.
The British effort to settle jhum cultivators was not
very successful. Settled plough cultivation is not easy
in areas where water is scarce and the soil is dry. In
fact, jhum cultivators who took to plough cultivation
often suffered, since their fields did not produce good
yields. So the jhum cultivators in north-east India
insisted on continuing with their traditional practice.
Facing widespread protests, the British had to
ultimately allow them the right to carry on shifting
cultivation in some parts of the forest.
Fig. 7 – T ribal workers in a rice field in Andhra Pradesh

Note the difference between rice cultivation in the flat plains and in
the forests.
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Forest laws and their impact
The life of tribal groups, as you have seen, was directly
connected to the forest. So changes in forest laws had
a considerable effect on tribal lives. The British extended
their control over all forests and declared that forests
were state property. Some forests were classified as
Reserved Forests for they produced timber which the
British wanted. In these forests people were not allowed
to move freely, practise jhum cultivation, collect fruits,
or hunt animals. How were jhum cultivators to survive
in such a situation? Many were therefore forced to move
to other areas in search of work and livelihood.
But once the British stopped the tribal people from
living inside forests, they faced a problem. From where Sleeper – The horizontal
would the Forest Department get its labour to cut trees planks of wood on which
for railway sleepers and to transport logs? railway lines are laid
Colonial officials came up with a solution. They
decided that they would give jhum cultivators small
patches of land in the forests and allow them to cultivate
these on the condition that those who lived in the
villages would have to provide labour to the Forest
Department and look after the forests. So in many
regions the Forest Department established forest
villages to ensure a regular supply of cheap labour.
Source 2
“In this land of the English how hard it is to live”

In the1930s Verrier Elwin visited the land of the Baigas – a tribal group in
central India. He wanted to know about them – their customs and practices,
their art and folklore. He recorded many songs that lamented the hard
time the Baigas were having under British rule.
In this land of the English how hard it is to live
How hard it is to live
In the village sits the landlord
In the gate sits the Kotwar
In the garden sits the Patwari
In the field sits the government
In this land of the English how hard it is to live
To pay cattle tax we have to sell cow
To pay forest tax we have to sell buffalo
To pay land tax we have to sell bullock
How are we to get our food?
In this land of the English
Quoted in Verrier Elwin and Shamrao Hivale, Songs of the Maikal, p. 316.
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Many tribal groups reacted against the
colonial forest laws. They disobeyed the
new rules, continued with practices that
were declared illegal, and at times rose
in open rebellion. Such was the revolt of
Songram Sangma in 1906 in Assam, and
the forest satyagraha of the 1930s in the
Central Provinces.
The problem with trade

During the nineteenth century, tribal
groups found that traders and money-
lenders were coming into the forests
more often, wanting to buy forest
produce, offering cash loans, and asking
them to work for wages. It took tribal
groups some time to understand the
consequences of what was happening.
Let us consider the case of the silk
growers. In the eighteenth century, Indian
silk was in demand in European markets.
The fine quality of Indian silk was highly
Fig. 8 – Godara women weaving
valued and exports from India increased
rapidly. As the market expanded, East India Company
officials tried to encourage silk production to meet the
growing demand.
Hazaribagh, in present-day Jharkhand, was an area
where the Santhals reared cocoons. The
traders dealing in silk sent in their
agents who gave loans to the tribal
people and collected the cocoons.
The growers were paid Rs 3 to Rs 4
for a thousand cocoons. These
were then exported to
Burdwan or Gaya where
they were sold at five
times the price. The
middlemen – so called
because they arranged
deals between the
Fig. 9 – A Hajang exporters and silk
woman weaving a mat growers – made huge
For women, domestic profits. The silk growers
work was not confined earned very little.
to the home. They Understandably, many
carried their babies
with them to the
tribal groups saw the
fields and the market and the traders
factories. as their main enemies.
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Fig. 10 – Coal miners of
Bihar, 1948
In the 1920s about 50 per
cent of the miners in the
Jharia and Raniganj coal
mines of Bihar were
tribals. Work deep down in
the dark and suffocating
mines was not only back-
breaking and dangerous, it
was often literally killing.
In the 1920s over 2,000
workers died every year in
the coal mines in India.
The search for work

The plight of the tribals who had to go far away from their
homes in search of work was even worse. From the late
nineteenth century, tea plantations started coming up and
mining became an important industry. Tribals were recruited
in large numbers to work the tea plantations of Assam and
the coal mines of Jharkhand. They were recruited through
contractors who paid them miserably low wages, and
prevented them from returning home. Activity
Find out whether
A Closer Look the conditions of
work in the mines
Through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, tribal groups have changed
in different parts of the country rebelled against the changes now. Check how
in laws, the restrictions on their practices, the new taxes many people die in
they had to pay, and the exploitation by traders and mines every year,
moneylenders. The Kols rebelled in 1831-32, Santhals rose and what are the
in revolt in 1855, the Bastar Rebellion in central India broke reasons for their
out in 1910 and the Warli Revolt in Maharashtra in 1940. death.
The movement that Birsa led was one such movement.
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Source 3
Birsa Munda
‘Blood trickles from Birsa was born in the mid-1870s. The son of a poor
father, he grew up around the forests of Bohonda,
my shoulders’ grazing sheep, playing the flute, and dancing in the
local akhara. Forced by poverty, his father had to move
The songs the Mundas from place to place looking for work. As an adolescent,
sang bemoaned their Birsa heard tales of the Munda uprisings of the past
misery. and saw the sirdars (leaders) of the community urging
Alas! under [the the people to revolt. They talked of a golden age when the
drudgery of] forced Mundas had been free of the oppression of dikus, and
labour said there would be a time when the ancestral right of
Blood trickles from the community would be restored. They saw themselves
my shoulders as the descendants of the original settlers of the region,
Day and night the
fighting for their land (mulk ki larai), reminding people
emissary from the of the need to win back their kingdom.
zamindars, Birsa went to the local missionary school, and
Annoys and irritates listened to the sermons of missionaries. There too he
me, day and night I heard it said that it was possible for the Mundas to
groan attain the Kingdom of Heaven, and regain their lost
Alas! This is my rights. This would be possible if they became good
condition Christians and gave up their “bad practices”. Later Birsa
also spent some time in the company of a prominent
I do not have a home,
Vaishnav preacher. He wore the sacred thread, and
where shall I get
happiness began to value the importance of purity and piety.
Alas! Birsa was deeply influenced by many of the ideas he
K.S. Singh, Birsa Munda and
came in touch with in his growing-up years. His
His Movement, p.12. movement was aimed at reforming tribal society. He
urged the Mundas to give up drinking liquor, clean their
village, and stop believing in witchcraft and sorcery. But
we must remember that Birsa also turned against
missionaries and Hindu landlords. He saw them as
outside forces that were ruining the Munda way of life.
In 1895 Birsa urged his followers to recover their
glorious past. He talked of a golden age in the past – a
Vaishnav – Worshippers
satyug (the age of truth) – when Mundas lived a good
of Vishnu
life, constructed embankments, tapped natural springs,
planted trees and orchards, practised cultivation to
earn their living. They did not kill their brethren and
relatives. They lived honestly. Birsa also wanted people
to once again work on their land, settle down and
cultivate their fields.
What worried British officials most was the political
aim of the Birsa movement, for it wanted to drive out
missionaries, moneylenders, Hindu landlords, and the
government and set up a Munda Raj with Birsa at
its head. The movement identified all these forces as
the cause of the misery the Mundas were suffering.
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The land policies of the British were destroying
their traditional land system, Hindu landlords and
moneylenders were taking over their land, and
missionaries were criticising their traditional culture.
As the movement spread the British officials decided
to act. They arrested Birsa in 1895, convicted him on
charges of rioting and jailed him for two years.
When Birsa was released in 1897 he began touring
the villages to gather support. He used traditional
symbols and language to rouse people, urging them to
destroy “Ravana” (dikus and the Europeans) and
establish a kingdom under his leadership. Birsa’s
followers began targeting the symbols of diku and
European power. They attacked police stations and
churches, and raided the property of moneylenders and
zamindars. They raised the white flag as a symbol of
Birsa Raj.
In 1900 Birsa died of cholera and the movement
faded out. However, the movement was significant
in at least two ways. First – it forced the colonial
government to introduce laws so that the land of the ELSEWHERE
tribals could not be easily taken over by dikus.
Second – it showed once again that the tribal people Why do we
had the capacity to protest against injustice and
need cash!
express their anger against colonial rule. They did this
in their own specific way, inventing their own rituals There are many reasons why
and symbols of struggle. tribal and other social groups
often do not wish to produce
for the market. This tribal song
from Papua New Guinea gives
us a glimpse of how the tribals
there viewed the market.
We say cash,
Let’s recall Is unsatisfactory trash;
It won’t keep off rain
And it gives me pain
1. Fill in the blanks: So why should I work my guts
From coconut trees
(a) The British described the tribal people as For these government mutts;
____________. Cash cropping is all very well
If you’ve got something to sell
(b) The method of sowing seeds in jhum cultivation But tell me sir why,
is known as ____________. If there’s nothing to buy;
Should I bother?
(c) The tribal chiefs got ____________ titles in central Adapted from a song quoted in
India under the British land settlements. Cohn, Clarke and Haswell, eds, The
Economy of Subsistence Agriculture,
(d) Tribals went to work in the ____________ of Assam (1970).
and the ____________ in Bihar.
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Let’s imagine (a) Jhum cultivators plough the land and sow
seeds.
Imagine you are a
jhum cultivator living (b) Cocoons were bought from the Santhals and
in a forest village sold by the traders at five times the purchase
in the nineteenth price.
century. You have
just been told that (c) Birsa urged his followers to purify themselves,
the land you were give up drinking liquor and stop believing in
born on no longer witchcraft and sorcery.
belongs to you. In a
meeting with British (d) The British wanted to preserve the tribal way
officials you try to of life.
explain the kinds of
problems you face.
What would you say?
Let’s discuss
3. What problems did shifting cultivators face
under British rule?
4. How did the powers of tribal chiefs change under
colonial rule?
5. What accounts for the anger of the tribals against
the dikus?
6. What was Birsa’s vision of a golden age? Why do
you think such a vision appealed to the people of
the region?
Let’s do
7. Find out from your parents, friends or teachers,
the names of some heroes of other tribal revolts in
the twentieth century. Write their story in your
own words.
8. Choose any tribal group living in India today. Find
out about their customs and way of life, and how
their lives have changed in the last 50 years.
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5 When People Rebel
1857 and After
Fig. 1 – Sepoys and peasants

gather forces for the revolt that
spread across the plains of north
India in 1857
Policies and the People

In the previous chapters you looked at the policies of
the East India Company and the effect they had on
different people. Kings, queens, peasants, landlords,
tribals, soldiers were all affected in different ways. You
have also seen how people resist policies and actions
that harm their interests or go against their sentiments.
Nawabs lose their power

Since the mid-eighteenth century, nawabs and rajas
had seen their power erode. They had gradually lost
their authority and honour. Residents had been
stationed in many courts, the freedom of the rulers
reduced, their armed forces disbanded, and their
revenues and territories taken away by stages.
Many ruling families tried to negotiate with the
Company to protect their interests. For example, Rani
Lakshmibai of Jhansi wanted the Company to recognise
her adopted son as the heir to the kingdom after the
death of her husband. Nana Saheb, the adopted son of
51
2019-200
Peshwa Baji Rao II, pleaded that he be given his father’s
pension when the latter died. However, the Company,
confident of its superiority and military powers, turned
down these pleas.
Awadh was one of the last territories to be annexed.
In 1801, a subsidiary alliance was imposed on Awadh,
and in 1856 it was taken over. Governor -General
Dalhousie declared that the territory was being
misgoverned and British rule was needed to ensure
proper administration.
The Company even began to plan how to bring the
Mughal dynasty to an end. The name of the Mughal
king was removed from the coins minted by the
Company. In 1849, Gover nor -General Dalhousie
announced that after the death of Bahadur Shah Zafar,
the family of the king would be shifted out of the Red
Fort and given another place in Delhi to reside in. In
1856, Governor-General Canning decided that Bahadur
Shah Zafar would be the last Mughal king and after
his death none of his descendants would be recognised
as kings – they would just be called princes.
The peasants and the sepoys

In the countryside peasants and zamindars resented
the high taxes and the rigid methods of revenue
collection. Many failed to pay back their loans to the
moneylenders and gradually lost the lands they had
tilled for generations.
The Indian sepoys in the employ of the Company
also had reasons for discontent. They were unhappy
about their pay, allowances and conditions of service.
Some of the new rules, moreover, violated their religious
sensibilities and beliefs. Did you know that in those
days many people in the country believed that if they
crossed the sea they would lose their religion and caste?
So when in 1824 the sepoys were told to go to Burma by
the sea route to fight for the Company, they refused to
follow the order, though they agreed to go by the land
route. They were severely punished, and since the issue
did not die down, in 1856 the Company passed a new
Activity law which stated that every new person who took up
Imagine you are a sepoy
employment in the Company’s army had to agree to
in the Company army,
serve overseas if required.
advising your nephew
not to take employment Sepoys also reacted to what was happening in the
in the army. What reasons countryside. Many of them were peasants and had
would you give? families living in the villages. So the anger of the
peasants quickly spread among the sepoys.
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Responses to reforms
The British believed that Indian society had to
be reformed. Laws were passed to stop the
practice of sati and to encourage the remarriage
of widows. English-language education was
actively promoted. After 1830, the Company
allowed Christian missionaries to function
freely in its domain and even own land and
property. In 1850, a new law was passed to
make conversion to Christianity easier. This
law allowed an Indian who had converted to
Christianity to inherit the property of his
ancestors. Many Indians began to feel that the
British were destroying their religion, their
social customs and their traditional way of life.
There were of course other Indians who
wanted to change existing social practices. You
will read about these reformers and reform
movements in Chapter 7.
Through the Eyes of the People

Fig. 2 – Sepoys exchange news
To get a glimpse of what people were thinking and rumours in the bazaars of
those days about British rule, study Sources 1 and 2. north India
Source 1
The list of eighty-four rules

Given here are excerpts from the book Majha Pravaas, written by Vishnubhatt
Godse, a Brahman from a village in Maharashtra. He and his uncle had set out
to attend a yajna being organised in Mathura. Vishnubhatt writes that they met
some sepoys on the way who told them that they should not proceed on the
journey because a massive upheaval was going to break out in three days.
The sepoys said:
the English were determined to wipe out the religions of the Hindus and the
Muslims … they had made a list of eighty-four rules and announced these
in a gathering of all big kings and princes in Calcutta. They said that the
kings refused to accept these rules and warned the English of dire
consequences and massive upheaval if these are implemented … that the
kings all returned to their capitals in great anger … all the big people
began making plans. A date was fixed for the war of religion and the secret
plan had been circulated from the cantonment in Meerut by letters sent to
different cantonments.
Vishnubhatt Godse, Majha Pravaas, pp. 23-24.
WHEN PEOPLE REBEL 53
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Source 2
“There was soon excitement in every regiment”

Another account we have from those days are the memoirs of Subedar Sitaram
Pande. Sitaram Pande was recruited in 1812 as a sepoy in the Bengal Native
Army. He served the English for 48 years and retired in 1860. He helped the
British to suppress the rebellion though his own son was a rebel and was
killed by the British in front of his eyes. On retirement he was persuaded by
his Commanding Officer, Norgate, to write his memoirs. He completed the
writing in 1861 in Awadhi and Norgate translated it into English and had it
published under the title From Sepoy to Subedar.
Here is an excerpt from what Sitaram Pande wrote:
It is my humble opinion that this seizing of Oudh filled the minds of the
Sepoys with distrust and led them to plot against the Government. Agents
of the Nawab of Oudh and also of the King of Delhi were sent all over
India to discover the temper of the army. They worked upon the feelings
of sepoys, telling them how treacherously the foreigners had behaved
towards their king. They invented ten thousand lies and promises to
persuade the soldiers to mutiny and turn against their masters, the English,
with the object of restoring the Emperor of Delhi to the throne. They
maintained that this was wholly within the army’s powers if the soldiers
would only act together and do as they were advised.
Fig. 3 – Rebel sepoys at Meerut attack officers, enter their homes and set fire to buildings
Source 2 contd.
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Source 2 contd.
It chanced that about this time the Sarkar sent Activity

parties of men from each regiment to different 1 . What were the
garrisons for instructions in the use of the new rifle. important concerns
These men performed the new drill for some time in the minds of the
until a report got about by some means or the other, people according to
that the cartridges used for these new rifles were Sitaram and according
greased with the fat of cows and pigs. The men from to Vishnubhatt?
our regiment wrote to others in the regiment telling
2 . What role did they
them about this, and there was soon excitement in
think the rulers were
every regiment. Some men pointed out that in forty
playing? What role did
years’ service nothing had ever been done by the
the sepoys seem to
Sarkar to insult their religion, but as I have already
mentioned the sepoys’ minds had been inflamed by play?
the seizure of Oudh. Interested parties were quick
to point out that the great aim of the English was to
turn us all into Christians, and they had therefore
introduced the cartridge in order to bring this about,
since both Mahommedans and Hindus would be
defiled by using it.
The Colonel sahib was of the opinion that the
excitement, which even he could not fail to see, would
pass off, as it had done before, and he recommended
me to go to my home.
Sitaram Pande, From Sepoy to Subedar, pp. 162-63.
A Mutiny Becomes a Popular Rebellion

Though struggles between rulers and the ruled are not
unusual, sometimes such struggles become quite
widespread as a popular resistance so that the power of
the state breaks down. A very large number of people
begin to believe that they have a common enemy and Mutiny – When soldiers
rise up against the enemy at the same time. For such as a group disobey their
a situation to develop people have to organise, officers in the army
communicate, take initiative and display the confidence
to turn the situation around.
Such a situation developed in the northern parts of
India in 1857. After a hundred years of conquest and
administration, the English East India Company faced
a massive rebellion that started in May 1857 and
threatened the Company’s very presence in India.
Sepoys mutinied in several places beginning from
Meerut and a large number of people from different
sections of society rose up in rebellion. Some regard it
as the biggest armed resistance to colonialism in the
nineteenth century anywhere in the world.
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Fig. 4 – The battle in the
cavalry lines
From Meerut to Delhi
On the evening of 3 July On 29 March 1857, a young soldier, Mangal Pandey, was
1857, over 3,000 rebels came hanged to death for attacking his officers in Barrackpore.
from Bareilly, crossed the Some days later, some sepoys of the regiment at Meerut
river Jamuna, entered Delhi,
refused to do the army drill using the new cartridges, which
and attacked the British
cavalry posts. The battle were suspected of being coated with the fat of cows and
continued all through pigs. Eighty-five sepoys were dismissed from service and
the night. sentenced to ten years in jail for disobeying their officers.
This happened on 9 May 1857.
The response of the other Indian soldiers in Meerut was
quite extraordinary. On 10 May, the soldiers marched to the
jail in Meerut and released the imprisoned sepoys. They
attacked and killed British officers. They captured guns and
ammunition and set fire to the buildings and properties of the
British and declared war on the firangis. The soldiers were
determined to bring an end to their rule in the country. But
who would rule the land instead? The soldiers had an answer
to this question – the Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar.
The sepoys of Meerut rode all night of 10 May to reach
Delhi in the early hours next morning. As news of their
Fig. 5 – Postal stamp issued in arrival spread, the regiments stationed in Delhi also rose
commemoration of Mangal Pandey
up in rebellion. Again british officers were killed, arms
and ammunition seized, buildings set on fire. Triumphant
soldiers gathered around the walls of the Red Fort where
Firangis – Foreigners the Badshah lived, demanding to meet him. The emperor
The term reflects an was not quite willing to challenge the mighty British power
attitude of contempt. but the soldiers persisted. They forced their way into the
palace and proclaimed Bahadur Shah Zafar as their leader.
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The ageing emperor had to accept this demand. He wrote
letters to all the chiefs and rulers of the country to come
forward and organise a confederacy of Indian states to
fight the British. This single step taken by Bahadur Shah
had great implications.
The Mughal dynasty had ruled over a very large part of
the country. Most smaller rulers and chieftains controlled
dif ferent territories on behalf of the Mughal ruler.
Threatened by the expansion of British rule, many of them
felt that if the Mughal emperor could rule again, they too
would be able to rule their own territories once more, under
Mughal authority.
The British had not expected this to happen. They
thought the disturbance caused by the issue of the
Fig. 6 – Bahadur Shah Zafar
cartridges would die down. But Bahadur Shah Zafar’s
decision to bless the rebellion changed the entire situation
dramatically. Often when people see an alternative
possibility they feel inspired and enthused. It gives them
the courage, hope and confidence to act.
The rebellion spreads
After the British were routed from Delhi, there was no
uprising for almost a week. It took that much time for
news to travel. Then, a spurt of mutinies began.
Regiment after regiment mutinied and took off to join
other troops at nodal points like Delhi, Kanpur and
Lucknow. After them, the people of the towns and villages
also rose up in rebellion and rallied around local leaders,
zamindars and chiefs who were prepared to establish their Fig. 7 – Rani Laxmibai
authority and fight the British. Nana Saheb, the adopted son
of the late Peshwa Baji Rao who lived near Kanpur, gathered
Fig. 8 – As the mutiny
armed forces and expelled the British garrison from the city. spread, British officers were
He proclaimed himself Peshwa. He declared that he was a killed in the cantonments
governor under Emperor
Bahadur Shah Zafar. In
Lucknow, Birjis Qadr, the
son of the deposed Nawab
Wajid Ali Shah, was
proclaimed the new
Nawab. He too
acknowledged the suzerainty
of Bahadur Shah Zafar. His
mother Begum Hazrat
Mahal took an active part
in organising the uprising
against the British. In
Jhansi, Rani Lakshmibai
joined the rebel sepoys and
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fought the British along with Tantia Tope, the general of
Activity Nana Saheb. In the Mandla region of Madhya Pradesh, Rani
1 . Why did the Mughal
Avantibai Lodhi of Ramgarh raised and led an army of four
emperor agree to
thousand against the British who had taken over the
support the rebels?
administration of her state.
2 . Write a paragraph on
the assessment he The British were greatly outnumbered by the rebel forces.
may have made before They were defeated in a number of battles. This convinced
accepting the offer of the people that the rule of the British had collapsed for good
and gave them the confidence to take the plunge and join
the sepoys.
the rebellion. A situation of widespread popular rebellion
developed in the region of Awadh in particular. On 6 August
1857, we find a telegram sent by Lieutenant Colonel Tytler
to his Commander-in-Chief expressing the fear felt by the
British: “Our men are cowed by the numbers opposed to
them and the endless fighting. Every village is held against
us, the zamindars have risen to oppose us.”
Many new leaders came up. For example, Ahmadullah
Shah, a maulvi from Faizabad, prophesied that the rule of
the British would come to an end soon. He caught the
imagination of the people and raised a huge force of
supporters. He came to Lucknow to fight the British. In Delhi,
a large number of ghazis or religious warriors came together
Fig. 9 – A portrait of Nana Saheb
to wipe out the white people. Bakht Khan, a soldier from
Bareilly, took charge of a large force of fighters who came to
Delhi. He became a key military leader of the rebellion. In
Bihar, an old zamindar, Kunwar Singh, joined the rebel
sepoys and battled with the British for many months. Leaders
and fighters from across the land joined the fight.
The Company Fights Back

