Propaganda doesn’t deceive people. It simply helps people to deceive themselves. - Eric Hoffer
The only factual thing I read in school history texts was that the British practiced “Divide and Rule” policy so they could rule easy. No text book of independent India mentions that British brutalised India so they can rule for eternity. There are some mention of Jallianwala bagh, the Rowlatt act, the Simon commission but just superficially and care taken not to hurt young India. The facts that British divided India in the name of religion, encouraged Christians to take a foot hold on education while discouraging Hindu community education, divided provinces and used castes to create deeper wedges were either forgotten or distorted. But yet, many Indians believe that the contemporary unity of the nation of India is due to the colonialists. But for the British, India would have been many nations, they claim. Not just many, most agree that the Indian nation was a British contribution. A British propaganda becomes an Indian belief. It is this history, sorry distory that I had proposed to bust in these series.
Assuming that British did help in the unification of India with a Good Samaritan spirit of kindness as espoused in the Bible, let’s see how and understand this seeming unity was brought about. We need to ask tough questions. Was the world divided as nations earlier? What brought about unity of people? Was India totally united at her time of independence? Was the much acclaimed divide and rule policy unfactual? Forget India, did the colonising British help other nations like USA to be united and if so what was their interest in strengthening nations? Let’s check facts.
When East India Company arrived in India they came to fulfill the mission decided in 1686 to “establish a large well grounded, surge English dominion in India for all times to come”. The company, Will Durant says, set up and fortified trading posts without permission of authorities. Never respected local laws with the confidence derived from troops and canons. On arrival of Clive, East India Co became nastier. He started the divide and rule policy, set one native ruler against another, and launched a system of bribing as an incentive. Four million dollars were sent to Calcutta in one shipment for bribing. He forced bribes as gifts in millions from hindu rulers depending on his favours. This was the launch of the unification of India, as some claim.
Not less than 111 wars were waged in the nineteenth century alone on the locals with guns, gun powder and mortars to bring India under control mostly fighting and engaging Indians with Indian troops. Millions of Indians fought wars for British so Indians can become and remain slaves to their white skinned masters. The cost of these wars were met to last penny from local taxes in India. Lajapat Rai said that the English congratulated themselves for winning wars without spending. And without losing British lives.
Kingdoms and states were annexed by a decree of Lord Dalhousie that ordered that whenever a hindu prince died without leaving a direct heir, his territory would pass on to the British. In Dalhousie’s period of governance, eight states were annexed in this manner. Were British uniting India unselfishly with a long term vision for the benefit of India?
Another technique adopted by Christian Britishers was to forge documents as required and later hang the Hindus to death for forging documents says Macaulay. They committed crimes on Indians and punished Indians for committing them. Macaulay adds: “ Robert Clive set up Mir Jaffar as ruler of Bengal for $ 6,192,875. Clive’s successors disposed him and set up Mir Kasim on payment of $ 1, 001,345. Two years later, he was replaced for $ 1, 151, 780 with Najib ud Daula.
The cost of annexation of India to serve British interests was borne by victims bearing every penny. Zimand said that British stole a quarter of a million square miles in forty years without spending a penny. This was the Great magnanimous British contribution to the unification of India! The fundamental purpose of British was to raise a nation of slaves subservient to their interests in every possible way while denying Indians every honour, dignity and office which the lowliest of Brits can be prevailed upon to accept. In the process, they went on to destroy the Hindu civilisation and making them contemptuous of their past achievements and culture. Even now some Indian political parties that tangoed with British during preindependence practice for the sake of power.
In late nineteenth century, Brits spent enormous amount on reinstating and reinforcing caste on Hinduism. Jatis and Varnas were based on occupation. And Jati wasn’t a hierarchical or a heriditary system. Brits crystallised them as superior, higher or lower or lowliest categories. They employed Brahmins in their offices while trying to please other castes with platitudes of kindness and efforts to protect them from threatening Brahmins. This way, they diverted people that the colonialists were the masters of society and all Hindus have been pushed to the lowliest caste in one stroke. Remember,the word caste was not an Indian word and was applied by British as was the word Hinduism instead of Sanatana Dharma. They found a messiah to split India on caste basis in
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/
Caste became handy to blame Hindus for the untold miseries inflicted on the British. It was a clever ploy to divide a way of living and convert the lower strata created by them to Christianity by acting saviours. We need to remember when the British arrived, India was experiencing Muslim rule of many centuries and Muslims were acting as masters of Hindus. Incidentally, the word Dalit was coined in 1920s. How did while the ruling elite called Muslims were on top did the Brahmins came to be blamed for bossing over other castes is an enigma. The myth of Brahmin superiority created by British hangs on even today for contemporary politics.
Did you read about British slave trade in India? Indians were slaves to handful of British masters and rapes became common with English judges siding and protecting the criminals. A community called Anglo Indians are proof of the morals and living by the Bible of the British. Fact remains British indulged in slave trade during their rule. When Britain abolished slave trade in its empire by Slavery abolition act of 1833, it included a clause that excluded India from the act. Andrea Major in book ‘Skavery, Abolitionism and Empire in India says “In fact eighteenth century Europeans including some Britains were involved in buying, selling and exporting of Indian slaves , transferring them across the sub continent, or to European slave colonies across the globe. According to Sir Henry Bartle Frere who sat on the Viceroy’s Council there were an estimated 8,000,000 to 9,000,000 slaves in India in 1841.
Thousands of Hindus were sold as slaves and transported to other nations of present commonwealth to serve the British masters under pretext of an indentured labourers in mines and plantations. They replaced slaves but were treated as slaves. They often starved under pitiable working conditions. So we find now Indian natives across the world...from West Indies to South Africa to Fiji some waving Indian flags at Sports events and cricket matches. Mostly lower castes were made slaves if they can not be converted in India and were transported by ships. It’s another matter that the Slave Indians became Christians on reaching foreign shores. They weren’t living a life of their choice. This is the good Christian spirit of kindness of Brits: Division by caste.
