British Raj

The following information on the British Raj is excerpted and edit from the New World Encyclopedia available at https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/

British Raj—summary

The British Raj or British India, officially the British Indian Empire, is the term used synonymously for the region, the rule, and the period from 1858 to 1947. The region included areas directly administered by the United Kingdom, as well as the princely states ruled by individual rulers under the paramountcy of the British Crown.
Prior to 1858, Britain's interests in India had been administered by the British East India Company, officially a commercial enterprise chartered by the Government. It operated in India as an agent of the Moghul Empire.
After the First War of Indian Independence (known as the mutiny of 1857), the British government assumed direct responsibility for ruling its Indian territories. A policy of expansion followed that brought the whole of India within the Empire. The princely states, all of which entered treaty arrangements with the British Crown, were allowed a degree of local autonomy in exchange for accepting protection and representation by the United Kingdom.

British Raj—summary

Known as the "Jewel in the Crown," India was over the years a source of wealth for Britain, although the Raj's profitability declined in the years before independence was finally granted.
On the other hand, railway, transport and communication systems were built that helped to knit the previously independent regions of India into a whole.
These improvements actually helped the Indian independence struggle under the leadership of the Indian National Congress. This movement was led by the very class of Indians that the British education system had produced, who read in English literature about the concepts of fair play, justice and about the mother of Parliaments in Westminster, but they also observed that the British seemed to leave these values and the practice of democracy at home when they arrived in India.

British Raj—summary

The Raj's policy has been described as one of "divide and rule." This partly refers to the way in which territory was acquired, by playing one Indian ruler against another, and to the way in which the British stressed what they saw as intractable differences between different religious communities, arguing that it was only their presence in India that prevented a blood bath.

British Raj—geography

The British Indian Empire included the regions of present-day India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and, at various times, Aden, Lower Burma, Upper Burma, British Somaliland, and Singapore. British India had some ties with British possessions in the Middle East.
What is now Iraq was, immediately after World War I, administered by the India Office of the British government. Among other countries in the region, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), ceded to the United Kingdom in 1802, was a British Crown Colony, but not part of British India.
The kingdoms of Nepal and Bhutan, although having been in conflict with Britain, had both subsequently signed treaties and were recognized as independent states and not part of the British Raj.
The Kingdom of Sikkim was established as a princely state after the Treaty of 1861, but the issue of sovereignty was left undefined. The Maldive Islands were also a British protectorate from 1867 to 1965, but not part of British India.

British Raj

The system of governance lasted from 1858, when the rule of the British East India Company was transferred to the Crown, until 1947, when the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two sovereign states, the Dominion of India (later the Republic of India) and the Dominion of Pakistan (later the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the People's Republic of Bangladesh).
Burma was separated from the administration of the British Indian Empire in 1937 and directly administered thereafter; it received independence from the UK in 1948 as the Union of Burma.

British East India Company

On December 31, 1600 Queen Elizabeth I of England granted a royal charter to the British East India Company to carry out trade with the East. Ships first arrived in India in 1608, docking at Surat in modern-day Gujarat. Four years later, British traders battled the Portuguese at the Battle of Swally, gaining the favor of the Mughal emperor Jahangir in the process.
In 1615, King James I sent Sir Thomas Roe as his ambassador to Jahangir's court, and a commercial treaty was concluded in which the Mughals allowed the Company to build trading posts in India in return for goods from Europe. The Company traded in such commodities as cotton, silk, saltpetre, indigo, and tea.
By the mid 1600s, the Company had established trading posts or "factories" in major Indian cities, such as Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras in addition to their first factory at Surat (built in 1612).

British East India Company

In 1670 King Charles II granted the company the right to acquire territory, raise an army, mint its own money, and exercise legal jurisdiction in areas under its control.
By the last decade of the 17th century, the Company was arguably its own "nation," possessing considerable military might and ruling the three presidencies.
The British first established a territorial foothold in the Indian subcontinent when Company-funded soldiers commanded by Robert Clive defeated the Nawab of Bengal 1757. Bengal became a British protectorate directly under the rule of the East India Company. Bengal's wealth then flowed to the Company, which attempted to enforce a monopoly on Bengali trade (though smuggling was rife). Bengali farmers and craftsmen were obliged to work for little money while their collective tax burden increased greatly.

British East India Company

Some believe that as a consequence, the famine of 1769-1773 cost the lives of ten million Bengalis.
A similar catastrophe occurred almost a century later, after Britain had extended its rule across the Indian subcontinent, when 40 million Indians perished from famine.
Despite the increase in trade and the revenues coming in from other sources, the Company found itself burdened with massive military expenditures, and its destruction seemed imminent.
Lord North's India Bill, The Regulating Act of 1773, by the British Parliament granted Whitehall, the British government administration, supervisory (regulatory) control over the work of the East India Company but did not take power for itself. This was the first step along the road to government control of India.

