Indian Nationalist Movement - [UNIT 10] HISTORY

Monarchy: When people are ruled over by one person

Kingdom: When there is a monarchy within the monarch’s land

Empire: When a monarch or any other government system takes over land that is outside their boundaries and possibly has its own governing system

Reasons for Colonisation:

  • Technological Advancements

  • Explorers and Missionaries

  • Economic Reasons

  • Population Growth

  • Nationalism and National Rivalries

  • Strategic Reasons 


1. Introduction

In the year 1700, India's share in the world's economy was an astounding 27%, more than all of Europe combined. 250 years later, India's share had dropped to less than 3%, and its people were left impoverished. What happened? Strap in, adventurers. We're about to dive into a dark and messy history.

Welcome to 18th century India. In 1707 CE, the death of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb sends the empire into a decades long spiral. In his wake, an endless parade of weak princelings force themselves upon the peacock throne. With the Mughal empire teetering on the brink of collapse, regional powers jostle for supremacy, land grabs and title claims, infighting and betrayal. India is vulnerable.

The situation is so precarious that in 1739, Persian emperor Nadir Shah invades North India and sacks Delhi. During this period of disorder, the British sensed opportunity. Leveraging their unique advantages as a foreign power, they bribed and blasted their way into a dominant position in the subcontinent. India was no stranger to dealing with foreign aggression, but the British were not like those who had come before. 

They were not like Nadir Shah who looted and simply left, nor were they like the Huns who, while shedding Gupta blood, became Indian themselves. Yes. The British were different, for they saw India as an inexhaustible gold mine whose resources were to be forever extracted. By the time India won its independence in 1947, its native institutions had been demolished, its economy de industrialized, its trade network severed, and its people more deeply divided by caste and creed. In just 200 years of colonial rule, the India that once inspired the world was unmade.

“The halcyon days of India are over. She has been drained of all the wealth she once possessed and her energies have been cramped by assorted system of misrule.” said F.J. Shore 

The deliberate bleeding of India by the British was so extreme that famed American scholar Will Durant referred to it as the greatest crime in all of history. So let's pull back the curtain and see what India was like before colonialism. In the 19th century, the American JT Sunderland, outspoken activist for human rights and anti-imperialism, wrote about the India that the British found when they arrived.

“India was a far greater industrial and manufacturing nation than any in Europe or Asia. Her textile goods were famous all over the civilized world, So was her exquisite jewelry and her precious stones. So was her pottery, her porcelain and ceramics. So were her fine works in metal, iron, steel, silver and gold. She had great architecture equal in beauty to any in the world.

She had great merchants, businessmen, bankers and financiers. She was not only a great shipbuilding nation, but had commerce and trade which extended to all civilized countries.”

That may seem like heavy handed praise, but the record does show that pre colonial India was a dominant manufacturing economy. Let's take a closer look at the textile, shipbuilding, and metalworking industries. India was a textile superpower for most of its long history.

There were many textile centers in the subcontinent. Coastal Andhra was a block printing hub for example, while Gujarat and Bengal were known for their high end woven products. There was global demand for these items. In fact, India enjoyed a mind blowing 25% share of the global textile trade by the mid 18th century. This thriving textile trade had knock on effects for the entire economy.

2. Indian Industry

For example, the popularity of Indian textiles led to the creation of stable international distribution networks. By piggybacking on these networks, other Indian artisans could sell their goods worldwide at a reduced cost. As a result, many different industries flourished alongside the Indian textile industry. We know that international trade was conducted primarily along maritime routes and so the Indian shipbuilding industry had developed into a behemoth too. A significant number of Indian ports were engaged in the shipbuilding industry: Dhaka, Maslapatnam, Surat, Calicut, Quilong, and many many others.

Entire rural communities were involved in the production and processing of materials used to construct ships. Quality was paramount. Consider the Bengali merchant fleet in the early 17th century. The fleet consisted of nearly 5,000 ships, each capable of carrying up to 500 tons of goods. These ships were constructed in Bengali ports by native artisans who had the skills to craft elaborate wood, iron, and brass fittings.

According to one British maritime observer, Indian vessels combine elegance and utility and are models of fine workmanship. Merchant contracts indicate that Bengali ships were much more durable than English ships. Bengali ships had an average lifespan exceeding 20 years while English ships were not known to last more than 12. Quite a difference. 