Unnerved by the scale of the upheaval, the Company decided
to repress the revolt with all its might. It brought
Fig. 10 –
A portrait of Vir Kunwar Singh
Fig. 11 – British forces attack

the rebels who had occupied the
Red Fort (on the right ) and
Salimgarh Fort in Delhi (on the
left )
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reinforcements from England, passed new laws so Fig. 12– The siege train reaches
Delhi
that the rebels could be convicted with ease, and then
The British forces initially found it
moved into the storm centres of the revolt. Delhi was
difficult to break through the
recaptured from the rebel forces in September 1857. The heavy fortification in Delhi. On 3
last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar was tried in September 1857 reinforcements
court and sentenced to life imprisonment. He and his arrived – a 7- mile-long siege train
wife Begum Zinat Mahal were sent to prison in Rangoon comprising cartloads of canons
and ammunition pulled by
in October 1858. Bahadur Shah Zafar died in the Rangoon elephants.
jail in November 1862.
The recapture of Delhi, however, did not mean that the
rebellion died down after that. People continued to resist
and battle the British. The British had to fight for two
years to suppress the massive forces of popular rebellion.
Lucknow was taken in March 1858. Rani Lakshmibai
was defeated and killed in June 1858. A similar fate
awaited Rani Avantibai, who after initial victory in
Kheri, chose to embrace death when surrounded by the
British on all sides. Tantia Tope escaped to the jungles
of central India and continued to fight a guerrilla war
with the support of many tribal and peasant leaders. Fig. 13 – Postal stamp Essued in
commemoration of Tantia Tope
He was captured, tried and killed in April 1859.
Just as victories against the British had earlier
encouraged rebellion, the defeat of rebel forces
encouraged desertions. The British also tried their best
to win back the loyalty of the people. They announced
 Activity
Make a list of places
rewards for loyal landholders would be allowed to where the uprising took
continue to enjoy traditional rights over their lands. place in May, June and
Those who had rebelled were told that if they submitted July 1857.
to the British, and if they had not killed any white people,
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Fig. 14 – British troops blow up they would remain safe and their rights and claims to
Kashmere Gate to enter Delhi land would not be denied. Nevertheless, hundreds of
sepoys, rebels, nawabs and rajas were tried and hanged.
Aftermath
The British had regained control
of the country by the end of 1859,
but they could not carry on ruling
the land with the same policies
any more.
Given below are the important
changes that were introduced by
the British.
1. The British Parliament passed
a new Act in 1858 and transferred
the powers of the East India Company
to the British Crown in order to
ensure a more responsible
management of Indian affairs. A
Fig. 15 – British forces capture member of the British Cabinet was appointed Secretary of
the rebels near Kanpur State for India and made responsible for all matters related
Notice the way the artist shows to the governance of India. He was given a council to advise
the British soldiers valiantly him, called the India Council. The Governor-General of India
advancing on the rebel forces.
was given the title of Viceroy, that is, a personal
representative of the Crown. Through these measures the
British government accepted direct responsibility for
ruling India.
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2. All ruling chiefs of the country were assured that their
territory would never be annexed in future. They were allowed to
pass on their kingdoms to their heirs, including adopted sons.
However, they were made to acknowledge the British Queen as
their Sovereign Paramount. Thus the Indian rulers were to hold
their kingdoms as subordinates of the British Crown.
3. It was decided that the proportion of Indian soldiers in the
army would be reduced and the number of European soldiers would
be increased. It was also decided that instead of recruiting soldiers
from Awadh, Bihar, central India and south India, more soldiers
would be recruited from among the Gurkhas, Sikhs and Pathans.
4. The land and property of Muslims was confiscated on a large
scale and they were treated with suspicion and hostility. The British
believed that they were responsible for the rebellion in a big way.
5. The British decided to respect the customary religious and
social practices of the people in India.
6. Policies were made to protect landlords and zamindars
and give them security of rights over their lands.
Thus a new phase of history began after 1857.
• Main centres of the Revolt

• Other centres of the Revolt Fig. 16 – Some
important centres of
the Revolt in North
India
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The Khurda Uprising – A Case Study
Much before the event of 1857, there had taken place another event of a similar nature at
a place called Khurda in 1817. Here, it would be instructive for us to study that event and
reflect on how resentment against the colonial policies of the British had been building up
since the beginning of the 19th century in different parts of the country.
Khurda, a small kingdom built up in the late 16th century in the south-eastern part of
Odisha, was a populous and well-cultivated territory consisting of 105 garhs, 60 large and
1109 small villages at the beginning of the 19th century. Its king, Raja Birakishore Dev had
to earlier give up the possession of four parganas, the superintendence of the Jagannath
Temple and the administration of fourteen garjats (Princely States) to the Marathas under
compulsion. His son and successor, Mukunda Dev II was greatly disturbed with this loss of
fortune. Therefore, sensing an opportunity in the Anglo-Maratha conflict, he had entered
into negotiations with the British to get back his lost territories and the rights over the
Jagannath Temple. But after the occupation of Odisha in 1803, the British showed no
inclination to oblige him on either score. Consequently, in alliance with other feudatory
chiefs of Odisha and secret support of the Marathas, he tried to assert his rights by force.
This led to his deposition and annexation of his territories by the British. As a matter of
consolation, he was only given the rights of management of the Jagannath Temple with a
grant amounting to a mere one-tenth of the revenue of his former estate and his residence
was fixed at Puri. This unfair settlement commenced an era of oppressive foreign rule in
Odisha, which paved the way for a serious armed uprising in 1817.
Soon after taking over Khurda, the British followed a policy of resuming service tenures.
It bitterly affected the lives of the ex-militia of the state, the Paiks. The severity of the
measure was compounded on account of an unreasonable increase in the demand of revenue
and also the oppressive ways of its collection. Consequently, there was large scale desertion
of people from Khurda between 1805 and 1817. Yet, the British went for a series of short-
term settlements, each time increasing the demands, not recognising either the productive
capacity of the land or the paying capacity of the ryots. No leniency was shown even in case
of natural calamities, which Odisha was frequently prone to. Rather, lands of defaulters
were sold off to scheming revenue officials or speculators from Bengal.
The hereditary Military Commander of the deposed king, Jagabandhu Bidyadhar
Mahapatra Bhramarabar Rai or Buxi Jagabandhu as he was popularly known, was one
among the dispossessed land-holders. He had in effect become a beggar, and for nearly two
years survived on voluntary contributions from the people of Khurda before deciding to
fight for their grievances as well as his own. Over the years, what had added to these
grievances were (a) the introduction of sicca rupee (silver currency) in the region, (b) the
insistence on payment of revenue in the new currency, (c) an unprecedented rise in the
prices of food-stuff and salt, which had become far-fetched following the introduction of
salt monopoly because of which the traditional salt makers of Odisha were deprived of
making salt, and (d) the auction of local estates in Calcutta, which brought in absentee
landlords from Bengal to Odisha. Besides, the insensitive and corrupt police system also
made the situation worse for the armed uprising to take a sinister shape.
The uprising was set off on 29 March 1817 as the Paiks attacked the police station and
other government establishments at Banpur killing more than a hundred men and took
away a large amount of government money. Soon its ripples spread in different directions
with Khurda becoming its epicenter. The zamindars and ryots alike joined the Paiks with
enthusiasm. Those who did not, were taken to task. A ‘no-rent campaign’ was also started.
The British tried to dislodge the Paiks from their entrenched position but failed. On 14
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April 1817, Buxi Jagabandhu, leading five to ten thousand Paiks and men of the Kandh
tribe seized Puri and declared the hesitant king, Mukunda Dev II as their ruler. The
priests of the Jagannath Temple also extended the Paiks their full support.
Seeing the situation going out of hand, the British clamped Martial Law. The King was
quickly captured and sent to prison in Cuttack with his son. The Buxi with his close associate,
Krushna Chandra Bhramarabar Rai, tried to cut off all communications between Cuttack
and Khurda as the uprising spread to the southern and the north-western parts of Odisha.
Consequently, the British sent Major-General Martindell to clear off the area from the
clutches of the Paiks while at the same time announcing rewards for the arrest of Buxi
jagabandhu and his associates. In the ensuing operation hundreds of Paiks were killed,
many fled to deep jungles and some returned home under a scheme of amnesty. Thus by
May 1817 the uprising was mostly contained.
However, outside Khurda it was sustained by Buxi Jagabandhu with the help of supporters
like the Raja of Kujung and the unflinching loyalty of the Paiks until his surrender in May
1825. On their part, the British henceforth adopted a policy of ‘leniency, indulgence and
forbearance’ towards the people of Khurda. The price of salt was reduced and necessary
reforms were made in the police and the justice systems. Revenue officials found to be
corrupt were dismissed from service and former land-holders were restored to their lands.
The son of the king of Khurda, Ram Chandra Dev III was allowed to move to Puri and
take charge of the affairs of the Jagannath Temple with a grant of rupees twenty-four
thousand.
In sum, it was the first such popular anti-British armed uprising in Odisha, which had
far reaching effect on the future of British administration in that part of the country. To
merely call it a ‘Paik Rebellion’ will thus be an understatement.
ELSEWHERE
For a Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace
While the revolt was spreading in India
in 1857, a massive popular uprising
was raging in the southern parts of
China. It had started in 1850 and could
be suppressed only by the mid-1860s.
Thousands of labouring, poor people
were led by Hong Xiuquan to fight for
the establishment of the Heavenly
Kingdom of Great Peace. This was known
as the Taiping Rebellion.
Hong Xiuquan was a convert to
Fig. 11 – Taiping army meeting their leader
Christianity and was against the
traditional religions practised in China such as Confucianism and Buddhism. The rebels of
Taiping wanted to establish a kingdom where a form of Christianity was practised, where no
one held any private property, where there was no difference between social classes and between
men and women, where consumption of opium, tobacco, alcohol, and activities like gambling,
prostitution, slavery, were prohibited.
The British and French armed forces operating in China helped the emperor of the Qing
dynasty to put down the Taiping Rebellion.
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Imagine you are a 1. What was the demand of Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi
British officer in that was refused by the British?
Awadh during the
rebellion. What would 2. What did the British do to protect the interests of
you do to keep your those who converted to Christianity?
plans of fighting the
3. What objections did the sepoys have to the new
rebels a top secret.
cartridges that they were asked to use?
4. How did the last Mughal emperor live the last years
of his life?
Let’s discuss
5. What could be the reasons for the
confidence of the British rulers about
their position in India before May
1857?
6. What impact did Bahadur Shah
Zafar’s support to the rebellion have
on the people and the ruling families?
7. How did the British succeed in
securing the submission of the rebel
landowners of Awadh?
8. In what ways did the British change
their policies as a result of the
rebellion of 1857?
Fig. 17 – Ruins of the Residency
in Lucknow
In June 1857, the rebel forces
began the siege of the Residency.
A large number of British women, Let’s do
men and children had taken
shelter in the buildings there.
The rebels surrounded the 9. Find out stories and songs remembered by people
compound and bombarded the in your area or your family about San Sattavan ki
building with shells. Hit by a
shell, Henry Lawrence, the Chief
Ladaai. What memories do people cherish about
Commissioner of Awadh, died in the great uprising?
one of the rooms that you see in
the picture. Notice how buildings 10. Find out more about Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi.
carry the marks of past events. In what ways would she have been an unusual
woman for her times?
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6 Weavers, Iron Smelters
and Factory Owners
Fig. 1 – Trading ships on the port of Surat in the seventeenth century

Surat in Gujarat on the west coast of India was one of the most important ports of
the Indian Ocean trade. Dutch and English trading ships began using the port from the
early seventeenth century. Its importance declined in the eighteenth century.
This chapter tells the story of the crafts and industries of India during
British rule by focusing on two industries, namely, textiles and
iron and steel. Both these industries were crucial for the industrial
revolution in the modern world. Mechanised production of cotton
textiles made Britain the foremost industrial nation in the nineteenth
century. And when its iron and steel industry started growing from
the 1850s, Britain came to be known as the “workshop of the world”.
The industrialisation of Britain had a close connection with the
conquest and colonisation of India. You have seen (Chapter 2) how
the English East India Company’s interest in trade led to occupation
of territory, and how the pattern of trade changed over the decades.
In the late eighteenth century the Company was buying goods in India
and exporting them to England and Europe, making profit through
this sale. With the growth of industrial production, British
industrialists began to see India as a vast market for their industrial
products, and over time manufactured goods from Britain began
flooding India. How did this affect Indian crafts and industries?
This is the question we will explore in this chapter.
65
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Indian Textiles and the World Market
Let us first look at textile production.
Around 1750, before the
British conquered Bengal, India
was by far the world’s largest
producer of cotton textiles. Indian
textiles had long been renowned
both for their fine quality and
exquisite craftsmanship. They
were extensively traded in
Southeast Asia (Java, Sumatra
and Penang) and West and
Central Asia. From the sixteenth
century European trading
companies began buying Indian
textiles for sale in Europe.
Memories of this flourishing
trade and the craftsmanship of
Indian weavers is preserved in
many words still current in
English and other languages. It
Fig. 2 – Patola weave, is interesting to trace the origin of such words, and see
mid-nineteenth century what they tell us.
Patola was woven in Surat,
Ahmedabad and Patan. Highly Words tell us histories
valued in Indonesia, it became
part of the local weaving European traders first encountered fine cotton cloth
tradition there. from India carried by Arab merchants in Mosul in
present-day Iraq. So they began referring to all finely
woven textiles as “muslin” – a word that acquired wide
currency. When the Portuguese first came to India in
search of spices they landed in Calicut on the Kerala
coast in south-west India. The cotton textiles which
they took back to Europe, along with the spices, came
to be called “calico” (derived from Calicut), and
subsequently calico became the general name for all
cotton textiles.
There are many other words which point to the
popularity of Indian textiles in Western markets. In
Fig. 3 you can see a page of an order book that the
English East India Company sent to its representatives
in Calcutta in 1730.
The order that year was for 5,89,000 pieces of cloth.
Browsing through the order book you would have seen
a list of 98 varieties of cotton and silk cloths. These
were known by their common name in the European
trade as piece goods – usually woven cloth pieces that
were 20 yards long and 1 yard wide.
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Fig. 3 – A page from an order
book of the East India Company,
1730
Notice how each item in the
order book was carefully priced
in London. These orders had to
be placed two years in advance
because this was the time
required to send orders to India,
get the specific cloths woven and
shipped to Britain. Once the cloth
pieces arrived in London they
were put up for auction and sold.
Now look at the names of the different varieties of

cloth in the book. Amongst the pieces ordered in bulk
were printed cotton cloths called chintz, cossaes (or
khassa) and bandanna. Do you know where the English
term chintz comes from? It is derived from the Hindi Fig. 4 – Jamdani weave, early
word chhint, a cloth with small and colourful flowery twentieth century
designs. From the 1680s there started a craze for printed Jamdani is a fine muslin on
Indian cotton textiles in England and Europe mainly which decorative motifs are
woven on the loom, typically in
for their exquisite floral designs, fine texture and
grey and white. Often a mixture
relative cheapness. Rich people of England including of cotton and gold thread was
the Queen herself wore clothes of Indian fabric. used, as in the cloth in this
Similarly, the word bandanna now refers to any picture. The most important
centres of jamdani weaving were
brightly coloured and printed scarf for the neck or Dacca in Bengal and Lucknow
head. Originally, the term derived from the word in the United Provinces.
WEAVERS, IRON SMELTERS AND FACTORY OWNERS 67
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Fig. 5 – Printed design on fine “bandhna” (Hindi for tying), and referred to a variety
cloth (chintz) produced in of brightly coloured cloth produced through a method
Masulipatnam, Andhra Pradesh,
mid-nineteenth century of tying and dying.
This is a fine example of the There were other cloths in the order book that were
type of chintz produced for noted by their place of origin: Kasimbazar, Patna, Calcutta,
export to Iran and Europe. Orissa, Charpoore. The widespread use of such words
shows how popular Indian textiles had become in
different parts of the world.
Fig. 6 – Bandanna design, early

twentieth century
Notice the line that runs through
the middle. Do you know why?
In this odhni, two tie-and-dye
silk pieces are seamed together
with gold thread embroidery.
Bandanna patterns were mostly
produced in Rajasthan and
Gujarat.
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Indian textiles in European markets
Activity
By the early eighteenth century, worried by the Why do you think the
popularity of Indian textiles, wool and silk makers in Act was called the
England began protesting against the import of Indian Calico Act? What does
cotton textiles. In 1720, the British government enacted the name tell us about
a legislation banning the use of printed cotton textiles the kind of textiles the
– chintz – in England. Interestingly, this Act was known Act wanted to ban?
as the Calico Act.
At this time textile industries had just begun to
develop in England. Unable to compete with Indian
textiles, English producers wanted a secure market
within the country by preventing the entry of Indian
textiles. The first to grow under government protection
was the calico printing industry. Indian designs were Spinning Jenny – A
now imitated and printed in England on white muslin machine by which a
or plain unbleached Indian cloth. single worker could
operate several spindles
Competition with Indian textiles also led to a search
on to which thread was
for technological innovation in England. In 1764, the
spun. When the wheel
spinning jenny was invented by John Kaye which
was turned all the
increased the productivity of the traditional spindles.
spindles rotated.
The invention of the steam engine by Richard Arkwright
in 1786 revolutionised cotton textile weaving. Cloth could
now be woven in immense quantities and cheaply too.
However, Indian textiles continued to dominate world
trade till the end of the eighteenth century. European
trading companies – the Dutch, the French and the
Fig. 7 – A sea view of the Dutch
English – made enormous profits out of this flourishing settlement in Cochin, seventeenth
trade. These companies purchased cotton and silk century
textiles in India by importing silver. But as you know As European trade expanded,
(Chapter 2), when the English East India Company trading settlements were
gained political power in Bengal, it no longer had to established at various ports.
The Dutch settlements in Cochin
import precious metal to buy Indian goods. Instead, they
came up in the seventeenth
collected revenues from peasants and zamindars in century. Notice the fortification
India, and used this revenue to buy Indian textiles. around the settlement.
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Where were the major centres of weaving
in the late eighteenth century?
Fig. 8 – Weaving centres: 1500 -1750

