Tag: british rule

The Revolt Act of 1857

The Revolt act of 1857-59 was a widespread but ultimately unsuccessful rebellion against the rule of the British East India Company, which acted as a sovereign power on behalf of the British crown in India.
  • It was the first organized form of opposition to the British East India Company.
  • It began as a revolt of the British East India Company’s army sepoys, but it eventually gained the support of the masses.
  • The revolt has been dubbed the Sepoy Mutiny by British historians, the Indian Mutiny, the Great Rebellion by Indian historians, the Revolt of 1857, the Indian Insurrection, and the First War of Independence by Indian historians (by Vinayak Damodara Savarkar).

Source – Youtube

Causes of the Revolt Act –

Political Causes:

The political causes of the rebellion were the British policy of expansion through the Doctrine of Lapse and direct annexation. A large number of Indian rulers and chiefs were deposed, instilling fear in other ruling families who feared a similar fate. The adopted son of Rani Lakshmi Bai was not permitted to sit on the throne of Jhansi. Under the Doctrine of Lapse, Satara, Nagpur, and Jhansi were annexed. In addition, Jaitpur, Sambalpur, and Udaipur were annexed. Lord Dalhousie’s annexation of Awadh under the guise of maladministration laid off thousands of nobles, officials, retainers, and soldiers. This measure turned Awadh, a traditionally loyal state, into a hotbed of discontent and intrigue.

Social and Religious Cause:

The rapidly spreading Western Civilization in India was causing alarm throughout the country.
In 1850, an act changed Hindu inheritance law, allowing a Hindu who converted to Christianity to inherit his ancestral properties. People believed that the government intended to convert Indians to Christianity. The legalization of widow remarriage and the abolition of practices such as sati and female infanticide were viewed as threats to the established social structure. Introducing western methods of education directly challenged Hindu and Muslim orthodoxy. Even the introduction of railways and the telegraph was met with skepticism.

Economic Cause:

Peasants and zamindars in rural areas were enraged by the Company’s high land taxes and stringent revenue collection methods. Many of these groups were unable to meet the high revenue demands and repay their loans to money lenders, eventually losing their ancestral lands. Because a large number of sepoys belonged to the peasantry and had family ties in villages, the peasants’ grievances affected them as well.
Following the Industrial Revolution in England, an influx of British manufactured goods into India ruined industries, particularly India’s textile industry.
Handicraft industries in India had to compete with low-cost machine-made goods from Britain.

Military Causes:

The Revolt of 1857 began as a sepoy mutiny:
Indian sepoys made up more than 87% of British troops in India but were regarded as inferior to British soldiers.
A European sepoy of the same rank was paid more than an Indian sepoy.
They were compelled to serve in locations far from their homes.
Lord Canning issued the General Services Enlistment Act in 1856, requiring sepoys to be ready to serve even in British territory across the sea.

Immediate Cause:

Eventually, the greased cartridge episode led to the Revolt of 1857.
There was a rumour that the new Enfield guns’ cartridges were greased with pig and cow fat.
The sepoys had to bite off the cartridge paper before loading these weapons. Muslims and Hindu sepoys both objected to their use.
The problematic cartridges were removed as Lord Canning attempted to make amends, but the harm had already been done. Unrest could be found everywhere.
Mangal Pandey, a sepoy in Barrackpore, had resisted using the gun and assaulted his superior officers in March 1857. On April 8, he was strangled to death.

Conclusion:

In the annals of British rule in India, the uprising of 1857 was unprecedented. It brought together numerous segments of Indian society for a common goal, albeit in a limited manner. Even though the uprising fell short of its intended objective, it did plant the seeds of Indian independence.

