1947 Part 10a: Indian SummerSince the ages long before memory, India has been at the heart of the world. India was and is many things – a realm of riches and wonders, an awakening giant on the verge of returned glory and an empire of the spirit that served as the cradle of many of the world’s great faiths. It stands now at the brink of much change in a new world transformed by science, yet is one with its long and strong roots that stretch deep into the past. Above all these, are history, land and people.
Its history stretches back thousands and thousands of years to the semi-mythical age of the Vedas, through the rise and fall of many classical empires into the Middle Ages, when India rivaled China as the centre of world civilization. India has had not one but many golden ages and the Mughals were perhaps the grandest of them all, creating the basis of the subcontinent’s industrial era with The modern era, which had seen the subcontinent come under the control of far off lands and distant kings, had been but a drop in the long river of Indian history as it wends its way through time. From this sense of history came its intrinsic spirituality and sense of the worlds beyond this one, as well as a deep and abiding love and respect for them all.
It was land. A land older than man, a land of a thousand kings and a land of mountains that touch the sky. India is vast. Its true scale bears deep consideration; were one to place the subcontinent in Europe, it would stretch from the western coast of Ireland through to the heart of the Ukraine and from the outskirts of Stockholm to Malta. It stretched from the Persian Gulf to the Isthmus of Kra, encompassing every type of terrain and climate betwixt and between. The towering Himalayas and Hindu Kush separate India from much of the rest of Asia and from these hallowed heights, ancient rivers run through wild jungles, fruitful plains and desolate deserts down to the eternal sea. It was a land rich with the bounty of nature, containing every natural resource known to man in abundance and gifted with some of the most fertile and productive land under the sun.
Yet above all this, India was its people. 452 million souls dwelt in the Raj, making it the second largest country in the world by manpower behind Imperial China and also its largest democracy. Her ancient cities teemed with life and the villages and farms of her countryside abounded with inhabitants They were a people of myriad faiths – Hindoos, Moslems, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains and Christians to name but a few – and many dozens of races, ranging from the dark Tamils of the south to the fair Pashtuns of the mountains. Possessing the widest spread diaspora of any nation, the cultural impact of India’s people was felt in virtually every continent across the world and the Indosphere stretched over much of Southern Asia. The sheer numbers of the populace of the subcontinent had enabled the British Empire to raise armies of unimaginable size for deeds of war and peace and played a vital role in entrenching its hegemonic position over the last two centuries. Now, these same people looked to take control of their own destinies and their example would shape the world.
India in 1947 stood on the cusp of full Dominion status and responsible government. It would hold its first general election for the largest Parliament in the world, the culmination of years of complex and painstaking negotiations between key political groups, British authorities and the Princely States to reach a solution that would satisfy all parties. This achievement came twenty-two years after the passage of the momentous Government of India Act, which had set the expansive timetable for Home Rule and the evolution of the Raj into the modern Union of India. There were certainly elements from both wings of politics who sought to engineer a more radical transformation of the sub-continent, but their voices were drowned out by the tide of democratic reform.
Undoubtably the most significant driver of change and modernisation in postwar India had been the experience of the Second World War. For the first time in the modern age, Indian territory came under direct threat of attack from the armies of the Empire of Japan, while German and Italian submarines assaulted shiping within sight of its coasts. Yet these perils were momentary and, at wars end, Indian armies stood victorious in the smashed fascist lair of Berlin and atop the broken hills of Kyushu and her ships weighed anchor in Tokyo Bay. The Indian Army had fielded a peak strength of 6,248,539 men in 82 divisions, along with hundreds of smaller units that served in combat and garrison roles around the Empire that formed the equivalent of another two score divisions, and had seen action in every major theatre of war. The Royal Indian Air Force had begun the war with scarcely 100 modern aeroplanes, but reached a peak strength of 2938 aircraft and 376,485 men by 1945, while the Royal Indian Navy could proudly boast of a force of three Royal Indian Marine Divisions, 256 ships, 569 aircraft and 205,193 men, including the first aircraft carriers built in Indian shipyards, HMIS
Plassey and HMIS
Assaye.
The primary Indian effort had been focused against Japan and it provided the majority of Imperial forces for the great battles that saved Burma and Malaya and then ground the Japanese back across Siam, Cambodia and Vietnam before storming into China for the climactic battles of the Far Eastern War. Yet as well as this front, Indian troops and aircraft fought in Noprh Africa, the Mediterranean and the Middle East in substantial numbers. The RIN’s battles in South East Asia marked its transition from an arm of the Royal Navy to an independent fleet in its own right and earned a proud reputation for their long years of convoy protection in the Indian Ocean. The Indian military emerged from World War Two as one of the most powerful in the world, operating modern tanks, long range artillery and powerful fighters and this frontline strength was supported by an immense military industrial complex that had been built up over the last century. Demobilisation of this war machine would take several years, although the changing world environment ensured that there would be no return to true peacetime conditions.
This process would provide one of the essential questions of postwar Indian politics – what would be the place of India in the new world as it took its last steps towards effective independence? Would it retreat inwards into introspection, continue association with the British Empire and the West or throw its lot in with the waxing power of the East? Parliament was evenly divided between the Socialist, Liberal, National and United Parties, along with notable Communist and Democrat minorities and dozens of smaller regional groups. Throughout the war years, there had been substantial ongoing debate regarding the future of India after victory had been achieved and peace restored to the world. More than a few voices called for a reappraisal of India’s position with regard to the Empire, arguing that full independence could only go hand in hand with repudiation of the path of the past, but these were countered by equally strident arguments that the position of the world’s largest democratic entity lay alongside the forces of freedom. Even with the prospect of a removal of the Japanese threat that had so consumed Delhi since the end of the First World War did not`simplify the great questions of peace and war, particularly with the Great Game entering into a renewed phase now made more uncertain and dangerous by the shadow of the atom. Prime Minister Sir Gopal Krishna Gokhale’s Liberal and Moderate coalition had staked out the middle ground between the disassociation favoured by the National Party lead by Mahendra Patel and the enthusiastic pro-Western stance of the Union Party and Democratic leader Sir Rama Vikramaditya Singh continued to develop an impressive reputation for statesmanship and deft negotiation that belied the relative size of his party.