If you look at the map you will notice that textile production was concentrated
in four regions in the early nineteenth century. Bengal was one of the most
important centres. Located along the numerous rivers in the delta, the
production centres in Bengal could easily transport goods to distant places.
Do not forget that in the early nineteenth century railways had not developed
and roads were only just beginning to be laid on an extensive scale.
Dacca in Eastern Bengal (now Bangladesh) was the foremost textile centre in
the eighteenth century. It was famous for its mulmul and jamdani weaving.
If you look at the southern part of India in the map you will see a second
cluster of cotton weaving centres along the Coromandel coast stretching
from Madras to northern Andhra Pradesh. On the western coast there were
important weaving centres in Gujarat.
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Who were the weavers?
Weavers often belonged to communities that specialised
in weaving. Their skills were passed on from one
generation to the next. The tanti weavers of Bengal, the
julahas or momin weavers of north India, sale and
kaikollar and devangs of south India are some of the
communities famous for weaving.
The first stage of production was spinning – a work
done mostly by women. The charkha and the takli were
household spinning instruments. The thread was spun
on the charkha and rolled on the takli. When the spinning
was over the thread was woven into cloth by the weaver.
In most communities weaving was a task done by men.
For coloured textiles, the thread was dyed by the dyer,
known as rangrez. For printed cloth the weavers needed
the help of specialist block printers known as chhipigars. Fig. 9 – A tanti weaver of Bengal,
Handloom weaving and the occupations associated with painted by the Belgian painter
it provided livelihood for millions of Indians. Solvyns in the 1790s
The tanti weaver here is at work
The decline of Indian textiles in the pit loom. Do you know
what a pit loom is?
The development of cotton industries in Britain affected
textile producers in India in several ways. First: Indian
textiles now had to compete with British textiles in the
European and American markets. Second: exporting
textiles to England also became increasingly difficult Aurang – A Persian
since very high duties were imposed on Indian textiles term for a warehouse –
imported into Britain. a place where goods are
By the beginning of the nineteenth century, English- collected before being
made cotton textiles successfully ousted Indian goods sold; also refers to a
from their traditional markets in Africa, America and workshop
Europe. Thousands of weavers in India were now thrown
out of employment. Bengal weavers were the worst hit.
English and European companies stopped buying
Indian goods and their agents no longer gave out
Source 1
“We must starve for food”

In 1823 the Company government in India received a petition from 12,000 weavers stating:
Our ancestors and we used to receive advances from the Company and maintain ourselves
and our respective families by weaving Company’s superior assortments. Owing to our
misfortune, the aurangs have been abolished ever since because of which we and our families
are distressed for want of the means of livelihood. We are weavers and do not know any other
business. We must starve for food, if the Board of Trade do not cast a look of kindness towards
us and give orders for clothes.
Proceedings of the Board of Trade, 3 February 1824
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Source 2
“Please publish this in your paper”

One widowed spinner wrote in 1828 to a Bengali newspaper, Samachar
Darpan, detailing her plight:
To the Editor, Samachar,
I am a spinner. After having suffered a great deal, I am writing this
letter. Please publish this in your paper ... When my age was … 22,
I became a widow with three daughters. My husband left nothing at
the time of his death … I sold my jewellery for his shraddha ceremony.
When we were on the verge of starvation God showed me a way by
which we could save ourselves. I began to spin on takli and charkha ...
The weavers used to visit our houses and buy the charkha yarn
at three tolas per rupee. Whatever amount I wanted as advance
from the weavers, I could get for the asking. This saved us from
cares about food and cloth. In a few years’ time I got together …
Rs. 28. With this I married one daughter. And in the same way all
three daughters ...
Now for 3 years, we two women, mother-in-law and me, are in
want of food. The weavers do not call at the house for buying yarn.
Not only this, if the yarn is sent to market it is still not sold even at
one-fourth the old prices.
I do not know how it happened. I asked many about it. They
say that Bilati 2 yarn is being imported on a large scale. The weavers
buy that yarn and weave … People cannot use the cloth out of this
yarn even for two months; it rots away.
A representation from a suffering spinner
advances to weavers to secure supplies. Distressed

weavers wrote petitions to the government to help them.
But worse was still to come. By the 1830s British
cotton cloth flooded Indian markets. In fact, by the 1880s
two-thirds of all the cotton clothes worn by Indians
were made of cloth produced in Britain. This affected
not only specialist weavers but also spinners. Thousands
of rural women who made a living by spinning cotton
thread were rendered jobless.
Handloom weaving did not completely die in India.
This was because some types of cloths could not be
Activity supplied by machines. How could machines produce
Read Sources 1 and 2.
saris with intricate borders or cloths with traditional
What reasons do the
woven patterns? These had a wide demand not only
petition writers give
amongst the rich but also amongst the middle classes.
for their condition of
Nor did the textile manufacturers in Britain produce
starvation?
the very coarse cloths used by the poor people in India.
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You must have heard of Sholapur in western India and
Madura in South India. These towns emerged as important
new centres of weaving in the late nineteenth century. Later,
during the national movement, Mahatma Gandhi urged people
to boycott imported textiles and use hand-spun and hand-
woven cloth. Khadi gradually became a symbol of nationalism.
The charkha came to represent India, and it was put at the
centre of the tricolour flag of the Indian National Congress
adopted in 1931.
What happened to the weavers and spinners who lost their
livelihood? Many weavers became agricultural labourers.
Some migrated to cities in search of work, and yet others
went out of the country to work in plantations in Africa and
South America. Some of these handloom weavers also found
work in the new cotton mills that were established in Bombay
(now Mumbai), Ahmedabad, Sholapur, Nagpur and Kanpur.
Cotton mills come up

The first cotton mill in India was set up as a spinning mill in
Bombay in 1854. From the early nineteenth century, Bombay
had grown as an important port for the export of raw cotton
from India to England and China. It was close to the vast
black soil tract of western India where cotton was grown.
When the cotton textile mills came up they could get supplies
of raw material with ease.
Fig. 10 – Workers in a
cotton factory, circa 1900,
photograph by Raja Deen
Dayal
Most workers in the
spinning departments were
women, while workers in
the weaving departments
were mostly men.
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By 1900, over 84 mills started operating in Bombay.
Smelting – The process Many of these were established by Parsi and Gujarati
of obtaining a metal businessmen who had made their money through trade
from rock (or soil) by with China.
heating it to a very high Mills came up in other cities too. The first mill in
temperature, or of Ahmedabad was started in 1861. A year later a mill
melting objects made was established in Kanpur, in the United Provinces.
from metal in order to Growth of cotton mills led to a demand for labour.
use the metal to make Thousands of poor peasants, artisans and agricultural
something new labourers moved to the cities to work in the mills.
In the first few decades of its existence, the textile
factory industry in India faced many problems. It found
it difficult to compete with the cheap textiles imported
from Britain. In most countries, governments supported
industrialisation by imposing heavy duties on imports.
This eliminated competition and protected infant
industries. The colonial government in India usually
refused such protection to local industries. The first
major spurt in the development of cotton factory
production in India, therefore, was during the First
World War when textile imports from Britain declined
and Indian factories were called upon to produce cloth
for military supplies.
The sword of Tipu Sultan and

Wootz steel
We begin the story of Indian steel and iron metallurgy
by recounting the famous story of Tipu Sultan who ruled
Mysore till 1799, fought four wars with the British
and died fighting with his sword in his hand. Tipu’s
legendary swords are now part of valuable collections
in museums in England. But do you know why the sword
was so special? The sword had an incredibly hard and
sharp edge that could easily rip through the opponent’s
armour. This quality of the sword came from a special
type of high carbon steel called Wootz which was
produced all over south India. Wootz steel when made
into swords produced a very sharp edge with a flowing
water pattern. This pattern came from very small carbon
crystals embedded in the iron.
Francis Buchanan who toured through Mysore in
1800, a year after Tipu Sultan’s death, has left us an
Fig. 11 – Tipu’s sword made in account of the technique by which Wootz steel was
the late eighteenth century produced in many hundreds of smelting furnaces in
Written with gold on the steel Mysore. In these furnaces, iron was mixed with charcoal
handle of Tipu’s sword were
and put inside small clay pots. Through an intricate
quotations from the Koran with
messages about victories in war. control of temperatures the smelters produced steel
Notice the tiger head towards the ingots that were used for sword making not just in India
bottom of the handle. but in West and Central Asia too. Wootz is an anglicised
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version of the Kannada word ukku, Telugu hukku and
Tamil and Malayalam urukku – meaning steel.
Activity
Why would the iron
Indian Wootz steel fascinated European scientists. and steel making
Michael Faraday, the legendary scientist and discoverer industry be affected by
of electricity and electromagnetism, spent four years the defeat of the
studying the properties of Indian Wootz (1818-22). nawabs and rajas?
However, the Wootz steel making process, which was
so widely known in south India, was completely lost by
the mid-nineteenth century. Can you guess why this
was so? The swords and armour making industry died
with the conquest of India by the British and imports
of iron and steel from England displaced the iron and
steel produced by craftspeople in India.
Abandoned furnaces in villages

Production of Wootz steel required a highly specialised
technique of refining iron. But iron smelting in India Bellows – A device or
was extremely common till the end of the nineteenth equipment that can
century. In Bihar and Central India, in particular, every pump air
district had smelters that used local deposits of ore to
produce iron which was widely used for the manufacture
of implements and tools of daily use. The furnaces were
most often built of clay and sun-dried bricks. The
smelting was done by men while women worked the Fig. 12 – Iron smelters of Palamau,
bellows, pumping air that kept the charcoal burning. Bihar
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Fig. 13 – A village in Central India where the Agarias – a community of iron smelters – lived.
Some communities like the Agarias specialised in the craft of iron smelting. In the late nineteenth
century a series of famines devastated the dry tracts of India. In Central India, many of the Agaria iron
smelters stopped work, deserted their villages and migrated, looking for some other work to survive the
hard times. A large number of them never worked their furnaces again.
Source 3
By the late nineteenth century, however, the craft
A widespread of iron smelting was in decline. In most villages,
furnaces fell into disuse and the amount of iron
industry produced came down. Why was this so?
One reason was the new forest laws that you have
According to a report of
read about (Chapter 4). When the colonial government
the Geological Survey of
prevented people from entering the reserved forests,
India:
how could the iron smelters find wood for charcoal?
Iron smelting was at Where could they get iron ore? Defying forest laws,
one time a widespread they often entered the forests secretly and collected
industry in India and wood, but they could not sustain their occupation
there is hardly a district on this basis for long. Many gave up their craft and
away from the great looked for other means of livelihood.
alluvial tracts of the
In some areas the government did grant access
Indus, Ganges and
to the forest. But the iron smelters had to pay a very
Brahmaputra, in which
slag heaps are not high tax to the forest department for every furnace
found. For the primitive they used. This reduced their income.
iron smelter finds no Moreover, by the late nineteenth century iron
difficulty in obtaining and steel was being imported from Britain.
sufficient supplies Ironsmiths in India began using the imported iron
of ore from deposits to manufacture utensils and implements. This
that no European inevitably lowered the demand for iron produced by
ironmaster would local smelters.
regard as worth his
By the early twentieth century, the artisans
serious consideration.
producing iron and steel faced a new competition.
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Iron and steel factories come up in India Slag heaps – The
The year was 1904. In the hot month of April, Charles Weld, waste left when
an American geologist and Dorabji Tata, the eldest son of smelting metal
Jamsetji Tata, were travelling in Chhattisgarh in search of
iron ore deposits. They had spent many months on a costly
venture looking for sources of good iron ore to set up a
modern iron and steel plant in India. Jamsetji Tata had
decided to spend a large part of his fortune to build a big
iron and steel industry in India. But this could not be done
without identifying the source of fine quality iron ore.
One day, after travelling for many hours in the forests,
Weld and Dorabji came upon a small village and found a
group of men and women carrying basketloads of iron ore.
These people were the Agarias. When asked where they had
found the iron ore, the Agarias pointed to a hill in the
distance. Weld and Dorabji reached the hill after an
exhausting trek through dense forests. On exploring the hill
the geologist declared that they had at last found what they
had been looking for. Rajhara Hills had one of the finest ores
in the world.
But there was a problem. The region was dry and water –
necessary for running the factory – was not to be found
nearby. The Tatas had to continue their search for a more
suitable place to set up their factory. However, the Agarias
helped in the discovery of a source of iron ore that would
later supply the Bhilai Steel Plant.
A few years later a large area of forest was cleared on the
banks of the river Subarnarekha to set up the factory and
an industrial township – Jamshedpur. Here there was water
near iron ore deposits. The Tata Iron and Steel Company
(TISCO) that came up began producing steel in 1912.
Fig. 14 – The Tata Iron
TISCO was set up at an opportune time. All through the and Steel factory on the
late nineteenth century, India was importing steel that was banks of the river
manufactured in Britain. Expansion of the railways in India Subarnarekha, 1940
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had provided a huge market for rails that Britain
produced. For a long while, British experts in the Indian
Railways were unwilling to believe that good quality
steel could be produced in India.
By the time TISCO was set up the situation was
changing. In 1914 the First World War broke out. Steel
produced in Britain now had to meet the demands of war
in Europe. So imports of British steel into India declined
Fig. 15 – Expansion at the dramatically and the Indian Railways turned to TISCO
end of the war for supply of rails. As the war dragged on for several years,
To meet the demands of the TISCO had to produce shells and carriage wheels for
war, TISCO had to expand
the war. By 1919 the colonial government was buying
its capacity and extend
the size of its factory. 90 per cent of the steel manufactured by TISCO. Over
The programme of expansion time TISCO became the biggest steel industry within the
continued after the war. British empire.
Here you see new
powerhouses and boiler In the case of iron and steel, as in the case of cotton
houses being built in textiles, industrial expansion occurred only when British
Jamshedpur in 1919. imports into India declined and the market for Indian
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industrial goods increased. This happened during the
First World War and after. As the nationalist movement
developed and the industrial class became stronger,
the demand for government protection became louder.
Struggling to retain its control over India, the British
government had to concede many of these demands in
the last decades of colonial rule.
ELSEWHERE
Early years of industrialisation in Japan

The history of industrialisation of Japan in the late nineteenth century presents a
contrast to that of India. The colonial state in India, keen to expand the market for
British goods, was unwilling to support Indian industrialists. In Japan, the state
encouraged the growth of industries.
The Meiji regime, which assumed power in Japan in 1868, believed that Japan
needed to industrialise in order to resist Western domination. So it initiated a series
of measures to help industrialisation. Postal services, telegraph, railways, steam
powered shipping were developed. The most advanced technology from the West
was imported and adapted to the needs of Japan. Foreign experts were brought to
train Japanese professionals. Industrialists were provided with generous loans for
investment by banks set up the government. Large industries were first started by
the government and then sold off at cheap rates to business families.
In India colonial domination created barriers to industrialisation. In Japan the
fear of foreign conquest spurred industrialisation. But this also meant that the
Japanese industrial development from the beginning was linked to military needs.
Let’s recall Let’s imagine

Imagine you are a
1. What kinds of cloth had a large market in Europe? textile weaver in late-
nineteenth-century
2. What is jamdani ? India. Textiles
produced in Indian
3. What is bandanna? factories are flooding
the market. How would
4. Who are the Agaria? you have adjusted to
the situation?
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(a) The word chintz comes from the word _________.
(b) Tipu’s sword was made of_________ steel.
(c) India’s textile exports declined in the _________
century.
Let’s discuss
6. How do the names of different textiles tell us about
their histories?
7. Why did the wool and silk producers in England
protest against the import of Indian textiles in
the early eighteenth century?
8. How did the development of cotton industries in
Britain affect textile producers in India?
9. Why did the Indian iron smelting industry decline
in the nineteenth century?
10. What problems did the Indian textile industry face
in the early years of its development?
11. What helped TISCO expand steel production during
the First World War?
Let’s do
12. Find out about the history of any craft around the
area you live. You may wish to know about the
community of craftsmen, the changes in the
techniques they use and the markets they supply.
How have these changed in the past 50 years?
13. On a map of India, locate the centres of different
crafts today. Find out when these centres came up.
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7 Civilising the “Native”,
Educating the Nation
In the earlier chapters you have seen how British rule affected
rajas and nawabs, peasants and tribals. In this chapter we
will try and understand what implication it had for the
lives of students. For, the British in India wanted not only
territorial conquest and control over revenues. They also felt
that they had a cultural mission: they had to “civilise the
natives”, change their customs and values.
What changes were to be introduced? How were Indians Linguist – Someone
to be educated, “civilised”, and made into what the British who knows and
believed were “good subjects”? The British could find studies several
no simple answers to these questions. They continued to languages
be debated for many decades.
How the British saw Education

Let us look at what the British thought and
did, and how some of the ideas of education
that we now take for granted evolved in the
last two hundred years. In the process of this
enquiry we will also see how Indians reacted
to British ideas, and how they developed
their own views about how Indians were to
be educated.
The tradition of Orientalism

In 1783, a person named William Jones
arrived in Calcutta. He had an appointment
as a junior judge at the Supreme Court that
the Company had set up. In addition to being
an expert in law, Jones was a linguist. He
had studied Greek and Latin at Oxford, knew
French and English, had picked up Arabic
from a friend, and had also learnt Persian.
At Calcutta, he began spending many hours
a day with pandits who taught him the
subtleties of Sanskrit language, grammar and Fig. 1 – William Jones learning Persian
81
2019-200
poetry. Soon he was studying ancient Indian texts on
law, philosophy, religion, politics, morality, arithmetic,
medicine and the other sciences.
Jones discovered that his interests were shared by
many British officials living in Calcutta at the time.
Englishmen like Henry Thomas Colebrooke and Nathaniel
Halhed were also busy discovering the ancient Indian
heritage, mastering Indian languages and translating
Sanskrit and Persian works into English. Together with
them, Jones set up the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and
started a journal called Asiatick Researches.
Jones and Colebrooke came to represent a particular
attitude towards India. They shared a deep respect for
ancient cultures, both of India and the West. Indian
civilisation, they felt, had attained its glory in the ancient
past, but had subsequently declined. In order to
understand India it was necessary to discover the sacred
Fig. 2 – Henry Thomas and legal texts that were produced in the ancient period.
Colebrooke
For only those texts could reveal the real ideas and laws
He was a scholar of Sanskrit
of the Hindus and Muslims, and only a new study of these
and ancient sacred writings
of Hinduism. texts could form the basis of future development in India.
So Jones and Colebrooke went about discovering
ancient texts, understanding their meaning, translating
them, and making their findings known to others. This
project, they believed, would not only help the British learn
from Indian culture, but it would also help Indians
rediscover their own heritage, and understand the lost
glories of their past. In this process the British would become
the guardians of Indian culture as well as its masters.
Influenced by such ideas, many Company officials
argued that the British ought to promote Indian rather
than Western learning. They felt that institutions should
be set up to encourage the study of ancient Indian texts
and teach Sanskrit and Persian literature and poetry.
The officials also thought that Hindus and Muslims
ought to be taught what they were already familiar with,
and what they valued and treasured, not subjects that
were alien to them. Only then, they believed, could the
British hope to win a place in the hearts of the “natives”;
only then could the alien rulers expect to be respected by
their subjects.
With this object in view a madrasa was set up in
Madrasa – An Arabic Calcutta in 1781 to promote the study of Arabic, Persian
word for a place of and Islamic law; and the Hindu College was established
learning; any type of in Benaras in 1791 to encourage the study of ancient
school or college Sanskrit texts that would be useful for the administration
of the country.
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Fig. 3 – Monument to Warren Hastings, by
Richard Westmacott, 1830, now in Victoria
Memorial in Calcutta
This image represents how Orientalists
thought of British power in India. You will
notice that the majestic figure of Hastings,
an enthusiastic supporter of the Orientalists,
is placed between the standing figure of a
pandit on one side and a seated munshi
on the other side. Hastings and other
Orientalists needed Indian scholars to teach
them the “vernacular” languages, tell them
about local customs and laws, and help
them translate and interpret ancient texts.
Hastings took the initiative to set up the
Calcutta Madrasa, and believed that the
ancient customs of the country and Oriental
learning ought to be the basis of British rule
in India.
Not all officials shared these views. Many were very Orientalists – Those
strong in their criticism of the Orientalists. with a scholarly
“Grave errors of the East” knowledge of the
language and culture
From the early nineteenth century many British officials of Asia
began to criticise the Orientalist vision of learning. They
said that knowledge of the East was full of errors and Munshi – A person who
unscientific thought; Eastern literature was non-serious can read, write and
and light-hearted. So they argued that it was wrong on teach Persian
the part of the British to spend so much effort in
encouraging the study of Arabic and Sanskrit language Vernacular – A term
and literature. generally used to refer
James Mill was one of those who attacked the to a local language or
Orientalists. The British effort, he declared, should not dialect as distinct from
be to teach what the natives wanted, or what they what is seen as the
respected, in order to please them and “win a place in standard language. In
their heart”. The aim of education ought to be to teach colonial countries like
what was useful and practical. So Indians should be India, the British used
made familiar with the scientific and technical advances the term to mark the
that the West had made, rather than with the poetry difference between the
and sacred literature of the Orient. local languages of
By the 1830s the attack on the Orientalists became everyday use and
sharper. One of the most outspoken and influential of English – the language
such critics of the time was Thomas Babington of the imperial masters.
Macaulay. He saw India as an uncivilised country that
needed to be civilised. No branch of Eastern knowledge,
according to him could be compared to what England
had produced. Who could deny, declared Macaulay, that
CIVILISING THE “NATIVE”, EDUCATING THE NATION 83
2019-200
“a single shelf of a good
European library was worth the
whole native literature of India
and Arabia”. He urged that the
British government in India
stop wasting public money in
promoting Oriental learning,
for it was of no practical use.
With great energy and
passion, Macaulay emphasised
the need to teach the English
language. He felt that knowledge
of English would allow Indians
to read some of the finest
literature the world had produced;
it would make them aware of
Fig. 4 – Thomas Babington the developments in Western
Macaulay in his study science and philosophy. Teaching of English could thus
be a way of civilising people, changing their tastes,
values and culture.
Source 1
Following Macaulay’s minute, the English Education
Act of 1835 was introduced. The decision was to make
Language of English the medium of instruction for higher education,
the wise? and to stop the promotion of Oriental institutions like
the Calcutta Madrasa and Benaras Sanskrit College.
Emphasising the need to These institutions were seen as “temples of darkness
teach English, Macaulay that were falling of themselves into decay”. English
declared: textbooks now began to be produced for schools.
All parties seem to Education for commerce

