India’s Missing Historians

By Mihir Bose
History Today Volume: 57 Issue: 9 2007


Mihir Bose discusses the paradox that India, a land of history, has a surprisingly weak tradition of historiography.

Nehru with Pamela MountbattenNehru with Pamela MountbattenIndia, the land of contrasts, presents no greater contrast than this: in a land rich in history there is a dearth of native historians, particularly those willing to tackle big subjects. Few academic historians are ready to explain how modern India emerged. Nor do they write biographies of prominent Indians. Even scarcer are large format illustrated books of popular history.

Indian historians appear to worry that they might ruffle too many feathers, and there is every reason to sympathize with this fear. A couple of years ago, an American academic James Laine wrote a biography of Shivaji, the seventeenth-century Maratha king. Some modern-day Shivaji followers were so outraged by certain passages in the book, Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India, that the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute where Laine had carried out the research was attacked. Oxford University Press withdrew the book from India where it was banned.

The lack of historical writing has deep roots. Ancient Indians believed poets are not only more valuable than historians but better able to write history. Kalhana, author of Rajatarngini, a twelfth-century history of the kings of Kashmir, began his book by saying, ‘who but a poet can bring back the past in sweet composition, and what can make it intelligible if his art cannot?’ As R. C. Majumdar, doyen of Indian historians, lamented in Ancient India (1968), ‘One of the gravest defects of Indian culture, which defies rational explanation, is the aversion of Indians to writing history. They applied themselves to all conceivable branches of literature and excelled in many of them, but they never seriously took to the writing of history,’ with the result that ‘for a great deal of our knowledge of ancient Indian history we are indebted to foreigners’. So to write about ancient India today you have to consult Herodotus and the Greek writers who accompanied Alexander the Great’s campaign to India; Megasthenes, the Greek historian who in c. 300 bc was ambassador to the court of Chandragupta Maurya and collected material there for his work Indica; Ptolemy’s Geographia; and the Chinese travellers Faxian and Xuanzang.

The first history of India was written in the eleventh century by Alberuni, a Muslim scholar who accompanied Mahmud of Ghazni’s invasion of northwest India. The Muslim presence in India encouraged the recording of history and nearly all the great Mughal emperors from Babar, founder of the dynasty, left behind fascinating memoirs, something that their contemporary monarchs in the West did not emulate. Yet when it comes to evidence of what life was like in Mughal times the historian still has to turn to foreigners – as Abraham Eraly (an exception to the rule that Indians do not go in for big picture history books) discovered when he came to write The Mughal World (2007): ‘For everyday life in Mughal India, the only sources are the writings of foreign travellers, and I have used them extensively.’

It is understandable that Indians do not want to study the Raj. British historians do that well enough, and many Indians would rather forget what they see as a shameful episode in India’s past. But it does seem remarkable that the two most popular books to deal with the gaining of India’s independence are Freedom at Midnight (1997) by Dominique Lapierre, a Frenchman, and Larry Collins, an American, and Liberty or Death (1998) by Patrick French, who is British.

Indians have not even been keen to tell the story of the India that has emerged since 1947. A rare example of excellent narrative history is India After Gandhi (2007) by Ramachandra Guha. He complains he has had to struggle because there are no biographies of many of the leading politicians of the last sixty years, the only exceptions being Gandhi, Nehru (who himself had a taste for writing history, something he shared with his fellow Harrovian, Winston Churchill) and his daughter Indira. As for other Indians, if a foreigner does not write the biography it does not get written. A good example is The Man Who Knew Infinity (1991), the biography of the mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887–1920) by American Robert Kanigel. Indians honour Ramanujan: his face is on postage stamps. They just do not seem to feel his life needs to be recorded.

This has left huge gaps in historical study. Take the story of how India assumed its present political and geographical shape. The British had left behind a curious state, without a uniform civil or criminal code. A third of India was ruled by princes who enjoyed considerable internal autonomy. In 1947 the 500-odd princely states were given the right to either accept India or Pakistan or seek independence. The integration of these princely states into India – with one glaring exception, Kashmir – was achieved much more quickly, and with less violence, than the transformation of the American colonies into the modern United States. Yet, apart from a book written by V. P. Menon, the civil servant who masterminded the operation, there has been no historical study of this remarkable exercise in nation-making.

Unlike America, there is no simple narrative explaining the creation of the nation. India did not have a Yorktown where the British surrendered. Gandhi may be the Indian Washington and popular folklore may have it that he drove the British out, but the real story is more complicated. During the Second World War the British jailed nationalists like Gandhi and Nehru for demanding freedom, while many Communists supported the British war effort, seeing it as a fight to save the motherland of Communism, Russia. While some 2.8 million Indians volunteered to fight for the British, the largest such volunteer force of the war, many Indian soldiers taken prisoner by the Japanese joined the Indian National Army fighting against the British. In 1946, when the British put these men on trial, nationalist Indians rushed to their aid. But when India won its freedom, none were allowed back into the Indian Army.

