Effects of British Rule Online Test 11th History Lesson 12 Questions in English

Battle of Buxar was the real foundation battle for British dominion in India. As a result of the Battle of Buxar, the Company ceased to be a company of merchants and became a formidable political force.

Initially, the English East India Company’s focus was not on administration. Its aim was ensuring smooth trade. However, after the terrible Bengal famine of 1770, they began to exercise power with some responsibility.

Not only the Nawab of Bengal and Oudh, but the Mughal emperor Shah Alam II and his prime minister were also opposed to the British in Battle of Buxar.

Under the pretext of corruption in Bengal administration Robert Clive was appointed Governor of Fort William.

As a result of this, two treaties of Allahabad were signed. The emperor granted the Diwani (revenue administration) of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa to the Company.

The emperor Shah Alam II was to get the districts of Allahabad and Kora, besides an annual allowance of 26 lakhs of rupees from the revenues of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa.

The province of Oudh was restored to Shuja-ud-daula on the payment of war indemnity. The treaties held the Nawab of Bengal responsible for the governance of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa.

The Company acquired the real power, while the responsibility of administration was with the Nawab. This arrangement is called Dual System or Double government or Dyarchy.

Governance without responsibility led to the outbreak of a terrible famine in 1770. Finally, the Company realized its responsibility and passed the Regulating Act of 1773. Warren Hastings was appointed the Governor General of Bengal.

The administrative head of East India Company was Governor (of Fort William or of Fort St. George) until 1772. Warren Hastings who was Governor of Fort William was made Governor-General of Bengal.

The Charter Act 1833 designated this post as Governor-General of India and William Bentinck was appointed the first Governor-General of united British India. The Governor-General was selected by the Court of Directors of the East India Company, to whom he was responsible.

After the great rebellion of 1857, when the government of India was transferred from the East India Company to the Crown, the title “Viceroy and Governor-General” was first used in the queen’s proclamation of 1858.

Canning was the first Viceroy and Governor-General of India accountable to the British Parliament.

The Pitt India Act of 1784 separated the civil and military establishments in India. The Regulating Act of 1773 imposed on the court of Directors the legal obligation of informing all revenue transactions of the Company servants to the British Treasury.

Governor-General Cornwallis, himself a big landlord, wanted to create landlords after the British model in India.

Cornwallis came to a settlement with the revenue farmers. This resulted in the creation of a new type of middlemen, called zamindars, reducing the cultivators to the position of mere tenants.

The settlement that Cornwallis made with the zamindars of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa in pursuance of the instruction from the Directors, is called the Permanent Settlement.

In the year 1793 the Cornwallis made settlement with the zamindars of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa.

The districts of Chengalpattu, Salem and Dindigul were divided into a number of mittahs and sold to the highest bidders. Most of the purchasers, after fleecing the peasants, failed in the course of a year or two. The experiment was therefore abandoned.

Mahalwari was introduced in 1833 during the period of William Bentinck. Under the system the revenue settlement was made with the proprietor of the estate but the land revenue was collected from individual cultivators.

Under the Village Lease system, the assessment of each village was to be fixed for a period of three years based on the actual collections over a series of past years.

The village lease system failed due to various reasons such as bad monsoons, low price of grains and the short period of lease. When crops failed entire villages defaulted and fled without paying the revenue.

By 1814 the Court of Directors had decided to introduce the ryotwari system.

Ryotwari system was formulated by Governor Thomas Munro. Under this system the ryot, an Anglicization by the British in India of the Arabic word ra'īyah, meaning a peasant or cultivator, was the proprietor and tax payer of the land.

The revenue assessment of Ryotwari system was reviewed once in thirty years, taking into account the changes in grain prices, marketing opportunities, irrigation facilities and the like.

They were permitted to sell, lease, mortgage or transfer the right over land in Ryotwari system. Apart from eviction, default could result in attachment of livestock, household property and personal belongings.

Thomas Munro arrived Madras in 1780. In the first 12 years he was engaged in Mysore War as soldier. He worked in the Baramahal (Salem district) from 1792-1799 and Kanara from 1799-1800.

