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11Test-1
1.
While bringing out their salient features, distinguish between Mural School of
Painting and Miniature School of Painting.
Indian painting
In both, murals and miniatures, Central India was one of the early debutantes. The
tradition of painting has been carried on in the Indian subcontinent since the ancient
times. Each form of painting is associated with a distinct historical period and thus
painting has an illustrious journey in India. Though regional, geographical and cultural
differences are obvious in any painting, every Indian painting style has a remarkable
unity in it still. Not only classical paintings, but the traditional art and paintings created
in various rural areas of India prove the same. Ancient Indian art used to revolve around
daily life and this was the most significant feature of art at that time.
Miniature School of Painting: The evolution of Indian Miniatures paintings started in
the Western Himalayas, around the 17th century. These paintings were highly
influenced by the mural paintings.
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Miniatures paintings are beautiful handmade paintings, which are quite
colourful.
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Miniature paintings are the small paintings done for books or albums.
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The highlights of these paintings are the intricate and delicate brushwork.
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Miniature paintings were started by the Palas of Bengal and enhanced by
Rajasthani schools.
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The colors are handmade, from minerals, vegetables, precious stones, indigo,
conch shells, pure gold and silver.
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The most common theme of the Miniature painting of India comprises of the
Ragas i.e., the musical codes of Indian classical music.
Schools of Miniature Painting
1) Pala School
2) Orissa School
3) Jain School
4) Rajasthani School
5) Nepali School
Murals are the large piece of art done on the walls.
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Some wall paintings are painted on large canvases, which are then attached to
the wall.
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Mural paintings are based on religious themes ( mostly from Hindu mythology
and legends )
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Mural School of Painting : Murals and miniatures are the two basic forms of Indian
painting. In India, the Pala miniature paintings, which date back to 11th century, are
the earliest evidences of miniature painting tradition. However, the golden period for
miniature paintings was the 16th century when various schools of paintings were
provided patronage by the Mughals, rulers of Deccan and Malwa, and Hindu chieftains
of Rajasthan. This led to the development of important schools of paintings such as
Mughal, Rajput and Deccan schools.
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The surface was coated with several thin layers of lime, which was then
burnished vigorously to provide the base.
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During the Middle Ages murals were usually executed on dry plaster.
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The technique consists of painting in pigment mixed with water on a thin layer of
wet, fresh, lime mortar or plaster.
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Tempera painting is one of the oldest known methods in mural painting.
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Murals can be a relatively effective tool of social emancipation.
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The visual effects are an enticement to attract public attention to social issues.
Schools of Mural painting:
1) Mughal school.
2) Rajput school.
3) Deccan school.
Murals in contemporary interior design
1) Traditional interior murals.
2) Graffiti-style interior murals.
3) Ethnic mural.
4) Tile mural.
REFERRENCES1. http://ccrtindia.gov.in/miniaturepainting.php
2. http://www.culturalindia.net/indian-art/paintings/
3. http://www.culturalindia.net/indian-art/paintings/miniature.html
4. https://www.britannica.com/art/mural-painting
5. http://indiapicks.com/Indianart/Main/MP_Central_India.htm
For advance reading
Murals of India
On India's great painting tradition, which travelled across Asia and created a vision that
shaped the culture of the continent.
The subjects are scenes from the life of the Buddha and the Jatakas, stories of his
previous births. These paintings bring to us great beauty of form, with extremely fine
rendering which imparts a sense of volume and roundedness. Yet, amidst the tender and
elegant beauty of the world, these paintings constantly take us to that which is within.
The great Bodhisattvas (seekers of truth) who are painted upon the walls of Ajanta,
always look within. It is this life of the spirit which pervades the entire world of these
paintings.
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Ajanta is known to be the fountainhead and inspiration of Buddhist paintings across the
whole of Asia.
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INDIA has one of the greatest traditions of painting of the ancient world. A high degree of
technical excellence was achieved even in very early times, and the art, born out of the
deep philosophy of the land, was graceful and sublime The earliest surviving paintings in
the Indian subcontinent are those of Ajanta. The paintings here were made in two
phases. The oldest date to around the 2nd century B.C. The marvellous latter phase was
around the 5th century A.D., under the patronage of the Vakatakas who ruled the
Deccan.
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The sophisticated ancient tradition of painting, which was inherited by the artists of
Ajanta, was documented as the Chitrasutra of the Vishnudharmottara Purana. This was
a verbal tradition, which would have come over many centuries, passed on through
guilds of painters. It was penned on paper by perhaps the 5th or 6th century A.D. This
ancient treatise places a sophisticated grammar in the hands of the painter. However, he
is informed that rules do not make the painting. It has to be given a life of its own by the
painter.
Contrary to what is generally known, there are several remnants of ancient paintings
found in all corners of the subcontinent, belonging to practically every century of the last
1,500 years and more. These display the fact of a great and unified tradition of painting
in ancient India.
There are fragments of paintings of the time of Ajanta which survive at many Buddhist
cave sites, including Pitalkhora near Ellora, in Maharashtra.
Nine caves were excavated on the slopes of the Vindhya hills above the Baghriver during
the reign of the Guptas, between the 4th and 6th centuries A.D. Unfortunately the
paintings on the walls of these caves have been practically lost to the ravages of time.
Reproductions of earlier times show that, as at Ajanta, the Buddhist paintings of Bagh
present a sense of stillness. There is all the activity of life and yet a profound sense of
peace upon the faces of the painted figures.
Very little of the paintings survive in the 6th century Hindu caves of Badami in
Karnataka. As at Bagh, what remains evokes the magic of a world of painted splendour
when all the walls and ceilings were covered with murals.
In the meantime, in the 7th century, the Pallava kings of what is now Tamil Nadu gave
exuberant and glorious expression to themes relating to Siva in the paintings in the
temples of Panamalai and Kailashanatar in Kancheepuram.
Painting in India
Painting as an art form has flourished in India from very early periods as is evident from
literary sources and also from the remnants that have been discovered.
Indian Paintings can be broadly classified as the murals & miniatures. Murals are huge
works executed on the walls of solid structures. Classic examples are the paintings in
Ajantha & Kailasantaha temple.
Miniature paintings are those executed on a very small scale on perishable material such
as paper, cloth, etc., though this style had been perfected by artisans under the various
rules, not many remain today. Prime examples are the Rajasthani & Mughal miniatures.
Contemporary artists have kept up to the times & excel in their modern works, giving
free expression to their imagination & artistic liberty
Cave Paintings in India
Cave paintings of India date back to the prehistoric times. The finest examples of these
paintings comprise of the murals of Ajanta, Ellora, Bagh, Sittanavasal, etc, which reflect
an emphasis on naturalism. Ancient cave paintings of India serve as a window to our
ancestors, who used to inhabit these caves. In the following lines, we have provided more
information on the ancient Indian rock paintings:
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Ajanta caves are located at a distance of approximately 100 km from the city of
Aurangabad. Most of the paintings seen in the Ajanta Caves, date back to the period of
the Mahayana sect of Buddhism. The themes of most of these paintings revolve around
the life and teachings of Lord Buddha. This includes the Jataka stories related to the
various lives and incarnations of Buddha. Calligraphic lines characterize these paintings,
which can be classified into portraits, narrative illustrations and ornamental decoration.
3
Ajanta Paintings
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Ellora Paintings
Ellora caves are nestled amidst the Chamadari Hills, lying approximately 18 miles to the
northeast of Aurangabad city. Paintings can be found in five caves. However, all of them
are today preserved only in the Kailasa temple. The rock paintings of Ellora were painted
in two different series. The first series, which were done when the caves were carved,
revolve around Lord Vishnu and Goddess Lakshmi. The second series, painted centuries
later, illustrate procession of Shaiva holy men, Apsaras, etc.
Bagh Paintings
Bagh caves, situated on the banks of the Bagh River, have been excavated on the rock
face of a lofty hill. The wall paintings of these caves date back to period between 5th and
7th century. These paintings represent the mast exquisite traditions of Indian art form.
Sittanavasal Paintings Sittanavasal is the site of an ancient Jain Monastery, located at
a distance of around 58 km from Trichy. The monastery is known for housing some of
the most exquisite frescoes in a rock cave. Most of these cave paintings are based on the
Pandyan period of the 9th century. The themes of these paintings include animals, fish,
ducks, people collecting lotuses from a pond, two dancing figures, etc. Apart from that,
one can also find inscriptions dating back to the 9th and 10th century. The ceiling of the
Ardhamandapam is adorned with murals from the 7th century.
To know more refer below links
http://www.frontline.in/static/html/fl2021/stories/20031024000107000.htm
http://ccrtindia.gov.in/wallpaintings.php
http://www.indian-heritage.org/painting/painting.htm
http://www.culturalindia.net/indian-art/paintings/cave.html
2.
‘Duplex made a cardinal blunder in looking for the key of India in Madras.
Clive sought and found it in Bengal’. The conquest of Bengal placed at the
disposal of English immense resources which paved the way for the
emergence of British India Empire. Comment.
The English conquest of Bengal in 1757 was undoubtedly of great significance. Besides
enhancing the political prestige of the English Company, it placed at its disposal the vast
resources in wealth and manpower of Bengal. The English occupation of Bengal in
1757 after Battle of Plassey under Robert Clive enabled them to use the inexhaustible
source of wealth and material resources of Bengal for fighting against the French.
Bengal was rich due to fertile land and trade. Bengal was also strategically important.
It gave the English a firm base of operation on the mainland. Bengal had an excellent
harbour which was useful in trade and men and military supply. Ganges and its
tributary in Bengal offered opportunity to the British to approach its remote parts by
means of boats without any hazard.
The French Failed because:
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Hence, Dupleix made a cardinal blunder in looking for the Key of India in Madras; Clive
sought and found it in Bengal.
4
At that time French were facing great financial difficulties. The resources that French
could get from the Deccan and Carnatic with Pondicherry as a base, were quite
inadequate. Deccan was less fertile than Bengal. It could finance neither wild political
ambition of Dupleix nor the reckless military schemes of Lally. Both for commercial
purposes and for purposes of war. The French seat of power was less advantageous
compared to that of the English. Strategically and financially English position in Bengal
meant inordinate accession to strength to the English Company while the French
position in the Madras was far too inferior.
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Scarcity of necessary funds and lack of timely support from the French
government.
Its limited resources were inadequate.
Viceroys and their subordinates very often indulged in private trade smuggling,
slave trade etc.
Going of Duplex from their territory who was very capable and farsighted
governor.
A principal factor for French failure was the superiority of the British naval
power. French were unable to replenish their resources from outside.
French Company was dependent on the government and lacked the spirit of bold,
individual and corporate effort.
The British had three important bases in India – Calcutta, Madras and
Bombay. If any of these bases were imperilled by the French, the English could
still get resources from other canters and could continue war from the other
bases. On the other hand, the French had only one strong base at
Pondicherry. If Pondicherry was endangered, it could not get any effective
support from their other bases in India.
The British Company was lucky to have many capable men like Clive, Lawrence
etc. in its service. On the other hand, besides Dupleix, the French Company
had no really able man to serve it.
The victory at Plassey gave the English Company large resources of a rich area.
EMERGENCE OF BRITISH INDIAN EMPIRE :
 The beginning of British political influence over India may be traced to the battle
of Plassey in 1757.
 English East India Company's forces defeated Siraj-ud-Daulah, the Nawab of
Bengal.
 As result of the Battle of Plassey, the company was granted undisputed right to
free trade in Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa.
 The East Company received the zamindari of the 24 Parganas near Calcutta.
 The result of Buxar battle firmly established the British as masters of Bengal,
Bihar, and Orissa and placed Avadh at their mercy.
REFERRENCES:
1) http://www.preservearticles.com/2012031627623/what-are-the-causes-for-thefailure-of-the-french.html
2) http://www.historydiscussion.net/history-of-india/failure-of-french/top-8causes-for-the-french-failure-in-india/5920
3) http://www.importantindia.com/9548/carnatic-wars/
4) https://selfstudyhistory.com/2015/02/03/british-french-struggle-forsupremacy-and-carnatic-wars/
5) http://www.tutorialspoint.com/modern_indian_history/modern_indian_history_t
he_british_conquest_of_india.htm
For further advance reading
French failure in India
This article throws light upon the several causes for the failure of French in India.
The policy of the Government was determined by the whims of the monarch.
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The French Government in the 17th century and for the major part of the eighteenth (till
we reach the French Revolution in 1789) was a personal despotism.
5
Cause # 1. French Government:
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The French Government did not realise the importance of the colonial empires in India
and America, and got her involved in the Continental War near her home which
precluded her from sending adequate help to her colonies abroad.
Alfred Lyall rightly points out: “India was not lost by the French because Dupleix was recalled, or because La Bourdonnais and D’ Ache both left the coast at critical moments or
because Lally was head-strong and intractable. Still less was the loss due to any national
inaptitude for distant and perilous enterprises in which the French have displayed high
qualities. It was through the short-sighted, ill-managed European policy of Louis XV,
misguided by his mistresses and by incompetent ministers, that France lost her Indian
Settlements in the Seven Years’ War”.
Martineou’s remarks that “no policy was more in opportune” not to retain in Europe
all the French land and naval forces “and it is perhaps because we dispersed them to
Canada and India, particularly to Canada, that we lost the Seven Years’ War. At that
time … the primary interests of France required her to confine her attention to Europe.
When the house is on fire, one does not think of the stable”. But France had made the
initial mistake by reversing her traditional alliance against Austria by the Diplomatic
Revolution which brought her erstwhile enemy Austria to her side which was a liability
rather than any accession to strength to her.
Thus was her Continental Policy responsible for her failure both in America and England
in the Seven Years’ War. England had an advantage over France. She fought the war in
the Continent with the help of Prussia, a rising military power very near to France and
employed much of her strength and energy to fight the French in America, India and on
the Seas.
Cause # 2. French Company:
There was an inherent weakness in the very nature of the organisation of the French
Company. It was a Government sponsored enterprise financed by the King in major part.
Naturally, the Company did not enjoy autonomy, nor did it represent the interest of the
French nation.
Cause # 3. Naval Strength:
The Carnatic wars proved beyond doubt that success or failure depended on the strength
of the parties on the seas. The French success in 1746 was due to her naval superiority
in the Coromandel Coast. But this superiority could not be maintained by the French
beyond 1748 because during the War of Austrian Succession the French naval strength
was so greatly reduced that she had, as Voltaire says, hardly any battle ship left with her
in the Seven Years’ War.
The naval superiority of the English in the Seven Years’ War enabled the English to keep
their communication with India undisturbed, to keep their settlements at Bombay and
Calcutta supplied with necessary reinforcements and to isolate the French force in the
Carnatic.
The lack of naval strength of the French compared to that of the English was one of the
decisive factors for the failure of the French in India. Dupleix did not appreciate the
greater importance of the navy in the colonial expansion in India, on the contrary, he
relied more on the land forces. Deficiency in naval strength was the major cause of the
French failure in face of English naval superiority.
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In their bid for territorial expansion in India the French forgot that they were primarily
merchants. All through the Anglo-French hostilities the English busily transacted their
ordinary commercial activities and in fact, the value of the export, as records of their
trade and shipping show. Dupleix, on the other hand, deliberately came to the
conclusion that for France, at any rate, the Indian Trade was a failure and that military
6
Cause # 4. Policy of Conquest in Place of Commerce:
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conquest opened up a more attractive prospect. The English, however, never forgot that
they were primarily a trading body.
Cause #5. Lack of Enthusiasm and Enterprise:
The Industrial Revolution which was taking place in England in the eighteenth century
created a great enthusiasm among the English merchants to collect raw materials for the
latter. This created a great enthusiasm among the English to exploit the Indian markets
for purchase of raw materials and marketing of finished goods. But the French did not
demonstrate that kind of enthusiasm in trade and naturally they did not find trading
profitable, which realisation in its turn made them more indolent and less enterprising in
matters of trade.
The British Presence in India in the 18th Century
British involvement in India during the 18th century can be divided into two phases, one
ending and the other beginning at mid-century. In the first half of the century, the
British were a trading presence at certain points along the coast; from the 1750s they
began to wage war on land in eastern and south-eastern India and to reap the reward of
successful warfare, which was the exercise of political power, notably over the rich
province of Bengal. By the end of the century British rule had been consolidated over the
first conquests and it was being extended up the Ganges valley to Delhi and over most of
the peninsula of southern India. By then the British had established a military
dominance that would enable them in the next fifty years to subdue all the remaining
Indian states of any consequence, either conquering them or forcing their rulers to
become subordinate allies.
...India became the focal point of the Company's trade.
At the beginning of the 18th century English commerce with India was nearly a hundred
years old. It was transacted by the East India Company, which had been given a
monopoly of all English trade to Asia by royal grant at its foundation in 1600. Through
many vicissitudes, the Company had evolved into a commercial concern only matched in
size by its Dutch rival. Some 3000 shareholders subscribed to a stock of £3 200 000; a
further £6 million was borrowed on short-term bonds; twenty or thirty ships a year were
sent to Asia and annual sales in London were worth up to £2 million. Twenty-four
directors, elected annually by the shareholders ran the Company's operations from its
headquarters in the City of London.
Towards the end of the 17th century India became the focal point of the Company's
trade. Cotton cloth woven by Indian weavers was being imported into Britain in huge
quantities to supply a worldwide demand for cheap, washable, lightweight fabrics for
dresses and furnishings. The Company's main settlements, Bombay, Madras and
Calcutta were established in the Indian provinces where cotton textiles for export were
most readily available. These settlements had evolved from 'factories' or trading posts
into major commercial towns under British jurisdiction, as Indian merchants and
artisans moved in to do business with the Company and with the British inhabitants
who lived there.
Regional politics
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The East India Company's trade was built on a sophisticated Indian economy. India
offered foreign traders the skills of its artisans in weaving cloth and winding raw silk,
agricultural products for export, such as sugar, the indigo dye or opium, and the
services of substantial merchants and rich bankers. During the 17th century at least,
the effective rule maintained by the Mughal emperors throughout much of the
subcontinent provided a secure framework for trade.
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The Mughal empire had disintegrated...
The Company's Indian trade in the first half of the 18th century seemed to be
established on a stable and profitable basis. Those who directed its affairs in London
could see no case for military or political intervention to try to change the status quo.
The British did, however, start to intervene in Indian politics from the 1750s, and
revolutionary changes in their role in India were to follow. This change of course can best
be explained partly in terms of changed conditions in India and partly as a consequence
of the aggressive ambitions of the local British themselves.
Conditions in India were certainly changing. The Mughal empire had disintegrated and
was being replaced by a variety of regional states. This did not produce a situation of
anarchy and chaos, as used once to be assumed. Some of the regional states maintained
stable rule and there was no marked overall economic decline throughout India.
A successful kingmaker...could become prodigiously rich.
There were, however, conflicts within some of the new states. Contestants for power in
certain coastal states were willing to seek European support for their ambitions and
Europeans were only too willing to give it. In part, they acted on behalf of their
companies. By the 1740s rivalry between the British and the French, who were late
comers to Indian trade, was becoming acute. In southern India the British and the
French allied with opposed political factions within the successor states to the Mughals
to extract gains for their own companies and to weaken the position of their opponents.
Private ambitions were also involved. Great personal rewards were promised to the
European commanders who succeeded in placing their Indian clients on the thrones for
which they were contending. A successful kingmaker, like Robert Clive, could become
prodigiously rich.
A new empire in India
The Anglo-French conflicts that began in the 1750s ended in 1763 with a British
ascendancy in the southeast and most significantly in Bengal. There the local ruler
actually took the Company's Calcutta settlement in 1756, only to be driven out of it by
British troops under Robert Clive, whose victory at Plassey in the following year enabled
a new British satellite ruler to be installed. British influence quickly gave way to outright
rule over Bengal, formally conceded to Clive in 1765 by the still symbolically important,
if militarily impotent, Mughal emperor.
...the governors of the Company's commercial settlements became governors of
provinces...
What opinion in Britain came to recognise as a new British empire in India remained
under the authority of the East India Company, even if the importance of the national
concerns now involved meant that the Company had to submit to increasingly close
supervision by the British state and to periodical inquiries by parliament. In India, the
governors of the Company's commercial settlements became governors of provinces and,
although the East India Company continued to trade, many of its servants became
administrators in the new British regimes. Huge armies were created, largely composed
of Indian sepoys but with some regular British regiments. These armies were used to
defend the Company's territories, to coerce neighbouring Indian states and to crush any
potential internal resistance.
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The conquests that had begun in the 1750s had never been sanctioned in Britain and
both the national government and the directors of the Company insisted that further
territorial expansion must be curbed. This proved a vain hope. The Company's new
domains made it a participant in the complex politics of post-Mughal India. It sought to
keep potential enemies at a distance by forming alliances with neighbouring states.
These alliances led to increasing intervention in the affairs of such states and to wars
8
Territorial expansion
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fought on their behalf. In Warren Hastings's period the British were drawn into
expensive and indecisive wars on several fronts, which had a dire effect on the
Company's finances and were strongly condemned at home. By the end of the century,
however, the Company's governor general, Richard Wellesley, soon to be Marquess
Wellesley, was willing to abandon policies of limited commitment and to use war as an
instrument for imposing British hegemony on all the major states in the subcontinent. A
series of intermittent wars was beginning which would take British authority over the
next fifty years up to the mountains of Afghanistan in the west and into Burma in the
east.
To know more refer below links
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/east_india_01.shtml
http://www.historydiscussion.net/history-of-india/failure-of-french/top-8-causes-forthe-french-failure-in-india/5920
http://ieg-ego.eu/en/threads/backgrounds/colonialism-and-imperialism/benediktstuchtey-colonialism-and-imperialism-1450-1950
http://www.historydiscussion.net/british-india/the-establishment-and-expansion-ofbritish-dominion-in-india-indian-history/704
http://www.historyhome.co.uk/c-eight/india/india.htm
For Further Reading
3.
‘If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed
some of its choisest gifts...I shoud point to India.’ In light of the above
statement comment on the role of Max Muller in propagation of Indian
Culture and Indology.
“If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its
choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered over the greatest problems of life, and has
found solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have
studied Plato and Kant, I should point to India.’’- Max Muller
ROLE OF MAX MULLER IN THE PROPAGATION OF INDIAN CULTURE :
Friedrich Max Muller (6 Dec.1823-28 Oct.1900), Sanskrit scholar and philologist, was a
pioneer in the fields of Vedic studies, comparative philosophy, comparative
mythology and comparative religion. Muller’s special areas of interest were Sanskrit
philology and the religions of India.
After 1860, he set about working on the translation of the Rigvedas. He prepared
simultaneously notes and commentaries on themes in comparative philosophy and
mythology with an interest in spreading this esoteric knowledge among the public.
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Muller’s other important project was founding and editing of a series of English
translations of Indian, Arabic, Chinese and Iranian religious texts. Muller translated
selections from the hymns of the Rig Veda, the Upanishads, and the Dhammapada, a
Buddhist text and also contributed to The Sacred Books of the East published by Oxford
University Press. By 1900, at the time of Muller’s death, forty-eight translated volumes
had been published in the series, with only one volume remaining to be published.
9
He was a British agent, who translated the Rig Veda in a demeaning style, so that the
Hindus should lose faith in them. In addition, Muller was an important early proponent
of a discipline that he called the “science of religion”; indeed, some credit him with
founding that field. Max Muller's letters reveal the fact that he was desperate to bring
Christianity into India so that the religion of the Hindus should be doomed.
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Muller’s views on religion were shaped by German idealism and the comparative study of
language. From the former he derived the conviction that at heart religion is a
consciousness of the Infinite; from the latter he formed the belief that religion could
only be understood through comparison. Muller believed that genuine understanding
of various aspects of life, including religion, required knowledge of their origins.
Accordingly, he expected the science of religion to determine “how religion is possible;
how human beings, such as we are, come to have any religion at all; what religion is,
and how it came to be what it is. Muller pursued the science of religion by studying
words and texts. He acknowledged that religion had developed differently in different
linguistic spheres.
ROLE OF MAX MULLER IN THE PROPAGATION OF INDIAN INDOLOGY:
Throughout the last thirty years of his life Indology remained the central focus of his
research in Comparative Theology and Philology.
His pioneering intervention in the vedic studies also coincided with an emerging trend
among the western scholars, in which the processes of language and culture were
not seen as parallel courses, but rather as stemming from the same field of factors.
Mueller in a way furthered the endeavour of the Indo-European language group in
tracing the ancestry of these civilisations to the ancient vedic culture of India. After
publishing The Six Systems of Hindu Philosophy in 1899, Max Mueller passed away at
his home in Oxford the following year.
The Goethe-Institutes in India, founded in 1957, were named after this founder of
Indology in honour of the inter-cultural sympathies and understanding he had
nurtured through his saintly quest for a common Indo-European brotherhood. In a
globalised world, where the need for understanding between cultures gains increasing
significance, nothing conveys this message in the history of Indo-German relations better
than the life and works of Friedrich Max Mueller.
Max Muller however was not able to rise to the objective standards of the Sanskrit
language. In his book ‘Vedic Hymns’, he himself declared that “My translation of the
Vedas is conjectural”.
ASSESSMENT
Even during Muller’s lifetime his ideas were strongly contested by scholars of
religions. They found his reliance upon the Rig veda in studying the origin of religions
unwarranted and his naturalizing interpretations of mythology strained. A contemporary
theologian and Orientalist, R.F. Littledale, suggested that Muller, who had risen in the
east (Germany) and come to the west (England) to bring illumination, was himself a solar
myth. Nevertheless, Muller’s enthusiasm for the study of religions was undiminished.
“The Science of Religion,” he wrote, “may be the last of the sciences which man is
destined to elaborate; but when it is elaborated, it will change the aspect of the world”.
This enthusiasm helped to stimulate the scholarship that made Muller’s own ideas
obsolete.
REFERRENCES:
1)
2)
3)
4)
http://www.salagram.net/MaxURdog.html
http://www.goethe.de/ins/in/en/lp/uun/mxm.html
http://archive.india.gov.in/myindia/myindia_frame.php?id=7
http://swarajyamag.com/culture/what-india-taught-max-muller
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10
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About Max Muller
If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its
choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered over the greatest problems of life, and has
found solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have
studied Plato and Kant, I should point to India.’’- Max Mueller
The German indologist and Sanskrit scholar Max Mueller was a pioneer, who in his
spiritual, romantic and philosophical quest traced the common roots of Indo-European
civilizations to the ancient vedic culture of India.
Max Mueller was born on 6th December in the year 1823 in Dessau, a small town in
eastern Germany. Max Mueller entered the Leipzig university at the age of 18 and went
on to complete his doctoral thesis on Spinoza’s ethics in 1843. During his university
years he had also developed an aptitude for learning the classical languages of Greek,
Latin, Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit. Soon after this initial engagement at the Leipzig
university he proceeded to Berlin, where he, under the influence of philosopher
Schelling, translated theUpanishads for him. Motivated by the French scholar Eugene
Burnouff, he later translated the Vedas, using the available manuscripts in the library of
the British East India Company in Britain.