Other aspects of post-Independence India await their historian. In the last sixty years India has seen the biggest experiment in positive discrimination anywhere in the world, by which members of the lower castes have jobs and educational places reserved for them. This hugely controversial subject is little examined by historians. Nor are there any histories to explain how the Indian army was kept out of politics when the Pakistani army, created by the same British masters, could not wait to leave the barracks to take over power.

The gap left by the absence of a clear freedom narrative has been filled by a persistent desire to prove that the Indian nation that emerged in 1947 was a truly secular state. It is understandable why Indians should want to assert this. Pakistan, a confessional state, was created on the basis that Muslims could not co-exist as a minority in a Hindu-dominated India. Looking back now, it is astonishing how many British officials supported the creation of this religious state, how pro-Muslim and anti-Hindu they were, and how contemptuous of the secular credentials of the Indian state.

Indian secularism led by Nehru took a curious turn. Almost any mention of religion was considered inappropriate, and the very word ‘communal’ was (and still is) used pejoratively of people who are biased in favour of either Hindus or Muslims – a usage that had its origins in the way the Raj allocated seats in representative assemblies by dividing Indian communities along religious and caste lines. By so completely ignoring the religious factor in India, India’s secular historians have left a back door open to be exploited by those keen to promote their own agenda about the religious divide in India.

This is underlined by the absence of a tradition of popular history writing in India. The wall between academic historians and popular historians seems as strong as the old Hindu divide between the higher castes and untouchables, bridged only by a very few, such as the businessman Gurcharan Das, who has written some fine popular books on Indian history. Such works are all the more important because, unlike in the west, there is a dearth of primary source materials. Often the best material on India is to be found in western libraries.

It is easy enough to laugh at the efforts of some so-called Indian historians – for example, P.N. Oak, who claimed in one book that the Taj Mahal built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan was really a Hindu palace, and in 1985 sought to prove that India once had an empire that included Britain. But more credible histories examining the effect of religion in India have generally been the work of foreigners, such as William Dalrymple’s splendid studies of Mughal India. Historians such as Ramachandra Guha and Pankaj Mishra – arguably the best Indian writer of non-fiction today – do seem ready to deal with this historical deficit, but even Guha found it necessary to preface his India after Gandhi with an apology labelling narrative history a ‘primitive technique’.

Guha is revealingly reluctant to discuss the personal lives of the politicians he is writing about. He does not tell us that Nehru had an affair with Lady Edwina Mountbatten but that ‘with both delicacy and truth [Edwina Mountbatten] can be referred to as his closest lady friend’. I cannot imagine a British historian being so coy. It means that Guha refrains from discussing whether Nehru’s policies  were influenced by his friendship with her husband, Lord Mountbatten – in particular, his disastrous policy towards China. And while Guha has found fascinating information, it is based on printed sources rather than interviews, even though many of the figures he writes about are still living.

Guha calls his section dealing with India since the 1990s ‘historically informed journalism’ rather than history, since the thirty-year rule for releasing official documents has not yet elapsed. Not many British writers would accept such a distinction. Indian historians have a horror of oral testimony. They need to overcome that, and be prepared to provide narrative histories, however ‘primitive’ the technique, if the story of India is not to be left to foreigners.

The British Colonial Legacy - Myths and Popular Beliefs

archaeology online

While few educated South Asians would deny that British Colonial rule was detrimental to the interests of the common people of the sub-continent - several harbor an illusion that the British weren't all bad. Didn't they, perhaps, educate us - build us modern cities, build us irrigation canals - protect our ancient monuments - etc. etc. And then, there are some who might even say that their record was actually superior to that of independent India's! Perhaps, it is time that the colonial record be retrieved from the archives and re-examined - so that those of us who weren't alive during the freedom movement can learn to distinguish between the myths and the reality.

Literacy and Education

Several Indians are deeply concerned about why literacy rates in India are still so low. So in the last year, I have been making a point of asking English-speaking Indians to guess what India's literacy rate in the colonial period might have been. These were Indians who went to school in the sixties and seventies (only two decades after independence) - and I was amazed to hear their fairly confident guesses. Most guessed the number to be between 30% and 40%. When I suggested that their guess was on the high side - they offered 25% to 35%. No one was prepared to believe that literacy in British India in 1911 was only 6%, in 1931 it was 8%, and by 1947 it had crawled to 11%! That fifty years of freedom had allowed the nation to quintuple it's literacy rate was something that almost seemed unfathomable to them. Perhaps - the British had concentrated on higher education ....? But in 1935, only 4 in 10,000 were enrolled in universities or higher educational institutes. In a nation of then over 350 million people only 16,000 books (no circulation figures) were published in that year (i.e. 1 per 20,000).

