India

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Introduction; Land and Resources; The People of India; Arts; Economy; Government; History

Sepoy Rebellion

The annexation of Indian territory and the rigorous taxation on Indian land contributed to a revolt against British rule that began in 1857 (see Sepoy Rebellion). The revolt started as a mutiny of Indian sepoys (soldiers) in the service of the English East India Company in Meerut, a town northeast of Delhi. The mutiny erupted when some sepoys refused to use their new Lee-Enfield rifles. To load the rifles, the soldiers had to bite off the ends of greased cartridges. Rumors that the cartridges were greased with the fat of cows and pigs outraged both Hindus, who regard cows as sacred, and Muslims, who regard pigs as unclean. After taking Meerut, the mutineers marched to Delhi and persuaded the nominal sovereign of India, the Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah II, to resume his rule. The revolt spread rapidly, with local rulers playing an active part in expelling or killing the British and putting their garrisons under siege, especially at Lucknow. The revolt extended through Oudh Province (now part of Uttar Pradesh) and present-day northern Madhya Pradesh. The British were able to crush it, making particular use of Sikh soldiers recruited in the Punjab. The mutiny ended by 1859, with both sides guilty of atrocities.

The Sepoy Rebellion, with its unanticipated fury and extent, left the British feeling insecure. In August 1858 the British Parliament abolished the English East India Company and transferred the company’s responsibilities to the British crown. This launched a period of direct rule in India, ending the fiction of company rule as an agent of the Mughal emperor (who was tried for treason and exiled to Burma). In November 1858, in her proclamation to the “Princes, Chiefs, and Peoples of India,” Queen Victoria pledged to preserve the rule of Indian princes in return for loyalty to the crown. More than 560 such enclaves, taking in one-fourth of India’s area and one-fifth of its people, were preserved until Indian independence in 1947. In 1876, at the urging of British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, Queen Victoria took the title of Empress of India.

Among the reforms introduced after the adoption of direct rule was a reorganization of the administrative system. A secretary of state, aided by a council, began to control Indian affairs from London. A viceroy (a governor who acts in the name of the British crown) implemented London’s policies from Calcutta. An executive and a legislative council provided advice and assistance. Provincial governors made up the next level of authority, and below them were district officials.

The army was also reorganized after the imposition of direct rule. The ratio of British to Indian soldiers was reduced, and recruitment policies were reshaped to favor Sikhs and other “martial races” who had been loyal during the Sepoy Rebellion. Castes and groups that had been disloyal were carefully screened out.

The Movement for Independence

Rise of Indian Nationalism

The Sepoy Rebellion and its aftermath increased political awareness among the Indian people of the abuses of British rule. This growing consciousness found its strongest voice among an English-educated intelligentsia that grew up in India’s major cities during the last three decades of the 19th century. These men were journalists, lawyers, and teachers from India’s elite. Most had attended universities founded in 1857 by the British in Bombay (now Mumbai), Calcutta (now Kolkata), and Madras (now Chennai). Studying the political theorists of Western democracy and capitalism such as John Stuart Mill convinced many that they were being denied the full rights and responsibilities of British citizenship.

Dissatisfaction with British rule took organized political form in 1885, when these men, with the support of sympathetic Englishmen, formed the Indian National Congress. Resolutions at the first session called for increased Indian participation on provincial legislative councils and improved access for Indians to employment in the Indian Civil Service. Initially the organization adopted a moderate approach to reform. For its first 20 years, the Congress served as a forum for debate on questions of British policy toward India, as well as a platform to push for economic and social changes. Central to a newly developed Indian identity was the argument, articulated by three-time Congress president Dadabhai Naoroji, that Great Britain was draining India of its wealth by means of unfair trade regulations. The Congress also took issue with the restraint on the development of native Indian industry and the use of Indian taxes to pay the high salaries and pensions of the British who ruled over India by “right” of conquest.

At the same time, a Hindu social reform movement that had begun 50 years earlier contributed ideas about the injustice of caste and gender discrimination. Reformers lobbied for laws to permit, for example, the remarriage of Hindu women widowed before puberty. In western India, one reformer, journalist Bal Gangadhar Tilak, impatient with the slow pace of the nationalist movement, attempted to mobilize a larger audience by drawing on Hindu religious symbolism and Maratha history to spark patriotic fervor. A similar thread of nationalism appeared in Bengal. By 1905 extreme nationalists had arisen to challenge the more moderate members of Congress, whose petitioning of the British government had had little success.

