Modern India

Advent of the Europeans

Vasco da Gama landed at Calicut, sailing via the Cape of Good Hope in 1498. This marked the beginning of the European era in Indian history. The lucrative trade in spices of Malabar - in modern Kerala - had tempted the Portuguese and inspired the search for a sea route to the Indies. The Portuguese had already established their colony in Goa by the first decade of the 16th Century but their territorial and commercial hold in India remained rather limited.

In the next century, India was visited by a large number of European travellers - Italians, Englishmen, Frenchmen and Dutchmen. They were drawn to India for different reasons. Some were traders, others adventurers, and quite a few fired by the missionary zeal to find converts to Christianity. Among them was Francois Bernier, the French doctor who enjoyed the confidence of princes and nobles and was in a uniquely privileged position to observe the functioning of the Mughal court. His account is a valuable source of information for historians.

These travelogues aroused European interest in India, and prompted in course of time, the colonial intervention. England, France, the Netherlands and Denmark, floated East India Companies. Chartered as trading companies by their respective governments, their primary commercial interest was in Indian textiles, both silk and cotton, indigo and at times, other sundry merchandise.

During the late 16th and the 17th Centuries, these companies competed with each other fiercely. By the last quarter of the 18th Century the English had vanquished all others and established themselves as the dominant power in India. The military campaigns of Robert Clive and the administrative enterprise of Warren Hastings (1772 - 1785) contributed significantly to this achievement.

 

British Colonialism

The British administered India for a period of about two centuries and brought about revolutionary changes in the social, political and the economic life of the country. Most Indians who came in their contact could not perceive the strategic threat posed by the East India Company. The British from the beginning followed a policy of divide and rule. Diplomacy and deceit were used to gain control of revenue collection in the province of Bengal. This gave the foreigners effective control of administration. The Marathas, the Sikhs and the rulers of Mysore could never unite to confront the foreign enemy and fell one by one. By the onset of the 19th Century there was no local power that could cope with their onslaught.

Once the British had consolidated their power, commercial exploitation of the natural resources and native labour became ruthless. It is true that there were a few benevolent Governor Generals who initiated social reforms and tried to render the administration more efficient and responsive, but they were exceptions. By the middle of the 19th Century arrogant exploitation of the people had tried the patience of the Indians to the limit.

The British had, to serve their own purpose, set up educational institutions that imparted western education and had established a vast network of rail-roads and telegraph lines. This united the country in an unprecedented manner. The Indians, exposed to western ideas of responsible and representative government, began to yearn for liberty and equality. There were many who looked back to the nation's glorious past and strove to rekindle the sentiment of patriotism. Foremost among them were Raja Ram Mohan Roy, and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar. The 19th Century is often referred to as the age of national resurgence in India.

The flash point was reached in 1857 when the British introduced a new rifle and cartridge in the British Indian Army. The bullet offended the religious sentiments of both the Hindus and the Muslims, as it allegedly contained pork and beef tallow. Soldiers at Meerut were the first to rebel and reaching Delhi proclaimed Bahadurshah Zafar the sovereign ruler of India. The revolt soon spread like wild fire all over north India and could only be put down after great difficulty and bloodshed. Nationalist historians have seen in it the first Indian war of independence.

The six decades between the end of the "mutinous" war of 1857 - 59 and the conclusion of First World War saw both the peak of British imperial power in India and the birth of nationalist agitation against it.

 

The Freedom Struggle

With increasing intrusion of aliens in their lives, it was natural that nationalist feelings began to be articulated by an increasing number of Indians. A group of middle class Indians formed the Indian National Congress (1885) - a society of English educated affluent professionals - to seek reforms from the British. The British did not respond adequately to the legitimate demands of the Indians and this resulted in growing resentment against them.

By the last decade of the 19th Century a younger, more militant generation of Indians had begun to assert their birthright to independence. The Indian National Congress inevitably changed under the constant pressure exerted by men like Bal Gangadhar Tilak from Maharashtra. In Bengal too, there was a fiery group of revolutionaries who maintained that violence was the only language the foreigners understood.

The partition of Bengal announced by Lord Curzon in 1905, triggered a political earthquake - people rose in revolt en masse and forced the withdrawal of the ill advised plan. The mass movement brought out the widespread love for India and things Indian - Swadeshi - and reinforced communal harmony. Foreign produce was boycotted and a bonfire of imported clothes became the characteristic feature of protest.

The anticolonial struggle became truly a mass movement with the arrival of Gandhi in 1915. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869 - 1948) had suffered great humiliation in South Africa due to the policy of racial discrimination and was commited to rid his motherland of the ills of foreign rule. While practising as an attorney in South Africa, Gandhi had read widely and contemplated deeply. After having acquainted himself with the ground reality in India he devised a unique strategy for India's freedom struggle. Laying equal emphasis on the ends and means, he told his compatriots to accept non-violence as their creed and civil disobedience as their invincible weapon.

Gandhi had a unique gift for dramatic manipulation of symbols as well as a charismatic personality. It was not long, before he galvanised the masses in the fight against the British. Almost all the major leaders in the national movement accepted him as their mentor. He conceived and led the Non-cooperation Movement in 1922, the Salt Satyagraha in 1930 that climaxed in the Dandi March and the Quit India Movement in 1942 with its stirring battle cry - Do or Die - shaking the roots of the British empire.

Even revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh and Chandrashekhar Azad, who disagreed with the philosophy of non-violence, respected him. Netaji Subhash Chadra Bose, who organised the Indian National Army (1943) in South East Asia during the Second World War to liberate India, also sought his blessings before starting his military campaign. Jawaharlal Nehru, Maulana Azad, Jaiprakash Narayan, Vallabhbhai Patel followed Gandhi's commands as disciplined soldiers of the Congress party.

After a long and arduous round of constitutional negotiations and in the face of the determined struggle of the Indian people, the British agreed to transfer power on 15th August, 1947.

But with freedom came the division of the country - a partition that brought in its wake unprecedented death and devastation. Undeterred, millions of Indians continued their endeavour to build the nation.