Grundy

im not particularily well informed on the British India in the days of the empire, i concentrate mostly on WW2, but i was wondering how the indians viewed the "occupation" as a good or bad thing and how do you think it has affected the modern day india, i have raised this because i have heard that the Empire was particullarily brutal towards the indians

anand1266

how would u feel when somebody comes and makes u a slave without ur conformity?
obviously why would u allow someone rule u in your own motherland.

Karthik

Grundy,

When the British first arrived in India, they did so under the banner of the East India company which wanted to trade in spices and riches that India had to offer.

Their inclination towards exerting colonial rule over India was clear in the early 1800's and the year 1857 witnessed the first war of Indian independence. Naturally, the superior artillery won the British that war.

From that time on, the movement towards independence continued and in 1892, the Indian National Congress, the first political outfit of India took shape. There were two kinds of people within the Congress - the moderates and the not-so-moderates. The moderates believed in the goodness of British rule and that Britain could be persuaded to declare India as a dominion. But the ranks of the moderates diminished as time went on and with the advent of Mahatma Gandhi the movement towards independence had gathered an invincible momentum.

British rule in India is not something that Indians are very fond of. In fact, many people in India view Britain as a former power of yesteryears, now reduced toothless. The only good thing that British rule did for India was bringing the English language here.

British rule was brutal, you are right. India was rich in raw materials, which Britain needed at the time of her industrial revolution. Indians could only buy goods manufactured from the British, and Indians were banned from British social events. Even a simple thing like collecting salt from the sea was illegal under British rule.

But, as you might be aware, the Indian independence movement exposed the brutality of Britsh rule and signalled the end of the British empire, giving rise to numerous movements in other such colonies.

Here is a link from where you can more.Indian Independence Movement

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Archer

Brits caused so many f*cking problems that even today, 50 years after independence, India is reeling from their after effects. Sigh.

Darned caste issues, with their artificial divisions between communities, creating a fraudulent caste- subcaste list which became enshrined and has created a myriad divisions where there were none, the entire subcaste sh!te. Loyal to brits, get on the list, otherwise you are screwed. Independent India is still trying to sort that one out.

Aryan Invasion theory, less said the better about- fricking Aryan vs Dravidian, when we are all the same genetically as finally proven by the recent Italian genome test. All to support an evangelical program by bloody Max Mueller.

Sigh.

No grudge against the Brits of today, they aint responsible for what the jackasses of yore did.

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lemontree

But the plus points of the British Raj.
- Integration of the Nation as one entity.
- Democracy.
- Educational and Rail infrastruction that was inherited stood us in good stead.
- A good civil/police service.
- Any organised and disciplined army.

The top two are the most important plus points the rest was incidental. We hold no grudge against the British though.

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Archer

True, that avoided messy battles later on, but they were not the only ones who could have done it, any empire in India basically sought to expand its borders and seek dominance. At their peak, the Marathas effectively ran an Indian empire. What I am of course picking on, is not your statement per se but the notion, often peddled by a few British victorian era academics (and apparently still a popular one in some british circles, even on the net) that the British accomplished something which was hitherto never done ("The raj was not all that bad old boy, we made India").

Which of course is patently false, given the Maurya empire in BC,
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/GRAPHIC...SES/MAURYA.GIF

...to even the modern day ones. And once the British left, it was Sardar Vallabhai Patel who by dint of acumen and strength created modern India. Whether Bharat or Hindustan, Indias been around for ages.

I have to disagree here since during British era, despite the ICS, Indians could never rise beyond the stated ranks. It was not a democracy, it was a Monarchy with white admins and brown babus.

The Collector, Magistrate equivalents were always the White guys. Rules relaxed somewhat much later on, esp during WW2, but the "glass ceiling" remained rigidly enforced, with due attention paid to "caste", "ethnicity" and "religion"- good old divide and rule.

Indian democracy began with the INC founding fathers and Ambedkar and co, who used the British system as a template to model our own. In that, we "owe" them, as much as we'd owe the Zimbabweans if we had followed the Rhodes system of democracy, just coming up with an off the cuff analogy..