After 1860, he set about working on the translation of the Rigvedas. He prepared
simultaneously notes and commentaries on themes in comparative philosophy and
mythology with an interest in spreading this esoteric knowledge among the public.
Throughout the last thirty years of his life Indology remained the central focus of his
research in Comparative Theology and Philology. In 1868, Mueller was the first one to
occupy the chair of Comparative Philology at the University of Oxford. This was followed
by the publication of Introduction to the Science of Religion in 1873. He continued to
lecture on the same theme at the Royal Institute and Westminister Abbey and
inaugurated the Hibbert lecture series in 1878 at the Westminister Abbey.
His pioneering intervention in the vedic studies also coincided with an emerging trend
among the western scholars, in which the processes of language and culture were not
seen as parallel courses, but rather as stemming from the same field of factors. Mueller
in a way furthered the endeavour of the Indo-European language group in tracing the
ancestry of these civilisations to the ancient vedic culture of India. After publishing The
Six Systems of Hindu Philosophy in 1899, Max Mueller passed away at his home in
Oxford the following year.
TRACING THE CONCEPT AND GENESIS OF INDOLOGY
a) classical Indology and
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Indology began with the Orientalist search for Indian culture and traditions through the
study of ancient history, classical language and literature, religion and philosophy. In
the contemporary world the studies Indic have gained a wider scope and thereforeneed a
further classification into:
11
Indology is the intellectual pursuit of all things Indic, with a focus on the interpretation
of the past. The scope of Indology overlaps to some extent with many areas of study,
applying their techniques to the South Asian case. These include history, sociology,
cultural and social anthropology, cultural studies, historical linguistics, philology,
textual criticism, literary history, literature, philosophy and the study of the religions of
aivism,
Vais
, Sikhism, etc., besides the indigenous forms of Judaism, Christianity and
Islam in South Asia. Indology also includes the researches into the indigenous traditions
of technological and scientific endeavours and knowledge. Finally it may include the
study of South Asian forms of art and architecture, which has generated probably the
most numerous scholastic contributions.
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b) Modern Indology.
The former more focused on Sanskrit and other ancient language sources, the latter
making more use of contemporary language sources and sociological approaches.
Classical Indologists mainly focus on a historical perspective, study of ancient and
medieval literature, languages, and philosophy etc. Examples of William Jones to the
professor of Linguistics at Berkeley University and Sanskritist, Murray Barnson
Emenneu, - may cover the classical Indologists of the West who developed Linguistics as
a special aspect of Indology while the contributions of Haraprasad Sastri and Suniti
Kumar Chattopadhyay may be identified as the examples of scholarship from India. On
the other hand, Monier Williams, T. W. Rhys Davids, and others had focused on social
and philosophical appraisals from study of ancient literature as had numerous Indian
scholars from Bhandarkar father and son duo to Radhakrishnan in the field of Indian
philosophy. Classical Indologists often place special value on a thorough knowledge of
the classical or ancient and medieval languages practised India, especially the classical
They especially consider a knowledge of one or more of these languages, coupled with a
knowledge of the methods of philology, to be a prerequisite for contributing meaningfully
to researches on Indology and as a necessary and characteristic feature of indology as a
field.
Modern Indological works may be identified in the literary contributions of the modern
writers in vernacular, writings of philosophers in contemporary social and moral and
cognitive philosophy, contemporary Indian art criticisms, etc and works of modern
sociologists and ethnlogists. One may include the examples of Iswar Chandra
Vidyasagar, Rabindranath Tagore, Prem Chand, Subrahmanyam Bharati, Maithili
Sharan Gupta for modern vernacular literature and language, , Acharya Jagadish
Chandra Bose, Meghnad Saha to Homi J. Bhaba, Jayant Narliker in the field of
philosophy of science, Dharma Kumar and more profoundly - Amartya Sen for social
sciences and economic Philosophy, M.N. Srinivas, T. N. Madan, R. Balasubramanium,
Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya and more recently Homi K. Bhaba for social sciences and
Philosophy, Satyajit Ray to Shyam Benegal in Indian Film Studies – to name a few – who
have contributed to a large extent to the development and appreciation of modern Indian
culture in its variegated forms.
To the classical Indologist, however, Indology would not typically include the study of the
contemporary economy, government, or politics of South Asia, except insofar as these
sometimes express issues that are deeply embedded in South Asian history, and may be
illuminated by methods and insights on Indology. In this sense Indology has remained
within the domains of Hermeneutics.
However, this summary definition of Indology is not comprehensive enough to clarify the
scope of what is generally understood by scholars over the time and in the many
institutions of the world where the subject is pursued. At present the scope of Indology
still remains somewhat fluid and cannot be treated on the same terms as we do the
formal disciplines like History, Philosophy, Geography and others. The idea of a culture –
specific subject – which Indology is – smacks more of a subjective, individualized
philosophical domain in which the intellect searches for information and garner
knowledge as an academic pursuit. Observation of the process through which Indology
got fashioned as an academic concern may throw some light.
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The late eighteenth century witnessed the completion of much of Europe’s ‘discovery’ of
the non European world and the growing body of knowledge incorporated within the
information store of ‘the civilized ‘ Europe. This body of knowledge grew in proportion as
colonization extended and took roots in many of these ‘discovered’ regions, especially in
Africa and Asia. The pedagogic aspect of this exercise of ‘discovery and colonization’ is
12
Genesis of Indology as a discipline
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reflected in the process of how knowledge and information on these regions were
collected by the colonizers and packaged in a format of cultural studies - which were
specified by the regions themselves. By the mid eighteenth century the knowledge about
the Egyptian civilization was given the title: “Egyptology’, that of Tibet – ‘Tibetology’ and
India ‘Indology’, etc. It should be noted that the major portion of this knowledge was
collected for the benefit of the colonizers and the nations that had colonized these
regions. The perspective of those who formatted this body of information into knowledge
about these cultures was coloured by their own standing as colonizers and outsiders,
especially that of a civilized outsider gleaning into an exotic culture and tradition. The
notions of the divisions between the ‘Occident’ and ‘Orient’ had already taken roots in
the psyche of the intellectuals of Europe especially and also of America. Those who
focused on the study of the Orient among these intellectuals were termed ‘Orientalists’.
The first batch of Indologists were actually the European Orientalists who came to India
in their varied capacities and began to accumulate information about this region’s
culture. They were mainly Europeans and viewed India as a part of the Orient and their
discourse of India was understood by them as a part of the study of what they regarded
as the Oriental culture. However, Indology per se developed later and the philosophy of
the Indologists was quite different in the sense that the characterization of ‘Indian
Culture’ was not so much shrouded in an exotic covering by them – even if they were
non – Indians themselves. Not only that, the studies Indic under ‘Indology’ developed as
a deep and professional appreciation, assessment and critical research into Indian
social, cultural, intellectual traditions – past and contemporary.
Bernard S. Cohn, the Chicago anthropologist, identified 3 major traditions in the perusal
of “knowledge” about Indian society: a) the orientalist, b) the administrative and c) the
missionary. It was the combined effort of these three groups that a scholastic Western
perception of India began to develop. The most specific characteristic of Indology was
understood to be literary as the sources of information on India that were most accessed
during the time was literary in nature: the brahmanical juridical texts and fictional
literature composed in Sanskrit. To give some examples of the kind of endeavour made
by the early scholars mention may be made of Charles Wilkins’ translation of the
Bhagavad Gita in November 1784 into English. In 1787 he produced the translation of
the Hitopadesa. In 1789 William Jones translated Kalidasa’s Sakuntala – ‘Sacontala; or
The Fatal Ring: An Indian Drama’. This went into 5 English Editions in less than 20
years. In 1792 Jones translated Gita Govinda and in 1794 the Law book of Manu –
entitled "Institutes of Hindoo Law", which was published posthumously.
Not only in the classical period but also in medieval times, scholars like Huang Tsang,
Alberuni and a number of others studied the subject. In modern times, the many
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From remote times, there have been numerous instances in which India has been sought
to be understood both by people from other countries and by Indians themselves.
Examples of this would be the so-called classical accounts of India by European
observers, travellers, and students of different cultures and by the authors of the
Itihasas and Puranas, who may be said to have been pioneers in achieving an
understanding of India. This effort to comprehend India still continues.
13
The Sanskrit language itself became a cynosure of the Orientalist pandits’ eyes following
the discovery of William Jones that clearly linked it with the ancient European languages
and gave birth to the concept of the common Indo -European linguistic heritage.
Henceforth the Indian languages, especially Sanskrit and linguistic studies came to be
regarded as the mainstay of Indology. But that was a later development. The beginning of
what we term ‘Indology’ was through the Orientalism applied to Indic studies.
Orientalism was the intellectual facet of colonialism in Africa and Asia and the main
focus of Orientalism was geared to the creation of a database of information related to
the regions colonized by the Western civilization.
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writings and speeches of Rabindranath Tagore on the mystery and reality of India and
Jawaharlal Nehru's "Discovery of India" represent two major attempts to develop an
integral view of history and culture. In the colonial period there were three methodologies
which deserve mentioning:
(1) The Christian missionary
(2) The empire-builders and administrators from abroad
(3) The scholars attracted to and motivated by the civilization and culture of India.
FRAGMENTATION AND GENERALIZATION
This effort has been carried out mainly in two principal ways viz: the philological and the
sociological. Of these two, the first depends more on analysis and the minute study of
fragments and the second on wide, sweeping generalizations. It may be said that most of
the foreign as well as the Indian scholars who have studied and written in English on
India have done so by adopting the approaches and methods which were developed by
the Westerners for the study of Greek and Roman civilizations. The question may be
raised whether approaches and
methods of this sort are adequate for understanding civilisations as different as the
Egyptian, the Indian, the Chinese, and the Aztec. In understanding modern India or
modern China, the anthropological or sociological methods developed for the field study
of the Amerindians and the Pacific Islanders would hardly
be adequate. A multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, and multi-religious country like India, from
all accounts, appears to have had a continuous civilization for over millennia. How can
this be grasped holistically?
BRIDGE BETWEEN INDOLOGY AND INDIA STUDIES
In several countries in the West, largely owing to the impetus given by Max Muller,
schools and scholars of Indology have contributed substantially to the study of Indian
scriptures, languages, and ancient literature. When the Honourable Prime Minister, P.V.
Narasimha Rao visited Germany, he came in contact with several Indologists who shared
his deep fascination and lifetime interest in India. These scholars also mentioned that
they were a dwindling group and stressed the need for India to take steps to sustain an
interest in Indology and the study of modern India.
The traditional scholarly fascination with studies on ancient India perhaps contributes to
the fact that scholarly interest in contemporary India has tended to be restricted to a
small group - which is growing smaller - of "India experts". And yet the vast and vibrant
multi-cultural model that India represents, the developments in every aspect of human
endeavour and existence in the second most populous country in the world, makes it
self-evident that the study of ancient India will continue to attract interest. It is essential
to build a bridge between the classical and the contemporary, between "Indology" and
"India Studies".
A National Organizing Committee was constituted, the patron of which is the Hon. Prime
Minister, while the Chairman is Prof. K.S. Murty, an eminent scholar. It was decided that
India scholars from around the world should meet and interact on selected themes over
a 5-day period in India.
http://www.goethe.de/ins/in/en/lp/uun/mxm.html
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0015/001550/155065eb.pdf
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14
The Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), is the secretariat for the Symposium.
This is appropriate, because one of the principal objectives of the ICCR is to improve the
manner in which India is perceived and projected abroad.
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https://www.academia.edu/4425371/TRACING_THE_CONCEPT_AND_GENESIS_OF_IN
DOLOGY
http://iias.asia/iiasn/iiasn3/south/isis.txt
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Max-Muller
4.
‘Orientalism produces a knowledge of the past to service the needs of the
Colonial state’. Elucidate
The legacy of Orientalism and creation of “the West and the rest” is deeply rooted in
the Western intellectual traditions, educational institutions, and political systems, as
well as in our seemingly “value-free” social sciences. The orient has traditionally been
considered to be the negation of the West, i.e. the other side of rationality, science,
development, economic growth, prosperity, and so forth.
In other words, everything that was prized as the elements of superiority of the occident
was lacking in the orient. Accordingly, the field of social scientific and sociological
research has mainly neglected conducting research on the complexity, heterogeneity,
and major transformations of what was called ‘the orient’.
In recent times the term ‘Orientalism’ has become highly problematic and contested,
carrying several meanings which do not sit altogether comfortably with each other. It is
helpful to begin with the two earliest meanings of the term as a foundation for analysing
the nature and impact of Orientalism.
First,it was a scholarly study of the languages, literatures and cultures of the Orient
(initially conceptualized as the Middle East but later encompassing all of Asia). Secondly,
the term also refers to the 18th century administrative policy of the East India
Company favouring the preservation of Indian languages, laws and customs.
The period of Orientalism can be said to begin from1773 with Warren Hastings being
appointed the Governor General of the East India Company and extends upto 1832,
when the East India Company government made English education compulsory in India
and brought the Orientalist phase to a close.
The fundamental principle of this tradition was that the conquered people were to be
ruled by their own laws. It therefore needed to produce knowledge about Indian society,
a process which is often called “reverse acculturation”, whereby the dominant society
(i.e the British) acculturated themselves to the colonized society (i.e Indian society).
According to Edward Said (1978), Orientalism was a western construction based on the
epistemological andontological distinction between the Orient and Occident
The common denominator in all Orientalist works was that the Orient was constructed
rather than objectively studied or analyzed.
Gyan Prakash (1990), for instance, argues that Orientalism was from the beginning a
European enterprise with Indians as objects of knowledge. The Orientalist scholar saw
Indians as outside and opposite to the European Self – the rational and materialist
British and the emotional and spiritual Indian, appeared as essential and natural
entities
Orientalism was not knowledge of the Orient produced by Englishmen sympathetic to
the cultures of the East but it was knowledge meant to serve the need of the colonial
state because of the following reasons:
Warren Hastings, who found himself in charge of a corrupt and degenerate government,
saw the Indianization of the civil servants as a means to improve the
administration of the newly acquired territories. Thus, for Hastings the quickest
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15
Efficiency of administration.
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
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way to increase the efficiency and honesty of the civil servant was to develop in them
a love and affection for India, to love India one must communicate with her people
and to communicate with her people it was necessary to learn her languages and
her culture and history.
It was with this political aim that Fort William college at Calcutta was established in
1800 to train civil servants in Indian languages and tradition.

Racial Theory.
This racial theory (Aryan Migration theory) provided a pseudo scientific basis for
racism in the late 19th century. In this view, Indians were seen as inherently
backward and inferior compared to the superior Western civilization, while at the
same time it created an inclusive space whereby Indians and Europeans were
related by blood. Both facts were used to justify colonialism.

To placate Indian sentiments.
Further, there was fear amongst the East India Company officials in the late18th
century that the Indians might reject British rule as being alien and thus
ventured to study Indian culture and history to placate such sentiments.

Moral justification of colonialism.
William Jones’ established linguistics between Greek, Latin and Sanskrit, all
supposedly belonging to the same Indo-European family of lanuagaes. This along
with Max Muller’s Aryan Migration Theory gave the idea of kinship between the
British and the Indians dating back to the classical period. It was said that once
golden Indian civilization got degenerated and British, with superior civilization,
is morally bound to advance Indian culture due to blood relation. This was used as
moral justification of colonialism through rhetoric of kinship love.
While in most of the cases, Orientalism was of an attempt to legitimize colonization,
there were few exceptions:

H.TColebrooke, an Orientalist, pushed for the establishment of a museum on the
premises of the Asiatic Society to preserve and display the vestiges of India’s past
while also criticizing the practice of Sati as having no validation in the shastras,
calling for its abolition thus, demanding a change in ancient traditions.

The special enthusiasm of the Germans (such as Max Mueller) in studying the
Orient was not to serve imperialism as Germany was not involved in any imperial
projects in India.
REFERRENCES:
Page
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1) http://www.academia.edu/2565126/British_Orientalism_in_India_Nature_and_Impa
ct_on_Indian_Society_A_Historiographical_Survey_
2) http://www.academia.edu/5373454/Rise_of_British_Orientalism_in_India
3) https://cordis.europa.eu/pub/improving/docs/ser_racism_kamali_session2.pdf
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Orientalism in India
The first orientalists were 19th century scholars who translated the writings of the
“orient” into English, based on the assumption that a truly effective colonial conquest
required knowledge of the conquered peoples. By knowing the orient, the west came to
own it. The orient became the studied, the seen, the observed, and the object. Orient is a
vast region, one that spreads across a myriad of cultures and countries. It includes most
of Asia as well as the Middle East. The discourse and visual imagery of orientalism is
laced upon with notions of power and superiority. The feminine and the weak orient
await the dominance of the west; it is a defenceless and unintelligent whole that exists
for, and in terms of it, its own western counter parts.
Orientalism is western fantasy and is of proxy nature. It is an institutional structure
which is to be understood at global and personal level. Oriental discourse, for said, is
more valuable as a sign of power exerted by the west over the orient than a ‘true’
discourse about the orient. If we see the philology, lexicography, history, biology,
literature, economic, we can find out that all are dominated by Britishers. Above all, Said
holds sway over the literary criticism of the 19th century novel. His recent work, “culture
and imperialism”(1993) is a critique of not only of those authors like Rudyard Kipling
and Joseph Conrad who wrote about Europe colonies and dependencies, but also of
quintessentially domestic writers as Jane Austen and Charles dickens. for e.g; In
Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, which is awarded Nobel prize, writer personifies the intellect of a
small British boy as hundred times better than a Buddhist monk who failed to attain
salvation.
Although Edward Said concentrated mainly on European Orientalism focusing on Arab
Middle East, the Saidian approach to Orientalist discourse is thought to be validly
applicable to other parts of the non-Western world, and various scholars Influenced by
Said have expanded his theories to include India [11]. In Orientalism
Said himself only occasionally refers to Orient list discourse on India. For example, he
mentions William Jones (1746–1794), the founder of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, who,
according to Said,with his vast knowledge of Oriental peoples was the undisputed
founder of scholarly Orientalism.Jones wanted to know India better than anyone in
Europe, and his aim was to rule, learn and compare the Orient with the Occident. Said
finds it interesting that many of the early Orientalists concentrating on India were
jurisprudents like Jones or doctors of medicine with strong involvement with missionary
work. Most Orient lists had a kind of dual purpose of improving the quality of life of
Indian peoples and advancing arts and knowledge back in the heart of the Empire.
British Orientalism
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For the most part, the British Orientalists were a unique group who reflected the
eighteenth century ideals of rationalism, classicism, and cosmopolitanism. Unlike many
later British officers serving in India, the Orientalists were appreciative of the ancient
religious and cultural traditions of classical India. Consequently, they made significant
contributions to the fields of Indian philology, archeology, and history. The idea that
traditional oriental learning could be combined with the rationalism of the West was the
inspiration of British Orientalism. Intellectually it was one of the most powerful ideas of
nineteenth century India.
17
British Orientalism (1772 to 1835) was a unique phenomenon in British Indian history
that was inspired by the needs of the East India Company to train a class of British
administrators in the languages and culture of India. This period of British Indian began
in 1772 with the coming to power of Warren Hastings (1732–1818), the first and perhaps
most famous of the British governors general of India. This period of British Orientalism
marks the formative years of a century of intense intellectual, religious and social change
in Bengal that in now known as the Bengal Renaissance.
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In 1800 Governor General Wellesley established the College of Fort William as a training
center in Calcutta for those company servants who would be employed in the field. The
idea behind the college was the perceived need to understand Indian culture as a basis
for sound Indian administration. In the words of Warren Hastings, “to rule effectively,
one must love India; to love India, one must communicate with her people; to
communicate with her people, one must acquire her languages.” The College of Fort
William became the effective vehicle of British Orientalism in India for the next two and a
half decades.
Under the auspices of the College of Fort William, an elaborate and expensive program of
literary patronage and research was undertaken. Faculty were trained, language
instruction was initiated, an extensive library was established, and books were published
in Bengali, Marathi, Urdu, Hindi, Persian, and Sanskrit. The college hired numerous
traditional Persian and Sanskrit scholars along with European academics. Over a
hundred Sanskrit texts alone were translated and published by the college. Indeed, the
effects of British Orientalism on Bengal were revolutionary. The College of Fort William
was the first institution of its kind in India to employ the tools of modern comparative
philology, textual criticism and historical analysis on a vast scale in conjunction with
traditional learning.
The fruits of Orientalism, although intended to serve the needs of company servants and
European academics, had a profound impact on Bengal’s intellectual and cultural elite,
the bhadraloka. For the first time the bhadraloka gained a systematic overview of its
Sanskrit Hindu culture, making them keenly aware of the grand accomplishments of
their cultural past.
Ultimately the success of British Orientalism was the source of its downfall. As
knowledge of India’s ancient past became evident, Christian missionaries and other
colonial interests soon began to wonder in whose favor Orientalism was intended, that of
the rulers or the ruled. The Charter Act of 1813 opened the door to a new group of
Europeans, the Christian evangelicals, who quickly established themselves throughout
Bengal. This new breed of “post-Orientalist” missionaries was the very antithesis of
British Orientalism. They viewed Hindu culture as backward and profane. To them the
strength of European culture was its Christian foundations. Their goal was to obliterate
as much of Hindu culture as possible and to replace it with Christian values, English
education, and Western ideas.
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Although the British Orientalists and Christian evangelicals might seem to have little in
common, their combined influence had a powerful effect on the lives of the bhadraloka.
British Orientalism lit the fires of Hindu pride, while the attacks of the missionaries and
other colonial interests such as the Utilitarians, inspired by John Stuart Mill, created a
powerful impetus to reformulate and understand traditional Hindu religious culture in
the light of modernity. The Orientalist’s idea that the critical techniques of modern
scholarship could be combined with traditional learning was powerful. It is clear that
many prominent members of the bhadraloka including Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar
(1820-1891), Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay (1838-1894) and Kedarnath Datta
Bhaktivinoda (1838-1914) employed the techniques of British Orientalism in their search
for Hindu religious and cultural identity. As a result, the works of many of the
bhadraloka attempted to redefine and defend Hindu ideals in the light of modern
18
By the 1820s the forces of racism and cultural imperialism had begun to overpower the
ideals of Orientalism and this unique period in British Indian history began to wane. By
the late 1830s British Orientalism as official policy had all but vanished from British
India. The struggle that ensued eventually saw the College of Fort William effectively
shut down by Governor General William Bentinck (1774–1839) in 1835 when he
dissolved the College Council and began to disperse the library. The college was officially
closed by Governor-General Dalhousie in 1853.
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European thought. There is little doubt that the methods adopted by the British
Orientalists heralded a new approach to Indian studies that influenced Bengali
intellectuals and men of learning well into the twentieth century.
Orientalism and the Writing of World History
Orientalist research was an integral component of the East India Company’s conquest
and governance of India. This seeks to unambiguously reassert the important
connections between a history of eighteenth-century orientalist research, in particular,
with the rise of British imperial power in India. At the most basic level, orientalist
research served to provide the colonial state with cultural information by which to rule
the Company’s territories authoritatively, and with a strategy it conceived conducive to a
minimum of disruption to existent cultural and social structures. Yet simultaneously,
orientalism, as practised, addressed questions fundamental to Europeans’
understanding of self and the patterns of world civilisation, by seeking to establish
authoritatively the historical relationships between language, religion, culture, and
society in imperial contexts. The ancient Sanskrit texts of India became the principal
medium through which the nature of the subcontinent’s civilisational heritage was
understood, while linguistic knowledge became the required mark of orientalist
expertise. It is argued that orientalist research in this context was inherently
comparative, and was thereby conducive to an evaluation of Indian society by the
colonial state within an emerging paradigm of historical progress. In this way, early
orientalist research, rather than being necessarily devoted to a humanistic ideal, as is
often thought, was in fact an important element within the construction of notions of a
degraded Indian civilisation in need of uplift through colonial interventionism
Orientalist School of Historiography
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At this juncture they took an orientalist turn. Orientalism as Edward Said argues was a
knowledge thrust of Europeans for gaining power, that’s why European tries to write
history from above. But in India, situation was different. European produced knowledge
about Indian History after dialogue with Indian Brahmin Pundits and Islamic priest
those who had an authority over Indian Knowledge system but here also purpose of
orientalism was only to produce the knowledge of past to meet the requirements of
present. The need at that point of time was to serve the colonial state. In its very
beginning this school started making connection between Indian history and European
history. They started studying Indian languages, and religious scriptures. This tradition
believes that like Europe India had also a great and glorious past. Sir William Jones a
great British philologist (those who study linguistics). He was a most prominent
linguistic scholar and philosopher of his time. He started making connection between
19
Battle of Plassey [1757] was a very decisive moment in the history of modern India. After
this battle colonial rule founded in India in a real manner. Immediately after this war
British ruler started looking for different justification for their colonial rule in this
country. They took help of history for this purpose. Reconstruction of Indian history was
basic need as well agenda of colonial administration. The colonial perspective on Indian
History develop in phases. In first phase Colonial ruler were very critical to the Indian
culture and civilization. Early source of Indian history writing was the writing of
Christian missionaries. They portrayed Indians as pre-modern, primitive, savage, people.
Though their knowledge was based upon the studies of Indian scriptures and religious
book and conversation with pundits and mullah but they understood us as primitive and
savage people. Purpose of this kind of knowledge was to portray the fact that Indian
history was stagnant and non- progressive. Here I would like you to understand this fact
that purpose of this kind of historiography was to justify colonial rule in India. They
wanted to project the fact that only they can bring civilisation and progress to Indian
society. That’s how they justified their imperial power. But very soon they started
realising the fact that they can’t go very long with this process.
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Indian and European languages. He established a linguistic connection between
Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin and by doing that he made a connection between IndoEuropean families of languages. His intention behind this was to establish a fact that
Indian history is as old as European and Indian too have a glorious antique past as
Europeans. He also defended a glorious classical past of India and tried to link it with
the Biblical stories. For example, orientalist parallel the story of Noah’s Ark as an almost
parallel to the story of Manu.
Orientalist tradition led to the foundation of:
Asiatic Society of Bengal 1784
Sanskrit College in Banaras1794
Fort William College in Calcutta 1800
Romila Thapar in her essay argues that this school of historiography also made racial
connection between Asian and Europeans. They made Aryan connection between
European and Asian societies. Certainly their purpose was to unify Indian and European
past, but in that process they intermingled caste with race and tried to established the
fact that upper caste Indians are basically people of Aryan Race. Thus they introduced
Indian society to the category of race. Shekhar Bandyopadhyay argues that we can
understand orientalism in practice, in the programme and policies of Waren Hestings.
