How did the British implement divide and rule policy in india
Answers
Britishers arrived in India around AD 1612. Sometimes I feel how some thousands of Britishers were able to conquer entire INDIA. And rule it for nearly 200 years. The Reason behind their success lies in their divide and rule technique. That time India was under the rule of Mughals which were firmly governing India with iron fist. So Britishers behaved as businesseman till the Mughals were strong at centre.
But after the Mughals became weak at centre after Aurangzeb death. Britishers started showing their true colours. While conquering India they used divide and rule policy. One key point you have to understand here is that feeling of Nationalism was absent among Common people. People from different regions don't used to consider each other as the citizens of same country. So Britishers were easily able to use army from one region against any other region. We Indians were like soliders who fight for money. That's why they were able to use divide and rule policy effectively in India.
After mughal empire weakened, many strong regional power rised in India.
Ex- Marathas, Nijams,Mysore, Bengal, awadh, Sikhs,rohilas, bundelas,jats, etc.
As you can see these regional power were pretty strong together. But they were in continuously fight with each other. Like example-Marathas , Mysore,Nijams were sworn enemies of each other.
So because of this Britishers were able to use the divide and rule policy on them. We will see some examples of how they used divide and rule policy in India.
First in battle of Plassey, Britishers bribed the mir jafar who was the head of army of nawab of Bengal . They divided the nawab of Bengal side by giving bribes to his army heads and nobles and Britishers were able to defeat the nawab of Bengal easily
Britishers never fought with 2 or more enemies at once. They used to make alliance with other regional power to defeat the other. Like example they made alliance with Marathas and Nijam against the war with Mysore. By using their help Britishers were able to defeat the Mysore kingdom. And afterwards they eliminated Maratha kingdom also by AD 1818 .This is the good example of divide and rule.They never allowed us to form alliance and Because of our division and quarrels they were easily able to divide us and defeat us one by one. And slowly slowly they captured entire India.
In 1857 revolt Hindu Muslims fought together against British unitedly.After the revolt of 1857, Britishers thought that the major reason behind the revolt were Muslim leaders. So they started oppressing the Muslim population after 1857. But after the formation of Congress in AD 1885 they wanted to hinder the working of Congress. So they started promoting Muslim population to create the rift between the Hindus and Muslims. Because of Britishers support Muslim league was formed.
To create more rift between Hindus and Muslims, in morley Minton act of 1909 they introduced the separate electorate for Muslim population. Which divided India on religion basis.
During the early 1900’s Bengal was the center of freedom struggle. So to make freedom struggle weak Britishers decided to divide Bengal based on religion basis.Majority Muslim populated eastern area became east Bengal and Hindu majority area of west became the west bengal in 1905. This is the very good example of how they implemented the divide and rule and policy
british implement divide and rule policy in india by dividing richer and poor people in different sections of society . and by increasing the taxes.