History of the British Raj

In the later half of the 19th century, both the direct administration of India by the British Crown and the technological change ushered in by the industrial revolution, had the effect of closely intertwining the economies of India and Great Britain. In fact, many of the major changes in transport and communications (that are typically associated with Crown Rule of India) had already begun before the Mutiny. Since Dalhousie had embraced the technological change then rampant in Great Britain, India too saw rapid development of all those technologies. Railways, roads, canals, and bridges were rapidly built in India and telegraph links equally rapidly established in order that raw materials, such as cotton, from India's hinterland could be transported more efficiently to ports, such as Bombay, for subsequent export to England. Likewise, finished goods from England were transported back just as efficiently, for sale in the burgeoning Indian markets. However, unlike Britain itself, where the market risks for the infrastructure development were borne by private investors, in India it was the taxpayers—primarily farmers and farm-labourers—who endured the risks, which, in the end, amounted to £50 million. In spite of these costs, very little skilled employment was created for Indians. By 1920, with a history of 60 years of its construction, only 10 percent of the "superior posts" in the railways were held by Indians. Consequently, many small farmers, dependent on the whims of those markets, lost land, animals, and equipment to money-lenders. File:George Robinson 1st Marquess of Ripon.jpg|Lord Ripon, the Liberal Viceroy of India, who instituted the Famine Code File:Agra canal headworks1871a.jpg|The Agra canal (c. 1873), a year away from completion. The canal was closed to navigation in 1904 to increase irrigation and aid in famine-prevention. File:India railways1909a.jpg|Railway map of India in 1909. Railway construction in India had begun in 1853. File:Victoriaterminus1903.JPG|A 1903 stereographic image of Victoria Terminus, Bombay, by Underwood and Underwood. The station was completed in 1888. In terms of the longer lasting effects and legacies of the economic impact of the British Raj, the impact predominantly stems from the irregular investment of areas of infrastructure. Simon Carey explains how the investment into Indian society was 'narrowly focused' and favoured the growth of transportation of goods and workers. Therefore, India has since seen an uneven economic development of society. For example, Acemoglu et al. (2001) identify how the inability of certain areas of rural India to cope with disease and famine best explain this uneven development of the nation. Carey also points out that a lasting impact of the British Raj is the transformation of India into an agricultural trading economy. Therefore, some areas of India, predominantly in affluent urban areas, have benefited from the legacies of the British Raj in the long term due to the transformation of Indian economic culture to a production based economy. However, the majority of Indian society has experienced a negative impact of the British Raj, especially in rural and suburban areas, due to the focus of investment into transport such as railways and canals rather than into healthcare and primary education. ==Beginnings of self-government== The first steps were taken toward self-government in British India in the late 19th century with the appointment of Indian counsellors to advise the British viceroy and the establishment of provincial councils with Indian members; the British subsequently widened participation in legislative councils with the Indian Councils Act 1892. Municipal Corporations and District Boards were created for local administration; they included elected Indian members The Indian Councils Act 1909 – also known as the Morley-Minto Reforms (John Morley was the secretary of state for India, and Gilbert Elliot, fourth earl of Minto, was viceroy) – gave Indians limited roles in the central and provincial legislatures, known as legislative councils. Indians had previously been appointed to legislative councils, but after the reforms some were elected to them. At the centre, the majority of council members continued to be government-appointed officials, and the viceroy was in no way responsible to the legislature. At the provincial level, the elected members, together with unofficial appointees, outnumbered the appointed officials, but responsibility of the governor to the legislature was not contemplated. Morley made it clear in introducing the legislation to the British Parliament that parliamentary self-government was not the goal of the British government. The Morley-Minto Reforms were a milestone. Step by step, the elective principle was introduced for membership in Indian legislative councils. The "electorate" was limited, however, to a small group of upper-class Indians. These elected members