Tracing India's "Cooperation" With Britain
British involvement in India developed mainly through the cooperation of India’s people. However, coercion led to compliance and this may yet be interpreted as cooperation. From a social perspective the British had no choice but to successfully adapt in India in order to gain both trust and ultimately cooperation. Without this cooperation, the British would not have been able to remain in India.
Yet, in the later years of the Raj, there was in fact, much less social mixing. This was in part, due to the arrival of Victorian women in India (1820s). Economic cooperation must also have been substantial otherwise the British would not have remained there. Nor would the British government have taken financial risks with India.
But economic cooperation was tantamount to the Indians robbing their own country. The Indian population cooperated largely through the paying of taxes to the East India Company beginning 1765. This made very little difference to the Indians themselves, as they were already used to paying taxes. The difference was that these taxes were fixed under British rule highlighting the inequities in this system.
Within the Mughal Empire, the British did not take poor harvests or financial difficulties into consideration when collecting taxes. Political cooperation was necessary early on, thereby acknowledging Britain’s legitimacy in its exercising of power in India. Increasing British involvement and political cooperation are inexorably linked. This cooperation varied greatly from province to province. Those Indian Princes who cooperated were slow to realize the consequences of their growing entanglement with the British.
Power was handed over from the hands of the princes to the British in return for the princes being left alone. The Princes acted as proxy rulers for the British. Cooperation beginning in 1858 was mixed, with some Indians challenging political authority with uprisings, that were smaller than those which had occurred between 1857-58. Other Indians worked the system having learned English, thereby allowing them to take up low governmental positions. Their work with the British enabled the Indians to help bring about political change. Ultimately, the cooperation of India’s peoples was the main way in which the British were genuinely able to increase their involvement in India.
Cooperation by definition is “an act or instance of working or acting together for a common purpose; joint action.” By this definition, cooperation was not particularly widespread as its benefit was not shared equally between the British and the Indians. Cooperation was demonstrably not the case. Instead “cooperation” was exercised by the Indians, who blindly obeyed the orders of their British officers and in the case of the sepoys, acted against their own countrymen.
However, the sepoys were deliberately removed from their own regions in order to avoid them being used against the British by their collaboration with the locals. Furthermore, the Indians would not have cooperated with the British, had they not thought there was some mutual benefit in so doing. This exploitation of their cooperation undoubtedly helped to increase British involvement. India’s peoples had to have cooperated, at least initially, in order for the first British people arriving in India to gain a foothold and thus be able to remain. In the second half of the 18th, in the early years of British involvement in India, there was a culture clash. By the time the British had established a major involvement in India in 1756 the structure of society in one of India’s most strategically important cities, Calcutta, had changed hugely.
Calcutta’s population grew rapidly from 10,000-12,000 in 1710, to just over 100,000 by 1750. It climbed to more than 150,000 by the end of the century. This expansion of a large city further placed the British on the back foot in terms of the threat of revolt, because they were so outnumbered. But it also made the Indians’ continual cooperation paradoxical. This successful cooperation gave the British the confidence to increase their involvement.
How India, Britain Came Together
The British adapted well to Indian society in the early going (1756-1820) in part because of their small numbers and the need to have the support of the locals. One of the popular venues for interaction was the Nautch Dance. But the dance became less practiced by the British with the arrival of Victorian women in the 1820s). Victorian women despised the casual flaunting of Indian women who would dance too provocatively.
The Nautch dance began to fall out of fashion by the 1830s and with its end, there was less and less interaction between the cultures. By early 1840, the only interaction resulted from the British use of brothels. In fact, wills reviewed from the 1790s showed many East India Company men leaving their possessions to Indian women, but that number declined over time.
How a Piece of Art Inspired Cooperation
A painting by an Indian artist in Delhi, painted c. 1815-20, depicts Mahadaji Sindhia entertaining a British naval officer and a military officer with a Nautch. The source, judging by the uniforms of his British guests, might be seen as propaganda to gloss over the past tensions and advertise rapprochement between the Scindias (a Hindu Maratha dynasty that ruled the Gwalior State) and the East India Company.
