Colonialism and Social Transformation in India

governance, lack of monolithic socio-cultural system and foresightedness on the part of governing elites and poor development of science and technology during the medieval period which paved the way for foreign rule in the country. or the British succeeded to colonize India because India The Europeans was a divided house in terms of socio-cultural and linguistic diversities and possessed a poor level of development in the use of technology of warfare. Anyway, what was done cannot be undone. The colonial masters indirectly gave us enough lessons to learn from our eventful history. The lessons society learnt, however, were quite high-priced both in terms of life and property. Such has been the course of India’s history. A careful perusal of India’s long history suggests that destiny has not been always kind to India that was Bharat. We do not know for sure who learnt and benefited more- the coloniser or the colonised or it was an equally gainful experience for both of them. While addressing this question one must keep in mind that India has been surviving and developing as a democratic republic since the middle of the 20th century despite considerable socio-cultural, ethnic and linguistic diversities and all sorts of odds both inside and outside the country, covering a population of over one billion spread over a vast expanse of geographical areas stretching from Jammu and Kashmir in the North and Andaman & Nicobar Islands in the Indian Ocean and Lakshadweep in the Arabian sea in the south. Despite all these it is believed that India is going to be a global power to reckon with much before the turn of this century. The first European colonists had started visiting the shores of India from the 15th century onwards. In the early 16th century, Portuguese rule was established on the West coast of India at Goa. The Portuguese did confined to the coastal periphery. The British dominions in India took shape succeed in moving deep into the country. Their domination remained the East India Company set out to trade with the Mughal Empire. As than gradually. In the very early years of the 17th century, British merchants of empire declined, the British took political and military control of the Indian territory, defeating the French and various Indian rulers to become the dominant power in South Asia. Initially the Britain ruled India through the East India Company and after the mutiny of 1857-58 India came to be ruled directly by the British crown. Though the Mughal Empire did survive till 1857, its heyday can be considered to have come to an end in 1707, with the death of Aurangzeb. The Marathas could not rise to the status of being the central authority for the entire country though at one time their armies had marched upto Attock beyond Peshawar near today’s Afghanistan- Pakistan border.

The British ascendancy, which began with the battle of Plassey in 1757, did mark the beginning of the end of feudalism in India. The century from 1757 to 1857 was the transitory stage from feudalism to the modern era. Thus the decline of feudalism did not entirely come about due to its internal decay; rather, it was largely mediated through the intervention of European colonialism. But the decline of feudalism was facilitated by the general confusion that prevailed in the country after the eclipse of the Mughal Empire as the executive authority of the country.

As the British presence in India grew, Britons increasingly went to India to run businesses and as administrators, soldiers, and missionaries. By the 19th century and into the 20th a life in India became a regular existence for many English men and women. Their personal motives were various: to make money, to find excitement, to improve their status, to maintain family tradition, and as a grand ideal of imperial service formed in Victorian times- to serve their own nation and India itself. In many ways, their personal motives were a microcosm of the reasons European nations and their societies sought imperial expansion.

Sometimes generations of the same family went to India. Some were born there, others recruited out of university or public school to join the police or the civil or the education or forest service. Whatever their backgrounds, those who went found themselves on a journey to a world very different from what they knew in the British Isles. Their literal passage on a steamship- from cool England, through Gibraltar and across the increasingly foreign Mediterranean, through the Suez Canal (symbolic divider of West from East), into the sun-scorched Red Sea and steamy Indian Ocean to a land full of new sounds, sights, and smells was more than a Oce trip but a rite of transition which often made a powerful impression.

Numerous studies have been carried out on the effects of colonialism in India. All most all the studies, particularly done by Indian scholars, have tried to harp on the same note that the British colonialism was merely a tool of economic exploitation of India. In fact, the studies on colonialism in India have given rise to two diverse kinds of perspectives in historical writings: nationalist and Marxist. Though both are two divergent schools of thought in history, both have contended vociferously that the British colonial masters were merely interested in economic exploitation of India (Marx and Engels, 1965; Dutt, 1949; Chand, 1961; Majumdar, 1963; Gopal, 1965; Hutchins, 1967; Seal, 1968; Chandra, 1972; Desai, 1976; Dutt, 1976; Chandra; 1989). They have merely depicted the Indian’s point of view on British colonialism. The present study intends to do a different kind of exercise. This is an exercise in the study of impact of British rule on Indian society in general in an objective manner. Herein no effort is made to make a value judgement about any impact whether that change was good or bad in the interests of the country.