Indian culture had always been a mixture of the contemporary and the eternal and this could be seen in the continued popular interest in legends from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and the Vedas that provided much of the material for the great boom in the multitudinous films that Indian cinema had produced over the previous twenty five years. As in many other parts of the world, the previous decades had seen something of a revival in traditional religious beliefs across India and Moslem, Hindoo, Buddhist, and Sikhs alike were engaged in rediscovery of ancient mysteries. The exploits, successes and failures of the Indian cricket team increasingly captivated large sections of the population with their star players - the graceful captain, the great Duleepsinhji, the redoubtable Nawab of Pataudi and the dashing Lala Amarnath. A similarly high profile was enjoyed by the wandering orders of warrior ascetics and the mystical yogis, who were much loved by the common folk. Great advances in science and medicine over the previous century had revolutionized Indian everyday life and health and the immemorial reverence for learning and wisdom was now also transferred to the doctors, engineers and scientists who labored to extend the benefits of modernity across the subcontinent.
However, to truly understand the great tides shaping India after the Second World War, one must examine its long and storied history, among the richest and most complex of all the widespread cultures of mankind. Man had dwelt on the subcontinent since the Middle Stone Ages, with the oldest known remains dating back over 700,000 years. For most of this time, through ice ages and warm periods, life remained much the same, consisting of hunter-gatherers following the great herds of game across the verdant plains.The deep origins of Indian civilisation stretch back over ten millennia, with the first organized human settlements arising on the banks of the Indus at the same time as the general rise of cities along the other great river valleys, although there have been some strange ruins located offshore that point to earlier antediluvian developments in the epoch of Atlantis. In this Chalcolithic era came the events that would serve as the basis for the Mahabarata War between the Kauravas and Pandavas, which up until recently were regarded as purely mythical. These ancient kingdoms and conflicts were swept away by the aftermath of the war, their names and people alost to history and little known of their lives although some ruins indicate the damage characteristically inflicted by dragonfire.
The first major Indian civilization that modern man discovered was that of the Harappans, which arose in the Indus Valley at the dawn of the Bronze Age in 4800 B.C from the myriad agricultural villages dotted along the banks of the fertile river. Similar to the other notable early civilisations of Egypt, China and Mesopotamia, they domesticated crops and animals alike, developed pottery and built great walled cities of mudbricks. Extensive trading networks sent the products of their craftsmen across the subcontinent and surrounding area – bronze tools, elaborate pots and children’s toys and jewelry of lapis lazuli and gold. The Harappans even independently developed their own form of writing, the so-called Indus script, which remained a mystery to scholars until 1926, when it was deciphered by the famed Professor Digory Kirke. Their cities were sophisticated urban centre, with the world’s first sanitations systems, heated public baths and huge granaries that supplied them through hard seasons, as well as the focus of considerable advanced learning in astronomy, mathematics and metallurgy. The largest city of the Harappans, Mohenjo-Daro, had a population in excess of 50,000, all ruled by a single priest-king who dwelt in a large ziggurat shaped palace at the centre of the settlement. The chief wonder of this great urban centre was the vast step pyramid that lay just beyond the city walls, aligned almost directly with the Great Pyramids of Giza and the mysterious lines at Nazca.
Of all the civilisations of the ancient world, those of India have been the most enigmatic for modern historians searching for their secrets and chief among the reasons for this was the sudden collapse of the Late Harrapan civilisation in approximately 2000 B.C. Evidence suggests that it had been in decline for several centuries through the effects of various outbreaks of plague and pestilence and ongoing agricultural failure exacerbated by the great droughts that ravaged the northern hemisphere around 2200 B.C. However, recent discoveries have revealed that the the final fall of the Indus Valley civilisation occurred amidst a far more violent upheaval – the Aryan invasions. Driven by changes in climate and the ravages of goblinkind, the Indo-European Aryans began their gradual series of migrations out of their ancestral home of the Central Eurasian steppe into the subcontinent after the Great Drought and, after a century of waxing power, put Mohenjo-Daro to the sack. Their chariot-making and bronze weapons gave them victory over the Harappans, who were subdued or slain in their thousands, their remains being recently uncovered by the excavations of Sir Mortimer Wheeler, Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India. Once again, some artifacts displayed the signs of being burnt by a fire beyond the capabilities of ancient man, but the events of the fall of the city have seemingly been lost to the sands of time.
What followed is known to historians as the Vedic period, known as such after the epic poems passed down by word of mouth through the many long ages. The invading Aryan tribes initially settled into a semi-nomadic existence in the fertile uplands of the Indus Valley, fighting a series of bloody semi-mythical wars chronicled in the Rigveda. In this era, several of the main foundations of modern Indian culture began to emerge, namely the Hindu religion and the caste system. They ruled over the native Dravidian peoples, forming many small wandering warbands that fought each other in a series of complex and bitter wars which were recorded for posterity in the Rigveda. Chief among these was the Battle of Ten Kings, fought along the banks of the Parushni between the Bharatas and the Purus over the control of its vital wars and the supply of horses, the sacrifice of which lay at the centre of their religion. The nomadic tribes eventually began to settle down into an agrarian lifestyle, aided by weapons and tools of iron that had spread in from the Fertile Crescent, establishing the Kuru Kingdom, which dominated India for over a century. It was followed by a series of smaller states known as Mahajanapadas, which extend out to the plain of the Ganges. Here were seen the first manifestations of varna, the social order that served as the origin of the modern caste system, separating people into Brahmins (priests and scholars), Ksatriya (warriors and rulers), Vaishyas ( farmers, craftsmen and merchants) and Sudras (labourers and servants). The basis of modern Hinduism developed at this time through the Vedas,
Mahabharata, the
Ramayana and Upanishads, as the gods of the ancient Vedic religion gave way to Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, the creator, the preserver and the destroyer. The Sanatan Dharma held that there was a higher order and purpose to the universe that would provide fulfilment to the experience of human life and that this could be found through the multitudinous aspects of Brahma. This development of an ordered and civil religion reflected the growing rootedness of Indian society and culture.