It is therefore favorable to the British. The source post-dates Mahadaji’s death by at least a decade. Mahadaji, the man who successfully confronted the EIC, defeated the Rajputs, with French backing, took the Mughal Emperor Shah ‘Alam under his protection and by 1793 was exerting a dominant influence over the Peshwa. In 1818, the Scindias became clients of the British. This having been painted in a time of cooperation and friendship mars its credibility, as it would have been painted with the intention of portraying this cooperation as a token of friendship and respect to the British.
This demonstration of manipulation and cooperation reflected the increased British involvement. This encouraged cooperation from India’s peoples, sometimes even adoration, as reflected in the fine details of the painting.
Reform Driven By East India Company
From the 1820s there was a clear shift in intervention. Society in India was split on the reforms that were being carried out by the British. The period of “reform” was brought about out of optimism that India could adopt western practices and therefore modernize. The confidence of the British in India was such that they believed that they could carry out such large-scale reform. This suggests that the British were confident that they could count, at this time, on the cooperation of the Indian population.
The first British in India did not want to agitate the Indians, especially as they, the British, were so few in number. The fact that their small numbers could govern such a large population led to some British acquiring a racial superiority complex, which bolstered their confidence. This is evident in the Act of Abolition in 1829 against Sati, the tradition of self-immolation by Hindu widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands, which was commonplace in some regions.
With the outlawing of Thagi, a semi-religious Hindu cult with a highly organized system of murder and robbery, there was wide-scale support. However, Sati was deeply rooted in tradition. This was because the widow did not want to be a financial burden to her family after the death of her husband. Governor-General William Bentinck’s “Minute on Sati,” November 1829 exemplifies why the reforms were brought about. As Bentinck writes, he felt an “awful responsibility” to abolish such a long-standing practice, but says that Indians needed to learn a “more just concept of the will of God.”
This shows that the British felt they had a moral duty educate them and guide the Indians in finding “God’.” This process of education was met with cooperation in the majority of cases.
Religious and Cultural Intolerance
The significance of Christian missionaries in forcing discussions on social and cultural issues in India cannot be understated. Unsurprisingly, the Christian missionaries were more successful amongst the Muslim Indians as Islam and Christianity shared monotheism. But the British got limited cooperation in the abolition of Sati Bengal province. It turned into the most “common indicator of social development” as Sati was regarded as primitive by both the British and an increasing number of Indians. It was barbaric enough to appall even the fiercest advocates of cultural tolerance. In 1828, it was estimated that there were 575 Satis in Bengal (Hamilton, 1828). Nonetheless it took until 1829 for the governing body to act.
Governor-General Sir Charles Napier stated: “it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and hang them. Build your funeral pyre and beside it my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your national custom – then we shall follow ours.”
This sheds some light on the intolerance some British commanders held for Indian customs and how they felt emboldened enough to outrageously voice their opinions. Napier was the British Army’s commander-in-chief in India, at which time he led the military conquest of Sindh. This demonstrates a biased view during a period of social upheaval in India from the perspective of an ardent imperialist. Napier was, however, an informed observer of the abolition of Sati and therefore his assertion shows an opinion that was adopted by many of the British in India at the time.
Economic “Cooperation” Between India, Britain
After the British took control of Bengal, economic cooperation and British involvement grew considerably. In terms of the size of its economy, Bengal was the most successful Indian region. It was therefore vital that the region was made to cooperate with the British in order to strengthen their grip on the nation. Indians in Bengal continued to pay their taxes, which meant they were indirectly cooperating with the British. This cooperation must have been considerable, as the British themselves were definitely shown to be reaping the rewards. This is demonstrated by Robert Clive’s own fortune of plundered wealth and gifts from frightened princes.
Clive is noted for saying in a speech made in Parliament, “I stand astonished at my own moderation.” He spoke of walking “through vaults thrown open to me alone, piled on either hand with gold and jewels.”
This further demonstrates the extent of Indian cooperation. Wealthy princes lavished British imperialists with treasures and innumerable riches in return for being allowed to remain in their princely seats and continue to rule over their subjects with British supervision. This was further demonstrated when in 1750, India accounted for 25 percent of world economic production, in contrast to England’s 1.9 percent. By 1900, India’s strong economy had dwindled to just 2 percent as Britain’s had soared to 22.8 percent.
