Lambton worked on the survey till he died of tuberculosis, in the field, in 1823. His crumbling grave was recently rediscovered by the writer John Keay in the village of Hinganghat, fifty miles south of Nagpur. His theodolite is in better condition and is now housed in the Survey of India headquarters in Dehradun. Less than half of the project had been completed when Lambton died. Fortunately, he was succeeded by the equally dedicated George Everest. By the time Everest retired and returned to England in 1843, the Great Arc had been extended well into the Himalayas. He built a bungalow for himself at Hathipaon, near the hill-station of Mussourie. Its ruins still stand on a ridge commanding magnificent views of snow-capped peaks on one side and the valley of Dehradun on the other. It is merely a fifteen-minute drive from Mussourie town, followed by a ten minute walk up the hill. Just the shell of the house remains, although the roof was largely intact when I visited it in February 2011 and the fireplaces were clearly visible in the larger rooms. Everything else had been stripped bare. Yet, as one looked out of the broken window frames at the Indian land mass extending south into the far distance, one could feel the soul of the eccentric but determined Welshman hanging in the air.
Everest returned home to recognition and a knighthood, but it is unclear whether he had ever seen Peak XV. In 1849, surveyors in the eastern Himalayas took theodolite measurements of Peak XV from six different angles. By averaging the measurements, the Bengali computer Radhanath Sikdar calculated that the peak was 29,000 feet high. He rushed into the office of Everest’s successor, Andrew Waugh, and is said to have blurted out, ‘Sir, I have discovered the highest mountain in the world’. The problem was that the learned scholars of that time would have dismissed the idea of a mountain that was over 25,000 feet. They would be especially suspicious of a rounded-out figure like 29,000. Therefore, the surveyors arbitrarily added two feet to the calculation and for decades geography textbooks would carry the number 29,002 feet! 6 Later measurements show the exact height at 29,029 feet or 8848 metres above sea level.
Now came the issue of naming Peak XV. The Tibetans already called it Chomolungma (Mother Goddess of the World). Unusually for the colonial period, the Survey of India tended to retain the local names where possible but in this case the temptation proved too great. It was named after George Everest. Like many people today, I used to wonder why the British would name the highest mountain in the world after the Surveyor General of India rather than after royalty or even a Viceroy. However, having read about the sheer scale of the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India, I can see that it was not so odd after all.
THE REVOLT OF 1857
By the time Mount Everest was being named, the British were very much in control of the whole subcontinent. What was not directly ruled by the British was managed through one-sided treaties with the remaining local princes. Not since the Mauryas had such a large part of the subcontinent been controlled by a single power. How did the British succeed where earlier European powers had failed? Technological advantage was important, but cannot have been the deciding factor. Unlike in the Americas, Africa or Australia, the technological gap between the Europeans and the locals was not so large as to be able to neutralize a very large numerical superiority. In many instances, there were European mercenaries and allies fighting on the Indian side. Yet, the British were repeatedly able to beat off much larger armies and then maintain control with a tiny number of officials. Why?
What is most striking about the British conquest of India is that so few British were involved. The armies of the East India Company were largely made up of Indian sepoys. Moreover, in many cases, the British received encouragement and support from the locals. For instance, at the Battle of Plassey, Robert Clive was funded and encouraged by the merchants of Bengal. Some historians tend to see this as proof that Indians did not have any sense of nationhood till the nineteenth century. However, as we have seen, Indians have had a very strong sense of being a civilization for millennia. Why did the Indians not oppose British rule more aggressively?
In my view, the real reason for this was that the collapse of the Mughal Empire in the eighteenth century had left the country in chaos. The Marathas, after showing some initial promise, had dissolved into their internal bickerings. The countryside was plagued with mercenaries and bandits of every description. Some of these privateer warlords, like Begum Samroo, became so powerful and rich that they lived openly and in style in Delhi and were considered respectable members of society. The East India Company was far from benign but, in comparison, did offer some semblance of order. There is an important additional factor. Unlike the Portuguese, the early British rulers conspicuously kept away from interfering with local culture and social norms. Even in the few instances where they did intervene, as in the abolition of the despicable custom of sati, it was done with the strong support of reformist Indians. This is why they would not have appeared as a civilizational threat to the contemporary Indian. It is not usually remembered that after his great victory at Plassey, Robert Clive did not offer thanksgiving at a church but at a Durga Puja organized by Nabakrishna Deb in Kolkata. One cannot picture Pedro Alvarez Cabral doing this.