Civilisation in India now entered its golden age, as the sixteen great Mahajanapadas coalesced into four larger and more powerful entities – Avanti, Kosala, Maghada and Vatsa. New forms of writing were introduced and the Sanskrit language emerged in a recognizable form, stimulating trade and the movement of peoples. Many were the wars that took place between the great kingdoms and now a new element entered into the art of warfare for the first time in human history – the elephant. Both the more numerous Indian elephants and the huge, thick-hided mammoths were progressively employed as shock weapons on the battlefield to great effect, soon attracting such esteem that a common maxim proclaimed that ‘an army without elephants is as despicable as a forest without a lion, a kingdom without a king’. Their use would spread out across the ancient world, yet it was in India that elephantry would make its greatest impact over the next two thousand years and be turned into a military artform. The largest beasts would carry wooden castles on their backs and their accompanying array of deadly archers and mystics could ward off even younger dragons as they dominated the battlefield. Blacksmiths in the south of India rediscovered the processes for the forging of steel that had been long lost in the antediluvian past, creating the strongest weapons and swords known to mankind that could rival even those of the dwarves of the northern mountains. It was also at this time that the first in the long tradition of Indian warrior ascetics or nagas emerged, adept at both armed and unarmed combat and capable of great feats of endurance and fortitude, as one aspect of the multifarious development of Indian religion.
Many religious reformers arose in this age, but none were so great or consequential as Siddhartha Gautama, known to eternity as the Buddha. Born a coseted prince of Kapilavastu in Northern India, all signs of suffering and decay were kept from him until the age of 29, when, upon encountering them, he forsook his lofty position and took up the life of an ascetic sadhu questing for the truth. He is said to have achieved enlightenment after protracted meditation under a fig tree, whereupon he began to teach of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, the foundations of the great modern religion of Buddhism. His ideas were the most wide reaching of the Indian religious teachers of the age, influencing thinkers as far away as China and the Mediterranean world during his long lifetime, but many other new ideas sprang up in this epoch of learning and philosophy, a time some scholars have come to call the Axis Age, after the concurrent rise of Confucius, Lao Tzu, Zarathustra, Plato and the great Hebrew prophets. Buddhism spread rapidly across the subcontinent and into the rest of the Orient over the following centuries and its ideas became an intrinsic feature of Eastern culture.
Arising above this time of philosophy and the spreading tides of civilisation came a new figure, who stood astride the ancient world like one of the mythical titans – Alexander III of Macedon, known universally to posterity as Alexander the Great. His domains stretched from the Pillars of Hercules to the soaring heights of the Hindu Kush, conquering the vast Persian Empire and laying it low in his wake, bringing him and his undefeated Greek armies to the gates of India. Alexander crossed into the modern day Punjab in 327 BC, seeking to subjugate the entire known world under his rule. He defeated King Porus of the Pauravas at the Battle of the Hydaspes River, making his valiant foe his satrap and forging on ever to the east. After reaching the banks of the Ganges, Alexander defeated Dhana Nanda, known to the Hellenic world as Agrammes, ruler of the vast Nanda Empire, in an epic battle that saw the Macedonians prevail despite grievous losses. Yet this would be the last of his victories in India, as his armies rose up and prevailed upon him to go no further forward, but rather to allow them to finally return home. Thus it was that Alexander set off back to the west, driving for the mouth of the Indus and the port of Barbarikon. His campaigns in India did great damage to the lands of the Indus Valley and resulted in countless thousands of deaths, but he is remembered in Indian literature and mythology as a legendary figure of weal and woe.
Yet far greater than Alexander to the fate of the land was the mighty king who arose out of the ashes left by the destruction of his invasion of the subcontinent, the founder of the greatest empire that spanned classical India - Chandragupta Maurya. Although a scion of nobility, he was raised by humble peasants and, after an extensive education, began to raise an army with the aid of his guru Chanakya to put an end to the chaos and disorder that had descended upon India. One of his key allies was a tribal kingdom of dwarves, the Kumbala, who provided substantial fighting forces and powerful weaponry. First he systematically overrun the Macedonian satrapies of the Indus Valley and harnessed the wealth and power of its land and people, then he turned upon the dying remnants of the Nanda Empire to the east, conquering it in a series of brilliant victories. His armies numbered over 600,000 men and counted war elephants, tigers and dragons among them. The efforts of Seleucus Nicator, one of Alexander's successors, to halt the conquests of Chandragupta, or Sandrakottas as he was known to the Hellenic world, were in vain as he was forced to concede to a amiable peace, cemented by a royal marriage.
The new Mauryan Empire spanned from the mouths of the Indus to the fertile Ganges delta, but once it was won, Chandragupta did not seek further conquests or to dominate the known world, but instead threw his considerable talents and energy into the good governance and sound statecraft of his domains and in this he encountered his greatest success. Many great roads, highways bridges and irrigation systems were built up and a prosperous trade network restored under the protection of his efficient administration and armies. Mines and armories supported his policies of avoiding war but maintaining a strong military to ensure the continuation of peace. Above all, he sought to be a ruler driven by dharma, or morality, as set out in the Arthashastra of Chanakya. The manner of the end of his reign in 298 BC encapsulates his status as a quintessentially Indian ruler, installing his well prepared son safely on the throne and then forsaking riches to live out his days as a Jainist ascetic, ending his life with a fast in search of enlightenment.
His grandson, Ashoka, would build upon the foundations established by Chandragupta Maurya, firstly by expanding the frontiers of the empire in the bloody Kalinga War to the east. Over 100,000 enemy warriors and civilians died in the climactic battles of the conflict, greatly disturbing the young Emperor and influencing his conversion to Buddhism. The remaining thirty years of his reign saw an emphasis on goodness, right conduct and just laws across his domains. Ashoka championed tolerance of different religious beliefs and promoted the spread of Buddhism through great construction projects and the dispatching of many missionaries across Asia. Laws were passed ensuring the humane treatment of man and beast alike, establishing many veterinary clinics and the ritual slaughter of animals was prohibited. Great pillars were erected to mark his rule and new cities of stone were built, rivaling the ancient and mysterious pyramids that stood as silent sentinels to those who had come before history. For perhaps the first time in the ancient world, an empire flourished based on the principles of pacifism and justice, which extended towards the nonhuman inhabitants of India and even the goblinoid species. At this time, Ashoka sponsored the quests of many adventuring heroes to understand and embody the virtues of the Eightfold Path, and their deeds have been passed down in the folk memory of the peoples of India.
