So British launched a divide and rule policy along religious lines. They sought to forment a separate Muslim consciousness. The British were also disturbed to see that when the Indian National Congress was first formed, and its first presidents included Hindus, Christians, Muslims, and Parsis. The British then lobbied for and financed the creation of the Muslim League as a rival body, deliberately to split the nationalists along religious lines, that being the easiest way to divide and rule.
In , the British partitioned Bengal, explicitly telling Muslims that they were giving them a Muslim majority province. Tharoor also argues that while India long had the caste system, it was a rather fuzzy thing. But the British took the caste system, and codified and entrenched it, to use as a means of social control.
The British taught English to only a narrow stratum of Indian society which they could use to enhance their control of India. The British had no incentive to educate Indians as that they might learn of the injustices of the British.
The fact that the Indian elite has seized upon English, educated themselves in it, and turned it into an instrument of their own liberation is to the credit of the Indians, not the British.
Overall, Tharoor reluctantly concedes that there have been some benefits for India from British colonialism, but that this is not because the British of magnanimity. They were basically indirect consequences of British self-serving actions. But he also argues that India suffered from the colonisation of the mind, something which it is much more difficult to overcome. How then did this poor little country of Britain manage to conquer India?
But they never managed to unite themselves. Indeed, the British were able to collaborate with some of these local Indian groups, and bribe them for support. Thus, Indians were very much complicit in their own oppression.
The British could not have ruled India without Indian complicity. The British also succeeded thanks to its superior military technology. In the early s, the Indian independence movement grew in prominence and received a significant level of sympathy at home and abroad. In , the Amritsar Massacre of unarmed protesters by British and Gurka troops received much public criticism.
From letters Clow wrote to a friend, we know he considered resigning on several occasions during the early s. This period of reflection led him to fundamentally question his role within the colonial system, but he ultimately decided to continue his career. Clow was a devout Christian and his life in India would develop into a religious cocoon of sorts where he used his relationship with God to suppress his trauma at being a colonial usurper.
As he became more senior within the administration he increasingly distanced himself from Indians, Indian culture and expressed little sympathy for the plight of people who suffered from British exploitation. He spent the vast majority of his time with other Europeans and his holidays at his house at the British hill station of Simla.
His diaries throughout the s and s became almost entirely written prayers requesting salvation punctuated by private comments of self-loathing, written in confidence between himself and God. His private time was spent largely in the pursuit of the preservation of the legacy of British India.
He voraciously read memoirs and other reflections by his former colleagues, and would lambast any critique of the British, even if those criticisms were rather sparse. His heightened religiosity was a key part of his way of dealing with this. In fact, the British encouraged these divisions. The better-off classes were educated in English schools. They served in the British army or in the civil service.
They effectively joined the British to rule their poorer fellow Indians. There are huge arguments about whether the British created or enlarged these divisions in Indian society British society was deeply divided by class , or whether the British simply took advantage of divisions that were already present in Indian society. For much of the s the average Indian peasant had no more say in the way he or she was ruled than did the average worker in the United Kingdom.
The British view tended to portray British rule as a charitable exercise - they suffered India's environment eg climate, diseases in order to bring to India good government and economic development eg railways, irrigation, medicine. Modern admirers of British rule also note these benefits. Other historians point out that ruling India brought huge benefits to Britain. India's huge population made it an attractive market for British industry. India also exported huge quantities of goods to Britain, especially tea, which was drunk or exported on from Britain to other countries.
Then there were the human resources. The Indian army was probably Britain's single greatest resource. It was the backbone of the power of the British empire.
In , for example, the British viceroy governor of India, Lord Curzon, said 'As long as we rule India, we are the greatest power in the world. If we lose it we shall straightway drop to a third rate power'. Did India gain or lose from British rule? Some recent research suggests that British rule did little for India in economic terms. Britain gained hugely from ruling India, but most of the wealth created was not invested back into the country. For example, from to about , economic growth in India was very slow - much slower than in Britain or America.
India actually started importing food under British rule, because Indians were growing 'cash crops' like cotton and tea to be sent to Britain. It is extremely important not to forget the terrible famines that devastated India. These were partly the result of weather, but partly caused by British policies.
Food shortages came about because Indians were growing cash crops. When famine struck in and the British system of government was completely overwhelmed and could not organise a big enough relief effort. As well as these massive famines, there were many other smaller, more localised famines.
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