Urban Development

It is undoubtedly true that the British built modern cities with modern conveniences for their administrative officers. But it should be noted that these were exclusive zones not intended for the "natives" to enjoy. Consider that in 1911, 69 per cent of Bombay's population lived in one-room tenements (as against 6 per cent in London in the same year). The 1931 census revealed that the figure had increased to 74 per cent - with one-third living more than 5 to a room. The same was true of Karachi and Ahmedabad. After the Second World War, 13 per cent of Bombay's population slept on the streets. As for sanitation, 10-15 tenements typically shared one water tap!
Yet, in 1757 (the year of the Plassey defeat), Clive of the East India Company had observed of Murshidabad in Bengal: "This city is as extensive, populous and rich as the city of London..." (so quoted in the Indian Industrial Commission Report of 1916-18). Dacca was even more famous as a manufacturing town, it's muslin a source of many legends and it's weavers had an international reputation that was unmatched in the medieval world. But in 1840 it was reported by Sir Charles Trevelyan to a parliamentary enquiry that Dacca's population had fallen from 150,000 to 20,000. Montgomery Martin - an early historian of the British Empire observed that Surat and Murshidabad had suffered a similiar fate. (This phenomenon was to be replicated all over India - particularly in Awadh (modern U.P) and other areas that had offered the most heroic resistance to the British during the revolt of 1857.)

The percentage of population dependant on agriculture and pastoral pursuits actually rose to 73% in 1921 from 61% in 1891. (Reliable figures for earlier periods are not available.)

In 1854, Sir Arthur Cotton writing in "Public Works in India" noted: "Public works have been almost entirely neglected throughout India... The motto hitherto has been: 'Do nothing, have nothing done, let nobody do anything....." Adding that the Company was unconcerned if people died of famine, or if they lacked roads and water.

Nothing can be more revealing than the remark by John Bright in the House of Commons on June 24, 1858, "The single city of Manchester, in the supply of its inhabitants with the single article of water, has spent a larger sum of money than the East India Company has spent in the fourteen years from 1834 to 1848 in public works of every kind throughout the whole of its vast dominions."

Irrigation and Agricultural Development

There is another popular belief about British rule: 'The British modernized Indian agriculture by building canals'. But the actual record reveals a somewhat different story. " The roads and tanks and canals," noted an observer in 1838 (G. Thompson, "India and the Colonies," 1838), ''which Hindu or Mussulman Governments constructed for the service of the nations and the good of the country have been suffered to fall into dilapidation; and now the want of the means of irrigation causes famines." Montgomery Martin, in his standard work "The Indian Empire", in 1858, noted that the old East India Company "omitted not only to initiate improvements, but even to keep in repair the old works upon which the revenue depended."

The Report of the Bengal Irrigation Department Committee in 1930 reads: "In every district the Khals (canals) which carry the internal boat traffic become from time to time blocked up with silt. Its Khals and rivers are the roads end highways of Eastern Bengal, and it is impossible to overestimate the importance to the economic life of this part of the province of maintaining these in proper navigable order... " "As regards the revival or maintenance of minor routes, ... practically nothing has been done, with the result that, in some parts of the Province at least, channels have been silted up, navigation has become limited to a few months in the year, and crops can only be marketed when the Khals rise high enough in the monsoon to make transport possible."

Sir William Willcock, a distinguished hydraulic engineer, whose name was associated with irrigation enterprises in Egypt and Mesopotamia had made an investigation of conditions in Bengal. He had discovered that innumerable small destructive rivers of the delta region, constantly changing their course, were originally canals which under the English regime were allowed to escape from their channels and run wild. Formerly these canals distributed the flood waters of the Ganges and provided for proper drainage of the land, undoubtedly accounting for that prosperity of Bengal which lured the rapacious East India merchants there in the early days of the eighteenth century.. He wrote" Not only was nothing done to utilize and improve the original canal system, but railway embankments were subsequently thrown up, entirely destroying it. Some areas, cut off from the supply of loam-bearing Ganges water, have gradually become sterile and unproductive, others improperly drained, show an advanced degree of water-logging, with the inevitable accompaniment of malaria. Nor has any attempt been made to construct proper embankments for the Gauges in its low course, to prevent the enormous erosion by which villages and groves and cultivated fields are swallowed up each year."
"Sir William Willcock severely criticizes the modern administrators and officials, who, with every opportunity to call in expert technical assistance, have hitherto done nothing to remedy this disastrous situation, from decade to decade." Thus wrote G. Emerson in "Voiceless Millions," in 1931 quoting the views of Sir William Willcock in his "Lectures on the Ancient System of Irrigation in Bengal and its Application to Modern Problems" (Calcutta University Readership Lectures, University of Calcutta, 1930)

Modern Medicine and Life Expectancy

Even some serious critics of colonial rule grudgingly grant that the British brought modern medicine to India. Yet - all the statistical indicators show that access to modern medicine was severely restricted. A 1938 report by the ILO (International Labor Office) on "Industrial Labor in India" revealed that life expectancy in India was barely 25 years in 1921 (compared to 55 for England) and had actually fallen to 23 in 1931! In his recently published "Late Victorian Holocausts" Mike Davis reports that life expectancy fell by 20% between 1872 and 1921.

In 1934, there was one hospital bed for 3800 people in British India and this figure included hospital beds reserved for the British rulers. (In that same year, in the Soviet Union, there were ten times as many.) Infant mortality in Bombay was 255 per thousand in 1928. (In the same year, it was less than half that in Moscow.)

