14. British Policies: Political, Economic, Administrative Unification

CORE Key Points at a Glance

1. 1

   Subsidiary Alliance (1798, Lord Wellesley)

   • Required Indian rulers to maintain a British force at their own expense
   • Required acceptance of a British Resident at their court
   • In return, Britain guaranteed protection from external and internal threats
   • States absorbed: Hyderabad (1798), Mysore (1799), Awadh (1801), Maratha chiefs (1802)
   • Ended the independence of Indian rulers without formal annexation
2. 2

   Doctrine of Lapse (Lord Dalhousie, 1848–1856)

   • Denied Indian rulers the right to adopt heirs — adopted sons could not legally inherit feudatory states
   • States lapsed: Satara (1848), Jaitpur and Sambalpur (1849), Baghat (1850), Udaipur (1852), Jhansi (1853), Nagpur (1854)
   • Annexation of Awadh (1856) added on separate grounds of "misgovernance"
   • Dispossessed rulers became core leadership of the 1857 revolt
3. 3

   Permanent Settlement of Bengal (1793, Lord Cornwallis)

   • Fixed land revenue in perpetuity with zamindars who gained hereditary ownership rights
   • Peasants (ryots) were reduced to mere tenants with no ownership
   • Transferred agricultural surplus to a new zamindar class loyal to the British
   • Created chronic rural indebtedness and deepened agrarian poverty
4. 4

   Ryotwari and Mahalwari Settlements

   • Ryotwari (Thomas Munro, Madras 1820; Elphinstone, Bombay): revenue settled directly with individual cultivators (ryots) who held occupancy rights
   • Mahalwari (William Bentinck, northern India): revenue settled with villages (mahals) collectively with joint liability
   • Three systems together covered all of British India
5. 5

   Railways in India

   • First railway line (Bombay to Thane, 21 miles) inaugurated on 16 April 1853 under Lord Dalhousie
   • By 1900, India had 25,000 miles of railway
   • Served British imperial purposes: raw material to ports, troop movement, market integration
   • Critics: railways deepened economic drain; defenders: created unified national market
6. 6

   Drain of Wealth Theory

   • Articulated by Dadabhai Naoroji in Poverty and Un-British Rule in India (1901)
   • Supplemented by R.C. Dutt in The Economic History of India (1902)
   • Naoroji estimated Britain drained at least £30 million annually through "Home Charges"
   • Home Charges included: civil/military pensions, railway debt interest, India Office costs, remitted profits
7. 7

   Indian Civil Service (ICS)

   • Established by the Charter Act of 1833; competitive examinations introduced by the Government of India Act 1853
   • Examinations were held only in London until 1922 (simultaneous exams in India and England allowed after that)
   • Lord Macaulay's 1835 "Minute on Education" pushed English as the medium of instruction
   • Shaped a colonial bureaucracy that became the IAS after independence
8. 8

   Lord Macaulay's Minute on Education (1835)

   • Argued that "a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia"
   • Recommended English-medium education to create "a class Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect"
   • Transformed India's educated elite but also produced the intellectual leaders of the independence movement
   • Naoroji, Gokhale, Tilak, and Banerjee all used Western ideas of liberty to demand self-rule
9. 9

   Queen Victoria's Proclamation of 1858

   • Transferred power from the East India Company to the British Crown after the 1857 revolt
   • Promised non-interference in religious matters and equal employment opportunities for Indians
   • Promised respect for existing treaties with Indian princes
   • Created the framework for direct Crown rule (British Raj) until 1947
10. 10

    Lord Ripon's Local Self-Government Act (1882)

    • Created elected local bodies (municipalities and district boards) with elected Indian majorities
    • First significant devolution of power to Indians
    • Also associated with the Ilbert Bill controversy (1883) — attempt to allow Indian judges to try European defendants
    • European community opposed the Ilbert Bill, forcing its withdrawal
11. 11

    Indian Councils Acts — 1892 and 1909

    • Indian Councils Act 1892: allowed Indians to be nominated to legislative councils
    • Indian Councils Act 1909 (Morley-Minto Reforms): introduced limited elections
    • Controversially introduced separate electorates for Muslims — deepened communal identity
    • This separate electorate policy eventually contributed to Partition
12. 12

    Partition of Bengal (1905, Lord Curzon)

    • Bengal divided into East Bengal (Muslim-majority) and West Bengal (Hindu-majority)
    • Ostensibly for administrative efficiency; nationalists saw it as deliberate "divide and rule"
    • Triggered the Swadeshi Movement — boycott of British goods, promotion of Indian products
    • Reversed at the Delhi Durbar (1911) under King George V; capital also shifted from Calcutta to Delhi