Historiography-The historiography of the British Empire refers to the studies, sources, critical methods and interpretations used by scholars to study the history of the British Empire. Scholars have long studied the Empire, looking at the causes for its formation, its relations to the French and other empires, and the kinds of people and their ideas who became imperialists or anti-imperialists. The history of the breakdown of the Empire has attracted the attention of scholars of the United States (which broke away in 1776), as well as India (1947) and the African colonies (1960s). In recent years scholars have paid special attention to its impact on the native peoples of Asia and Africa who became part of its domain, with respect to the impact on their economy, social structure, demography, politics and world view. The present work is a very small step in that direction.

Armitage (2000) traces the emergence of a British imperial ideology from the time of Henry VIII to that of Robert Walpole in the 1720s and 1730s. Using a close reading of English, Scottish and Irish authors from Sir Thomas Smith (1513-77) to David Hume (1711-1776), Armitage argues that the imperial ideology was both as a critical agent in the formation of a British state from three kingdoms and an essential bond between the state and the transatlantic colonies. Armitage thus links the concerns of the ‘New British History’ with that of the Atlantic history. Before 1700 Armitage

the emergence of a unitary imperial ideology. Furthermore the notions of finds that contested English and Scottish versions of state and empire delayed republicanism produced in the writers a tension between “empire and liberty” and “imperium and dominium.” However political economists Nicholas Barbon and Charles Davenant in the late 17th century emphasized the significance of commerce to the success of the state, arguing that “trade depended on liberty, and that liberty could therefore be the foundation of empire” (Armitage, 2000: 143). To overcome competing versions of ’empires of the seas’ within Britain, Parliament undertook the regulation of the Irish economy, the Act of Union (1707) and the formation of a unitary and organic ‘British’ empire of the sea. Walpole’s opponents in the 1730 in the “country party” and in the American colonies developed an alternative vision of empire that would be “Protestant, commercial, maritime and free” (Armitage, 2000: 173). Walpole’s did not ensure the promised “liberty” to the colonists’ colonies because he was intent on subordinating all colonial economic activity to the mercantilist advantages of the metropolis. Anti- imperial critiques emerged from Francis Hutcheson and David Hume, presaging the republicanism that swept the American colonies in the 1770s and led to the creation of a rival empire.

One of the most controversial aspects of the Empire is its role in first promoting and then ending slavery. In the 18th century British merchant ships were the largest element in the “Middle Passage” which transported millions of slaves to the Western Hemisphere. Most of those who survived the journey wound up in the Caribbean, where the Empire had highly profitable sugar colonies, and the living conditions were bad (The plantation owners lived in Britain). Parliament ended the international transportation of slaves in 1807, and used the Royal navy to enforce that ban. In 1833 it bought out the plantation owners and banned slavery. Historians before the 1940s argued that moralistic reformers such as William Wilberforce were primarily responsible for the abolition of slavery.

Historical revisionism arrived with West Indian historian Eric Williams in Capitalism and Slavery (1944), rejected this moral explanation and substituted a Marxist interpretation. He argued that abolition was now more profitable, for a century of sugar cane raising had exhausted the soil of the islands, and the plantations had become unprofitable. It was more profitable to sell the slaves to the government than to keep up operations. The 1807 prohibition of the international trade, Williams argued, prevented French expansion on other islands. Meanwhile British investors turned to Asia, where labour was so plentiful that slavery was unnecessary. Williams went on to argue that slavery played a major role in making Britain prosperous Revolution Britain enjoyed prosperity because of the capital thieved from The high profits from the slave trade, he said, helped finance the Industrial the unpaid work of slaves. This explanation is heavily biased in favour of Marxist perspective.

More recently historians have challenged Williams. They have shown that slavery remained profitable in the 1830s because of innovations in agriculture so the profit motive was not central to abolition (Ward, 1998 415-39). Richardson (1998) finds Williams’s claims regarding the Industrial Revolution are highly exaggerated, for profits from the slave trade amounted challenges claims that the slave trade caused widespread depopulation and to less than 1% of domestic investment in Britain. Richardson further economic distress in Africa indeed that it caused the “underdevelopment of Africa. Admitting the horrible suffering of slaves, he notes that many Africans benefited directly, because the first stage of the trade was always purchase cargoes of people who were captured in the hinterland by African firmly in the hands of Africans. European slave ships waited at ports to dealers and tribal leaders. Richardson finds that the “terms of trade” moved heavily in favour of the Africans after about 1750. That is, indigenous elites inside West and Central Africa made large and growing profits from slavery, thus increasing their wealth and power (Richardson, 1998: 440-64).