George Nathaniel Curzon, who was viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905, presided over the affairs of British India at its peak, and he worked to weaken nationalist opposition to British rule. In 1905 he partitioned the administratively unwieldy province of Bengal into East Bengal and Assam (with a Muslim majority) and Bengal, Bihār, and Orissa (with a Hindu majority). This measure sparked a set of developments in the nationalist movement that were to transform India’s future. The Hindu elite of Bengal, many of whom were landlords collecting rent from Muslim peasants of East Bengal, were roused to protest not just in the press and at public meetings, but with direct action. Some pushed a boycott and swadeshi (literally “own-country,” but meaning here “buy Indian”) campaign against British goods, especially textiles. Others joined small terrorist groups that succeeded in assassinating some British officials. This movement echoed in other parts of India as well. By 1908 imports had fallen off significantly, and sales of local goods enjoyed a five-year boom that gave real impetus to the development of native industries.

The emergence of extremism, led particularly by Tilak, resulted in a split in the Congress in 1907. The election of a new Liberal government in Britain in 1906 and the subsequent appointment of a new Liberal secretary of state, John Morley, gave new heart to the moderates. Many extremists were imprisoned by the British for lengthy terms.

Finally, the partition of Bengal, the vehement agitation against it, and the prospect of liberal reform crystallized the opposition of the Muslim elite to the trend of Indian nationalism. They worried about the role of a Muslim minority in a fully democratic, independent India. In October 1906 a delegation of about 35 Muslim leaders called upon Lord Minto, the viceroy, to ask for separate electorates for Muslims and a weighted proportion of legislative representation that would reflect their historic role as rulers and their record of cooperating with the British. (These requests were later adopted in the reforms incorporated in the Government of India Act of 1909.) In December, this delegation, joined by additional delegates from every province of India and Burma, formed the All-India Muslim League (later the Muslim League). Although the Muslim League did not then generate a mass following, its leaders played an important role in the politics that accompanied the challenge to British rule and the partition of India in 1947.

Ultimately the opposition to the partition of Bengal was successful. In 1911 the division was annulled, and the eastern and western portions of Bengal were reunited as a presidency, with Calcutta as its capital. Assam became its own province, while Bihār and Orissa were joined as a province (divided into separate provinces in 1936). Also at this time, the British authorities announced that the capital of India would be moved from Calcutta (where it had been formally since 1858) to Delhi. There, a new adjoining city called New Delhi would be built to house the government offices; it was inaugurated as the capital in 1931. Although New Delhi was constructed on a grand imperial scale, the losses from World War I (1914-1918) dealt what was to become a mortal blow to the British Empire.

The World Wars and the Emergence of Gandhi

India was a major source of support for Britain’s war effort. Some 750,000 Indian troops served in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa; more than 36,000 were killed. India supplied wheat and other goods to British forces east of Suez, and with the loss of trade with Germany and the other Central Powers and the continuance of heavy taxation, the economic cost of the war was evident. Political resistance to British rule continued, although mainly at a more moderate level. A small, mostly Sikh revolutionary movement appeared briefly in Punjab.

Shortly after the war began, Indian lawyer Mohandas Gandhi returned to India from South Africa, where he had organized and led an Indian ambulance corps when the war broke out. When he came to India in 1915 he was already an important political leader because of an earlier trip to India in 1901 and 1902 and because of his efforts for civil liberties in South Africa. He met with the viceroy and the leaders of the Congress, and in 1916 he forged a pact with Mohammed Ali Jinnah, leader of the Muslim League, for Congress-Muslim League joint action. Gandhi also became involved in a number of campaigns of nonviolent resistance, in which he honed the nonviolent techniques he had developed in South Africa.

In 1917 Edwin Montague, the secretary of state for India, had announced a policy of the “gradual development of self-governing institutions with a view to the progressive realization of responsible government in India as an integral part of the British Empire.” As the war ended the British introduced a fresh set of reforms, culminating in the Government of India Act of 1919. This act brought some Indian control over certain executive departments in the provinces and greater representation of Indians in the central legislative council. Also, the act made it easier for Indians to gain admission into the civil service and into the officer corps of the army, an aspect of the law which encountered resistance from some British.

