The emergence of a national political discourse in the late 1800s came about against the wishes of the GoI, but on a stage prepared by it.
” Government was to be exercised through a collaborative elite responsible for the implementation of government policy in the locality. The GoI ’s mission was thus to preserve stability and control, largely through a strategy of “divide and rule. India was to be governed for the benefit of the British metropole as cheaply as possible. Consequently the Government of India (GoI) understood its role in an extremely conservative light. The revolt convinced the British that their efforts at reform of Indian society had been dangerously miscalculated. THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA (1858 –1947)Ĭompany rule ended with the abolition of the East India Company in 1858 in the wake of the Indian rebellion, more commonly known as the Indian Mutiny. Throughout its reign, the debate as to whether the company ’s role was to transform Indian society or to preserve Indian tradition continued unabated. The EIC became the ultimate arbiter of what constituted tradition, and its codification turned previously fluid arrangements of social interaction into rigid systems of social classification. Yet this effort to preserve and participate in Indian “traditions ” fundamentally transformed them. The company made an extensive effort to codify indigenous law and practice. It continued to transact the business of government through local allies, according to local custom and in local languages. An English trading company driven by European ideas of economy as well as European norms and practices of political authority, the EIC was also a participant in the South Asian political universe, asserting its credentials as a successor state to the Mughal empire. The indirect exercise of control contributed to the hybridity of EIC governance. The company exercised power indirectly through local allies and rulers, setting a precedent followed up to 1947.
Political instability following the disintegration of Mughal authority enabled the EIC to transform from a mere trading interest to a territorial ruler. By the mid-eighteenth century, competition with the French drew the British into the South Asian political scene through alliances with local powers. The company ’s participation in the lucrative spice trade led it to establish trading posts first at Surat on the Gujarati coast and later at Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta. The origins of British rule of South Asia lay in the founding of the English East India Company (EIC) in 1600. The period of the Raj covers two hundred years of South Asian history and is one of the most important episodes of colonialism in modern history. The latter included Bangladesh as East Pakistan, which gained independence in 1971. The British finally left the subcontinent in 1947, ceding independence to the new states of India and Pakistan on August 14/15. While the English East India Company (EIC) had been present in South Asia from the early seventeenth century, formal British rule began in 1757. The Raj, a Hindi word meaning “rule, ” is the epithet most closely associated with British rule of the Indian subcontinent.
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