Colonial policy in India, 1857-1890 Flashcards
Causes of the Indian Mutiny: general grievances within the army
- There were limited opportunities for promotion, with British officers occupying key officer positions and sepoys being confined to the lower ranks (racial hierarchy)
- There was a new army regulation in 1856 that required sepoys to serve wherever they were posted (ie they would have to potentially serve in regions of India very far away from their families)
Causes of the Indian Mutiny: religious insensitivity within the army
Early religious insensitivity: in Vellore in 1806, sepoys were given turbans with leather cockades, which was perceived as an attack on their religions and partly caused the Vellore mutiny
Religious insensitivity as a trigger: the pattern 1853 musket was rumoured to have been greased with pig and cow fat, which angered both Hindus and Muslims. 90 sepoy soldiers refused to bite into the cartridges, and were subsequently imprisoned on April 24th 1857. They were then sprung from jail by other mutinous sepoys and then marched on Delhi, beginning the Indian Rebellion.
Causes of the Indian Mutiny: hardship amongst the peasantry
- Peasants resented high taxes which they had to pay for the company’s trade, administration and British expansion. Many peasants had to switch from subsistence farming to export crops in order to cope with this financial pressure.
- High taxes caused famines such as the Agra famine of 1837-1838, during which 800,000 Indians died of starvation
Causes of the Indian Mutiny: interference with religious and cultural practices
- In 1829, the Hindu practice of sati (widow burning) was declared illegal thanks to lobbying Christian missionaries – the practice was described as revolting in nature, and deeply offended many Hindus, who had been practicing the ritual since at least 400CE
- When the ban was extended to Madras and Bombay, several thousand Indians signed a petition against the legislation
- In 1856, the Hindu Women Remarriage Act was passed, and was perceived as an attempt to Christianise India (because remarrying after the death of a husband was something also embedded in Christian faith)
Causes of the Indian Mutiny: political concerns and the Doctrine of Lapse
- The Doctrine of Lapse meant that if an Indian prince didn’t have any natural sons, then his land would be taken by the British (meaning that adopted sons could not be heirs) - or if the existing ruler was ‘manifestly incompetent’
- Nana Sahib, who lead the Siege of Cawnpore, was motivated by the Doctrine of Lapse because he was the adopted son of the leader of Awadh (Oudh) so therefore didn’t have the right to inherit princely rule (example of political motivation) (1856)
Ways in which the rebellion was not united/weak, thus leading to the British victory
- Rebellions were primarily confined to the North (2/3 of the country stayed completely passive)
- Sikhs from the Punjab region provided a battalion to help overcome the Lucknow siege (Indians provided help on the ‘other’ side)
- Nizam of Hyderabad crushed the uprising in Hyderabad and was conferred with the title ‘Faithful Ally of the British Government’ for his unquestionable loyalty to the British during the rebellion
- The armies of Bombay and Madras were fundamentally loyal to the British
Give basic details of the Indian Mutiny, including events at Cawnpore and Lucknow
- 8th April: Pandey is executed by hanging after having shot a British officer in retaliation for religious and racial prejudices, which catalyses rebellion amongst other sepoys
- 24th April: 90 sepoy soldiers in Bengal refuse to bite their cartridges and are then imprisoned
- June 6th: Nana Sahib laid siege to the British encampment at Cawnpore which was packed with refugees (the siege lasts for 3 weeks)
- June 27th: Around 300 British refugees in Cawnpore were all massacred (except for 4) by the mutineers, after having being promised water and ventured out into the open
- June – November: the Siege of Lucknow takes place – in July, Europeans stuck inside were dying at a rate of 10 a day due to starvation, dehydration, diseases etc
How was Britain’s economic policy beneficial for Indians? (investment and infrastructure)
- The British invested much more in infrastructure, which benefited Indians through making the Raj more economically efficient and productive: railway tracks grew by roughly 2 miles per day from 1857. There were 432 miles of track in 1859, but this rose to 9000 by 1880.
- In total, Britain invested £150 million into India in the 22-year span following the mutiny
- Irrigation was improved by British crown rule: 8 x more land could be fertilised
How was Britain’s economic policy beneficial for Indians? (trade)
- The British increased domestic agricultural production: the number of tea plantations increased from just one in 1851 to 295 by 1871
- Indians benefitted from the availability of British goods to import and consume, and these imports increased over the period: exports to India averaged in value at £20m in the years 1865-9, but they increased to £30m in the years 1880-4
How was Britain’s economic policy not beneficial for Indians? (cash crops)
Increased trade isn’t necessarily a sign of British policy being beneficial for Indians. For instance, the increase in agricultural production was mostly owing to Britain’s encouragement of the growth of ‘cash crops’ (raw materials grown at a low price, imported to Britain, and then usually sold back to India at a very high price)
For instance, imports of cotton from India to Britain reached as high as £6m by 1876, which was roughly 3 times their value after the mutiny.