Their fundamental principle was to rule India according to Indian laws and rules so that
they could gain legitimacy. For this purpose it was compulsory to them to gain
knowledge about Indian society. They wanted to assimilate Indians under British rule
rather accommodating them with British Raj. Thomas Trautmann argues that the
orientalist historiography had different political project. He has suggested that by
promoting the kinship relationship between Indians and Europeans (racial connection)
coloniser were trying to morally bind the colonized to the colonial rule through a rhetoric
of love. There were two factions of orientalists. Lord Cornwallis as an orientalist
administrator believed in glorious past of India but he found contemporary India in
decaying status. Cornwallis was in favour of Anglicisation of the administration of
contemporary India. He was in favour of intervention in Indian society but there are
other faction of administrator like Thomas Munro who defended the customs and
traditions of Indian society and supported the policy of non-intervention.
Thus at the end of this phase of imperialistic perspective I would like to recapitulate
some of the important point of this phase
1) In this phase orientalist were inspired with the romanticism and classicism of Indian
past
2) Main purpose of their project was to create an exotic image of India. Through
historical representation of India they constructed a metaphysical and spiritual
imagination of India. In this process orientalist, somehow conveyed the message that
India is a completely different land than the Europe. India is spiritual, and believe in
transcendental while Europe is scientific and believe in fact and realities. Thus they
created India as an “other” of European self.
Thirdly in this phase mostly European were following a non-interventionist approach in
Indian social custom and tradition.
http://ijellh.com/papers/2014/November/28-260-267-november-2014.pdf
http://sanskrit.org/kedarnath-datta-bhaktivinoda-british-orientalism/
http://research.jyu.fi/jargonia/artikkelit/jargonia8.pdf
https://www.academia.edu/2565126/British_Orientalism_in_India_Nature_and_I
mpact_on_Indian_Society_A_Historiographical_Survey_
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5.
http://cscs.res.in/dataarchive/textfiles/textfile.2010-08-17.6665681050/file
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057%2F9780230288706_2
http://vle.du.ac.in/mod/book/print.php?id=10373&chapterid=17640
While British withdrawing from its colonies post the second world war, France
sought to reconsolidate its control. Examine this statement in light of the
campaigns in Indo-China.
Was British Decolonization after 1945 a Voluntary Process?
Addressing the House of Commons in July 1943, the then Secretary of State for the
Colonies, Oliver Stanley, declared that his Government was ‘pledged to guide Colonial
people along the road to self-government within the framework of the British Empire’.[1]
At the time Mr Stanley made his statement, the majority of Britain’s South East Asian
empire was under Japanese occupation.[2] Nevertheless, the Secretary of State made it
clear that following the war, the British Government would endeavour to maintain the
empire whilst allowing territories to govern themselves, perhaps in similar circumstances
to those enjoyed by the Dominions. Just eight years later, the then Secretary of State
made a similar statement to the Commons, albeit referring to ‘self-government within the
British Commonwealth’, a telling distinction given the events and processes that
developed in the aftermath of the War.[3] The rapid transformation of Britain’s colonial
empire in 1945 to a ‘Commonwealth of Nations’ of dwindling relevance by the 1970s is
particularly curious when one considers John Darwin’s observation that ‘before 1939 it
was usual to suppose that even if the pattern of rule in the colonial world was modified,
ultimate European control would continue indefinitely almost everywhere.[4]
With this in mind, this essay will discuss the nature of decolonization that occurred
throughout the British Empire in the post-WW2 era, with the intent of understanding
the extent to which this process was voluntarily aided by British policy. It will do this by
systematically analysing the decline of Britain’s imperial domination in three regions of
significance; Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and will illuminate the various ways in
which decolonization was often contradictory to Britain’s interests. It will then consider
the intrinsic link between Britain’s colonial empire and notions of British world power, in
an attempt to understand Britain reliance on its imperial presence to maintain global
power and influence, and as such the extent to which decolonization eroded its claims to
be the world’s ‘third great power’.
‘Wind of Change’: British Decolonization in Africa
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Notwithstanding the growth of nationalism and the changing international context,
Britain had, in the immediate aftermath of the war a least, two primary reasons for
desiring the preservation of its colonial supremacy on the African continent. The first
incentive was London’s desire to utilise its colonial possessions as a means to aid
economic recovery. A.V. Alexander, the Minister of Defence in 1949, spoke of achieving
‘the most rapid development practicable of our overseas possessions, since without such
Colonial development there can be no major improvement in the standard of living of our
21
As in Asia, the impact of the Second World War was of great significance in determining
the pace and nature of the decolonization process. An undeniable growth in nationalistic
feeling and political literacy was the first and foremost outcome of the conflict, as
‘African political consciousness had been stimulated by the war, and the white man’s
prestige destroyed as an instrument of government’.[18] The changing nature of world
opinion was in itself another tide against which the British were swimming, in particular
the anti-colonial outlook of many states in the aftermath of the Second World War, and
their ability to amplify these views through the recently established United Nations.[19]
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own people at home’.[20] Thus, in the tropical African colonies, ‘Britain’s interests were
as vital as ever, or more so’, and ‘this more intensive exploitation of her colonies by
Britain tightened her grip on them’.[21]Ernest Bevin, Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs 1945-51, saw an intensification of exports from Britain’s African colonies as a
means with which Britain could reduce its financial dependence on the United
States.[22] Britain’s second motivation to retain its colonial possessions in Africa was a
concern that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) would take Britain’s place as
the preeminent power on the continent, considerably enhancing the perceived
communist threat. Following Sudan’s independence in 1956 a British official spoke of
the importance attached by the USSR to the new state as the ‘gateway for the offensive
against Black Africa which they are now visibly preparing’.[23] This was a view shared by
Britain’s usually anti-colonial Cold War ally, the United States. Even before the end of
the Second World War, the Director of the Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs at
the US Department of State had realised that in facing the spread of communism ‘the
continuance of the British Empire in some reasonable strength is in the strategic
interests of the United States’.[24]
When one considers the intense pressures on Britain to decolonize, particularly the
forces of nationalism and international opinion discussed above, it was inevitable that by
1960 Britain had to begin the process of African decolonization. Famously, Prime
Minister Harold Macmillan declared during his tour of British Africa in 1960 that ‘the
wind of change is blowing through this continent and, whether we like it or not, this
growth of national consciousness is a political fact’.[25] Although Britain’s African
territories were by this time no longer economically vital to London, they remained
important elements in the geostrategic struggle for influence between East and West.
Though the maintenance of Colonial rule was initially seen as a way in which Britain
could prevent the spread of communism in Africa, this strategy had the potential for
unintended consequences. As pointed out by members of Whitehall’s Africa Committee
in 1959, ‘If Western governments appear to be reluctant to concede independence to
their dependent territories, they may alienate African opinion and turn it towards the
Soviet Union’.[26] Thus, British policy makers of the 1960s were evidently more
accepting of the need to decolonize than their predecessors in the 1940s and 1950s.
However, that constitutional independence appeared inevitable did not result in the
British ‘throwing in the towel’ and terminating their African imperial presence entirely.
Indeed, as David Reynolds states, ‘the British expected, as elsewhere, that formal empire
would be replaced by informal influence, sealed by economic ties and defence
treaties’.[27] Britain’s optimism, in vain it now seems, that the Commonwealth would
provide a vehicle with which it could maintain influence in its former colonies is a clear
illustration of London’s desire to maintain an informal imperial relationship with its past
dependencies.[28] It is therefore difficult to agree with the contention that British
decolonization in Africa was voluntary, but rather a reluctant response to the growing
pressures of various forces, chief among them nationalism and international opinion.
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Writing in September 1945, Baron Altrincham declared in a Colonial Office
memorandum on British policy in the Middle East that ‘as a funnel of communication
between the western, eastern and southern peoples of the British Commonwealth…we
cannot allow any other Power to dominate and must preserve for ourselves the maximum
friendship and goodwill’. Altrincham went on to assert that the region was ‘no less vital
to Britain than Central and South America to the United States’.[29] The Government of
the day concurred with this view, with Ernest Bevin stating in 1949 that ‘the Middle East
is an area of cardinal importance to the UK…Strategically the Middle East is a focal point
of communications, a source of oil, a shield to Africa and the Indian Ocean, and an
irreplaceable offensive base’.[30]
22
The End of Britain’s Informal Empire: The Middle East
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With these statements in mind it is clear that, discounting the unceremonious
withdrawal from Palestine in 1947-48 (a so called ‘impossible situation’)[31], Britain was
fully committed to maintaining its role as the preeminent imperial power in the Middle
East in the post-war era. This policy took on many guises, including London’s attempted
use of the Baghdad Pact defence organisation as a vehicle with which it could preserve
its regional influence in the mid-1950s.[32] The Suez Crisis of 1956, popularly perceived
as the watershed moment with which Britain’s regional supremacy ebbed, was arguably
not as significant as generally professed. As Simon Smith asserts, ‘Britain was prepared
neither to relinquish its residual interests in the region, nor become subservient to the
United States. For its part, America continued to perceive a significant role for the
British in the Middle East’.[33] Post-Crisis, Britain’s defence commitments ‘East of Suez’
actually took on a more prominent role in British defence strategy; Minister of Defence
Harold Watkinson informed the Commons in 1962 that the base in the Colony of Aden
would soon be one of three global locations where British forces would be
concentrated.[34] There is therefore little evidence to suggest a waning in Britain’s
commitment to its ‘informal empire’. It had conducted a military operation in 1961 to
defend newly-independent Kuwait, and was covertly operating forces in Yemen
throughout the 1960s in an attempt to prevent the Nasserite Civil War there from
spilling over into its Protectorate, the Federation of South Arabia.[35]
Britain’s eventual retreat from the Middle East, announced in January 1968 and
complete by 1971, was, as Wm Roger Louis argues, an economic necessity rather than
an intentional act. As he summarises, ‘the decision to end the British presence in the
Gulf in a narrow sense was the direct consequence of the collapse in Aden and the
simultaneous sterling crisis’, and that ‘The British did not plan to leave the Gulf because
they wanted to, or for reasons concerning the Gulf itself.’[36] The abrupt nature of this
policy decision is reflected by the fact that just two months before the announcement of
withdrawal, the Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs had travelled to
the Middle East to reassure the Rulers of the Trucial States that ‘the British presence
would continue as long as it is necessary to maintain peace and stability in the area’.[37]
The devaluation of Sterling by nearly 15% (from $2.80 to $2.40)[38]necessitated the
reassessment of Britain’s global defence commitments, resulting in the realisation that
Britain simply could no longer afford to defend the Sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf and so
had no choice but to terminate its treaty obligations to them. Put simply by Phillip
Darby, ‘ultimately lack of resources rather than intellectual rejection ensured its
[Britain’s role East of Suez] abandonment.’[39] Given its strategic importance for both
British defence policy and the desire for energy security, it would be plausible to suggest
that the Middle East was the region in which Britain was most reluctant to decolonize.
Decolonization and the Decline of British World Power
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It is important to keep in mind that the case studies discussed in this analysis were not
isolated events, but in fact components of the wider, global process of British
decolonization. The decolonization process was occurring simultaneously with another
phenomenon, that of ‘British decline’. The two developments were, of course, intrinsically
linked, given that Britain’s imperial system was the foundation of its world power. As
Bevin declared in a memorandum curiously titled ‘The threat to Western civilisation’:
23
Thus far, this essay has illuminated the various ways in which the process of
decolonization within the British Empire often ran counter to London’s desires and
interests. In Asia, Britain was forced to concede Malaya and Singapore, despite the
evident economic and strategic advantages the two territories provided. In Africa, Britain
reluctantly granted independence to its colonial possessions in face of the perceived
threat of a Soviet-backed communist subversion of the Continent. In the Middle East,
Britain was usurped from its last remaining (and so vital) strategic hub by the
compulsion of economic crisis.
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This is a far cry from what one might expect of a Government eager to liquidate its
overseas possessions. Undoubtedly, Britain’s ability to act as the world’s ‘Third Power’
was chiefly reliant on its global empire, and the economic and strategic returns this
empire provided. It is inconceivable that a small island nation like Britain would have
been able to compete with the continental superpowers that emerged from the Second
World War without its imperial connection. The preservation of empire was therefore
crucial to ensure the continuance of Britain’s relevance in the emerging sphere of
superpower rivalry. Britain’s post-war government was therefore convinced of ‘the need
to uphold Britain’s material interests in the world’, including ‘the preservation of the
empire in some form or another’.[41] The nexus between Britain’s world power and its
imperial system was as relevant at the culmination of the decolonization process as it
was in the 1940s. When discussing the 1965 Defence Review which recommended a
reduction in imperial defence commitments, Gordon Walker wrote to the Prime Minister
that ‘the problem is whether we are an island off the north-west corner of Europe or a
world power’.[42]Without question, the process of decolonization eroded Britain’s
pretense of ‘world power’ status. Lacking economic clout or the strategic bases essential
to independently project global military power, Britain was compelled to accept relegation
to the status of a European middle power. Given the fact that successive British
governments were committed in the post-war era to the maintenance of British power
and influence were possible, it is inconceivable to suggest that London voluntarily
deconstructed the very system on which it was reliant to retain its assertions to world
power.
Conclusions on British Decolonization
It has not been the purpose of this essay to explain the decolonization process, nor to
identify its causation. Rather, it has intended to provide a general introduction to the
economic and strategic imperatives which determined the importance to Britain of
maintaining its empire and consequently the reluctant nature of British withdrawal.
However, given the significance of the driving forces of the decolonisation process,
Britain often had little choice but to concede that the constitutional independence of its
dependencies was inescapable. The loss of prestige, on which British rule so often
depended, signaled the beginning of the end of Britain’s Asian empire, resulting in the
loss of key economic and strategic assets in the dawning of the Asian Cold War.
Nationalism, international opinion and the risk of Africa emerging as a Cold War
battleground complicated British African policy, but meant independence was a fait
accompli. The Middle East, ‘the last province of the Pax Britannica’[43], witnessed an
unwilling departure forced by economic necessity. Fundamentally, Britain’s options were
limited.
During the Scramble for Africa in the late nineteenth century, European powers divided
Africa and its resources into political partitions at the Berlin Conference of 1884-85. By
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Decolonization in Africa
24
This is not to say that Britain was desperate to cling onto every colonial possession,
every island, every enclave and every atoll that it had annexed. To be sure, there will
have been a number of colonial territories in which Britain had little or no economic or
strategic interests and so little desire to retain. Rather ironically, a few of the small
islands making up the remnants of the British Empire, the renamed ‘British Overseas
Territories’, may provide appropriate examples. We cannot, however, ignore the fact that
decolonization in many places ran counter to British interests and the desires of the
government in London. If we imagine a world devoid of nationalism, anti-colonial
international opinion or even the impact of the Second World War, it is difficult to
envisage Britain willingly liquidating its colonial possessions and, as we have seen, its
vestige of world power status. This was a reluctant retreat indeed, and far from
voluntary.
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1905, African soil was almost completely controlled by European governments, with the
only exceptions being Liberia (which had been settled by African-American former slaves)
and Ethiopia (which had successfully resisted colonization by Italy). Britain and France
had the largest holdings, but Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium, and Portugal also had
colonies. As a result of colonialism and imperialism, Africa suffered long term effects,
such as the loss of important natural resources like gold and rubber, economic
devastation, cultural confusion, geopolitical division, and political subjugation.
Europeans often justified this using the concept of the White Man's Burden, an
obligation to "civilize" the peoples of Africa.
Causes
World War II saw the colonies help their colonial masters fight against an unknown
enemy, but with no mention of independence for African nations. Future Prime
Ministers Henrik Verwoerd and B.J. Vorster of South Africa supported Adolf Hitler while
most French colonial governors loyally supported the Vichy government until 1943.
German wartime propaganda had a part in this defiance of British rule. Imperial Japan's
conquests in the Far East caused a shortage of raw materials such as rubber and
various minerals. Africa was therefore forced to compensate for this shortage and greatly
benefited from this change. Another key problem the Europeans faced were the U-boats
patrolling the Atlantic Ocean. This reduced the amount of raw materials being
transported to Europe and prompted the creation of local industries in Africa. Local
industries in turn caused the creation of new towns, and existing towns doubled in size.
As urban community and industry grew so did trade unions. In addition to trade unions,
urbanization brought about increased literacy, which allowed for pro-independence
newspapers.
On February 12th 1941, United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime
Minister Winston Churchill met to discuss the postwar world. The result was the Atlantic
Charter. One of the provisions in this document that was introduced by Roosevelt was
the autonomy of imperial colonies. Therefore after World War II, there was pressure on
Britain to abide by the terms of the Atlantic Charter. When Winston Churchill
introduced the Charter to
Decolonization of Africa 2 Parliament, he purposely mistranslated the colonies to be
recently captured countries by Germany in order to get it passed. After the war, African
colonies were still considered "children" and "immature" therefore democratic
government was only introduced at the local levels.
By the 1930s, the colonial powers had carefully cultivated a small elite of leaders
educated in Western universities and familiar with ideas such as self- determination.
These leaders, including some major nationalists such as Kenyatta (Kenya), Nkrumah
(Gold Coast, Ghana), Senghor (Senegal), and Houphouët-Boigny (Côte d'Ivoire) came to
lead the struggle for independence. During the years of 1926 to 1938, the cholesterol
level of Kenyans had increased ten-fold, resulting in medical need from the Eastern
European countries. The British Parliament acted upon their demands, and agreed to
donate medicinal care in order to gain 40% of the land
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http://www.ssag.sk/files/Decolonization.pdf
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https://www.griffith.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/454960/Huyen_VN_cold_wars
.pdf
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http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/5/decolonization-and-the-collapse-of-thebritish-empire
6. ‘France were more fertile than Britain in producing new socialist theories and
movements, though they bore less concrete results in France than in Britain’.
Evaluate.
One of the important developments of the modern times is the industrial revolution. The
industrial revolution led to the birth of two new social classes and the
wretchedness of condition of workers led to advancement of socialist movement. As
the industrial revolution first occurred in Western Europe, the socialist ideas and
practices also gained currency there especially in Britain and France.
France was more fertile than Britain in producing new socialist theories and movements.
Charles Power urged reconstitution of society including abolition of the wage
system and the complete equality of sexes. The French journalist Louis Blanc stood
like many of his contemporaries against the competitiveness of the new industrial society
and particularly opposed the exploitation of the working class.
The French Revolution was based on ideas of several philosophers at its different stages.
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
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
Montesquies's ideas off a Constitutional Monarchy on lines of Britain with
three centers of power being the Monarch, the Church and the Aristocratic
Court. While this ideas was very popular it did not include the natural rights that
were demanded by the people.
Rousseau ideas of a Republic where people owned themselves. This idea was
also very popular but it was unfortunately twisted and misused during a reign of
terror that was there in France at that time.
Voltaire who had expressed the need for developing scientific temper for
solving problems of human scarcity.
Napoleon, took Voltaire's ideas and combined them with Rousseau's philosophy.
He ultimately gave France a strong Republic that favored education and
encouraged science.
In the wake of industrial revolution, in France:
 Charles Power urged reconstitution of society including abolition of the wage
system and complete equality of sexes.
 French journalist Louis stood like many against the new industrial society and
particularly opposed the exploitation of working class. Following them,
workers made a system of workshops governed by workers which would
guarantee jobs and security for all. His solution was to campaign for universal
male suffrage which could give working class men control of the state.
 These workers would make the state the ‘banker of the poor’ and institutes
Associations of Production” – actually a system of workshops governed by workers
which would guarantee jobs and security for all. These workshops were briefly
instituted in Paris during the Revolution of 1848.
 Proudhon condemned the profits accruing to employers at the expense of
their employees.
 France was better ground because of more and wide effect of philosophical
thinkers. Being the presence of 97% commons, who were exploited but were
educated, philosophical theories and movements could ripe better fruits here.
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 The most persuasive thinker was Robert Owen. He argued against the middle
class belief that profit motive should be allowed to shape the social and
economic organization advocating the general reorganization of society on the
26
In Britain:
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basis of cooperation, with communities rewarding the workers solely on the basis
of their actual labor.
 Unlike France, British workers had to agitate for their rights.
 Because away from continental Europe thus giving advantage of isolation from
local and regional conflicts. Because industrial revolution developed here at first
which provided ground for people to ask for legitimate rights and move against
government (1832 rights and chartist movement)
But British agitations bore more result, with initiative finally taken by the government
and in the beginning of second half of 19th cent, a series of legislations were passed
conferring the workers with trade union rights and also empowering them to exercise
their right of franchise
Thus, France experimented with many ideas till finally finding the one combination that
suited it best. This was in contrast with Britain who had struck to its system of
Constitutional Monarchy the whole time, even to this day.
REFERRENCES:
1) http://www.historytoday.com/maurice-cranston/french-revolution-ideas-andideologies
2) http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/theories/france-was-more-fertile-than-britainin-producing-new-socialist-theories-and-movements/4036/
3) https://selfstudyhistory.com/2015/09/20/rise-of-socialist-ideas-up-to-marxspread-of-marxian-socialism-part-3/
For advance reading
Edmund Burke was one of the first to suggest that the philosophers of the French
Enlightenment were somehow responsible for the French Revolution, and his argument
was taken up, and elaborated on, by many historians, including Tocqueville and Lord
Acton. The philosophes undoubtedly provided the ideas. It may well be that the collapse
of the old regime was the consequence of other factors – economic problems, social
unrest, conflicting ambitions of groups and individuals – but in the unfolding of the
Revolution, what was thought, what was said, and what was advocated, was expressed
in terms and categories that came from political theorists of the Enlightenment.
Montesquieu's project gives a conspicuous share of the sovereignty to the aristocracy –
the class to which he himself belonged – both the noblesse de robe in the courts and the
noblesse de race on the land. Some of the people most active in the earliest stages of the
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The first phase of the French Revolution was the one in which the dominant ideas were
those of Montesquieu, notably those expounded in his masterpiece, L'Esprit des lois, first
published in 1753. Montesquieu claimed that a liberal constitutional monarchy was the
best system of government for a people who prized freedom, on the grounds that by
dividing the sovereignty of the nation between several centres of power, it provided a
permanent check on any one of them becoming despotic. Montesquieu suggested that
the English had achieved this by sharing sovereignty between the Crown, Parliament and
the law courts. The French, he suggested, would need, if they were to adopt the same
idea, to make use of the estates with which they were themselves already familiar: the
Crown, the aristocratic courts, the Church, the landed nobility and the chartered cities.
27
Those theorists were far from sharing the same ideas; but, then, the French Revolution
itself was not animated by a single revolutionary programme. Unlike the English and
American Revolutions, the French Revolution went through a series of phases, each of
which almost amounted to a revolution in itself; and as the Revolutionists repudiated
one policy to adopt another, more or less its antithesis, they were able to turn from one
philosopher of the Enlightenment, to an alternative, competing or rival theorist from the
same stable.
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Revolution were aristocrats, who undoubtedly identified the cause of national freedom
with the interests of their own estate. When the French Revolution began, Louis XVI took
it to be an enterprise on the part of some of his privileged subjects to do what the Whig
nobles of England had done in 1688, and replace an absolute monarch with a
constitutional monarch. It was in order to avoid being another James II of England that
Louis XVI tried to play the part of another William III.
The comte de Mirabeau, the leading orator among the revolutionists of this early phase,
was very much the disciple of Montesquieu in his demand for a constitutional monarchy.
On the more abstract level Mirabeau believed that the only way to ensure freedom was to
institute a divided sovereignty, but he did not agree with Montesquieu as to which
estates in France should have a share in that divided sovereignty. Despite being a
nobleman himself, Mirabeau was out of sympathy with most of his peers. Indeed one big
difference between the French liberal noblemen who were prominent in the early stages
of the French Revolution – Lafayette, Condorcet, Liancourt, Talleyrand, as well as
Mirabeau – and the English Whig aristocrats of 1688 is that they did not represent the
views of a large section of their own class.
Even before Mirabeau's death in April 1791, Montesquieu's dream of devolving a large
share of national sovereignty on to the peerage and the Church had been rendered
unrealisable by the attitude of the First, the ecclesiastical, and the Second, or the noble
Estates when the Estates-General first met in May 1789. The privileged orders proved
more eager to hold on to their privileges than to accede to the powers Montesquieu had
wished them to have. Instead it was less privileged groups represented in the Third
Estate – the commons – who demanded to share the sovereignty of the nation with the
Crown.
Nevertheless, while the idea of shared sovereignty continued to inform the struggle for
freedom, Montesquieu remained the most important political philosopher of the French
Revolution; even those orators and journalists who invoked the name of John Locke as
the great theorist of modern freedom did not move far from Montesquieu's conception of
things, since Montesquieu saw himself as Locke's successor in the liberal tradition, and
modestly claimed only to wish to adapt Locke's general principles to the particular
conditions of France.
Burke, with remarkable prescience, saw Rousseau as the chief ideologue of the French
Revolution as early as 1790; but it was only after the king's flight to Varennes had
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What put an end to all this was the king's flight to Varennes, which made it fairly
obvious that he did not want to share his sovereignty with the legislature; and the failure
thereafter of liberal monarchists to patch up the constitution gave a signal to those who
had no desire for the people to share sovereignty with the Crown. Thus the theory of
divided sovereignty came to be overthrown in favour of the theory of undivided
sovereignty; the constitutional monarchy gave way to a republic: Montesquieu, in effect,
yielded to Rousseau.
28
But there was one element of Locke's thinking that Montesquieu was less attracted to
than were the Revolutionists of 1789, and that was Locke's theory of the natural rights of
man to life, liberty and property. The French revolutionists made much of this because
the American revolutionists had done so in 1776. Lafayette, having taken part in person
in the American war of independence, and Condorcet, who had been made an honorary
citizen of New Haven, were among those most active in having the French Revolution
justify itself to the world and the people, by proclaiming the Declaration of the Rights of
Man and the Citizen as early as August, 1789. However, as later critics pointed out, a
'declaration' has no force in law, and the proclamation made no material difference to the
institutions and procedures by which the constitutional monarchy was governed. The
division of sovereignty between the Crown and the legislature was still thought of as the
central achievement of the Revolution of 1789.
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undermined his liberal reputation that republicanism came to the fore- front of the
revolutionary agenda. As Rousseau replaced Montesquieu, his conception of the meaning
of liberty replaced that of L'Esprit des lois. Where Montesquieu had understood freedom
as being unconstrained and unimpeded in doing what one chooses to do so long as it is
lawful, Rousseau defined freedom as ruling oneself, living only under a law which one
has oneself enacted. On Rousseau's philosophy of freedom, there was no question of the
people dividing and diminishing sovereignty, because the people were to keep sovereignty
in their own hands. In Rousseau's conception of a constitution, the nation became
sovereign over itself.
Socialism
Socialism, social and economic doctrine that calls for public rather than private
ownership or control of property and natural resources. According to the socialist view,
individuals do not live or work in isolation but live in cooperation with one another.
Furthermore, everything that people produce is in some sense a social product, and
everyone who contributes to the production of a good is entitled to a share in it. Society
as a whole, therefore, should own or at least control property for the benefit of all its
members.