Building the Raj: British expansion across India

It also established the post of Governor-General of India, the first occupant of which was Warren Hastings. Other acts, such as the Charter Act of 1813 and the Charter Act of 1833, further defined the relationship of the Company and the British government.
Hastings remained in India until 1784 and was succeeded by Cornwallis, who initiated the Permanent Settlement, whereby an agreement in perpetuity was reached with zamindars or landlords for the collection of revenue. For the next 50 years, the British were engaged in attempts to eliminate Indian rivals.

Building the Raj: British expansion across India

At the turn of the 19th century, Governor-General Lord Wellesley, began expanding the Company's domain on a large scale, defeating Tippu Sultan, annexing Mysore in southern India, and removing all French influence from the subcontinent.
In the mid-19th century, Governor-General Dalhousie launched perhaps the Company's most ambitious expansion, defeating the Sikhs in the Anglo-Sikh Wars, annexing the Punjab, and subduing Burma in the Second Burmese War.
He also justified the takeover of small princely states such as Satara, Sambalpur, Jhansi, and Nagpur by way of the doctrine of lapse, which permitted the Company to annex any princely state whose ruler had died without a male heir.
The annexation of Oudh in 1856 proved to be the Company's final territorial acquisition, as the following year saw the boiling over of Indian grievances toward the so-called "Company Raj."

First War of Indian Independence

On May 10, 1857 soldiers of the British Indian Army (known as "sepoys,"), drawn from the Indian Hindu and Muslim population, rose against the British in Meerut, a cantonment northeast of Delhi. At the time, the strength of the Company's Army in India was 238,000, of whom 38,000 were Europeans.
Indian soldiers marched to Delhi to offer their services to the Mughal emperor, and soon much of north and central India was plunged into a year-long insurrection against the British East India Company. Many Indian regiments and Indian kingdoms joined the uprising, while other Indian units and Indian kingdoms backed the British commanders.
The rebellion or the war for independence had diverse political, economic, military, religious and social causes.

Causes of the rebellion

One was the policy of annexation pursued by Governor-General Dalhousie. Based on his "Doctrine of Lapse," it held that princely states would be merged into company-ruled territory if a ruler died without direct heir. This denied the Indian rulers the right to adopt an heir in such an event; adoption had been pervasive practice in the Hindu states previously, sanctioned both by religion and by secular tradition.
This greed for land, especially in a group of small-town and middle-class British merchants, whose parvenu background was increasingly evident and galling to Indians of rank, had alienated a large section of the landed and ruling aristocracy, who were quick to take up the cause of evicting the merchants once the revolt was kindled.
Second, the justice system was considered inherently unfair to the Indians. The official Blue Books that were laid before the House of Commons during the sessions of 1856 and 1857 revealed that Company officers were allowed an extended series of appeals if convicted or accused of brutality or crimes against Indians.

Causes of the rebellion

And, the economic policies of the East India Company were also resented by the Indians. Most of the gold, jewels, silver and silk had been shipped off to Britain as tax and sometimes sold in open auctions, ridding India of its once abundant wealth in precious stones.
The land was reorganized under the comparatively harsh Zamindari system to facilitate the collection of taxes. In certain areas farmers were forced to switch from subsistence farming to commercial crops such as indigo, jute, coffee and tea. This created hardship for the farmers and increased food prices.
Local industry, specifically the famous weavers of Bengal and elsewhere, also suffered under British rule. Import tariffs were kept low, according to traditional British free-market sentiments, and thus the Indian market was flooded with cheap clothing from Britain. Indigenous industry simply could not compete, and where once India had produced much of England's luxury cloth, the country was now reduced to growing cotton which was shipped to Britain to be manufactured into clothing, and subsequently shipped back to India to be purchased by Indians.

Causes of the rebellion

This extraordinary quantity of wealth, much of it collected as 'taxes', was absolutely critical in expanding public and private infrastructure in Britain and in financing British expansionism elsewhere in Asia and Africa.
The spark that lit the fire was the result of a British blunder in using new cartridges for the Pattern 1853 Enfield rifle that were greased with animal fat, rumored to be a combination of pig-fat and cow-fat. This was offensive to the religious beliefs of both Muslim and Hindu sepoys, who refused to use the cartridges and, under provocation, finally mutinied against their British officers.
The rebellion soon engulfed much of North India. The unprepared British were terrified, without replacements for the casualties. However, after getting reinforcements, the British army was able to suppress the uprising and restore British control over these areas.

