Inglorious Empire
Shashi Tharoor
Inglorious Empire
Shashi Tharoor served for twenty-nine years at the UN, culminating as Under-Secretary General. He is a Congress MP in India, the author of fourteen previous books and has won numerous literary awards, including a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Tharoor has a PhD from the Fletcher School and was named by the World Economic Forum in Davos in 1998 as a Global Leader of Tomorrow.
For my sons, Ishaan and Kanishk,
whose love of history equals,
and knowledge of it exceeds,
my own
Scribe Publications
18–20 Edward St, Brunswick, Victoria 3056, Australia
2 John St, Clerkenwell, London, WC1N 2ES, United Kingdom
First Published under the title An Era of Darkness: the British Empire in India by Aleph Book Company, New Delhi, India in 2016
Published by arrangement with C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd., 41 Great Russell Street, London
Published by Scribe 2017
Copyright © Shashi Tharoor 2016
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publishers of this book.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
9781925322576 (Australian edition)
9781925548518 (e-book)
A CiP entry for this title is available from the National Library of Australia.
scribepublications.com.au
scribepublications.co.uk
But ’tis strange.
And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths…
William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act I, scene iii
Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;
And universal darkness buries all.
Alexander Pope, The Dunciad
We live in the flicker—may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling!
But darkness was here yesterday.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
India—a hundred Indias—whispered outside beneath the indifferent moon, but for the time India seemed one and their own,
and they regained their departed greatness by hearing its departure lamented…
E. M. Forster, A Passage to India
CONTENTS
Chronology
Acknowledgements
Preface
1. The Looting of India
2. Did the British Give India Political Unity?
3. Democracy, the Press, the Parliamentary System and the Rule of Law
4. Divide Et Impera
5. The Myth of Enlightened Despotism
6. The Remaining Case for Empire
7. The (Im)Balance Sheet: A Coda
8. The Messy Afterlife of Colonialism
Notes and References
Bibliography
CHRONOLOGY
1600
British Royal Charter forms the East India Company, beginning the process that will lead to the subjugation of India under British rule.
1613–14
British East India Company sets up a factory in Masulipatnam and a trading post at Surat under William Hawkins. Sir Thomas Roe presents his credentials as ambassador of King James I to the Mughal Emperor Jehangir.
1615–18
Mughals grant Britain the right to trade and establish factories.
1700
India, under Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, accounts for 27 per cent of the world economy.
1702
Thomas Pitt, Governor of Madras, acquires the Pitt Diamond, later sold to the Regent of France, the Duc d’Orléans, for £135,000.
1739
Sacking of Delhi by the Persian Nadir Shah and the loot of all its treasures.
1751
Robert Clive (1725–74), aged twenty-six, seizes Arcot in modern-day Tamil Nadu as French and British fight for control of South India.
1757
British under Clive defeat Nawab Siraj-ud-Daula to become rulers of Bengal, the richest province of India.
1765
Weakened Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II issues a diwani that replaces his own revenue officials in the provinces of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa with the East India Company’s.
1767
First Anglo-Mysore War begins, in which Hyder Ali of Mysore defeats the combined armies of the East India Company, the Marathas and the Nizam of Hyderabad.
1771
Marathas recapture Delhi.
1772
Birth of Rammohan Roy (d. 1833). British establish their capital in Calcutta.
1773
British East India Company obtains monopoly on the production and sale of opium in Bengal. Lord North’s Regulating Act passed in Parliament. Warren Hastings appointed as first Governor-General of India.
1781
Hyder Ali’s son, Tipu Sultan, defeats British forces.
1784
Pitt the Younger passes the India Act to bring the East India Company under Parliament’s control. Judge and linguist Sir William Jones founds Calcutta’s Royal Asiatic Society.
1787–95
British Parliament impeaches Warren Hastings, Governor-General of Bengal (1774–85), for misconduct.
1793
British under Lord Cornwallis introduce the ‘permanent settlement’ of the land revenue system.
1799
Tipu Sultan is killed in battle against 5,000 British soldiers who storm and raze his capital, Srirangapatna (Seringapatam).
1803
Second Anglo-Maratha War results in British capture of Delhi and control of large parts of India.
1806
Vellore mutiny ruthlessly suppressed.
1825
First massive migration of Indian workers from Madras to Reunion and Mauritius.
1828
Rammohan Roy founds Adi Brahmo Samaj in Calcutta, first movement to initiate socio-religious reform. Influenced by Islam and Christianity, he denounces polytheism, idol worship and more.
1835
Macaulay’s Minute furthers Western education in India. English is made official government and court language.
1835
Mauritius receives 19,000 migrant indentured labourers from India. Workers continued to be shipped to Mauritius till 1922.
1837
Kali-worshipping thugs suppressed by the British.
1839
Preacher William Howitt attacks British rule in India.
1843
British conquer Sindh (present-day Pakistan). British promulgate ‘doctrine of lapse’, under which a state is taken over by the British whenever a ruler dies without an heir.
1853
First railway built between Bombay and Thane.
1857
First major Indian revolt, called the Sepoy Mutiny or Great Indian Mutiny by the British, ends in a few months with the fall of Delhi and Lucknow.
1858
Queen Victoria’s Proclamation taking over in the name of the Crown the governance of India from the East India Company. Civil service jobs in India are opened to Indians.
1858
India completes first 200 miles of railway track.
1860
SS Truro and SS Belvedere dock in Durban, South Africa, carrying first indentured servants (from Madras and Calcutta) to work in sugar plantations.
1861
Rabindranath Tagore is born (d. 1941).
1863
Swami Vivekananda is born (d. 1902).