Ashoka was followed by a succession of weaker kings and the Mauryan Empire eventually crumbled after a bloody military rebellion in 185 B.C. The unified realm disintegrated into a collection of competing successor states, including the Andhra and Shunga Empires and the renewed Kingdom of Kalinga. Greek forces invaded from Bactria and established the prosperous Indo-Greek Kingdom in the fertile valley of Indus over the next century, before they fell in turn to an invasion by the nomadic Scythians. As the power of Rome rose in the west to dominate the Mediterranean world and the might of Han China waxed in the east, India was once again united by the deeds of a superlative individual leader, Drashta Saravana. Born in the ancient city of Varanasi, he wandered through India as a child and spent a decade studying the arts of mystical power with great yogis high in the Himalayas before forging his way south to build an army, aided by the wise dragon-sage Ashtavara. By 164 B.C., he had driven out the interlopers from the west and ruled a unified empire from his grand capital at Pataliputra, then the largest city in the Old World. Drashta’s 27 year reign was marked by continued support of Buddhism and great prosperity and the construction of one of the great wonders of Classical Antiquity, the marvelous underground city of Mount Paradana. The Saravana Empire would flourish for the next three centuries, before collapsing suddenly as the result of a terrible ten year drought and associated rebellion in 248 A.D.
After a brief interregnum of several decades, a new entity arose to dominate the northern area of the subcontinent, the Gupta Empire, and its period of dominance in Late Antiquity between 330 and 590 AD is often regarded as one of the Golden Ages of Indian cultural development. As Rome and China declined to the west and east, the relative power of India rose and theirs was the most powerful empire in the world for much of the period. The Gupta era saw Hinduism eclipse Buddhism as the major religion of the state, although it had never truly declined among the everyday people of the land. Theirs was an epoch of outstanding art and architecture, with the completion of the Grand Mahabodhi Temple perhaps their greatest achievement. Learning and science flourished in the two and a half centuries of the Guptas, including the development of the mathematical concept of zero and the formulation of the heliocentric model of the Solar System. The Gupta army was based largely around archers equipped with new, powerful bamboo longbows, as well as the traditional Indian array of chariotry and elephantry. The decline and fall of the Guptas followed much of the same pattern as Rome, with costly border wars against barbarians and a succession of ineffectual kings creating a nexus of weakness that was dealt a mortal blow by the great climactic events of the age and the dreadful invasion of the Alchon Huns from the northwest.
Thereupon began the Indian Middle Ages, a thousand year period of the rise and fall of warring kingdoms and empires that paled in comparison with the grand entities of the classical period, even as Indian cultural influence extended throughout South East Asia. It was an age characterized by the clash between entities based around four major areas: the northwestern Indus Valley, the central Gangetic Plains, the river deltas of the northeast and the Deccan plateau of the south. The great Tripartite Struggle between the Pala, Rashtrakutra and Pratihara Empires in the 9th Century for the control of the strategic north of India resulted in victory for the latter, but they were weakened significantly and could not offer effective resistance to the newest invaders to come pouring through the northwest, the Moslem Ghaznavids of Persia. Earlier campaigns against the subcontinent had been conducted by the Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates of Islam, but their penetration had been limited to the mountainous borderlands and the Kingdom of Sindh. Sultan Mahmoud of Ghazni launched assault after assault into India and extended his rule across the Indus Valley, setting the pattern for a century of raids by Moslem warriors. These culminated in the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate by Mohammed of Ghor and his Mamluk successors, an empire that would last for 320 years until 1526 AD. Terrible campaigns of repression against Buddhism ensued, with many great monuments and stupas laid low in an orgy of destruction that sparked the Moslem-Buddhist Wars which lasted on and off for much of the 13th century. Yet even as this bitter struggle raged, the power of the Delhi Sultanate managed to repel the greater threat of invasion by the Mongol Empire through concerted defence of the borderlands. The fusion of the ancient Indian cultural traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism with Islamic civilization resulted in the emergence of a new hybrid entity and a dramatic rise in the population and wealth of the Indian subcontinent, whilst at the same time creating a distinct divide between the Moslem aristocracy and Hindoo peasantry. In the south, the Vijayanagara Empire stood firm against the campaigns of the Delhi Sultanate and maintained their traditional beliefs and culture. The era is particularly notable for the adventures and exploits of the warrior ascetics and yogis who became storied folk heroes for their defence of the common people against the ravages of invasion and exploitation.
In the final years of the 14th Century, a new and terrible threat boiled out of Central Asia in the form of the dread Tamerlane, scion of Genghis Khan. After having conquered much of the Persian territories of the Ilkahnate to join to his realm of Samarkand, Tamerlane turned his attentions to the rich lands of India. He invaded across the Indus and pushed inexorably on Delhi. On the 17th of December 1398, a climactic battle took place before the walls of the city, with the elephantry of Sultan Nasir-ud-Din decisively defeated by Tamerlane’s ingenious use of flaming camels and a pair of young dragons. Delhi was brutally sacked and over 100,000 of its people put to the sword in an orgy of unrestrained destruction. A new line of kings who owed their fealty to Tamerlane and his house was established, ruling for half a century before the final dynasty of the Delhi Sultanate regained some measure of control. This was but a fleeting moment, as then came Babur, descended of the Timurid line and seeking a new kingdom within India to replace that which he had lost in Samarkand. He invaded and decisively defeated the army of Sultan Ibrahim Lodi at the Battle of Panipat, smashing aside his cavalry and elephantry with artillery and firearms. This was followed by twin victories over the strong forces of the Rajput kings and a triumphal entry into Delhi, whereupon he took possession of the greatest treasures of the realm which had been hidden away even from Tamerlane, including an array huge gemstones of fabled magics, an ancient sword of mystical power and five dragon eggs. Babur would go on to establish a new empire in 1526 that would be the greatest to span India since the time of the Mauryas – the Mughal Empire.