be agreed on one In 1854, the Court of Directors of the East India
point, that the dialects Company in London sent an educational despatch to
commonly spoken
the Governor-General in India. Issued by Charles Wood,
among the natives …
the President of the Board of Control of the Company,
of India, contain
it has come to be known as Wood’s Despatch. Outlining
neither literary nor
scientific information,
the educational policy that was to be followed in India,
and are, moreover, it emphasised once again the practical benefits of a
so poor and rude system of European learning, as opposed to Oriental
that, until they are knowledge.
enriched from some One of the practical uses the Despatch pointed to
other quarter, it was economic. European learning, it said, would enable
will not be easy to Indians to recognise the advantages that flow from the
translate any valuable expansion of trade and commerce, and make them see
work into them … the importance of developing the resources of the
From Thomas Babington country. Introducing them to European ways of life,
Macaulay, Minute of 2 February would change their tastes and desires, and create a
1835 on Indian Education
demand for British goods, for Indians would begin to
appreciate and buy things that were produced in Europe.
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Source 2
Wood’s Despatch also argued that European learning
would improve the moral character of Indians. It would An argument
make them truthful and honest, and thus supply the
Company with civil servants who could be trusted and for European
depended upon. The literature of the East was not only knowledge
full of grave errors, it could also not instill in people a
sense of duty and a commitment to work, nor could it Wood’s Despatch of 1854
develop the skills required for administration. marked the final triumph
Following the 1854 Despatch, several measures were of those who opposed
introduced by the British. Education departments of Oriental learning. It
the government were set up to extend control over all stated:
matters regarding education. Steps were taken to We must emphatically
establish a system of university education. In 1857, declare that the
while the sepoys rose in revolt in Meerut and Delhi, education which we
universities were being established in Calcutta, Madras desire to see extended
and Bombay. Attempts were also made to bring about in India is that which
changes within the system of school education. has for its object
the diffusion of
the improved arts,
Activity services, philosophy,
Imagine you are living in the 1850s. You hear of and literature of
Wood’s Despatch. Write about your reactions. Europe, in short,
European knowledge.
Fig. 5 – Bombay University in the nineteenth century
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The demand for moral education
The argument for practical education was strongly criticised

by the Christian missionaries in India in the nineteenth century.
The missionaries felt that education should attempt to improve
the moral character of the people, and morality could be
improved only through Christian education.
Until 1813, the East India Company was opposed to
missionary activities in India. It feared that missionary activities
would provoke reaction amongst the local population and
make them suspicious of British presence in India. Unable to
establish an institution within British-controlled territories, the
missionaries set up a mission at Serampore in an area under
the control of the Danish East India Company. A printing press
was set up in 1800 and a college established in 1818.
Over the nineteenth century, missionary schools were
set up all over India. After 1857, however, the British
government in India was reluctant to directly support missionary
Fig. 6 – William Carey was education. There was a feeling that any strong attack on local
a Scottish missionary customs, practices, beliefs and religious ideas might enrage
who helped establish the
Serampore Mission “native” opinion.
Fig. 7 – Serampore College on the banks of the river Hooghly near Calcutta
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What Happened to
the Local Schools?
Do you have any idea of how
children were taught in pre-
British times? Have you ever
wondered whether they went to
schools? And if there were
schools, what happened to these
under British rule?
The report of William Adam

In the 1830s, William Adam, a
Scottish missionary, toured
the districts of Bengal and
Bihar. He had been asked by the
Company to report on the progress of education in vernacular Fig. 8 – A village pathshala
schools. The report Adam produced is interesting. This is a painting by a
Dutch painter, Francois
Adam found that there were over 1 lakh pathshalas in Solvyn, who came to India
Bengal and Bihar. These were small institutions with no in the late eighteenth
more than 20 students each. But the total number of century. He tried to depict
children being taught in these pathshalas was considerable the everyday life of people
in his paintings.
– over 20 lakh. These institutions were set up by wealthy
people, or the local community. At times they were started
by a teacher (guru).
The system of education was flexible. Few things that
you associate with schools today were present in the
pathshalas at the time. There were no fixed fee, no printed
books, no separate school building, no benches or chairs,
no blackboards, no system of separate classes, no roll-
call registers, no annual examinations, and no regular
time-table. In some places classes were held under a
banyan tree, in other places in the corner of a village
shop or temple, or at the guru’s home. Fee depended on
the income of parents: the rich had to pay more than the
poor. Teaching was oral, and the guru decided what to
teach, in accordance with the needs of the students.
Students were not separated out into different classes:
all of them sat together in one place. The guru interacted
separately with groups of children with different levels
of learning.
Adam discovered that this flexible system was suited
to local needs. For instance, classes were not held during
harvest time when rural children often worked in the
fields. The pathshala started once again when the crops
had been cut and stored. This meant that even children
of peasant families could study.
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New routines, new rules
Activity
1. Imagine you were born Up to the mid-nineteenth century, the Company was
in a poor family in the concerned primarily with higher education. So it allowed
1850s. How would you the local pathshalas to function without much
have responded to the interference. After 1854 the Company decided to
coming of the new improve the system of vernacular education. It felt that
system of government- this could be done by introducing order within the
regulated pathshalas ? system, imposing routines, establishing rules, ensuring
2. Did you know that regular inspections.
about 50 per cent of How was this to be done? What measures did
the children going to the Company undertake? It appointed a number of
primary school drop government pandits, each in charge of looking after four
out of school by the to five schools. The task of the pandit was to visit the
time they are 13 or pathshalas and try and improve the standard of teaching.
14? Can you think of Each guru was asked to submit periodic reports and
the various possible take classes according to a regular timetable. Teaching
reasons for this fact? was now to be based on textbooks and learning was
to be tested through a system of annual examination.
Students were asked to pay a regular fee, attend regular
classes, sit on fixed seats, and obey the new rules
of discipline.
Pathshalas which accepted the new rules were
supported through government grants. Those who were
unwilling to work within the new system received no
Fig. 9 – Sri Aurobindo Ghose government support. Over time gurus who wanted to
In a speech delivered on retain their independence found it difficult to compete
January 15, 1908 in Bombay, with the government aided and regulated pathshalas.
Aurobindo Ghose stated that
the goal of national education The new rules and routines had another consequence.
was to awaken the spirit of In the earlier system children from poor peasant families
nationality among the had been able to go to pathshalas, since the timetable
students. This required a
was flexible. The discipline of the new system demanded
contemplation of the heroic
deeds of our ancestors. The regular attendance, even during harvest time when
education should be imparted children of poor families had to work in the fields.
in the vernacular so as to Inability to attend school came to be seen as indiscipline,
reach the largest number of as evidence of the lack of desire to learn.
people. Aurobindo Ghose
emphasised that although the
students should remain The Agenda for a National Education
connected to their own roots,
they should also take the British officials were not the only people thinking about
fullest advantage of modern education in India. From the early nineteenth century
scientific discoveries and many thinkers from different parts of India began
Western experiments in
popular governments.
to talk of the need for a wider spread of education.
Moreover, the students should Impressed with the developments in Europe, some
also learn some useful crafts so Indians felt that Western education would help modernise
that they could be able to find India. They urged the British to open more schools,
some moderately remunerative
colleges and universities, and spend more money on
employment after leaving their
schools. education. You will read about some of these efforts in
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Chapter 9. There were other Indians, however, who
reacted against Western education. Mahatma Gandhi
and Rabindranath Tagore were two such individuals.
Let us look at what they had to say.
“English education has enslaved us”

Mahatma Gandhi argued that colonial education created
a sense of inferiority in the minds of Indians. It made
them see Western civilisation as superior, and destroyed
the pride they had in their own culture. There was
poison in this education, said Mahatma Gandhi, it was
sinful, it enslaved Indians, it cast an evil spell on them.
Charmed by the West, appreciating everything that
came fr om the West, Indians educated in these
institutions began admiring British rule. Mahatma
Gandhi wanted an education that could help Indians
recover their sense of dignity and self-respect. During
the national movement he urged students to leave
educational institutions in order to show to the British
that Indians were no longer willing to be enslaved.
Mahatma Gandhi strongly felt that Indian languages
ought to be the medium of teaching. Education in
English crippled Indians, distanced them from their
own social surroundings, and made them “strangers in
their own lands”. Speaking a foreign tongue, despising
local culture, the English educated did not know how
to relate to the masses.
Fig. 10 – Mahatma Gandhi along
Western education, Mahatma Gandhi said, focused with Kasturba Gandhi sitting with
on reading and writing rather than oral knowledge; Rabindranath Tagore and a group
it valued textbooks rather than lived experience and of girls at Santiniketan, 1940
practical knowledge. He
argued that education
ought to develop a person’s
mind and soul. Literacy –
or simply learning to read
and write – by itself did
not count as education.
People had to work with
their hands, learn a craft,
and know how different
things operated. This
would develop their mind
and their capacity to
understand.
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Source 3
“Literacy in itself is not education”

Mahatma Gandhi wrote:
By education I mean an all-round drawing out of
the best in child and man – body, mind and spirit.
Literacy is not the end of education nor even the
beginning. It is only one of the means whereby
man and woman can be educated. Literacy in itself
is not education. I would therefore begin the child’s
education by teaching it a useful handicraft and
enabling it to produce from the moment it begins
its training … I hold that the highest development
of the mind and the soul is possible under such a
system of education. Only every handicraft has to
be taught not merely mechanically as is done today
but scientifically, i.e. the child should know the
why and the wherefore of every process.
The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 72, p. 79
As nationalist sentiments spread, other thinkers

also began thinking of a system of national education
which would be radically different from that set up by
the British.
Tagore’s “abode of peace”

Many of you may have heard of Santiniketan. Do you
know why it was established and by whom?
Fig. 11 – A class in progress in
Rabindranath Tagore started the institution in 1901.
Santiniketan in the 1930s
As a child, Tagore hated going to school. He found
Notice the surroundings – the
trees and the open spaces. it suffocating and oppressive. The school appeared
like a prison, for he could never do what he felt like
doing. So while other children
listened to the teacher, Tagore’s
mind would wander away.
The experience of his
schooldays in Calcutta
shaped Tagore’s ideas of
education. On growing
up, he wanted to set up
a school where the
child was happy, where
she could be free and
creative, where she was
able to explore her own
thoughts and desires. Tagore felt
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that childhood ought to be a time of self-learning, outside the
rigid and restricting discipline of the schooling system set up
by the British. Teachers had to be imaginative, understand
the child, and help the child develop her curiosity. According
to Tagore, the existing schools killed the natural desire of the
child to be creative, her sense of wonder.
Tagore was of the view that creative learning could be
encouraged only within a natural environment. So he chose
to set up his school 100 kilometres away from Calcutta, in a
rural setting. He saw it as an abode of peace (santiniketan ),
where living in harmony with nature, children could cultivate
their natural creativity.
In many senses Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi thought about
education in similar ways. There were, however, differences
too. Gandhiji was highly critical of Western civilisation and
its worship of machines and technology. Tagore wanted to
combine elements of modern Western civilisation with what
he saw as the best within Indian tradition. He emphasised
the need to teach science and technology at Santiniketan,
along with art, music and dance.
Many individuals and thinkers were thus thinking about
the way a national educational system could be fashioned.
Some wanted changes within the system set up by the British,
and felt that the system could be extended so as to include
wider sections of people. Others urged that alternative systems
be created so that people were educated into a culture that
was truly national. Who was to define what was truly national?
The debate about what this “national education” ought to be
continued till after independence.
Fig. 12 – Children playing

in a missionary school in
Coimbatore, early
twentieth century
By the mid-nineteenth
century, schools for girls
were being set up by
Christian missionaries
and Indian reform
organisations.
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ELSEWHERE
Education as a civilising mission

Until the introduction of the Education Act in 1870, there was no widespread education for
the population as a whole for most of the nineteenth century. Child labour being widely
prevalent, poor children could not be sent to school for their earning was critical for the
survival of the family. The number of schools was also limited to those run by the Church
or set up by wealthy individuals. It was only after the coming into force of the Education
Act that schools were opened by the government and compulsory schooling was introduced.
One of the most important educational thinkers of the period was Thomas Arnold,
who became the headmaster of the private school Rugby. Favouring a secondary school
curriculum which had a detailed study of the Greek and Roman classics, written 2,000
years earlier, he said:
It has always seemed to me one of the great advantages of the course of study
generally pursued in our English schools that it draws our minds so continually
to dwell upon the past. Every day we are engaged in studying the languages, the
history, and the thoughts of men who lived nearly or more than two thousand
years ago…
Arnold felt that a study of the classics disciplined the mind. In fact, most educators of the
time believed that such a discipline was necessary because young people were naturally
savage and needed to be controlled. To become civilised adults, they needed to understand
society’s notions of right and wrong, proper and improper behaviour. Education, especially
one which disciplined their minds, was meant to guide them on this path.
Can you suggest how such ideas might have influenced thinking about education of the
poor in England and of the “natives” in the colonies?

Imagine you were
witness to a debate 1. Match the following:
between Mahatma
William Jones promotion of English
Gandhi and Macaulay
on English education. education
Write a page on the Rabindranath respect for ancient cultures
dialogue you heard. Tagore
Thomas Macaulay gurus
Mahatma Gandhi learning in a natural
environment
Pathshalas critical of English education
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(a) James Mill was a severe critic of the Orientalists.
(b) The 1854 Despatch on education was in favour
of English being introduced as a medium of higher
education in India.
(c) Mahatma Gandhi thought that promotion of
literacy was the most important aim of education.
(d) Rabindranath Tagore felt that children ought to
be subjected to strict discipline.
Let’s discuss
3. Why did William Jones feel the need to study Indian
history, philosophy and law?
4. Why did James Mill and Thomas Macaulay think
that European education was essential in India?
5. Why did Mahatma Gandhi want to teach children
handicrafts?
6. Why did Mahatma Gandhi think that English
education had enslaved Indians?
Let’s do
7. Find out from your grandparents about what they
studied in school.
8. Find out about the history of your school or any other
school in the area you live.
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8 Women, Caste and
Reform
Have you ever thought of how children lived about two

hundred years ago? Nowadays most girls from middle-class
families go to school, and often study with boys. On growing
up, many of them go to colleges and universities, and take
up jobs after that. They have to be adults before they
are legally married, and according to law, they can marry
anyone they like, from any caste and community, and
widows can remarry too. All women, like all men, can vote
and stand for elections. Of
course, these rights are
not actually enjoyed by
all. Poor people have little
or no access to education,
and in many families,
women cannot choose
their husbands.
Two hundred years ago
things were very different.
Most children were
married off at an early age.
Both Hindu and Muslim
men could marry more
than one wife. In some
parts of the country,
widows were praised if they
Fig. 1 – Sati, painted by chose death by burning themselves on the funeral pyre of
Balthazar Solvyn, 1813 their husbands. Women who died in this manner, whether
This was one of the many willingly or otherwise, were called “sati”, meaning virtuous
pictures of sati painted by the women. Women’s rights to property were also restricted.
European artists who came
to India. The practice of sati
Besides, most women had virtually no access to education.
was seen as evidence of the In many parts of the country people believed that if a
barbarism of the East. woman was educated, she would become a widow.
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Differences between men and women were not the
only ones in society. In most regions, people were divided
along lines of caste. Brahmans and Kshatriyas considered
themselves as “upper castes”. Others, such as traders
and moneylenders (often referred to as Vaishyas) were
placed after them. Then came peasants, and artisans
such as weavers and potters (referred to as Shudras).
At the lowest rung were those who laboured to keep
cities and villages clean or worked at jobs that upper
castes considered “polluting”, that is, it could lead to
the loss of caste status. The upper castes also treated
many of these groups at the bottom as “untouchable”.
They were not allowed to enter temples, draw water
from the wells used by the upper castes, or bathe in
ponds where upper castes bathed. They were seen as
inferior human beings.
Over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many
of these norms and perceptions slowly changed. Let us
see how this happened.
Working Towards Change

From the early nineteenth century, we find debates and
discussions about social customs and practices taking on
a new character. One important reason for this was
the development of new forms of communication. For the
first time, books, newspapers, magazines, leaflets and
pamphlets were printed. These were far cheaper and
far more accessible than the manuscripts that you have
read about in Class VII. Therefore ordinary people could
read these, and many of them could also write and
express their ideas in their own languages. All kinds of
issues – social, political, economic and religious – could
now be debated and discussed by men (and sometimes
by women as well) in the new cities. The discussions
could reach out to a wider public, and could become
linked to movements for social change.
These debates were often initiated by Indian reformers
and reform groups. One such reformer was Raja
Rammohun Roy (1772-1833). He founded a reform
Activity
Can you think of the
association known as the Brahmo Sabha (later known ways in which social
as the Brahmo Samaj) in Calcutta. People such as customs and practices
Rammohun Roy are described as reformers because they were discussed in the
felt that changes were necessary in society, and unjust pre-printing age when
practices needed to be done away with. They thought books, newspapers and
that the best way to ensure such changes was by pamphlets were not
persuading people to give up old practices and adopt a readily available?
new way of life.
WOMEN, CASTE AND REFORM 95
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Rammohun Roy was keen to spread the knowledge
of Western education in the country and bring about
greater freedom and equality for women. He wrote about
the way women were forced to bear the burden of
domestic work, confined to the home and the kitchen,
and not allowed to move out and become educated.
Changing the lives of widows

Rammohun Roy was particularly moved by the problems
widows faced in their lives. He began a campaign
against the practice of sati.
Rammohun Roy was well versed in Sanskrit, Persian
and several other Indian and Europeon languages. He
tried to show through his writings that the practice
of widow burning had no sanction in ancient texts.
By the early nineteenth century, as you have read in
Fig. 2 – Raja Rammohun Roy,
painted by Rembrandt Peale, 1833
Chapter 7, many British officials had also begun to
criticise Indian traditions and customs. They were
therefore more than willing to listen to Rammohun who
was reputed to be a learned man. In 1829, sati was banned.
The strategy adopted by Rammohun was used by
later reformers as well. Whenever they wished to
challenge a practice that seemed harmful, they tried to
find a verse or sentence in the ancient sacred texts
that supported their point of view. They then suggested
that the practice as it existed at present was against
early tradition.
Fig. 3 – Hook swinging

festival
In this popular festival,
devotees underwent a
peculiar form of suffering
as part of ritual worship.
With hooks pierced
through their skin they
swung themselves on
a wheel. In the early
nineteenth century, when
European officials began
criticising Indian customs
and rituals as barbaric,
this was one of the rituals
that came under attack.
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Source 1
“We first tie them down to the pile”

