Were the British benevolent with India? - Quora
www.quora.com/Were-the-British-benevolent-with-IndiaBritish Raj (Colonial Rule of India; 1858-1947) ... Balaji Viswanathan, History buff.History ... Since independence, some improvement has been made to wipe out ... in 1857, when patriots rose against the British invasion, they hung lakhs and killed others by tying them up to the mouths of cannons
How did the British colonize India? - Quora
www.quora.com/How-did-the-British-colonize-IndiaColonization .... History of India: How did the Britishers initially coming to trade with India ... I think Balaji has given a very comprehensive and factual answer.Between 1765 and 1947, India experienced several major famines, primarily caused by droughts and policy failures. Some notable famines include:- 1770: The Great Bengal Famine, with an estimated mortality rate between 1 and 10 million
- 1783–1784: The Chalisa Famine, with an estimated 11 million deaths
- 1791–1792: The Doji bara Famine, with an estimated 11 million deaths
- 1837–1838: The Agra Famine, with an estimated 800,000 deaths
- 1866: The Orissa Famine
- 1873–1874: The Bihar Famine
- 1876–1878: The Great Famine, also known as the Southern India Famine or Madras Famines, affected the south and southwest regions
- 1943: The Bengal Famine, which occurred during World War II
Other famines that occurred during this period include: 1860–1861, 1865–1867, 1868–1870, 1896–1897, and 1899–1900.Featured snippet from the web
- Great Bengal Famine of 1770.
- Chalisa famine of 1782–84.
- Doji Bara famine or Skull famine of 1788–94.
- Agra famine of 1837–38.
- Upper Doab famine of 1860–61.
- Orissa famine of 1866.
- Rajasthan famine of 1869.
- Bihar famine of 1873–74.
•4 Sept 2018How could India have prevented being colonized by Britain ...
www.quora.com/How-could-India-have-prevented-being-colonized-by-...British expansion into India is a story of a series of betrayals - w... ... Balaji Viswanathan, History buff.History ... What did Britain have to gain by colonizing India?Is Mahatma Gandhi unduly credited for India's long freedom ...
www.quora.com/.../Is-Mahatma-Gandhi-unduly-credited-for-Indias-long...Thus, the British Empire does not depend on England but on India. ... Balaji Viswanathan, History buffHistory buff ... However, in colonies far from India, England still clung on to power (until the 1980s in Africa and Carribean) and it fought a war ...
The recent debacle of David Cameron’s filmed condemnation of Nigerian and Afghan corruption and the Queen’s remark on Chinese officials’ rudeness highlights the persistence of imperial thinking in Britain. There seems to be a continuing assumption within the British establishment that it sets an example for others to follow and that the British are owed deference by others.
Ever since evangelical antislavery activists campaigned for Britain to abolish the transatlantic slave trade, Britons have assured themselves that imperial overrule is compatible with the “benign tutelage” of other races and nations. Unlike the other European empires, Britons tell themselves, theirs was an empire founded on humanitarian compassion for colonised subjects.
The argument runs like this: while the Spanish, Portuguese, French, Belgians and Germans exploited and abused, the British empire brought ideas of protection for lesser races and fostered their incremental development. With British tutelage colonised peoples could become, eventually, as competent, as knowledgeable, as “civilised” as Britain itself. These platitudes have been repeated time and again – they are still at the heart of most popular representations of the British Empire.
Even when we are encouraged to pay attention to empire’s costs as well as its benefits, these costs are imagined solely in terms of specific incidents of violence such as the Amritsar Massacre in India or the suppression of the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya. Britain has excused itself from that most structural injustice of empire – the slave trade itself – by the fact that it was Britain that pioneered its abolition.
Acknowledgement that cities such as Bristol, Liverpool and London were enriched by Britain’s dominance of the trade, that many stately homes were built on its wealth and that the compensation money paid to owners upon emancipation – rather than the enslaved – helped drive the industrial revolution and the growth of the City of London, tends to be confined to more critical quarters.
By contrast, runs the same argument, the benefits that empire brought to the world are universal. Everyone – Nigerians, Afghans and Chinese included – should be grateful for the rule of law, the English language, modern education, railways and free trade, all things that Britain provided in order to usher in the modern age.
Selective memory
But to remember empire in this way is an act of incredible selectivity, if not wilful forgetting. Far from being of universal benefit, these features of British rule were designed in the first instance to benefit British settlers, producers and traders. The partial inclusion of colonised peoples themselves in their benefits had to be hard won by those peoples in the face of racist laws and customs.
Black people generally weren’t allowed to travel on the railways on the same terms as white people. Gandhi’s political awakening came when he was thrown out of a whites only carriage on a South African railway. Government-run education systems varied hugely in time and place but were generally not extended to “natives”. Their education was left to mission societies able to reach only a tiny proportion of them. The Indian Residential Schools of Canada and many of the institutions into which Aboriginal and so-called “half-caste” children were forced in Australia were notoriously neglectful and abusive.