Debate continues about the economic impact of British imperialism on India. The issue was actually raised by conservative British politician Edmund Burke who in the 1780s vehemently attacked the East India Company, claiming that Warren Hastings and other top officials had ruined the Indian economy and society. Indian historian Rajat Kanta Ray (1998) continues this line of attack, saying the new economy brought by the British in the 18th century was a form of “plunder” and a catastrophe for the traditional economy of Mughal India. Ray accuses the British of depleting the food and money stocks and imposing high taxes that helped cause the terrible famine of 1770, which killed a third of the people of Bengal (Ray. 1998: 508-29).

 J. Marshall (1998) shows that recent scholarship has reinterpreted the view that the prosperity of the formerly benign Mughal rule gave way to poverty and anarchy. Marshall argues the British takeover did not make any sharp break with the past. British control was delegated largely through regional Mughal rulers and was sustained by a generally prosperous economy for the rest of the eighteenth century. Marshall notes that the British went into partnership with Indian bankers and raised revenue through

local tax administrators and kept the old Mughal rates of taxation. Instead of the Indian nationalist account of the British as alien aggressors, seizing power by brute force and impoverishing all of India, Marshall presents the interpretation, supported by many scholars in India and the West, in which the British were not in full control but instead were players in what was primarily an Indian play and in which their rise to power depended upon excellent cooperation with Indian elites. Marshall admits that much of his interpretation is still rejected by many historians working in India, who prefer to ‘bash the British’ (Marshall 1998: 487-507).

Objectives and Methodology

The fact that the British rule brought enormous changes in social, political and economic systems of the country through their system of governance has always remained overshadowed or has been underplayed by the scholars. While the Great Britain felt that they were being very generous to the Indian people in colonizing and modernizing the nation, the Indians do not always agree with this. Undoubtedly under the British rule, many new roads, railways and harbours were built, post and telegraph system was introduced. Numerous schools, colleges, universities and hospitals were opened to provided education and health services to the people. The positive effects of nineteenth and twentieth century colonialism can still be felt today. These effects can be felt on many different levels of life and culture in India. When Britain colonized India, the English language quickly spread and diverse indigenous languages of the natives began to become unimportant. In addition, the traditional culture of India was altered, taking on a more European style. With such changes to its culture, language, and way of life, the newly independent country was forced to rediscover itself in a fast-paced world. Willingly or unwillingly, the British ushered in a new era of rationality in India. The country slowly and steadily moved from tradition to modernity. For long the Indian society was highly imbued with traditional Hindu and Islamic values system. Because of prominently agrarian economy and massive illiteracy, the country was not prepared to experience rapid change in pre-British India. The British system of governance provided not only an impetus to change but also acted as catalytic agent of change.

This research work has to be based on purely secondary sources of data. As this is a sociological analysis of historical facts, it may be called an inter-disciplinary research. The work is, however, heavily tilted in favour of history because of my academic orientation as a student of history.

work of this kind is likely to fall within the rubric of social history. Not much work has been done in history following sociological perspective and similarly not much work has been done in sociology following historical perspective either. Hence, an effort is made to combine Sociology with History. It may be pointed out that no effort is made to counter or falsify the facts and arguments put forward either by Marxist and or the nationalist historians with regard to adverse or dysfunctional impacts of colonialism on India society and culture; rather, the main concern of the research is to focus upon changes which were encountered and experienced by the country during the period of about 150 years of Pax Britannica in India. A word of caution may be moved here. As this study has sought to offer a macro level analysis of historical facts, generalizations made can hold in broad terms only.

Defining Concepts

Concepts are the building blocks of any scientific knowledge. They are also the basic tools of encapsulating and communicating knowledge. Colonialism and social change are two main concepts used in this work. In fact, entire work centres round these two concepts. Both of them carry very specific connotation in social science. Hence, they are defined and elaborated here. Along with these two, we have also incorporated some other related concepts like imperialism, neo-colonialism, post neo-colonialism, slave trade, westernization, sanskritization and secularization.

