How the East India Company Enslaved India!

 

 

 

 

How the East India Company Enslaved India!  

It is an untold story as to how a trading commercial company could conquer India, resulting in a foreign rule for two hundred years. It was the most ignominious and darkest period of Indian history.  The India that the British East India Company conquered was no primitive land, but the glittering jewel of the medieval world. 

At the beginning of 18^th century, according to the British historian Angus Madison, India’s share of the world economy was 23 per cent, as large as all of Europe put together. In fact, it was 27 per cent in 1700, when the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb’s treasury raked in 100 million pounds in tax revenue alone.  Shashi Tharoor in his book An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India, quoted the American  historian Will Durant who wrote:“The British conquest of India was the invasion and destruction of a high civilization by a trading company utterly without scruple or principle…greedy of gain, over-running with fire and sword of a country temporarily disordered and helpless, bribing and murdering, annexing and stealing, and beginning that career of illegal and ‘legal’ plunder which has gone on ruthlessly...”

The East India Company took full advantage of the internal disruptions in India, following the death of Aurangzeb in 1707.  There was no strong central authority to hold on India.  Robert Clive, who defeated the Bengal Nawab Suraj-ud-Daula, due to betrayal by his closest aid Mir Jafar, at the battle of Plassey in 1757, had transferred the princely sum of 2.5 million pounds to the Company’s coffers in England, as the spoils of conquest. In the hundred years after Plassey, the Company, with an army of 260,000 men extended its control over India, presiding over the destiny of more than 200 million.

The Company conquered then absorbed a number of hitherto independent states. Its Governor- General Dalhousie came out with a ‘Doctrine of Lapse’, according to which if the ruler of a state died without an heir, his adopted son was not allowed to occupy the throne and the sate was annexed.  He annexed a quarter of a million square miles of territory from Indian rulers.

Where the Company did not choose to govern directly, it installed puppet rulers in ‘princely states.’ who allied with its cause of expanding the British Empire in India.  They were charged copious fees in exchange for installing them on their thrones and for security from enemy sates- protection money. These rulers paid generously for the British contingents in their kingdoms, with the Company acquiring the right to collect revenue.  As Shashi Tharoor says, “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... We literally paid for our own oppression. ”

It was Indian complicity in the rule by the Company. The Indians are unable to come to terms with the fact that the takeover of India by a trading company was facilitated and encouraged by Indians. Indeed, “Indians were active collaborators in many, if not most, of the misdeeds. This was especially true of Indian princes who accepted a Faustian bargain to protect their wealth and their comforts in exchange for mortgaging their integrity…out of their way to demonstrate their loyalty to the Crown.Many Indians too, went along with the British; many never felt they had a choice in the matter.”

It was a combination of racial self-assurance, the cravenness, cupidity, opportunism that explains how a great country fell to the merchants, best at intrigue and deception. There were some 700 Indian states, depending on the goodwill of the Company, including the bigger states like Hyderabad, Kashmir, Mysore, Baroda, Gwalior etc. The Company official- called the Resident- lived in the states and he exercised general control over the administration.  It mattered little to him how bad the government of the state was.  He was just interested in the strengthening the Company authority in the state.

The Nizam of Hyderabad took refuge under the protecting wings of the growing power of the Company and survived as a state because of this vassalage. Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan of Mysore were formidable adversaries who inflicted a sever defeat on the Company and came near to breaking its hold on India.  Haider Ali tried to organize a joint effort to drive the Company out and, for this purpose, sent envoys to the Marathas, the Nizam and Shuja-ud-Dowla of Oudh to enlist their support. But they did not support him. Tipu Sultan-the tighter of Mysore- was finally defeated and killed at the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War 1799 by the combined forces of the Company, the Marathas and the Nizam. Subsequently, the Marathas were defeated by the Company. As Nehru wrote in The Discovery of India, "among the Marathas chiefs themselves there was bitter rivalry, and occasionally civil war, in spite of a vague alliance under the Peshwa’s leadership. At critical moments they failed to support each other, and were separately defeated. “

And “the British often had a powerful fifth column both in their administration and in the armies of the Indian rulers…The fifth column of the British functioned continuously and in moments of crisis and in the heat of war there would be defections in their favor, which made a great difference. They won most of their battles before the actual fighting took place.”  One of the chief duties of the British Residents at the courts of Indian rulers was to bribe and corrupt the ministers and the officials. That had been so at Plassey and was repeated again and again right up to the Anglo-Sikh wars (1849-56). When Rani Laxmibai and Tatya Tope were fighting the forces of the Company, Jayajirao Scindia of Gwalior betrayed them, and sided the Company, despite unrest amongst his troops and his people who wanted to join the rebels. The Indian princes not only remained aloof during the Revolt of 1857, but in fact helped the Company to crush it. We find several such stories of treason and betrayal in Indian history.

The British  believed  in the notion of ‘White Man’s Burden’ which meant that  non-whites are uncivilized  and unfit to govern themselves and, therefore, they would benefit from becoming subjugated to the rule by the white men. This arrogance of racial superiority implied that not only the white men had the right to conquer the myriad ‘lesser’ civilizations around the globe, but it was their responsibility. And, consequently, any violence or brutality committed by the British morally was acceptable, justifying that any hardship done to those conquered outweighed by the benefits of elevating the entire civilization.

Why blame the British for the misdeeds! Nehru in his letter dated December 5, 1932, to Indira (Glimpses of World History) wrote:”you will sometimes feel angry at the policy they have pursued and the widespread misery that has resulted from it.  But whose fault was it that this happened? Was it not due to our own weakness? Weakness and folly are always invitations to despotism. If the British can profit by our mutual dissensions, the fault is ours that we quarrel amongst ourselves. If they can divide us and so weaken us, playing on the selfishness of separate groups, our permitting this is itself a sign of the superiority of the British…be angry with weakness and ignorance and mutual strife, for it is these things that are responsible for our troubles.” There were groups of selfish Indians who profited by the British exploitation, supporting it to consolidate and strengthen its rule in India, bringing more poverty and misery to people in the process. The Indians whom Englishmen usually met were of the opportunists that surrounded them or the ministers, frequently corrupt and intriguing, of the Indian courts.

Nehru was indignant: “The English were an imperial race, we were told, with the god-given right to govern us and keep us in subjection... As an Indian, I am ashamed to write all this, for the memory of it hurts, and what hurts still more is the fact that we submitted for so long to this degradation. I would have preferred any kind of resistance to this, whatever the consequences, rather than that our people should endure this treatment.”

As it happened, foreign political domination came first and this led to a rapid destruction of the economy India had built up. The East India Company represented both British political power and British vested interests and economic power, with many Parliamentarians earning huge dividends as its share holders, sharing the spoils of the loot and the plunder.