increasingly became an "opposition" to the "official government". The Communal electorates were later extended to other communities and made a political factor of the Indian tendency toward group identification through religion. File:John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn - Project Gutenberg eText 17976.jpg|John Morley, the Secretary of State for India from 1905 to 1910, and Gladstonian Liberal. The Indian Councils Act 1909, also known as the Minto-Morley Reforms allowed Indians to be elected to the Legislative Council. File:Delhidurbar pc1911.jpg|Picture post card of the Gordon Highlanders marching past King George V and Queen Mary at the Delhi Durbar on 12 December 1911, when the King was crowned Emperor of India. File:Indiantroops medical ww1.jpg|Indian medical orderlies attending to wounded soldiers with the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force in Mesopotamia during World War I. ==World War I and its causes==

World War I would prove to be a watershed in the imperial relationship between Britain and India. 1.4 million Indian and British soldiers of the British Indian Army would take part in the war and their participation would have a wider cultural fallout: news of Indian soldiers fighting and dying with British soldiers, as well as soldiers from dominions like Canada, Australia and New Zealand, would travel to distant corners of the world both in newsprint and by the new medium of the radio. India's international profile would thereby rise and would continue to rise during the 1920s. Back in India, especially among the leaders of the Indian National Congress, it would lead to calls for greater self-government for Indians The pace of the reforms where to be determined by Britain as and when the Indians were seen to have earned it. Now, as constitutional reform began to be discussed in earnest, the British began to consider how new moderate Indians could be brought into the fold of constitutional politics and simultaneously, how the hand of established constitutionalists could be strengthened. with the unstated goal of extending the government's wartime powers. The Rowlatt committee presented its report in July 1918 and identified three regions of conspiratorial insurgency: Bengal, the Bombay presidency, and the Punjab. The increased taxes coupled with disruptions in both domestic and international trade had the effect of approximately doubling the index of overall prices in India between 1914 and 1920. and post-war inflation led to food riots in Bombay, Madras, and Bengal provinces, To combat what it saw as a coming crisis, the government now drafted the Rowlatt committee's recommendations into two Rowlatt Bills. Although the bills were authorised for legislative consideration by Edwin Montagu, they were done so unwillingly, with the accompanying declaration, "I loathe the suggestion at first sight of preserving the Defence of India Act in peace time to such an extent as Rowlatt and his friends think necessary." After more discussion by the government and parliament in Britain, and another tour by the Franchise and Functions Committee for the purpose of identifying who among the Indian population could vote in future elections, the Government of India Act 1919 (also known as the Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms) was passed in December 1919. and the recommendation of the report submitted by the Simon Commission in May 1930. Demands for swaraj, or self-rule, in India had been growing increasingly strong. By the 1930s, many British politicians believed that India needed to move towards dominion status. However, there were significant disagreements between the Indian and the British leaders that the conferences could not resolve. against Gandhi Willingdon imprisons leaders of Congress In 1932 the Viceroy, Lord Willingdon, after the failure of the three Round Table Conferences (India) in London, now confronted Gandhi's Congress in action. The India Office told Willingdon that he should conciliate only those elements of Indian opinion that were willing to work with the Raj. That did not include Gandhi and the Indian National Congress, which launched its Civil Disobedience Movement on 4 January 1932. Therefore, Willingdon took decisive action. He imprisoned Gandhi. He outlawed the Congress; he rounded up all members of the Working Committee and the Provincial Committees and imprisoned them; and he banned Congress youth organisations. In total he imprisoned 80,000 Indian activists. Without most of their leaders, protests were uneven and disorganised, boycotts were ineffective, illegal youth organisations proliferated but were ineffective, more women became involved, and there was terrorism, especially in the North-West Frontier Province. Gandhi remained in prison until 1933. Willingdon relied on his military secretary, Hastings Ismay, for his personal safety. Communal Award: 1932 MacDonald, trying to resolve the critical issue of how Indians would be represented, on 16 August 1932 announced the Communal Award, which retained separate electorates for Muslims, Sikhs, and Europeans in India and increased the number of provinces that offered separate electorates to Anglo-Indians and Indian Christians. The Depressed Classes (now known as the Dalits) obtained a separate electorate. Gandhi, representing the Indian National Congress during negotiations, rejected separate electorates for the Depressed Classes, Europeans, Anglo-Indians, and Indian Christians because, according to historian Helen Nugent, he believed those separate electorates would weaken Congress' claim to be nationally representative. The award went into effect anyway. ==Government of India Act (1935)==