This conviction puts socialism in opposition to capitalism, which is based on private
ownership of the means of production and allows individual choices in a free market to
determine how goods and services are distributed. Socialists complain that capitalism
necessarily leads to unfair and exploitative concentrations of wealth and power in the
hands of the relative few who emerge victorious from free-market competition—people
who then use their wealth and power to reinforce their dominance in society. Because
such people are rich, they may choose where and how to live, and their choices in turn
limit the options of the poor. As a result, terms such as individual freedom and equality
of opportunity may be meaningful for capitalists but can only ring hollow for working
people, who must do the capitalists’ bidding if they are to survive. As socialists see it,
true freedom and true equality require social control of the resources that provide the
basis for prosperity in any society. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels made this point in
Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848) when they proclaimed that in a socialist society
“the condition for the free development of each is the free development of all.”
This fundamental conviction nevertheless leaves room for socialists to disagree among
themselves with regard to two key points. The first concerns the extent and the kind of
property that society should own or control. Some socialists have thought that almost
everything except personal items such as clothing should be public property; this is true,
for example, of the society envisioned by the English humanist Sir Thomas More in his
Utopia (1516). Other socialists, however, have been willing to accept or even welcome
private ownership of farms, shops, and other small or medium-sized businesses.
The second disagreement concerns the way in which society is to exercise its control of
property and other resources. In this case the main camps consist of loosely defined
groups of centralists and decentralists. On the centralist side are socialists who want to
invest public control of property in some central authority, such as the state—or the
state under the guidance of a political party, as was the case in the Soviet Union. Those
in the decentralist camp believe that decisions about the use of public property and
resources should be made at the local, or lowest-possible, level by the people who will be
most directly affected by those decisions. This conflict has persisted throughout the
history of socialism as a political movement.
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The origins of socialism as a political movement lie in the Industrial Revolution. Its
intellectual roots, however, reach back almost as far as recorded thought—even as far as
Moses, according to one history of the subject. Socialist or communist ideas certainly
play an important part in the ideas of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, whose
29
ORIGINS
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Republic depicts an austere society in which men and women of the “guardian” class
share with each other not only their few material goods but also their spouses and
children. Early Christian communities also practiced the sharing of goods and labour, a
simple form of socialism subsequently followed in certain forms of monasticism. Several
monastic orders continue these practices today.
Structures of Government: Fact or Fiction? Structures of Government: Fact or
Fiction?
Christianity and Platonism were combined in More’s Utopia, which apparently
recommends communal ownership as a way of controlling the sins of pride, envy, and
greed. Land and houses are common property on More’s imaginary island of Utopia,
where everyone works for at least two years on the communal farms and people change
houses every 10 years so that no one develops pride of possession. Money has been
abolished, and people are free to take what they need from common storehouses. All the
Utopians live simply, moreover, so that they are able to meet their needs with only a few
hours of work a day, leaving the rest for leisure.
More’s Utopia is not so much a blueprint for a socialist society as it is a commentary on
the failings he perceived in the supposedly Christian societies of his day. Religious and
political turmoil, however, soon inspired others to try to put utopian ideas into practice.
Common ownership was one of the aims of the brief Anabaptist regime in the
Westphalian city of Münster during the Protestant Reformation, and several communist
or socialist sects sprang up in England in the wake of the Civil Wars (1642–51). Chief
among them was the Diggers, whose members claimed that God had created the world
for people to share, not to divide and exploit for private profit. When they acted on this
belief by digging and planting on land that was not legally theirs, they ran afoul of Oliver
Cromwell’s Protectorate, which forcibly disbanded them.
The Central Place of the French Revolution in Forming the Modern World
In my understanding of the modern world’s construction, the French Revolution takes a
central place. It defined a system of values—Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (in present-day
terms, Solidarity)—that founded modernity on its fundamental contradiction. In the last
analysis these values are much more the values of the still-to-be-invented higher
socialist civilization than they are values whose real and full actualization could be
acceptable to capitalism. In this sense the French Revolution was more than a
“bourgeois revolution” (such as the 1688 English “Glorious Revolution”); it proclaimed—
with the Jacobin ascendancy—the need to go beyond.
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By their very nature Liberty and Equality are conflicting values that can be reconciled
only when bourgeois property, as the property only of a minority, has been suppressed.
The French Revolution, even at its most radical Jacobin phase, did not go that far: it
remained protective of property rights and held them sacred, imagining them to be
generalizable in the form of small family farms and artisanal enterprises. It had no way
30
Capitalist values—those which are useful to its spread—are those that inspired the
American Non-Revolution: Liberty and Property. Together they define “free enterprise”:
whether in the form of a small family farming business, as was the case in the New
England colonies; or of the slave-labor-based farms of the Southern colonies; or, in later
periods, of industrial Big Business and then of financialized monopolies. Linked
together, these two values exclude any aspirations for an equality going beyond universal
equality of legal rights. “Equality of opportunity” is the ideological phraseology that
finesses the starting-point inequalities which distinguish the property-owning classes
from the proletarians who have only their labor-power to sell. Liberty and Property
together make inequality seem legitimate: inequality is made to seem the result of
individuals’ talent and hard work. They lead people to ignore the virtues of solidarity and
recognize only their opposites: competition among individuals and among businesses.
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to grasp how capitalism would develop, how it would put such emphasis on the
inevitably ongoing concentration of modern capitalist property.
The socialist/communist idea, understood as a stage of civilization superior to the
capitalist stage, takes form precisely through the gradually growing consciousness of
what is implied in a sincere effectuation of the slogan “liberty, equality, solidarity”: the
substitution of collective workers’ property in place of the bourgeois-minority property
form.
To know more refer below links
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7.
http://www.historytoday.com/maurice-cranston/french-revolution-ideas-andideologies
https://www.britannica.com/topic/socialism
https://www.marxists.org/subject/britain/
http://monthlyreview.org/2014/06/01/popular-movements-toward-socialism/
‘’Italy is not a country but mere geographical entity”. Elaborate on this
statement of Metternich in terms of Italy before unification.
Italy was recognized: a mere geographical entity, it existed as a single nation only for
tourist like Oswald and Napoleon.
The early history of Italy is that of Rome and -the Roman Empire, a martial and
cultural administration which left its mark on the language and history of the Western
World. This Empire was divided into two parts, Eastern and Western in the 4th
century A.D. and began to break up the following century. Rome was taken by the
Ostrogoths and the centralized government finally failed. Ostrogothic kingdom later
disputed between the Kingdom of the Lombards and the Byzantine (Eastern Roman)
Empire. Following conquest by the Frankish Empire, the title of King of Italy merged
with the office of Holy Roman Emperor but as an absentee foreigner who had little
concern for the governance of Italy as a state, Italy gradually developed into a system of
city-states.
Some historians and scholars consider the treaty of the Italic League, in 1454, or the
15th century foreign policy of Cosimo De Medici and Lorenzo De Medici, as
harbingers for national unity, and between the 14th and 16th centuries, Italian writers
such as Dante Alighieri, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco
Guicciardini expressed opposition to foreign domination
The Italian campaigns of the French Revolutionary Wars destroyed the old structures
of feudalism in Italy. The new French Republic necessarily supported the spread of
republican principles, and the institutions of republican governments promoted
citizenship over the rule of the royal families, primarily the Bourbons and Habsburgs.
This set the stage for the appearance of nationalist sentiment in Italy, which greatly
influenced the course of European history
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Throughout medieval times, the history of Italy followed no coherent form. It became a
pattern of feudal states and fiefs which changed allegiances and led to many internal
wars and tyrannic dynasties. From this nebulous grouping of dukedoms, emerged the
Renaissance, a period of artistic and creative endeavour which led to the pre-eminence of
Italian merchants throughout western Europe and the Levant. The need for these
merchant princes to communicate throughout their areas of control led to the early
31
As Spain declined in the 16th century, so did its Italian possessions in Naples,
Sicily, Sardinia, and Milan. Southern Italy was impoverished, stagnant, and cut off from
the mainstream of events in Europe. Naples was one of the continent's most overcrowded
and unsanitary cities, with a crime-ridden and volatile populace.
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establishment of regular messenger services which developed into an international
European postal service.
The development of power of Venice into the control of the Adriatic and Aegean with
services to many of the islands which they controlled saw the spread of Italian
merchants towards the east, while the Florentines moved north. Merchant postal
services in France, Britain and Germany were operating in the 16th century.
In the 17th and early 18th centuries, Italy became the battle grounds for the political
interests of Spain, France and Austria. The War of the Spanish Succession began in
Italy in 1701 and the country was divided into kingdoms and dukedoms at the Peace
of Utrecht in 1713. In 1720, the Duke of Savoy became the King of Sardinia - a move
which was to have far reaching results some 130 years later. The history of Italy in the
Early Modern period was partially characterized by foreign domination: until 1797 only
the Republic of Venice, the Kingdom of Sardinia and the State of Vatican remained
fully independent. The Italian Wars saw 65 years of French attacks on the Italian
states, starting with Charles VIII's invasion of Naples in 1494. However the Peace of
Cateau-Cambrésis (1559) saw almost all of Italy fall under the direct or indirect control
of the Spanish. The War of the Spanish Succession saw control of much of Italy pass
from Spain to Austria, culminating in the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713. The Spaniards
regained Naples and Sicily following the Battle of Bitonto in 1738.
REFERRENCES:
1)
2)
3)
http://www.historydiscussion.net/history/history-of-italy/history-of-the-theunification-of-italy/1708
http://alice1204.tripod.com/id59.htm
https://www.sandafayre.com/stampatlas/italyunification.html
For advance reading
ITALIAN UNIFICATION
The unification of Italy was one of the most impressive political and military
achievements in the 19th century, a process accomplished partly by the efforts of
romantic patriots and partly by the efforts of a calculating statesman. For centuries after
the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Italian peninsula had been home to an odd
assortment of independent city-states and then small territorial states, which were
occasionally subject to foreign domination by larger states, including Spain, France, and
the Holy Roman Empire early on, and later, Bourbon and imperial France and the
Hapsburgs.
After Napoleon I was defeated, the Congress of Vienna restored Italy to its status antebellum; it was divided into a number of territories, most of which were ruled by outside
powers.
The patriotic journalist, member of the "carbonari," and publisher of the influential
journal Young Italy in the early 1830s, Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872) favored a unitary
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An ordained priest, politician, and philosopher, Vincenzo Gioberti (1801-1852) led the
so-called "neo-Guelphs," who favored a loose confederation of Italian states under a
papal presidency. Early in the papacy (1846-1848) of Pius IX, who was initially quasireformist and known as "the workingman's Pope," this plan was temporarily the most
popular. But the conservative nature of the Papacy and the anti-clerical tenor of much
liberal nationalism eventually made a Risorgimento without church leadership the
preferred course.
32
The Risorgimento (Italian for "resurgence"; taken from the title of a newspaper founded
by Cavour) movement, which sought to unify Italy under liberal-nationalist auspices,
inspired a variety of nationalist programs that quickly gained popular support:
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republic and advocated a broad nationalist movement. He would have a significant role
in securing national unity. His prolific output of propaganda, including his The Duties of
Man, helped the unification movement stay active in its more dormant phases.
A radical democrat and revolutionary, who had also fought for democracy in Latin
America, Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882) hoped to inspire a peasant insurrection, which
would lay the foundation for a grassroots democracy in a federated Italy. His success at
leading a seemingly ill-trained force of peasants in revolt against areas in Southern Italy
still under petty monarchical control was crucial to unification's ultimate success.
The Completion of Unification
In the decade after Italy's initial formation, her statesmen again used alliances with a
great power to gain possession of the entire peninsula. This time Prussia, rather than
France, provided her with the necessary muscle.
Tensions had been mounting between the two rivals within the German world: Prussia
and Austria. In 1866, Italy signed a pact with Prussia guaranteeing support if Prussia
went to war with Austria. In exchange, Prussia promised to obtain Venetia for Italy.
Several months later, war between Prussia and Austria did come to pass. Austria was
utterly defeated by Prussia in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. In the peace settlement,
Italy was rewarded with Venice and the surrounding territories. Florence was made
capital of Italy.
Four years later, in 1870, Prussia went to war against France. When the French troops
pulled out of Rome, Italian forces occupied the city. The Pope was left with a small
enclave within Rome, "Vatican City," which includes the Church of St. Peter and the
surrounding administrative buildings. Pius IX, as well as subsequent popes, adopted a
policy of self-imprisonment and proclaimed himself "prisoner of the Vatican." It is
important to remember that, as advantageous to Italy the Prussian victories over Austria
and France were, they were part of Bismarck's program to unite Germany under
Prussian leadership. Aiding Italian unification and territorial consolidation was merely a
side-effect.
Italy before and after unification
The early history of Italy is that of Rome and -the Roman Empire, a martial and cultural
administration which left its mark on the language and history of the Western World.
This Empire was divided into two parts, Eastern and Western in the 4th century A.D.
and began to break up the following century. Rome was taken by the Ostrogoths and the
centralized government finally failed.
Page
The development of power of Venice into the control of the Adriatic and Aegean with
services to many of the islands which they controlled saw the spread of Italian
merchants towards the east, while the Florentines moved north. Merchant postal
services in France, Britain and Germany were operating in the 16th century. Postal
markings were not used, but letters which exist carry charge marks, sometimes in
Italian or local currency and those which are marked with a Guild mark, do not appear
to have been charged. An early example of Free Franking.
33
Throughout medieval times, the history of Italy followed no coherent form. It became a
pattern of feudal states and fiefs which changed allegiances and led to many internal
wars and tyrannic dynasties. From this nebulous grouping of dukedoms, emerged the
Renaissance, a period of artistic and creative endeavour which led to the pre-eminence of
Italian merchants throughout western Europe and the Levant. The need for these
merchant princes to communicate throughout their areas of control led to the early
establishment of regular messenger services which developed into an international
European postal service.
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In the 17th and early 18th centuries, Italy became the battle grounds for the political
interests of Spain, France and Austria. The War of the Spanish Succession began in Italy
in 1701 and the country was divided into kingdoms and dukedoms at the Peace of
Utrecht in 1713. In 1720, the Duke of Savoy became the King of Sardinia - a move which
was to have far reaching results some 130 years later.
Postally, the states developed separately-in part because of the differences in currency
which made the interchange of mail between them complicated. The use of handstamps
developed during the 18th century and the spheres of influence were clearly defined by
the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars.
In May 1796, Italy was invaded by France and gradually overrun until Rome was
occupied. In 1797, at the Treaty of Campo Formi, the northern states of Italy were
divided between France and Austria and the Cisalpine Republic was formed as a French
puppet. The Roman Republic was formed soon afterwards. However, war continued
between Austria and France and, after the Victory of Marengo in 1800, Bonaparte
created the Italian Republic to replace the Cisalpine and Roman Republics. Italy became
a kingdom within the French Empire in 1805.
Italy became incorporated into the French postal service and the provinces were given
French style hand-stamps which were used until the collapse of the French control at
the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
The Kingdom had taken over the Austrian provinces of North Italy in 1806 and they were
returned in 1815 when the Lombardy-Venetia state was established. The boundaries of
the dukedoms and kingdoms were ratified by the Congress of Vienna and the scene was
set for the unification which finally began in the 1850s.
Italy in the early 19th century
Italy in the early nineteenth century INTRODUCTION in September 1870, the troops of
King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy entered Rome. Italian unification, the bringing together
different states of the Italian peninsula under one government, was complete. The
Risorgimento, the reawakening of Italy, had reached its climax. However, the creation of
the new Italian state was neither inevitable nor had it been planned. Although Italian
unification had taken place, there was little enthusiasm for the new state among the
Italian people. In 1861, an Italian politician named Massimo d’Azeglio remarked to Victor
Emmanuel: ‘Sir, we have made Italy. Now we must make Italians.’ The story of what
follows is of how Italy was made, but it is also a story of division and the failure to ‘make
Italians’.
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Under French rule, many Italians experienced a transformation in how they were
governed. Instead of a patchwork of customs and feudal laws that had dominated the
running of so many of the states of Italy, they enjoyed the benefits of a new, more
efficient system. The French brought with them a fairer Code of Law. State officials
administered parts of Italy under a unified and clearly defined system of rules. The Code
forbade torture and stated that all people were equal in the eyes of the law. Even when
the French were expelled from Italy and their laws repealed, it was difficult for many of
the restored rulers to turn back the clock. French rule sped up the process of the rise of
the middle professional classes. In most regions of Italy before the 1790s, land was
mainly owned by the aristocracy and the Church. However, Napoleonic rule meant the
sale of large amounts of Church land. The peasantry did not benefit from this land sale
because they could not afford to buy the land. Instead, the land was purchased by the
commercial and professional middle classes. Indeed, many of the later leaders of the
process of political unification such as Count Camillo Cavour came from families that
34
IMPACT OF NAPOLEONIC RULE IN ITALY
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made their fortunes in this period. Land sale also strengthened the position of members
of the nobility, who were able to increase the size of their estates by buying Church land.
To know more refer below link
https://www.britannica.com/place/Italy/History
https://faculty.unlv.edu/gbrown/westernciv/wc201/wciv2c21/wciv2c21lsec2.html
https://www.sandafayre.com/stampatlas/italyunification.html
https://www.pearsonschoolsandfecolleges.co.uk/Secondary/History/16plus/ASandA2O
CRHistoryA/Samples/ASStudentBookSampleChapters/Unification%20of%20Italy.pdf
https://www.pearsonschoolsandfecolleges.co.uk/Secondary/History/16plus/ASandA2O
CRHistoryA/Samples/ASStudentBookSampleChapters/Unification%20of%20Italy.pdf
8.
The Russian revolution was economic exploitation hastened by the stupidities
of the autocratic government. Discuss.
The Russian Revolution constitutes an event of resounding significance in the pages of
the 20th century history of the world civilization.
The revolution first came in March 1917 and then in November 1917, the revolution
was carried by the Bolsheviks under leadership of Lenin.
The Russian Revolution was result of discontentment among masses with autocratic
ruler of Russia called Czar and deplorable conditions of peasants and workers. The
Revolution was basically an outburst of dissatisfaction fuelled by the sharpening
economic polarization of the Russian society. The Russian autocratic government still
believed in the divine rights of King. They fired at a group of peaceful protesters going to
give a petition, killing thousands of Workers, women and children, shock masses
including some sections of soldiers. This event called the “Bloody Sunday” fanned the
revolution. Although, Czar brought out manifesto declaring freedom of expression and
assembly, yet practically nothing was done.
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The Russian economy was polarized. The industry had developed in Russia by
the end of the nineteenth century but the profits that accrued were confined to
few hands. In causing the Revolution, the economic conditions of the workers
played a highly significant role.
The workers suffered from long hours of work. They were paid low wages.
Heavy fines were imposed on them and they were treated inhumanely.
The capitalists blocked the path of factory reform while the workers tried to
protest through the strikes.
The condition of the peasantry was no better off. Though they were freed from
Serfdom in 1861, they had to pay huge compensation to the landlords.
Another serious issue at hand was the shortage of land. In such a situation, the
peasants cast hungry eyes upon the large estates of the landlords.
The peasants carried out the cultivation with primitive tools and outdated
methods.
Further, the peasants had to bear heavy burden of taxation.
Russia suffered massive reverses in World War 1. 600, 000 Soldiers had died in
the war.
Many historical cities were destroyed and economy was shattered.
This showed the hypocrisy of Czar Nicholas II. According to Lenin, for any revolution, two
conditions must be met. First, people must understand the necessity of revolution and
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35
OTHER REASONS:
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ready to sacrifice their lives. Second, government must be in crises. These conditions
certainly arrived in 1917 in Russia.
In the earlier wars that Russia fought, like the Russo-Japanese war in 1905, it had to
suffer high losses. It was in this background that Russia joined the World War I which
aggravated the situation and sufferings. Although, there was plenty of food in the
country, it did not reach the big cities in sufficient quantities because of the war time
arrangement of transportation.
At the same time, a far sighted and efficient administration could have saved the
situation turning into a revolution. But the Tsar Nicholas' administration was corrupt
and incompetent. The people's appeal for necessary measures for improvement in the
condition was rejected by the king and wheeled away his time in luxuries, which
compelled the people to rise in revolt.
The non-competent and corrupt rule of the Czar coupled with its inability to diffuse
economic grievances brought the Revolution.
REFERRENCES:
1) http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/education/study-guides/russianrevolution-and-bolshevik-dictatorship-and-labour-theory-value
2) http://speakout-now.org/the-russian-revolution-of-1917-our-revolutionaryheritage/
3) http://www.sparknotes.com/history/european/russianrev/summary.html
4) http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Russian_Revolution.aspx
For advance reading
Russian Revolution: 1917
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On October 24 - 25 the Bolshevik party led Russian workers and peasants to revolution,
under the slogan of: "All power to the Soviets". On October 25 - 26, the Second AllRussia Congress of Soviets met and created the Soviet Government through the elections
of a new Council of People's Commissars and Central Executive Committee. The new
government resolved to begin construction on aSocialist society, but soon encountered
extreme obstacles: while attempting to come to peace with all warring nations, only
Germany agreed to peace (see the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk). When World War I ended,
fresh off the battlefields of the Western Front, the Entente powers (US, UK, France,
Japan, etc) invaded Russia from all directions, assisted by tsarist generals and
provisional government politicians. A four year Civil War ravaged the country with
catastrophic famine and casualties, forcing the government to adopt War Communism in
order to survive. By the end of the war, a devastated Russia began to slowly rebuild with
such programs as the NEP.
36
In 1917 Russia went through two revolutions: February 24 - 29 and October 24 - 25. The
first revolution overthrew the tsarist government and replaced it with a Provisional
Government of Duma members (mostly members of the Cadet party), who allowed a
Contact Commission of the Petrograd Soviet to advise the government. Protests and
strikes against the new government quickly grew as Russia's involvement in World War I
lingered on, and the Provisional Government responded by establishing a Coalition
Government with the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet. This Dual Power
however, created a confused bureaucratic quagmire, leading the government to inaction
on urgent issues such as the widespread famine and slaughter on the front. Such crisis
resulted in opportunities for some to seize autocratic power, as Kerensky and General
Kornilov attempted.
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Causes and consequence of the Russian revolutions
Specific Objective: Understand the causes and consequences of the Russian Revolution,
including Lenin’s use of totalitarian means to seize and maintain control. Read the
summaries to answer questions on the next page. The Russian Revolution The Russian
Revolution is dated to November 1917 (October 1917 on the Russian calendar), when
Bolshevik Party forces took over the government offices in Petrograd. However, the
problems that led toward revolution had been developing for generations. The
revolution’s consequences, too, were far-reaching—the Communist Party, which formed
to lead post-revolutionary Russia, remained in power until 1991. Causes • Widespread
suffering under autocracy—a form of government in which one person, in this case the
czar, has absolute power • Weak leadership of Czar Nicholas II—clung to autocracy
despite changing times • Poor working conditions, low wages, and hazards of
industrialization
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New revolutionary movements that believed a worker-run government should
replace czarist rule
Russian defeat in the Russo-Japanese War (1905), which led to rising unrest
Bloody Sunday, the massacre of unarmed protestors outside the palace, in 1905
Devastation of World War I—high casualties, economic ruin, widespread hunger
The March Revolution in 1917, in which soldiers who were brought in for crowd
control ultimately joined labor activists in calling “Down with the autocracy!”
Consequences
The government is taken over by the Bolshevik Party, led by V. I. Lenin; later, it
will be known as the Communist Party.
Farmland is distributed among farmers, and factories are given to workers.
Banks are nationalized and a national council is assembled to run the economy.
Russia pulls out of World War I, signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, conceding
much land to Germany.
Czarist rule ends. Nicholas II, his wife and five children are executed.
Civil war, between Bolshevik (“red”) and anti-Bolshevik (“white”) forces, sweeps
Russia from 1918 to 1920. Around 15 million die in conflict and the famine
The Russian economy is in shambles. Industrial production drops, trade all but
ceases, and skilled workers flee the country.
Lenin asserts his control by cruel methods such as the Gulag, a vast and brutal
network of prison camps for both criminals and political prisoners.
Russian Revolution of 1917
Russian Revolution of 1917, two revolutions, the first of which, in February (March, New
Style), overthrew the imperial government and the second of which, in October
(November), placed the Bolsheviks in power.
Page
But it was the government’s inefficient prosecution of World War I that finally provided
the challenge the old regime could not meet. Ill-equipped and poorly led, Russian armies
suffered catastrophic losses in campaign after campaign against German armies. The
war made revolution inevitable in two ways: it showed Russia was no longer a military
match for the nations of central and Western Europe, and it hopelessly disrupted the
economy.
37
By 1917 the bond between the tsar and most of the Russian people had been broken.
Governmental corruption and inefficiency were rampant. The tsar’s reactionary policies,
including the occasional dissolution of the Duma, or Russian parliament, the chief fruit
of the 1905 revolution, had spread dissatisfaction even to moderate elements. The
Russian Empire’s many ethnic minorities grew increasingly restive under Russian
domination.
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Riots over the scarcity of food broke out in the capital, Petrograd (formerly St.
Petersburg), on February 24 (March 8), and, when most of the Petrograd garrison joined
the revolt Tsar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate March 2 (March 15). When his brother,
Grand Duke Michael, refused the throne, more than 300 years of rule by the Romanov
dynasty came to an end.
A committee of the Duma appointed a Provisional Government to succeed the autocracy,
but it faced a rival in the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. The 2,500
delegates to this soviet were chosen from factories and military units in and around
Petrograd.
The Soviet soon proved that it had greater authority than the Provisional Government,
which sought to continue Russia’s participation in the European war. On March 1
(March 14) the Soviet issued its famous Order No. 1, which directed the military to obey
only the orders of the Soviet and not those of the Provisional Government. The
Provisional Government was unable to countermand the order. All that now prevented
the Petrograd Soviet from openly declaring itself the real government of Russia was fear
of provoking a conservative coup.
Between March and October the Provisional Government was reorganized four times. The
first government was composed entirely of liberal ministers, with the exception of the
Socialist Revolutionary Aleksandr F. Kerensky. The subsequent governments were
coalitions. None of them, however, was able to cope adequately with the major problems
afflicting the country: peasant land seizures, nationalist independence movements in
non-Russian areas, and the collapse of army morale at the front.
Meanwhile, soviets on the Petrograd model, in far closer contact with the sentiments of
the people than the Provisional Government was, had been organized in cities and major
towns and in the army. In these soviets, “defeatist” sentiment, favouring Russian
withdrawal from the war on almost any terms, was growing. One reason was that radical
socialists increasingly dominated the soviet movement. At the First All-Russian Congress
of Soviets, convened on June 3 (June 16), the Socialist Revolutionaries were the largest
single bloc, followed by the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks.
Page
By autumn the Bolshevik program of “peace, land, and bread” had won the party
considerable support among the hungry urban workers and the soldiers, who were
already deserting from the ranks in large numbers. Although a previous coup attempt
(the July Days) had failed, the time now seemed ripe. On October 24–25 (November 6–7)
the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist Revolutionaries staged a nearly bloodless coup,
occupying government buildings, telegraph stations, and other strategic points.