Poverty and Population Growth

Several Indians when confronted with such data from the colonial period argue that the British should not be specially targeted because India's problems of poverty pre-date colonial rule, and in any case, were exacerbated by rapid population growth. Of course, no one who makes the first point is able to offer any substantive proof that such conditions prevailed long before the British arrived, and to counter such an argument would be difficult in the absence of reliable and comparable statistical data from earlier centuries. But some readers may find the anecdotal evidence intriguing. In any case, the population growth data is available and is quite remarkable in what it reveals.
Between 1870 and 1910, India's population grew at an average rate of 19%. England and Wales' population grew three times as fast - by 58%! Average population growth in Europe was 45%. Between 1921-40, the population in India grew faster at 21% but was still less than the 24% growth of population in the US!

In 1941, the density of population in India was roughly 250 per square mile almost a third of England's 700 per square mile. Although Bengal was much more densely inhabited at almost 780 per square mile - that was only about 10% more than England. Yet, there was much more poverty in British India than in England and an unprecedented number of famines were recorded during the period of British rule.

In the first half of the 19th century, there were seven famines leading to a million and a half deaths. In the second half, there were 24 famines (18 between 1876 and 1900) causing over 20 million deaths (as per official records). W. Digby, noted in "Prosperous British India" in 1901 that "stated roughly, famines and scarcities have been four times as numerous, during the last thirty years of the 19th century as they were one hundred years ago, and four times as widespread." In Late Victorian Holocausts, Mike Davis points out that here were 31(thirty one) serious famines in 120 years of British rule compared to 17(seventeen) in the 2000 years before British rule.

Not surprising, since the export of food grains had increased by a factor of four just prior to that period. And export of other agricultural raw materials had also increased in similar proportions. Land that once produced grain for local consumption was now taken over by by former slave-owners from N. America who were permitted to set up plantations for the cultivation of lucrative cash crops exclusively for export. Particularly galling is how the British colonial rulers continued to export foodgrains from India to Britain even during famine years.

Annual British Government reports repeatedly published data that showed 70-80% of Indians were living on the margin of subsistence. That two-thirds were undernourished, and in Bengal, nearly four-fifths were undernourished.

Contrast this data with the following accounts of Indian life prior to colonization:-
" ...even in the smallest villages rice, flour, butter, milk, beans and other vegetables, sugar and sweetmeats can be procured in abundance... Tavernier writing in the 17th century in his "Travels in India".

Manouchi - the Venetian who became chief physician to Aurangzeb (also in the 17th century) wrote: "Bengal is of all the kingdoms of the Moghul, best known in France..... We may venture to say it is not inferior in anything to Egypt - and that it even exceeds that kingdom in its products of silks, cottons, sugar, and indigo. All things are in great plenty here, fruits, pulse, grain, muslins, cloths of gold and silk..."

The French traveller, Bernier also described 17th century Bengal in a similiar vein: "The knowledge I have acquired of Bengal in two visits inclines me to believe that it is richer than Egypt. It exports in abundance cottons and silks, rice, sugar and butter. It produces amply for it's own consumption of wheat, vegetables, grains, fowls, ducks and geese. It has immense herds of pigs and flocks of sheep and goats. Fish of every kind it has in profusion. From Rajmahal to the sea is an endless number of canals, cut in bygone ages from the Ganges by immense labour for navigation and irrigation."
The poverty of British India stood in stark contrast to these eye witness reports and has to be ascribed to the pitiful wages that working people in India received in that period. A 1927-28 report noted that "all but the most highly skilled workmen in India receive wages which are barely sufficient to feed and clothe them. Everywhere will be seen overcrowding, dirt and squalid misery..."

This in spite of the fact that in 1922 - an 11 hour day was the norm (as opposed to an 8 hour day in the Soviet Union.) In 1934, it had been reduced to 10 hours (whereas in the Soviet Union, the 7 hour day had been legislated as early as in 1927) What was worse, there were no enforced restrictions on the use of child labour and the Whitley Report found children as young as five - working a 12 hour day.

Ancient Monuments

Perhaps the least known aspect of the colonial legacy is the early British attitude towards India's historic monuments and the extend of vandalism that took place. Instead, there is this pervasive myth of the Britisher as an unbiased "protector of the nation's historic legacy".

R.Nath in his 'History of Decorative Art in Mughal Architecture' records that scores of gardens, tombs and palaces that once adorned the suburbs of Sikandra at Agra were sold out or auctioned. "Relics of the glorious age of the Mughals were either destroyed or converted beyond recognition.." "Out of 270 beautiful monuments which existed at Agra alone, before its capture by Lake in 1803, hardly 40 have survived."

In the same vein, David Carroll (in 'Taj Mahal') observes: " The forts in Agra and Delhi were commandeered at the beginning of the nineteenth century and turned into military garrisons. Marble reliefs were torn down, gardens were trampled, and lines of ugly barracks, still standing today, were installed in their stead. In the Delhi fort, the Hall of Public Audience was made into an arsenal and the arches of the outer colonnades were bricked over or replaced with rectangular wooden windows."