India was a long time pioneer in the global steel industry. As early as the 6th century CE, crucible formed steel, which came to be known as WUTs or Damascus steel in the west, was being produced for export by Indian blacksmiths, particularly along the Malabar coast and in the Deccan. Arab and European officers regularly imported blades from India. While these blades were purchased as wartime implements, they were so robust and beautifully crafted that they also served as a mark of high status in times of peace. Though we've barely scratched the surface, it should already be clear that India was a manufacturing juggernaut, a thriving exporter of high quality goods to markets throughout the world. How did the British manage to unmake all of that?

“The fundamental principle of the British has been to make the whole Indian nation subservient to the interests and benefits of themselves.” said F.J. Shore, civil servant and judge who worked in the East India Company service in India 

And so once the British took power, they changed the entire dynamic of the Indian economy to suit their own interests. The first step, dismantling all native industry. To start, they established a legal monopoly over Indian textile goods and cut off the export market, which immediately disrupted long standing trade links. Having now made themselves the exclusive buyers of Indian textiles, the British then changed the way that they paid for those goods.

Instead of using foreign currency, they paid using the tax revenues extracted from India. The Indian economy stagnated and prices collapsed. Skilled artisans who once fueled the vibrant Indian economic engine were now significantly poorer and more restricted than ever before, and it didn't stop there. Soon enough, British manufacturers lobbied their government to completely eliminate the competition from the Indian textile industry. See, despite the restrictions imposed on Indian industry, British manufacturers were still finding it difficult to compete with Indian products.

Company soldiers were sent to smash Indian looms. According to several different accounts, they even went around breaking the thumbs of weavers so that they could no longer ply their trade. But that's not all. To ensure that the Indian textile industry could not recover, adapt, or innovate itself back into relevancy, the British imposed an absurdly harsh 80% tariff. This had an immediate catch 22 trap effect.

Exporting goods from India to the UK was now economically unviable. But remember, Indians were restricted from selling to anyone else. Similar restrictions were imposed on nearly every branch of manufacturing in India. India was reduced to being a mere exporter of raw materials like cotton and metal ore so that the British could sell finished products back to Indians at a premium. 

“We conquered India as an outlet for the goods of Britain. I'm not such a hypocrite to say that we hold India for the Indians.” said sir William Hicks, a now deceased English Member of Parliment

3. India's Population

The colonial deindustrialization process was so complete that by 1947, only 0.7% of India was employed in any form of manufacturing. But skilled workers had to go somewhere, do something. The British monopoly on industrial production drove Indian artisans, merchants, builders, and others into agriculture en masse. 

In the words of Charles Hall, British physician, social critic and Ricardian socialist, “India's population has been thrown back upon the soil because Britain's discriminating duties have ruined every branch of native manufacture.”

Rural wages cratered to historical lows and in fact the land itself could not sustain the influx of newly disenfranchised workers. Poor seasonal harvests and droughts gave way to catastrophic famines and mass poverty. With most Indians now converted into peasant cultivators, the British sought to exploit them further. They began to tax cultivators as the primary revenue source for the administration. Taxes were extreme, pegged at 50 to 80% of gross income and calculated before the harvest.

The result? Indian cultivators often owed more in taxes than they earned as income. The British knew how harsh this really was. They openly conceded that they were imposing the highest tax rates in the world, and that taxes were more than 3 times higher than they had ever been under Indian rulers. To add insult to injury, the British even bragged about it in parliament.

“The Indians have been taxed to the utmost limit. Every province has been made a field for higher exaction and it has always been our boast how greatly we have raised the revenue above that which the native rulers were able to extort.” - F.J Shore

Colonial taxes were so burdensome that 2 thirds of the population in directly ruled British areas fled to the hinterlands where native Indian lords could at least minimally protect them from financial depredation. The millions who stayed behind could hardly afford to pay taxes, and the situation was worsened by the fact that the British did not negotiate tax payments. Horrors were perpetrated under the guise of sinless mathematical neutrality.

“Tax defaulters were confined in cages and exposed to the burning sun. Fathers sold their children to meet the rising rates.” - Will Durant

Vulnerable peasants were physically tortured to pay up. And when they didn't have the means to pay, the British confiscated their farmland for themselves. Tens of millions of landless peasants were created for the first time in Indian history.