Thomas Munro was collector of Ceded Districts: Kadapa, Kurnool, Chittoor, Anantapur. It was during this period that he conceived the idea of Ryotwari Settlement.

In 1820 he became Governor of Madras Presidency and served for seven years. He also emphasized the need for Indianization of the services. He died of Cholera at Pattikonda (Karnool district) in July 1827.

The government dealt with peasants or cultivator directly without the intervention of any middlemen. Under this system the ryot, an Anglicization by the British in India of the Arabic word ra'īyah, meaning a peasant or cultivator, was the proprietor and tax payer of the land.

Governor General Wellesley (1798-1805) pursued a forward policy to establish British supremacy in India. His annexation of territories was not a result of victory in war. It was by assumption of the entire` administration of an Indian State, with its rulers retaining his title and receiving a fixed allowance.

In 1822, Thomas Shelby officially enforced the Ryotwari System in Madras. During his governorship, he gave attention to education and regarded any expenditure on it as an investment.

Before Wellesley, the Company concluded alliances with Indian princes. The Nizam and the Nawab of Oudh received subsidies for the maintenance of British contingents. Such forces were generally stationed outside the State concerned.

Difficulties arose when the payments were not promptly paid. Wellesley broadened the scope of this arrangement by his Subsidiary Alliance System, bringing under its Hyderabad, Mysore, Lucknow, the Maratha Peshwa, the Bhonsle (Kolhapur) and Sindhia (Gwalior).

No European should be employed without the permission of the British. No negotiation with any Indian power should be held without the Company’s permission.

Thomas Munro very popular governor, people constructed shrines in his honour, and named their children after him. His statue was erected at Madras in 1839 by public subscription.

Distinction between ‘Presidency’ and ‘Province’: The British called Presidency the place where the office of Chief Administrative Head was situated. Madras, Bombay and Calcutta were the three Presidencies.

The doctrine of lapse was introduced by governor general Dalhousie in British India.

By applying this policy known as Doctrine of Lapse, the first state to was Satara. Shahji of Satara died (1848) and the son he adopted on the eve of his death was not recognized by Dalhousie.

Gangadhar Rao, Raja of Jhansi died in November 1853 and Dalhousie annexed that state immediately. His widow, Rani Lakshmi Bai, played a prominent role in the Great Rebellion of 1857.

Raghuji Bhonsle III died in 1853 without a child. Nagpur was immediately annexed.

In 1851, the last Peshwa died. He had been a pensioner of the Company for thirty-three years, but Dalhousie refused to continue paying the pension to his son, the Nana Sahib.

In the aftermath of the Battle of Plassey (Palashi) (1757), when the Company embarked on its career of expansion, it established the system of dual government.

The Company was only the diwan (the collector of revenue), but in practice it exercised full authority. This authority was asserted by the refusal to continue the payment of annual tribute to the Mughal emperor Shah Alam promised by Clive. Cornwallis even stopped affirming obedience in letters to the emperor.

Wellesley carried matters further with his objective of establishing British predominance through his Subsidiary Alliance System. Wellesley made subsidiary alliances with the three of the major States of India: Hyderabad, Poona and Mysore.

Hastings (Moira) who became Governor General in 1813 ordered the removal of the phrase denoting the imperial supremacy from his seal.

Warren Hastings refused to meet Emperor Akbar II, unless he waived all authority over the Company’s possessions. But Hastings laid down a policy that the Company was in no way responsible for the administration of the Indian States.

In Hyderabad, the authority of the Nizam did not prevail in certain areas, as the Arab troops lived without any control. The assistance of British troops helped reduce the Arabs to obedience.

In Mysore state the financial management of the raja provoked a rebellion in 1830 and the treaty of Wellesley only provided authority for the Company to interfere.

William Bentinck, as Governor General, relieved the raja of all his powers and appointed Mark Cubbon to administer Mysore.

In Gwalior, during a minority, the parties at the durbar quarrelled bitterly among themselves. The army of the State passed out of control. Ellenborough moved with a strong army, but the State army resisted.

