How India became a political and economic appendage of Britain!

How India became a political and economic appendage of Britain!

The East India Company was founded in 1600, with the proclamation of Queen Elizabeth granting it the trading rights.  Its first ship reached Surat in 1608. Sir Thomas Roe visited the Court of Emperor Jahangir in 1615 and obtained the permission to trade. The East India Company, interested in spice trade, gradually expanded its trade to include the items such as cotton, silk, indigo, saltpetre, tea, and opium to its wares; it also participated in the slave trade. Initially it followed a peaceful trade policy, but took advantage of the deteriorated political situation in India.  How could a trading company conquer India and establish the British Rule in such a vast country for two hundred years? It is a fascinating story. There is no parallel in history!

After Robert Clive defeated Siraj-ud-Daulah-the last Nawab of Bengal- at the battle of Plassey in 1757, Bengal, Bihar and Orissa came under the direct control of the East India Company, and with the defeat of the Marathas in 1818 its political supremacy in India was complete.  The British became the unchallenged sovereigns of a great part of India, governing the country directly.

The British people practiced with great success the method of making the people of India pay for their own conquest.  The East India Company plundered the wealth of India and promoted the industrial development in England and then used India’s raw materials to promote the factories in England. Adam Smith in his book The Wealth of Nations said: “The government of an exclusive company of merchants is perhaps the worst of all governments for any country whatever. It is the interest of the East India Company considered as sovereigns that the European goods which are carried to their Indian dominions should be sold there as cheaply as possible; and that the Indian goods which are brought from there should be sold as dear as possible.”

Jawaharlal Nehru in The Discovery of India gave an account of India  at the time when the East India was establishing its rule: India was a highly developed manufacturing country exporting her manufactured products to Europe and other countries, with the Indian hand-loom supplying the markets of Asia and Europe. India was as advanced industrially, commercially, and financially as any country prior to the industrial revolution. The foreign political domination led to a rapid destruction of the Indian economy. 

The East India Company had carried a very profitable business by selling Indian made linens and woollens and silks and embroidered goods.  English goods could enter India without the payment of any duty, but the Indian goods entering England were heavily taxed to discourage the Indian products.  That was how “India, which had been for hundreds of years the Lancashire of the Eastern world… lost her position as a manufacturing country and became just a consumer of British goods…the East India Company crushed every Indian industry which came into conflict with British industry.”

Consequently, millions of artisans were thrown out of work.  The poor, homeless, workless, starving artisans fell back on the land and. became landless labourers, a large number of them starved to death. Most of these weavers and artisans had lived in towns and cities. Now that their occupation was gone they drifted back to the land and to the villages. And the population of the towns went down, while the population of the villages went up.  In other words, India became less urban and more rural. This process of ruralisation of India continued throughout, making the country poor and impoverished. 

The establishment of British rule in India was an entirely navel phenomenon, not comparable with any other invasion or political change. India had been conquered before, but by the invaders who settled within her frontiers and made themselves part of her life.  She had never lost her independence, never been enslaved. The Afghans, the Mughals and all others, who invaded and conquered India, had accepted India as their homeland, bringing their language, culture, and religion in the process, resulting in their synthesisation as the Din-e-Illahi of Akbar demonstrated. India had never been drawn into a political and economic system whose centre of gravity lay outside her soil, never been subjected to a ruling class which was permanently alien in origin and character. 

India had been a melting pot for ages, absorbing and assimilating whoever came to her.  And “every previous ruling class, whether it had originally come from outside or was indigenous, had accepted the structural unity of India’s social and economic life and tried to fit into it. It had become Indianised and had struck roots in the soil of the country.  The new rulers were entirely different.  Now racialism became the acknowledged creed and this was intensified by the fact that the dominant race had both political and economic power, without check or hindrance.”

The Indian native rulers, barring a few, did not resist the foreign enemy; instead they fought among themselves, fell over to appease the East India Company, helping to consolidate its hold on India. They were more pre-occupied with political intrigue, hurting each other. There were many Jayachandras among them. The Indian states, about 600, feudal and autocratic in nature, had entered into treaties with the East India Company, accepting its suzerainty. The British Crown or Parliament had nothing whatever to do with the treaties. Nearly all these states could be traced back to the beginnings of British rule; they had no earlier history, exercising the privilege of power without responsibility. The doctrine of British paramountcy was proclaimed to establish the supremacy over them, with 11 Provinces already under the direct British control. The Indian states were rightly called “Britain’s fifth column in India.”  

Thus India, the cradle of civilization with rich cultural heritage, had become for the first time a political and economic appendage of another country, the imperial Britain, and a colony at that, losing her freedom and entity. A dark chapter, indeed, in her long glorious history!