By the end of 19th century, India was Britain's largest source of revenue by far, its largest purchaser of exports, and a source of highly paid employment for both British civil servants and soldiers, and they were all paid for by Indian taxes. Many British officials freely acknowledged the exploitative nature of the colonial enterprise. In fact, a prime minister of the UK, the Marquez of Salisbury, himself admitted, “as India is to be bled of money, the Lancet should be directed to those parts where the blood is congested.” And just like that, India and its people were bled dry. The fundamental issue of British overlordship was the fact the British had no intention to become one with the land or to rule it as their own.

The British saw India as innately and eternally foreign and this justified their creation and maintenance of what scholars have referred to as an extractive colony. For comparison's sake, consider the Turkic peoples who invaded India and eventually formed the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire. Look. The Mughals were no heroes. They imposed unequal taxes, engaged in religious discrimination, plundered local treasuries, visited great violence upon their enemies, and exhibited a Persianized racial arrogance.

But one thing is clear, India's wealth was preserved at a foundational level. After nearly 2 centuries of Mughal rule India was still a dominant economic power responsible for 27% of global trade. There's a simple reason for that. See, the Mughals had a foreign place of origin, Fergana. But they did not repatriate India's resources to their original homeland.

4. Resources Of India

India may not have been Ferghana, but it had become their new home. And so their loyalties and energies were owed solely to India. Meanwhile, the British ruled India as disconnected tyrants. The bulk of the revenue from India wasn't reinvested in India. No.

No. No. It was extracted and repatriated to their distant foggy homeland. How much? Modern economists have estimated that total amount of wealth that the British extracted from India is in the ballpark of $45 trillion.

Yes. $45,000,000,000,000. When taxes are not spent in the country from which they are raised, they constitute an absolute loss and extinction of the whole amount withdrawn from the tax country. 

Apologists for colonial rule often point to the railways as some sort of extravagant counter to the argument of extraction and divestment. But as modern scholars have pointed out, the railways serve as evidence for how exploitative and inefficient British investment in India really was. 1st, there's the bold assumption that Indians would not have built railways like the Japanese or others, either by importing the technology or by developing their own. India had been far too advanced and cutting edge a civilization to not keep up had it been given the opportunity to do so. 

“When the British came to India, the country was the leader of Asiatic civilization.Japan was nowhere. Now in 50 years, Japan has revolutionized her history with the aid of modern arts of progress, and India, burdened by 150 years of English rule, is condemned to tutelage.” - William Bryan, Former United States Secretary of State

But let's ignore that for now. Initially, the Indian Railways were positioned as a grand investment scheme for British shareholders. The government guaranteed substantial returns of at least 5% per year.

And when the revenues were not enough to pay out these returns, Indian taxpayers covered all the losses. Because of these taxpayer backed guarantees, construction of the railways was extremely inefficient. Here's a fun stat. Every mile of Indian rail cost £18,000 to construct as compared to £2,000 for the same mile built in the United States. All the elements of railway construction, steel, wagons, gears, engines, and more, were produced by British manufacturers.

Indians weren't even given an opportunity to produce their own manufactured alternatives because the British government imposed restrictions that prevented Indians from competing. Worse still, the essential purpose of the railways was to assist the British enterprise in the exploitation of the natural resources of India. In fact, the railways made it possible for the British to export enormous amounts of grain and other agricultural products, which sparked and exacerbated famines. Over the course of British rule in India, an estimated 35 million preventable deaths were caused by famines. That's millions more than those killed under Stalin or Mao.

And that's 5 times more than the holocaust. The British were directly responsible for this. They mass exported Indian foodstuffs to Britain and other countries in Europe even during drought periods. Food in India became too expensive for peasants to afford. According to Charles Hall, “India starves so that its annual tax revenue to England may not be diminished by a dollar. There is plenty of grain in India. The trouble is that the people have been ground down till they are too poor to affort it.”

5. Conclusion

The British had no interest in provisioning for Indian lives. Famine non intervention was official government policy. How ironic given that heavy handed British intervention and market manipulation is what sparked the famines in the first place.

And when good people, Indians and foreigners, worked together to help famine affected peasants, the British government made efforts to stop them. They were furious that the government's own failures were being highlighted. Don't believe me? Listen to this British officer in his own words. 

“Scores of corpses were tumbled into old wells because the deaths were too numerous for the relatives to perform funeral rites. Mothers sold their children for a single meal. Husbands flung their wives into ponds to escape the torment of seeing them perish from hunger. But amid these scenes of death, the British government in India was unmoved. Newspapers were persuaded into silence. Strict orders were given to civilians. Do not acknowledge that civilians are dying of hunger.”