Rammohun Roy published many pamphlets to spread his
ideas. Some of these were written as a dialogue between the
advocate and critic of a traditional practice. Here is one
such dialogue on sati:
ADVOCATE OF SATI:
Women are by nature of inferior understanding,
without resolution, unworthy of trust … Many of
them, on the death of their husbands, become desirous
of accompanying them; but to remove every chance
of their trying to escape from the blazing fire, in
burning them we first tie them down to the pile. Activity
This argument was
OPPONENT OF SATI: taking place more
than 175 years ago.
When did you ever afford them a fair opportunity of
Write down the
exhibiting their natural capacity? How then can you
different arguments
accuse them of want of understanding? If, after
instruction in knowledge and wisdom, a person cannot you may have heard
comprehend or retain what has been taught him, we around you on the
may consider him as deficient; but if you do not worth of women.
educate women how can you see them as inferior. In what ways have
the views changed?
For instance, one of the most famous reformers,

Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar, used the ancient texts to
suggest that widows could remarry. His suggestion was
adopted by British officials, and a law was passed in
1856 permitting widow remarriage. Those who were
against the remarriage of widows opposed Vidyasagar,
and even boycotted him.
By the second half of the nineteenth century, the
movement in favour of widow remarriage spread to other
parts of the country. In the Telugu-speaking areas of
the Madras Presidency, Veerasalingam Pantulu formed
an association for widow remarriage. Around the same
time young intellectuals and reformers in Bombay
pledged themselves to working for the same cause.
In the north, Swami Dayanand Saraswati, who founded
the reform association called Arya Samaj, also supported
widow remarriage.
Yet, the number of widows who actually remarried Fig. 4 – Swami Dayanand
Saraswati
remained low. Those who married were not easily
Dayanand founded the Arya Samaj
accepted in society and conservative groups continued in 1875, an organisation that
to oppose the new law. attempted to reform Hinduism.
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Girls begin going to school
Many of the reformers felt that education for girls was
necessary in order to improve the condition of women.
Vidyasagar in Calcutta and many other reformers
in Bombay set up schools for girls. When the first
schools were opened in the mid-nineteenth century,
many people were afraid of them. They feared that
schools would take girls away from home, prevent them
from doing their domestic duties. Moreover, girls had
to travel through public places in order to reach school.
Many people felt that this would have a corrupting
influence on them. They felt that girls should stay
away from public spaces. Therefore, throughout the
nineteenth century, most educated women were taught
at home by liberal fathers or husbands. Sometimes
women taught themselves. Do you remember what you
Fig. 5 read about Rashsundari Debi in your book Social
Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar
and Political Life last year? She was one of those who
secretly learned to read and write in the flickering light
of candles at night.
In the latter part of the century, schools for girls
were established by the Arya Samaj in Punjab, and
Fig. 6 – Students of Hindu Jyotirao Phule in Maharashtra.
Mahila Vidyalaya, 1875
In aristocratic Muslim households in North India,
When girls’ schools were first
set up in the nineteenth century, women learnt to read the Koran in Arabic. They were
it was generally believed that the taught by women who came home to teach. Some
curriculum for girls ought to be reformers such as Mumtaz Ali reinterpreted verses from
less taxing than that for boys. the Koran to argue for women’s education. The first
The Hindu Mahila Vidyalaya was
one of the first institutions to
Urdu novels began to be written from the late nineteenth
provide girls with the kind of century. Amongst other things, these were meant to
learning that was usual for boys encourage women to read about religion and domestic
at the time. management in a language they could understand.
Women write about

women
From the early twentieth
century, Muslim women
like the Begums of Bhopal
played a notable role in
promoting education among
women. They founded a
primary school for girls at
Aligarh. Another remarkable
woman, Begum Rokeya
Sakhawat Hossain started
schools for Muslim girls in
Patna and Calcutta. She
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Source 2
was a fearless critic of conservative ideas, arguing
that religious leaders of every faith accorded an inferior
place to women. Once a woman’s
By the 1880s, Indian women began to enter husband has died...
universities. Some of them trained to be doctors, some
became teachers. Many women began to write and
publish their critical views on the place of women in In her book,
society. Tarabai Shinde, a woman educated at Stripurushtulna,
home at Poona, published a book, Stripurushtulna, Tarabai Shinde wrote:
(A Comparison between Women and Men), criticising Isn’t a woman’s life
the social differences between men and women. as dear to her as yours
Pandita Ramabai, a great is to you? It’s as if
scholar of Sanskrit, felt that women are meant to
Hinduism was oppressive towards be made of something
women, and wrote a book about different from men
altogether, made from
the miserable lives of upper-caste
dust from earth or
Hindu women. She founded a
rock or rusted iron
widows’ home at Poona to provide
whereas you and your
shelter to widows who had been lives are made from
treated badly by their husbands’ the purest gold. …
relatives. Here women were You’re asking me what
trained so that they could support I mean. I mean once a
themselves economically. woman’s husband has
Fig. 7 Needless to say, all this more died, … what’s in store
Pandita Ramabai than alarmed the orthodox. For for her? The barber
instance, many Hindu nationalists comes to shave all
felt that Hindu women were adopting Western ways and the curls and hair
that this would corrupt Hindu culture and erode family off her head, just to
values. Orthodox Muslims were also worried about cool your eyes. … She
the impact of these changes. is shut out from
going to weddings,
As you can see, by the end of the nineteenth century, receptions and other
women themselves were actively working for reform. auspicious occasions
They wrote books, edited magazines, founded schools that married women
and training centres, and set up women’s associations. go to. And why all
From the early twentieth century, they formed political these restrictions?
pressure groups to push through laws for female suffrage Because her husband
(the right to vote) and better health care and education has died. She is
for women. Some of them joined various kinds of unlucky: ill fate is
nationalist and socialist movements from the 1920s. written on her
In the twentieth century, leaders such as forehead. Her face is
Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose lent their not to be seen, it’s a
support to demands for greater equality and freedom bad omen.
for women. Nationalist leaders promised that there Tarabai Shinde, Stripurushtulna
would be full suffrage for all men and women after
Independence. However, till then they asked women
to concentrate on the anti-British struggles.
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Law against child marriage
With the growth of women’s organisations

and writings on these issues, the momentum
for reform gained strength. People challenged
another established custom – that of child
marriage. There were a number of Indian
legislators in the Central Legislative Assembly
who fought to make a law preventing child
marriage. In 1929 the Child Marriage
Restraint Act was passed without the kind of
bitter debates and struggles that earlier laws
had seen. According to the Act no man below
the age of 18 and woman below the age of
16 could marry. Subsequently these limits
were raised to 21 for men and 18 for women.
Fig. 8 – Bride at the age of eight

This is a picture of a child bride at the beginning of
the twentieth century. Did you know that even today
over 20 per cent of girls in India are married below
the age of 18?
Caste and Social Reform

Some of the social reformers we have been discussing
also criticised caste inequalities. Rammohun Roy
translated an old Buddhist text that was critical of
caste. The Prarthana Samaj adhered to the tradition of
Bhakti that believed in spiritual equality of all castes.
In Bombay, the Paramhans Mandali was founded in
1840 to work for the abolition of caste. Many of these
reformers and members of reform associations were
people of upper castes. Often, in secret meetings, these
reformers would violate caste taboos on food and touch,
in an effort to get rid of the hold of caste prejudice in
their lives.
There were also others who questioned the injustices
of the caste social order. During the course of the
nineteenth century, Christian missionaries began
setting up schools for tribal groups and “lower”-caste
children. These children were thus equipped with some
resources to make their way into a changing world.
At the same time, the poor began leaving their
villages to look for jobs that were opening up in the
cities. There was work in the factories that were coming
up, and jobs in municipalities. You have read about
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the expansion of cities in
Chapter 6. Think of the new
demands of labour this
created. Drains had to be
dug, roads laid, buildings
constructed, and cities
cleaned. This required coolies,
diggers, carriers, bricklayers,
sewage cleaners, sweepers,
palanquin bearers, rickshaw
pullers. Where did this labour
come from? The poor from
the villages and small towns,
many of them from low castes,
began moving to the cities where there was a new Fig. 9 – A coolie ship,
demand for labour. Some also went to work in plantations nineteenth century
in Assam, Mauritius, Trinidad and Indonesia. Work in This coolie ship – named John
Allen – carried many Indian
the new locations was often very hard. But the poor,
labourers to Mauritius where
the people from low castes, saw this as an opportunity they did a variety of forms of hard
to get away from the oppressive hold that upper-caste labour. Most of these labourers
landowners exercised over their lives and the daily were from low castes.
humiliation they suffered.
Who could produce shoes?
Leatherworkers have been traditionally held in

contempt since they work with dead animals
which are seen as dirty and polluting. During the
First World War, however, there was a huge
demand for shoes for the armies. Caste prejudice
against leather work meant that only the
traditional leather workers and shoemakers were
ready to supply army shoes. So they could ask
for high prices and gain impressive profits.
Fig. 10 – Madigas making shoes, nineteenth-century

Andhra Pradesh
Madigas were an important untouchable caste of
present-day Andhra Pradesh. They were experts at
cleaning hides, tanning them for use, and sewing
sandals.
There were other jobs too. The army, for instance,

offered opportunities. A number of Mahar people, who
were regarded as untouchable, found jobs in the Mahar
Regiment. The father of B.R. Ambedkar, the leader of
the Dalit movement, taught at an army school.
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No place inside
the classroom
In the Bombay
Presidency, as late as
1829, untouchables were
not allowed into even
government schools.
When some of them
pressed hard for that
right, they were allowed
to sit on the veranda
outside the classroom
and listen to the lessons,
without “polluting” the
room where upper-caste
boys were taught. Fig. 11 – Dublas of Gujarat carrying mangoes to the market.
Dublas laboured for upper-caste landowners, cultivating their
fields, and working at a variety of odd jobs at the landlord’s house.
Activity
1. Imagine that you are Demands for equality and justice
one of the students Gradually, by the second half of the nineteenth century,
sitting in the school people from within the Non-Brahman castes began
veranda and listening organising movements against caste discrimination, and
to the lessons. What demanded social equality and justice.
kind of questions The Satnami movement in Central India was founded
would be rising in by Ghasidas who worked among the leatherworkers and
your mind? organised a movement to improve their social status.
2. Some people thought In eastern Bengal, Haridas Thakur’s Matua sect worked
this situation was among Chandala cultivators. Haridas questioned
better than the total Brahmanical texts that supported the caste system.
lack of education for In what is present-day Kerala, a guru from Ezhava caste,
untouchable people. Shri Narayana Guru, proclaimed the ideals of unity for
Would you agree with his people. He argued against treating people unequally
on the basis of caste differences. According to him, all
this view?
humankind belonged to the same caste. One of his
famous statements was: “oru jati,
oru matam, oru daivam
manushyanu” (one caste, one
religion, one god for humankind).
All these sects were founded
by leaders who came from Non-
Brahman castes and worked
amongst them. They tried to
change those habits and practices
which provoked the contempt of
dominant castes. They tried to
create a sense of self-esteem
Fig. 12 – Shri Narayana Guru
among the subordinate castes.
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Gulamgiri
One of the most vocal amongst the “low-caste” leaders
was Jyotirao Phule. Born in 1827, he studied in schools
set up by Christian missionaries. On growing up he
developed his own ideas about the injustices of caste
society. He set out to attack the Brahmans’ claim that
they were superior to others, since they were Aryans.
Phule argued that the Aryans were foreigners, who
came from outside the subcontinent, and defeated and
subjugated the true children of the country – those who
had lived here from before the coming of the Aryans.
As the Aryans established their dominance, they began
looking at the defeated population as inferior, as low-
caste people. According to Phule, the “upper” castes
had no right to their land and power: in reality, the
land belonged to indigenous people, the so-called
low castes.
Phule claimed that before Aryan rule there existed a Fig. 13 – Jyotirao Phule
golden age when warrior-peasants tilled the land and
ruled the Maratha countryside in just and fair ways.
He proposed that Shudras (labouring castes) and
Ati Shudras (untouchables) should unite to challenge
caste discrimination. The Satyashodhak Samaj, an
association Phule founded, propagated caste equality.
Source 3
“Me here and you over there”

Phule was also critical of the anti-colonial nationalism that was
preached by upper-caste leaders. He wrote:
The Brahmans have hidden away the sword of their
religion which has cut the throat of the peoples’ prosperity
and now go about posing as great patriots of their country.
They … give this advice to ... our Shudra, Muslim and
Parsi youth that unless we put away all quarrelling amongst Activity
ourselves about the divisions between high and low in our Carefully read
country and come together, our ... country will never make Source 3. What do
any progress ... It will be unity to serve their purposes, you think Jyotirao
and then it will be me here and you over there again. Phule meant by
Jyotiba Phule, The Cultivator’s Whipcord “me here and you
over there again”?
In 1873, Phule wrote a book named Gulamgiri,

meaning slavery. Some ten years before this, the
American Civil War had been fought, leading to the end
of slavery in America. Phule dedicated his book to all
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Source 4
those Americans who had fought to free slaves, thus
“We are also establishing a link between the conditions of the
“lower” castes in India and the black slaves in
human beings” America.
As this example shows, Phule extended his
In 1927, Ambedkar said:
criticism of the caste system to argue against all
We now want to go to forms of inequality. He was concerned about the
the Tank only to prove plight of “upper”-caste women, the miseries of the
that like others, we are labourer, and the humiliation of the “low” castes.
also human beings … This movement for caste reform was continued in
Hindu society should the twentieth century by other great dalit leaders
be reorganised on two like Dr B.R. Ambedkar in western India and E.V.
main principles – Ramaswamy Naicker in the south.
equality and absence
of casteism. Who could enter temples?
Ambedkar was born into a Mahar family. As a child
he experienced what caste prejudice meant in
Fig. 14 – The gateway to the
Madurai temple, drawn by everyday life. In school he was forced to sit
Thomas Daniell, 1792 outside the classroom on the ground, and was
“Untouchables” were not not allowed to drink water from taps that
allowed anywhere near such upper -caste children used. After finishing
gateways until the temple school, he got a fellowship to go to the US for
entry movement began.
higher studies. On his return to India in 1919,
he wrote extensively about “upper”- caste
power in contemporary society.
In 1927, Ambedkar started a temple
entry movement, in which his Mahar caste
followers participated. Brahman priests
were outraged when the Dalits used water
from the temple tank.
Ambedkar led three such movements
for temple entry between 1927 and 1935.
His aim was to make everyone see the
power of caste prejudices within society.
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The Non-Brahman movement
In the early twentieth century, the non-Brahman
movement started. The initiative came from those
non-Brahman castes that had acquired access to
education, wealth and influence. They argued that
Brahmans were heirs of Aryan invaders from the
north who had conquered southern lands from
the original inhabitants of the region – the indigenous
Dravidian races. They also challenged Brahmanical
claims to power.
E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker, or Periyar, as he
was called, came from a middle-class family.
Interestingly, he had been an ascetic in his early Fig. 15 – E.V. Ramaswamy
Naicker (Periyar)
life and had studied Sanskrit scriptures carefully.
Later, he became a member of the Congress, only to Source 5
leave it in disgust when he found that at a feast
organised by nationalists, seating arrangements Periyar on women
followed caste distinctions – that is, the lower castes
were made to sit at a distance from the upper castes. Periyar wrote:
Convinced that untouchables had to fight for their
Only with the arrival of
dignity, Periyar founded the Self Respect Movement.
words such as Thara
He argued that untouchables were the true
Mukurtham our women
upholders of an original Tamil and Dravidian culture
had become puppets in
which had been subjugated by Brahmans. He felt the hands of their
that all religious authorities saw social divisions husbands … we ended
and inequality as God-given. Untouchables had to up with such fathers
free themselves, therefore, from all religions in order who advise their
to achieve social equality. daughters ... that they
Periyar was an outspoken critic of Hindu scriptures, had been gifted away
especially the Codes of Manu, the ancient lawgiver, to their husbands and
and the Bhagavad Gita and the Ramayana. He said they belong to their
that these texts had been used to establish the husband’s place. This
authority of Brahmans over lower castes and the is the … result of
domination of men over women. our association with
Sanskrit.
These assertions did not go unchallenged. The
Periyar, cited in Periyar
forceful speeches, writings and movements of lower- Chintahnaikal
caste leaders did lead to rethinking and some self-
criticism among upper-caste nationalist leaders. But
orthodox Hindu society also reacted by founding
Sanatan Dharma Sabhas and the Bharat Dharma Activity
Mahamandal in the north, and associations like the Why does caste remain
Brahman Sabha in Bengal. The object of these such a controversial issue
associations was to uphold caste distinctions as a today? What do you
cornerstone of Hinduism, and show how this was think was the most
sanctified by scriptures. Debates and struggles over important movement
caste continued beyond the colonial period and are against caste in colonial
still going on in our own times. times?
2019-200
Organising for reform
The Brahmo Samaj
The Brahmo Samaj, formed in 1830, prohibited all forms of idolatry and sacrifice,
believed in the Upanishads, and forbade its members from criticising other
Fig. 16 – Keshub
religious practices. It critically drew upon the ideals of religions – especially of
Chunder Sen –
one of the main Hinduism and Christianity – looking at their negative and
leaders of the positive dimensions.
Brahmo Samaj
Derozio and Young Bengal
Henry Louis Vivian Derozio, a teacher at Hindu College, Calcutta, in the
1820s, promoted radical ideas and encouraged his pupils to question all
authority. Referred to as the Young Bengal Movement, his students attacked
tradition and custom, demanded education for women and campaigned for
Fig. 17
the freedom of thought and expression. Henry Derozio
The Ramakrishna Mission and Swami Vivekananda

Named after Ramakrishna Paramhansa, Swami Vivekananda’s guru, the
Ramakrishna Mission stressed the ideal of salvation through social service
and selfless action.
Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902), whose original name was Narendra
Nath Dutta, combined the simple teachings of Sri Ramakrishna with his
well founded modern outlook and spread them all over the world. After
hearing him in the World Parliament of Religions at Chicago in 1893, the
New York Herald reported, “We feel how foolish it is to send missionaries
to this learned nation”. Indeed, Swami Vivekananda was the first Indian in
modern times, who re-established the spiritual pre-eminence of the Vedanta
Fig. 18 Swami
Vivekananda
philosophy on a global scale. But his mission was not simply to talk of
religion. He was extremely pained at the poverty and the misery of his
country men. He firmly believed that any reform could become successful only by uplifting the
condition of the masses. Therefore, his clarion call to the people of India was to rise above the
narrow confines of their ‘religion of the kitchen’ and come together in the service of the nation.
By sending out this call he made a signal contribution to the nascent nationalism of India. His
sense of nationalism was, however, not narrow in its conception. He was convinced that many
of the problems facing the mankind could only be overcome if the nations of the world come
together on an equal footing. Therefore, his exhortation to the youth was to unite on the basis
of a common spiritual heritage. In this exhortation he became truly ‘the symbol of a new spirit
and a source of strength for the future’.
The Prarthana Samaj
Established in 1867 at Bombay, the Prarthana Samaj sought to remove caste restrictions, abolish
child marriage, encourage the education of women, and end the ban on widow remarriage. Its
religious meetings drew upon Hindu, Buddhist and Christian texts.
The Veda Samaj
Established in Madras (Chennai) in 1864, the Veda Samaj was inspired by the Brahmo Samaj. It
worked to abolish caste distinctions and promote widow remarriage and women’s education.
Its members believed in one God. They condemned the superstitions and rituals of orthodox
Hinduism.
2019-200
The Aligarh Movement
The Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College, founded by Sayyid Ahmed
Khan in 1875 at Aligarh, later became the Aligarh Muslim University.
The institution offered modern education, including Western science, to
Muslims. The Aligarh Movement, as it was known, had an enormous impact
in the area of educational reform.
The Singh Sabha Movement
Reform organisations of the Sikhs, Fig. 19
Sayyid Ahmed Khan
the first Singh Sabhas were formed
at Amritsar in 1873 and at Lahore in
1879. The Sabhas sought to rid
Sikhism of superstitions, caste
distinctions and practices seen by
them as non-Sikh. They promoted
education among the Sikhs, often
combining modern instruction with
Sikh teachings. Fig. 20 – Khalsa College, Amritsar, established in 1892 by the
leaders of the Singh Sabha movement
ELSEWHERE
Black slaves and white planters