The following two centuries were truly the golden age of the Mughals, one of glory and might. They succeeded in combining the ancient traditions of India with the Islamic culture of Persia and the Near East in a manner never achieved by their predecessors. Through the miraculous hatching of all five dragon eggs in a period of ten years, they built a draconic power unrivalled outside of China itself. Babur’s grandson Akbar the Great began the true pomp of the Mughals, extending the empire to cover the entire subcontinent and bringing about an age of religious tolerance not seen since the epoch of Ashoka. He built a new expansive capital in Fatehpur Sikri and gathered about him a highly sophisticated court and government to efficiently administer his expansive realms. Commerce flourished, including with the first tentative contacts with the trading companies of the European empires, and the increased revenues of the state were harnessed for the construction of great roads, forts and irrigation networks. Indian wizardry, which had declined in status during the initial stages of the Islamic invasions of the subcontinent, now experienced a renaissance comparable to that of the Art in the Western World, albeit focused on spellcraft and arcane works of a decidedly Indian character. The final years of his reign saw the arrival of the first ship of the English East India Company, the
Golden Lion, commanded by the renowned adventurer Sir Charles Ratcliffe.
Akbar was succeeded by two more strong emperors in Jahangir and Shah Jehan, with the latter responsible for the construction of that most enduring symbol of Indian architecture and culture, the Taj Mahal; the vast and hauntingly beautiful mausoleum serving as a monument to his enduring love for his lost wife. The grandeur of the Mughal court and the building projects of its emperors would become the harbinger of their own fall, as more and more revenues were channeled into extravangent expenses. Shah Jehan was imprisoned by his son Aurangzeb after a mysterious illness and died in 1666 in Agra Fort, some eight years after the latter had taken the throne. It was under the reign of Aurangzeb that Mughal India reached its economic peak, surpassing China as the richest state in the world and recording an annual revenue of over 5000 million rupees. Aurangzeb would remain on the throne for 50 years and is often considered to be the last of the great Mughal emperors, conquering the Golconda Sultanate and establishing suzerainty over much of Southern India. The latter half of the 17th century saw the highpoint of the rivalry between the three great ‘Gunpowder Empires’ of the Moslem world – the Mughals, Ottoman Turkey and Saffavid Persia – with the strength of the Turks waning even as that of India reached its apex. Aurangzeb embraced a decidedly more conservative religious approach than that of his father and grandsire, imposing the jizya and ordering the destruction of numerous temples. One of the religious groups that attracted his particular persecution was Sikhism, several of whose gurus were put to grievous tortures and death, culminating in their establishment of the Khalsa, or sacred order of Sikh warriors. These campaigns had the unintended side effect of leading to the three of the four remaining Mughal dragons abandoning the cause of the empire. The latter half of his reign saw the eventual eclipse of Mughal power as the new vigorous Maratha Empire first resisted and then defeated the armies of Aurangzeb, expanding their domains from Bombay to encompass huge swathes of India. His death in 1707 heralded the beginning of bloody wars of succession as new kingdoms broke away in Bengal, Hyderabad and the Punjab. The final blow to the power of the Mughals came in 1739 as the Persian ruler Nadir Shah became the last great invader to penetrate through the tradition route through the Hindu Kush and sack Delhi.
By the middle of the 18th century, the destiny of India became inextricably intertwined with that of the rest of the world. Europe had emerged from the Middle Ages and prospered through the Renaissance and great voyages of discovery that had given its kingdoms and empires the boundless resources of the New World, further stimulating the advancement of trade and science which pushed it ahead of the traditional colossi of the East in China and India. Vasco da Gama of Portugal had been the first Western seafarer in the modern epoch to reach India in 1499 and the Portuguese had been joined by the English, Dutch, French, Swedish and Spanish by the end of the 16th century. It would be the great rivals of England and France that would emerge as the most influential foreign actors in India by the 1660s, establishing trading posts along both coasts of India and bringing the wars of Europe to the seas and lands of the Orient. The English East India Company and Royal Navy defeated the French and their Indian allies in the First and Second Carnatic Wars between 1746 and 1754, prior to the outbreak of the first climactic global conflict of the Seven Years’ War in 1756.
Britain won a great triumph at the Battle of Plassey in 1757 as Robert Clive defeated a larger army commanded by the Nawab of Bengal through fine generalship, superior firepower and spellcraft and the devastating use of his pair of dragons. The victory won them effective paramountcy over Bengal and an indemnity of 6 million pounds, leaving them as the dominant European empire on the subcontinent. This was confirmed by Clive’s next great victory at the Siege of Pondicherry in 1761 the terms of the Treaty of Paris in 1763, which ended the power and influence of the French in India as their final outposts now fell under the control of the British. The new Nawab of Bengal, Mir Jafar, was an effective puppet of the East India Company, who were granted the diwani, or right to collect revenue, for Bengal and Bihar, greatly increasing their already considerable profits. The first decade after the war saw the rapid accumulation of enormous wealth by the nabobs of the Company, which aroused considerable anger in the British metropole at their seeming disregard for principle and rampant corruption. Clive returned to win another resounding victory in 1765 and put in place a sweeping programme of military reforms which made the Company army the most formidable military force on the subcontinent. Yet the sheer scale of political and commercial corruption was too substantive for any one man to combat and more dramatic measures were seen as necessary to cement British control and establish a more effective administration and Clive’s early demise from the Red Death in 1766 prevented him from having any lasting impact on the administrative policy of the Company’s Bengali domains.