Shashi Tharoor and his Ideology on the British Rule in India

Shashi Tharoor is a writer and that too an extraordinary one. He is a legend and his pen has the power to change the world through his words. He writes others maybe imagine but can not put into appropriate words. He has many published works which are just perfect. One such work of his is the book named An Era of Darkness : The British Empire in India. This book was also published in United Kingdom under the name Inglorious Empire : What the British did to India. It was of course a best seller. This book basically depicts what is in Shashi Tharoor’s mind about the British rule in India. His ideology about the British Empire is written in this amazing work. Through this book he wants us to know about “the origins of the difficulties that confronted India.” , as stated by himself. In simple words, he wants us to understand about the evils of the British Rule in India and how it affected us. He strongly desires an apology from the British, same as whole of the country does. In his opinion, an apology would be most desirable, rather than compensation by cash or other valuables. This book also exposes the corruptions during that period along with questions their claim on superiority.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

He deeply explains the way how it all came to the establishment of British Empire and also about why it all happened. He puts light on the manipulations of the British on the people of our country. He has clearly stated in his book that “this book is an argument and not a story.” He argues that the ruling record of the Indian governments is far better than the British. He accepts the fact that the British has in fact paid the reparations in form of aids over the years, but he is adamant that they were not due to guilt. According to Tharoor, India suffered many problems and conflicts due to racism, wars, disputes for kingdoms and other several problems, under the British Rule. He also states in his book that “this just basic knowledge about the history of our country but is still unknown even to the educated Indians.” He stresses on his point of the reparations, by saying that day by day it is getting late to amend things but it’s certainly not that late. The damage is done but can still be somewhat repaired to some extent.

Tharoor has remarked that every single thing the British did and the rules they imposed on the citizens were for their own benefit and not ours. He is right of course in all his arguments. The correct word for the Rule of British in India has to be ‘rotten’. The British Rule and their Empire was rotten in terms of all the policies they put up to follow, all the standards as compared to ours. He has done an impeccable job on the book and made us realize what we had forgotten with time.

INDIA’S ECONOMIC EXPLOITATION UNDER BRITISH RULE

SOURCE- PINTEREST

The very first Hindi word to be added in the English dictionary was “loot” which refers to the spoils of war pillaged from an enemy. This first addition was made when the British ruled India and filled their bags with Indian riches.

Before the British established their stronghold in India, our country was known all around the world as “Golden Bird” or “Sone ki Chidiya”.

The disintegration of the Mughal Empire in the 18th CE brought both political and economic fragmentation of the country. It was during this time that the British made their cunning move and eventually began to colonize the country. It was this colonial rule that not only devastated the political and social fabric but also drew out the riches.


A company’s official John Sullivan observed in 1840,
‘Englishmen flourishes, acts like a sponge, drawing up riches from the banks of Ganges and squeezing them down upon the banks of Thames’.

Before the British came, India’s share of the world’s GDP was very significant.
Angus Maddison, a British economic historian observes that the contribution of India to world GDP declined from 24.4% to just 4.2% between 1700-1950. This is really a very dwindling figure.

SOURCE- PINTEREST

It was not that the Indians during the colonial times did not understand it. It was apparent to everyone. The greatest contribution in making the common people realize the economic exploitation goes to Dadabhai Naoroji. He put forward the “Drain of Wealth” theory.
He described the drain of wealth as the major cause of Indian poverty. He said that the British were “bleeding India White”.

“By the end of the nineteenth century, India was Britain’s biggest source of revenue, the world’s biggest purchaser of British exports, and the source of highly paid employment for British civil servants and soldiers all at India’s own expense. Indians literally paid for their own oppression.”
― Shashi Tharoor, Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India

And now the figures of how much the British drained our country would certainly blow everyone’s mind.
Writing in 1859, George Wingate estimated the drain at £4 million per annum for 17 years between 1835-1851.
V.I. Pavlov, professor of Economics at Moscow State University, estimated that in the 1930’s the British squeezed India of £130 million- £140 million in pure tribute.
He remarks that -“With this amount, India could annually construct 3 plants of Bhilai type each of which would exceed in capacity the country’s iron and steel industry in British period”.

Thus, it can be concluded that the exploitation of Britishers is beyond reparation. The Englishmen understood that India was the bird that could lay golden eggs for them. So, they drained our country so excessively that when they left in 1947, they left behind an economically impoverished country, suffering for centuries from poverty and exploitation.