Kerensky’s attempt to organize resistance proved futile, and he fled the country. The
Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which convened in Petrograd simultaneously
with the coup, approved the formation of a new government composed mainly of
Bolshevik commissars
38
Kerensky became head of the Provisional Government in July and put down a coup
attempted by army commander in chief Lavr Georgiyevich Kornilov (according to some
historians, Kerensky may have initially plotted with Kornilov in the hope of gaining
control over the Petrograd Soviet). However, he was increasingly unable to halt Russia’s
slide into political, economic, and military chaos, and his party suffered a major split as
the left wing broke from the Socialist Revolutionary Party. But while the Provisional
Government’s power waned, that of the soviets was increasing, as was the Bolsheviks’
influence within them. By September the Bolsheviks and their allies, the Left Socialist
Revolutionaries, had overtaken the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks and held
majorities in both the Petrograd and Moscow soviets.
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The preliterate and Peasantry
The Russian proletariat learned its first steps in the political circumstances created by a
despotic state. Strikes forbidden by law, underground circles, illegal proclamations,
street demonstrations, encounters with the police and with troops – such was the school
created by the combination of a swiftly developing capitalism with an absolutism slowly
surrendering its positions. The concentration of the workers in colossal enterprises, the
intense character of governmental persecution, and finally the impulsiveness of a young
and fresh proletariat, brought it about that the political strike, so rare in Western
Europe, became in Russia the fundamental method of struggle. The figures of strikes
from the beginning of the present century are a most impressive index of the political
history of Russia. With every desire not to burden our text with figures, we cannot
refrain from introducing a table of political strikes in Russia for the period 1903 to 1917.
The figures, reduced to their simplest expression, relate only to enterprises undergoing
factory inspection. The railroads, mining industries, mechanical and small enterprises in
general, to say nothing of agriculture, for various reasons do not enter into the count.
But the changes in the strike curve in the different periods emerge no less clearly for
this.
We have before us a curve – the only one of its kind – of the political temperature of a
nation carrying in its womb a great revolution. In a backward country with a small
proletariat – for in all the enterprises undergoing factory inspections there were only
about 1.5 million workers in 1905, about 2 million in 1917 – the strike movement attains
such dimensions as it never knew before anywhere in the world. With the weakness of
the petty bourgeois democracy, the scatteredness and political blindness of the peasant
movement, the revolutionary strike of the workers becomes the battering ram which the
awakening nation directs against the walls of absolutism.
To know more refer below links
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9.
http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199207800.001.0001
/acref-9780199207800-e-1191
http://www.csun.edu/~sr6161/world/unit%207/Standard%2010.7.1.pdf
https://www.britannica.com/event/Russian-Revolution-of-1917
http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/45a
http://www.globalresearch.ca/history-of-the-russian-revolutions-and-civilwar/5460551
http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199207800.001.0001
/acref-9780199207800-e-1191
Discuss the impact of Karachi Session of Congress in 1931 that had
enormous bearing on India during post Independence. Elaborate.
Resolution on Fundamental Rights and Economic Policy:
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So, when Gandhi was on the way to attend the Karachi session, all over the route, he
was greeted with the Black flags. In the Karachi session, congress passed a resolution to
dissociate itself from and disapprove the political violence in any shape. The resolution
which was drafted by Gandhi, admired the bravery and sacrifice of the three martyrs. In
the same line, the Congress endorsed the Gandhi-Irwin Pact and reiterated the goal
of "Poorna Swaraj".
39
The Gandhi Irwin Pact was endorsed by the Congress in the Karachi Session of 1931
that was held from March 26-31. Gandhi was nominated to represent Congress in the
Second Round Table Conference. Just a week back, Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru
had been executed. So, there was anger in the public whose point was that why Gandhi
did accept to sign the pact.
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The Karachi session was presided by Sardar Patel. The congress adopted a resolution
on Fundamental Rights and Economic Policy which represented the Party’s Social,
Economic and Political programme. It was later known as Karachi Resolution.
FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS AND DUTY:
1) Right of free expression of opinion,
 the right of free association and combination,
 the right to assemble peacefully and without arms, for a purpose not
opposed to law or morality.
2) Every citizen shall enjoy freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess
and practice his religion, subject to public order and morality.
3) Equality before law.
4) Elections on the basis of Universal Adult Franchise.
5) Free and compulsory primary education.
6) No disability attaches to any citizen by reason of his or her religion, caste, creed
or sex, in regard to public employment, office of power or honor, and in the
exercise of any trade or calling.
7) The State shall observe neutrality in regard to all religions
8) Every citizen is free to move throughout India and to stay and settle in any part
thereof, to acquire property and to follow any trade or calling, and to be treated
equally with regard to legal prosecution or protection in all parts of India.
LABOUR:
1) The organization of economic life must conform to the, principle of justice, to the
end that it may secure a decent standard of living.
2) The State shall safeguard the interests of industrial workers and shall secure for
them, by suitable legislation and in other ways, a living wage, healthy conditions
of work, limited hours of labour.
3) Protection of women workers, and especially, adequate provision for leave
during maternity period.
4) Government ownership or control of key industries, mines, and transport.
5) Children of school-going age shall not be employed in mines and factories.
TAXATION AND EXPENDITURE:
1) The system of land tenure and revenue and rent shall be reformed and an
equitable adjustment made of the burden on agricultural land, immediately giving
relief to the smaller peasantry.
2) Death duties on a graduated scale shall be levied on property above a fixed
minimum.
3) Expenditure and salaries in civil departments shall be largely reduced. No
servant of the State, other than specially employed experts and the like, shall be
paid above a certain fixed figure, which should not ordinarily exceed 500 per
month.
4) No duty shall be levied on salt manufactured in India.
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1) Protection of Minorities.
2) The State shall also protect other indigenous industries, when necessary, against
foreign competition.
3) Intoxicating drinks and drugs shall be totally prohibited, except for medicinal
purposes.
4) Currency and exchange shall be regulated in the national interest.
5) The State shall own or control key industries and services, mineral resources,
railways, waterways, shipping, and other means of public transport.
40
ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL PROGRAMME:
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6) The State shall provide for the military training to citizens so as to organize a
means of national defence apart from the regular military forces.
Thus, the Congress which was agenda less a few years back had the most impressive
agenda in hand now and made this agenda- the basis of its political programme for the
next many years to come.
REFERRENCES:
1) https://cafedissensus.com/2014/01/01/revisiting-the-karachi-resolution-thegenealogy-of-reintroducing-capital-punishment-in-india/
2) https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/sections/britain/peri
odicals/labour_monthly/1931/05/x01.htm
3) http://www.abhijeetsingh.com/2007/08/15/karachi-resolution-1931/
For advance reading
The Indian National Congress
Until only a few months ago Gandhi was still received wherever he went with cries of
“Gandhi ki jai.” To-day there is a radical alteration in the situation. The working masses
and the revolutionary youth have begun to regard him as a traitor. The cries that greet
him to-day are “Down with Gandhi,” “Gandhi is a traitor,” “Bhagat Singh ki jai,” “Inqilab
Zindabad” (Long live the Revolution). This change is a fact of great historical importance
and marks the beginning of a new and decisive phase in the national revolutionary
struggle.
The spontaneous revolt against the betrayal which is daily assuming clearer forms and
more extensive proportions, is symbolised in the recent historic events at Cawnpore. The
traitors, on the other hand, mobilised their forces at the 45th session of the Indian
National Congress at Karachi, in order to obtain mass sanction for their treacherous
bargain with imperialism.
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The British Government did everything possible to facilitate Gandhi’s ascendancy at the
Karachi session of the National Congress, in order to obtain from the rank and file of the
Congress the ratification of the Delhi betrayal. Firstly, the personal interview between the
Viceroy and Gandhi, although in reality a clever diplomatic exploitation of the latter’s
inordinate vanity, is being interpreted as a recognition of “equal status” for the Indians
and of Gandhi himself as the “accredited ambassador” of the Indian “people.” Secondly,
notwithstanding the agreement made at Delhi that all prisoners of the civil disobedience
movement should immediately be set free, only some 17,000 were liberated, while
another 7,000 were detained in jail during the Karachi Congress. In this way, the
Congress, at which nearly half of the delegates were from among the released prisoners,
was packed with sure supporters of Gandhi. Thirdly, just before the Karachi session,
Gandhi was refused permission to visit the North-West Frontier Province—which created
the impression that he was regarded by the Government as a dangerous man. Fourthly,
there, is reason to believe that the attack on Gandhi made by a youth at. Maliv Station
on March 25th, just as Gandhi was on the way to the Karachi Congress—although
41
By a series of intrigues, and with the collaboration of the British Government, Gandhi
and his lieutenants are still attempting to maintain their hold on the Congress rank and
file and through these on the masses. Ever since the signature of the traitorous pact
with British imperialism, the Congress leaders have been busy trying to make the
masses believe that the Pact is not a surrender but only an “armistice,” a “truce” (a word
now used also by the Imperialist press), that the Congress still stood by the Lahore
resolution on complete independence, that indeed they were going to the second Round
Table Conference to obtain nothing less than independence or at any rate the “substance
of independence” and that, if they failed, the struggle would be continued.
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undoubtedly reflecting the hostility of the youth members of the Congress—was inspired
by the Government in order to create “a reaction in Mr. Gandhi’s favour,” which is said
by the Times correspondent to have been the result of the attack.
The tactics adopted by the Congress leaders at the Karachi Congress were to vote radical
resolutions to satisfy the revolutionary youth and, obtain the ostentatious capitulation of
the “left” “opposition” leaders to Gandhi in the name of “discipline.” There were 12 items
on agenda of the Congress, the very first item—the one central item that was decisive—
being the ratification or the rejection of the “Delhi Pact?” But, for tactical reasons, in
order to obtain the support or at least break the resistance of the opposition, the first
resolution discussed was the one relating to the execution of the three Lahore national
revolutionary activists. Gandhi associated himself with the “tributes to the bravery and
sacrifices of the young patriots” and denounced the executions as “first-class blunder”
and an “act of wanton vengeance” but even the imperialist press says that these “wild
statements of Mr. Gandhi’s should not be taken too seriously” because “Gandhi has got
to watch the extremist elements” and makes these statements “with one eye on his
young men.” It is openly admitted that this and other resolutions demanding the release
of other Lahore prisoners, of the Moplah prisoners, of the Frontier prisoners, were mainly
intended as a “sop to the revolutionaries.”
Similar tactics were adopted in order to obtain the ratification of the Delhi Pact. The Pact
clearly declares that “as regards constitutional, questions the scope of future discussion
is stated with the assent of Majesty’s Government to be with the object of considering
further the scheme for the constitutional Government of India discussed at the Round
Table Conference.” That scheme laid down a number of “safeguards” for British
imperialism. Gandhi himself is willing to accept those “safeguards” with a few
modifications, but knows that the rank and file recognize their true character as a
strengthening and widening of the basis of imperialist rule. The Congress resolution on
the Pact, drawn up by Gandhi and accepted by the Subjects Committee by 298 votes
against 2, was, therefore, careful to keep up the fiction of “independence” as the goal of
the negotiations. “The Congress goal of ’purna swaraj’ (complete independence) remains
intact,” says the resolution, and declares further:
“In the event of the way being open to Congress to be represented at any Conference
with representatives of the British Government, the Congress delegation will work for
this goal, and in particular for national control over the army, external affairs, finance
and fiscal and economic policy, the right of scrutiny through an impartial tribunal of the
financial transactions of the British Government in India, the right to examine and
assess the obligations to be undertaken by India or Britain, and the right of either party
to end the partnership at will.”
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The Congress leaders are trying to make their followers believe that the “safeguards”
already laid down at the Round Table Conference will be revised, and the fifth item of the
Congress agenda dealt with the definition of ’purna swaraj’ and the limitation of those
safeguards.” As far as these safeguards are concerned, the I.L.P. Secretary of State of the
Imperialist Government has just declared that “the statement that in any future Round
Table Conference the constitutional safeguards will regarded as entirely open to
42
The sting of this deliberately bombastic resolution lies however in its tail which runs as
follows:— “Provided, however, that the Congress delegation will be free to accept such
adjustments as may be shown to be necessary in the interests of India.” And as
Mahatma Gandhi, the infallible holy man, has been empowered to represent the
Congress with 16 to 20 lieutenants, there is no doubt that such “adjustments in the
interests of India” will be found at the second Round Table Conference. It is worth
recording that Lord Irwin also in a speech made at about the same time said:— “Indian
opinion is surely not less anxious than any opinion in Great Britain to see ample
security provided where necessary, for the good of India.”
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discussion is a distortion of the position.” Nevertheless, the Congress leaders have
created the impression that they will now dictate terms to British imperialism as to the
nature and extent of these safeguards. But Vallabhai Patel in his presidential speech was
careful to create the necessary atmosphere of surrender by saying that when “power
passed from one to another by agreement there were always safeguards” and that a
country like India, emasculated by two centuries of imperialist exploitation, “must seek
assistance in several respects from external sources.” For the hundredth time too the
word “swaraj” was defined. Gandhi had already declared categorically, three weeks
before the Congress, that in his opinion “purna swaraj is quite compatible with India
remaining within the Empire!” And in anticipation of his visit to London, the saint of
Sabarmati is fawning upon the British lion by saying: “I think the British are a practical
people loving liberty for themselves. It is only a step further to give liberty to others!”
The most characteristic feature of the Karachi Congress, however, not its absolute
domination by Gandhi on behalf of the landlords and millowners, whose interests alone
he represents, but the miserable and disgraceful role played by the two “left” wing
“oppositional” “youth” leaders, Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose, Bose
presided at the meeting of the Naujawan Bharat Sabha (Revolutionary Youth League)
held at Karachi at the same time as the National Congress, and declare that India had
been betrayed by the Delhi Pact and that the “real goal was a Socialist Republic in which
government was shared by peasants and workers.” Jawaharlal Nehru had made similar
statements during the Lahore Congress in December, 1929, but he is said to have “taken
pains to dissociate himself” at Karachi from the sentiments expressed by Bose. From this
radical-sounding speech by Bose we should have expected him to lead the revolutionary
youth against Gandhi and against the ratification. But nothing of the kind happened.
Gandhi would not have half measures. The Pact, he said, must either be ratified or
rejected. Placed before this terrible alternative, Bose, who had denounced the Pact
several times as a betrayal, nevertheless thought it desirable to stand behind Gandhi
“order to present a united front to the wicked bureaucracy.”
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This manoeuvre to stifle the youth—who constituted more than 60 per cent. of the total
number of delegates—was supplemented by a radical sounding resolution laying down
“the fundamental rights of the people” under a “Swaraj” Constitution—this phrase being
deliberately used throughout the resolutions instead of “independent India.” The object
of the resolution was to make it appear to the masses that their interests were being
protected, for it demanded, among other things, a living wage for industrial workers,
suppression of slavery, protection of working women, prohibition of child labour,
progressive income tax on agricultural incomes and legacies, reduction of land rent and
taxes on the peasantry, adult suffrage, trade union rights, &c. Even though this was a
mere trick to draw the workers and peasants into the Congress net, there was strong
opposition to it from the landlords and the industrialists, but Gandhi forced the
resolution through the Subjects Committee by 91 votes to so, and the open Congress
naturally passed that deceptive resolution unanimously.
43
As for Jawaharlal Nehru it is clear that the role assigned to him by Gandhi is to keep the
youth inside the Congress camp by the frequent reiteration of anti-imperialist
resolutions. The two leaders entered into an agreement by which Nehru would support
the Delhi Pact, if Gandhi would move a resolution embodying a “declaration of rights”
under the coming “Swaraj” constitution. Early in March, at a mass meeting convened in
Lucknow to “explain the terms of the Pact” (i.e., to deceive the masses); Nehru said that
“although all the terms were not to his liking, his business as a soldier was to obey and
not to question the Congress decisions.” His obedience to the “Generalissimo” (as Gandhi
is called) was complete. At Karachi it was Nehru who moved the resolution on the
ratification of the shameful Delhi Pact. And in order to carry their treachery to the youth
still further, they succeeded in getting Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the leader of the “Red Shirts”
of the N.W. Frontier, to second the resolution.
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Gandhi has thus succeeded (1) in using a year of heroic sacrifices made by the masses
for signing a pact with British imperialism in the interests of the landlords, industrial
and commercial bourgeoisie and the moneylenders; (2) in getting the Congress to ratify
the Pact and thus giving Gandhi and the other Congress delegates to the Round Table
Conference the appearance of having the “nation” behind them; (3) in silencing the youth
opposition temporarily; (4) in proclaiming a radical programme for the benefit of the
masses, so as to enable the national reformists to continue their pernicious work among
the workers and peasants.
In order to carry on the negotiations with British imperialism, Gandhi has nominated the
Working Committee, or “Cabinet” as he calls it, most of the members of which are likely
to be delegates to the Second Round Table Conference. The names included are those of
persons who are known to be absolutely subservient to Gandhi. The president is
Vallabhai Patel of Gujerat, an uncompromising Gandhist; and other members are
Jamnalal Bajaj a millionaire; four Muslims, Dr. Ansari, Dr. Alam, Dr. Mahmud and Abul
Kalam Azad, all known for their “moderation.” Mrs. Sarojini Naidu, who even at Lahore
was against the independence resolution, Sen-Gupta, the Mayor of Calcutta; K. F.
Nariman, President of the Bombay Presidency Youth League, &c. Subhas Chandra Bose
has been left out in spite of his capitulation to Gandhi, not only because his allegiance to
the creed of non-violence is doubtful, but because, as President of the All-India Trade
Union Congress and of a number of unions in Jamshedpur and Calcutta, he is needed in
India by the bourgeoisie to gain control of the working class movement.
The Karachi Congress represents the final and definite transition of the Indian
bourgeoisie and their agents and allies among the intelligentsia from the partial struggle
against imperialism, which they had carried on for a short while, into open alliance with
British imperialism against the Indian Revolution. In order to free the masses finally
from the national reformist leadership, it is necessary to carry on a wide campaign
against the National Congress and in particular to expose the real role of Nehru, Bose
and other leaders who still wield influence in working-class and peasant organisations.
What Mahatma Gandhi did to save Bhagat Singh
Gandhi's failure to secure commutation of Bhagat Singh's execution has provided his
critics a convenient weapon to attack him. He has been accused of making half-hearted
effort and even deception - for the alleged discrepancy between his actual role and his
public statements. This paper attempts to establish that while following a consistent
approach towards revolutionary violence, Gandhi tried his best to save the lives of
Bhagat Singh and his colleagues till the last moment. The paper also discusses Gandhi's
strategy to focus on suspension rather than commutation of the death sentence.
Gandhi alone could have intervened effectively to save Bhagat Singh's life. He did not, till
the very last.
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Yashpal, a revolutionary colleague of Bhagat Singh and a bitter critic2 of Gandhi, wrote:
"Gandhi considered it moral to put government pressure on the people for prohibition
but he considered it immoral to put people's pressure on foreign government to commute
the sentences of Bhagat Singh etc."3 Leftist scholar revolutionary, Manmathnath Gupta
also bitterly attacked Mahatma Gandhi over the issue of Bhagat Singh.
44
Executions of 23RD MARCH 1931 marked the collapse of the hopes of millions of
Indians who had believed that Mahatma Gandhi would be able to save the lives of the
three young heroes - Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru. Gandhi's failure to stop the
executions provided a potent weapon in the hands of his opponents who used it to
malign him and charged him for disregarding the feelings of the entire nation. Soon after
the executions Gandhi had to face the 'Red' demonstrators in the Karachi session (1931)
of the Congress, shouting slogans of "Gandhi go back", "Down with Gandhism",
"Gandhi's truce has sent Bhagat Singh to the gallows", and "Long Live Bhagat Singh".1
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Gandhi's critics fail to understand that, he had more to gain by saving the lives of
Bhagat Singh and his comrades, if it was possible, than the contrary. Gandhi was well
aware that his failure to stop their execution will make the people in general and younger
element of the Congress in particular, angry. Moreover, the executions would inevitably
glorify the revolutionaries and popularise the ideals underlying the revolutionary violence
and thus it will be a tactical setback in his fight with the forces favouring use of violence
in the battle for swaraj. If Gandhi had succeeded in saving the lives of Bhagat Singh,
Sukhdev and Raj guru, it would have been seen as the victory of nonviolence over
violence and moral victory of Gandhi over the revolutionaries.
A false impression has been created that Gandhi became interested in Bhagat Singh's
fate only a few weeks before his execution. As far back as 4 May 1930, a day before he
was arrested, Gandhi had written to the Viceroy strongly criticizing him for the creation
of the special Tribunal to try the revolutionaries in the Lahore Conspiracy Case: "You
have found a short cut through the law's delay in the matter of the trial of Bhagat Singh
and others by doing away with the ordinary procedure. Is it any wonder if I call all these
official activities a veiled form of Martial Law?"8 On 31 January, 1931, he spoke at
Allahabad on the subject of Bhagat Singh's execution. "Those under a death sentence
should not be hanged. My personal religion tells me not only that they should not be
hanged but also that they should not even be kept in prison. However, that is my
personal opinion and we cannot make their release a condition."9
Coming to the tense events leading to 23rd March 1931, after the dismissal of the
Petition for Special Leave to Appeal in the Privy Council on 11 February 1931, it became
quite apparent that only an intervention by the Viceroy in the form of commutation alone
could save the lives of the revolutionary trio.
Gandhi-Irwin talks were round the corner. There was intense pressure on Gandhi from
Congressmen and the general public alike to negotiate for Bhagat Singh's life during his
parleys with the Viceroy.
Gandhi-Irwin talks began on 17th February 1931 and continued till 5th March when
Gandhi-Irwin Pact or Delhi Pact was arrived at. Gandhi entered the talks without making
Bhagat Singh's issue a precondition. Gandhi explained in Young India:
The Working Committee had agreed with me in not making commutation a condition
precedent to truce. I could therefore only mention it apart from the settlement.
a proper stage when a favourable environment was created in which he could ask for the
remission of the sentences or even the release of the condemned revolutionaries.
A secret part of Gandhi's prolongation strategy was that he hoped to use the time in
getting guarantee from the revolutionaries to shun violence if Bhagat Singh's life is
spared. Gandhi hoped to use this guarantee as a 'carrot' or a bargaining point with the
British Government for the release of revolutionaries including Bhagat Singh.
To know more refer below links
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The question as to whether it (the execution) should take place before or after the
Karachi Congress had been very seriously considered by the Government who realised
the difficulties of either course, but thought it would have been unfair to the condemned
persons to postpone execution and also not fair to Gandhi to allow the impression to
gain ground that commutation was under consideration when this was not the case. He
agreed that of the two alternatives it is better not to wait, but he suggested, though not
seriously that the third course of commutation of the sentence would have been better
still.
45
Gandhi, for the second time, raised the issue of Bhagat Singh with Lord Irwin on 19th
March when they met to discuss the notification of the Pact at the Congress session in
Karachi.
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http://www.mkgandhi.org/articles/bhagat_singh.htm
https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/sections/britain/periodicals
/labour_monthly/1931/05/x01.htm
http://inc.in/congress-timeline.html
http://www.gktoday.in/karachi-session-of-congress-1931/
10.
The Railways, instead of serving as the catalyst of Industrial revolution as in
Western-Europe and the U.S.A, acted in India as ‘the catalyst of complete
colonization’. Examine.
The advent of railways accentuated the production and distribution processes in Europe
and USA by reducing the time between the site of raw materials, factories and the
markets. Having full command over the substance and media of movement, they could
plan and execute it to further capitalistic aims of maximizing profit and furthering
industrial revolution.
In the case of India, railways were used as a tool of colonialism and imperialism. It
facilitated the carriage of raw materials from the mines to ports for export to England
and carry finished English made goods into hinterland markets. This practice deprived
Indians of any possible use of raw materials and further the machine made goods further
made local artisans and industry less competitive. Any attempt to stand competition to
English goods (from India or abroad) was whittled down by adjusting import and export
duties favorably.
Hence, it can be justifiably argued that Railways in India subjugated the country further
before her colonial masters, this being the precise objective behind its introduction.
However, like every life saving drug, this did have some side effects. People started
travelling across the length and breadth of the country. Knowledge of common problems
and the common creator of these problems brought the people together and induced a
feeling of hate and resentment towards the English. Such a feeling caused them to rally
behind the nationalists in their freedom struggle and eventual ousting of the colonizers.
Therefore, railways which were designed as catalyst for complete colonization of India led
to its ultimate destruction, in the process introducing an important means of
transportation to initiate Industrial Revolution.
OR
The railways were introduced in India solely to serve the British economic and military
interests. Unlike serving as a catalyst for industrial evolution in India it served as a
catalyst for complete colonization.
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The mercantile interests in London and Manchester were the initial advocates for
developing railways in India. The railways provided greater access to the rural
hinterlands and threw open vast markets. British merchants could now source raw
materials from places far away. The cheap factory made products now found deeper
46
The various processes involved with the establishment of a railway network like transfer
of technology, capital, forward and backward linkages etc could have helped give birth to
modernization on a limited scale in India. But the British aim of limiting the
modernisation of India was a crucial factor in restricting the benefits of a railway
network. The British imported from England most of the items required for the railway
networks, thus the benefits of a forward and backward linkage was hampered. Only
lower end technology like tunnelling and plate laying was developed. Even the capital for
the development of railway network was British and that too on guaranteed returns.
Thus the railway network proved to be a big setback to the interests of Indians.
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markets inside the countryside, thus harming the local manufacturers. Thus leading to
economic colonisation.
With the railways India got more geographically united and the railways facilitated faster
movement of military and personnel. This ensured faster conquest of Indian provinces.
The railways had played a key role in putting down the great revolt of 1857.
Thus we can see the contribution of railways in colonising India rather than acting as a
harbinger of industrial revolution.
REFERRENCES:
1) http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~dbogart/indraileconachieve.pdf
For advance reading
The Industrial Revolution (1750–1900)
The term Industrial Revolution, like similar historical concepts, is more convenient than
precise. It is convenient because history requires division into periods for purposes of
understanding and instruction and because there were sufficient innovations at the turn
of the 18th and 19th centuries to justify the choice of this as one of the periods. The
term is imprecise, however, because the Industrial Revolution has no clearly defined
beginning or end. Moreover, it is misleading if it carries the implication of a once-for-all
change from a “preindustrial” to a “postindustrial” society, because, as has been seen,
the events of the traditional Industrial Revolution had been well prepared in a mounting
tempo of industrial, commercial, and technological activity from about 1000 CEand led
into a continuing acceleration of the processes of industrialization that is still proceeding
in our own time. The term Industrial Revolution must thus be employed with some care.
It is used below to describe an extraordinary quickening in the rate of growth and
change and, more particularly, to describe the first 150 years of this period of time, as it
will be convenient to pursue the developments of the 20th century separately.
Railway in Europe and America
The transformation of a traditional agricultural society/economy into an industrial
economy must be "paid for" by agriculture. Assuming that there are no significant
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Although the qualification regarding older sources of power is important, steam
demonstrated the feasibility of applying steam power to large-scale grain milling. Many
other industries followed in exploring the possibilities of steam power, and it soon
became widely used.