The Mughal fort at Allahabad (one of Akbar's favorite) experienced a fate far worse. Virtually nothing of architectural significance is to be seen in the barracks that now make up the fort. The Deccan fort at Ahmednagar was also converted into barracks. Now, only its outer walls can hint at its former magnificence.

Shockingly, even the Taj Mahal was not spared. David Carroll reports: "..By the nineteenth century, its grounds were a favorite trysting place for young Englishmen and their ladies. Open-air balls were held on the marble terrace in front of the main door, and there, beneath Shah Jahan"s lotus dome, brass bands um-pah-pahed and lords and ladies danced the quadrille. The minarets became a popular site for suicide leaps, and the mosques on either side of the Taj were rented out as bungalows to honeymooners. The gardens of the Taj were especially popular for open-air frolics..."
"At an earlier date, when picnic parties were held in the garden of the Taj, related Lord Curzon, a governor general in the early twentieth century, "it was not an uncommon thing for the revellers to arm themselves with hammer and chisel, with which they wiled away the afternoon by chipping out fragments of agate and carnelian from the cenotaphs of the Emperor and his lamented Queen." The Taj became a place where one could drink in private, and its parks were often strewn with the figures of inebriated British soldiers..."

Lord William Bentinck, (governor general of Bengal 1828-33, and later first governor general of all India), went so far as to announce plans to demolish the best Mogul monuments in Agra and Delhi and remove their marble facades. These were to be shipped to London, where they would be broken up and sold to members of the British aristocracy. Several of Shahjahan's pavilions in the Red Fort at Delhi were indeed stripped to the brick, and the marble was shipped off to England (part of this shipment included pieces for King George IV himself). Plans to dismantle the Taj Mahal were in place, and wrecking machinery was moved into the garden grounds. Just as the demolition work was to begin, news from London indicated that the first auction had not been a success, and that all further sales were cancelled -- it would not be worth the money to tear down the Taj Mahal.
Thus the Taj Mahal was spared, and so too, was the reputation of the British as "Protectors of India's Historic Legacy" ! That innumerable other monuments were destroyed, or left to rack and ruin is a story that has yet to get beyond the specialists in the field.

India and the Industrial Revolution

Perhaps the most important aspect of colonial rule was the transfer of wealth from India to Britain. In his pioneering book, India Today, Rajni Palme Dutt conclusively demonstrates how vital this was to the Industrial Revolution in Britain. Several patents that had remained unfunded suddenly found industrial sponsors once the taxes from India started rolling in. Without capital from India, British banks would have found it impossible to fund the modernization of Britain that took place in the 18th and 19th centuries.

In addition, the scientific basis of the industrial revolution was not a uniquely European contribution. Several civilizations had been adding to the world's scientific database - especially the civilizations of Asia, (including those of the Indian sub-continent). Without that aggregate of scientific knowledge the scientists of Britain and Europe would have found it impossible to make the rapid strides they made during the period of the Industrial revolution. Moreover, several of these patents, particularly those concerned with the textile industry relied on pre-industrial techniques perfected in the sub-continent. (In fact, many of the earliest textile machines in Britain were unable to match the complexity and finesse of the spinning and weaving machines of Dacca.)

Some euro-centric authors have attempted to deny any such linkage. They have tried to assert that not only was the Industrial Revolution a uniquely British/European event - that colonization and the the phenomenal transfer of wealth that took place was merely incidental to it's fruition. But the words of Lord Curzon still ring loud and clear. The Viceroy of British India in 1894 was quite unequivocal, "India is the pivot of our Empire .... If the Empire loses any other part of its Dominion we can survive, but if we lose India the sun of our Empire will have set."

Lord Curzon knew fully well, the value and importance of the Indian colony. It was the transfer of wealth through unprecedented levels of taxation on Indians of virtually all classes that funded the great "Industrial Revolution" and laid the ground for "modernization" in Britain. As early as 1812, an East India Company Report had stated "The importance of that immense empire to this country is rather to be estimated by the great annual addition it makes to the wealth and capital of the Kingdom..."

Unfair Trade

Few would doubt that Indo-British trade may have been unfair - but it may be noteworthy to see how unfair. In the early 1800s imports of Indian cotton and silk goods faced duties of 70-80%. British imports faced duties of 2-4%! As a result, British imports of cotton manufactures into India increased by a factor of 50, and Indian exports dropped to one-fourth! A similiar trend was noted in silk goods, woollens, iron, pottery, glassware and paper. As a result, millions of ruined artisans and craftsmen, spinners, weavers, potters, smelters and smiths were rendered jobless and had to become landless agricultural workers.