At the battle of Maharajpur, the State army was defeated and new terms of conditions including the limitation of the military forces maintained by it were imposed in 1843. Every accession of territory also increased the influence of the Company over the governments of the Indian princes.

Cornwallis organized company administration securing the services of William Jones, a judge and an Orientalist. He set up a machinery for the detection and punishment of crime, thereby ending the dual system of government established by Clive.

Cornwallis deprived the collectors of their judicial function and confined them to revenue collection. Civil and criminal courts were thoroughly reorganized. At the top of the judicial system were the Sadar Diwani Adalat (Civil Court) and the Sadar Nizamat Adalat (Criminal Court).

These two highest civil and criminal courts (Sadar Diwani Adalat and the Sadar Nizamat Adalat) of appeal at Calcutta were presided over by the Governor General and his Council.

Under the two highest civil and criminal courts were four provincial courts of appeal at Calcutta, Deccan, Murshidabad and Patna.

Each provincial court was to function under three European judges, aided by Indian advisers. Next came the District and City courts, each presided over by a European judge assisted by Indians. Every district and important city was provided with a court.

At the bottom of the judicial system were courts under Indian judges, called munsifs.

In civil cases, Muslim law was imposed and followed. In criminal cases, Hindu and Muslim laws were applied according to the religion of the litigants.

The biggest contribution of Cornwallis was the reform of the civil services. Cornwallis provided scope for employing capable and honest public servants. He put an end to the old tradition of the civil service wherein the Company’s servants were given a small salary but were permitted to trade.

Every district was divided into thanas (police circles). Each thana was under a daroga, an Indian officer.

Cornwallis, who toned up the civil and criminal administration, however, did not pay adequate attention to the education of Company servants. It was Wellesley who emphasized the need for educating and training them.

Wellesley thought the civilians should have a knowledge of the languages, laws, customs and manners and history of India, in addition to their liberal education in England. With this object, the College of Fort William was founded at Calcutta in 1800.

A three-year course of study was provided for the Company’s civil servants at college of Fort Williams. The college was staffed by European professors and eighty Indian pundits. This became the Oriental School for Bengal civilians.

In Madras, the College of Fort St George was set up in 1812.

In 1806 the East India College was established in England.

In Madras, the College of Fort St George was set up by F.W. Ellis in 1812 on the lines of College of Fort William. It was here that the theory that the South Indian languages belonged to a separate family of languages independent of Sanskrit was formulated.

The establishment of a Madrasa by a learned maulvi with the support of Warren Hastings was the beginning of initiatives of British government to promote education.

The Madrasa started by a learned maulvi with forty stipendiary students.

What Warren Hastings had done for the Muslims; his successor was prepared to do for the Hindus. Cornwallis established a Sanskrit college (1791) in Benares. The successive governors in the next twenty years, however, did nothing to follow it up.

The Company held the view that it was not desirable in its own interests to encourage education in India. In 1813, when the Company Charter was renewed, it contained a clause intended to force on the Company the initiative for a regular educational policy.

Hastings encouraged the foundation of vernacular schools by missionaries.

Hastings was the patron of the Hindu College, established at Calcutta in 1817, supported by the Indian public for the teaching of English and of Western science.

The cause of education was further promoted by missionaries like Alexander Duff. Thanks to Hastings’ liberal outlook, press censorship instituted in 1799 was abolished.

The Bengali Weekly, the Samachar Darpan was started in 1818.

The Charter act of 1833 emphasized the development of the country primarily in the interest of its inhabitants.

William Bentinck, appointed the first Governor General of united India reformed the society by suppressing thuggee (robbery and murder committed by the thugs in accordance with their ritual), abolishing sati and introducing English as the medium of instruction in schools and colleges.

William Bentinck thought would facilitate Indianization of the services. Bentinck founded the Calcutta Medical College in March 1835. The students of this college were sent to London in 1844 to complete their studies.

Ten years after the establishment of the Calcutta Medical College, the Grant Medical College in Bombay was founded in 1845.

In 1847 the Thomason Engineering College at Roorkee (now IIT Roorkee) came into existence. In 1849 a school for girls was founded in Calcutta.