In the same year that it passed these reforms, however, the legislative council also passed the Rowlatt Acts. The Rowlatt Acts, which detractors called the Black Acts, made permanent some restrictions on civil liberties that had been imposed during the war. Specifically, the acts gave the government emergency powers to deal with so-called revolutionary activities. There was an immediate wave of disapproval from all Indian leaders, and Gandhi stepped in and organized a series of nonviolent acts of resistance. Gandhi called these acts satyagraha (Sanskrit for “truth and firmness”). These included nationwide work stoppages (hartal) and other activities in which Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs participated together. One of these protests coincided with a Hindu festival in Amritsar. Despite a last-minute ban on public meetings, thousands of unarmed pilgrims and protesters gathered in a public square to celebrate on April 13, 1919. Without warning, British troops opened fire on the peaceful crowd, killing nearly 400 people. The success of the Rowlatt Satyagraha followed by the Amritsar incident brought public sympathy to the nationalist movement, and with it a new level of prestige.

In 1920, when the government failed to make amends, Gandhi began an organized campaign of noncooperation. Many Indians returned their British honors, withdrew their children from British schools, resigned from government service, and began a new boycott of British goods. Gandhi reorganized the Congress in 1920, transforming it from an annual gathering of self-selected leaders with a skeleton staff to a mass movement, with membership fees and requirements set to allow even the poorest Indian to join. Gandhi ended the noncooperation movement in 1922 after 22 Indian policemen were burned to death. A lull in nationalist activity followed. Gandhi was jailed shortly after ending the noncooperation movement and remained in prison until 1924. In 1928, a British committee began to study the next steps of democratic reform, sparking a revival of the Congress movement. In its 1929 annual session, the Congress issued a demand for “complete independence.”

Gandhi then led another even more massive movement of civil disobedience. It climaxed in 1930 with the so-called Salt Satyagraha, in which thousands of Indians protested taxes, particularly the tax on salt, by marching to the Arabian Sea and making salt from evaporated seawater. Tens of thousands, including Gandhi, were sent to jail as a result. The British government gave in, and Gandhi went to London as the sole representative of the Congress to negotiate new steps of reform.

In 1935, after these negotiations, the British Parliament approved legislation known as the Government of India Act of 1935. The legislation provided for the establishment of autonomous legislative bodies in the provinces of British India, the creation of a federal form of central government incorporating the provinces and princely states, and the protection of Muslim minorities. The act also provided for a bicameral national legislature and an executive arm under control of the British government. The federation was never realized, but provincial legislative autonomy went into effect April 1, 1937, after nationwide elections. In these elections, the Congress saw victory in much of India, except in areas where Muslims were a majority. Congress governments, with significant powers, took office in a number of provinces.

When World War II broke out in 1939 the British declared war on India’s behalf without consulting Indian leaders, and the Congress provincial ministries resigned in protest. After extended negotiations with the British, who were searching for a way to grant independence some time after the war’s end, Gandhi declared a “Quit India” movement in 1942, urging the British to withdraw from India or face nationwide civil disobedience. Along with other Congress leaders, he was imprisoned in August that year, and the country erupted in violent demonstrations. Gandhi was not released until 1944.

The Muslim League supported Britain in the war effort but had become convinced that if the Congress Party were to inherit British rule, Muslims would be unfairly treated. Jinnah campaigned vigorously against Congress during the war and increased the Muslim League’s support base. In 1940 the League passed what came to be known as the Pakistan Resolution, which demanded separate states in the Muslim-majority areas of India (in the northwest, centered on Punjab, and in the east, centered on Bengal) at independence. Many Muslims supported the Muslim League in its demand, while Hindus (and some Muslims) supported the Congress, which opposed partition of British India. Another round of negotiations over Indian independence began after the war in 1946, but the Congress and the Muslim League were unable to settle their differences over partition. Jinnah proclaimed August 16, 1946, Direct Action Day for the purpose of winning a separate Muslim state. Savage Hindu-Muslim riots broke out in Calcutta the next day and quickly spread throughout India. In September, an interim government was installed. Jawaharlal Nehru, the leader of Congress, became India’s first prime minister. A united India, however, no longer seemed possible. The new Labor government in Britain decided that the time to end British rule of India had come, and in early 1947 Britain announced its intention of transferring power no later than June 1948.