Colonialism- It is the ideology relating to development and maintenance of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. Sovereignty over the colony is claimed by the metropole. Social structure, government and economics within the territory of the colony are changed by the colonists. Colonialism normally refers to a period of history from the 15th to the 20th century when people from Europe built colonies on other continents. Some colonists felt they were helping the indigenous population by bringing them Christianity and civilization. However, the reality was often subjugation, displacement or death.’ A colony is part of an empire and so colonialism is closely related to imperialism.

Historians often distinguish between two forms of colonialism, chiefly based on the number of people from the colonising country who settle in the colony:

Settler colonialism involved a large number of colonists, typically seeking fertile land for farming.

Exploitation colonialism involved fewer colonists, typically interested in extracting resources to export to the metropole. This category includes would provide much of the administration and own much of the land and trading posts but it also includes much larger colonies where the colonists other capital but rely on indigenous people for labour.

There is a certain amount of overlap between these models of colonialism. In both cases people moved to the colony and goods were exported to the metropole. A plantation colony is normally considered to fit the model of exploitation colonialism. However, in this case there be other immigrants to the colony- slaves to grow the cash crop for export. areas and the result was either an ethnically mixed population, or a racially In some cases, settler colonialism took place in substantially pre-populated divided population, such as in French Algeria or Southern Rhodesia. A League of Nations mandate was legally very different from a colony. However, there was some similarity with exploitation colonialism in the mandate system.

Historical view of colonialism- Colonialism is not a modern phenomenon (Osterhammel, 1997). A variety of ancient and more recent examples whereby ethnically distinct groups settle in areas other than their original settlement that are either adjacent or across land or sea. From about 750 BC the Greeks began 250 years of expansion, settling colonies in all directions. Phoenician civilization was an enterprising maritime trading culture that spread across the Mediterranean during the period 1550 BC to 300 BC. Other examples range from large empire like the Roman Empire, the Arab Empire, the Mongol Empire, the Ottoman Empire or small movements like ancient Scots moving from Hibernia to Caledonia and Magyars into Pannonia (modern-day Hungary). Turkic peoples spread across most of Central Asia into Europe and the Middle East between the 6th and 11th centuries. Recent research suggests that Madagascar was uninhabited until Malay seafarers from Indonesia arrived during the 5th and 6th centuries A.D. Subsequent migrations from both the Pacific and Africa further consolidated this original mixture, and Malagasy people emerged.

The historical phenomenon of colonization is one that stretches around the globe and across time, including such disparate peoples as the Hittites, the Incas and the British, although the term colonialism is normally used with reference to discontiguous European overseas empires rather than contiguous land-based empires, European or otherwise. Land-based empires are conventionally described by the term imperialism, such as Age of Imperialism which includes colonialism as a sub-topic, but in the main

refers to conquest and domination of nearby lesser geographic powers. Examples of land-based empires include the Mongol Empire, Chinese Empire, the Empire of Alexander the Great, the Umayyad Caliphate, the Persian Empire, the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire. The Ottoman Empire was created across Mediterranean, North Africa and into South- Eastern Europe and existed during the time of European colonization of the other parts of the world. After the Portuguese Reconquista period when the Kingdom of Portugal fought against the Muslim domination of Iberia, in the 12th and 13th centuries, the Portuguese started to expand overseas. European colonialism began in 1415, with Portugal’s conquest of the Muslim port of Ceuta, Northern Africa. In the following decades Portugal braved the coast of Africa establishing trading posts, ports and fortresses. Colonialism was led by Portuguese and Spanish exploration of the Americas, and the coasts of Africa, the Middle East, India, and East Asia.

On June 7, 1494, Pope Alexander VI divided “newly discovered” lands outside Europe between Spain and Portugal along a north-south meridian 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde islands (off the west coast of Africa). This division was never accepted by the rulers of England or France.

The latter half of the sixteenth century witnessed the expansion of the English colonial state throughout Ireland. Despite some earlier attempts, it was not until the 17th century that Britain, France and the Netherlands successfully established overseas empires outside Europe, in direct competition with Spain and Portugal and with each other. In the 19th century the British Empire grew to become the largest empire yet seen.