47
The Industrial Revolution, in this sense, has been a worldwide phenomenon, at least in
so far as it has occurred in all those parts of the world, of which there are very few
exceptions, where the influence of Western civilization has been felt. Beyond any doubt it
occurred first in Britain, and its effects spread only gradually to continental Europe and
North America. Equally clearly, the Industrial Revolution that eventually transformed
these parts of the Western world surpassed in magnitude the achievements of Britain,
and the process was carried further to change radically the socioeconomic life of Asia,
Africa, Latin America, and Australasia. The reasons for this succession of events are
complex, but they were implicit in the earlier account of the buildup toward rapid
industrialization. Partly through good fortune and partly through conscious effort,
Britain by the early 18th century came to possess the combination of social needs and
social resources that provided the necessary preconditions of commercially successful
innovation and a social system capable of sustaining and institutionalizing the processes
of rapid technological change once they had started. This section will therefore be
concerned, in the first place, with events in Britain, although in discussing later phases
of the period it will be necessary to trace the way in which British technical
achievements were diffused and superseded in other parts of the Western world.
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exports of non-agricultural goods or hand produced manufactures - the proceeds of
which could be used to buy in food and raw materials or be diverted to provide capital
for new manufacturing industry - it is domestic agriculture that must produce more
food, for more people, and for more "non-productive food producers" (ie the urban
industrial labour force). Initially, this could be ( and in some countries was) achieved
simply by taking more away from those left in the countryside than they could really
afford to give - ie suppressing rural nutrition levels - but it can only be sustained in the
longer term by an increase in agricultural productivity - ie. an increase in the amount of
food that every productive acre, and every productive worker left in agriculture, could
produce. If the transition from an agricultural to an industrially based economy is to be
achieved, in the first stages at least, more must be produced from relatively less. Once
the industrial engine has started to turn, manufactures exports might be used to import
food and raw materials and the strategic importance in weakened, but it is difficult to
make the initial jump without the full support of domestic agriculture.
Increases in agricultural productivity usually require (a) land reform (b) new methods of
cultivation and new machinery, and (c) increased investment in the "agricultural
infrastructure"(eg barns, hedges, drainage, communications). Land reform usually
involves the abolition of small "peasant" holdings and the consolidation of the land into
larger, more efficient units, controlled by better educated and entrepreneurial farmers,
who had both the resources and inclination to experiment with new methods. New
methods usually means the introduction of new crops, rotations and other farming
practices which preserve and enhance the fertility of the cultivated area. New
machinery enables the working of the land to be improved but above all reduces the
amount of labour required per acre. Increased investment in infrastructure not only
enables the land and the labour force to work more efficiently, but facilitates the
movement of food surpluses to market and encourages the general "commercialisation"
of agriculture in place of traditional "subsistence" practices.
Page
Finally, we should note that the increased productivity burden placed on agriculture is
not confined to human food products alone. The sector does not only have to feed a
larger and more urbanised population, it often also has to provide an increased supply of
vegetable and animal based raw materials for industry Thus in England and Wales the
output of wool and leather products increased sharply to keep pace with rising industrial
demand; in Ireland, flax production for linen manufacturers was greatly expanded,; and
everywhere the production of barley and hops for brewing was under pressure. Similarly,
agriculture had to greatly increase the production of "fuel" – i.e. fodder - for the rapidly
multiplying number of horses in the country. They were needed not only to operate the
new range of agricultural machinery, but to pull the increased number of carts, river and
canal boats operating in the expanding transport system; to work in mines and quarries;
and to service a wide range of activities in the expanding urban centres. Arguably, if the
railways and motor car had not mechanised transport by applying first the steam engine
and then the internal combustion engine to it, the whole process of industrialisation and
urbanisation could have been strangled by the fodder requirements and environmental
consequences of an exponential expansion of the equine population!
48
All of this inevitably requires a great increase in capital investment - in the form of both
fixed and working capital. To find this capital, the traditional agricultural system
must save more; in other words,consume less. But the requirement for increased savings
and investment is not only coming from agriculture itself, but also from the emerging
industrial sector; from the building needs on the new manufacturing towns and cities;
from the transport sector for roads, railways etc. The demands on agriculture for both
increased food output and for saving and capital investment are extreme, and are only
slightly alleviated by other sources of savings, such as trade or foreign investment.
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Impact
The Industrial Revolution changed the climate of society from a rural, agricultural
economy whose goods were made by hand one at a time to an urban economy in which
goods were manufactured in factories employing large concentrations of workers. From
this came new cities, with their many advantages and numerous drawbacks, as well as
far-flung markets. The advancement of knowledge and invention of new devices also led
to many technical improvements in production, material, and transportation.
The steam-powered railway brought a revolution in transportation and accelerated the
already developing industrialization of the Western world. Railroads answered the need
to transport goods quickly to distant markets and to get the goods to ports where they
could be taken by ship to even more distant markets overseas; railroads also brought
raw materials to ports close to factories. Before the coming of the railroad, it was difficult
to move some heavy industrial materials like iron, coal, or stone. The ability of the
railroad and the steamboat to transport very heavy loads meant that more goods could
be moved and more could be sold.
Operators of factories invested their profits in railroads to enhance their businesses. This
was a good investment for the owners. Improvements were always necessary, and the
expansion of railroads would serve mines and textile mills and bring more profit. When
passenger cars were added, railroads were even more successful. It is clear that steam
railroads accelerated industrialization, and industrialization in turn accelerated the
building and improvement of railroads. The increased demand for coal and heavy
manufactured goods was a guarantee of continued prosperity for the railroads. More
factories were also needed to build more locomotives, rails, signals, switches, cars, and
so on. More people had to be hired to build new track. Because of the spread of easy
travel, it took less time for salesmen to sell goods, and quick sales meant quicker return
on money that could then be invested in new lines or the manufacture of additional
goods.
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The railroad has been called a fundamental innovation in American material life. It was a
stimulus for the spread of U.S. population to the West and, in fact, created many small
towns. Railroads were an efficient way to move men and supplies during the Civil War
(1861-65). In the 1850s Congress began giving federal land grants to builders of new
railroads. Northern businessmen had more money to spend on railroads than those in
the South and, because the South was mainly agricultural, it lagged far behind the
North in railroad mileage. Four times as many miles of railroads crisscrossed the
northeastern part of the country as in the Southeast when the Civil War began in 1861.
This advantage played an important part in the success of the North in the Civil War.
49
A single railroad could cost two million dollars--an enormous sum in the 1800s. Money
was needed not only for the 2,500 men to build the structure but also the designers,
engines, men who planned routes and decided where to build tunnels, embankments,
and bridges. Therefore, construction of a new railroad required more capital than even a
wealthy individual could handle alone. This necessitated the creation of corporations and
stock companies to pool capital and resources to make the new railroad a reality. This
sped up railroad construction but was not always advantageous to the citizens or the
towns. The owners of the railroad and its right of way often become too powerful,
controlling local government and monopolizing business and land holdings. The owners
moved large amounts of manufactured goods and brought competition into an area from
outside. For example, a company that produced wine had a general monopoly on the sale
of local wine. When a new wine was brought in by the railroad, it changed sales in the
area. If the imported wine was better or cheaper, the local wine producer would lose
some of his profit to the new business. Railroads thus changed the way goods were
advertised, priced, and sold.
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Long before the war, a rail connection to join the East Coast with the West Coast had
been planned, but materials were unavailable during the war. The year after the war
ended in 1865, the long-awaited connection was begun. Union Pacific built from the East
and the Central Pacific began from the West. When the two railroads joined their tracks
in Utah in 1869, the United States had a viable transportation route from the East Coast
to the West.
The advent of railroad systems had numerous other effects. For instance, railroads made
it possible for farmers to expand away from the banks of rivers and locate anywhere good
farmland existed. Railroads also created the idea of small-town America. Furthermore,
railroads stimulated the production of goods as well as propelling and spreading the idea
of industrialization in the Western world. Railroads, the first major industry in the
United States, made possible the growth of industries like coal, steel, flour mills, and
commercial farming. They established cities like Chicago and had an impact on urban
design. The finest minds and richest entrepreneurs were attracted to the engineering
challenges of the railroad and to the legal and financial aspects of its operation.
The Development of the Railways
In 1767 Richard Reynolds created a set of rails for moving coal at Coalbrookdale; these
were initially wood, but became iron rails. In 1801 the first Act of Parliament was passed
for the creation of a ‘railway’, although at this point it was a horse pulled carts ion rails.
Small, scattered railway development continued, but at the same time the steam engine
was evolving. In 1801 Trevithic invented a steam driven locomotive which ran on roads,
and 1813 William Hedly built Puffing Billy for use in mines, followed a year later by
George Stephenson’s engine.
In 1821 Stephenson built the Stockton to Darlington railway using iron rails and steam
power with the aim of breaking the local monopoly of the canal owners.
Development of railway network and its impact in India
Before the arrival of railways, the Indian transportation network was poor. Roads were
few and poorly constructed with many being inaccessible in the monsoons. Water
transportation was limited to the coast and the Indus and Ganga river systems, both
important commercial arteries connecting the north to the western and eastern coasts
respectively. Outside of the great river systems or the Grand Trunk Road connecting
Calcutta to Peshawar, transport costs were generally high. As a result, markets for most
bulky goods were small and regional. Only high value to weight luxury goods, like
printed cotton textiles, could reach national or international markets (Hurd 1983). The
initial advocates for developing railways in India were the mercantile interests in London
and Manchester (Thorner 1955). The expectation was railways would lower transport
costs and allow English merchants easier access to raw cotton from India.
Simultaneously railways would open Indian markets to British manufactured products
such as cotton textiles. Neither the railway promoters nor the East India Company
envisioned much of a demand for passenger traffic at that time. It was a short-sighted
view because passenger traffic would eventually become a major source of revenue. The
initial development of the network was slow under the East India Company, but the
paced picked up once the British crown took control in 1858
http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~dbogart/indraileconachieve.pdf
http://people.exeter.ac.uk/RBurt/exeteronly/HEC1010/Lecture2.html
https://www.britannica.com/technology/history-of-technology/The-IndustrialRevolution-1750-1900
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http://www.nios.ac.in/media/documents/SecSocSciCour/English/Lesson-05.pdf
http://www2.needham.k12.ma.us/nhs/cur/Baker_00/baker_1800_soc/baker_b
y_gw_p.1/railroads.htm
11.
Passed down from generation to another, Indian folk art is still alive in many
parts of the country. Being culturally diverse and distinct, a variety of art
forms have evolved over the years; some untouched by modernization, some
adapting to new paint colours and materials. Elaborate with examples.
India is a land of rich cultural heritage and a home to many art forms. Not only are these
paintings exotic, each of them has a rich historical perspective. Passed down from one
generation to another, Indian folk art is still alive in many parts of the country. Being
culturally diverse and distinct, a variety of art forms have evolved over the years; some
untouched by modernization, some adapting to new paint colours and materials. Each
depict religious epics or Gods and Goddesses mostly, but they’re all unique, admirable
and inimitable in their own might. In the days of yore, they were made with natural dyes
and colours made of soil, mud, leaves and charcoal, on canvas or cloth – giving it a sense
of antiquity, vintage nostalgia.
Here’s a look at 10 folk painting forms that are still practiced in select parts of the
country:
MADHUBANI.
Also called Mithila art, it originated in the kingdom of Janak (Sita’s father in
Ramayana) in Nepal and in present-day Bihar. It is one of the most popular Indian
folk arts, practiced mostly by women who wanted to be one with God. Characterized
by geometric patterns, this art form wasn’t known to the outside world until the
British discovered it after an earthquake in 1930’s revealed broken houses with
Madhubani paintings. It mirrored the work of Picasso and Miro, according to William
G. Archer. Most of these paintings or wall murals depict gods, flora and fauna.
MINIATURE PAINTINGS.
These paintings are characterized by its miniature size but intricate details and acute
expressions. Originating in the Mughal era, around 16th century, Miniature
paintings are influenced by Persian styles, and flourished under Shah Jahan and
Akbar’s rule. Later, it was adopted by Rajputs, and is now popularly practiced in
Rajasthan. As with other art forms, the paintings depict religious symbols and epics.
These paintings stand out as humans are portrayed with large eyes, a pointed nose
and a slim waist, and men are always seen with a turban.
GOND.
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WARLI.
Originated by the Warli tribes from the Western Ghat of India, in 2500 BCE, this is
easily one of the oldest art forms of India. It is mainly the use of circles, triangles and
squares to form numerous shapes and depict daily life activities like fishing, hunting,
festivals, dance and more. What sets it apart is the human shape: a circle and two
triangles. All the paintings are done on a red ochre or dark background, while the
shapes are white in colour.
51
PHAD.
Originating in Rajasthan, Phad is mainly a religious form of scroll painting depicting
folk deities Pabuji or Devnarayan. The 15-30 feet-long canvas or cloth that it is
painted on is called phad. Vegetable colours and a running narrative of the lives and
heroic deeds of deities characterise these paintings.
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Characterised by a sense of belonging with nature, the Gondi tribe in Madhya
Pradesh created these bold, vibrantly coloured paintings, depicting mainly flora and
fauna. The colours come from charcoal, cow dung, leaves and coloured soil. If you
look closely, it is made up of dots and lines. Today, these styles are imitated, but with
acrylic paints. It can be called an evolution in the Gond art form, spearheaded by
Jangarh Singh Shyam, the most popular Gond artist who revived the art for the
world in the 1960’s.
KALAMKARI.
Literally meaning ‘drawings with a pen’, Kalamkari is of two types in India:
Machilipatnam, which originates from Machilipatnam in Andhra Pradesh and
Srikalahasti, which originates from Chitoor in the same state. While the former refers
to block-printed form of art, the latter is a free flowing art with a pen on fabric.
Today, Kalamkari art is used on sarees and ethnic clothing, and depicts anything
from flora and fauna to epics such as Mahabharata or Ramayana.
TANJORE.
From down South, Tanjore or Thanjavur paintings originated in 1600 AD,
encouraged by the Nayakas of Thanjavur. Thanjavur painting uses gold foil, which
glitters and lends the painting a surreal look. These panel paintings on wooden
planks depict devotion to gods, goddesses and saints. It borrows its styles from
Maratha and Deccani art, as well as European styles.
CHERIYAL SCROLLS.
Originating in present-day Telangana, this dying art form is practised by the Nakashi
family only, where it has been passed down for many generations. The tradition of
long scrolls and Kalamkari art influenced the Cheriyal scrolls, a much more stylised
version of Nakashi art. Depicting puranas and epics, these 40-45 feet scrolls were an
essential visual accompaniment as saints wandered around singing or narrating the
epics. They use primary colours and a vivid imagination, a stark contrast from the
traditional rigour of Tanjore or Mysore paintings.
KALIGHATS PAINTING.
A recently discovered painting style, it originated in the 19th century Bengal, from
Kalighat. It was the time when upheaval against the British was a possible, exciting
idea. These paintings, on cloth and pattas, at first depicted Gods and Goddesses, but
then took a turn towards social reform. With cheap paper and paint colours, squirrel
hair brushes and colour pigments, the art was characterised by flawless strokes,
brushwork, and simple but bold drawings. It sought to raise awareness about social
conditions in its viewers – rich zamindars were depicted drinking wine with women,
while priests were shown with ‘unchaste’ women and police babus being sloppy.
PATACHITRA.
A cloth-based scroll painting from Odisha and West Bengal, these paintings with
sharp, angular bold lines depict epics, Gods and Goddesses. Originating from the
fifth century in religious hubs like Puri and Konark, around the same time that
sculpturing began, considering there was no known distinction between an artist and
sculptor back then. What’s unique about this art form is that the dress style depicted
in the paintings has heavy influence of the Mughal era.
REFERRENCES:
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For advance reading
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1) http://www.archive.india.gov.in/knowindia/culture_heritage.php?id=99
2) http://blog.artoflegendindia.com/2010/12/indian-folk-paintings-regional-artof.html
3) http://www.dollsofindia.com/library/folk_paintings/
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Folk and Tribal Art
India had always been known as the land that portrayed cultural and traditional
vibrancy through its conventional arts and crafts. The 35 states and union territories
sprawled across the country have their own distinct cultural and traditional identities,
and are displayed through various forms of art prevalent there. Every region in India has
its own style and pattern of art, which is known as folk art. Other than folk art, there is
yet another form of traditional art practiced by several tribes or rural population, which
is classified as tribal art. The folk and tribal arts of India are very ethnic and simple, and
yet colorful and vibrant enough to speak volumes about the country's rich heritage.
Folk art in India apparently has a great potential in the international market because of
its traditional aesthetic sensibility and authenticity. The rural folk paintings of India bear
distinctive colorful designs, which are treated with religious and mystical motifs. Some of
the most famous folk paintings of India are the Madhubani paintings of Bihar, Patachitra
paintings from the state of Odisha, the Nirmal paintings of Andhra Pradesh, and other
such folk art forms. Folk art is however not restricted only to paintings, but also
stretches to other art forms such as pottery, home decorations, ornaments, clothsmaking, and so on. In fact, the potteries of some of the regions of India are quite popular
among foreign tourists because of their ethnic and traditional beauty.
Moreover, the regional dances of India, such as the Bhangra dance of Punjab, the
Dandiya of Gujarat, the Bihu dance of Assam, etc, which project the cultural heritage of
those regions, are prominent contenders in the field of Indian folk art. These folk dances
are performed by people to express their exhilaration on every possible event or occasion,
such as the arrival of seasons, the birth of a child, weddings, festivals, etc. The
government of India, as well as other societies and associations, have therefore made all
efforts to promote such art forms, which have become an intrinsic part of India's cultural
identity.
Tribal art, like folk art, has also progressed considerably due to the constant
developmental efforts of the Indian government and other organizations. Tribal art
generally reflects the creative energy found in rural areas that acts as an undercurrent to
the craftsmanship of the tribal people. Tribal art ranges through a wide range of art
forms, such as wall paintings, tribal dances, tribal music, and so on.
Folk and Tribal Art of India:
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Tanjore Art
Madhubani Painting
Warli Folk Painting
Pattachitra Painting
Rajasthani Miniature Painting
Kalamezhuthu
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The Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in the project: Documentation,
Preservation and Research on Folk Paintings of North India (Folk Paintings of
Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan) sponsored by the Development Commissioner’s office
(Handicrafts), Ministry of Textiles, undertook a survey of Folk paintings of Rajasthan and
Madhya Pradesh. Villages and towns of both these regions abound in different styles of
paintings and to cover all these forms and styles would have been beyond the scope of
any one project. To delineate specific forms that the project would document, an initial
survey was conducted. On the basis of this survey three main traditions of folk paintings
were selected for a detailed documentation and analysis. The project thus concerned
itself mainly with bhumi chitra, the drawing and painting done on floor. Under this
53
Folk Paintings of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh
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rubric we documented and investigated the traditions of Mandanas, prevalent both in
Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh; bhitti chitra, wall painting. Here we documented the
traditional forms such as Sanjhi, Mandana, Thapa, Chitravan, Gond and Bhil
adivasi chitrakala (tribal paintings of Gonds Bhils). The third category was that of
body painting, under this rubric we selected the art of Gudna i.e body tattooing. Let us
very briefly look at each of these forms before moving on to a more conceptual analysis of
the folk painting tradition.
Specific Art Forms
•
Sanjhi
•
Mandanas
•
Thapa
•
Chitravan
•
Tribal Painting
•
Bhil Painting
•
Gond paintings
•
Pithora paintings
•
Gudna motifs
•
Folk Paintings - Source Classification and Meaning
•
Common Geometric and Figurative Motifs
Indian Folk Art Painting
India is a land of prosperous artistic tradition and a dwelling to many art forms. The
heritage of painting has been supported in the Indian subcontinent since the historic
times. Ancient Indian folk art styles and painting has been conceded down from
generation to generation, and are still alive in diverse parts of the country. Each painting
has a rich historical insight and perception. Being culturally assorted and separate, a
variety of art forms have developed over the years. Some sorts of art figures are adapting
to new paint materials and colors while some are untouched by modernization. Each art
form portrays religious Gods and Goddess mostly. And Indian paintings have the unique
values all over the world. It was the period of Gupta Dynasty where Indian folk art
paintings were evolved to new level. Mostly arts of Indian resemble the religious
sculptures.
Interesting facts of Madhubani and Kalamkari art
Madhubani is a folk painting of Bihar which is also called as Maithili painting. The
names were obtained from the regions of source namely Mithila and Madhuban. It is one
of the most famous Indian folk arts and it is practiced mainly by women who desired to
be one with God. The paintings are evolved on several geometrical patterns and the
characters are described in a colorful surrounding with large soulful eyes.
Lord Krishna is a favorite subject and other Hindu mythologies are also depicted in these
art forms.
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Kalamkari is a style of paintings by using pens or sticks. The word kalamkari stands for
‘Drawings with a pen’; it’s a unique technique of craftsmanship which is seen rarely
among olden day’s paintings. Often Indian artist uses bamboo sticks for painting, as
bamboo sticks were used as pen in one end and fine brush as from other end. Vegetable
dyes are used on cloth to color the art forms. Drawings are mostly made up of intricate
54
This painting was not recognized to the outside world until the British determined it after
an earthquake in 1930’s.
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designs and fine lines. In the modern days, Kalamkari art is used on ethnic painting and
sarees.
Great things behind Indian folk arts
Thanjavur or Tanjore paintings are originated in 1600 AD from down South. Mostly,
Thanjavur Nayakas encouraged these kinds of paintings. The art form is still very
famous and extensively learnt. Southern Tamil Nadu is well-known for its Tanjore
paintings. The paintings can be easily recognized by its use of gold, glass and semiprecious stones. These surreal look panel paintings on wooden boards illustrate loyalty
to Gods, Goddesses and saints. The art form borrows its styles from Deccani, Maratha
and European art. The characters of these paintings are mostly illustrated with large
round faces and embroidered designs.
The Gonds of Central India developed a tribal art called as Gond art. The paintings were
mostly distinguished by a sense of belonging with environment. These kinds of vibrant
and bold colored paintings are depicting about flora and fauna. Ancient Indian artists
prefer natural colors for their paintings, and they prefer to draw arts with lines and dots.
Even those techniques are followed by modern age artists too, for such modern paintings
people refer as acrylic paints.
To know more refer below link
http://www.standupindialoanscheme.in/indian-folk-art-painting/
http://ignca.nic.in/sanjhi/about_project.htm
http://www.archive.india.gov.in/knowindia/culture_heritage.php?id=99
12. “The collapse of Berlin Wall in 1989 brought new ideas of cooperation in
Europe”. Critically evaluate.
The collapse of Berlin Wall in 1989 was a crucial event in the history of Europe that led
to major political and economic changes in the existing Soviet and Western/capitalist
nation.
The major consequences of the fall of the Berlin wall that led to the emergence of new
ideas of cooperation in Europe were:
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It led to the unification of East and West Germany allowing the unrestricted
movement of people and ideas across boundaries.
The initiation of the reforms, Perestroika (restructuring) and Glasnost (openness)
led to the end of the stagnation of the authoritarian regime of the Soviet Union
also lifted the curbs on freedom of thought and expression.
Liberal, capitalist and democratic system emerged as the major doctrines across
Europe and the whole world.
The hold of the communist party over the political life of the countries was
loosened and political parties were allowed to function.
Some of the countries in the former Soviet union and Central -Eastern Europe
became members of the Western institutions and organizations like European
Union (EU), NATO, OECD etc.
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Constitutions were re-written and companies began to incorporate. As a result people
living under communism started delving into other ventures and be a part of the rest of
55
As the wall came down, the entire Soviet power structure started to fall and a welter of
previously closed, moribund economies across Europe, the former Soviet Union and
Central Asia spluttered into life and started lurching forward.
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the world. Post-Communist Europe and Central Asia started sending their exports to
western European countries.
In sum, the fall of the Berlin Wall opened up vast opportunities for the emergence of cooperative ideas in Europe especially in terms of economy, because re-absorption of its
previously communist half gave Germany a bridgehead into Eastern Europe, Russia and
beyond. This further led to creation of more jobs and hence lifted the living standard of
people. Hence, the event not only brought new ideas but also positioned Germany and
Europe at better rankings on the welfare and development list.
OR
The Berlin wall which was created in 1961 with an immediate reason of stopping the
mass migration of people from East Berlin (controlled by the USSR) to West Berlin
(controlled by western bloc led by the USA). However, the prime motive of erecting the
wall was to find an escape route from the embarrassment over the poverty of East Berlin
under communist rule in sharp contrast of prosperity in its western counterpart under
capitalist regime.
However, by the time Mikhail Gorbachev took over the presidency of erstwhile USSR in
1985, things have been changed. The USSR’s economic position was of no match to the
western powers. Also, Gorbachev policies of glasnost and perestroika were signaling
liberal reforms in the political, social and economic sphere.
It is with this background that Gorbachev met with west Germany Chancellor Helmut
Kohl and virtually promised him freedom of East Germany (and Berlin). This led to the
collapse of Berlin wall.
This brought new ideas of co-operation in Europe because:
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After the collapse of the wall, East Germany and West Germany also got unified.
The reunification of Germany once again after Bismarck led further socioeconomic integration of Europe which got culminated into the European Union
for which Germany became a vital part.
The cooperation was extended by the western powers in East Vs West Berlin
issue. The USA agreed that reunification could take place. The Great Britain and
France, though were less happy about German unification (due to the possibility
of increased Berman power) felt bound to go ahead with the flow.
The co-operation between West Europe and East Europe including Russia
increased as Europe was no longer divided in blocs. The Cold War ended giving
further hope for co-operation.
Many Eastern European countries became part of European Union, which
strengthened European unity.
Europe also started co-operating more with rest of the world.
However the path of co-operation was not smooth and this included confrontations also.
Britain and France initially did not like unification of Germany due to possibility of even
more powerful Germany. Membership of EU and NATO to Eastern European countries
was despised by Russia. Also integrating poor East Germany to rich West Germany and
poor East Europe with rich West Europe faced difficulties. There were also voices against
co-operation and integration from many Europeans who feared loss of national identity,
economic problems due to integration.
1) http://horizon-magazine.eu/article/how-fall-berlin-wall-transformed-europe-sresearch-landscape_en.html
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REFERRENCES:
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Hence, the collapse of Berlin wall not only signified the end of communism and
disintegration of the USSR but also new level of cooperation in Europe, inspite of facing
obstacles.
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2) http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/history/the-collapse-of-berlin-wall-in-1989brought-new-ideas-of-co-operation-in-europe/4052/
For advance reading
How the fall of the Berlin Wall transformed Europe’s research landscape
The fall of the Wall and the other momentous changes in Eastern and Central Europe
from 1989 opened up new possibilities for researchers to meet and collaborate with their
Western European counterparts and gave them hope of new partnerships. ‘After these
changes there was an extraordinary opening towards international research,’ said
Professor Anton Anton, a lecturer in Romania at the time and now professor of
hydraulics and environmental protection at the University of Civil Engineering in
Bucharest. ‘Researchers were very positive.’