Unfortunately, by the mid-nineteenth century, this open attitude had changed and we see growing cultural and racial arrogance. There is a distinct emphasis on ‘civilizing’, often meaning Christianizing, the natives. This was no secret but openly discussed. James Mill, author of The History of British India (1820), described Hinduism as ‘the most enormous and tormenting superstition that ever harassed and degraded any portion of mankind’. 7 Evangelical missionaries began using British political control to aggressively seek converts. Not surprisingly, Indians—both Hindu and Muslim—looked on all this with suspicion.
The resultant resentment eventually erupted into a full-fledged revolt in 1857, exactly a hundred years after the Battle of Plassey. British readers will know this as the Sepoy Mutiny. Within a few weeks, the bulk of the East India Company’s Bengal Army was in open revolt and, in many cases, the British officers had all been killed. The phenomenon spread like wildfire across large parts of North and Central India. Note that the revolt did not have a centralized leadership but occurred in a number of different centres and had a number of different leaders, usually dispossessed members of the old Indian aristocracy. Delhi was one of the important centres of the uprising.
By 1857, the glory days of Shahjahanabad were a fading memory. The eighty-two-year-old Bahadur Shah Zafar was an emperor in name alone and his writ barely ran in Delhi. The royal family lived off a pension provided by the British and many of the junior branches of the family had been reduced to extreme poverty. William Sleeman, an official who visited the Red Fort a few years before the revolt, tells us of how 1200 members of the family lived in the palace off the meagre pension but were too proud to work. 8 Instead, there are amusing stories of how some of these princes would try to use their family name to swindle money. Even the palace inside the Red Fort was in a state of severe disrepair. In 1824, Bishop Herber described the palace gardens as ‘dirty, lonely and wretched; the bath and fountain dry; the inlaid pavement hid with lumber and gardener’s sweepings, and the walls stained with the dung of birds and bats.’ 9 Things would have been worse by the 1850s.
There has been a tendency in recent years by writers like William Dalrymple to present the court of Bahadur Shah Zafar as a ‘court of great brilliance’ that was in the ‘middle of remarkable cultural flowering’ and the ‘greatest literary renaissance in modern Indian history’. 10 This is inaccurate. While it is true that the court did include some excellent poets like Ghalib and Zauq, by the 1850s Delhi would have felt distinctly provincial and archaic compared to Calcutta. A ‘renaissance’ is about new ideas, innovation and vigour. Ghalib’s poetry may be very good from a literary perspective but it is mostly a lament for a world that was collapsing around him. It contains no vision of the future.
In May 1857, several hundred mutinous sepoys and cavalrymen rode into Delhi from Meerut and instigated
the local troops. Together they massacred every British resident that they could find. Indian converts to Christianity were not spared either. As more and more rebels arrived, the soldiers turned to the ageing emperor for leadership. Bahadur Shah was personally ambivalent about the offer. On one hand, he was scared that the British would return and exact retribution. On the other hand, he was faced with a large and growing number of rebels who would probably break into a riot if he refused. He opted to play along with the rebels, but would remain indecisive throughout the episode.
Meanwhile, a small British force had arrived and set up a defensible position on the ancient Aravalli ridge overlooking the walled city. From here they proceeded to pound Shahjahanabad with artillery. Their numbers were small but the disorganized rebels were unable to make a concerted attempt to capture the position. A contingent of Gurkha soldiers held off waves of rebel attacks near Burra Hindu Rao’s house on top of the ridge; it’s now a hospital. One of the princes, Mirza Mughal, did try to organize the mutineers, but was constantly undermined by the indecisive emperor and by the internal jealousies of his own family. It is amazing how the British had a constant flow of information from collaborators within the walled city throughout the siege. 11
From mid-August, the British were being reinforced by fresh troops and supplies from Punjab. The artillery pounding was ramped up. A month later, Shahjehanabad had been captured and sacked. The game was over. Bahadur Shah and members of his family, proud descendants of Taimur the Lame and Ghengis Khan, fled down the Yamuna to take shelter in Humayun’s grand tomb. It is not clear why they bothered since it is barely a few miles south of the city. The British soon caught up with them. Many Mughal princes were executed. Three of them, including Mirza Mughal, were stripped naked and shot dead with a Colt revolver near the archway still called Khuni Darwaza (Gate of Blood). The emperor himself was exiled to Rangoon.