Before the expansion of the Bantu languages and their speakers, the southern half of Africa is believed to have been populated by Pygmies and Khoisan speaking people, today occupying the arid regions around the Kalahari and the forest of Central Africa. By about 1000 AD Bantu migration had reached modern day Zimbabwe and South Africa. The Banu Hilal and Banu Ma’qil were a collection of Arab Bedouin tribes from the Arabian peninsula who migrated westwards via Egypt between the 11th and 13th centuries. Their migration strongly contributed to the Arabization and Islamization of the western Maghreb, which was until then dominated by Berber tribes. Ostsiedlung was the medieval eastward migration and settlement of Germans. The 13th century was the time of the great Mongol and Turkic migrations across Eurasia. Between the 11th and 18th centuries,

the Vietnamese expanded southward in a process known as nam tin (southward expansion)

More recent examples of internal colonialism are the movement of ethnic Chinese into Tibet and Eastern Turkistan, ethnic Javanese into Western New Guinea and Kalimantan, Brazilians into Amazonia, Israelis into the West Bank and Gaza, ethnic Arabs into Iraqi Kurdistan, and ethnic Russians into Siberia and Central Asia. The local populations or tribes, such as the aboriginal people in Canada, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Japan, Siberia and the United States, were usually far overwhelmed numerically by the settlers.

The end of the 18th and early 19th century saw the first era of decolonization when most of the European colonies in the Americas gained their independence from their respective metropoles. Spain and Portugal were irreversibly weakened after the loss of their New World colonies, bur Britain (after the union of England and Scotland), France and the Netherlands turned their attention to the Old World, particularly South Africa, India and South East Asia, where coastal enclaves had already been established. The German Empire (now Republic), created by most of Germany being united under Prussia (omitting Austria, and other ethnic- German areas) also sought colonies in German East Africa. Territories in other parts of the world were also added to the trans-oceanic, or extra- European, German colonial empire. Italy occupied Eritrea, Somalia and Libya. During the First and the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, Italy invaded Abyssinia, and in 1936 the Italian Empire was created.

The industrialization of the 19th century led to what has been termed the era of New Imperialism, when the pace of colonization rapidly accelerated, the height of which was the Scramble for Africa.

In 1823, the United States, while expanding westward for the Pacific, had published the Monroe Doctrine in which it gave fair warning to western European expansionists to stay out of American affairs. Originally, the document targeted the spread of colonialism in Latin America and the Caribbean, deeming it oppressive and intolerable. By the end of the 19th century, interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine by individuals such as Theodore Roosevelt, viewed it as an American responsibility to ensure Central American, Caribbean, and South American economic stability that would allow those nations to repay their debts to their colonizers. In fact, under Roosevelt’s presidency in 1904, the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine was added to the original document in order to justify colonial expansionist policies and actions by the U.S. under Roosevelt (Marks, 1979)

In this case imperialism would now, for the first time in American history, begin to manifest itself across the bordering waters and incorporating the Philippines, Guam, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii as American territories.

America was successful in “liberating” the territories of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. U.S. government replaced the existing government in Hawaii in 1893; it was annexed into the American union as an offshore territory in 1898. Between 1898 and 1902, Cuba was a territory of the United States along with Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, which were all colonies gained by the United States from Spain. In 1946, the Philippines was granted independence from the United States and Puerto Rico still to this day remains a territory of the United States along with American, Samoa, Guam, and The U.S. Virgin Islands. In Cuba, the Platt Amendment was replaced in 1934 by the Treaty of Relations which granted Cuba less intervention by U.S. government on matters of economy and international relations. 1934 would also be the year that, under the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, that the Good Neighbour Policy was adopted in order to limit American intervention in South and Central America.

During the 20th century, the overseas colonies of the losers of World War I were distributed amongst the victors as mandates, but it was not until the end of World War II that the second phase of decolonization began in earnest.

Neo-colonialism- The term neo-colonialism has been used to refer to a variety of things since the decolonization efforts after World War II. Generally it does not refer to a type of colonialism but rather colonialism by other means. Specifically, the accusation that the relationship between stronger and weaker countries is similar to exploitation colonialism, without the stronger country having to build or maintain colonies. Such accusations typically focus on economic relationships and interference in the politics of weaker countries by stronger countries.

Post-colonialism Post-colonialism refers to a set of theories in philosophy and literature that grapple with the legacy of colonial rule. In this sense, postcolonial literature may be considered a branch of Post-modern literature concerned with the political and cultural independence of peoples formerly subjugated in colonial empires. Many practitioners take Edward Said’s book Orientalism (1978) to be the theory’s founding work. Edward Said analyzed the works of Balzac, Baudelaire and Lautréamont, exploring how they were both influenced by and helped to shape a societal fantasy