The British Government had been much vexed by the inability of the East India Company to discharge its responsibilities, including the annual payment of £1.5 million to the British Government for its monopoly on tea sales, and despite the Regulating Act of 1773, the situation only grew more dire during the period of the American Revolutionary War. The one measure of note to have any effect was the establishment of the position of Governor-General of India and an advisory Supreme Council to oversee the Company’s three presidencies of Bengal, Bombay and Madras, with Warren Hastings being the first to hold the esteemed position. Hastings would be the first of several early Governor-Generals who would support the integration of Company personnel and administration with existing Indian customs and power structures, but also proved to have no answer to the issue of devastating famines, which combined with considerable rises in land taxes, . the deleterious practice of tax farming and the cultivation of cash crops to have a devastating impact on the peasantry of Bengal.
In 1784, Prime Minister William Pitt engineered a wide-sweeping India Act to combat corruption and bring the administration of Company affairs and territories in India under government control. It created a Board of Control, increased the annual revenue to the Crown and established the beginnings of a reformed civil service for the better administration of India, but its most curious measure was the introduction of the position of Grand Diwan. This role would be filled by an experienced wizard who would take the role of the chief counsellor and advisor to the Governer-General and head of the Supreme Council, with the traditional Indian title selected as something of a gesture of accommodation to existing customs. First to hold this office was Sir Rephaiah Ambrosius, whose views and policies would help shape the destiny of India over the next seventy-eight years. Hastings was replaced in 1785 by Earl Cornwallis, who put in place the Cornwallis Code of legislation for the administration of India and the Compact of Settlement, which put in place a fixed land tax payable by Indian zamindars to the Company, aimed at encouraging development of land, whilst preserving the role of the traditional aristocracy.
In 1793, Richard Wellesley, the Earl of Mornington, took office as Governor-General and would continue in this position for the next dozen years. During this period, the forces of the British East India Company won decisive victories over the Tipu Sultan in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War and, more significantly, over the Maratha Confederacy in the Second Anglo-Maratha War, both campaigns being commanded by General Arthur Wellesley, later the Duke of Wellington and victor of Waterloo. The crushing successes of the Battle of Assaye in 1803 and the Battle of Farrukhabad in 1804 saw the removal of the last major rivals to British dominance of the subcontinent, with only the Sindh and the Sikh domains of the northwest remaining as truly independent entities. The Sikh Empire waxed under the rule of the great Ranjit Singh, the Lion of the Punjab, in the first decades of the 19th century and led to the largest expansion of the new faith in its brief history, but eventually it fell under Company rule in the Anglo-Sikh War of 1831-32, bringing its many treasures under British control and the Punjab joining Bengal, Bombay and Madras as the fourth great presidency of British India. This marked the shift from the role of the Company as a commercial entity to an imperial one, with its influence spreading well beyond India to the Persian Gulf and Araby in the west and the Malay peninsula in the east. The vile cult of Thuggee and the custom of widow burning were suppressed through decisive British action and a steady flow of missionaries, teachers and scholars arrived by the year with many idealistic visions of changing India. However, just as with other conquerors over its long history, India would absorb much of their efforts and assimilate them in turn.
It was at this time that the most consequential figure in 19th century Indian history came to the fore in the form of John Michael Ryan, the Marquess of Avalon. Holding the position of Governor-General between 1829 and 1845 before becoming the first Viceroy of India, he oversaw tremendous changes to the administration, finances, government and military of India and implemented a program of agricultural reforms and infrastructure construction that would permanently change the subcontinent. A valiant soldier who had won fame on the field of Waterloo, Ryan had been sent out by a Tory government that saw the revenues of the East India Company as the optimal means of paying down the massive national debt accrued in the Napoleonic Wars. He heeded the counsel of Ambrosius that the best method to accomplish this goal would be to encourage the growth of the Indian economy, rather than simply increase taxes and tribute, a view that the now venerable wizard had developed over several decades of study and travel through the subcontinent. The Grand Diwan had been attempting to steer policy towards such a direction with regard to cotton manufactures and domestic weaving in Bengal, but had been able to achieve comparatively little due to the competing pressures of British textile producers. In Ryan, he found an ally and several of the more egregious methods used to suppress Indian domestic textile production were curtailed, although much suffering had already been inflicted. Throughout 1830, amid great debate in Calcutta, Ryan and his advisors formulated his Grand Design, which was centred on the notion of increasing the agricultural productivity of Indian land through the implementation of arcane and scientific advances that had so benefited Britain in the previous two centuries in what some have termed the Agricultural Revolution, along with massive irrigation and road building programmes. The initial phase of experimental reforms and projects began in Bengal in 1832, but yielded mixed results for the first four years until 1836, when crop yields rose by almost a quarter through a combination of new tools and methods, fertility enchantments, new varieties of rice and the provision of funds for the improvement of land. This increase could not be matched in subsequent years, but agricultural production began a steady rise that would continue over several decades in combination with improvements in irrigation, particularly through the dedication and genius of Sir Arthur Cotton, who would make his mark on the landscape of India with a vast network of canals and barrages. Ryan’s period in office also saw the beginning of the construction of the vast Indian railway network, which is still growing to this day and stands as one of the marvels of the modern world. The growth of Indian internal trade was stimulated by these improvements in transport, although Ambrosius’s expansive vision for an India where the awful spectres of famine and privation were banished to the past would take many long decades to come to pass.
Amid these changes and challenges came the war scare of 1842, when cooling relations between Russia and Britain threatened to engulf even India in a great conflagration between the imperial rivals, which had been decidedly icy since the Anglo-Persian War of 1839. A succession of confused events and ultimatums culminated in an invasion of Afghanistan by the 50,000 strong Army of the Indus, assembled from the cream of the Company’s forces. They met with initial success and overthrew Emir Dost Mohammed Khan, but soon learnt the harsh lessons experienced by Alexander and other conquerors of the past regarding the difficulty of campaigning in Afghanistan. Lasting victory proved elusive and the residual garrisons soon found themselves largely tied to the major cities, forts and castles across the rugged country until a series of negotiated settlements were reached with key tribal leaders. Ryan’s examinations of the state of Indian defence determined that even with greater coordination between the armies of the four presidencies, India was significantly lacking in efficient, modern forces and could not support an indefinite active deployment in Afghanistan. This quandary further added to the broader debate in London lead by Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel regarding the viability of Company rule and the incompatibility of its monopoly over trade with the new enthusiasm for free trade.
