Rise of Nationalism in India - Study Notes

Lesson summary

British political and economic centralisation of India, carried out for better exploitation and control, led to national consciousness. Nationalism began with nineteenth-century social reform campaigns and the petitions of Western-educated Indians, and became a mass movement after Gandhi, who returned from South Africa in 1915, took the lead in 1919. Early nationalists such as Naoroji, Gokhale, Pal, Lajpat Rai and Tilak educated Indians about their national identity and colonial exploitation.

1.1 Socio-economic background

New land tenures

• Pre-British revenue was a share of the actual crop; the British fixed it in cash, ignoring crop failure, price falls, droughts and floods.
• Sale of land for debt let money lenders rob landholders.
• Land became a commodity; land seized for default was auctioned, creating absentee landlords living in cities.
• Agriculture was commercialised: produce went to the market, not village consumption. Discontented peasants later turned against the imperialists.

Laissez faire and de-industrialisation

• After the Industrial Revolution the British followed free trade. Raw cotton, jute and silk went to Britain and cheap machine goods returned.
• Weavers, cotton dressers, carpenters, blacksmiths and shoemakers lost work; farmers were forced to grow indigo and cotton, causing food scarcity.
• Indigo revolt (1859-60), Bengal: tenants forced by European planters to grow indigo refused new advances and contracts and drove the planters out of northern Bengal.

Famines

• The British extended laissez faire even to famines. Between 1770 and 1900 about 25 million Indians died in famines.
• William Digby, editor of Madras Times: 19 million died in famines in 1891-1900 alone, against 5 million in all wars of 1793-1900.
• Orissa famine 1866: a million and a half starved while 200 million pounds of rice were exported; it started Naoroji's study of Indian poverty.
• Madras famine 1876-78: Viceroy Lytton followed a hands-off approach; about 3.5 million died.

Indentured labour

• Plantations of coffee, tea and sugar in Ceylon, Mauritius, Fiji, Malaya, the Caribbean and South Africa needed labour. In 1815 the Governor of Ceylon asked Madras for coolies.
• Famines of 1833 and 1843 pushed people to Ceylon; slavery was abolished in 1843.
• Tamil labourers in Ceylon: 10,000 (1837), 80,000 (1846), 128,000 (1855), about 380,000 (1877).
• Mauritius: 30,218 males and 4,307 females in 1843; some 5,00,000 by the end of the century.
• Contract of five years; agents called kanganis tricked or kidnapped labourers; many died on voyages.

1.2 Western education

• Pre-British education was divided by religion and caste; Brahmins studied in Vidyalayas and Chatuspathis in Sanskrit; women and lower castes were excluded; rote learning blocked innovation.
• The General Committee of Public Instruction (1823) split into Orientalists (vernacular) and Anglicists (English).
• English Education Act, 1835; Macaulay's Minute on Indian Education (1835) backed the Anglicists. Macaulay was first law member, 1834-1838.
• Universities in Bombay, Madras and Calcutta, 1857. The British mocked the educated as the Babu class, but they became the progressive intelligentsia.
• Missionaries opened education to the underprivileged; their challenge sparked reform movements.

1.3 Social and religious reforms

1.4 Other factors

• Memories of 1857: British outrages went un-avenged; Elphinstone wrote that in looting they had surpassed Nadirshah.
• Racial discrimination: civil service age limit cut from 21 to 19; simultaneous examination in India refused.
• Repression: Section 124A IPC (1870), Vernacular Press Act (1878), abolition of duty on imported cotton goods, Ilbert Bill amended under Ripon.
• Press: Sambad Kaumudi (1821, Bengali), Mirat-Ul-Akbar (1822, Persian); Amrit Bazaar Patrika, Bombay Chronicle, The Tribune, Indian Mirror, The Hindu, Swadesamitran.
• Glorious past: William Jones, Charles Wilkins and Max Muller translated Indian texts; Aurobindo Ghose called for recovering Indian thought.

1.5 Associations

• Madras Native Association: 26 February 1852, inspired by Gajula Lakshminarasu; petitions of December 1852 and a second signed by 14,000; H.D. Seymour visited Madras in October 1853; ceased by 1881.
• Madras Mahajana Sabha: May 1884; inaugural meeting 16 May 1884; later merged with the INC.
• INC: idea emerged at a Theosophical Society meeting in Madras, December 1884, presided by A.O. Hume; founded in Bombay on 28 December 1885; first president W.C. Bonnerjee. Demands: Indian representation, lower land revenue, simultaneous ICS examinations, separation of Executive and Judiciary.
• Moderates and extremists: moderates used petitions; Tilak declared in 1897 'Swaraj is my birth right'. One-third of 1885 members were journalists. Tilak was arrested on 27 July 1897 under Section 124A.

1.6 Naoroji and the drain theory

• Grand Old Man of Indian Nationalism; elected to the British Parliament in 1892; founded the India Society (1865) and East India Association (1866) in London; thrice INC President; journals Voice of India and Rast Goftar.
• Poverty and Un-British Rule in India (1901): India exported an average of 13 million pounds of goods a year (1835-1872) with no return; Home Charges caused a loss of 30 million pounds a year.