Colonial Beneficiaries

Another aspect of colonial rule that has remained hidden from popular perception is that Britain was not the only beneficiary of colonial rule. British trade regulations even as they discriminated against Indian business interests created a favorable trading environment for other imperial powers. By 1939, only 25% of Indian imports came from Britain. 25% came from Japan, the US and Germany. In 1942-3, Canada and Australia contributed another 8%. In the period immediately before independence, Britain ruled as much on behalf of it's imperial allies as it did in it's own interest. The process of "globalization" was already taking shape. But none of this growth trickled down to India. In the last half of 19th century, India's income fell by 50%. In the 190 years prior to independence, the Indian economy was literally stagnant - it experienced zero growth. (Mike Davis: Late Victorian Holocausts)

Those who wish India well might do well to re-read this history so the nation isn't brought to the abyss once again, (and so soon after being liberated from the yoke of colonial rule). While some Indians may wax nostalgic for the return of their former overlords, and some may be ambivalent about colonial rule, most of us relish our freedom and wish to perfect it - not gift it away again.
References: Statistics and data for the colonial period taken from Rajni-Palme Dutt's India Today (Indian Edition published in 1947); also see N.K. Sinha's Economic History of Bengal (Published in Calcutta, 1956); and "Late Victorian Holocausts" by Mike Davis

Bibliography: (For further research into this area)
* M. M. Ahluwalia, Freedom Struggle in India,
* Shah, Khambata: The Wealth and Taxable Capacity of India
* G. Emerson, Voiceless India
* W. Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce in Modern Times
* Brooks Adams, The Law of Civilization and Decline
* J. R. Seeley, Expansion of England
* H. H. Wilson, History of British India
* D. H Buchanan, Development of Capitalist Enterprise in India
* L. C. A Knowles: Economic Development of the Overseas Empire
* L. H. Jenks: The Migration of British Capital

Documentary :Islamic Muslim Invasion of INDIA via Bangladesh Immigration

Part 1.



Part 2.

East India Company: From Traders to Rulers

Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Business Economist

This article dwells on the evolution of – what perhaps became – the world’s first joint stock company, its emergence as a global business and its transformation from a commercial organization to a military establishment, which was the main force behind the colonization. It also attempts to draw valuable management lessons from various stages of the East India Company.

It is not so common that one comes across a company that prospered for over 250 years and ruled a subcontinent. The East India Company (EIC) stands apart as the world’s first major shareholder company, which ruled a fifth of the world’s population, with a quarter million private army and generated revenues much greater than the whole of Britain. It played a key role in the triggering of globalization, long before it became a buzzword.

Though, it looked like a multinational company, in action, it was an expansionist nation state. In fact, there is no other powerful company in the history that can be compared with the EIC in terms of longevity and wide-ranging economic, political and cultural influence. The EIC established a distant empire and then set about governing, controlling and exploiting it from a great distance in London. It ruled India with a private army of 26,000 native troops, twice the size of the British Army. The company’s trade with South-East Asian countries had an impact on the gradual evolution of new customer tastes and the growth of mass markets, for the commodities which were previously unknown.

The Origin

The seeds of the world’s first multinational company were sown on September 24, 1599, when a group of eighty merchants met at the Founders’ Hall in the City of London. Under the Chairmanship of the Lord Mayor, Sir Stephen Soane, agreed to petition Elizabeth I, to set up a company to trade with the East Indies. After a series of political negotiations and finance raising, finally the EIC was incorporated on December 31, 1600. Queen Elizabeth granted a charter to the Governor and Company of Merchants of London for fifteen years with the primary purpose of share in the East Indian spice trade lured by India’s profitable economic market.

In its initial days, it faced stiff competition from the Dutch and the Portuguese. However, it was not enough to stop it from making rapid progress. The early voyages of the company proved quite profitable. For example, in the tenth voyage, in 1611, it earned a return of 148 percent on its shareholders’ capital of £46,092.1 The company developed a routine of sixteen month-long voyages. The company’s cargo included silver, lead, tin, mercury, corals, ivory, armor, swords, and satins. Most of this cargo in India was exchanged for cotton textiles, which was then traded in the Spice Islands for pepper, cloves, and nutmeg. Though some expeditions were made to China, Japan, or Philippines for silk, indigo, sugar, coffee and tea, the normal route back was via India.

Until 1612, it conducted voyages, separately subscribed to, by investors. The company’s main motive was to make money. With this mindset, it made huge profits, resulting in further explorations and entered into new areas of long and tiring voyages. It even began to take big ships on lease, instead of building them, which saved both time and cost.

The merchants’ stated intention in their charter’s sonorous terms was:

“...that they, of their own adventures, costs and charges, as well as for the honor of our realm of England as for the increase of our navigation and advancement of trade of merchandise... might adventure and set forth one or more voyages, with convenient number of Ships and Pinnaces, by way of traffic and merchandise to the East Indies...”

In 1609, the company got a permanent charter, which continued former privileges and added authority to make peace or war with Indian princes. By 1615, the merchants combined as a single joint stock company, and planted the seeds for the beginning of a modern idea of shareholdings and dividends. Then, political control came gradually as residential governors began to establish the foundations of English justice, fixed land revenue in India.

By the late 17th century, it was a well-organized monopoly company. In the process, it emerged as the most powerful private company in history. It established its direct rule in Madras, Bombay as well as Calcutta with its powerful army, while in other Indian Provinces it ruled through a system of alliances.