After long and at times bitter debate, Peel pushed through the Government of India Act of 1845, which transferred control and sovereignty of the Company’s territories in India to the Crown, created an Indian Civil Service and India Office under a Secretary of State and took on the responsibilities of the Company with regard to all treaties, contracts and agreements. The East India Company’s monopoly over Indian trade would end by 1850 in return for compensation in the form of land and money, an expansive mercantile agreement including the rights to existing mines and canal revenue and the rights to its own modest forces for the security of its holdings beyond the subcontinent. The Marquess of Avalon would take on a new expanded role as the first Viceroy of India, continuing in the position until 1848 and Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India. The native Indian aristocracy and royalty would be accorded the same rights and privileges as English nobles of the same rank and many of their sons would be educated in British schools and universities. The British Raj would continue for the next century and its first years would be marked by mixture of continuity with the Orientalist style of the early 19th century and a distinctly Victorian faith in progress and modernity. Britons continued to flock to India in search of fame and fortune and the ranks of the Anglo-Indian community swelled, both in terms of the products of marriage between Europeans and Indians and those Englishmen born in the Raj. British society continued to be enamoured with the exoticism of the products and traditions of the subcontinent and this taste for the Orient increased the demand for Indian goods and manufactures.
Over the next two decades, the fruits of the reforms of the 1830s began to yield greater prosperity, with one particularly noticeable effect being the increasing movement of large numbers of Indians to the cities and from thence to different areas of the expanding British Empire across Africa and Asia; the resultant Indian diaspora of today is one of the widest spread and most industrious in the world. India made many contributions to the strength and prosperity of Britain during the golden years of the Victorian Industrial Revolution, chief among them being grain and cotton, but above all else, its manpower and market stood out as giving London a decisive advantage over her European competitors. The military capacity of the subcontinent had truly allowed the British Empire to become the first global superpower. Following the tumultuous global conflict of the Crimean War, where Indian troops played a significant role across several fronts, the new British Indian Army was expanded and saw extensive service across the Orient in the second half of the century. Recruitment was centred on the martial races, in line with the prevailing theories of the time and Gurkha and Sikh regiments won fame across the Empire. Burma had been conquered in the Anglo-Burmese War of 1852-53 and was incorporated within the Raj for administrative purposes, stretching its borders down to the shores of the Gulf of Siam, whilst the Himalayan kingdoms of Nepal and Bhutan were considered for all intents and purposes as allied princely states under the protection of British India. The four presidencies of Punjab, Bengal, Madras and Bombay were joined by a fifth major entity in the form of Hindustan, an amalgamation of the central and northern provinces of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. Each fielded a strong field army of British and Indian infantry and cavalry regiments supported by engineers, wizards and artillery, in addition to a central reserve force based in the fortress complex around Delhi.
Even as the defence of India became more secure, there were shifting tides within the Raj, driven by rising prosperity and the gradual changes imparted by improved education.
The last major famine in India took place in 1867 and although subsequent food shortages occurred on a localized basis over the latter decades of the century, they did not result in significant mortality. The growing urban working class created much wealth for the newly emerging middle class of merchants, traders and industrialists who were not entitled to many of the privileges imparted to the Indian aristocracy. The network of Indian schools, colleges and universities encouraged the dissemination of new thoughts and opinions regarding equal access to all of the rights and privileges of British subjects Eloquent voices across British and Indian society advocated the extension of representation for Indians and an end to legal disparities between the different subjects of the Crown. These effort increased throughout the 1880s, leading to the establishment of representative legislative councils in each of the presidencies and provinces and a increasingly significant role for Indian personnel in the civil service and non-commissioned ranks of the military. This was followed by the Indian Councils Act of 1890, which increased representation on the councils, established a framework for the election of Indian members and expanded their role. Although these measures addressed many of the concerns of higher caste and wealthier Indians, there was still a great deal of overt discrimination towards the majority of the poor rural populace and a casual sense of British superiority that was felt in many interactions and provided the origin of considerable support for radicalism and socialism in certain circles.
Just as war and the threat of war had been responsible for the birth of the Raj, two particular conflicts would now be the catalyst for great changes in India in the beginning of the 20th century.
The South African War at the dawn of the century saw over 160,000 Indian sepoys drawn from all five armies deployed alongside forces from across the Empire, providing vindication to the Imperial General Staff plans for their use in large scale conflicts. This was but a small foretaste of the Great War, which saw the British Indian Army deploy expeditionary forces to France, China, East Africa, Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Mediterannean and muster a total strength of 2,564,887 men in 56 divisions. They would suffer 87,542 dead and over 200,000 wounded or captured in the fifty months of war and win 64 Victoria Crosses for valour. These displays of courage and devotion made an extremely strong impression on public opinion and added greatly to the case that India merited a due reward for its efforts and sacrifices. India had been represented on the Imperial Council since its inaugural meeting in 1901, albeit by delegates nominated by the Viceroy, but now there was definitive pressure from political parties within India and throughout the Empire for a more equitable settlement. The London Conference of 1920 made a range of recommendations after long debate, which resulted in the great reforms of the Government of India Bill, which was first introduced into the House of Commons in 1924. It set out a commitment for the establishment of a united Dominion of India consisting of both the territories of the British Raj and the Princely States, full internal responsible government, free elections and equal status within the British Empire, spread out over a timetable of 25 years. This was controversial in both India and Britain, with many voices in the former calling for an accelerated path, whilst disagreements over the very question of Indian sovereignty lead to a fracture within the Conservative Party and the emergence of the die hard Imperialists, who opposed what they characterized as a hasty and ignominious course of action. It was passed by the Commons and the House of Lords in 1925 amid substantial bitterness.
