Name towns that decayed under british rule
Answers
In terms of the actual destruction of temples and so on, the only major desecration I know of was the stripping of the Red Fort in Delhi, which under the Moghuls was encrusted with precious stones and gold. Now it is plain red stone. They also plundered the wealth of the Rajahs they defeated in war, and no doubt would have stripped off any precious decorations from their palaces (but you have only to visit one to see they left a lot for the local Rajah to enjoy).
In the various wars against the independent principalities that were the political landscape before the British brought them under their rule, I expect local temples and Gurdwaras were damaged or destroyed, but again, you only have to cross India to know this did not seriously alter the landscape of local worship. Indira Ghandi did more damage to the Golden Temple than the British ever did.
The most extensive and lasting reforms were probably those of Lord Dalhousie in the 1850s. To quote from this article, Lord Dalhousie imposed some important social reforms that overrode the ancient laws of India. Thus “Dalhousie abolished female infanticide which was prevalent among the Rajputs of higher castes. He also abolished the practice of human sacrifice practiced by the khonds of Orissa, Madras and Central Provinces who had blind belief that the fertility of the soil would be increased by sacrificing human beings… Dalhousie passed the Religious Disability Act in 1850 which enabled the Hindu convert to inherit his ancestral property [previously illegal under Hindu law]. Moreover, he passed the Widow Remarriage Act in 1855 which legalized the marriage of Hindu widows.”
The British, as mentioned elsewhere here, pretty much put an end to Sati, but not until the mid-19th Century, and the last actual report I know of was the immolation of Roop Kanwar in 1987 in Rajasthan. At least the British managed to make the practice unethical in most Indians’ eyes, which it had not been. You can go so far with law, but changing people’s attitudes and traditions is a harder task, and in this it is clear they succeeded.
The British also put down the Thuggees, another group revered in their way because they carried out their reign of murderous terror on travellers in the name of the Goddess Kali. They specialised in strangling their victims, before robbing them. The English word Thug derives from them. They had been at their work for at least 450 years, even the Moghuls had not bothered to stop them. They were, in their way, also part of Hindu culture.
Probably, Dalhousie’s most lasting alteration of the culture of the sub-continent was the introduction of the railways, postal system and telegraph, which, as they did wherever the Europeans took them, radicalised Indian society, because it radicalised communications. The European cultural revolution of the past three hundred years or so has changed every society’s culture. Compared to all of the cultural revolutions in the previous millennia of human society, from the Babylonians inventing numbers to the Chinese inventing paper money, or whatever you like, I can’t think of another one to match it. And the single essential ingredient of that revolution is surely the development and distribution of the means of communication, so that now we live in a world entirely connected by telecommunication systems of one kind or another, with print, radio and film as the tools we have to hand.
But it is important to understand how that revolution has worked to make its success. It is incorporative by nature. The British in particular have a long history of absorbing the best of other cultures into theirs, their language and their traditions. So let’s not forget just how much India has altered European culture, through language, music, art, and the production of such fineries as Muslin. Oh, and Tikka Massala is now officially the most popular dish of the United Kingdom, and is itself a hybrid of Indian and English cuisine!
Not to mention the incorporation into Western thinking of the philosophical wisdom of a culture that is thousands of years older than Europe’s.
Hope helps.....
Answer:1 Jhansi 2bithoor 3.meerut 4.kanpur