Causes of the rebellion

It was a monumental event in history, for both Indians and British alike. The Rebels had achieved the impossible in uniting and overthrowing (if only temporarily) an apparently unbeatable army and a now semi-despotic ruling power. Heroic defenses of British bases such as the Siege of Lucknow, Siege of Cawnpore and the retaking of rebel held cities as in the Siege of Delhi also passed into history.
Isolated uprisings also occurred at military posts in the centre of the subcontinent. The last major sepoy rebels surrendered on June 21, 1858, at Gwalior, one of the principal centres of the revolt. A final battle was fought at Sirwa Pass on May 21, 1859, and the defeated rebels fled into Nepal.
The rebellion was a major turning point in the history of modern India. In May 1858, the British exiled Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar II to Rangoon, Burma, after executing most of his family, thus formally liquidating the Mughal Empire.

Aftermath of the 1857 Rebellion and the formal initiation of the Raj

Bahadur Shah Zafar, known as the Poet King, contributed some of Urdu's most beautiful poetry, with the underlying theme of the freedom struggle. The Emperor was not allowed to return and died in solitary confinement in 1862. The Emperor's three sons, also involved in the 1857 Rebellion, were arrested and shot in Delhi by Major William Hodson of the British Indian Army.
Cultural and religious centres were closed down, properties and estates of those participating in the uprising were confiscated. At the same time, the British abolished the British East India Company and replaced it with direct rule under the British Crown. In proclaiming the new direct-rule policy to "the Princes, Chiefs, and Peoples of India," Queen Victoria promised equal treatment under British law, which never materialized.

Aftermath of the 1857 Rebellion and the formal initiation of the Raj

Many existing economic and revenue policies remained virtually unchanged in the post-1857 period, but several administrative modifications were introduced, beginning with the creation in London of a cabinet post, the Secretary of State for India.
The governor-general (called viceroy when acting as representative to the "princely states" or "native states"), headquartered in Calcutta, ran the administration in India, assisted by executive and legislative councils.
Beneath the governor-general were the governors of Provinces of India, who held power over the division and district officials, who formed the lower rungs of the Indian Civil Service.
For decades the Indian Civil Service was the exclusive preserve of the British-born, as were the superior ranks in such other professions as law and medicine. This continued until the 1880s when a small but steadily growing number of native-born Indians, educated in British schools on the Subcontinent or in Britain, were able to assume such positions.

Aftermath of the 1857 Rebellion and the formal initiation of the Raj

However, a proposal by Viceroy Ripon and Courtenay Ilbert in 1883 that Indian members of the Civil Service have full rights to preside over trials involving white defendants in criminal cases sparked an ugly racist backlash.
Thus an attempt to further include Indians in the system and give them a greater stake in the Raj, ironically, instead exposed the racial gap that already existed, sparking even greater Indian nationalism and reaction against British rule.
The Viceroy announced in 1858 that the government would honor former treaties with princely states and renounced the "Doctrine of Lapse." About 40% of Indian territory and 20–25% of the population remained under the control of 562 princes notable for their religious (Islamic, Hindu, Sikh and other) and ethnic diversity. Their propensity for pomp and ceremony became proverbial, while their domains, varying in size and wealth, lagged behind socio-political transformations that took place elsewhere in British-controlled India.

Aftermath of the 1857 Rebellion and the formal initiation of the Raj

A more thorough re-organization was effected in the army and in government finances. Shocked by the extent of solidarity among Indian soldiers during the rebellion, the government separated the army into the three presidencies.
The Indian Councils Act of 1861 restored legislative powers to the Presidencies (elite provinces), which had been given exclusively to the governor-general by the Charter Act of 1833.
British attitudes toward Indians shifted from relative openness to insularity and racism, even against those with comparable background and achievement as well as loyalty. British families and their servants lived in cantonments at a distance from Indian settlements. Private clubs where the British gathered for social interaction became symbols of exclusivity and snobbery that refused to disappear decades after the British had left India.

Aftermath of the 1857 Rebellion and the formal initiation of the Raj

In 1883 the government of India attempted to remove race barriers in criminal jurisdictions by introducing a bill empowering Indian judges to adjudicate offences committed by Europeans. Public protests and editorials in the British press, however, forced the viceroy George Robinson, to capitulate and modify the bill drastically.
The Bengali "Hindu intelligentsia" learned a valuable political lesson from this "white mutiny": the effectiveness of well-orchestrated agitation through demonstrations in the streets and publicity in the media when seeking redress for real and imagined grievances.

