Banyan Tree Adventures

by Keith Forrester

  For many British people and most of their daily national newspapers, there is little doubt of the benefits accruing from British imperial activities. The British historian Andrew Roberts for example wrote in the Daily Express that for “the vast majority of its half millennia-long history, the British empire was an exemplary good… the British gave up their Empire largely without bloodshed, after having tried to educate their successor governments in the ways of democracy and representative institutions.” In another British newspaper – the Daily Telegraph – John Keegan argued that “the empire became in its last years highly benevolent and moralistic.” The Victorians “set out to bring civilization and good government to their colonies and to leave when they were no longer welcome. In almost every country, once coloured red on the map, they stick to their resolve.” A similar view was expressed in the Daily Mail newspaper. After berated Prime Minister Cameron’s “exaggerated humility” on his 2013 visit to India, Dominic Sandbrook then outlines the reasons “why modern-day India… is a success story built on sturdy Anglo-Saxon foundations… The Raj survived not at the point of a bayonet, but thanks to the enthusiastic cooperation of ordinary Indians, who relished the order that their colonial partners had brought to a subcontinent torn apart by religious and ethnic conflict… It was no accident that when Union Jacks were lowered in Asia and Africa, there was a feeling of friendship and goodwill.”

  By way of contrast George Monbiot in another British newspaper – The Guardian – wrote that, “The story of benign imperialism, whose overriding purpose was not to seize land, labour and commodities but to teach the natives English, table manners and double-entry bookkeeping, is a myth that has been carefully propagated by the right-wing press. But it draws its power from a remarkable ability to airbrush and disregard our past.”

  Strongly opposed views about Britain’s time in India are not difficult to find. The subject of ‘The Empire’ keeps appearing at regular intervals in the press in Britain but it is very much a partial, truncated and, for most of the daily press, a celebratory story of the benefits given to far-off countries by the British. By way of contrast, there are other complaints about the absence of the Empire from our views and understandings of who we as British are, where we came from and until very recently the extent of our involvement in other parts of the world. Moni Mohsin for example, who was brought up in Pakistan, had an article in The Guardian at the end of 2016 entitled, “Empire shaped the world. There is an abyss at the heart of dishonest history textbooks”. Writing after the ‘Brexit’ vote where Britain decided to leave the European Union, her article reflects the present-day worries of British people of colour and ethnic difference with “the ugly xenophobia,” as she puts it, unleashed by the vote. Reflecting on her daughters’ (both born in London) educational experience at “a fantastic school”, there was nevertheless this absent, missing element to their education. “Despite the range and candour of their education,” writes Moni, “they haven’t once encountered Britain’s colonial past in school.” One way or another, ‘our’ Empire keeps rearing its relevance and pertinence in a variety of ways.

  Post-colonial understandings

  I was interested in how my small group of Western tourists to India understood and related to the historical experiences of the British presence in the country. I asked a few questions along this line from my small sample and, not surprisingly, obtained views that reflected the ambiguities and hesitations that characterise the whole British colonial Indian experience. In the case of Sany from France for example, it had been school in Paris that first put India on the map. “It started at school when we started learning about Indian Independence and I said, oh, I’m interested – very interested. Jewish slaughter, Gandhi and Indian Independence, segregation in the States and apartheid in South Africa.” Later on in the discussion Sany returned to the topic. Rather defensively knowing that I was from England, she continued, “England made excellent things such as the railway network. There was a peaceful struggle and India got its country back. Gandhi [the film released in 1982 and directed by Richard Attenborough] which I saw with the school connected me quite strongly to India. It had a great impact.”

  Pauline, who had grown up with Indian artefacts in her home in England as a result of her parents having been in the army in India, was interested to some extent in this history. “I’m not historically inclined but you can’t miss what the British did and what was built. I remember talking to these two old men outside the Gandhi museum. One was a healer and the other was the curator of the museum. I said, I was ‘ashamed because of what we did to your people.’ The curator said, ‘No, you shouldn’t be ashamed. It was part of our history – to get to democracy. You should see it more as a trajectory to get where we are now.’” Pauline did admit that the two men might have been too polite to give her their real views but nevertheless hinted that she was of a similar view. It was the Partition of the Indian Empire which led to the creation of Pakistan on 14th August 1947 and India a day later that most interested Pauline. “The thing that made the most impression on me was the Partition. Horror – what people can do to each other. You see it always – how quickly things can blow up. We see in Serbia, Bosnia – neighbours living next door to each other and then doing these most horrific things. What human beings are capable of is terrifying. And it’s possible today in India – it’s definitely possible for these things to happen. There is this underlying anger that is not shown.”

  Sheila too mentioned the Partition of the country. “Partition was unforgivable,” she said. “But I don’t know enough about how much we took from India. In England there are a lot of grand buildings built on the wealth not only of India but from the Commonwealth. It’s amazing that so many were ruled by so few in India. Why didn’t they do something about it? We must have ruled very well by dividing the ruled.”