In 1935, after the failure of the Round Table Conferences, the British Parliament approved the Government of India Act 1935, which authorized the establishment of independent legislative assemblies in all provinces of British India, the creation of a central government incorporating both the British provinces and the princely states, and the protection of Muslim minorities. The act also provided for a bicameral national parliament and an executive branch under the purview of the British government. Although the national federation was never realized, nationwide elections for provincial assemblies were held in 1937. Despite initial hesitation, the Congress took part in the elections and won victories in seven of the eleven provinces of British India, and Congress governments, with wide powers, were formed in these provinces. In Great Britain, these victories were to later turn the tide for the idea of Indian independence. ==World War II==

India played a major role in the Allied war effort against both Japan and Germany. It provided over 2 million soldiers, who fought numerous campaigns in the Middle East, and in the India-Burma front and also supplied billions of pounds to the British war effort. The Muslim and Sikh populations were strongly supportive of the British war effort, but the Hindu population was divided. Congress opposed the war, and tens of thousands of its leaders were imprisoned in 1942–45. A major famine in eastern India led to hundreds of thousands of deaths by starvation, and remains a highly controversial issue regarding Churchill's reluctance to provide emergency food relief. With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, declared war on India's behalf without consulting Indian leaders, leading the Congress provincial ministries to resign in protest. The Muslim League, in contrast, supported Britain in the war effort; however, it now took the view that Muslims would be unfairly treated in an independent India dominated by the Congress. Hindus not affiliated with the Congress typically supported the war. The two major Sikh factions, the Unionists and the Akali Dal, supported Britain and successfully urged large numbers of Sikhs to volunteer for the army. Quit India movement or the Bharat Chhodo Andolan The British sent a high level Cripps Mission in 1942 to secure Indian nationalists' co-operation in the war effort in exchange for postwar independence and dominion status. Congress demanded immediate independence and the mission failed. Gandhi then launched the Quit India Movement in August 1942, demanding the immediate withdrawal of the British from India or face nationwide civil disobedience. Along with thousands of other Congress leaders, Gandhi was immediately imprisoned, and the country erupted in violent local episodes led by students and later by peasant political groups, especially in Eastern United Provinces, Bihar, and western Bengal. According to John F. Riddick, from 9 August 1942 to 21 September 1942, the Quit India movement: :attacked 550 post offices, 250 railway stations, damaged many rail lines, destroyed 70 police stations, and burned or damaged 85 other government buildings. There were about 2,500 instances of telegraph wires being cut....The Government of India deployed 57 battalions of British troops to restore order. The police and army crushed the resistance in months. Nationalist leaders were imprisoned until the end of World War 2. Ultimately, the British government realised that India was ungovernable in the long run, and the question for the postwar era became how to exit gracefully and peacefully. In 1945, when the World War 2 had almost come to an end, the Labour Party of the United Kingdom won elections with a promise to provide independence to India. The jailed political prisoners were released the same year. Bose and the Indian National Army (INA) Subhas Chandra Bose, who had been ousted from the Congress Party in 1939 following differences with the more conservative high command, turned to Germany and Japan for help with liberating India by force. With Japanese support, he organised the Indian National Army, composed largely of Indian soldiers of the British Indian army who had been captured at Singapore by the