Macaulay came to India as a law member in 1835. He was appointed President of the Board of Education. He had a poor opinion of indigenous learning. Macaulay recommended and government accepted to make English the literary and official language of India.

The East India Company was started with Queen Elizabeth’s Charter of 1600.

Queen Elizabeth charter of 1600 came to be renewed every twenty years, after Warren Hastings took over as Governor General since 1773. The Charter of 1853 was the last one before the Company government was taken over by the Crown.

Dalhousie showed keen interest in education. He approved of the system of vernacular education designed by James Thomason, Lieutenant Governor of the North-Western Provinces (184353).

Departments of Public Instruction and a university for each of the three Presidencies were organized for the purpose. University of Madras was established under this plan (1857), along with universities in Bombay and Calcutta.

The Educational Dispatch of Charles Wood (1854) outlined a comprehensive scheme of education-primary, secondary, collegiate.

Dalhousie modified the policy of Macaulay by encouraging educational institutions in vernaculars too. He also agreed to the principle of grants-in-aid to private effort, irrespective of caste or creed.

The British proclaimed Pindari War. But it turned out to be a war against Marathas and the outcome of this prolonged war (1811 to 1818) was that the whole of Central India came under British rule.

The Thugs were robbers operating between Delhi and Agra from the fourteenth century.

The Thugs were bound together by oaths and ritual and murdered unsuspecting travellers in the name of the goddess Kali.

Bentinck placed William Sleeman in charge of the operation to eliminate the Thuggee menace. Between 1831 and 1837 more than three thousand Thugs were convicted. Five hundred became approvers. By 1860 the problem of thuggee had ceased to exist.

Previous governors-general of Bentinck were reluctant to prohibit the custom as an interference in religion but Bentinck enacted a law (Sati Abolition Act, 1829) to put an end to this practice.

Raja Ram Mohan Roy’s campaigns and efforts played a decisive part in getting this inhuman practice abolished.

Governor General Dalhousie however persuaded them arguing that the railways would bring very considerable economic advantage. Yet before the Great Rebellion less than three hundred miles of track had been laid.

Though several proposals for the laying of telegraph communication between India and London were put forward, the telegraph service was inaugurated only in 1854.

The time of communication between London and Calcutta came down from several days to twenty-eight minutes. With the opening of Suez Canal in 1869, the journey between Europe and India was reduced by some 4000 miles.

By 1870 the government of British India was in effective contact with Secretary of State, India Office, London. Subsequently, with the exception of Curzon, Governor Generals were reluctant to do anything without seeking the permission of Whitehall, the headquarters of the East India Company.

The first train runs between Bombay and thane.

The first railway line in south India ran from Madras to Arakonam in 1856. Royapuram was one of the railway stations inaugurated in that year.

The railway line from Bombay to Thane was opened in 1853; from Howrah to Raniganj in 1854-55.

In Madras, as we will see in the following section, a few irrigation works were carried out because of the personal enthusiasm of Arthur Cotton, an Engineering officer. Against much opposition, Cotton built a dam across the Kollidam (Coleroon) in 1836. In 1853, a dam across the Krishna river had also begun.

In the north, before the takeover of India by the Crown, Jumna canal was completed in 1830 and by 1857 the Ganges canal had been extended to nearly 450 miles.

In the Punjab area the Bari Doab canal had been excavated by 1856. But the canal water contributed to soil salinity and water logging causing great ecological distress.

The Santhals who were the first tribal group to resist the British rule in India.

Slope cultivation was encouraged in the hilly and mountainous tracts. Land was provided to European enterprises at a throwaway price for slope cultivation.

Zamins were created out of Jungle Mahal forests and auctioned off for regular cultivation. The original inhabitants of this region, the Santhals were evicted.

Timber came to be exploited with the massive construction of the railway system. In the 1870s, it was calculated that every year one million sleepers were needed to build railway tracks. Indian trees, particularly sal, deodar, and teak, were preferred for their strength over other Indian timbers.

Much sal was extracted from the forests of the Jungle Mahals of West Bengal and Bihar. Timber went to England too for the building of railways.

