Attempt Review of National Movemen
Answers
The author begins this deeply researched assessment of the first phase of the Indian national movement, the 30th in the People’s History of India series, by refuting the popular claim that India was ruled by “foreigners” for 1,000 years, a reference that clubs the Mughals with the British.
“There was actually no ‘foreign rule’ over India before the British conquest,” he writes, and quotes Adam Smith to underline the deleterious impact of British rule. In 1778, Smith wrote, “unlike the preceding Indian rulers the English East India Company by its control over trade… was tending to ‘degrade the cultivation of the whole country and to reduce the number of its inhabitants’.”
Dr Habib dates the start of the independence struggle from the 1857 uprising, highlighting its socio-economic origins. The discontent among peasant-cultivators at the Company’s exploitative land revenue policies played into unrest among the British Indian army’s sepoys, many of whom came from those same agrarian regions. The famous “greased cartridge” rumour, thus, served as kindling to ignite revolt.
As Dr Habib writes, “There is no doubt that the revolt of 1857 not only involved over 100,000 men of the Bengal army but was the largest agrarian uprising ever witnessed in India, spread as it was over such a large region.” He reminds us that communalism was an alien concept at the time: “Not only this… it was common to see Indian sepoys choose their Muslim brethren as their leaders and vice-versa.”
Before discussing the emergence of Indian national consciousness, Dr Habib cautions that, “Any scrutiny of the causes of the revolt of 1857 must bring into focus two negative factors inherited from old India; a limited notion of India as a country among people across regions, and the division of people in a hierarchy of castes and communities”. How could such a “disunited” society develop any feeling of nation and nation consciousness? Unlike Hindu national chauvinists who claim that ancient India had everything, including science and technology, the author acknowledges the contribution of the British in creating the conditions for regeneration of Indian society — the printing press, postal system, and the railways facilitated the emergence of a new consciousness among Indians. “The very existence of the railways helped to create in many minds, the vision of a modern, industrialised India, achievable if Indians could control their own destiny,” he writes.