Let me start the article by clearing any preliminary airs that may culminate into ad hominem criticism; I am not an apologist for the empire; I am not a self-loathing colored person venting his frustration. In fact, if it counts for anything, my family gave sweat, blood and more to the Indian freedom struggle, and hence I heap scorn on those who still consider the British Empire as ‘the white man’s burden’. However, there is an abiding tendency in our country to use the Empire’s depredations as a convenient scapegoat for a majority of our ills. A few examples: we are poor because the Empire robbed us dry; we are divided because the Empire left us that way. Of course, I have oversimplified but the general line of thinking moves along these lines. Sir Isaiah Berlin rightly stated that for an idea of a nation to fructify ‘infliction of wounds on the collective feelings of a society is a necessary condition for the birth of nationalist sentiment’. In the Indian case, the wounds inflicted by the Empire act as the foundation of the edifice for the idea of a nation. There is no point in contesting the deleterious impact of the Empire. It is a settled issue that the economic ravagement of the Empire had no hidden or unintended positive effects. However, I put forth the proposition that the Empire unwittingly left a positive political legacy that outlives its villainy.
India Lacked Political Unity
The British lorded over the Indian subcontinent for around 200 years. Their record of extraction and exploitation could, perhaps, only be outmatched by the bloody feats of Spanish conquistadors in South America. The Spanish colonizers wiped out the Aztec and Incan civilizations, exploited the natural resources to absolute exhaustion, and left a legacy of tumult in the region. If there were to be a prize for the ‘master marauder’, the Spanish duo of Cortés and Pizarro would surely defeat the British duo of Robert Clive and Warren Hastings. The British trailed the Spanish by almost a century when they first launched their foray into colonization; the first British colony, a failed one, was set up in Roanoke, North Carolina (USA) in 1585. Even as the initial efforts to colonize North America failed, the British East India Company (EIC) established its first factory in Surat, India, in 1613. But it wasn’t until the British victory in the Battle of Plassey, in 1757, that they became a potent force in the Indian subcontinent. It’s important that we briefly analyze the polity of the Indian subcontinent in leading up to the Battle of Plassey. Since the death of Aurangzeb in 1707, the mighty and majestic Mughal Empire was unraveling steadily. From the unceasing wars of attrition with the Marathas and the Sikhs to the invasions of Nader Shah and Ahmed Shah Abdali, the Mughals didn’t live up to their Timurid genetics, which was a part of their royal boast. Whenever it is pointed out either by an apologist of the Empire or an unbiased historian that there was no political unity in India before the establishment of British rule, the ‘Indian nationalist’ flies into a rage; he cites cultural unity from Kashmir to Kanyakumari; he cites Indian achievements in arts and sciences (with the emphasis being on the ‘zero’). Yet, his arguments don’t fulfill the norms of political unity as laid down by the Westphalian ideals, which provide the basis for a modern nation state. Two major invasions demonstrate the lack of political unity in the India of mid-eighteenth century. In 1739, Nader Shah of Persia successfully invaded India or rather the Mughal Empire. Such was the size of the war booty that there was no taxation in Persia for the next three years. The Marathas, who by then had become a potent force in the subcontinent, didn’t come to the aid of the Mughal Empire. In fact they had no reason to, as Nader Shah didn’t attack their territories. In 1761, when the Marathas faced off against Abdali’s Durrani Empire, they didn’t receive support from either the Sikhs or the Rajputs (in fact Patiala’s Baba Ala Singh, Captain Amarinder Singh’s ancestor, supported Abdali). There may have been cultural unity that was agnostic of religion affiliation, but political loyalty was parochial and very narrow in essence. When invaders from Central Asia, be it Nader Shah or Abdali came rampaging into the Indian heartland, the Mughals, the Marathas or the Sikhs put up a resistance only when it was politically expedient to their territorial ambitions. There were galvanizing ideas of Sultanate-e-Mughaliya, Hindu Pad Padshahi (Marathas) or Khalsa (Sikh) looming in that political climate, but there was no idea of an Indian nation.
Indian and idea of liberty, equality and fraternity
We, Indians, paid a heavy price to the British in the form back-breaking taxation, acute deindustrialization, and institutionalized humiliation to achieve political unification. When the British left India in 1947, we inherited that political unity, which wasn’t sullied by any regional, racial or religious loyalties. Opponents of this point of view argue that given the tenacity of the enlightenment ideas of liberty, fraternity and equality, India would have achieved political unity irrespective of the British rule. I beg to differ. The Ottoman Empire, which existed contemporaneously with the Mughal Empire, was as multi-religious and multi-ethnic as the Mughal Empire (perhaps more). The dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire in the wake of the First World War is a didactic lesson on how not to butcher an empire. The effects of that dismemberment are felt until this day in the Middle East. If the Mughal Empire would have been disemboweled the Ottoman way, India would have looked much different today. For better or worse, the administrative unification provided by the British, for extractive purposes nevertheless, incubated the nationalistic ferment and leadership formation in what is the modern day India. To take the point further, had the rebellion of 1857 succeeded, what would have India looked like? The Marathas, under Nana Sahib and Tantiya Tope, wanted a restoration of their confederacy, helmed by Brahmin Peshwas. The various Nawabs, who had suffered under the British policy of Doctrine of lapse, wanted a return to their feudal ways. Sure, one could argue that enlightenment ideas would have swept through various princely states and pushed them towards reform. However, one shouldn’t be too sure about it. When the winds of nationalism did blow, at the time of Indian independence, the Maharajas and the Nawabs were still haggling with the newly-created nation states of India and Pakistan to secure a ‘good bargain’, which was perhaps the most Indian thing they did. In fact, Maharaja of Kashmir’s vacillation cost the Indian subcontinent dear, given we sit on the precipice of a probable nuclear blowout between India and Pakistan. Another case was that of Maharaja of Jodhpur who gave serious thought to Jinnah’s tempting offer to accede to Pakistan before Sardar Patel intervened and ensured Jodhpur’s accession to India.
Of course, we can give into the hyper- nationalistic trend and interpret history that doesn’t raise uncomfortable questions about the formation of the Indian state; or we can have a nuanced look at our past and perhaps learn from it. (The author is the Editor-in-Chief of Udghosh. He has worked in investment banking, government, and the non-profit sector. He holds a Masters in Public Administration from Columbia University and a Masters in Finance and Economics from Warwick Business School).