New efforts were made at European Community level to encourage cooperation
previously impossible because of the Iron Curtain, and ‘science diplomacy’ was
recognised as encouraging European cultural reunification when other paths were still
difficult.
‘We realised it would not be easy to become part of the European research community,
but there was a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of optimism,’ said Dr Jan Krzysztof Frackowiak,
of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He was a physicist before becoming Deputy Science
Minister of Poland for 14 years from 1991. Schemes such as PECO/COPERNICUS,
launched in 1992 with funding of EUR 55 million, encouraged new ways of working
together for Central and Eastern European countries seen as potential future members
of the EU.
Eastward growth
Along with scientific and technical research fellowships, it also provided for project-byproject participation in parts of the Framework Programmes, with joint activities on the
environment, health, information and communication technology, materials, agriculture
and food.
‘Without the Framework Programmes, we would have never reached this stage.’
Professor Anton Anton, former Romanian Secretary of State for Research
‘The special actions played a very important role for us in gaining experience of
European rules and methods,’ Dr Frackowiak said. ‘Later on this meant we could
gradually take on more important roles.’ Identifying the Central and Eastern European
countries as a focus played a large role in the expansion of the Framework Programmes.
This eastward growth continued through the 1990s and into the next decade, when 10
Central and Eastern European countries were to join the European Union. By the Fourth
Framework Programme (FP4) in 1994, COPERNICUS was included in a specific
programme of International Cooperation (INCO).
Among the Polish-led advanced nanotechnology projects in FP7 have been the
ENSEMBLE study of self-organising electromagnetic structures and SUPERSONIC,
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Participation was still on a project-by-project basis, on limited themes, but once the
countries were on track for EU membership and became associates of the Framework
Programmes, their participation increased. By the Sixth Framework Programme, which
began in 2002, Poland for instance was proposing advanced projects as a coordinator
and it was to lead more than 180 consortiums in the Seventh Framework Programme
(FP7), in the specific programmes of People, Ideas and Cooperation, and the Research
Potential (REGPOT). These have included a selection of prominent projects ranging from
information technology, security, and energy efficiency to nanotechnology.
57
Smoother knees
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looking at depositing layers of lubricating solid nanoparticles to ease the use of wind
turbines, aeroplane engines or even artificial knees. Developing research capacity has
benefited greatly from participation in the Framework Programmes, which have kept
growing with the EU itself. From EUR 13.1 billion at the start of FP4, when the European
Union had just 12 Member States, the funding has swelled to EUR 80 billion for the 28strong European Union of Horizon 2020.
Combined benefits
For new Member States, the benefits of the Framework Programmes have, in many
cases, been multiplied by using EU Structural Funds to develop new laboratories and
modern facilities for research. Austria, Finland and Sweden already had very well
developed research infrastructure when they joined the European Union in 1995. But
Spain has shown the benefits of combining these different forms of European funding to
transform its relatively underdeveloped research system in the 1980s to world-class
status.
The Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) project shows a similar synergy in Romania,
Hungary and the Czech Republic, where some of the most intense lasers ever made are
being built for research.
The preparatory phase was carried out under FP7 and the three facilities are being
developed with support from the Structural Funds. They are expected to be operational
by 2018 and to host substantial Framework Programme research in fundamental
physics, materials, pharmacology, cancer and X-ray and gamma ray imaging.
‘This is one of the main benefits for us,’ said Prof. Anton, who is also a former Romanian
government minister and Secretary of State for Research. ‘Without the Framework
Programmes, we would have never reached this stage.
Europe’s Road to integration
Alarming headlines about Europe have been inescapable in recent years even if the
latest outlook is somewhat better. Markets and the media have questioned Europe’s
ability to deal with a severe financial shock and an economic downturn, even raising
concern about the viability of the euro.
As bad as the crisis has been—and it has been extremely damaging, not least for the
many people out of work—that should not obscure Europe’s achievement of a closely
integrated region with some of the world’s highest standards of living. That this has
been accomplished after two devastating world wars and the division of the continent
between east and west for much of the 20th century is all the more remarkable.
Europe has experienced some crucial pushes toward integration in the past
25 years—the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the wave of central European countries
that joined the European Union in 2004, and the launch of the euro in 1999. The
current crisis presents an opportune time to consider Europe’s path to integration so
far and what lies ahead.
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The past few years have been rocky, and there will surely be further bumps ahead.
The crisis exposed weaknesses in the regional architecture and national policies,
while eroding political support for closer ties. But integration has yielded substantial
benefits for Europe so far, and continues to point the way forward.
58
While Europe is much larger and more populous than the European Union alone, the
Union has been at the heart of European integration, binding countries once in
conflict and offering benefits well beyond its borders—as a key trading and investment
partner across Europe and as a powerful catalyst for fundamental economic and
governance reforms by many entrants and aspirants.
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Complex origins
More than six decades ago, six countries in western Europe (Belgium, France, West
Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands) decided to take economic
cooperation a step further. The vision of the EU founding fathers, epitomized by the
Schuman Declaration in 1950, was to tie their economies—including the reemerging
West German economy—so closely together that war would become impossible.
Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be built through
concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity.
—Robert Schuman
The history of the European Union has been one of big and small steps toward evercloser integration. Early on, leaders decided to integrate their key industries of the
war and postwar years: coal and steel production. Tariffs were reduced, subsidies
slashed, and national cartels dismantled. But unlike other forms of emerging postwar
economic cooperation, the integration of Europe was defined by the creation of
supranational institutions. Over the years these institutions have evolved into the
executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the European project. The durability
and continuous strengthening of these institutions is a demonstration of the power
and the success of the project. A key milestone was the first direct European vote in
1979 when the European Parliament became the legislative power.
Geographically, the European Union also went through various stages of enlargement.
In 1973, Denmark, Ireland, and the United Kingdom joined what was then the
European Community. The 1970s saw deep social and political transformations in
Greece, Portugal, and Spain, where military regimes and dictatorships were
overthrown. Inspired by the prosperity and stability of the European Community,
these countries joined the European project a mere decade later, strengthening their
emerging democracies. The countries benefited enormously from free trade and
common policies, in particular structural funds that were set up to foster convergence
by funding infrastructure and productive investments in poorer regions.
The Fall of the Berlin Wall and European Integration
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German unification and European unity were considered as two intrinsically linked sides
of the same coin.1 Rapid German unification had come about only after formal consent
of the four allied powers, who had won World War II against the German Reich. German
unification accelerated the path toward the European Monetary Union. It also opened up
the possibility of further enlargements to include Central and Eastern European
countries: After all, the accession of the German Democratic Republic to the Federal
Republic of Germany – based on its traditional internal federal structures with five “new
59
Crisis of Trust as Crisis of Deepening Integration Surprisingly, the fall of the Berlin Wall
on November 9, 1989, turned out to be the biggest challenge to Europe since the fall of
Hitler’s Third Reich in the same city on May 8, 1945. Instead of rejoicing about the end
of Europe’s division in happy anticipation of European unification under the banner of
freedom, democracy and market economy, skeptical concern, fear and immobility soon
filled the air. With German unification imminent as the immediate consequence of the
fall of the Berlin Wall, even the very rationale of European integration seemed to have
become questionable. Germany might not need European integration any longer, some
argued. Other notorious skeptics perceived united Germany as the dominating European
power, while some analysts were questioning whether or not Germany would maintain
its interest in pursuing European integration at all. Soon, a first set of reassuring
answers was given: The government of united Germany under Chancellor Helmut Kohl
was reelected twice after the unification of the two German states on October 3, 1990,
before he lost his Chancellorship in the 1998 election. At all times during this decade,
Kohl’s government remained unwavering in its commitment to European integration.
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Länder” joining the eleven “old Länder” of the Federal Republic – was the first accession
of a post-communist transformation society to the European Community, albeit under
different conditions. Joy could have been the overall European attitude. This, however,
did not happen because a second set of answers to the questions raised with the end of
the artificial division of Europe was much more difficult to obtain.
In fact, it even took EU leaders a couple of years to define the right content of questions
following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. The fall of the Berlin
Wall in 1989 found a first formal answer in the EU membership of ten post-communist
countries in 2004, followed by another two in 2007. Further applicant countries from
Southeast Europe reminded the EU that even the enlargement marathon had remained
unfinished business. The enlargement of the European Union to include former
communist countries had been the only possible and morally right answer to overcome
the division of Europe originating in the Cold War. Before joining the EU, the new
member states had to go through a tough period of internal transformation in the course
of which they had to adopt the EU’s acquis communautaire. Through this daunting
process, they became formally more Europeanized than most of the “old” EU member
states.2 None of them would have wished to go through the ordeal.
The Berlin Wall fell and a new Europe rose
It is for historians to discern the origins of the most momentous event in post-war
European history. But the path to the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago today will
surely lead through the election of Karol Wojtyla, Archbishop of Krakow, as Pope in 1978
and the emergence in Poland of Solidarity under Lech Walesa. In Russia, Mikhail
Gorbachev introducedglasnost (opennness) and perestroika (restructuring) after coming
to power in 1985. Four years later, liberalisation gathered an unstoppable momentum.
The opening of Hungary's border with Austria from May onwards allowed hundreds of
East Germans to escape to the West, the most notable instance being the Pan-European
Picnic, a peace demonstration held in August under the patronage of Otto von Habsburg.
Within four months the wall was breached, a watershed from which flowed the collapse
of Communism in Europe, the re-unification of Germany and the disintegration of the
Soviet Union.
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Yet those setbacks cannot disguise the immense advance of freedom in Europe over the
past 20 years, freedom not just to elect or dismiss a government but also to have access
to an incomparably wider range of goods and services (see the graphic image of East
Berliners sitting behind the wheels of BMWs cited in today's newspaper by Adrian
Bridge). Yesterday we remembered the men and women who have given their lives, from
the Somme to Helmand, in defence of our democratic values. Their sacrifice reminds us
that freedom should never be taken for granted. It is not a static concept, rather one
which constantly ebbs and flows and demands unceasing vigilance.
60
Two decades on, former Communist countries account for over 40 per cent of Nato
members and all of them have contributed troops to the International Security
Assistance Force in Afghanistan. Ten of them have joined the European Union, and two
more are candidates for membership. Separated from half of the Continent by Stalin's
brutal diktat, they have come in from the cold. That historic process has not been
without grave setbacks. The unravelling of Yugoslavia was accompanied by the hideous
practice of ethnic cleansing, culminating, at Srebrenica in 1995, in the largest mass
murder in Europe since the Second World War. Today, of the republics which made up
the old federation, only Slovenia is a member of both Nato and the EU. In Russia, the
freewheeling chaos of the Yeltsin era has given way under Vladimir Putin to a nasty
combination of nationalism, crony capitalism and scant regard for human rights. And
the former Soviet satellites have been hit particularly hard by the current economic
recession, the average estimated fall in their GDP this year being 6.2 per cent.
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http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2014/03/moghadam.htm
http://horizon-magazine.eu/article/how-fall-berlin-wall-transformed-europe-sresearch-landscape_en.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/06/-sp-fall-berlin-wall-what-itmeant-to-be-there
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/6528859/The-Berlin-Wallfell-and-a-new-Europe-rose.html
http://www.kas.de/upload/Publikationen/Panorama/2009/1/kuehnhardt.pdf
13. The doctrines of Glasnost and Perestroika eventually led to the decline of the
Soviet Union. Critically examine.
After World War II, the Soviet Union emerged as one of the most powerful states in the
world (the other, of course, was the United States). Although the Soviet Union suffered
unimaginable casualties and enormous economic devastation during the war, by the
1950s, it was well on its way to recovery.
Eastern Europe had fallen under the control of the Soviet Union, further aiding the
Soviet recovery and boosting Soviet nationalism. In the resource-laden Ukraine,
agricultural and industrial output was particularly important. Soviet economics, of
course, proceeded according to Joseph Stalin's Five-Year Plan. The Soviet Union had also
acquired nuclear weapons technology, leading to the nuclear arms race between the two
superpowers. The Soviet Union's economy was not nearly as robust as the American
economy, and when the Soviets increased defense spending to counter American
expenditures, it severely hurt their economy. The arms race was basically bankrupting
the Soviet Union. The Soviet War in Afghanistan, which began in 1979, also proved to be
a drain on the Soviet economy, even as it highlighted the general decay of Soviet power.
In the 1980s, the Soviet Union was engulfed by a multitude of problems. The economy,
especially the agricultural sector, began to fall apart. The country lacked technological
advancements and used inefficient factories, all while consumers were buying lowquality products and suffered from a shortage of social freedoms. To reform the
distraught Soviet Union, the democratization of the Communist Party was promoted
through Party Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev‘s policies of “perestroika” and “glasnost.”
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The term “Glasnost” means “openness” and was the name for the social and political
reforms to bestow more rights and freedoms upon the Soviet people. Its goals were to
include more people in the political process through freedom of expression. This led to a
decreased censoring of the media, which in effect allowed writers and journalists to
expose news of government corruption and the depressed condition of the Soviet people.
Glasnost also permitted criticism of government officials, encouraging more social
freedoms like those that Western societies had already provided. Yet, the totalitarian
state present since 1917 was difficult to dismantle, and when it fell apart, citizens were
not accustomed to the lack of regulation and command. The outburst of information
about escalating crime and crimes by the government caused panic in the people. This
61
Perestroika refers to the reconstruction of the political and economic system established
by the Communist Party. Politically, contested elections were introduced to reflect the
democratic practices of Western society and allow citizens to have a slight say in
government. Economically, Perestroika called for de-monopolization and some semiprivate businesses to function, ending the price controls established by the government
for the past seven decades. The goal was to create a semi-free market system, reflecting
successful capitalist practices in the economies of Germany, Japan, and the United
States. Unfortunately, such an economy took time to thrive, and people found
themselves stuck in a worn-out economy, which led to long-lines, strikes, and civil
unrest.
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caused an increase in social protests in a nation used to living under the strictest
government control, and went against the goals of Gorbachev.
These policies were in effect from 1985 to 1991, when Boris Yeltsin became Russia’s first
popularly elected president. He then formed the Commonwealth of Independent States.
Reconstructing the organization of the Soviet Union proved difficult and the effects were
mixed; while more social freedoms were permitted, the economy was in deterioration and
social unrest was growing among the people. Glasnost and Perestroika eventually helped
cause the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, which had lasted from
1945 to 1991.
REFERRENCES:
1) http://study.com/academy/lesson/gorbachevs-policies-of-glasmost-andperestroika.html
2) http://www.academia.edu/8275555/Causes_of_the_Collapse_of_the_U.S.S.R._un
der_Mikhail_Gorbachev
3) http://www.e-ir.info/2013/06/21/the-collapse-of-the-ussr-ontologicalconjunctural-or-decisional/
For advance reading
GLASNOST AND PERESTROIKA
In the 1980s, the Soviet Union was engulfed by a multitude of problems. The economy,
especially the agricultural sector, began to fall apart. The country lacked technological
advancements and used inefficient factories, all while consumers were buying lowquality products and suffered from a shortage of social freedoms. To reform the
distraught Soviet Union, the democratization of the Communist Party was promoted
through Party Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev‘s policies of “perestroika” and “glasnost.”
Perestroika refers to the reconstruction of the political and economic system established
by the Communist Party. Politically, contested elections were introduced to reflect the
democratic practices of Western society and allow citizens to have a slight say in
government. Economically, Perestroika called for de-monopolization and some semiprivate businesses to function, ending the price controls established by the government
for the past seven decades. The goal was to create a semi-free market system, reflecting
successful capitalist practices in the economies of Germany, Japan, and the United
States. Unfortunately, such an economy took time to thrive, and people found
themselves stuck in a worn-out economy, which led to long-lines, strikes, and civil
unrest.
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Page
These policies were in effect from 1985 to 1991, when Boris Yeltsin became Russia’s
first popularly elected president. He then formed the Commonwealth of Independent
States. Reconstructing the organization of the Soviet Union proved difficult and the
62
The term “Glasnost” means “openness” and was the name for the social and political
reforms to bestow more rights and freedoms upon the Soviet people. Its goals were to
include more people in the political process through freedom of expression. This led to a
decreased censoring of the media, which in effect allowed writers and journalists to
expose news of government corruption and the depressed condition of the Soviet people.
Glasnost also permitted criticism of government officials, encouraging more social
freedoms like those that Western societies had already provided. Yet, the totalitarian
state present since 1917 was difficult to dismantle, and when it fell apart, citizens were
not accustomed to the lack of regulation and command. The outburst of information
about escalating crime and crimes by the government caused panic in the people. This
caused an increase in social protests in a nation used to living under the strictest
government control, and went against the goals of Gorbachev.
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effects were mixed; while more social freedoms were permitted, the economy was in
deterioration and social unrest was growing among the people. Glasnost and Perestroika
eventually helped cause the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, which
had lasted from 1945 to 1991
PERESTROIKA AND GLASNOST
When Mikhail S. Gorbachev stepped onto the world stage in March 1985 as the new
leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), it was immediately clear that he
was different from his predecessors. Gorbachev, then 54, was significantly younger than
the aging party members who had led the Communist superpower in previous decades–
the last two of whom had seen their rule cut short by health problems. Hailing from a
younger generation gave Gorbachev a new outlook on the challenges that faced his
country.
Since his resignation from the Soviet presidency in 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev has
remained active in politics and world affairs. He has founded several political parties in
Russia, penned opinion pieces for U.S. newspapers and even appeared in movies,
television shows and advertisements for various products.
Gorbachev realized that he had inherited significant problems. Even as the USSR vied
with the United States for global political and military leadership, its economy was
struggling, and its citizens were chafing under their relatively poor standard of living and
lack of freedom. Those difficulties were also keenly felt in the Communist nations of
Eastern Europe that were aligned with and controlled by the Soviets.
Gorbachev took a new approach toward addressing these problems: He introduced a
reform program that embodied two overarching concepts. Perestroika, his restructuring
concept, started with an overhaul of the top members of the Communist Party. It also
focused on economic issues, replacing the centralized government planning that had
been a hallmark of the Soviet system with a greater reliance on market forces. The
accompanying concept of glasnost sought to ease the strict social controls imposed by
the government. Gorbachev gave greater freedom to the media and religious groups and
allowed citizens to express divergent views. By 1988, Gorbachev had expanded his
reforms to include democratization, moving the USSR toward an elected form of
government.
SLOWING THE ARMS RACE
Gorbachev’s internal reforms were matched by new approaches to Soviet foreign policy.
Determined to end his country’s nuclear rivalry with the United States, he pursued
negotiations with U.S. President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004). Although Reagan held
strong anti-communist views and had intensified the Cold War by initiating a buildup of
U.S. forces in the early 1980s, the two leaders managed to find common ground.
Gorbachev and Reagan took part in five summits between 1985 and 1988. Their
discussions resulted in the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in
1987, which brought about a major reduction in both nations’ weapons stockpiles. The
productive dialogue was the result of fresh thinking on both sides, but progress on many
points began with Gorbachev’s willingness to abandon long-held Soviet positions.
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The Gorbachev initiative that had the most far-reaching effects was his decision to
abandon Soviet control of the Communist nations of Eastern Europe. Since World War II,
leaders of the USSR had viewed the maintenance of these states as essential to their
nation’s security, and they had crushed anti-Soviet uprisings in Warsaw Pact countries
(a group of eight Communist nations in Eastern Europe, including Poland and Hungary)
that sought greater independence. However, just a year after taking power, Gorbachev
oversaw reforms that loosened the Soviet grip on these states. Then, in a landmark
63
THE LIBERATION OF EASTERN EUROPE
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December 1988 speech at the United Nations, he declared that all nations should be free
to choose their own course without outside interference. To the amazement of millions,
he capped this speech by announcing that the USSR would significantly reduce the
number of troops and tanks that were based in the Eastern Bloc countries.
Gorbachev’s move had unintended consequences. He had hoped that his reforms would
revitalize and modernize the Soviet Union. Instead, they unleashed social forces that
brought about the dissolution of the USSR (which had been in existence since 1922). In
1989, Communist regimes fell in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia,
Bulgaria and Romania. By the end of that year, the Berlin Wall had been dismantled and
discussions were under way that would result in the reunification of Germany in October
1990
Gorbachev did not watch passively as these events unfolded. To the contrary, he adopted
more conservative policies in 1990–the same year he received the Nobel Peace Prize.
Despite his willingness to try new approaches, Gorbachev remained committed to the
principles of socialism and determined to maintain the Soviet republics as one nation. In
the end, however, his efforts to rein in the reform spirit he had turned loose were
ineffective.
Angry hard-line Communists attempted to remove Gorbachev from power in August
1991 by staging a coup. The revolt failed due to the efforts of Boris Yeltsin (1931-2007),
president of the Russian Republic, who emerged as the country’s most powerful political
figure. However, before the end of the year, Yeltsin and other reformers succeeded in
completely undoing the old order. The Soviet Union dissolved into 15 individual
republics, and on December 25, 1991, Gorbachev resigned from the presidency of a
nation that no longer existed.
New Thinking: Foreign Policy under Gorbachev
New Thinking" was Gorbachev's slogan for a foreign policy based on shared moral and
ethical principles to solve global problems rather than on Marxist-Leninist concepts of
irreconcilable conflict between capitalism and communism. Rather than flaunt Soviet
military power, Gorbachev chose to exercise political influence, ranging from the
enhancement of diplomatic relations and economic cooperation to personally greeting the
public in spur-of-the-moment encounters at home and abroad. Gorbachev used the
world media skillfully and made previously unimaginable concessions in the resolution
of regional conflicts and arms negotiations. In addition to helping the Soviet Union gain
wider acceptance among the family of nations, the New Thinking's conciliatory policies
toward the West and the loosening of Soviet control over Eastern Europe ultimately led
to the collapse of communism and the end of the Cold War.
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Gorbachev also assiduously pursued closer relations with China. Improved Sino-Soviet
relations had long depended on the resolution of several issues, including Soviet support
for the Vietnamese military presence in Cambodia, the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan,
and the large numbers of Soviet troops and weapons deployed along China's northern
border. Soviet moves to resolve these issues led the Chinese government to agree to a
64
United States-Soviet relations began to improve soon after Gorbachev became general
secretary. The first summit meeting between Reagan and Gorbachev took place in
Geneva in November 1985. The following October, the two presidents discussed strategic
arms reduction in Reykjavik, without making significant progress. In the late summer of
1987, the Soviet Union yielded on the long-standing issue of intermediate-range nuclear
arms in Europe; at the Washington summit that December, Reagan and Gorbachev
signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty--see Glossary),
eliminating all intermediate- and shorter-range missiles from Europe. In April 1988,
Afghanistan and Pakistan signed an accord, with the United States and Soviet Union as
guarantors, calling for withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan by February 1989.
The Soviet Union subsequently met the accord's deadline for withdrawal.
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summit meeting with Gorbachev in Beijing in May 1989, the first since the Sino-Soviet
split in the 1950s.
Soviet relations with Europe improved markedly during the Gorbachev period, mainly
because of the INF Treaty and Soviet acquiescence to the collapse of communist rule in
Eastern Europe during 1989-90. Since the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in
1968, the Soviet Union had adhered to the Brezhnev Doctrine upholding the existing
order in socialist states. Throughout the first half of Gorbachev's rule, the Soviet Union
continued this policy, but in July 1989, in a speech to the Council of Europe (see
Glossary), Gorbachev insisted on "the sovereign right of each people to choose their own
social system," a formulation that fell just short of repudiating the Brezhnev Doctrine. By
then, however, the Soviet Union's control over its outer empire already was showing
signs of disintegration.
That June the communist regime in Poland had held relatively free parliamentary
elections, and the communists had lost every contested seat. In Hungary the communist
regime had steadily accelerated its reforms, rehabilitating Imre Nagy, the reform
communist leader of the 1956 uprising, and dismantling fortifications along Hungary's
border with Austria. At the end of the summer, East German vacationers began escaping
to the West through this hole in the Iron Curtain. They also poured into the West
German embassy in Prague. The East German state began to hemorrhage as thousands
of its citizens sought a better and freer life in the West.
With the East German government under increasing pressure to stem the outflow, East
Germans who stayed behind demonstrated on the streets for reform. When the ouster of
East German communist party leader Honecker failed to restore order, the authorities
haphazardly opened the Berlin Wall in November 1989. The same night the Berlin Wall
fell, the Bulgarian Communist Party deposed its longtime leader, Todor Zhivkov. Two
weeks later, Czechoslovakia embarked on its "Velvet Revolution," quietly deposing the
country's communist leaders. At an impromptu summit meeting in Malta in December
1989, Gorbachev and United States president George H.W. Bush declared an end to the
Cold War.
During the Gorbachev years, improvements in United States-Soviet relations were not
without complications. For example, in 1991 Soviet envoy Yevgeniy Primakov's attempted
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By the June 1990 Washington summit, the United States-Soviet relationship had
improved to such an extent that Gorbachev characterized it as almost a "partnership"
between the two countries, and President Bush noted that the relationship had "moved a
long, long way from the depths of the Cold War." In August 1990, the Soviet Union joined
the United States in condemning the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and supported United
Nations resolutions to restore Kuwait's sovereignty. In November 1990, the United
States, the Soviet Union, and most of the European states signed the Conventional
Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE Treaty--see Glossary), making reductions in battle tanks,
armored combat vehicles, artillery, and fighter aircraft "from the Atlantic Ocean to the
Ural Mountains."
65
Throughout 1990 and 1991, Soviet-controlled institutions in Eastern Europe were
dismantled. At the January 1990 Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon-see Glossary) summit, several East European states called for disbanding that
fundamental economic organization of the Soviet empire, and the summit participants
agreed to recast their multilateral ties. At the next summit, in January 1991, Comecon
dissolved itself. In March 1990, Gorbachev called for converting the Warsaw Pact to a
political organization, but instead the body officially disbanded in July 1991. Soviet
troops were withdrawn from Central Europe over the next four years--from
Czechoslovakia and Hungary by mid-1991 and from Poland in 1993. By midsummer
1990, Gorbachev and West German chancellor Helmut Kohl had worked out an
agreement by which the Soviet Union acceded to a unified Germany within NATO.
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mediation of the Kuwait conflict threatened to undercut the allied coalition's demand
that Iraq withdraw unconditionally from Kuwait. After the signing of the CFE Treaty,
disputes arose over Soviet compliance with the treaty and the Soviet military's efforts to
redesignate weapons or move them so that they would not be subject to the treaty's
terms. United States pressure led to the resolution of these issues, and the CFE Treaty
entered into force in 1992. The Soviet crackdown on Baltic independence movements in
January 1991 also slowed the improvement of relations with the United States.
By the summer of 1991, the United States-Soviet relationship showed renewed signs of
momentum, when Bush and Gorbachev met in Moscow to sign the Strategic Arms
Reduction Treaty (START I--see Glossary). Under START, for the first time large numbers
of intercontinental ballistic missiles were slated for elimination. The treaty foresaw a
reduction of approximately 35 percent in United States ballistic missile warheads and
about 50 percent in Soviet ballistic missile warheads within seven years of treaty
ratification. Gorbachev recently had attended the Group of Seven (G-7; see Glossary)
summit to discuss his proposals for Western aid. Gorbachev also established diplomatic
relations with Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and, in the waning days of the Soviet Union's
existence, Israel.
