—JAWAHARLAL NEHRU (1936),
WHO BECAME INDIA’S FIRST PRIME MINISTER
Calcutta Afghanistan
Nepal
Bhutan
Madras Delhi
Hyderabad Ahmedabad
Bombay
BAY OF BENGAL
1857
OPPOSITE Territory controlled by the East India Company in 1857, based on a map originally printed in the Imperial Gazetteer of India (1907). Photo by Edinburgh Geographical Institute and Fowler&fowler.
Courtesy Wikimedia Commons. Map created by Elspeth Sweatman on a modern map of India, by Nichalp. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
the physical land than in any goods the land could produce. They sought ways to grab land whenever it became available. When a ruler died without a male heir, the Company seized his lands. When an Indian could not prove ownership of land in a formal (i.e., Western) way, the EIC deposed him. When a ruler such as Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II needed funds or protection, the EIC offered him a deal: tax revenue in exchange for military support. The 1765 Treaty of Allahabad granted the EIC diwani—the rights to collect tax revenues from more than ten million Indian people. Unlike the Indian rulers, the EIC based its tax policy on the potential revenue of each area, not on the actual goods produced. This kept taxes high even when an area was decimated by drought, further increasing the wealth inequality between the EIC and the Indian people.
“They Have Sacrificed Millions for the Sake of Gain”
This EIC monopoly decimated not only the Indian lower classes but also the environment. The Company needed more land to produce opium and tea—the two crops that would make the most revenue. The forests of Nilgiris and Assam were razed to the ground to make way for coffee, tea, and opium plantations. The EIC also
“brought in several exotic species like eucalyptus, pine and wattle to produce viscose, which was sent to the UK to be made into fabric,” says Tharoor. “Unfortunately, plants like eucalyptus thirstily drink up the ground water; thanks to their plantations, the British converted the once lush tropical rainforests of the Nilgiris into a water-shortage area.” This level of production devastated regional ecosystems, leading to droughts, famines, and crop shortages. In the two millennia before the British arrived in India, there were 17 recorded famines. During British rule, there were 34, killing an estimated 25 million people.
Where others saw disaster, EIC executives saw opportunity. Rather than lower the price of food and forgo tax collection, the Company raised taxes in times of famine.
During the 1770 Bengal famine, “many of the Company’s leading executives used their position to purchase grain by force—even seed for the next year’s planting—and then sold this at famine prices in the big cities of Calcutta and Murshidabad,” says historian Nick Robins. During the 1866 Orissa famine, British government officials exported 200 million pounds of rice as 1.5 million Indians starved to death.
Apart from their insatiable desire for wealth, the British had philosophical, racist reasons for not providing disaster relief. They believed in free trade (you shouldn’t interfere in market forces) and in the Malthusian doctrine (when the population gets too big for the land to support, natural disasters restore the balance). They did not
EIC-controlled area Indian territory Neighboring countries Because the original map was created by the colonizers, we have kept their spelling of Indian cities.
All boundaries are approximate.
believe in the tradition of charity—tax relief, fixed grain prices, suspended food exports during times of famine—set down by Indian rulers and the wealthy landowners. “The East India Company took a dim view of this kind of Indian almsgiving,” says Tharoor,
“dismissing it as undiscerning charity which irresponsibly attracted the wandering poor.
. . . The British therefore declared that they would ‘provide employment for the able-bodied’ but not ‘gratuitous relief ’ to the general public.”
“Commerce With Sword In Your Hands”
By the mid-1700s, the EIC was no longer a merchant enterprise; it was a colonizer, governing vast swathes of land in southern and northern India. Control—of revenue streams and Indian rulers—became its mission. Yet this “control was only possible because administrators could rely upon a large army to suppress opposition,” says Barrow. In 1830, there were 895 EIC civil servants backed by 36,409 European, 20,000 British, and 187,067 Indian troops. The EIC used these soldiers as a bargaining chip in alliance negotiations, war mongering, and quashing rebellions. “It is one of the
Sikh sepoys, non-commissioned and Indian officers in uniform and mufti, 1933–35. Photo from the War Office Photographic Collection, the National Archives UK. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
great ironies of the Company’s history that its Indian empire was effectively won by its Indian troops,” says Barrow.
It was in the military that the EIC’s racist strategy of divide et impera (“divide and rule”) flourished. Indians from Bengal were pitted against Indians from neighboring states. Indian troops were slowly cut off from their communities, forbidden from participating in festival parades or having holy men bless their regimental colors.
Some ethnic groups or castes were favored above others. This was especially true after the Great Rebellion of 1857 (the First War of Indian Independence), when sepoys (Indian infantrymen) revolting over pig-fat-greased rifle cartridges caused a chain reaction of uprisings throughout Bengal and northern India. “The sight of Hindu and Muslim soldiers rebelling together, willing to pledge joint allegiance to the enfeebled Mughal monarch, alarmed the British,” says Tharoor, and they “concluded that pitting the two groups against one another was the most effective way to ensure the unchallenged continuance of empire.”
“The Whole Ideology of This Rule Was That of . . . the Master Race”
Underlying all of the EIC’s economic policies during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries was racism. Yes, some early Company officials took the initiative to learn local languages, to read Indian texts, and to sponsor the construction of schools and temples. But these were all a means to an end: exploitation. To weasel every cent of money out of the land, the governments, and the people, it was useful to know as