The Raj’s critics expected too much. It was never a totalitarian state which could do what it liked when it chose. Throughout its history the Raj operated under powerful constraints. These were the costs of its armed forces and administration, the amount of revenue it could raise and the need to conciliate Indian opinion. Behind the Raj’s impressive façade lay a mass of compromises and accommodations made by a government which was always well aware that it lacked the manpower and resources to ride roughshod over its subjects’ wishes. The 1857 Mutiny proved this, and Gandhi’s non-co-operation campaigns confirmed the point. Nearly a third of Indians were subjects of the Raj only by association, being governed by their own princes who had chosen to become partners in government. The Raj could not have lasted as long as it did without the co-operation of millions of lesser Indians who filled the ranks of its army, undertook its bureaucratic drudgery and served in its perpetually undermanned police force. In the countryside where most Indians lived, often without ever seeing a European, village headmen, chowkidars and a legion of fiscal and transport functionaries kept the machinery of government ticking over. In return they received local power and status. Such figures are easily overlooked, but they were the bedrock on which the Raj rested.
The existence of a substantial body of Indians who actively co-operated with alien rulers is a source of unease for modern Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi historians. How does one promote a sense of national identity in the knowledge that, during the recent past, the great majority of one’s countrymen either submitted to or were the accomplices of foreign rulers? One answer is to elevate those who, often for private rather than ‘national’ reasons, opposed the Raj. Thus the Rani of Jhansi has a splendid equestrian statue on the site of her cremation in Gwalior. Tikendrajit Singh, the ambitious dynast who violently ejected the British resident from Manipur in 1891, becomes a ‘freedom fighter’ in the Indian Dictionary of National Biography, where it is claimed that his state needed a very strong, rather ruthless ruler to withstand the Raj. Home-grown tyranny, it seems, is better than the imported government, and it is hard to see how an aristocrat fighting for his privileges was a proto-nationalist. Nevertheless, it is reassuring for Indians to know that there were men and women who resisted the Raj, and they honour their spirit in the same way as Boadicea’s has been in England.
Twentieth-century nationalist leaders qualify more easily for the national Pantheon. Moreover, although their arguments were grounded in British political and legal philosophy, men like Gandhi and Nehru possessed distinctly Indian qualities. Here lay their immense strength: they could reason with their rulers in terms the latter understood and simultaneously appeal to the Indian masses. And yet, and this is perhaps the greatest irony of the Raj, both men argued passionately for the preservation of India’s integrity, something which was a direct result of British rule. It is of course right and proper that Gandhi, Nehru and Jinnah should be revered as national heroes, but it should not be forgotten that each in his way was a product of political and intellectual traditions which had been imparted into their country by the British.
Quite simply the Raj cannot be disinvented. It happened, and its consequences, from a passion for cricket to a faith in democracy, remain deeply rooted in Indian soil. No one can ever know what course Indian history would have followed if the British had not intervened so decisively in its eighteenth-century power struggles. Would a dominant, centralising power have emerged from among the greater Indian states? Would it have been Hindu or Muslim? Most importantly, how long would it have lasted, and could it have resisted its neighbours? The history of independent states in Asia during the nineteenth century suggests strongly that India might have endured some form of European domination, as Persia and China did, or direct occupation like Indo-China. Would a non-British India, united or fragmented, have attracted the investment which financed its railways, or would a native entrepreneurial class have emerged with the capital which was ploughed into industrialisation during the two world wars? And would hundreds of thousands of Indians, Pakistanis and Bangledeshis have settled in Britain to enrich it with their talents and, among things, make curry its most popular dish?
Subjunctive history is more than a diverting pastime, for it reminds us how much the present pivots on the past. For better or worse (and on the whole I think it was for the better), the British Raj shaped the subcontinent that is now shared by India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The period of foreign rule has been likened to a love affair between a couple whom unexpected circumstances had thrown together. Initial fascination was followed by exploration and rough wooing, then came harmony, and fast behind rows, estrangement and separation. After fifty years the partners have calmed down and come to appreciate the value of what bound them together and the experiences they shared. The result is a restored goodwill, affection and a new partnership of interest with steadily rising Anglo-Indian trade and British investment in one of the world’s most dynamic and expanding economies. I hope that this survey of the Raj will strengthen the bonds between Britons and Indians, and make them look again at their common past without shame or recrimination.
Bibliography
Abbreviations
BL British Library
BLO Bodleian Library, Oxford
EHR English Historical Review
EcHR Economic History Review
HJ Historical Journal
IESHR Indian Economic and Social History Review
IJMES International Journal of Middle East Studies
ILN Illustrated London News
IOL India Office Library
IWM Imperial War Museum
JAS Journal of Asian Studies
JICH Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History
JIH Journal of Indian History
JRAS Journal of the Royal Asian Society
JSAHR Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research
LHC Liddell Hart Centre
MAS Modern Asian Studies
NAM National Army Museum
NLS National Library of Scotland
NRO Norfolk Record Office
PP Past and Present
PRO Public Record Office
RID Records of the Intelligence Department
SRA Strathclyde Regional Archives
SRO Scottish Record Office
TP Transfer of Power
TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society
VS Victorian Studies
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Private papers, Mss Eur series: Anonymous Journal of the Karnatic campaign, 1780–81; Christopher Beaumont; Carnac Collection; Lord Casey (Sir Richard Casey, Governor of Bengal, 1944–46); Lady Francis Chambers; Walter Christie; Edward Colebrook; Alan Flack; Philip Francis; Charles Horne; Lieutenant Charles Horwood, 12th Bengal Infantry; Brigadier John Jacob (Letters of Sir James Outram); Lushington Collection; Lieutenant-Colonel Chardin Johnson, 9th Lancers; Captain Robert Knolles; Hugh Martin; Lieutenant Godfrey Pearce, Bengal Artillery; Lieutenant Thomas Pierce, 48th Bengal Infantry; Sidney Muspratt; Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Jasper Nicholls; Samuel Roakes; John Shore; Strachey Collection; M. M. Stuart; Sir Evan Thomas; Sir Charles Wood; Yule family Recordings: C. P. Bramble; Major-General Palit; Govind Narain
Liddell Hart Centre for Military Studies, London
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National Army Museum, London
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Norfolk Record Office, Norwich
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Public Record Office, London
Air (Air Ministry) 8, 23; DO (Dominions Office) 142; FO (Foreign Office) 65, 248, 402, 406, 539; HD (Home Department) 2, 3, 4; WO (War Office) 33, 71, 88, 92, 105, 106, 110, 157, 164, 203, 208; Papers of the 5th Marquess of Lansdowne (FO 800); Papers of Field Marshal Lord Roberts of Kandahar (PRO 30/57)
Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh
Letters, papers and correspondence of: Lieutenant-Colonel James Brunton, Madras Army; Alexander Campbell; Sir Montstuart Elphinstone (Seaforth Papers); Sir Archibald Grant; Captain William Hume, Bengal Army (Home of Wedderburn Papers); Lieutenant Alexander Lindsay, Bengal Horse Artillery; William Read (Cochrane Papers); Lieutenant James Whitton, Royal Scots Fusiliers
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