India experienced strong economic growth during the first half of the 1920s, but the Soviet war scare of 1927/28 and the onset of the Great Depression constrained its development somewhat, although the subcontinent was largely insulated from the worst effects of the latter catastrophe. The construction of the great imperial capital of New Delhi, the masterwork of Sir Edward Lutyens, was completed in 1932, with many of its magnificent monuments and civic buildings serving as centrepieces of the new state that was gradually emerged. The powers and responsibilites of the native members of the Indian Civil Service were gradually increased, creating a large class of trained administrators to pave the way towards self-government. The Nehru Report of 1930, chiefly prepared by Sir Motilal Nehru set out a proposed draft constitution for the new Dominion, including a Bill of Rights, a commitment to equality of religions and protection for minorities, and this drove subsequent discussion in the 1930s, culminating in the first session of the Parliament of India in 1936 after a lengthy constitutional convention producing an agreeable Constitution in 1935. The deteriorating international situation cast a shadow over the political development of India and a limited prepatory mobilization of certain defence and industrial assets began in early 1939 as the spectre of war seemed inevitable. Upon the outbreak of war in Europe, the Viceroy, the Marquess of Zetland and Secretary of State for India Sir Leo Amery engineered an agreement with the Indian Prime Minister Sir Gopal Krishna Gokhale for a unified declaration of war on Nazi Germany, paving the way for a full commitment of Indian effort.
The initial years of the Second World War seemed very far away from India itself, with its expeditionary forces acquitting themselves with aplomb in the doomed fighting on the Western Front and providing the bulk of the Empire’s field armies in Egypt, the Middle East and Africa during the perilous years of 1940 and 1941. Deteriorating relations with Japan shifted the focus of Indian defence to the immediate environs of East Asia and substantial forces were deployed to Burma and Malaya to secure those vital flanks of Imperial defence. Even with this preparation, the Japanese strike of December 1941 came as a great shock to the government, armies and people of India and in the darkest hours of early 1942, it seemed as if the enemy would drive his way to the very gates of the Raj itself. The importance of the valiant defence of the Indian Army in this period of deep war cannot be understated as they first halted and then broke the Imperial Japanese Army in both Burma and Malaya alongside their British and Commonwealth comrades under the leadership of Wavell, Auchinleck and Slim. The shift to offensive operations by the Allies was supported by the mobilization of the people, resources and industry of the subcontinent on an unprecendented scale and their part in final victory was acknowledged by the presence of Indian political and military leaders on the highest councils of the united Allied nations. A proposal in late 1945 for India to take its place as one of the permanent members of the Council of the League of Nations alongside the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, France and China was vetoed by Stalin, who feared that it would entrench British influence on the august body, but it was clear that India was now a force to be reckoned with.
India's wartime economic boom continued into the peace as the demand for consumer goods and new development was now unleashed with tremendous effect. Indian steel, coal and oil now fed its own domestic industries as well as maintaining high levels of exports to the devastated nations of Asia and Europe. American, British and Canadian automotive manufacturing concerns were now joined by India's first domestic automobile company, Tata Motors, which produced licenced versions of Rootes cars and lorries. The burgeoning middle class of the great cities now directed their carefully husbanded savings towards wireless sets, bicycles and household goods, with demand greatly outweighing the capacity of Indian light industry. The massive hydroelectric projects of the 1920s and 1930s provided sufficient electricity for large swathes of the country to truly enter the Industrial Age and several new chemical production plants were completed in 1946, further stimulating Indian economic performance. A vast and growing market hungry for new goods and consumer products was welcomed by British industrial concerns recovering from the damages of war and hundreds of millions of pounds of development loans were issued by London financial concerns to harness the potential of Indian resources and business.
Of all of the consequences of the Second World War for the Raj, perhaps the most consequential for the course of the second half of the 20th century is the awakening of India's potential as a modern military superpower. Whilst the Great War had seen the large scale mobilisation of the vast manpower of the subcontinent, that of the most recent conflict dwarfed that of 1914-1918. It was joined by the production of aircraft, tanks, armoured vehicles, small arms, ammunition, motor vehicles, trains and artillery by hundreds of factories and arsenals across India. The awakening of this industrial potential transformed India's role in the wartime grand strategy of the British Empire. Construction of new shipyards and airfields to support the huge Imperial advance through South East Asia gave India sophisticated modern infrastructure that would serve equally well in peace as in war. India's defence industry stood as one of the most formidable in the world after the defeat of the Axis powers and the new large standing forces required in the uncertain brave new world were amply supplied. Immediate postwar plans were for the Royal Indian Air Force to have a frontline strength of 1600 modern aeroplanes, the Royal Indian Navy to operate 120 combat vessels and 400 aircraft in two separate fleets and the Indian Army to maintain a force of 1,500,000 men in 30 divisions and numerous independent brigades and regiments with sufficient equipment and trained reserves to rise to 125 divisions on mobilisation. This military potential put India in the very highest echelon of martial powers in its own right.
Although New Delhi did not yet have full control of its foreign affairs under the timetable agreed upon at the London Conference, it was still courted by several of the major Allies with the aim of furthering their vision of the postwar world as a new Cold War took hold. The Soviet Union sought to encourage Indian communist and socialist parties to work towards a parliamentary path to power and engage with radical nationalists in order to shift India firmly into alignment with Moscow. The United States increased its efforts to use economic support to influence Indian political development towards positions favourable to Washington's interests, with its well-known anti-colonial ideology being regarded positively in certain nationalist circles. China moved to subtly influence Indian policies towards a more strident nationalism that would mirror the position of Peking, but the ongoing civil war detracted from the intensity of its efforts. The Gokhale government maintained strong support of the League of Nations and emphasised the importance of collective security and international cooperation, but its primary areas of focus were internal. London aimed to steer India onto a path of mutual cooperation and advantage, but great cares were taken to avoid any semblance of manipulation, lest the whole process shift out of their control.
India was set upon an inevitable path to take its rightful place in the ranks of the independent states of the world and found itself well positioned for future prosperity at the end of 1947. Divisions between faiths, races and castes were now shifting to a new sense of united purpose and nationhood, even as the pressures from the outside world threatened to disturb the comparative harmony. So now, as at so many times in its long and illustrious history, a unified nation would now forge its own destiny under its own leadership and direction. The Indian Summer of the British Raj was now slowly shifting towards a new spring.
Started reading some hours back but broke off for the armistice programme. Anyway a few thoughts and many thanks.