You have read about how Jyotirao Phule established a connection in his book Gulamgiri
between caste oppression and the practice of slavery in America. What was this system
of slavery?
From the time that European explorers and traders landed in Africa in the
seventeenth century, a trade in slaves began. Black people were captured and brought
from Africa to America, sold to white planters, and made to work on cotton and
other plantations – most of them in the southern United States. In the plantations
they had to work long hours, typically from dawn to dusk, punished for “inefficient
work”, and whipped and tortured.
Many people, white and black, opposed
slavery through organised protest. In
doing so, they invoked the spirit of the
American Revolution of 1776, exhorting:
“See your Declaration, Americans! Do you
understand your own language?” In his
moving Gettysburg Address, Abraham
Lincoln held that those who had fought
slavery had done so for the cause of
democracy. He urged the people to strive
for racial equality so that “government
of the people, by the people, for the
people, shall not perish from the earth”.
Fig. 21 – Slave Sale, South Carolina, USA,
1856
Here you see potential buyers examining African
slaves at an auction.
2019-200
Let’s recall
Let’s imagine
Imagine you are a 1. What social ideas did the following people support.
teacher in the school Rammohun Roy
set up by Rokeya Dayanand Saraswati
Hossain. There are 20 Veerasalingam Pantulu
girls in your charge.
Write an account of Jyotirao Phule
the discussions that Pandita Ramabai
might have taken Periyar
place on any one day Mumtaz Ali
in the school.
Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar
(a) When the British captured Bengal they framed
many new laws to regulate the rules regarding
marriage, adoption, inheritance of property, etc.
(b) Social reformers had to discard the ancient texts
in order to argue for reform in social practices.
(c) Reformers got full support from all sections of
the people of the country.
(d) The Child Marriage Restraint Act was passed
in1829.
Let’s discuss
3. How did the knowledge of ancient texts help the reformers promote new
laws?
4. What were the different reasons people had for not sending girls to
school?
5. Why were Christian missionaries attacked by many people in the country?
Would some people have supported them too? If so, for what reasons?
6. In the British period, what new opportunities opened up for people who
came from castes that were regarded as “low”?
7. How did Jyotirao the reformers justify their criticism of caste inequality
in society?
8. Why did Phule dedicate his book Gulamgiri to the American movement to
free slaves?
9. What did Ambedkar want to achieve through the temple entry movement?
10. Why were Jyoti rao Phule and Ramaswamy Naicker critical of the national
movement? Did their criticism help the national struggle in any way?
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9 The Making of the National
Movement: 1870s--1947
Fig. 1 – Police teargas

In the previous chapters we have looked at: demonstrators during the
¢ The British conquest of territories, and takeover Quit India movement
of kingdoms
¢ Introduction of new laws and administrative
institutions
¢ Changes in the lives of peasants and tribals
¢ Educational changes in the nineteenth century
¢ Debates regarding the condition of women
¢ Challenges to the caste system
¢ Social and religious reform
¢ The revolt of 1857 and its aftermath
¢ The decline of crafts and growth of industries
On the basis of what you have read about these

issues, do you think Indians were discontented with
British rule? If so, how were different groups and classes
dissatisfied?
THE MAKING OF THE NATIONAL MOVEMENT: 1870 S-1947 109
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The Emergence of Nationalism
The above-mentioned developments led the people to
ask a crucial question: what is this country of India
and for whom is it meant? The answer that gradually
emerged was: India was the people of India – all the
people irrespective of class, colour, caste, creed, language,
or gender. And the country, its resources and systems,
were meant for all of them. With this answer came the
awareness that the British were exercising control over
the resources of India and the lives of its people, and
until this control was ended India could not be for Indians.
This consciousness began to be clearly stated by the
political associations formed after 1850, especially those
that came into being in the 1870s and 1880s. Most of
these were led by English-educated professionals such
as lawyers. The more important ones were the Poona
Sarvajanik Sabha, the Indian Association, the Madras
Mahajan Sabha, the Bombay Presidency Association,
and of course the Indian National Congress.
Note the name, “Poona Sarvajanik Sabha”. The literal
meaning of “sarvajanik” is “of or for all the people” (sarva =
all + janik = of the people). Though many of these
associations functioned in specific parts of the country,
their goals were stated as the goals of all the people
of India, not those of any one region, community or
Sovereign – The capacity class. They worked with the idea that the people should
to act independently be sovereign – a modern consciousness and a key
without outside feature of nationalism. In other words, they believed
interference that the Indian people should be empowered to take
decisions regarding their affairs.
The dissatisfaction with British rule intensified in
the 1870s and 1880s. The Arms Act was passed in 1878,
disallowing Indians from possessing arms. In the
same year the Vernacular Press Act was also enacted
in an effort to silence those who were critical of the
government. The Act allowed the government to
confiscate the assets of newspapers including their
printing presses if the newspapers published anything
that was found “objectionable”. In 1883, there was a
furore over the attempt by the government to introduce
the Ilbert Bill. The bill provided for the trial of British
or European persons by Indians, and sought equality
between British and Indian judges in the country. But
when white opposition forced the government to
withdraw the bill, Indians were enraged. The event
highlighted the racial attitudes of the British in India.
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The need for an all-India organisation of educated
Publicist – Someone
Indians had been felt since 1880, but the Ilbert Bill
who publicises an idea
controversy deepened this desire. The Indian National
by circulating
Congress was established when 72 delegates from all
information, writing
over the country met at Bombay in December 1885.
reports, speaking at
The early leadership – Dadabhai Naoroji, Pherozeshah
meetings
Mehta, Badruddin Tyabji, W.C. Bonnerji, Surendranath
Banerji, Romesh Chandra Dutt, S. Subramania Iyer,
among others – was largely from Bombay and Calcutta.
Naoroji, a businessman and publicist settled in London,
and for a time member of the British Parliament, guided
the younger nationalists. A retired British official,
A.O. Hume, also played a part in bringing Indians from
the various regions together.
Source 1
Who did the Congress

seek to speak for?
A newspaper, The Indian Mirror, wrote in January 1886:
The First National Congress at Bombay … is the nucleus
of a future Parliament for our country, and will lead to
the good of inconceivable magnitude for our countrymen.
Badruddin Tyabji addressed the Congress as President

in 1887 thus:
this Congress is composed of the representatives, not
of any one class or community of India, but of all the
different communities of India.
Fig. 2 – Dadabhai Naoroji
Naoroji’s book Poverty and
A nation in the making Un-British Rule in India offered
a scathing criticism of the
It has often been said that the Congress in the first economic impact of British rule.
twenty years was “moderate” in its objectives and
methods. During this period it demanded a greater voice
for Indians in the government and in administration.
It wanted the Legislative Councils to be made more
representative, given more power, and introduced in
provinces where none existed. It demanded that Indians
Activity
From the beginning the
be placed in high positions in the government. For this
Congress sought to
purpose it called for civil service examinations to be
speak for, and in the
held in India as well, not just in London.
name of, all the Indian
The demand for Indianisation of the administration people. Why did it
was part of a movement against racisim, since most choose to do so?
important jobs at the time were monopolised by white
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officials, and the British generally assumed that Indians
Repeal – To undo law;
could not be given positions of responsibility. Since
to officially end the
British officers were sending a major part of their large
validity of something
salaries home, Indianisation, it was hoped, would also
such as a law
reduce the drain of wealth to England. Other demands
included the separation of the judiciary from the
executive, the repeal of the Arms Act and the freedom
of speech and expression.
The early Congress also raised a number of economic
issues. It declared that British rule had led to poverty and
famines: increase in the land revenue had impoverished
peasants and zamindars, and exports of grains to Europe
had created food shortages. The Congress demanded
Source 2 reduction of revenue, cut in military expenditure, and
more funds for irrigation. It passed many resolutions
In pursuit of gold on the salt tax, treatment of Indian labourers abroad,
and the sufferings of forest dwellers – caused by an
This is what a Moderate interfering forest administration. All this shows that
leader, Dinshaw Wacha, despite being a body of the educated elite, the Congress
wrote to Naoroji in 1887: did not talk only on behalf of professional groups,
zamindars or industrialists.
Pherozeshah is
nowadays too busy The Moderate leaders wanted to develop public
with his personal awareness about the unjust nature of British rule. They
work … They are published newspapers, wrote articles, and showed
already rich enough how British rule was leading to the economic ruin
… Mr. Telang too of the country. They criticised British rule in their
remains busy. I speeches and sent representatives to different parts
wonder how if all of the country to mobilise public opinion. They felt
remain busy in the that the British had respect for the ideals of freedom
pursuit of gold can and justice, and so they would accept the just demands
the progress of the of Indians. What was necessary, therefore, was to
country be advanced? express these demands, and make the government aware
of the feelings of Indians.
“Freedom is our birthright”

Activity By the 1890s many Indians began to raise questions
What problems
regarding the early about the political style of the Congress. In Bengal,
Congress does this Maharashtra and Punjab, leaders such as Bepin
comment highlight? Chandra Pal, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Lala Lajpat Rai
were beginning to explore more radical objectives
and methods. They criticised the Moderates for their
“politics of prayers”, and emphasised the importance of
self-reliance and constructive work. They argued that
people must rely on their own strength, not on the “good”
intentions of the government; people must fight for
swaraj. T ilak raised the slogan, “Freedom is my
birthright and I shall have it!”
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In 1905 Viceroy Curzon partitioned
Bengal. At that time Bengal was the
biggest province of British India and
included Bihar and parts of Orissa. The
British argued for dividing Bengal for
reasons of administrative convenience. But
what did “administrative convenience”
mean? Whose “convenience” did it represent?
Clearly, it was closely tied to the interests
of British officials and businessmen. Even
so, instead of removing the non-Bengali
areas from the province, the government
separated East Bengal and merged it with
Assam. Perhaps the main British motives were
to curtail the influence of Bengali politicians
and to split the Bengali people.
The partition of Bengal infuriated people
all over India. All sections of the Congress
– the Moderates and the Radicals, as
they may be called – opposed it. Large
public meetings and demonstrations were
organised and novel methods of mass protest developed. Fig. 3 – Balgangadhar Tilak
The struggle that unfolded came to be known as the Notice the name of the newspaper
Swadeshi movement, strongest in Bengal but with that lies on the table. Kesari, a
Marathi newspaper edited by
echoes elsewhere too – in deltaic Andhra for instance, Tilak, became one of the
it was known as the Vandemataram Movement. strongest critics of British rule.
Fig. 4 – Thousands joined the demonstrations during the Swadeshi movement
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The Swadeshi movement sought to oppose British
rule and encourage the ideas of self-help, swadeshi
enterprise, national education, and use of Indian
languages. To fight for swaraj, the radicals advocated
mass mobilisation and boycott of British institutions
and goods. Some individuals also began to suggest
that “revolutionary violence” would be necessary to
overthrow British rule.
The opening decades of the twentieth century were
marked by other developments as well. A group of Muslim
landlords and nawabs formed the All India Muslim
League at Dacca in 1906. The League supported the
partition of Bengal. It desired separate electorates for
Muslims, a demand conceded by the government in
1909. Some seats in the councils were now reserved
for Muslims who would be elected by Muslim voters.
Fig. 5 – Lala Lajpat Rai This tempted politicians to gather a following by
A nationalist from Punjab, he distributing favours to their own religious groups.
was one of the leading members Meanwhile, the Congress split in 1907. The Moderates
of the Radical group which was
critical of the politics of petitions. were opposed to the use of boycott. They felt that it
He was also an active member of involved the use of force. After the split the Congress
the Arya Samaj. came to be dominated by the Moderates with Tilak’s
followers functioning from outside. The two groups
reunited in December 1915. Next year the Congress
and the Muslim League signed the historic Lucknow
Pact and decided to work together for representative
Revolutionary violence
government in the country.
The use of violence to
make a radical change
within society The Growth of Mass Nationalism
After 1919 the struggle against British rule gradually
Council – An appointed became a mass movement, involving peasants, tribals,
or elected body of people students and women in large numbers and occasionally
with an administrative, factory workers as well. Certain business groups too
advisory or representative began to actively support the Congress in the 1920s.
function Why was this so?
The First World War altered the economic and
political situation in India. It led to a huge rise in the
defence expenditure of the Government of India. The
government in turn increased taxes on individual
incomes and business profits. Increased military
expenditure and the demands for war supplies led to a
sharp rise in prices which created great difficulties
for the common people. On the other hand, business
Activity groups reaped fabulous profits from the war. As you
Find out which countries
have seen (Chapter 7), the war created a demand for
fought the First World
industrial goods (jute bags, cloth, rails) and caused a
War.
decline of imports from other countries into India. So
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Indian industries expanded during the war, and Indian
business groups began to demand greater opportunities
for development.
The war also lead the British to expand their army.
Villages were pressurised to supply soldiers for an alien
cause. A large number of soldiers were sent to serve
abroad. Many returned after the war with an
understanding of the ways in which imperialist powers
were exploiting the peoples of Asia and Africa and with
a desire to oppose colonial rule in India.
Furthermore, in 1917 there was a revolution in
Russia. News about peasants’ and workers’ struggles
and ideas of socialism circulated widely, inspiring
Indian nationalists.
The advent of Mahatma Gandhi

It is in these circumstances that Mahatma Gandhi
emerged as a mass leader. As you may know, Gandhiji,
aged 46, arrived in India in 1915 from South Africa.
Having led Indians in that country in non-violent
marches against racist restrictions, he was already Fig. 6 – Founders of the Natal
Congress, Durban, South Africa,
a respected leader, known internationally. His South 1895
African campaigns had brought him in contact with
In 1895, along with other
various types of Indians: Hindus, Muslims, Parsis and Indians, Mahatma Gandhi
Christians; Gujaratis, Tamils and north Indians; established the Natal Congress
and upper-class merchants, lawyers and workers. to fight against racial
discrimination. Can you identify
Mahatma Gandhi spent his first year in India Gandhiji? He is standing at the
travelling throughout the country, understanding the centre in the row at the back,
people, their needs and the overall situation. His earliest wearing a coat and tie.
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interventions were in local movements in Champaran,
Kheda and Ahmedabad where he came into contact with
Rajendra Prasad and Vallabhbhai Patel. In Ahmedabad
he led a successful millworkers’ strike in 1918.
Let us now focus in some detail on the movements
organised between 1919 and 1922.
The Rowlatt Satyagraha

In 1919 Gandhiji gave a call for a satyagraha against
the Rowlatt Act that the British had just passed. The
Activity Act curbed fundamental rights such as the freedom of
Find out about the expression and strengthened police powers. Mahatma
Jallianwala Bagh Gandhi, Mohammad Ali Jinnah and others felt that the
massacre. What is government had no right to restrict people’s basic
Jallianwala Bagh? freedoms. They criticised the Act as “devilish” and
What atrocities were tyrannical. Gandhiji asked the Indian people to observe
committed there? How 6 April 1919 as a day of non-violent opposition to this Act,
were they committed? as a day of “humiliation and prayer” and hartal (strike).
Satyagraha Sabhas were set up to launch the movement.
Fig. 7 – The walled compound in

which General Dyer opened fire on
The Rowlatt Satyagraha turned out to be the first
a gathering of people all-India struggle against the British government
The people are pointing to the although it was largely restricted to cities. In April 1919
bullet marks on the wall. there were a number of demonstrations and hartals in
the country and the government used brutal measures
to suppress them. The Jallianwala Bagh atrocities,
Knighthood – An honour
inflicted by General Dyer in Amritsar on Baisakhi day
granted by the British
(13 April), were a part of this repression. On learning
Crown for exceptional
about the massacre, Rabindranath Tagore expressed
personal achievement or
the pain and anger of the country by renouncing his
public service
knighthood.
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Source 3
During the Rowlatt Satyagraha the participants tried
to ensure that Hindus and Muslims were united in the The eternal law
fight against British rule. This was also the call of
Mahatma Gandhi who always saw India as a land of all of suffering
the people who lived in the country – Hindus, Muslims
and those of other religions. He was keen that Hindus What did Mahatma
and Muslims support each other in any just cause. Gandhi mean by ahimsa
(non-violence)? How
Khilafat agitation and the Non-Cooperation could ahimsa become
Movement the basis of struggle?
The Khilafat issue was one such cause. In 1920 the This is what Gandhiji
British imposed a harsh treaty on the Turkish Sultan said:
or Khalifa. People were furious about this as they had Non-violence comes
been about the Jallianwala massacre. Also, Indian to us through doing
Muslims were keen that the Khalifa be allowed to retain good continually
control over Muslim sacred places in the erstwhile without the slightest
Ottoman Empire. The leaders of the Khilafat agitation, expectation of return.
Mohammad Ali and Shaukat Ali, now wished to initiate … That is the
a full-fledged Non-Cooperation Movement. Gandhiji indispensable lesson
supported their call and urged the Congress to campaign in non-violence … In
against “Punjab wrongs” (Jallianwala massacre), the South Africa … I
Khilafat wrong and demand swaraj. succeeded in learning
the eternal law of
The Non-Cooperation Movement gained momentum suffering as the only
through 1921-22. Thousands of students left government- remedy for undoing
controlled schools and colleges. Many lawyers such wrong and injustice.
as Motilal Nehru, C.R. Das, C. Rajagopalachari and It means positively the
Asaf Ali gave up their practices. British titles were law of non-violence.
surrendered and legislatures boycotted. People lit public You have to be
bonfires of foreign cloth. The imports of foreign cloth prepared to suffer
fell drastically between 1920 and 1922. But all this cheerfully at the hands
was merely the tip of the iceberg. Large parts of the of all and sundry
country were on the brink of a formidable revolt. and you will wish ill
to no one, not even to
People’s initiatives those who may have
In many cases people resisted British rule non-violently. wronged you.
In others, different classes and groups, interpreting Mahatma Gandhi,
Gandhiji’s call in their own manner, protested in ways 12 March 1938
that were not in accordance with his ideas. In either
case, people linked their movements to local grievances.
Let us look at a few examples.
In Kheda, Gujarat, Patidar peasants organised non-
violent campaigns against the high land revenue
demand of the British. In coastal Andhra and interior
Tamil Nadu, liquor shops were picketed. In the Guntur Picket – People protesting
district of Andhra Pradesh, tribals and poor peasants outside a building or
staged a number of “forest satyagrahas”, sometimes shop to prevent others
sending their cattle into forests without paying grazing from entering
fee. They were protesting because the colonial state
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had restricted their use of forest resources in various
Mahants – Religious
ways. They believed that Gandhiji would get their taxes
functionaries of Sikh
reduced and have the forest regulations abolished. In
gurdwaras
many forest villages, peasants proclaimed swaraj and
believed that “Gandhi Raj” was about to be established.
Illegal eviction – Forcible
In Sind (now in Pakistan), Muslim traders and
and unlawful throwing
peasants were very enthusiastic about the Khilafat call.
out of tenants from the
In Bengal too, the Khilafat-Non-Cooperation alliance
land they rent
gave enormous communal unity and strength to the
national movement.
In Punjab, the Akali agitation of the Sikhs sought to
remove corrupt mahants – supported by the British –
from their gurdwaras. This movement got closely
identified with the Non-Cooperation Movement. In
Assam, tea garden labourers, shouting “Gandhi Maharaj
ki Jai”, demanded a big increase in their wages. They
left the British-owned plantations amidst declarations
that they were following Gandhiji’s wish. Interestingly,
in the Assamese Vaishnava songs of the period the
reference to Krishna was substituted by “Gandhi Raja”.
Fig. 8 – A popular representation
of Mahatma Gandhi
The people’s Mahatma
In popular images too Mahatma We can see from the above that sometimes people
Gandhi is often shown as a divine thought of Gandhiji as a kind of messiah, as someone
being occupying a place within who could help them overcome their misery and poverty.
the pantheon of Indian gods.
In this image he is driving
Gandhiji wished to build class unity, not class conflict,
Krishna’s chariot, guiding other yet peasants could imagine that he would help them
nationalist leaders in the battle in their fight against zamindars, and agricultural
against the British. labourers believed he would provide them land. At
times, ordinary people
credited Gandhiji with
their own achievements.
For instance, at the end
of a powerful movement,
peasants of Pratapgarh
in the United Provinces
(now Uttar Pradesh)
managed to stop illegal
eviction of tenants;
but they felt it was
Gandhiji who had won
this demand for them.
At other times, using
Gandhiji’s name, tribals
and peasants undertook
actions that did not
conform to Gandhian
ideals.
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Source 4
“It was he who got bedakhli

stopped in Pratapgarh”
The following is an extract from a CID report on the
kisan movement in Allahabad district, January 1921:
The currency which Mr. Gandhi’s name has
acquired even in the remotest villages is astonishing.
No one seems to know quite who or what he is,
Activity
but it is an accepted fact that what he says is so, Read Source 4.
and what he orders must be done. He is a Mahatma According to this report,
or sadhu, a Pundit, a Brahmin who lives at how did people view
Allahabad, even a deota … the real power of his Mahatma Gandhi? Why
name is to be traced back to the idea that it was he do you think they felt
who got bedakhli [illegal eviction] stopped in that he was opposed to
Pratapgarh … as a general rule, Gandhi is not zamindars but not to
thought of as being antagonistic to Government, the government? Why
but only to the zamindars … We are for Gandhiji do you think they were
and the Sarkar. in favour of Gandhiji?
The happenings of 1922 -1929

Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, was against violent
movements. He abruptly called off the Non-Cooperation
Movement when in February 1922 a crowd of peasants
set fire to a police station in Chauri Chaura. Twenty-
two policemen were killed on that day. The peasants
were provoked because the police had fired on their
peaceful demonstration.
Once the Non-Cooperation movement was over,
Gandhiji’s followers stressed that the Congress must
undertake constructive work in the rural areas. Other
leaders such as Chitta Ranjan Das and Motilal Nehru
argued that the party should fight elections to the
councils and enter them in order to influence
government policies. Through sincere social work in
villages in the mid-1920s, the Gandhians were able to
extend their support base. This proved to be very useful
in launching the Civil Disobedience movement in 1930.
Two important developments of the mid-1920s were
the formation of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh
(RSS), a Hindu organisation, and the Communist Party of Fig. 9 – Chitta Ranjan Das
India. These parties have held very different ideas about A major figure in the freedom
movement, Das was a lawyer
the kind of country India should be. Find out about their from East Bengal. He was
ideas with the help of your teacher. The revolutionary especially active in the Non-
nationalist Bhagat Singh too was active in this period. Cooperation Movement.
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Fig. 10 – Demonstrators oppose the Simon Commission
In 1927 the British government in England decided to send a commission headed by Lord Simon to
decide India’s political future. The Commission had no Indian representative. The decison created an
outrage in India. All political groups decided to boycott the Commission. When the Commission
arrived it was met with demonstrations with banners saying “Simon Go Back”.
The decade closed with the Congress resolving

to fight for P u rna Swaraj (complete independence)
in 1929 under the presidentship of Jawaharlal Nehru.
Consequently, “Independence Day” was observed on
26 January 1930 all over the country.
“It takes a loud voice to make the deaf hear.