Disagree here- the educational institutions that existed in British time, fell into the pale in comparison with the utter destruction of the village/ taluk level educational system which iirc Macaulay and co, systematically uprooted. Gurcharan Das has excellent statistics on this, he points out that pre British times, even the smallest village often had access to functional literacy, including basic math, in its native tongue. The British banned this, and instituted an English centric system, which ensured that only a few handpicked babus were groomed for the ICS, admin posts etc. Their would have been little harm in this but for the fact they wiped out basic education from significant swathes of India; what had taken literally centuries to establish was driven into oblivion, and many of the dotard Rajah's were only too eager to follow Company Bahadurs diktat, tax their peasants, rather than concern themselves with such plebeian affairs.

Its an ironic state of affairs, that modern India, fifty years thence, is striving, at great cost, to implement what the British uprooted so fast, and thoroughly! Macaulays other (in)famous statement being of course: (paraphrasing) : A roomfull of western / latin literature is far better than all that Sanskrit is ever going to be worth.

Furthermore, most of India's educational system, including the much vaunted IITs etc are post Independence. There are but a handful of Pre Ind. Univs, some of which are still soldiering on, BHU, I think being one of them, which was set up by Pandit Madan Mohan Malviyas initiative.

Agreed, they established the rail network and expanded it (primarily some claim to move logistics and troops asap), but the bulk of the Indian network has been established post independence.

Its amazing for instance, if we see post independence Pak and India, the latters rail network -on an image, appears throughout, Paks is like a stunted branch, arguably pointing to each countries relative success or priority.


Definitely. Be as it may, the ICS were excellent bureaucrats, even if they were more often than not, more Brit than the Brits themselves.

On the negative side, the British template of the bureaucracy and the police force was of the ruler and the ruled, independent India followed it, and to its discredit, has not reformed the system despite many commissions pointing out the glaring disconnect. The Right to info. act is hopefully a harbinger of things to come, but the police reforms still need to be undertaken, perhaps better late than never.

In my opinion, the most overlooked byproduct of the Raj, afaik, in WW2 there were 20 Million Indians volunteers in the Military, the largest contingent from any nation (of course, this was united India, but the largest portion came from todays India).

India has always had superb soldiers by historical/ cultural choice- the Rajputs for eg, to those who made themselves into warriors, the Khalsa, the Marathas, but the British per se, introduced uniformity across the ranks and drilled them to perfection. The Marathas, and the Sikhs all iirc had a massive elite contingent, but were also dependent upon levies of varying levels of training, and consequently performance. This of course, referring to only the "famous types"- the common Indian jawan comes from so many diverse backgrounds that it is hard to state them one by one!

I have no qualms in accepting the Brit influence here, as well as paying homage to our doughty Indian jawans and officers, who have continued to soldier on, as their forefathers did, in a noble and highly challenging profession.

Ray

No one likes to be enslaved.

One rather look at the positive contribution of the "occupation" and let the "negative" ones spur all to ensure that there is never again the "enslavement"!

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sparten

Only thing the sub contient got out of the Raj was syphallis and rail roads

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anand1266

and one of the main reasons for the fall was kingdoms at that time used to fight with each other. So what britian had to do was to add fuel to this. THey used to befriend one king and would offer their army support , resulting in the defeat of the rival king. Now after war is won and then britian would trick their own ally-king using various offers , bussiness options etc and try to take control of his kingdom. Cheating was the main criteria for them to enter in india.East india company was essentially a bussiness company actually but they ultimately snatched power from our kings to control india.

east india company came to india in 1600. I wonder why indians didnt try to protest untill 1857 if the legend of mangal pandey is true.
First recorded proof of indians revolting against the empire was in 1857. WAs there any revolt against british before 1857?

raj

all the above was to save their own rear
1) to rule whole land rather than in parts
2) Democracy?????????????
3) to save their own rears after 1st world war, they built railways, so that raw materials can be moved from interiors to the ports quickely. regarding the education, they did need some one to help them rule the country
4) wanted to rule the country, so had to have some police force, but in that they created a huge behmoth of beaurocratic mess
5) save their own rear, btw which country had the guts to wage a war against us during british period except during ww2

BTW i only find angl indians and christians praising british rule

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saw this in some site dont remember the name tough

raj

may be you should tell the brits of today to stop using the economic might that they got from screwing india for generations together and filling their pockets

anand1266

so true,
india was once called golden peocock coz she was so rich and prosperous at that time before british invasion.
They took away each and every thing that looked valuable .

Samudra

Summarised pretty well.

Oh I praise the British for what good they have done to us.
Now I dare you to label "Samudra" as an AngloIndian or a Christian.

raj

may be i should have added the word "mostly" to my post

Archer

Good one.