And if you think that Indians would have done a worse job, consider this. There hasn't been a single large scale Indian famine in the 70 plus years since British rule ended. Not one. Independent India has its flaws, but it has been overwhelmingly better at providing for the care, safety, and prosperity of its own people.

Indian Nationalist Movement:

Causes of Colonisation:

  • Very profitable for the british as India was rich in many resources such as textiles, opium, indigo, and more, all of which fuelled Britain’s economic growth, especially alongside their exploitation and biassed trade

  • Controlled the Asian seas and got access to many trade routes as India was a well-connected trading region 

  • Created a large market for cheap British goods, as they had a large population, and this created profit for the British. British industries also got a cheap and large workforce in terms of agriculture and mining 

  • Converting Indians to Christianity, to ‘save the souls’, as they considered this their duty to their country, God and Queen. They believed that those who did not follow Christianity were savage and subhumans, and needed to be corrected and fixed

Effects of Colonisation:

  • Deindustrialization of India due to increased poverty of the people, caused by their exploitation, high taxes and other forms of economic collapse in the country, including the importation of British consumer goods instead of local production

  • Economic ruination because of the British exploiting India’s natural resources, high taxes to poor locals and biassed trade, that eventually led to inflation and mass poverty after decolonisation

  • Increase in national literacy rates, especially in English, due to the implementation of standardised British education, which also led to the rise of a middle class. However, this also led to the destruction of historical and traditional forms of Indian education, known as the gurukul. This is said to be harmful because the standardised education was created and implemented in a way to create herd thought and reduce individual thinking, which can lead to decreases in innovations, developments, creative thought and experimentation.

  • Improved transportation and communications through the country, with the building of the rail implementation of telephones, because Birtish was more technologically advanced than India at the time

  • Increased tensions between different races, ethnicities and religions within the country due to attempts at segregating and villainising each of them to reduce their unity and power. This eventually led to the partition of India, the bloodbaths at the time and the later Indo-Pak wars as well. 

Causes of Decolonisation:

Events in Decolonisation:

  • World War 1: World War 1 was the first time during the Indian colonisation when Indians truly felt like they could achieve independence, or at least that the downfall of the British Empire was possible. This was because of the economic and social problems that Britain faced post-war, even with its victory. Additionally, many Indian soldiers, who fought under the British flag, were angry with the lack of recognition and rewards thay received, and hence fed into the nationalist movement with a fervour. 

  • Rowlatt Act: The Rowlatt act in 1919 continued the wartime removal of certain rights such as the freedom of speech and the right to hold protest movements, and kept this status during peacetime as well. 

  • Amritsar Massacre: This was the killing of thousands of civilians, who had come together on April 13th 1919 to celebrate a festival, on the orders of General O’Dyer. Unprovoked, he blocked the single exit to the park and started firing on the civilians without warning, stopping only once the soldiers ran out of ammunition. This massacre sparked protests and patriotism nationwide, as it showed the true colours of imperialism, and the massacre got more Indians willing to fight for independence.  

  • Salt March: The Salt March was a protest against the Salt Tax in 1930, along with the banning of the production and selling of salt by Indians. This was seen as a travesty as salt was necessary for most food items in India, and hence many poor civilians were forced to pay extra for this. The march was led by Mahatma Gandhi, who walked for 260 miles, with thousands of people joining him, to the coastal village Dandi, where he collected salt from the beach and started the spar of the Civil Disobedience Movement.

  • Civil Disobedience Movement: This was a series of boycotts, protests and strikes throughout the country, all peaceful in nature due to Gandhi’s preaching of satyagraha in the nation. These included the boycotting of British cotton and using traditional Indian material, spun khadi, instead to stop paying the British as much, and more. These movements gave Indians the strength to defy the British, as they were systematically breaking various laws and regulations - many of these people also went to jail for it. 

  • World War 2: The economic instability of the British, and India becoming a liability for them because not only did they owe India a debt post-war, but the numerous protests and the added rage and again not being recognised for their war efforts is what finally led to Britain accepting Indian decolonisation. 

Significant Figures:

  • Mahatma Gandhi: he led the peaceful protest movement, and started the civil disobedience movement - and he supported nonviolence only, while speaking out publicly against violent protests. He used to be a barrister, had studied in London and had later worked and protested against imperialism in South Africa before his return to India. 

What was the historical context before independence?