  The word ‘embarrassment’ too is used by Steven. “Yes, the British in India does interest me a lot. I have watched a lot of TV documentaries (in the UK) on India and our colonial past. I am quite embarrassed about this past… our previous exploitation of the country as a colonial power. We weren’t interested in the well-being of the Indian people. We wanted to force them to buy cloth made in the mills of Bradford. Obviously Mahatma Gandhi came in at that point. So I find our colonial past slightly worrying. The whole issue of Partition in particular. I had read that book Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire by Alex Von Tunzelmann, about Mountbatten’s relationship with Jinnah and so on. And the Emergency as well. There’s that book A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry which is a novel set in the times of the Emergency. It really is a must-read but is difficult to get hold of. It really is a powerful work of literature. I was deeply affected by it. But in general, I try and keep up to date with developments since Independence.”

  I guess it is not that surprising that the British in India seems to be an issue that generally interests and, in some cases, continues to engage these frequent travellers to the country. I think that most visitors from the ‘West’ to the country, first-timers or those on package arrangements would have a vague working knowledge of this history – it’s a global story full of drama, tragedy, mystery and big personalities. Arguably it can be seen as one of the defining significant historical stories of the twentieth century ranking, as Sany pointed out above, with the Holocaust and the apartheid struggles in South Africa. And it is one that refuses to fade away into the background as the heated media discussions around David Cameron’s 2013 visit to India or the 70th anniversary celebrations of Independence in 2017 indicate. For Britain, this is perhaps understandable. Few countries if any value and parade their historical involvement abroad to the same extent as Britain. The Empire materially and ideologically shaped who we are and how we chose to be seen. In doing so these experiences also prevented or blocked other potentially ‘modernising’ initiatives and socio-economic developments over the last hundred and fifty years. Britain’s militaristic history, its rigid class structur
e, its limited understandings and practice of ‘democracy’, its education system and economic dominance of the financial sector are only a few examples of the socio-political anomalies that can be traced to the adventures abroad. The deeply conservative nature of its institutions together with the failure to develop an alternative radical strategy to this dominant imperial story is partly explained by the compromises we made with the bounty and notions of superiority resulting from the Empire. It’s a history of ourselves that continues to haunt us today. While the rest of the world may be surprised and bewildered at the dominance of one particular fee-paying private school Eton, in the make-up of the recent ruling Conservative Party’s Cabinet, we from Britain are not. Our social elite, or should that be ruling class or maybe oligarchy, have not been swept away. Instead they have emerged stronger and more powerful from the upheavals, wars and political convulsions of the twentieth century. In fact, many of Britain’s great aristocratic families owe their history, wealth, prestige and political influence to their participation in the country’s imperial adventures – especially slavery – around the world. India was an important part of this story. It was after all only very recently that Britain began to withdraw from this imperial past with “our colonial partners” and with “a feeling of goodwill and friendship” and “largely without bloodshed”, according to some of our newspapers. Ignoring the more nationalistic and xenophobic overtones of many contributions and in a spirit of generosity, so historically recent has been this withdrawal that it is perhaps too early to critically evaluate these defining experiences. Nevertheless, the Empire and India in particular will continue to figure prominently in Britain’s national discussions, debates and reflections.

  So what were the British doing in India?

  Visiting any of the great Indian metropolises inevitably raises questions not only of the impact of the British in India but also as mentioned above of the impact back in Britain of this relationship. As William Dalrymple noted in a 2015 newspaper article, “For better or worse, the British Empire was the most important thing the British ever did. It altered the course of history across the globe and shaped the modern world. It also led to the huge enrichment of Britain.” India was one of the biggest losers in this transformation together with the hundreds of thousands of slaves from Africa sent to work on the American plantations. In India’s case, the fall was catastrophic – from a position of a global manufacturing power before the arrival of the British to impoverishment when the British left. Although receiving little attention in Britain, an Indian Congress Party member and writer Shashi Tharoor argued in a debate at Oxford University in 2015 that Britain owed India a huge amount of financial reparations for the damage inflicted while in India. The video of his speech went viral with three million views within three weeks. In the British press, it barely registered as a footnote.

