33.5 The indian subcontinent: a.d. 1801 to 1900  (Page 2/2)

The British had a professional army of never more than 200,000 men and 2/3 of them were native Indians. Native revolts against the spreading East Indian Company, particularly the Sepoy mutiny of 1857, forced the British government to take over actual control of the country. This famous Sepoy revolt had to do with the new Enfield rifle which was issued along with cartridges, which were coated with grease. The cartridge had to be bitten open before loading and the Indian Sepoys (many of high Brahmin Hindu caste) thought that biting fat of the sacred cow would throw them back down through many life times of struggle to get back up to their present level in the cycle of rebirth, while the Muslims in the units felt that if the fat were of the unclean pig, the situation was intolerable. The mutiny of the troops started at Meerut in the far north of Rajputana and resulted in 14 months of bitter fighting. Sikh loyalty to the British in the Punjab and indifference in the Deccan and south, turned the tide eventually in favour of the British. The most important consequence of all this was an abrupt change in the British management of India.

The East India Company was terminated by royal decree on August 12, 1858 and the British crown (Queen Victoria) took over. Ultimate~y 2,000 members of the Indian Civil Service and 10,000 British officers had authority over the 300,000,000 Indian people, helped only by 60,000 British regular soldiers and 200,000 native troops. The English, after fighting 111 wars in India, using Indian money and troops, completed the conquest of that land and then, with peace obtained, did establish railways, factories and schools as a token reward for their financial despotism.

There has been much criticism of British imperialism in India, but some of it has certainly been unjust. Although the British East India Company may have taken much wealth from India, there was plenty left for the 565 princes or maharajas of the same number of states which remained more or less self-governing under British jurisdiction. Those princes had an average of 5, 8 wives, 12 to 16 children, 9.2 elephants, 2.8 private railway cars, 3.4 Rolls-Royces and 22.9 tigers killed. Most had tremendous wealth in gold, silver and fabulous jewels, even if their subjects might be starving. The Sikh Maharaja of Pateala had a pearl necklace later insured by Lloyds of London for $1,000,000, but his most intriguing item was a diamond breastplate composed of 1,000 brilliantly matched blue-white diamonds. The Maharaja of Baroda went about on an elephant with all the animal's equipment, such as the howdah, harness and great saddle cloth, made of gold, with 10 gold chains hung from each huge ear, each chain worth $60,000. (Ref. 211 , 122 , 8 , 37 )

Throughout the century the Indian army fought almost incessantly along the passes and peaks of the frontier with Afghanistan, at Landi Kotal and up and down the Kyber.

The enemy was cruel, Pathans like the Wazirs and Mahsuds, who finished off wounded prisoners with knives. Famine occurred through most of India in 1866 and again in 1877 and then periodically until 1899, although commercial agriculture flourished. When another episode of plague arrived in Bombay in 1898, within 10 years some 6,000,000 persons had died of it

Map taken from Reference 97

At the end of the century India was the second largest nation on earth with about five times as many Hindus as Moslems, several million Sikhs and about the same number of Christians, a few Parsis and still fewer Jews. The observation of the occasional contrast between Christian principles and the actual practice of Christians, left India skeptical and satirical and Christianity has converted only 6% of the Indian people in 300 years, as the Hindu religion has remained supreme. There were 15 official languages and 845 dialects. There was a leper population the size of Switzerland and enough beggars to populate Holland. Cholera was endemic but became general and violent throughout this century and even spread to Europe. A virulent form of tuberculosis had developed in the previous century and continued to ravage in this one. (Ref. 260 ) There were still some many million aborigines, some like the Nagas of the far east Nagaland next to Burma, who still hunted heads until the middle of the 20th century. In the l9th century probably as many as 3,000,000 Indians migrated to other countries along the shores of the Indian Ocean, but they did not fuse well with local peoples and in the next century many had returned home. (Ref. 37 , 8 , 68 , 211 , 46 )

After the 1830s there was a large migration of Indian Tamils to Sri Lanka to labor on the coffee, tea and rubber plantations. They joined other Tamils whose Dravidian ancestors had arrived centuries before from the south of India. Most practiced Hinduism, in contrast to the majority Sinhalese of the island, who were Buddhists. The Tamils prospered under the British rule during the l9th century, but today, in the late 20th century, many are being deported back to India. (Ref. 108 , 260 )