Inquilab Zindabad !”
Revolutionary nationalists such as Bhagat Singh, Chandra Shekhar
Azad, Sukhdev and others wanted to fight against the colonial rule
and the rich exploiting classes through a revolution of workers
and peasants. For this purpose they founded the Hindustan Socialist
Republican Association (HSRA) in 1928 at Ferozeshah Kotla in Delhi.
On 17 December, 1928, Bhagat Singh, Azad and Rajguru
assassinated Saunders, a police officer who was involved in the
lathi-charge that had caused the death of Lala Lajpat Rai.
On 8 April, 1929, Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt threw a bomb in
the Central Legislative Assembly. The aim, as their leaflet explained,
was not to kill but “to make the deaf hear”, and to remind the
Fig. 11 – Bhagat Singh foreign government of its callous exploitation.
Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were executed on March
23, 1931. Bhagat Singh’s age at that time was only 23.
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The March to Dandi
Purna Swaraj would never come on its
own. It had to be fought for. In 1930,
Gandhiji declared that he would lead a
march to break the salt law. According
to this law, the state had a monopoly
on the manufacture and sale of salt.
Mahatma Gandhi along with other
nationalists reasoned that it was sinful
to tax salt since it is such an essential
item of our food. The Salt March related
the general desire of freedom to a specific
grievance shared by everybody, and thus
did not divide the rich and the poor.
Gandhiji and his followers marched
for over 240 miles from Sabarmati to
the coastal town of Dandi where they
broke the government law by gathering
natural salt found on the seashore,
and boiling sea water to produce salt.
Fig. 12 – Mahatma Gandhi breaking the

salt law by picking up a lump of natural salt,
Dandi, 6 April 1930
Women in the freedom struggle: Ambabai from Karnataka
Women from diverse backgrounds participated in the national movement. Young

and old, single and married, they came from rural and urban areas, from both
conservative and liberal homes. Their involvement was significant for the freedom
struggle, for the women’s movement, and for themselves personally.
Both British officials and Indian nationalists felt that women’s participation gave
the national struggle an immense force. Participation in the freedom movement
brought women out of their homes. It gave them a place in the professions, in the
governance of India, and it could pave the way for equality with men.
What such participation meant for women is best recounted by them. Ambabai
of Karnataka had been married at age twelve. Widowed at sixteen, she picketed
foreign cloth and liquor shops in Udipi. She was arrested, served a sentence and
was rearrested. Between prison terms she made speeches, taught spinning, and
organised prabhat pheris. Ambabai regarded these as the happiest days of her life
because they gave it a new purpose and commitment.
Women, however, had to fight for their right to participate in the movement.
During the Salt Satyagraha, for instance, even Mahatma Gandhi was initially opposed
to women’s participation. Sarojini Naidu had to persuade him to allow women to
join the movement.
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Peasants, tribals and women participated
in large numbers. A business federation
published a pamphlet on the salt issue.
The government tried to crush the
movement through brutal action against
peaceful satyagrahis. Thousands were
sent to jail.
The combined struggles of the Indian
people bore fruit when the Government
of India Act of 1935 prescribed
provincial autonomy and the
government announced elections to the
provincial legislatures in 1937. The
Congress formed governments in 7 out
of 11 provinces.
In September 1939, after two years
of Congress rule in the provinces, the
Second World War broke out. Critical of
Hitler, Congress leaders were ready to
Fig. 13 – Sarojini Naidu with support the British war effort. But in return they wanted
Mahatma Gandhi, Paris, 1931 that India be granted independence after the war.
Active in the national movement The British refused to concede the demand. The Congress
since the early 1920s, Naidu was
ministries resigned in protest.
a significant leader of the Dandi
March. She was the first Indian
Source 5
woman to become President of
the Indian National Congress
(1925).
Veer Lakhan Nayak was hanged
Baji Mohammed, President of the Nabrangpur
Congress, Orissa in the 1930s, reports:
On August 25, 1942 … nineteen people died on
the spot in police firing at Paparandi in
Nabarangpur. Many died thereafter from their
wounds. Over 300 were injured. More than a
thousand were jailed in Koraput district. Several
were shot or executed. Veer Lakhan Nayak
(a legendary tribal leader who defied the British)
was hanged.
Nayak, Baji tells us, was not worried about being

executed, only sad that he would not live to see
freedom’s dawn.
Provincial autonomy
Baji Mohammad mobilised 20,000 people to join
Capacity of the provinces
the national struggle. He offered satyagraha many
to make relatively
times over. He participated in protests against the
independent decisions
Second World War and in the Quit India movement,
while remaining within
and served long jail terms.
a federation
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Fig. 14 – Quit India movement,
August 1942
Demonstrators clashed with
the police everywhere. Many
thousands were arrested, over
a thousand killed, many more
were injured.
Bose and the INA
Quit India and Later

Mahatma Gandhi decided to initiate a new phase of
movement against the British in the middle of the
Second World War. The British must quit India
immediately, he told them. To the people he said, “do or
die” in your effort to fight the British – but you must
Fig. 15 – Subhas Chandra Bose
fight non-violently. Gandhiji and other leaders were
jailed at once but the movement spread. It specially A radical nationalist, with
attracted peasants and the youth who gave up their socialist leanings, Bose did
studies to join it. Communications and symbols of not share Gandhiji’s ideal
state authority were attacked all over the country. In of ahimsa, though he
many areas the people set up their own governments. respected him as the
The first response of the British was severe repression. “Father of the Nation”. In
By the end of 1943 over 90,000 people were arrested, and January 1941, he secretly
around 1,000 killed in police firing. In many areas orders left his Calcutta home, went
were given to machine-gun crowds from airplanes. The to Singapore, via Germany,
rebellion, however, ultimately brought the Raj to its knees. and raised the Azad Hind
Fauj or the Indian National
Towards Independence and Partition Army (INA). To free India
from British control, in 1944,
Meanwhile, in 1940 the Muslim League had moved a
the INA tried to enter
resolution demanding “Independent States” for Muslims
India through Imphal and
in the north-western and eastern areas of the country. Kohima but the campaign
The resolution did not mention partition or Pakistan. failed. The INA members
Why did the League ask for an autonomous arrangement were imprisoned and
for the Muslims of the subcontinent? tried. People across the
From the late 1930s, the League began viewing country, from all walks of
the Muslims as a separate “nation” from the Hindus. life, participated in the
In developing this notion it may have been influenced movement against the
by the history of tension between some Hindu and INA trials.
Muslim groups in the 1920s and 1930s. More
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Fig. 16 – Maulana Azad with
other members at the Congress
Working Committee, Sevagram,
1942
Azad was born in Mecca to a
Bengali father and an Arab
mother. Well-versed in many
languages, Azad was a scholar
of Islam and an exponent of
the notion of wahadat-i-deen,
the essential oneness of all
religions. An active participant
in Gandhian movements and a
staunch advocate of Hindu-
Muslim unity, he was opposed
to Jinnah’s two-nation theory.
Fig. 17 – Chakravarti Rajagopalachari

speaking to Gandhiji before the Gandhi-
Jinnah talks, 1944
A veteran nationalist and leader of
the Salt Satyagraha in the south,
C. Rajagopalachari, popularly known as
Rajaji, served as member of the Interim
Government of 1946 and as free India’s
first Indian Governor-General.
Fig. 18 – Sardar
Vallabhbhai Patel played
an important role in the
negotiations for
independence during
1945- 47
Patel hailed from an
impoverished peasant-
proprietor family of
Fig. 19 – Mohammad Ali
Nadiad, Gujarat.
Jinnah with Mahatma Gandhi,
A foremost organiser of
Bombay, September 1944
the freedom movement
from 1918 onwards, Patel An ambassador of Hindu-
served as President of Muslim unity until 1920,
the Congress in 1931. Jinnah played an important
role in the making of the
Lucknow Pact. He reorganised
the Muslim League after 1934,
and became the major
spokesperson for the demand
for Pakistan.
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Fig. 20 – Jawaharlal Nehru
listens to Mahatma Gandhi before
the Bombay session of the
Congress, July 1946
Gandhiji’s disciple, a Congress
Socialist, and an internationalist,
Nehru was a leading architect of
the national movement and of
free India’s economy and polity.
“General”constituencies
Election districts with
no reservations for any
religious or other
community
importantly, the provincial elections of 1937 seemed to

have convinced the League that Muslims were a
minority, and they would always have to play second
fiddle in any democratic structure. It feared that
Muslims may even go unrepresented. The Congress’s
rejection of the League’s desire to form a joint Congress-
League government in the United Provinces in 1937
also annoyed the League.
The Congress’s failure to mobilise the Muslim masses
in the 1930s allowed the League to widen its social
support. It sought to enlarge its support in the early
1940s when most Congress leaders were in jail. At the
end of the war in 1945, the British opened negotiations
between the Congress, the League and themselves for
the independence of India. The talks failed because the
League saw itself as the sole spokesperson of India’s
Muslims. The Congress could not accept this claim since Fig. 21 – Khan Abdul Ghaffar
a large number of Muslims still supported it. Khan, the Pashtun leader from
Elections to the provinces were again held in 1946. the North West Frontier
Province, with his colleagues
The Congress did well in the “General” constituencies
at a peace march through
but the League’s success in the seats reserved for Muslims Bihar, March 1947
was spectacular. It persisted with its demand for “Pakistan”. Also known as Badshah
In March 1946 the British cabinet sent a three-member Khan, he was the founder
mission to Delhi to examine this demand and to suggest of the Khudai Khidmatgars,
a suitable political framework for a free India. This a powerful non-violent
movement among the Pathans
mission suggested that India should remain united and of his province. Badshah
constitute itself as a loose confederation with some Khan was strongly opposed
autonomy for Muslim-majority areas. But it could not to the Partition of India.
get the Congress and the Muslim League to agree to He criticised his Congress
specific details of the proposal. Partition now became colleagues for agreeing to
the 1947 division.
more or less inevitable.
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After the failure of
the Cabinet Mission, the
Muslim League decided
on mass agitation for
winning its Pakistan
demand. It announced
16 August 1946 as
“Direct Action Day”. On
this day riots broke
out in Calcutta, lasting
several days and
resulting in the death
of thousands of people.
By March 1947 violence
spread to different parts
of northern India.
Fig. 22 – Refugees from Many hundred thousand people were killed and
riot-torn Punjab gather in numerous women had to face untold brutalities during
New Delhi, in search of
the Partition. Millions of people were forced to flee their
shelter and food
homes. Torn asunder from their homelands, they were
reduced to being refugees in alien lands. Partition also
meant that India changed, many of its cities changed, and
a new country – Pakistan – was born. So, the joy of our
country’s independence from British rule came mixed with
the pain and violence of Partition.
ELSEWHERE
Nationalism in Africa: The case of Ghana

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries witnessed the rise of nationalism
in many Afro-Asian countries. In many of these, nationalism arose as a part of the
anti-colonial struggles for independence.
Colonial rule in Africa was dictatorial. Only the “Chiefs” were allowed to rule on behalf
of the foreign powers. Alternately, laws affecting Africans were created in all-white
legislatures. Africans had no decision-making powers or representation, not until after
the Second World War at least. The forcible takeover of land from local owners or users,
increased taxation and poor working conditions led to many African protests.
In 1957, Ghana, known until then as the Gold Coast, became the first sub-Saharan
African country to gain independence. The freedom movement was led by Kwame
Nkrumah’s Convention People’s Party through strikes, boycotts and mass rallies. In 1951
this party won a huge electoral victory. It opposed the existing system in which the
British rulers had allowed the Chiefs to nominate representatives to the legislature.
It pressed the British to grant a legislature that contained no nominated or special
members and won this demand in 1954. Elections to the new Legislative Council were
held in 1956. The Convention People’s Party won these, thus paving the way for the
proclamation of an independent nation under the name “Ghana”.
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Let’s recall Let’s imagine
1. Why were people dissatisfied with British rule in Imagine that you are
the 1870s and 1880s? involved in the Indian
national movement.
2. Who did the Indian National Congress wish to Based on your reading
speak for? of this chapter, briefly
3. What economic impact did the First World War discuss your preferred
methods of struggle
have on India?
and your vision of a
4. What did the Muslim League resolution of 1940 free India.
ask for?
Let’s discuss
5. Who were the Moderates? How did they propose to
struggle against British rule?
6. How was the politics of the Radicals within the
Congress different from that of the Moderates?
7. Discuss the various forms that the Non-Cooperation
Movement took in different parts of India. How did
the people understand Gandhiji?
8. Why did Gandhiji choose to break the salt law?
9. Discuss those developments of the 1937-47 period
that led to the creation of Pakistan.
Let’s do
10. Find out how the national movement was organised
in your city, district, area or state. Who participated
in it and who led it? What did the movement in
your area achieve?
11. Find out more about the life and work of any two
participants or leaders of the national movement
and write a short essay about them. You may
choose a person not mentioned in this chapter.
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10 India After Independence
A New and Divided Nation

When India became independent in August 1947, it
faced a series of very great challenges. As a result of
Partition, 8 million refugees had come into the country
from what was now Pakistan. These people had to be
found homes and jobs. Then there was the problem
of the princely states, almost 500 of them, each ruled
by a maharaja or a nawab, each of whom had to be
persuaded to join the new nation. The problems of the
refugees and of the princely states had to be addressed
immediately. In the longer term, the new nation had to
adopt a political system that would best serve the hopes
and expectations of its population.
Fig. 1 – Mahatma Gandhi's ashes being immersed in Allahabad, February 1948

Less than six months after independence the nation was in mourning. On 30 January 1948, Mahatma
Gandhi was assassinated by a fanatic, Nathuram Godse, because he disagreed with Gandhiji’s conviction
that Hindus and Muslims should live together in harmony. That evening, a stunned nation heard Jawaharlal
Nehru’s moving statement over All India Radio: “Friends and comrades, the light has gone out of our lives
and there is darkness everywhere … our beloved leader … the Father of the Nation is no more.”
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India’s population in 1947 was large, almost 345
million. It was also divided. There were divisions
Activity
Imagine that you are a
between high castes and low castes, between the
British administrator
majority Hindu community and Indians who practised
leaving India in 1947.
other faiths. The citizens of this vast land spoke many
You are writing a letter
different languages, wore many different kinds of dress,
home where you discuss
ate different kinds of food and practised different
what is likely to happen
professions. How could they be made to live together in
to India without the
one nation-state?
British. What would be
To the problem of unity was added the problem of your views about the
development. At Independence, the vast majority of future of India?
Indians lived in the villages. Farmers and peasants
depended on the monsoon for their survival. So did the
non-farm sector of the rural economy, for if the crops
failed, barbers, carpenters, weavers and other service
groups would not get paid for their services either. In
the cities, factory workers lived in crowded slums with
little access to education or health care. Clearly, the
new nation had to lift its masses out of poverty by
increasing the productivity of agriculture and by
promoting new, job-creating industries.
Unity and development had to go hand in hand. If
the divisions between different sections of India were
not healed, they could result in violent and costly
conflicts – high castes fighting with low castes, Hindus
with Muslims and so on. At the same time, if the fruits
of economic development did not reach the broad masses
of the population, it could create fresh divisions – for
example, between the rich and the poor, between cities
and the countryside, between regions of India that were
prosperous and regions that lagged behind.
A Constitution is Written
Between December 1946 and November 1949, some
three hundred Indians had a series of meetings on
the country’s political future. The meetings of this
“Constituent Assembly” were held in New Delhi, but
the participants came from all over India, and from
different political parties. These discussions resulted
in the framing of the Indian Constitution, which came
into effect on 26 January 1950.
One feature of the Constitution was its adoption of
universal adult franchise. All Indians above the age of
21 would be allowed to vote in state and national
elections. This was a revolutionary step – for never before
Franchise – The right to
had Indians been allowed to choose their own leaders.
vote
In other countries, such as the United Kingdom and
INDIA AFTER INDEPENDENCE 129
2019-200
Fig. 2 – Jawaharlal Nehru the United States, this right had been granted in stages.
introducing the resolution that First only men of property had the vote. Then men who
outlined the objectives of the
Constitution
were educated were also added on. Working-class men
got the vote only after a long struggle. Finally, after a
bitter struggle of their own, American and British women
were granted the vote. On the other hand, soon after
Independence, India chose to grant this right to all its
citizens regardless of gender, class or education.
A second feature of the Constitution was that it
guaranteed equality before the law to all citizens,
regardless of their caste or religious affiliation. There
were some Indians who wished that the political system
of the new nation be based on Hindu ideals, and that
India itself be run as a Hindu state. They pointed to the
example of Pakistan, a country created explicitly to
protect and further the interests of a particular religious
community – the Muslims. However, the Indian Prime
Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was of the opinion that India
could not and must not become a “Hindu Pakistan”.
Besides Muslims, India also had large populations
of Sikhs and Christians, as well as many Parsis and
Jains. Under the new Constitution, they would have
the same rights as Hindus – the same opportunities
when it came to seeking jobs in government or the
private sector, the same rights before the law.
A third feature of the Constitution was that it offered
special privileges for the poorest and most disadvantaged
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Source 1
Indians. The practice of untouchability, described
as a “slur and a blot” on the “fair name of India”,
was abolished. Hindu temples, previously open to
We must give them
only the higher castes, were thrown open to security and rights
all, including the former untouchables. After a
long debate, the Constituent Assembly also Nehru wrote in a letter to
recommended that a certain percentage of seats the Chief Ministers of states:
in legislatures as well as jobs in government be
reserved for members of the lowest castes. It had ... we have a Muslim
been argued by some that Untouchable or as they minority who are so large
in numbers that they
were now known, Harijan, candidates did not have
cannot, even if they want,
good enough grades to get into the prestigious
go anywhere else. That is a
Indian Administrative Service. But, as one member
basic fact about which
of the Constituent Assembly, H.J. Khandekar, there can be no argument.
argued, it was the upper castes who were Whatever the provocation
responsible for the Harijans “being unfit today”. from Pakistan and
Addressing his more privileged colleagues, whatever the indignities
Khandekar said: and horrors inflicted on
We were suppressed for thousands of years. non-Muslims there, we
You engaged us in your service to serve your have got to deal with this
own ends and suppressed us to such an minority in a civilised
extent that neither our minds nor our bodies manner. We must give
and nor even our hearts work, nor are we them security and the
able to march forward. rights of citizens in a
democratic State.
Along with the former Untouchables, the
adivasis or Scheduled Tribes were also granted
reservation in seats and jobs. Like the Scheduled
Castes, these Indians too had been deprived and
discriminated against. The tribals had been
deprived of modern health care and education,
while their lands and forests had been taken away
by more powerful outsiders. The new privileges
granted them by the Constitution were meant to
make amends for this.
The Constituent Assembly spent many days
Activity
Imagine a conversation
discussing the powers of the central government between a father and son
versus those of the state governments. Some in a Muslim family. After
members thought that the Centre’s interests Partition, the son thinks it
should be foremost. Only a strong Centre, it was would be wiser for them to
argued, “would be in a position to think and plan move to Pakistan while the
for the well-being of the country as a whole”. Other father believes that they
members felt that the provinces should have should continue to live in
greater autonomy and freedom. A member from India. Taking information
Mysore feared that under the present system from the chapter so far
“democracy is centred in Delhi and it is not allowed (and Chapter 11), act out
to work in the same sense and spirit in the rest of what each would say.
the country”. A member from Madras insisted that
2019-200
“the initial responsibility for the
well-being of the people of the
provinces should rest with the
Provincial Governments”.
The Constitution sought to
balance these competing claims by
providing three lists of subjects: a
Union List, with subjects such as
taxes, defence and foreign affairs,
which would be the exclusive
responsibility of the Centre; a
State List of subjects, such as
education and health, which
would be taken care of principally
by the states; a Concurrent List,
under which would come subjects
such as forests and agriculture,
in which the Centre and the states
would have joint responsibility.
Another major debate in the
Fig. 3 – Dr B.R. Ambedkar Constituent Assembly concerned language. Many
Dr. B.R. Ambedkar (1891-1956), members believed that the English language should
respectfully referred to as leave India with the British rulers. Its place, they
Babasaheb, belonged to a
argued, should be taken by Hindi. However, those who
Marathi-speaking dalit family.
A lawyer and economist, he is did not speak Hindi were of a different opinion. Speaking
best known as a revered leader in the Assembly, T.T. Krishnamachari conveyed “a
of the Dalits and the father of warning on behalf of people of the South”, some of whom
the Indian Constitution threatened to separate from India if Hindi was imposed
on them. A compromise was finally arrived at: namely,
that while Hindi would be the “official language” of India,
English would be used in the courts, the services, and
communications between one state and another.
Many Indians contributed to the framing of the
Constitution. But perhaps the most important role was
played by Dr B.R. Ambedkar, who was Chairman of
the Drafting Committee, and under whose supervision
the document was finalised. In his final speech to the
Constituent Assembly, Dr Ambedkar pointed out that
political democracy had to be accompanied by economic
and social democracy. Giving the right to vote would
Activity not automatically lead to the removal of other
Discuss in your class, inequalities such as between rich and poor, or between
one advantage and one upper and lower castes. With the new Constitution, he
disadvantage today of said, India was
the decision to keep
going to enter into a life of contradictions. In
English as a language
politics we will have equality and in social and
of India.
economic life we will have inequality. In politics
2019-200
we will be recognising the principle of one
man one vote and one value. In our social and
economic life, we shall, by reason of our social
and economic structure, continue to deny the
principle of one man one value.
How were States to be Formed?