One of the first things that some indigenous elites did with their education was challenge white peoples’ entitlement to rule their countries. The colonial “rule of law” generally worked in favour of white settlers, elites and men. Even where explicitly racist legislation was avoided, proxies for race such as English language tests were used. These either imposed different standards on “native” populations or kept Asian people out of settler colonies unless their labour was required.
The wider adoption of English certainly facilitated more global conversations and business transactions among male elites. But it only served to heighten the exclusion of most non-English speaking subjects and women from access to the credit and political capital that flowed through Anglophone global networks.
Much the same could be said for free trade, which tended to enrich the colonial masters rather than their imperial subjects – let’s not forget it was the argument for free trade which was used to force China to continue accepting opium imports against its will, starting China’s “Century of Humiliation”.
Imperialism was no gift
Democracy was not actually a concept with which British elites were comfortable – or with which colonised peoples were familiar throughout most of the era of Britain’s imperial rule. Rather, it was something hard won, largely once the British had left.
Those under the “benevolent” rule of empire did not necessarily experience British imperialism as a gift. For many around the world, the costs of empire were not restricted to the occasional episode of violent repression, nor even to structural injustices such as the slave trade. Rather, these were systematic, everyday costs. These costs included exclusion – from power and privilege in their own lands – coupled with humiliation at being made to pay deference to white people who assumed the right to govern them.
Before condemning the corruption and rudeness of others perhaps we should remember the act of imperialism itself may be seen as self-interested, arrogant rudeness on a global scale.
Alan Lester, Professor of Historical Geography, University of Sussex
An event that no one knows about it.
The only incident in India was when the British simultaneously hanged 52 revolutionaries on the tamarind(इमली) tree. Still, the leftists kept such a big event of history covered in the darkness of oblivion to date.
Bavani Tamarind(इमली) is a famous tamarind tree located in the Fatehpur district of Uttar Pradesh. Also, a martyr memorial in India. On 28th April 1858, Gautam Kshatriya, Jodha Singh Ataiya, and their fifty-one companions were hanged on this tamarind tree. This monument is located on Mughal Road, three kilometers west of Bindki tehsil headquarter near Khajua town in Bindki subdivision of Fatehpur district of Uttar Pradesh.
Bavani Tamarind Tree
This memorial is a symbol of the sacrifices made by the freedom fighters. On 28th April 1858, the British army hanged fifty-two freedom fighters on a tamarind tree. This tamarind tree still exists. People believe that after that massacre, the growth of that tree stopped.
On 10th May 1857, when independence was conjured in Barrackpore Cantonment, on 10th June 1857, the revolutionaries in Fatehpur also stepped in this direction, which Jodha Singh Ataya led. Fatehpur Deputy Collector Hikmat Ulla Khan was also his associate. These heroes first took the Fatehpur court and the treasury in their possession. The fire of freedom was burning in the mind of Jodha Singh Ataya for a long time. He was related to Tatya Tope. To liberate the motherland, they fought with the British on the banks of river Pandu. After the face-to-face battle, the English army fled the field. These heroes buried their flag in Kanpur.
The flame of Jodha Singh's mind did not subside even after this. On 27th Oct 1857, they burnt an English officer and a constable in the village of Mahmudpur while staying in a house. On 7th Dec 1857, he attacked the Gangapar Ranipur police post and killed a British corpse. Jodha Singh organized the revolutionaries of Awadh and Bundelkhand and captured Fatehpur as well.
Seeing the convenience of transportation, the revolutionaries made Khajuha their center. Colonel Pavel, going from Prayag to Kanpur on the information of a traitor informer, attacked the revolutionary army gathered at this place. Colonel Powell wanted to break this stronghold, but Jodha Singh's plan was perfect. He resorted to guerrilla warfare, killing Colonel Powell. Now the British sent a new consignment of the army under the leadership of Colonel Neil. Due to this, the revolutionaries had to bear heavy losses. But even after this, Jodha Singh's morale did not diminish. He planned the organization of the army, the collection of arms, and the collection of funds afresh. For this, he started migrating in disguise, but it was the misfortune of the country that, along with the heroes, traitors also flourished here. When Jodha Singh returned to Khajuha after discussing with the Ataya Argal king, he was surrounded by the British cavalry near village Ghorha on the information of an informer. Only after a short struggle was Jodha Singh taken prisoner along with his 51 revolutionary companions.
Memorial place
On April 28, 1858, he was hanged along with his 51 companions on a tamarind tree on Mughal Road by Britishers. But the brutality of the British did not stop here. The British made a statement everywhere that whoever removed the dead body from the tree would also be hanged from that tree. After which, for how many days the dead bodies kept hanging from the trees and the eagles kept eating the vultures. Eventually, Maharaja Bhavani Singh and his companions went and lowered the dead bodies from the tree on 4th June, and the last rites were performed. The tamarind tree (Bavani tamarind) between Bindki and Khajuha is remembered today as the Martyr's Memorial.