Indian Independence

As independence approached and Hindus and Muslims continued to fight and kill each other, Gandhi once again put his belief in nonviolence into play. He went on his own to a Muslim-majority area of Bengal, placing himself as a hostage for the safety of Muslims living among Hindus in western Bengal. With the British army unable to deal with the threat of mounting violence, the new viceroy, Louis Mountbatten, decided to advance the schedule of the transfer of power, leaving just months for the parties to agree on a formula for independence. Finally in June 1947 Congress and Muslim League leaders, against Gandhi’s wishes, agreed to a partition of the country along religious lines, with predominantly Hindu areas allocated to India and predominantly Muslim areas to Pakistan. They agreed to a partition of the Muslim-majority provinces of Punjab and Bengal as well. Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh refugees numbering in the millions streamed across the newly drawn borders. In Punjab, where the Sikh community was cut in half, a period of terrible bloodshed followed. In Bengal, where Gandhi became what Lord Mountbatten called a “one-man boundary force,” the violence was insignificant in comparison. On India’s independence day, August 15, 1947, Gandhi was in Calcutta rather than Delhi, mourning the division of the country rather than celebrating the self-rule for which he had fought.

India After Independence

Territorial Consolidation

Under the provisions of the Indian Independence Act, India and Pakistan were established as independent dominions of the British Commonwealth of Nations, with the right to withdraw from or remain within the Commonwealth. At independence India received most of the 562 princely states, as well as the majority of the British provinces, and parts of three of the remaining provinces. Pakistan received the remainder. Pakistan consisted of a western wing, with the approximate boundaries of modern Pakistan, and an eastern wing, with the boundaries of present-day Bangladesh. For the subsequent history of Pakistan (and Bangladesh, from 1947 to 1971), see Pakistan: History.

Before independence, Mountbatten had made clear to the Indian princes that they would have to choose to join either India or Pakistan at partition. In all but three cases, the princes, most of them ruling over very small territories, were able to work out an agreement with one country or another, generally a deal that preserved some measure of their status and a great deal of their revenue. The status of three princely states—namely, Jammu and Kashmīr, Hyderābād, and the small and fragmented state of Jūnāgadh (in present-day Gujarāt)—remained unsettled at independence, however. The Muslim ruler of Hindu-majority Jūnāgadh agreed to join to Pakistan, but a movement by his people, followed by Indian military action and a plebiscite (people’s vote of self-determination), brought the state into India. The nizam of Hyderābād, also a Muslim ruler of a Hindu-majority populace, tried to maneuver to gain independence for his very large and populous state, which was, however, surrounded by India. After more than a year of fruitless negotiations, India sent its army in a police action in September 1948, and Hyderābād became part of India.

Hari Singh, the Hindu maharaja of Jammu and Kashmīr, a large state with a majority Muslim population and adjacent to both India and Pakistan, kept postponing the decision of whether to join India or Pakistan, hoping to explore the possibilities of independence. After tribal warriors supported by Pakistan invaded and threatened his capital in October 1947, Hari Singh finally agreed to join India in exchange for military support from the Indian army. The situation, however, was complicated by a nearly 20-year-old movement against the maharaja—a movement that was likely supported by a large majority of Muslims of the Kashmīr valley. Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah, the leader of the movement against the maharaja, also explored the possibility of independence, but his friendship with Nehru prevented him from pursuing this idea. Sheikh Abdullah and Nehru made an arrangement whereby Abdullah became Jammu and Kashmīr’s first prime minister in 1948, and the new state was granted far more autonomy than any other princely state that had joined India.

The problems with Jammu and Kashmīr, however, were only beginning. As fighting continued between Indian and Pakistani forces, India asked the United Nations (UN) for help. A cease-fire was arranged in 1949, with the cease-fire line creating a de facto partition of the region. The central and eastern areas of the region came under Indian administration as Jammu and Kashmīr state, while the northwestern third came under Pakistani control as Azad (Free) Kashmīr and the Northern Areas. Although a UN peacekeeping force was sent in to enforce the cease-fire, the territorial dispute remained unresolved (see Indo-Pakistani Wars).

France and Portugal still held territories on the Indian coast after India gained independence. The French territories, the largest of which was Puducherry, had an area of about 500 sq km (about 200 sq mi); they were ceded to India in 1956. Portugal’s main Indian possession was Goa, a territory on the western coast of India. Goa had an area of about 3,400 sq km (about 1,300 sq mi) and a population of about 600,000 in 1959. Portugal refused to cede its territories to India, and in December 1961 the Indian army occupied them. Portugal eventually accepted India’s rule in the early 1970s. Goa became a state of India in 1987; Puducherry became a union territory in 1962.