The city of Delhi, shorn of its last link to Mughal grandeur, became even more of a backwater. Within the Red Fort, many of the Mughal structures were torn down to make way for the barracks that one sees today. A few years later, a large part of the old city would be cleared to make way for the railways. Only a handful of structures remain to remind one of Shah Jehan’s dream. This completes the third cycle of India’s urbanization. It had begun with the sacking of Prithviraj Chauhan’s Delhi and ended six and a half centuries later with the sacking of Mughal Delhi. The next cycle, however, was well under way in Calcutta, Madras and Bombay.
After the fall of Delhi, the British proceeded to systematically put down the other centres of rebellion. Tens of thousands were executed as punishment. This is not the place to analyse the many reasons for the failure of the revolt. Despite the extraordinary courage shown by individuals such as Rani Laxmibai of Jhansi, the rebellion was probably too uncoordinated to succeed. The British were able to pick off each group one by one. For all its fame, the fort at Jhansi is a modest affair. It still contains two of Rani Laxmibai’s cannons, of a design that would have been considered antiquated by the mid-nineteenth century and stood no chance against modern British cannonry. Standing on the ramparts of Jhansi fort, I could still feel the spirit of the twenty-two-year-old queen—her isolation, her audacity in defying the most powerful empire of that time, and the complete hopelessness of her cause.
It may hurt our nationalist pride to admit this today but many Indians either remained indifferent or were loyal to the British. Perhaps they feared a return to the chaos of the eighteenth century. Perhaps, they simply did not think that their future lay in going back to the old feudal order. The year 1857 saw another revolution that would have a much more lasting impact. Three federal examining universities on the pattern of London University were established in the cities of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. By the time India became independent in 1947, twenty-five such institutions would have been set up. The universities would create an educated middle class that would be at the forefront of the next round of resistance to British rule.
The rebellion of 1857 also spelled the end of the East India Company. Its territories in India were put directly under government control. The Governor-General was replaced with a Viceroy, a representative of the Crown. The ratio of Europeans to Indians in the army was pushed up to 1:3 from 1:9. The British also gave up their policy of annexing Indian kingdoms, and the existing network of kingdoms and principalities was given a permanent standing under the Imperial umbrella. This framework would broadly survive till 1947. Most importantly, the Queen’s Proclamation of 1858 stated that the British would no longer ‘impose Our convictions on any of Our subjects.’
The Queen’s Proclamation was read out by Lord Canning on 1 November 1858. The choice of place is interesting since it was not read out in Calcutta, Bombay, Madras or even Delhi. Instead, it was done in Allahabad. It is here that the Yamuna meets the Ganga and is said to be joined by the invisible Saraswati flowing underground. The place is called Triveni Sangam, literally meaning the confluence of three rivers. It is here that Ram is said to have crossed the river and visited the sage Bharadhwaj before proceeding on his exile to the forests of central India. The association with the Ramayana is remembered in a famous Hanuman temple close to Triveni Sangam and an ‘eternal tree’ under which Ram is said to have rested. It is also here that Xuan Zang (or Hieun Tsang) witnessed the great gathering of the Kumbha Mela in the seventh century AD. Overlooking the temple and the merging rivers is the fort built by Emperor Akbar which houses the Mauryan column that bears the inscriptions of three emperors—Ashoka, Samudragupta and Jehangir. In short, this is no ordinary place, but the heart of Indian civilization. The British had finally understood the nature of Indian nationhood.