To tackle competition from Spain and Portugal, sophisticated administration was required. For this, it created a two-tier structure for effective administration. The General Court included all the shareholders with voting rights; many of these were bigwigs from court and parliament. The regular management was entrusted to the court of directors (twenty-four men), all elected by the General Court. The governors and their deputies assisted by accountants, clerks and cashiers, worked through seven committees specializing in accounting, buying, correspondence, shipping, finance, warehousing, and private trade. The court of directors also supervised the overseas network of resident “factors” that managed the local trading posts or factories.

The company also faced severe competition from the Dutch in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). However, the Dutch virtually excluded company members from the East Indies after the Amboina Massacre in 1623 (an incident in which English, Japanese, and Portuguese traders were executed by Dutch authorities), but the company’s defeat of the Portuguese in India (1612) won them trading concessions from the Mughal Empire. The company settled down to a trade in cotton and silk piece goods, indigo, and saltpeter, with spices from South India. Then it extended its activities to the Persian Gulf, Southeast Asia, and East Asia.

During the period 1751 to 1856, it brought under its control, almost all the Indian states and eventually grew as a commercial and a political power. Then it involved actively in Indian politics. The company gained political foothold in India after capturing Calcutta in 1756, defeating the Nawab of Bengal, at the battle of Plassey. The subsequent victory over the Mughals at Buxur in 1764, gave them control over Bengal. Then within a year’s time, without much opposition, the British merchants expanded and consolidated their power in India.

The people behind this transformation are Lord Clive and Warren Hastings. Charles Cornwallis helped to transform the company from trader to sovereign. It virtually created British Raj in India and has left a deep and permanent imprint on the history of India.

From Traders to Rulers

The company’s transformation from traders to rulers had an impact on every nook and corner of India. It ruled entire India with its own army and navy and minted its own currency and traded every corner of the world. Indeed, the company’s history is inextricably bound with Britain’s own rise from a backward European State to a global imperial power. Philip Lawson, the author of the “East India company – A History,” comments that the company’s history can no longer be seen as somehow detached from the mainstream history of Britain itself, which was open to, and influenced by, imperial as well as domestic considerations throughout the years.

All said and done, the EIC has been described as the first ever multinational. It carried goods, people and ideas across the globe. Its powerful legacy endures in India till date in the form of the Indian civil services and the education system.

When they first reached India, it was not only a great agricultural country but also a great manufacturing country3. It had prosperous textile industry, whose cotton, silk, and woollen products were marketed in Europe and Asia. Other important industries included the jewellery and stone carving, filigree work in gold and silver, ivory, glass, tannery, perfumery and papermaking. Besides, India had its own shipbuilding industry in Calcutta, Daman, Surat, Bombay and Pegu.

However, all this altered under the British leading to the de-industrialization of India – its forcible transformation from a country of combined agriculture and manufacture into an agricultural colony of British capitalism. It was the Indian textile industry that impacted the company’s fortunes; going by Indian skilled workmanship and comparatively low prices, these two contributed to the company’s rapid success worldwide. By 1707, the EIC became Britain’s single most successful enterprise and the biggest single employer in London.

The transformation from traders to rulers shifted the company’s role beyond trade. It became responsible for the civil, judicial and revenue administration of India’s richest province with some 20 million inhabitants. Tens of thousands of volunteer Indian soldiers commanded by British officer cadre and assisted by British Army units posted India at the company’s expense. Though the trade continued, the company no longer remained a lobbyist at Indian courts and ports. As the time progresses, the economic structure of the subcontinent came to serve the needs of new rulers. This helped the company’s servants to transform themselves from merchants into administrators, judges, revenue collectors and soldiers.

On the other hand, the growing wealth generated by the company also had an economic and physical impact on London. The company’s trade was a major generator of employment in London and its old wooden headquarters transformed into a great commercial hub in London. However, the increasing political power of East India Company in India raised many issues in London. The company’s officials were returning to London with fortunes equaling, without too much effort or ability (even a seat in Parliament), with those of the wealthy people in London.

Gradually, the concerns grew over the way the company ruled in India. The critics argued that it should be nationalized. In the 19th century, it was brought under tighter control and in 1813; the government abolished its monopoly of trade. In 1833, it was deprived of its rights to trade altogether. The company’s army was passed to the crown, and with the expiry of the charter on June 1, 1874, the unusual East India Company met its closing stages. The 18th century’s dominant world trader, fell from grace and power following the India Mutiny of 1857.

From a humble beginning, the East India Company’s spectacular rise to fame and glory is unmatched. It acquired the status of a business icon, and then, a military power, which ruled nations. It had many of the characteristics which some of today’s long surviving companies desire to possess. What made it survive for so long? History suggests, it was its ability to adapt i.e., keeping pace with change, something akin to modern day’s adaptive enterprises.

Lessons to Learn

Even today, the East India Company is perceived as the most powerful corporation, the world has ever seen. It was not only the first major shareholder-owned company, it was also a pivot that changed the course of the economic history. It played a key role in the development of joint stock company structure, a precursor to today’s multinational corporations. Going by the current turmoil in the corporate world, the close observation of the East India Company has many lessons for modern companies, in the areas of management and corporate governance.

Corruption was one of the main reasons for the demise of the honorable company. It was rampant from bottom, from lower ranked employees to top officials of the company. Companies who solely took care of their own protection costs did not last long.