Images of Calcutta

The Johns Hopkins Sheridan Libraries and University Museums website has a Calcutta Photograph Collection that comprises 60 photos of Indian people and street scenes taken by a soldier stationed there during WWII. It's West Bengal, in the 1940s.

Historical Note:

- Mrs. Marianne M. Doctor and her husband, a dentist, left Germany in 1938 and resided in Calcutta, India until the end of the Second World War when they emigrated to the United States. American G.I.s who were stationed in the city were often entertained by the Doctors in their home. From one American soldier, Mr. Doctor purchased an annotated album of photographs which included scenes of the city. The Doctors came to Baltimore, MD in April 1947
- https://blogs.library.jhu.edu/2012/07/calcutta-photograph-collection/

Dalhousie Square: World Monuments Fund

https://www.wmf.org/project/dalhousie-square

The Writer's Building (from The Guardian)

The Writers' Buildings is the official secretariat building of the state government of West Bengal in Kolkata, India. The 150-meter long building covers the entire northern stretch of the iconic Lal Dighi pond and has long been considered the administrative and business hub of the city.
It originally served as the principal administrative office for writers (junior clerks) of the British East India Company. Designed by Thomas Lyon in 1777, the Writers' Building has gone through a long series of extensions over the centuries. Since India's independence in 1947, it housed the office of the Chief Minister of West Bengal, cabinet ministers and other senior officials, until October 2013, when a major restoration of the building was announced.
The building has been called a mini-township of sorts with a built-up area of around 550,000 square feet. Before the shifting of the state secretariat, the building housed 34 departments of the state government, and served as the office for approximately 6,000 employees. As of October 2020, the renovation of the building continues.

Dalhousie Square: World Monuments Fund

The former Dalhousie Square, now known as Benoy-Badal-Dinesh Bagh (B. B. D. Bagh), is an oasis at the heart of modern Kolkata, formerly Calcutta, in eastern India. Occupying an area of over two square kilometers, the plaza is ringed by historic architecture and contains the Lal Dighi, or “Red Tank,” a body of water that reflects the buildings above.
The space was originally named for James, Marquess of Dalhousie, who served as the Governor-General of India from 1847 to 1856. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Calcutta was the capital of British India and Dalhousie Square was the city’s financial, social, and political nucleus. Calcutta’s first parish church, St. John’s, faces the square with its classical exterior and its early nineteenth-century steeple, modeled after Gibbs’s St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields in London’s Trafalgar Square. After the capital was moved to New Delhi in 1911, the buildings surrounding Dalhousie Square were neglected over time and occasionally demolished. In more recent years, local preservation groups have begun to advocate for the restoration and revitalization of the area.

Dalhousie Square: World Monuments Fund

In the early 2000s, architects and students from the nearby Jadavpur University completed a survey of fifty historic buildings on and around Dalhousie Square. Several of these 200-year-old structures had been slated for demolition, and the identity of the entire plaza was being threatened by poor development schemes and explosive population growth.
Dalhousie Square was included on the World Monuments Watch in 2004 and 2006 in order to raise support and funding for the local conservationists. Following Watch-listing, the government of West Bengal pledged to preserve the site; the municipality created its own list of landmarks, 55 of which were located in the Dalhousie Square Heritage Zone. In 2005, WMF arranged a strategy-planning workshop for stake holders and also contributed funding for a pilot project: the restoration of St. John’s Church. WMF coordinated and financed the first phase of work in 2007, which required stabilizing the church’s foundations and repairing the drainage system.

Dalhousie Square: World Monuments Fund

Dalhousie Square is one of south Asia’s few surviving colonial centers, and it is unique in India because much of its peripheral environment remains intact. The classical-style St. John’s Church is just one of 55 municipal landmarks in the vicinity of the plaza, which has been dubbed the “Dalhousie Square Heritage Zone” by city officials.
The buildings that line the square range in date from 1695 and 1947, the latter year being the date of India’s independence from the United Kingdom. In the aftermath of that momentous event, Dalhousie Square was renamed Benoy-Badal-Dinesh Bagh (B.B.D. Bagh) after three Indian nationalists who were killed leading the rebellion.
Whatever its name, the square and its surrounding architecture remain a beautiful feature of Kolkata due to a combination of local advocacy and international support..

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 of 1892.
The Government of India Act of 1909—also known as the Morley-Minto Reforms—gave Indians limited roles in the central and provincial legislatures. 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.
Also 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

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." Communal electorates were later extended to other communities and made a political factor of the Indian tendency toward group identification through religion.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah is credited for uniting Muslims to form the state of Pakistan. For Muslims it was important both to gain a place in all-India politics and to retain their Muslim identity.