Back in the 1920s, the Indian National Congress – the
main party of the freedom struggle – had promised that
once the country won independence, each major
linguistic group would have its own province. However,
after independence the Congress did not take any steps Linguistic – Relating to
to honour this promise. For India had been divided on language
the basis of religion: despite the wishes and efforts of
Mahatma Gandhi, freedom had come not to one nation
but to two. As a result of the partition of India, more
than a million people had been killed in riots between
Hindus and Muslims. Could the country afford further
divisions on the basis of language?
Both Prime Minister Nehru and Deputy Prime
Minister Vallabhbhai Patel were against the creation
of linguistic states. After the Partition, Nehru said,
“disruptionist tendencies had come to the fore”; to check
them, the nation had to be strong and united. Or, as
Patel put it:
... the first and last need of India at the present
moment is that it should be made a nation …
Everything which helps the growth of nationalism
has to go forward and everything which throws
obstacles in its way has to be rejected … We
have applied this test to linguistic provinces also,
and by this test, in our opinion [they] cannot
be supported. Fig. 4 – Potti Sriramulu, the
Gandhian leader who died
That the Congress leaders would now go back on fasting for a separate state for
their promise created great disappointment. The Kannada Telugu speakers
speakers, Malayalam speakers, the Marathi speakers, had
all looked forward to having their own state. The strongest
protests, however, came from the Telugu-speaking districts
of what was the Madras Presidency. When Nehru went
to campaign there during the general elections of 1952,
he was met with black flags and slogans demanding
“We want Andhra”. In October of that year, a veteran
Gandhian named Potti Sriramulu went on a hunger
strike demanding the formation of Andhra state to
protect the interests of Telugu speakers. As the fast
went on, it attracted much support. Hartals and bandhs
were observed in many towns.
2019-200
On 15 December 1952, fifty-eight days into his fast,
Potti Sriramulu died. As a newspaper put it, “the news of
the passing away of Sriramulu engulfed entire Andhra in
chaos”. The protests were so widespread and intense that
the central government was forced to give in to the demand.
Thus, on 1 October 1953, the new state of Andhra came into
being, which subsequently became Andhra Pradesh.
After the creation of Andhra, other linguistic communities
also demanded their own separate states. A States
Reorganisation Commission was set up, which submitted
its report in 1956, recommending the redrawing of district
and provincial boundaries to form compact provinces of
Assamese, Bengali, Oriya, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and
Telugu speakers respectively. The large Hindi-speaking
region of north India was also to be broken up into several
states. A little later, in 1960, the bilingual state of Bombay
was divided into separate states for Marathi and Gujarati
speakers. In 1966, the state of Punjab was also divided
into Punjab and Haryana, the former for the Punjabi speakers
(who were also mostly Sikhs), the latter for the rest (who
spoke not Punjabi but versions of Haryanvi or Hindi).
The making of Linguistic

States
Fig. 5 (a)
Indian Provinces and Princely
States before 14 August 1947
Princely States
British India
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Erstwhile
Princely States*
Other States
*A state ceased to be a
“princely state” as and
when its prince agreed to
merger with India or
Pakistan or was defeated.
But many of these states
were retained as
administrative units until
31 October 1956. Hence
the category, “erstwhile
princely states” for the
period 1947-48 to 31
October 1956.
Fig. 5 (b) – Indian States before 1 November 1956
Activity
Look at Figs. 5 (a),
5 (b) and 5 (c).
Notice how the
Princely States
disappear in 5 (b).
Identify the new
states that were
formed in 1956 and
later and the
languages of these
states.
Fig. 5 (c) – Indian States in 1975
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Fig. 6 – The bridge on the
Mahanadi river constructed to
control the flow of water
Bridges and dams became the
symbol of development in
independent India.
State – Concerned with Planning for Development

the government. (Note
Lifting India and Indians out of poverty, and building a
that used in this sense,
modern technical and industrial base were among the
the word does not refer
major objectives of the new nation. In 1950, the
to the different states
government set up a Planning Commission to help design
which are found in a
and execute suitable policies for economic development.
country.)
There was a broad agreement on what was called a
“mixed economy” model. Here, both the State and the
private sector would play important and complementary
Fig. 7 – Work going on at the
Gandhi Sagar bandh roles in increasing production and generating jobs.
This was the first of the four What, specifically, these roles were to be – which industries
dams built on the Chambal river should be initiated by the state and which by the
in Madhya Pradesh. It was market, how to achieve a balance between the different
completed in 1960. regions and states – was to be defined by the Planning
Commission.
In 1956, the Second Five
Year Plan was formulated.
This focused strongly on
the development of heavy
industries such as steel,
and on the building of large
dams. These sectors would
be under the control of
the State. This focus on
heavy industry, and the
effort at state regulation of
the economy was to guide
economic policy for the next
few decades. This approach
had many strong supporters,
but also some vocal critics.
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Source 2
Nehru on the Five Year Plans

Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was a great supporter of
the planning process. He explained the ideals and purposes
of planning in a series of letters he wrote to the chief
ministers of the different states. In a letter of 22 December
1952, he said that:
... behind the First Five Year Plan lies the conception of
India’s unity and of a mighty co-operative effort of all
the peoples of India … We have to remember always
that it is not merely the governmental machinery that
counts in all this, but even more so the enthusiasm and
co-operation of the people. Our people must have the
sensation of partnership in a mighty enterprise, of being Fig. 8
8– Jawaharlal
fellow-travellers towards the next goal that they and Nehru at the Bhilai Steel
we have set before us. The Plan may be, and has to be, Plant
based on the calculations of economists, statisticians and The Bhilai steel plant
the like, but figures and statistics, very important as was set up with the help
of the former Soviet
they are, do not give life to the scheme. That breath of Union in 1959. Located
life comes in other ways, and it is for us now to make in the backward rural
this Plan, which is enshrined in cold print, something area of Chhattisgarh,
living, vital and dynamic, which captures the it came to be seen as an
imagination of the people. important sign of the
development of modern
India after Independence.
Some felt that it had put inadequate emphasis

on agriculture. Others argued that it had
neglected primary education. Still others believed
that it had not taken account of the
environmental implications of economic policies.
As Mahatma Gandhi’s follower Mira Behn wrote
in 1949, by “science and machinery he [mankind]
may get huge returns for a time, but ultimately
will come desolation. We have got to study
Nature’s balance, and develop our lives within
her laws, if we are to survive as a physically
healthy and morally decent species.”
Activity
Discuss in your class whether Mira Behn was
right in her view that science and machinery
would create problems for human beings.
You may like to think about examples of
the effects of industrial pollution and
de-forestation on the world today.
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The search for an independent foreign policy
India gained freedom soon

after the devastations of the
Fig. 9 – Jawaharlal Second World War. At that
Nehru and Krishna
time a new international body
Menon arriving at the
United Nations – the United Nations – formed
Krishna Menon led in 1945 was in its infancy.
the Indian delegation The 1950s and 1960s saw the
to the UN between emergence of the Cold War,
1952 and 1962 and that is, power rivalries and
argued for a policy of
ideological conflicts between
non-alignment.
the USA and the USSR, with
both countries creating military alliances. This was also the period
when colonial empires were collapsing and many countries were
attaining independence. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who was
also the foreign minister of newly independent India, developed
free India’s foreign policy in this context. Non-alignment formed
the bedrock of this foreign policy.
Led by statesmen from Egypt, Yugoslavia, Indonesia, Ghana
and India, the non-aligned movement urged countries not to
join either of the two major alliances. But this policy of staying
away from alliances was not a matter of remaining “isolated” or
“neutral”. The former means remaining aloof from world affairs
whereas non-aligned countries such as India played an active
role in mediating between the American and Soviet alliances.
They tried to prevent war — often taking a humanitarian and
moral stand against war. However, for one reason or another,
many non-aligned countries including India got involved in wars.
By the 1970s, a large number of countries had joined the
non-aligned movement.
Fig. 10 – Leaders of
Asian and African
countries meet at
Bandung, Indonesia
1955
Over 29 newly
independent states
participated in this
famous conference
to discuss how
Afro-Asian nations
could continue to
oppose colonialism
and Western
domination.
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The Nation, Sixty Years On
On 15 August 2007, India celebrated sixty years of its
existence as a free nation. How well has the country
done in this time? And to what extent has it fulfilled
the ideals set out in its Constitution?
That India is still united, and that it is still democratic,
are achievements that we might justly be proud of. Many
foreign observers had felt that India could not survive
as a single country, that it would break up into many
parts, with each region or linguistic group seeking to
form a nation of its own. Others believed that it would
come under military rule. However, as many as thirteen
general elections have been held since Independence,
as well as hundreds of state and local elections. There
is a free press, as well as an independent judiciary.
Finally, the fact that people speak different languages
or practise different faiths has not come in the way of
national unity.
On the other hand, deep divisions
persist. Despite constitutional
guarantees, the Untouchables or, as
they are now referred to, the Dalits,
face violence and discrimination.
In many parts of rural India they
are not allowed access to water
sources, temples, parks and other
public places. And despite the secular
ideals enshrined in the Constitution,
there have been clashes between
different religious groups in many
states. Above all, as many observers
have noted, the gulf between the
rich and the poor has grown over the years. Some parts Fig. 11 – Dharavi in Bombay is
of India and some groups of Indians have benefited a one of the world’s largest slums
great deal from economic development. They live in large Notice the high-rise buildings in
the background.
houses and dine in expensive restaurants, send their
children to expensive private schools and take expensive
foreign holidays. At the same time many others continue
to live below the poverty line. Housed in urban slums,
or living in remote villages on lands that yield little,
they cannot afford to send their children to school.
The Constitution recognises equality before the law,
but in real life some Indians are more equal than others.
Judged by the standards it set itself at Independence,
the Republic of India has not been a great success.
But it has not been a failure either.
2019-200
ELSEWHERE
What happened in Sri Lanka

In 1956, the year the states of India were reorganised on the basis of language, the
Parliament of Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) introduced an Act recognising Sinhala as the sole
official language of the country. This made Sinhala the medium of instruction in all state
schools and colleges, in public examinations, and in the courts. The new Act was opposed
by the Tamil-speaking minority who lived in the north of the island. “When you deny me
my language,” said one Tamil MP, “you deny me everything.” “You are hoping for a divided
Ceylon,” warned another, adding: “Do not fear, I assure you [that you] will have a divided
Ceylon.” An Opposition member, himself Sinhala speaking, predicted that if the
government did not change its mind and insisted on the Act being passed, “two torn little
bleeding states might yet arise out of one little state”.
For several decades now, a civil war has raged in
Sri Lanka, whose roots lie in the imposition of the
Sinhala language on the Tamil-speaking minority.
And another South Asian country, Pakistan, was
divided into two when the Bengali speakers of the
east felt that their language was being suppressed.
By contrast, India has managed to survive as a single
nation, in part because the many regional languages
were given freedom to flourish. Had Hindi been
imposed on South India, in the way that Urdu was
Fig. 12 – Gun-carrying Tamil militant – imposed on East Pakistan or Sinhala on northern
a symbol of the civil war in Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, India too might have seen civil war and
fragmentation. Contrary to the fears of Jawahalal
Nehru and Sardar Patel, linguistic states have not threatened the unity of India. Rather,
they have deepened this unity. Once the fear of one’s language being suppressed has
gone, the different linguistic groups have been content to live as part of the larger nation
called India.
Let’s recall
Let’s imagine
1. Name three problems that the newly independent
You are witness to an
nation of India faced.
argument between an
adivasi and a person 2. What was the role of the Planning Commission?
who is opposed to the
reservation of seats 3. Fill in the blanks:
and jobs. What might
be the arguments you (a) Subjects that were placed on the Union
heard each of them List were _________, _________
put forward? Act out and _________.
the conversation.
(b) Subjects on the Concurrent List were
_________ and _________.
2019-200
(c) Economic planning by which both the state and
the private sector played a role in development
was called a _________ _________ model.
(d) The death of _________ sparked off such violent
protests that the government was forced to give
in to the demand for the linguistic state of Andhra.
(a) At independence, the majority of Indians lived in
villages.
(b) The Constituent Assembly was made up of members
of the Congress party.
(c) In the first national election, only men were allowed
to vote.
(d) The Second Five Year Plan focused on the development
of heavy industry.
Let’s discuss
5. What did Dr Ambedkar mean when he said that
“In politics we will have equality, and in social
and economic life we will have inequality”?
6. After Independence, why was there a reluctance to
divide the country on linguistic lines?
7. Give one reason why English continued to be used
in India after Independence.
8. How was the economic development of India
visualised in the early decades after Independence?
Let’s do
9. Who was Mira Behn? Find out more about her life
and her ideas.
10. Find out more about the language divisions in Pakistan
that led to the creation of the new nation of Bangladesh.
How did Bangladesh achieve independence from Pakistan?
2019-200
CREDITS
Institutions
The Alkazi Foundation for the Arts (Ch. 5, Fig. 11)
The Osian Archive and Library Collection, Mumbai (Ch. 6, Figs. 1, 8)
Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi (Ch. 8, Figs. 4, 5,
7, 13; Ch. 10, Figs. 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 9)
Photo Division, Government of India, New Delhi (Ch. 9, Fig. 20;
Ch. 10, Figs. 3, 10)
Journals
The Illustrated London News (Ch. 8, Fig. 15)
Books
Aman Nath and Jay Vithalani, Horizons: The Tata-India Century,
1904-2004 (Ch. 6, Figs. 10, 14, 15)
C.A. Bayly, ed., An Illustrated History of Modern India, 1600-1947
(Ch. 6, Fig.11; Ch. 7, Figs. 2, 4, 6; Ch. 10, Figs. 6, 7, 17, 22;
Ch. 9, Figs. 3, 4, 5, 10 )
Jan Breman, Labour Bondage in Western India (Ch. 8, Fig. 11)
Jyotindra Jain and Aarti Aggarwal, National Handicrafts and
Handloom Museum, New Delhi, Mapin (Ch. 6, Figs. 4, 5)
Malavika Karlekar, Re-visioning the Past (Ch. 8, Figs. 6, 8;
Ch. 7, Fig. 11)
Marina Carter, Servants, Sirdars and Settlers (Ch. 8, Fig. 9)
Peter Ruhe, Gandhi (Ch. 9, Figs. 1, 6, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21)
Susan S. Bean, Yankee India: American Commercial and Cultural
Encounters with India in the Age of Sail, 1784-1860
(Ch. 8, Figs. 3, 7)
U. Ball, Jungle Life in India (Ch. 6, Fig. 12)
Verrier Elwin, The Agaria (Ch. 6, Fig. 13)
Textiles for Temple Trade and Dowry, Collection Sanskriti Museum of
Everyday Art (Ch. 6, Figs. 2, 6)
2019-200

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SOCIAL SCIENCE

OUR PASTS – III

1. How, When and Where 1

6. Weavers, Iron Smelters and Factory Owners 65

7. Civilising the “Native”, Educating the Nation 81

8. Women, Caste and Reform 94

9. The Making of the National Movement: 1870s--1947 109

10. India After Independence 128

How Important are Dates?

 Activity Indians willingly gave over their

2 OUR PASTS – III

HOW, WHEN AND WHERE 3

4 OUR PASTS – III

HOW, WHEN AND WHERE 5

6 OUR PASTS – III

“Not fit for human

HOW, WHEN AND WHERE 7

8 OUR PASTS – III

Aurangzeb was the last of the powerful Mughal rulers.

Fig. 1 – Bahadur Shah Zafar

10 OUR PASTS – III

East India Company begins trade in Bengal

Fig. 3 – Local boats bring goods

FROM TRADE TO TERRITORY 11

12 OUR PASTS – III

The promise of riches Fig. 6 – Sirajuddaulah

The territorial ambitions of the mercantile East India

FROM TRADE TO TERRITORY 13

Company officials become “nabobs”

14 OUR PASTS – III

FROM TRADE TO TERRITORY 15

What power did the Resident have?

Tipu Sultan – The “Tiger of Mysore”

16 OUR PASTS – III

relationship with the French in India, and modernised

FROM TRADE TO TERRITORY 17

The claim to paramountcy

18 OUR PASTS – III

The Doctrine of Lapse

FROM TRADE TO TERRITORY 19

Fig. 11 a, b, c – Expansion of British

Fig. 14c – India, 1857

20 OUR PASTS – III

Fig. 15 – The trial of Warren Hastings, painted by R.G. Pollard, 1789

FROM TRADE TO TERRITORY 21

22 OUR PASTS – III

increasingly subjected to European-style training, drill

FROM TRADE TO TERRITORY 23

Slave Trade in South Africa

24 OUR PASTS – III

3. State whether true or false:

FROM TRADE TO TERRITORY 25

Fig. 1 – Robert Clive

The Company Becomes the Diwan

26 OUR PASTS – III

Revenue for the Company

RULING THE COUNTRYSIDE 27

28 OUR PASTS – III

A new system is devised

Activity Indians willingly gave over their

It chanced that about this time the Sarkar sent Activity