EIC’s sole objective was to maximize profits with minimum resources. Modern corporations can learn lessons from this episode. The bottomline is that companies solely driven by profits do not survive for long. In long-lasting companies, the essence is mutual trust. The EIC failed at that. The whole entity was distantly bound in trust. Understanding its model could go a long way in making modern businesses achieve the pursuit of global presence and endurance.

N Janardhan Rao, Lead Economist

The first multinational: Little has changed

From infochange

The East India Company was the first major shareholder-owned multinational company (MNC). It found India rich and left it poor. When the company was established in 1600, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, and for 150 years thereafter, there were no products England could export that the East wanted to buy. Spices, textiles and luxury goods sailed west. Only money sailed east. It was the ability to acquire land and control government services that raised the fortunes of the Company -- and broke India.

As the mighty and opulent Mughal Empire declined, the Company acquired land beyond its vulnerable trading ports, extorted taxes, manipulated terms of trade in its favour, and built up a private army. In 1757 Robert Clive fought and defeated the Nawab of Bengal. Later, Lord Cornwallis defeated Tipu Sultan in the south. In both cases, and in many lesser incidents, the Company's executive officers extorted huge ransoms and accumulated unimaginable wealth. This wealth was obtained, not so much from its fashionable society customers back in England, as from suppliers in India, from defeated rulers and from taxes imposed on the populace. India financed its own impoverishment.

Under the Mughals, taxes had been collected through a complex pattern of mutual obligation. This was too complex for the Company. At a stroke the zamindars, tax farmers under the Mughals, were transformed into landlords, and Bengal's 20 million smallholders were deprived of all hereditary rights. Just five years after the Company secured control of Bengal in 1765, revenues from the land tax had tripled, beggaring the people. The devastating effects last to this day. These conditions turned one of Bengal's periodic droughts, in 1769, into a full-blown famine. An estimated 10 million people, one third of the population of Bengal, died. But, rather than organise relief efforts to meet the needs of the starving, the Company actually increased tax collection during the famine. Granaries were locked, and grain was seized by force from the peasants and sold at inflated prices in the cities.

The Company became feared for the brutal enforcements of its monopoly interests. For example, it was infamous for cutting off the thumbs of weavers found selling cloth to other traders, to prevent them ever working again. In rural areas two-thirds of a peasant's income was taken in tax, nearly double that under the Mughals. Consumption of salt was forced well below the minimum prescribed in English jails: the effect was to treat the people of India as sub-human, a class below the criminal. This disgraceful control of an essential commodity was only withdrawn after Gandhi's famous Salt March in 1930. The Company's performance, through pursuing profit for its shareholders and its chiefs, contrasted starkly with its claim, in the mid-19th century, that it ruled for the moral and material betterment of India.

In Britain, so powerful was the Company's grip on politics, that attempts to control its affairs could bring down a government. An attempt, led by Edmund Burke, to place the Company's Indian possessions under Parliamentary rule led to the dismissal of the government. The general election that followed was so generously funded by the Company that it secured a compliant Parliament in which a tenth of the seats were held by `nabobs'.

Booty from India created this new class of `nabobs', the chief executive officers (CEOs) of Georgian England. The nabobs themselves had no conscience about their wealth. Robert Clive, having extorted a fortune after the battle of Plassey, defended himself at a House of Commons enquiry into suspected corruption, saying that he was "astounded" at his own moderation at not taking more. Only a few dissenting voices, like the Quaker, William Tuke, pointed to the humanitarian disaster that the Company had wrought in India. But the case for reform was overwhelming and in 1784 the India Act transferred executive management to a Board of Control, answerable to Parliament -- a kind of public-private partnership.

Although there were expressions of intent that the Company should promote a mission to make Indians "useful and happy subjects," the underlying ethics of the public-private partnership remained the same. By the 1850s, just 15,000 pounds sterling was being spent on non-English schools compared with a military budget of 5 million pounds sterling. Railways were built to accelerate access of British goods to Indian markets. Mill-made cloth brought from Britain shattered the local village economies, which were based on the integration of agriculture and spinning. The great textile cities of Bengal collapsed. The governor-general reported that "the misery hardly finds parallel in the history of commerce. The bones of the cotton weavers are bleaching the plains of India".

Indians were worn down by the hegemony of the British presence, by the unfair trading rules, the crippling taxes, the draining of India's wealth, and the contempt in which they were held. Retaliation was inevitable. The final insult to Indian sentiments came when sepoys were forced to use a rifle cartridge greased with cow and/or pig fat -- an outrage to both Hindus and Muslims. Catastrophe struck in 1857. Mutiny. The massacre of Europeans generated a ferocious bloodlust in English society. Reprisals were brutal. Long- standing plans for increased dominance in all spectrums of Indian life and economy had now received their 'justification'. In 1858, the East India Company was abolished and direct rule by queen and Parliament was introduced.

Corporate exploitation, followed by catastrophe, led to Empire. Is history repeating itself?

Excerpted from The Little Earth Book by James Bruges, published by Alastair Sawday.