During its colonisation, India was known as Britain’s “jewel of the crown” as it was by far the largest and most profitable colony for them. Britain developed India technology-wise by building railways, mechanical transports and communications systems that were previously unimaginable to Indians, bringing about the Industrial Revolution for the country. The British also replaced the traditional Indian schooling system by implementing the British schooling system in the country.

There was also a huge cultural gap between the Indians and the British, which triggered many rebellions and were some of the causes of the independence movements.

What were the conditions of the countries before the independence movements

Before the independence movements, India by itself was extremely poor and had limited industrialization and resources due to British rulers using many natural resources and taking money from locals through taxes and biassed trades.

India also had problems in development, with a large population to feed and turn into workforce, majority of whom were illiterate. India had been going through famine in different parts of the country for a time, and most of its population were farmers, making rapid development and industrialization difficult.

How did the independence movement develop?

We can definitively trace the beginning of the independence movement to the Rowlatt Act, which was a legislation that allowed officers to detain people on mere suspicion and put them into prison without a trial in front of a jury. This was the start of the Satyagraha movement, in which Indians, led by Mahatma Gandhi, peacefully protested by workers going on strike and starting rallies.

These rallies led to curfews being imposed and gatherings being limited to 4 people by the law. Shortly after this, people in Amritsar held a mass peaceful gathering in ‘Jallianwala Bagh’, and the British officers caught notice of it. That is when the Amritsar Massacre occurred, when British officers stormed the park with their troops and started shooting at the civilians without warning.

This was the turning point for the Indian Independence Movement, as it permanently destroyed Indo-British relations at the time and led to Mahatma Gandhi refusing to work alongside the British. He and others then developed the Indian Independence Movements through many peaceful rebellions such as the Civil Disobedience Movement, the Non-Cooperation Movement, and the Salt March.

What were the key individuals, events and actions?

Individuals:

  • Mahatma Gandhi – the leader of the independence movements, Mahatma Gandhi was the person who began the non-violence protests and Satyagrahas that the Indians implemented against the British.

  • Muhammad Ali Jinnah – Muhmmad Ali Jinnah was the leader of the Muslim Party at the time and fought for having an independent Muslim-dominant nation named ‘Pakistan’.

  • Dr. Satyapal and Kitchlew – They were political leaders in the Amritsar area, and were taken prisoner by British officers only days before the Amritsar Massacre.

  • General Dyer – General Dyer was the British officer who called in the troops and ordered the shooting for the Amritsar Massacre.

Events and Actions:

  • Amritsar Massacre: The Amritsar Massacre was a turning point for the Indian Independence Movement as it gave many people vigour and anger to remove the British from the country. This was an event remembered forever as one of the bloodiest massacres on a peaceful crowd.

  • Satyagraha: The non-violence tactics used by the protesters were shown to be successful during the Non-Cooperation Movement, Civil Disobedience Movement, Salt March, and Quit India Movement.

What were the factors that led to the successes or failures of the independence movement?

Successes:

  • The growth of Indian Nationalism was a major factor that made the movements successful as people were motivated to take apart in them and undermine the British rule

  • The Second World War was another factor that led to the British leaving India, as they were struggling economically after 6 years of war and were not able to manage their overseas colonies and the regular dissent in India and were also losing support for colonisation in Britain due to the economic struggles the citizens were enduring.

Failures:

  • India was far less industrialised and developed than the British, which put them at a disadvantage during the planning and execution of the independence movements. This also made the people involved in the independence movements limited as communications and transport were problems, so independence movements did not spread very far.

  • Refugees and inter-religion divides were also major problems for the independence movements as different leaders wanted different outcomes and ended in dissent. For example, the Muslim League led by Jinnah wanted an independent Muslim nation while others were against this idea.

What were the consequences for the country?

The consequences of British Rule for India were India’s stunted industrial development and lack of finances that left the country struggling after its independence. Indians also suffered directly at the hands of the British, with reminders of death and violence, for example in the various inhumane prison camps and the Amritsar Massacre. 

The consequences of the Independence movements for India were the lack of political structure due to everyone wanting a voice in the government, which was not always possible. The country also had a major refugee crisis and violent Hindu-Muslim riots near the borders due to the partition. The partition and riots also led to many lives lost and many people homeless or separated from their family because of their religion.

Important Indian Nationalists:

·   Bal Gangadhar Tilak

·   Lala Lajpat Rai

·   Bipin Chadra Pal

·   Sri Aurbindo Ghosh

·   Gopal Krishna Ghokle