  There is a very obvious British footprint to many aspects of Indian cities, culture and political life. If we return to South Park Street Cemetery in Calcutta for example, there are clues to this interrelationship beyond the shady gardens, masonry and architecture. Buried here were the colonial elite of a part of the Empire ‘at work’ – civil servants, businessmen, military officers and assorted family members. This was the graveyard of that strangely disappeared, today unacknowledged key to British domination in India – the Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies, more commonly known as the British East India Company. Calcutta was the company town of the East India Company and South Park Cemetery documents the contributions of many of its employees together with the military personnel that ensured its spectacular success. Today, many of those subjugated to its rule remember the Company, but in Britain, it seems to have been airbrushed from history. Nick Robins, author of the recent book The Corporation that Changed the World: How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multinational mentions his search in London for any monument or plaque at the location of the Company. In a ‘heritage’ dominated country, he finds nothing. On the original site of the Company in Leadenhall Street, London instead there is the architecturally-famed Lloyd’s Bank Building. This is strange, for the East India Company was no ordinary company. When the Company arrived in India as a trading enterprise in 1660, Britain’s share of the world’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was around 2%, India’s was around 22%. When the British left India in 1947, its national income was 50% higher than India’s. This was some reversal and the East India Company played a major role in this reversal. Yet still no plaque for this mother of the modern transnational company. Perhaps part of the reason for this amnesia today is the ambiguous attitude or even political embarrassment towards the Company today from a country that prides itself on its practice of ‘cutting-edge’ capitalism. After all, this was a company that began as a humble trading enterprise started by a few individuals (although with a trading monopoly granted by Elizabeth I) eager to share in the trade of silk, dye, sugar, spices and cloth from a sophisticated economy and in ‘partnership’ with the Mughal emperors. It ended up as a restructured shareholder company which through its own military resources conquered the country and ushered in a period of domination, oppression and economic exploitation. Gone and defeated were the Mughals, the French, the Portuguese and the Dutch. One of the key episodes in this transformation (and in the history of India) was the 1757 Battle of Plassey on the banks of the Hugli river, outside Calcutta in the state of Bengal. As many British schoolchildren with a smattering of history can testify, Robert Clive – Clive of India – is a name to be remembered and cherished. His victory at the village of Plassey on the banks of the Hugli River over the Nawab of Bengal in 1757 against overwhelming numbers ensured the ascendancy of the East India Company, the British against the French, of Clive himself as master of Bengal and, in the longer term, to the establishment of British rule in India. Although not mentioned in the history books, it was a victory, writes William Dalrymple, “that owed more to treachery, forged contracts, bankers and bribes than military prowess.” The breakthrough of Plassey was that Clive was recognised by the enfeebled Mughal Empire and began raising huge revenues through taxation – the oil that greased the mechanisms of domination and exploitation. The East India Company through the military violence of Clive was now financially able to increase trade, raise and pay for an army of considerable strength, make wars and threaten those opposing its ambitions. The Company by now was second only to the Bank of England in importance. Clive returned to England a millionaire. Bengal was as Clive described it, “an inexhaustible fund of riches” and bled dry. Within three decades after Plassey, the Company was now a ruler increasingly concerned with issues of ‘governance’ and the raising of finances to fund this rule, an imperial power in its own right. And still, no plaque.

  William Dalrymple in a 2015 article in The Guardian newspaper describes the East India Company as “the original corporate raider”. It’s a wonderful article. As he reminds us, “It was not the British government that seized India at the end of the 18th century, but a dangerously unregulated private company headquartered in one small office, five windows wide, in London, and managed in India by a sociopath – Clive.” Dalrymple goes on to characterise the East India Company as “almost certainly” the best example of what “remains the supreme act of corporate violence in world history. For all the power wielded today by the world’s largest corporations – whether ExxonMobil, Walmart or Google – they are tame beasts compared to the ravaging territorial appetites of the militarised East India Company.”

  So, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the British through the East India Company had established a military dominance that enabled them to subdue all remaining important Indian states, either through conquest or through the creation of subordinate rulers. At its peak, it ruled the subcontinent, created countries such as Singapore and initiated forced production of the lucrative opium which was smuggled into China. Victory at Plassey was followed by victories over the Marathas in 1818, the Sikhs in 1848 and t
he annexation of Awadh in 1856. Huge armies were created largely involving local Indian conscripts to defend the Company’s territories and assets, and to ‘persuade’ and crush any internal dissent and resistance. The export, import and manufacture of goods moved directly or indirectly from independent Indian merchants to the East India Company.

  Around the middle of the nineteenth century, however, the Company was finished. The 1857 Indian Mutiny, as the British history books describe it, began as a mutiny of Sepoys in the Company’s army. Quickly the revolt spread to numerous areas throughout the country. Also known as India’s First War of Independence, the Indian Mutiny, the Sepoy Mutiny or the Uprising of 1857, the rebellion took on a popular patriotic revolt against the European domination of the country. The Uprising has exercised a powerful fixation for British opinion and history ever since. The roots of the revolt go back some time but the common understanding is of soldiers of the Bengal army revolting against their British officers and marching on Delhi. Their revolt encouraged rebellions by civilians, peasants and Indian soldiers across north and central India. British women and children were killed together with thousands of Indians by the avenging British armies. Retribution was savage and widespread. The mutiny, however, had lasting consequences and marked the transition from company rule to crown rule. In 1858 authority was transferred from the company to the monarch and in 1877 Queen Victoria was declared Empress of India. The need to keep remittances flowing through to London remained paramount irrespective of changes at the top.

  The conquests in India by the Company were never agreed to in Britain. However, increasing British concern over the activities of the Company coupled with the Company’s financial problems stemming from the huge military expenditures resulted in greater Parliamentary control over the Company in 1873 and the introduction of Governor General rule in India. Thus began the period of the British Raj with direct governing by the Crown. There seems little doubt that the 1857 Indian Mutiny had greatly unsettled the political powers back ‘home’. In 1885, the East India Company was dissolved.