Sunday, May 4, 2003		Books

Off the shelf
Rise and fall of the British Empire in India
V. N. Datta

THREE types of British historians have written on India. One, like the famous James Mill who never visited India, nor knew any Indian language and yet produced perhaps the biggest historical work on India which Macaulay regarded as the greatest since Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Two, the historian-administrator like W.W. Hunter and Vincent Smith who produced text books on Indian history for the British civil servants. Three, the professional historians trained in the austerities of historical discipline, drawn mainly from the school of Oriental Studies, London and Oxbridge, who brought out a number of scholarly works on a variety of themes concerning India. Roderick Cavaliero, the author of the book under review, Strangers in the Land, belongs to a different category.

Author of several historical works, including the Last of the Crusaders and Admiral Satan, Cavaliero studied history at Oxford. Thereafter he went to India as the British Council Cultural Attache, travelled in many parts of the country, made friends, and acquired knowledge about the habits and customs of the people. After retiring from the British Council as the Deputy Director-General in London, he took to writing the present elegantly produced work, Strangers in the Land: The Rise and Decline of the British Empire (I. B. Tarri, London, 2002, pages XVI + 280).

The title of the book bears similarity to Penderal Moon’s Strangers in India published in 1943. Moon was then the District Magistrate at Amritsar. He was concerned with the communal problem that was to threaten the unity of the country. Moon’s aim was limited, but not Cavliero’s. His object is not to recount the British military adventures or political initiatives taken to promote the case of Indian’s self-rule. Cavliero sets the tone of the book in his preface: the "Britons remained strangers in the land and never sadly understood or properly appreciated what they called the jewel in the crown. Thus they could never fill the role of Platonic guardians they had assigned to themselves."

The opening chapters show how the British, few in number, possessing meagre resources, through sheer military strategy, diplomacy and ruse established their authority in a large badly governed country torn by internecine conflicts, intrigues and divided loyalties. The Battle of Buxar completed the work of Plassey. Cavaliero is brutally frank and does not mince words when he writes that "from Plassey in 1757 to Clives’ return to Bengal in 1765, `A3 2169065 had been received by Company servants in gifts above `A3112,000 in 1765 surpassing anything that disgraced the annals of Tacitus."

According to Cavaliero, the early 19^th century India marked a turning point in the social and cultural history of India when profound social and cultural changes began to take place in the country, for which the initiative had been taken earlier by the Orientalists like Sir William Jones, H.T. Colebrook and H.H. Wilson who had taken a lead in resurrecting the antiquity, tradition and culture of ancient India. The Asiatic Society of Bengal had been set up to study and promote the cause of Indology. Warren Hasting himself was the promoter of Oriental learning and he had set up a number of educational institutions.

Cavaliero shows how during the Governor-Generalship of Lord William Bentinck the impact of the Utilitarian and Evangelical ideas had resulted in the introduction of social and educational reforms in which Bentinck, Macaulay, the first law member in the Council, and Charles Trevelyan had played a vital role. Sati was abolished and female infanticide and thuggee suppressed. The English language in place of Sanskrit and Persian was introduced as a medium of instruction in educational institutions despite a bitter controversy on the issue raised both in England and India.

Caveliero represents Bentinck as a confirmed and convinced liberal who was deeply influenced by the Benthamite theories of legislation and ethics. From contemporary sources it is evident that India had set itself on the path to modernity, which was strongly reflected in the speeches and writings of Rammohan Roy, the herald of new spirit of enlightenment and individualism.

After Bentinck’s departure India plunged again into military expeditions and warfare.

The British intervened in Afghanistan, much to their cost in men and material, and the whole Afghan venture proved politically inexpedient and morally unjustifiable.

Cavaliero’s portrait of Ranjit Singh is most illuminating. The Maharaja had a sense of premonition that after his exit from the scene there would be a deluge (Sub lal ho jayega). Rammohan Roy and Ranjit Singh remain the most outstanding men of their age in the country.

Cavaliero’s analysis of Lord Dalhousie and Lord Curzon shows that they bore to each other a great similarity in their mode of governance. Men of iron and flint, both were radical in their reforms and despotic in administration. They were in a desperate hurry to overhaul the political, social and educational set-up of the country. They shared in common a strong belief that the perpetuation of the British rule was divinely ordained, and was a blessing in disguise for the welfare of the Indian people.

Their maxim was that England had everything to give to India, and not to learn from her. Though some of the administrative measures they took were commendable, like Dalhousie’s suppression of sati in the native states, and Curzon’s setting up of the Archaeological Survey of India for the preservation of ancient and medieval monuments, on the whole, the cumulative effect of their actions proved disastrous. Dalhousie has been held responsible for the Mutiny of 1857, and Curzon for the Partition of Bengal, which unleashed strong anti-British forces in the country and created bitter feelings against the Raj among the educated classes.

Cavaliero’s narrative after dealing with Curzon’s administration speeds up and goes over in inimitable style significant events: the emergence of the Congress as a strong political party, the communal divide between Hindus and Muslims, Muslim consciousness, the transfer of the Capital from Calcutta to Delhi, impact of the First World War, Jallianwala Bagh massacre, the Khilafat, Non-Cooperation Movement, Simon Commission, the Government of India Act, 1935, the Second World War, Cripps Mission, the Congress rebellion, the Labour in power in England, Cabinet Mission proposals (1946), communal riots, Mountbatten’s role, transfer of power and the Partition.

The book contains a highly interesting account of the sports the British promoted, such as horseracing, cricket and polo. The author’s description of the Viceregal Lodge in Delhi is exquisite. By interpreting important literary narratives, Cavaliero has highlighted some of the striking British approaches to the understanding of the complexity of Indian history.

Cavaliero had undertaken a rather difficult task of writing such a comprehensive work covering a period of over two centuries and dealing with the political, social and cultural life of the people in this age of narrow specialisation when we are interested in knowing more and more about less and less. I think that Cavaliero has acted prudently in doing what two eminent historians Burchardt and Dillty had done in the interpretation of the past. The historians had taken the "significant," the "unique" and the "recurrent’ in history and by using them as "types" built up the texture of the narrative. In this masterly study of the Indo-British relations, elegantly and lucidly written, Cavaliero has presented a fiercely objective and candid story in the detached spirit of a true historian.