Japanese, including many Sikhs as well as Hindus and Muslims. Japan's secret service had promoted unrest in Southeast Asia to destabilise the British war effort, and came to support a number of puppet and provisional governments in regions under their occupation, such as those of Burma, the Philippines and Vietnam; similarly supported was the Provisional Government of Azad Hind (Free India), presided over by Bose. These trials became a galvanising point in the Indian Independence movement for the Indian National Congress. Finances Britain borrowed everywhere it could and made heavy purchases of equipment and supplies in India during the war. Previously India owed Britain large sums; now it was reversed. Britain's sterling balances around the world amounted to £3.4 billion in 1945; India's share was £1.3 billion (equivalent to $US 74 billion in 2016 dollars.) In this way the Raj treasury accumulated very large sterling reserves of British pounds that was owed to it by the British treasury. However, Britain treated this as a long-term loan with no interest and no specified repayment date. Just when the money would be made available by London was an issue, for the British treasury was nearly empty by 1945. India's balances totalled to Rs. 17.24 billion in March 1946; of that sum Rs. 15.12 billion [£1.134 billion] was split between India and Pakistan when they became independent in August 1947. They finally got the money and India spent all its share by 1957 which included buying back British owned assets in India. ==Transfer of power==

The All India Azad Muslim Conference gathered in Delhi in April 1940 to voice its support for an independent and united India. Its members included several Islamic organisations in India, as well as 1400 nationalist Muslim delegates. The pro-separatist All-India Muslim League worked to try to silence those nationalist Muslims who stood against the partition of India, often using "intimidation and coercion". The mutinies came to a head with mutiny of the Royal Indian Navy in Bombay in February 1946, followed by others in Calcutta, Madras, and Karachi. Although the mutinies were rapidly suppressed, they found much public support in India and spurred the new Labour government in Britain to action, and leading to the Cabinet Mission to India led by the Secretary of State for India, Lord Pethick Lawrence, and including Sir Stafford Cripps, who had visited four years before. However, the negotiations between the Congress and the Muslim League stumbled over the issue of the partition. Jinnah proclaimed 16 August 1946, Direct Action Day, with the stated goal of peacefully highlighting the demand for a Muslim homeland in British India. The following day, Hindu-Muslim riots broke out in Calcutta and they quickly spread throughout India. Although the Government of India and the Congress were both shaken by the course of events, in September, a Congress-led interim government was installed, with Jawaharlal Nehru serving as united India's prime minister. Later that year, the Labour government in Britain, its exchequer exhausted by the recently concluded World War II, decided to end British rule of India, and in early 1947, Britain announced its intention to transfer power no later than June 1948. As independence approached, the violence between Hindus and Muslims in the provinces of Punjab and Bengal continued unabated. With the British army unprepared for the potential for increased violence, the new viceroy, Louis Mountbatten, advanced the date for the transfer of power, allowing less than six months for a mutually agreed plan for independence. In June 1947, the nationalist leaders, including Nehru and Abul Kalam Azad on behalf of the Congress, Jinnah representing the pro-separatist Muslim League, B. R. Ambedkar representing the Untouchable community, and Master Tara Singh representing the Sikhs, agreed to a partition of the country in opposition to Gandhi's views. In the years leading up to the partition of India, the pro-separatist All-India Muslim League violently drove out Hindus and Sikhs from the western Punjab. Many millions of Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu refugees trekked across the newly drawn borders. In Punjab, where the new border lines divided the Sikh regions in half, massive bloodshed followed; in Bengal and Bihar, where Gandhi's presence assuaged communal tempers, the violence was more limited. In all, anywhere between 250,000 and 500,000 people on both sides of the new borders died in the violence. On 14 August 1947, the new Dominion of Pakistan came into being, with Muhammad Ali Jinnah sworn in as its first Governor General in Karachi. The following day, 15 August 1947, India, now a smaller Union of India, became an independent country with official ceremonies taking place in New Delhi, with Jawaharlal Nehru assuming the office of the prime minister, and the viceroy, Louis Mountbatten, stayed on as its first Governor General. ==See also==