What types of surveys were conducted by the British in India from time to time short answer?
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Answer:
The office of the Survey of India completed 250 years on Tuesday. Entrusted with the duty of collection of data, mapping and topographical research, the institute came into existence in 1767, three years after the British East India Company emerged victorious in the Battle of Buxar. At present, the Survey of India holds a very important place in the sector of research and analysis within the country and in fact serves as a reference point for several Southeast Asian countries as well. However, an examination of the institute’s inception would reveal a much darker past, when its establishment was firmly tied with the British ambitions of conquest.
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There is an interesting relationship that the process of knowledge production and political power share with each other. Quite often, those in power have the privilege to produce knowledge. On other occasions though, it is the ability to produce knowledge that aids in achieving power. In case of establishment of the Survey of India, it was the production of quantifiable knowledge — data, maps and census — that was seen as a necessary step by the English East India Company (EIC) for efficiently conquering and administering India. In the words of economist U. Kalpagam, “the production of colonial archive is the immense project of conquest, rule and the administration of a vast subcontinent called the ‘Indian empire’.”
Maps and surveys in India
Throughout the late eighteenth and nineteenth century, as more and more territories came under the British rule, a series of surveys and mapping exercises were carried out. The task at hand was to represent India pictorially and to demarcate its territories. This administrative requisition gained currency once the revenue collection and regulation of states gained importance. The Bengal Atlas and the Map of Hindoostan published by James Rennell in the 1780s serve as examples. These maps were dedicated to the commander in chief of British India Robert Clive and governor general Warren Hastings. The maps also carried with them memoirs, providing information about the area’s history, the revenue it generated under previous rulers, and the inhabitants of the region. About the inhabitants, the information generally revolved how likely or unlikely they were to resist conquest. For instance, James Renell writing about the inhabitants of Mewat in his memoir states that “its inhabitants have ever been characterised as the most savage and brutal: and their chief employment, robbery and plundering.”
Credits: https://indianexpress.com/article/research/survey-of-india-turns-250-remembering-a-british-past-when-mapping-was-for-the-sake-of-conquering-4609008/