1866
At least a million and a half Indians die in the Orissa Famine.
1869–1948
Lifetime of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Indian nationalist and political activist who develops the strategy of non-violent disobedience that forces Britain to grant independence to India (1947).
1872
First British census conducted in India.
1876
Queen Victoria (1819–1901) is proclaimed Empress of India (1876–1901). Major famine of 1876–77 mishandled by Viceroy Lord Lytton.
1879
The Leonidas, first emigrant ship to Fiji, adds 498 Indian indentured labourers to the nearly 340,000 already working in other British empire colonies.
1885
A group of middle-class intellectuals in India, some of them British, establish the Indian National Congress to be a voice of Indian opinion to the British government.
1889
Jawaharlal Nehru is born (d. 1964).
1891
B. R. Ambedkar is born (d. 1956).
1893
Swami Vivekananda represents Hinduism at Chicago’s Parliament of the World’s Religions, and achieves great success with his stirring addresses.
1896
Nationalist leader and Marathi scholar Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856–1920) initiates Ganesha Visarjan and Shivaji festivals to fan Indian nationalism. He is the first to demand ‘purna swaraj’ or complete independence from Britain.
1897
Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee celebrated amid yet another famine in British India.
1900
India’s tea exports to Britain reach £137 million.
1901
Herbert Risley conducts first ethnographic census of India.
1903
Lord Curzon’s grand Delhi Durbar.
1905
Partition of Bengal rouses strong opposition. Swadeshi movement and boycott of British goods initiated. Lord Curzon, prominent British viceroy of India, resigns.
1906
The Muslim League political party is formed in India at British instigation.
1909
Minto–Morley Reforms announced.
1911
Final imperial durbar in Delhi; India’s capital changed from Calcutta to Delhi. Cancellation of Partition of Bengal.
1913
Rabindranath Tagore wins Nobel Prize in Literature.
1914
Indian troops rushed to France and Mesopotamia to fight in World War I.
1915
Mahatma Gandhi returns to India from South Africa.
1916
Komagata Maru incident: Canadian government excludes Indian citizens from immigration. Lucknow Pact between Congress and Muslim League.
1917
Last Indian indentured labourers are brought to British colonies of Fiji and Trinidad.
1918
Spanish Influenza epidemic kills 12.5 million in India, 21.6 million worldwide.
1918
World War I ends.
1919
Jallianwala Bagh massacre. General Dyer orders Gurkha troops to shoot unarmed demonstrators in Amritsar,
killing at least 379. Massacre convinces Gandhi that India must demand full independence from oppressive British rule. Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms promulgated. Rowlatt Acts passed.
1920
Gandhi formulates the satyagraha strategy of non-cooperation and non-violence. Khilafat movement launched.
1922
Non-cooperation movement called off by Mahatma Gandhi after Chauri Chaura violence.
1927 & 1934
Indians permitted to sit as jurors and court magistrates.
1930
Jawaharlal Nehru becomes president of the Congress party. Purna Swaraj Resolution passed in Lahore. Will Durant arrives in India and is shocked by what he discovers of British rule. Mahatma Gandhi conducts the Salt March.
1935
Government of India Act.
1937
Provincial elections in eleven provinces; Congress wins eight.
1939
World War II breaks out. Resignation of Congress ministries in protest against not being consulted by viceroy before declaration of war by India.
1940
Lahore Resolution of Muslim League calls for the creation of Pakistan.
1942
Cripps Mission. Quit India movement. Congress leaders jailed. Establishment of Indian National Army (Azad Hind Fauj) by Subhas Chandra Bose to fight the British.
1945
Congress leaders released. Simla Conference under Lord Wavell.
1946
Royal Indian Navy Mutiny. Elections nationwide; Muslim League wins majority of Muslim seats. Cabinet Mission. Interim government formed under Jawaharlal Nehru. Jinnah calls Direct Action Day. Violence erupts in Calcutta.
1947
India gains independence on 15 August. Partition of the country amid mass killings and displacement. Britain exits India.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
There are many wonderful people I would like to thank for helping me with this book. First of all, my friend and publisher David Davidar, who talked me into undertaking this project—a decision I made rashly without fully realizing how much work it would involve—an
d guided the manuscript to the form in which it is before you now. His colleague Simar Puneet, for her diligent and painstaking assistance throughout the editing process, deserves a special word of appreciation. I greatly appreciate the thoughtful editorial advice of Michael Dwyer in the preparation of the Hurst edition.
Inglorious Empire required an extraordinary amount of research and reading (in many cases, re-reading) of source material on the British Raj in India. In this endeavour Professor Sheeba Thattil was invaluable, digging up digitized versions of original documents, texts and books from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as finding academic material of more recent provenance in the form of books and journal articles relating to my subjects of enquiry. My two tireless researchers, Abhimanyu Dadu, who bore the brunt of the load, and Ben Langley, unearthed valuable insights and substantiated them meticulously. Abhimanyu stayed involved with the preparation of the manuscript, including crosschecking its many references and citations, for which I am most grateful.
A handful of close friends read the manuscript and offered useful comments: my son Kanishk Tharoor, a better historian and writer than his father; my close aide Manu Pillai, author of a superb history of the period himself; my friend, and sometime collaborator, the writer and polymath Keerthik Sasidharan; and my ‘sister from another womb’, the historian Dr Nanditha Krishna. My schoolmate and now parliamentary colleague Professor Sugata Bose, the eminent Harvard historian, read a late draft of the manuscript and gave me the benefit of his wisdom. While their thoughts and ideas were most valuable, I remain solely responsible for the substance and the conclusions in this book.