In order to understand the essence of this, visit the Saraswati Ghat 12 in Allahabad at dawn in January during the annual Magh Mela (or, if you are lucky, the Kumbha Mela). As the sun rises through the mist, one can see tens of thousands of people irrespective of age, gender, class, sect or caste take a dip at the confluence of the rivers. They chant Vedic hymns composed thousands of years ago on the banks of the ancient Saraswati, still alive in the collective memory of millions. Boatloads of villagers row across from villages far and near, their women softly singing traditional songs passed down through generations. It is a moment of eternity. The sun reflects off the ramparts built by a Muslim emperor who grew to understand this. A short walk away is the spot, marked by a column, where a global power was forced to acknowledge this ancient civilization in order to legitimize its rule.
The column commemorating the Queen’s Proclamation is a short walk from Saraswati Ghat and stands neglected in an overgrown park. None of the locals seemed to know the significance of the place. This is unfortunate because the modern Indian State is the direct outcome of this Proclamation. After independence, the government capped the column with a replica of the national emblem, the Mauryan lions and the wheel. Usually I disapprove of meddling with the artifacts of history, but somehow it seemed appropriate that the dreams of Sudasa and the Mauryas are remembered at that place.
Although colonial expansion became less overt after 1858, a large gap remained between the Indians and their British rulers. The separation is visible even in urban planning. British towns were clearly segregated into the spacious ‘white-towns’ and crowded ‘black-towns’. It is not unusual for rulers to live separately from the ruled. We see this in both the citadel of Dholavira as well as the Red Fort of Shahjehanabad. However, the elites still lived within the same cultural context as the wider population. In contrast, there was a large cultural gap between the spacious bungalows of the Civil Lines and the bazaars of the indigenous population.
Nowhere was this more visible than in the Civil Lines of Allahabad itself. The fifty years following the Revolt would be the heyday of Empire. The British considered themselves superior to the rest of humanity and were grudgingly acknowledged as such. It would be many decades before a trickle of Indians, armed with a Western education, would be reluctantly allowed into this world. Till
as recently as 2005, vestiges of this era were clearly visible in the large, crumbling bungalows of Allahabad’s Civil Lines. However, when I revisited it in April 2012, I found that the neighborhood had turned into a jumble of malls, shops and apartment blocks. The few remaining bungalows now hide fearfully amidst the new buildings.
THE STEAM MONSTERS
By 1820, India’s population stood at 111 million, but its share in world GDP had fallen to 16 per cent compared to China’s 33 per cent. 13 Together they still accounted for half of the global economy, but China was doing most of the heavy lifting. Driven by the Industrial Revolution, Britain already enjoyed a per capita income that was three times higher than that of the Asian giants. As the nineteenth century wore on, the gap between the Europeans and the Asians grew wider. By the time India became independent in 1947, its share would fall to a mere 4 per cent of world GDP.
Despite this relative decline, the second half of the nineteenth century witnessed a radical transformation of the country’s economic and geographic landscape. The introduction of the railways was arguably the single most important factor that drove this change. Both commercial and military considerations lay behind the idea of building a railway network. Through the 1830s and 1840s, there were a number of discussions and proposals. The government did not have internal resources to build it but it was initially thought that private operators would easily raise the capital. However, it was soon clear that the money could not be raised in India. Investors in England also appeared lukewarm.
The discussions drifted for several years till the arrival of F.W. Simms, a railway engineer of ‘tried and proved ability’. A number of routes were surveyed under his supervision. He argued that a Delhi–Calcutta line would allow the military establishment alone to make a saving of at least 50,000 pounds a year, a very large sum in those days. 14 Given these encouraging studies, the government decided to give generous guarantees to persuade investors to pump capital into the railways. These included a guaranteed return of 4.5 per cent as well as an exchange rate guarantee. These would later prove expensive and attract a lot of criticism, but at that moment they got the projects going. The very first railway line in the subcontinent ran 21 miles (34 km) from Bombay to Thane. The formal inauguration was performed at Bori Bandar on 16 April 1854 when 14 carriages with 400 guests left the station ‘amidst the loud applause of a vast multitude and the salute of 21 guns’. A year later, a train left Howrah (a town across the river from Calcutta) and steamed up to Hooghly thereby establishing the first line in the east. Two years later, the first line in the south was established by the Madras Railway Company. By 1859, there was even a line between Allahabad and Kanpur.
Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography Page 20