This kind of economic exploitation caused the Blue Mutiny of 1859, which was a rebellion in Bengal against British planters who exploited Indian peasants to facilitate the mass production of indigo (which was imported into Britain and used to dye clothes there). There was a system of ryoti which subjected many Indian peasants to what was effectively forced labour.
social policies as beneficial: religious toleration
New policy of religious toleration: in Queen Victoria’s proclamation of November 1858, she stated that ‘none be in any wise favoured, none molested or disquieted, by reason of their religious faith or observances’ – contrasts to the instances of religious insensitivity which triggered the mutiny
social policies as beneficial: education
- Increase in education, aiming to create an elite class of capable Indians whom could held administer the country: new universities in 1860, 1868 and 1875. In the 30 years following 1857, some 60 000 Indians entered these universities, and their graduates accounted for some 1100 appointments to government service by 1882.
- Mary Carpenter travelled to India in 1866 and tried to improve female education – she won funding to set up a training college for female Indian teachers in 1868
Social policies as beneficial: law and courts
- The Ilbert Bill (1883) showed that the government were at least attempting to be more fair and racially indiscriminate with regards to the law; it proposed that European people accused of a crime could be seen by an Indian judge – an attempt to reduce racial hierarchies within the legislative system
social policies as beneficial: famine relief
- The Bihar famine of 1873 was dealt with well by the British and kept mortality near to nothing. An example of effective famine relief was the government’s spending of £40m on exporting 450,000 tons of rice from Burma – they ended up overbuying rather than underbuying, leaving 100,000 tons of rice at the end of the relief effort
Social policies as beneficial: missionaries doing humanitarian work
Amy Carmichael worked for 55 years in India (died in India in 1951), trying to rescue the ‘temple children’ – young girls who had been forced into prostitution – objectively a good thing to be doing – sometimes religious/cultural intervention was actually moral and beneficial
Social policies as damaging: education
- The 60,000 entries previously described only accounted for 0.00033% of the population, showing how British colonial policy following the Mutiny continued to exclude the majority of Indians from having a good education, instead building up a very small elite of individuals who the British could directly profit off of through employing them in administrative/government positions
- The failure to consider the education of the masses generally is further evident in the fact that illiteracy rates were still as low as 3.2% in 1872
Social policies as damaging: law and courts
- The Ilbert Bill doesn’t really show that British colonial policy was becoming less racially discriminative, as it was met by intense opposition from the European population in India and then revaluation and moderated in 1884. There were demonstrations of between 75 000 and 250 000 protestors initially (deep racial prejudices remained)
Social policies as damaging: racial distrust
There was a legacy of racial distrust – civil lines (residential areas only for white Europeans and excluding Indians) were built and became a prominent feature of the Raj – i.e., Cawnpore was segregated)
Any attempt at religious toleration therefore, was merely a practical means of avoiding another rebellion, and anyways was completely undermined by the legacy of racial distrust created by the mutiny.
Social policies as damaging: lack of religious toleration
- Christian missionaries were common in India at the start of British rule…
- In 1874, Cheltenham Mercury wrote ‘if the present rate of increase was continued, by the year 2001 at least 135,000,000 people would be converted’
Social policies as damaging: famine
- The Bihar famine was an anomaly in how effective British famine relief support was, with there generally being very high mortality from famines in the second half of the 19th Century. For instance, the Madras famine of 1877 caused an estimates 8.2 million fatalities.
Political policies as beneficial: ICS and princely autonomy
The Indian Mutiny marked the beginning of the inclusion of Indians in political and administrative roles: in Queen Victoria’s proclamation of November 1858, she allowed ‘subjects, of whatever race or creed’ to be ‘freely and impartially admitted to offices in our services’.
Princely states still had a degree of autonomy, and made up a significant proportion of India: there were 562 states ruled by princes which made up 35% of the country
Political policies as beneficial: Indian Councils Act
- The Indian Councils Act in 1861 allowed more Indian representation in government – the Viceroy hand-picked 6-12 ‘addition members’ who were Indians, to meet with his council
The Act ended the Doctrine of Lapse, which was resented by many Indian princes
Political policies as damaging: ICS
- The ICS didn’t actually give Indians much political power as it was held in London and only once a year, making it only accessible to very rich Indians who could afford to sacrifice a lot of their time. Additionally, the test was very difficult. This inaccessibility is evident in the fact that, even by 1887, there were only 12 Indian members of the ICS.
Political policies as damaging: limited representation
The 1858 Government of India Act allowed for virtually no Indian representation at a senior level…
- The Viceroy was British and appointed by the British Government and the monarch’s representative
- The Secretary of State for India was based in Westminster and was responsible for government policy towards the subcontinent
- The Council of India was comprised of 15 non-Indian men who guided and checked the Secretary of State
…this structure is not beneficial for Indians because a lot of decisions are made in London (policy making is very removed and inaccessible) and there are no Indian representatives in these high positions
Moreover, the princes were essentially puppet rulers so didn’t actually have lots of autonomy.