The myth that India’s forests were inexhaustible was exploded. It was in this background that the colonial state, in order to manage and control forest resources, started the Forest Department and passed the Indian Forest Act, 1865. This was a draconian act which restricted the use of forest resources by indigenous groups who resented it.

In order to contain protest and resistance the British enacted the dreaded Criminal Tribes Act, 1871. During the entire colonial period there were frequent insurrections by tribal people against the colonial state.

Rather than being the world’s leading exporter of cloth and textiles, India became a market for Lancashire cottons. Cheap machine-made British goods led to the flooding of Indian markets. Indian cotton piece goods began to lose ground gradually.

The Company government, in the first three decades, followed a policy of allowing unrestricted flow of imports of British goods into India. Without any import duty English goods were much cheaper than domestic products. At the same time, Indian manufactures were shut out from the British market by high protective duties.

Contrasting Muslim rule with British governance William Bentinck himself acknowledged the benevolent nature of the former. ‘In many respects’, Bentinck wrote, ‘the Muhammedans surpassed our rule; they settled in the countries which they conquered; they intermarried with the natives; Our policy on the contrary, has been the reverse of this– cold, selfish and unfeeling.’

Arthur Cotton wanted the colonial state to give priority to irrigation rather than building railway network, but his suggestion was turned down by the imperial Government in England.

The Ryotwari system intended to create a large body of independent peasants, who would be protected from the “corrupt and faithless zamindar,” however, in reality achieved the contrary result of strengthening the position of the big landlords.

The Torture Commission, appointed by the Company government in Madras in its report presented in 1855 exposed the atrocities perpetrated by the Indian revenue and police officials in the process of collecting land tax from the cultivators.

Famine, though no stranger to India, increased in frequency and deadliness with the advent of British colonial rule. Between 1800 and 1825, there were only four famines. But in the last quarter of the century there were 22 famines.

By 1901, Romesh Chunder Dutt, a former ICS officer and a staunch nationalist, enumerated 10 mass famines since the 1860s, putting the total death toll at 15 million.

The Orissa famine, in which one third of the population died of starvation and disease, served as a patent proof of this thesis. It prompted nationalist Dadabhai Naoroji, to begin his lifelong investigations into Indian poverty.

Madras Famine of 1876-78: The failure of two successive monsoons caused a severe famine in the Madras Presidency during 1876-78.

The viceroy Lytton adopted a hands-off approach similar to that followed in Orissa. 3.5 million people died in the presidency.

Initially slave labour was used for the plantation crops and slope cultivation. But after the Company government abolished slavery in India (1843), the system of indentured was used.

The introduction of plantation crops and slope cultivation in Ceylon, Mauritius, Fiji, Malaya, the Caribbean islands, Natal and South Africa required enormous labour. The system of indentured was used to hire labour.

Under the system of indentured, labourers were hired on contract for a period of five years (indenture) and they could return to their homeland with passage paid at the end. Many impoverished peasants and weavers went hoping to earn some money. But in effect it was worse than slave labour.

Dadabhai Naoroji in his Poverty and UnBritish Rule in India explained how the English rulers were different from the earlier invaders.

Savings and the salaries of European officials, European traders and Planters remitted to England

Expenses on wars fought in India and interests for the loans obtained from the banks for the conduct of wars and for the building of railroads. India’s loan to England was 130 million pounds in 1837. It increased to 220 million pounds, of this 18 percent was for conducting wars waged against Afghanistan and Burma.

In the form of guaranteed interest of 5 percent, the Colonial state promised to repay the interest in sterling. There was a loss of 220 million pounds to India on this score.

The drain of wealth Dadabhai Naoroji lamented that had the money drained to England remained in the pockets of Indians, India would have economically progressed. Even Gazni Mahmud’s pillage stopped after eighteen times but the British plunder seemed to be unending, he quipped.

R.C. Dutt estimated that during the last decade of the reign of Queen Victoria (1891-1901), of the total income 647 pounds, 159 million pounds drained to England. This worked to 44 percent of the total income of the country.

In 1815, the Governor of Madras received a communication from the Governor of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) asking for coolies to work on the coffee plantations.