India throughout the ages had no prejudices based on skin colour. Hindu Gods and Goddesses were dark complexioned. There was not a single God confirmed to have been a brahmin ( debate is still on among Hindu baiting, secular Lutyens) and most Alwars, Nayanmars, Saints belonged to other castes. Even Saint Ramana Maharishi refused to be identitified with the caste of his birth, brahmanism. But, yet, India today has an admiration for the white skin thanks to the white skinned Moghuls and British and the skin colour has come to be associated with race supremacy. Check
A systematic application of racism wherein the British enforced caste nomenclatures into every day living by employing Brahmins as clerks in British India bureaucracy while crushing the spirit of other castes by brutal inhuman acts ranging from extreme taxes, slave trade, poverty helped them hit many birds with one stone. Indians fell for these acts as well as propaganda that they were responsible for their own bad state of affairs. But on rail and in the few educational institutions and hospitals, all castes of Hindus were dumped in third class compartments as other compartments became exclusive for the British. Indian apartheid introduced by British was hardly spoken on western media because British managed to convince them repeatedly that Indians were masters of their fate. That Indians travelled in packed class compartments in complete harmony without evidence of so called untouchability was never spoken about.
The kind British after declaring castes, declared some castes to be born criminals. Such a racist theory was unheard of in world history. The British enacted the criminal tribe acts of 1871 and 1911 which claimed that criminality was inherited and 38 tribes were identified as Criminals. After slapping Hindus, they will entice them to convert through their churches and also pass a rehabilitation act to save them from their criminality. Subterfuge, manipulations of the highest order were practiced. The Kallar rehabilitation program with Kallar reclamation schools was one such hypocritical program that criminalised the society while claiming to be an effort to decriminalising the community. Do you know Kallar boys above the age of sixteen had to sleep in the night at police stations or report twice in the night?
British enforced caste with exclusive caste based schools. Though the criminal tribes act was repealed in 1947, the Caste based school were not wound up as British reports had hailed the success of the act. Muthuramalinga Thevar fought tooth and nail against the act. It’s another thing that this criminalising of a community continued even after independence with the support of Congress party and the Dravidian parties and the Schools continue till today though without much success. Because, vote bank politics matters more than self respect for the people. Free India under Congress party believed freedom was enough and end of all for a democracy to survive. Mahatma Gandhi’s demand for unwinding of Congress fell on deaf ears.
Will Durant wrote in late 1920s : “It is said that England has given India unity. On the contrary she had delayed unity by supporting the caste system and setting up puppet princes in seven hundred independent native states, upon whose autocratic rulers Britain can rely to oppose the unification of India under a democracy. The Simon commission recommends further disunity by proposing the almost complete independence of each province; its secret purpose again is to ‘divide and rule’. India has two hundred languages or rather dialects.; so has Russia; so has non Russian Europe, which is no larger than India. Canada with one thirtieth of India’s population has 178. Already 20 crores out of 32 crore population speak Hindusthani(Hindi). For thousands of years, India has had an unity far deeper than that of language or government. She has had the moral and cultural unity of Europe in the Middle Ages”.
Riots continued between Muslims and Hindus during British rule but wasn’t it strange that all of them happened in British controlled states and none in native states. Mahatma Gandhi noted: In the case of many of these disturbances, we hear that the government agents were at the back of them. Ramsay McDonald said that malicious British officials were sowing discord between Muhammedan and hindu communities. The system of communal or sectarian elections by which religious units in India vote as a group for members of their own sect intensified the divisions and disunity of India .
The independent provinces were set against each other. When the Bengal Famine hit, most provinces didn’t come forward to help as British turned a Nelsons eye towards the province which was once India’s most prosperous state. Punjab Government. The British who set every province against another enacted the Defence of India Act in 1939 that gave power to provincial governments the power to restrict inter provincial trade. This empowered states to block export of rice to others within India. Punjab, Central provinces, Madras, Bihar and Orissa banned rice exports which affected Bengal. Result led to 30 lakh deaths. While British kept exporting rice from India to Srilanka and elsewhere. It was a clever game to make Indians fight each other and suffer. So divided India can be ruled easily.
British successfully divided India by making provinces fight each other, princes become enemies of other princes, deepening divisions of castes, setting Muslims and Hindus against each other and by all kinds of frauds and crimes unheard anywhere else in world history. Yet, to some, they were harbingers of Indian unity.
Nation states came into existence in mid 16 th century in Europe yet some say India wasn’t a nation during ancient times. It began through the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 and went through stages of evolvement initially in some European countries. It recognised exclusive sovereignty of areas under control and boundaries. The Utrecht Treaty of 1713 and the later Congress of Vienna helped shape. Japan was a nation state without these influences. But India, had an unique cultural influence that went beyond seas as a civilisation.
The concept of nationalism or nation states with clear boundaries evolved in Europe. USA was not an united nation we see on her independence from the British but slowly she forced some territories or states to join while some joined voluntarily into the confederation. Brits do not claim to have united USA as Americans held no regard for the British during independence. Yet despite the greatest crime in all history and second largest mayhem that equals nazi holocaust, pacifist Indians admire British not on facts but on emotions. India which was divided on independence had to show force to bring many princely states that were set free of India by the British. Yet we credit British for uniting India instead of discrediting them for their constant manipulations to divide India. British propaganda has made Indians propagate against themselves and disclaim their own achievements.
(To be continued)
PS: It’s irony that while Sikkim joined India Union voluntarily, Britain has threats from Ireland and Scotland to break away.
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