Gorbachev's foreign policy won him much praise and admiration. For his efforts to
reduce superpower tensions around the world, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace
in 1990. Ironically, as a result of frequent rumors of a conservative coup, the leader of
the Soviet empire, whose previous rulers had kept opposition figures Lech Walesa and
Andrey Sakharov from collecting their Nobel prizes, was unable to collect his own until
June 1991.
To know more refer below links
http://www.coldwar.org/articles/80s/glasnostandperestroika.asp
https://www.academia.edu/8275555/Causes_of_the_Collapse_of_the_U.S.S.R._under_M
ikhail_Gorbachev
http://countrystudies.us/russia/17.htm
http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/perestroika-and-glasnost/
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It is needless to say that the French Revolution brought about great changes in France.
The monarchy was displaced and the king and queen executed. New form of government
attempted to find stability in the hitherto chaotic society. The various stages of
revolution a deliberate attempt to build a new France.
As France trembled, there was a massive ideological challenge in front of Europe. The
fact that the concept of French revolution was not immediately adopted by the rest of
Europe, it did not reduce its effect, because France had started exporting the revolution
at the points of its bayonets. Certainly, Europe would experience a war which would go
on until the final outbreak of Napoleon in 1815.
The post 1815 era across Europe witnessed many revolutions, some of them successful
in their aims. A realistic model of republican government was re-introduced by the
French Revolution which proved that it was not necessary for a European state to be
officially Christian.
Equal law for everyone, freedom of speech, and independence of the people rather than
monarchy found its roots in the revolution. Europe experienced nationalism on a major
scale.
Concepts of liberal democracy, fraternity and equality were introduced by the French
into the political arena. The rise of various philosophers and sociologists was a major
66
14. “The impact of the French revolution (1789) was initially confined to Europe,
but that of the Russian revolution (1917) was global. Critically review.
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reason for the enlightenment. This concept was spread across Europe which was gladly
accepted by the public to overthrow the monarchs and adopt liberal democracy.
Russian Revolution: The October Revolution was peaceful; however, the new state soon
got involved in a civil war. The revolution succeeded in overthrowing the autocracy and
destroying the power of the church. The USSR was thus the outcome of the end of the
Czarist regime.
With the new government, private property in the means of production was abolished
and economic planning was adopted for a faster development. The various measures
adopted took Soviet Union to become a major power in the world.
Building of a socialist society as it prime objective, the Russian Revolution had
repercussions on the entire globe since it had led to the creation of a new state over a
huge area of the world.
Though the French and Russian revolution started with the similar intention of
overthrowing the corrupt regime of the monarchy, there were significant differences
between the two revolutions hence the magnitude of their impact too differed.
The Russian revolution took place at a time when the world was divided and
Communism was becoming stronger in Russia. The extent of this country and concept of
communism contributed in making this event a global one, at a time when imperialism
was the way in other countries.
To conclude, Russian revolution was definitely international in nature but French
revolution cannot be treated any less for its international contributions. It helped
America against Britain to achieve democracy and gradually the same ideology has been
adopted by most of the country today.
And
The French Revolution, which was inspired by the Enlightenment Writers – Montesque,
Rosseau, Voltaire and so on, wished to establish the principle of liberty, equality and
fraternity in France which had thence been ruled by autocratic rulers. Although French
Revolution is one of the most significant revolutions that Europe had witnessed and had
far reaching consequences, the immediate impact was only local to France. On the other
hand, Russian Revolution had a truly international character from the very onset. Lenin
had relied in the Communist International which he hoped would bring in similar
revolutions in the other countries of Europe and other parts of the world. Immediately
after the Russian Revolution, the new Union was faced with difficulties on all fronts and
all the otherwise divided powers got united against Socialism and Lenin. In this context,
the only hope of Lenin was to have Socialist revolutions in other counties.
A fair analysis of history reveals the contrary. The French Revolution laid the seeds of
liberty, equality and fraternity that got support worldwide acclaim and are the guiding
force for all the democratic nations of the world even today. Contrary to the expectation
of Lenin, the Communist International was a failure and few, it at all, nations witnessed
socialist revolutions. The hope of Lenin was defied and socialism was never able to get
wide acceptance. Today, none of the socialist countries exist and ideals of French
Revolution are respected world-wide.
REFERRENCES:
Page
For advance reading
67
1) https://www.coursehero.com/subjects/history/
2) https://www.quora.com/“The-impact-of-the-French-Revolution3) https://www.wordpress.com/2014/10/27/russian-revolution-vs-frenchrevolution/
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The auguries for war
In 1913, Tsar Nicholas II celebrated the tercentenary of Romanov rule in Russia. He and
his dynasty ruled over a huge empire, stretching from central Europe to the Pacific
Ocean and from the Arctic to the borders of Afghanistan.
the events that took place on the Eastern Front...would have a profound impact upon
world history for the remainder of the century
This mighty imperium covered one-sixth of the land surface of the globe, and was
populated by almost 150 million people of more than a hundred different nationalities.
However, the Russian Empire was riven by many tensions. Just five years after the
celebrations, Nicholas and his family would be dead, executed by the Bolsheviks, while
his empire would be defeated in the World War and wracked by revolutions, civil wars
and foreign interventions.
By 1921, after a period of great unrest, the Bolsheviks triumphed in Russia, and largely
reunited the old empire (formally constituted as the USSR in 1923). The repercussions of
the events that took place on the Eastern Front, from 1914 to 1921, however, would
have a profound impact upon world history for the remainder of the century and beyond
- although it was the battles of the Western Front that eventually achieved greater fame.
Campaigns and crises: 1914-1916
In 1914, Russia was hardly prepared for war. Just nine years earlier she had been
defeated in a war with tiny Japan. The Revolution of 1905, when revolts and uprisings
had forced the Tsar to concede civil rights and a arliament to the Russian people, had
also shaken the empire.
The subsequent reforms and rebuilding were far from complete, but as workers and
land-hungry peasants rallied to the Russian flag and marched off to fight against the
Central Powers, the initial auguries for both war and national unity were not bad.
This failed Russian advance...signalled the beginning of an unrelenting Russian retreat
National unity, however, could only be built on victory and, in that regard, Russia's
hopes were dashed early in the Great War. At Tannenberg and the First Battle of the
Masurian Lakes, in 1914, Russia lost two entire armies (over 250,000 men).
This failed Russian advance into East Prussia did disrupt Germany's Schlieffen Plan and
thus probably prevented the fall of Paris, but it also signalled the beginning of an
unrelenting Russian retreat on the northern sector of the Eastern Front. By the middle of
1915 all of Russian Poland and Lithuania, and most of Latvia, were overrun by the
German army.
Many factors - including the militarisation of industry and crises in food supply threatened disaster on the home front
Fortunately for the Russians, they did better in 1916. The supply of rifles and artillery
shells to the Eastern Front was vastly improved, and in the Brusilov Offensive of June
1916, Russia achieved significant victories over the Austrians - capturing Galicia and the
Bukovina - and she was also more than holding her own in Transcaucasia, against
Turkey.
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Added to this cocktail were rumours that the tsarina, Alexandra, and her favourite, the
infamous Rasputin, were German spies. The rumours were unfounded, but by November
1916 influential critics of the regime were asking whether Russia's misfortunes -
68
However, the country's political and economic problems were greatly exacerbated by the
war. Many factors - including the militarisation of industry and crises in food supply threatened disaster on the home front.
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including 1,700,000 military dead and 5,000,000 wounded - were a consequence of
'stupidity or treason'.
This was a rabble-rousing exaggeration, but certainly the outdated strategies of Russia's
General Staff had cost hundreds of thousands of lives, while the regime seemed careless
of such appalling losses.
1917: From February to October
Kerensky at his desk during the Russian Revolution Aleksandr Fyodorovich Kerensky,
leader of the Provisional Government, 1917 © Food riots, demonstrations and a mutiny
at the Petrograd Garrison in February 1917 forced Nicholas II to abdicate as war still
continued. A Provisional Government led by liberals and moderate socialists was
proclaimed, and its leaders hoped now to pursue the war more effectively.
Real power in Russia after the February Revolution, however, lay with the socialist
leaders of the Petrograd (later All-Russian) Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies,
who were elected by popular mandate (unlike the ministers of the Provisional
Government).
Anarchist and Bolshevik agitators played their own part in destroying the Russian
Army's ability to fight
The Soviet leaders rather half-heartedly supported a defensive war, but were more
committed to an unrealistic programme of ending the conflict, through a general peace
'without annexations or indemnities' – a formula that neither the Allies nor Germany
would ever accept.
Against this background, the war minister (later Prime Minister) Kerensky of the
Provisional Government hoped to strengthen Russia's hand with a new Russian offensive
on the Eastern Front in June. But by then the ability of Russia's officers to induce their
men to obey had been entirely negated by the hopes of social transformation and an end
to the war that the February Revolution had unleashed in the trenches - leading to what
historian Alan Wildman has termed 'trench bolshevism'.
Anarchist and Bolshevik agitators played their own part in destroying the Russian
Army's ability to fight. Many anti-war radicals, along with the Bolshevik leader, Vladimir
Lenin, were ferried home from exile in Switzerland in April 1917, courtesy of the German
General Staff (which had spent roughly 30 million marks trying to foment disorder in
Russia by the end of 1917).
most of the generals and forces of the political right threw their weight behind a plan for
a military coup.
The summer offensive was a disaster. Peasant soldiers deserted en masse to join the
revolution, and fraternisation with the enemy became common. Meanwhile, in an
attempt to restore order and resist the German counter-offensive, most of the generals
and forces of the political right threw their weight behind a plan for a military coup,
under the Russian Army's commander-in-chief, General Kornilov.
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The only winners were the Bolsheviks, with Lenin at their head, who were able to topple
Kerensky and take power in the October Revolution of 1917- without significant
resistance from either the government or the army.
69
The coup failed, but had two important consequences: on the one hand, the generals and
the conservatives who had backed Kornilov felt betrayed by Kerensky (who arrested
Kornilov after having appeared to have been in agreement with him) and would no longer
defend the government; on the other, Kerensky's reputation with the moderate left and
with the population at large plummeted when it became clear that he had initially
supported Kornilov's plans for the restoration of the death penalty and for the
dissolution of soldiers' revolutionary committees.
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The Impact of the First World War and Its Implications for Europe Today
The First World War was a calamity for Germany and Europe. The Second World War
was an even bigger calamity for Germany and Europe. But without both World Wars
there would be no European Union (EU) today. The EU has provided the essential
infrastructure to deal with ‘the German Question’ – the role of the largest and most
powerful state in Europe. When Europeans commemorate the Great War of 1914-18 this
summer they should be reflecting not only on the diplomatic blunders and the enormous
waste of lives but also the beginning of a new approach to international relations
epitomised by the EU.
The First World War destroyed empires, created numerous new nation-states,
encouraged independence movements in Europe’s colonies, forced the United States to
become a world power and led directly to Soviet communism and the rise of Hitler.
Diplomatic alliances and promises made during the First World War, especially in the
Middle East, also came back to haunt Europeans a century later. The balance of power
approach to international relations was broken but not shattered. It took the Second
World War to bring about sufficient political forces to embark on a revolutionary new
approach to inter-state relations.
After both wars Europe was exhausted and devastated. The difference was that the
second major internecine war in Europe in a generation led to a profound change in
political thinking, at least in Western Europe, about how states should conduct their
relations. Die Stunde Null was the backdrop to the revolutionary ideas of the EU’s
‘founding fathers,’ statesmen such as Robert Schuman, Alcide De Gasperi, Jean Monnet
who developed the novel idea of a community of states establishing a political system
based on sharing sovereignty. This system has brought many benefits to Europeans but
in recent years the system has been under challenge by the rise of Euroscepticism,
populism and nationalism. As Europe reflects on the titanic struggle of 1914-18 it is
important to recall the advances made since 1945 through European integration and
redouble efforts to combat nationalist and extremist forces.
Who caused the War?
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What is perhaps more interesting is how the major powers involved have presented
different narratives about their involvement in the Great War. In Germany the shame of
the Nazi period including the Holocaust has meant that there has been little appetite to
reflect about the 1914-18 conflict. For Russia, it is has always been the heroism and
sacrifice of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45 that remain uppermost in the national
psyche rather than the disasters of the First World War, including defeat and revolution.
President Putin has recently lamented the changes after the First World War that left
70
Part of the debate in today’s Europe about Germany goes back to the origins of both
world wars. Many believe that because of Germany’s role in both World Wars it is too big
to act as an independent nation state and has to be embedded in structures such as the
EU and NATO for its own good. Thousands of books have been written about the 191418 conflict with many seeking to apportion responsibility for the outbreak of war. The
renowned German historian, Fritz Fischer, caused a sensation in the 1960s when he
published a book Griff nach der Weltmacht claiming that Germany was primarily
responsible for starting the war as it had secret ambitions to annex most of Europe. In
more recent times, historians such as Margaret Macmillan The War that Ended Peace:
How Europe Abandoned Peace for the First World War and Christopher Clark The
Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 have adopted more nuanced arguments.
Macmillan agrees that Germany should bear much of the responsibility as it had the
power to put pressure on its Austria-Hungary ally and stop the drift to war. Clark argues
that Germany, like the other major powers, sleep-walked into the war. Another famous
historian, Neil Ferguson, has argued in The Pity of War that Britain should not have
become involved as the stakes were too low and the ultimate costs too high.
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millions of Russian speakers in the Soviet Republic of Ukraine. The war also means
different things to the constituent parts of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. Austria
looks back with regret tinged with nostalgia for its glory days. Hungary still finds it
difficult to accept the injustice of the Treaty of Trianon. Czechoslovakia gained its
independence only to be swallowed up by Germany twenty years later. France views the
war as a tragic but massive endeavour to save the motherland from Les Boches. The
First World War certainly plays better in the French national memory than the defeat in
1940 followed by occupation and collaboration. For Britain, the Second World War was
the ‘good war’ whereas the rights and wrongs of Britain’s participation in the First World
War were less clear - and are still debated today. Each year millions of Britons wear red
poppies to commemorate Armistice Day and hold memorial services around war
memorials on which the names of the dead in the First World War vastly outnumber
those of the Second.
The controversies about the causes, strategies and consequences of the Great War
remain matters of contemporary concern. In March 2014, the British education
secretary, Michael Gove, tried to reclaim this year’s commemorations for those for whom
the war was a just cause fought for liberal values. He complained that for too long the
conflict had been portrayed as a series of catastrophic mistakes by an aristocratic elite.
The impact of the two world wars has been such that in other parts of the world
politicians have been competing to draw analogies. At the World Economic Forum in
Davos in February 2014, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe speculated that the SinoJapanese territorial disputes over tiny rocky islands in the East China Sea might be
analogous to the various crises that led to the outbreak of the First World War. German
Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble and former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
both likened Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annexation of the Crimea to Nazi
Germany’s annexation of the former Czechoslovakia in 1938.
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The French Revolution of 1789 had a momentous impact on neighboring countries. The
French Revolutionary armies during the 1790s and later under Napoleon invaded and
controlled large parts of Europe. Together with invasion came various radical
institutional changes. French invasion removed the legal and economic barriers that had
protected the nobility, clergy, guilds, and urban oligarchies and established the principle
of equality before the law. The evidence suggests that areas that were occupied by the
French and that underwent radical institutional reform experienced more rapid
urbanization and economic growth, especially after 1850. There is no evidence of a
negative effect of French invasion. Our interpretation is that the Revolution destroyed
(the institutional underpinnings of) the power of oligarchies and elites opposed to
economic change; combined with the arrival of new economic and industrial
opportunities in the second half of the 19th century, this helped pave the way for future
71
More recently Putin has spoken of the need to protect ethnic Russian minorities in the
former Soviet republics including Ukraine. But Hitler had a geopolitical vision – the
domination of Europe – and the reunification of German-speaking peoples was merely
the means by which he could acquire the critical mass needed to attain that geopolitical
end-state. Putin appears to want to restore Russia to a central global position in
international politics, something the former Soviet Union enjoyed for much of the postWorld War II era. It does not mean, however, that Putin seeks to restore the former
Soviet empire. Surprisingly Putin’s actions have found more sympathy in Germany than
other European countries with at least two former Chancellors expressing understanding
for Moscow’s actions. German public opinion also seems to show more forgiveness to
Russia’s actions than in other European countries, perhaps reflecting some latent war
guilt. Although politicians often use historical analogies to describe an unfolding
situation it does not mean that analogical reasoning is not fraught with potential
dangers. It is important to note that each situation is unique although some
unscrupulous political leaders often exploit these opportunities for their own ends.
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economic growth. The evidence does not provide any support for several other views,
most notably, that evolved institutions are inherently superior to those 'designed'; that
institutions must be 'appropriate' and cannot be 'transplanted'; and that the civil code
and other French institutions have adverse economic effects.
To know more refer below links
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

15.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/eastern_front_01.shtml
http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/jrobinson/files/jr_consequeces_frenchrev.pdf
https://www.boell.de/en/2014/07/08/impact-first-world-war-and-itsimplications-europe-today
Analyse the reasons behind England being the first country to experience
Industrial Revolution.
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, life in Great Britain rapidly changed as the
Industrial Revolution got under way. Britain led the world in industrializing for a variety
of reasons, including the availability of natural resources such as coal. In addition, social
changes, such as an increase in food production and a growing colonial empire, also
positioned Britain well for industrialization.
A number of factors contributed to Britain's role as the birthplace of the European
Industrial Revolution:
 Large deposits of iron and coal near the surface provided the raw materials which
would enhance industrial development.
 The British Empire and its mercantilist economic system provided valuable
sources of raw materials such as cotton, and markets for manufactured goods
from Britain.
 A plethora of navigable waters and streams in Britain, so many that one was
never more than 20 miles from navigable water, made transportation of raw
materials and manufactured goods efficient and inexpensive.
 The Agricultural Revolution in Britain had led to enhanced production of
foodstuffs which substantially reduced the price of food. The reduction of food
prices consequently provided an increase in disposable income which could be
used for manufactured items.
 Britain had no internal tariffs as existed in other parts of Europe. This enhanced
the efficient movement of raw materials and manufactured products.
 Britain had a stable government and established banking system. This stability
lent itself to industrial development as market enterprise and entrepreneurship
were encouraged.
 Britain was further blessed with a large and mobile work force. In other parts of
Europe, peasants were still bound to the land. In Britain, after farm lands were
enclosed there were more workers available than were needed for agricultural
production, and industry was an attractive source of working income.
Natural Resources
In the 18th century, new technologies allowed Britain to produce more agriculture
than ever before. Other advances, like more efficient rotating of crops, helped spur
production. A greater percentage of land was also used for production. Cereal yields
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Agricultural Abundance
72
Before the Industrial Revolution, Britain's primary source of energy was wood. But as
population grew, timber resources were exhausted and became prohibitively
expensive. Britain turned to a resource it had in greater abundance -- coal. Other
geographic advantages further strengthened coal's role in industrialization. For
example, many of Britain's coal reserves were located near the sea, which meant that
they could be easily and cheaply transported elsewhere by boat.
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were also increased by the discovery of nitrogen, which was a critical fertilizer. Many
people moved to cities, fueled urbanization and contributed needed labor for the
Industrial Revolution.
Political Environment
Britain's political environment, characterized by unprecedented stability, also helped
industrialization. After the Glorious Revolution, Parliament exercised more freedom from
the monarch, and the country was free from unrest. Unlike other absolute monarchies,
such as France, Britain's Parliament placed few restraints on the country's economy.
This allowed for factories and other entrepreneurs to invest and grow, as they could not
elsewhere. In Britain, industrialists were free from the worries of a revolution and were
also lightly regulated.
Imperial Power
The Industrial Revolution also began in Britain partly because of the resources of the
country's large colonial empire. By the early 19th century, Britain's Royal Navy was the
strongest in the world, and it dominated oceanic trade. This was a huge advantage for
British factory owners, because it meant that their exports abroad could be safely
transported. Colonies abroad also provided British industrialists with opportunities to
trade Indian teas, Chinese silks and West Indian sugar. These goods could be exchanged
for industrial products produced in Britain.
REFERRENCES:
1) http://www.historytoday.com/stephen-clarke/industrial-revolution-why-britaingot-there-first
2) http://classroom.synonym.com/britain-first-industrialize-21863.html
3) http://www.academia.edu/1940258/Why_was_Britain_first_The_industrial_revol
ution_in_global_context
For advance reading
The Industrial Revolution: Why Britain Got There First
Many observers of modern social science are convinced of the maxim: 'There are three
kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics'. Yet good historical scholarship has always
used statistics as the antidote to the ‘damned lies’. This is especially useful with the
Industrial Revolution, where wild theories dominate. Below I examine three famous
theories of the Revolution and show why they do not tell us the whole story.
Underpinning my analysis is the recent work of Professor Nicholas Crafts, Professor of
Economics and Economic History at the University of Warwick. In November the
Legatum Institute welcomed Professor Crafts to explore the question: ‘why Britain got
there first?’
Third, Crafts shows that industrialisation was concentrated in a limited number of
sectors, such as textiles, and largely bypassed the service industries.
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Second, the ‘great divergence’ had already occurred by the time Britain was
industrialising. Real GDP per person was far higher in Britain, the Netherlands and Italy
than in China by 1600: the West was far ahead of the rest by the time of the Industrial
Revolution.
73
What do we understand by ‘Britain was first to industrialise’? Professor Crafts is one of
the leading scholars unpacking the Industrial Revolution and his work reveals a number
of salient points. First, there was no great ‘take-off’ in industrialisation or productivity: in
Britain industrial employment increased by just 12% between 1759 and 1851, similarly
total factor productivity increased by just 0.4% a year until the 1830s. By 20th century
standards such growth was underwhelming.
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Despite these reservations, something remarkable did occur. By the middle of the 19th
century Britain accounted for 23% of global industrial production, British workers were
the richest in Europe, and comparatively few of them worked on the land. What is clear
is that this unique position was not the result of a century of rapid change; Britain’s was
a slower, more incremental revolution than previously thought.
How to explain this revolution? Three different historians offer an economic, a social and
a genetic explanation, yet, to differing degrees, all three are found wanting.
Most successful is Robert Allen who puts forth a compelling argument in The British
Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective. Britain’s success was the result of relative
prices and market potential. Allen argues that in Britain wages were high, while capital
and energy were cheap. Britain also provided a large market for manufactured products.
The result was that it made sense to invest in the spinning jenny in England, while it did
not in France.
However, this picture is too simplistic. While British workers were paid more than their
French counterparts, even at lower French wages, adopting the jenny would still have
been profitable (albeit less so). Similarly, American workers were paid more than their
British counterparts, but industrialisation did not take off there.
Joel Mokyr in The Enlightened Economy: an Economic History of Britain 1700-1850
posits that the Enlightenment meant that Britain was best positioned to take advantage
of the ideas and equipment of the age. While many European states benefited from the
Enlightenment, Britain was alone in possessing an adequate supply of skilled craftsmen
who were afforded the freedom to be entrepreneurial. Mokyr’s theory incorporates many
of the elements that economists have identified as important for economic growth such
as human and physical capital, research and development and effective institutions.
Nevertheless his work is somewhat light on evidence. For every piece of effective
government legislation of the period, such as the repealing of the Corn Laws, there is a
counterpoint of deleterious action, such as the failure to effectively regulate the railways.
Similarly, for every Baconian experimenter such as Josiah Wedgwood who would have
encountered Enlightenment ideas, there many, such as Richard Arkwright, who were
less likely to have been raised on Enlightenment teaching.
Least successful is Gregory Clark who moves further from the realm of inductive
reasoning than Mokyr. Clark in A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the
World argues that Britain’s Industrial Revolution was a rapid transformation bought
about by demographic and genetic changes. The salient point in Clark’s account is that
the higher birth rates of the upper classes meant that their offspring formed an
increasingly large part of the British population. As they did so they spread their genes
and work ethic through a larger swathe of the populace, powering the Industrial
Revolution.
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In all disciplines there is a struggle between facts and theories. For years this was the
state of affairs in economics, as mathematical models replaced engagement with facts
and data. Historians would be wise to not to repeat this mistake. Crafts and others like
him are doing the discipline a great service by providing the evidence with which to
examine competing claims. Doing so may result in the dismissal of more theories than in
their generation but as Thomas Edison said:
74
Clark’s claim is controversial but thankfully statistics can be used to evaluate it. Clark is
correct that some of the upper classes had higher birth rates than other segments of the
population; however, this was also the case in many other European countries and in
China. So why was Britain’s experience unique? Unfortunately Clark fails to give an
answer to this question and his overall thesis, that Britain experienced particularly rapid
change around 1800, fails to account for the data assembled by Crafts and outlined
above. In this case statistics are clearly the antidote to an unsubstantiated theory.
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Industrial revolution in Britain
Between about 1750 and 1850, the United Kingdom experienced the first industrial
revolution. The purpose of this site is to study major historical interpretations of this
complex process, which continues to transform our world. The site's goal is to provide
resources that will allow readers to explore major historical and cultural interpretations
of the industrial revolution in Britain. It was conceived as a tool for a Summer Seminar
at the University of Nottingham on Interpretations of the Industrial Revolution in Britain.
sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the University of
Massachusetts Dartmouth. It is designed especially for those who teach and study the
subject in the schools and can serve as a forum through which both teachers and
students can contribute to a discussion of the subject.
Industrialization is one of the central experiences of human life during the last two
centuries. While historians have noted that other societies developed considerable largescale industry a half millennium before the West, it was the industrial revolution in
Britain that accelerated a cumulative multiplication of productive power that has
transformed European society and challenged the very existence of traditional societies
around the world.
The power of industry that propelled British goods and guns around the globe also
brought its views of the first industrial revolution in its wake. Indeed, interpretations of
Britain's industrial revolution not only helped shape values and public policies in
Britain, but also fostered attitudes toward capitalism and modern industry elsewhere.
In contemporary culture, the often pejorative connotations that the term industrial
revolution retains, is a result of artistic, literary and historical interpretation. Many of
the artists, poets, essayists, and novelists of early nineteenth century Britain, lamented
the momentous changes which the coming of modern industry brought to the landscape,
social relations, and the very souls of England's people caught up in its impersonal
power. Others were much impressed by humanity's new ability to order nature and to
harness its energy for material welfare. Liberals insisted that the well being of the
common people was not a matter of "rose covered cottages" but of "steam power and
independence." Socialists of the time, as well as subsequent critics of capitalism, have
echoed literary critiques of market society and added a thesis of class exploitation. By
contrast, modern conservatives have echoed earlier liberal views and protest that
society's predilections toward the welfare state and its distrust of capitalism are rooted in
a false and unduly pessimistic interpretation of the industrial revolution. Modern
scholarship has argued that gender roles have both powerfully influenced the division of
labor within industrial society and helped transform family and gender roles. Both
advocates and critics of globalization point to Britain's championship of free trade during
its industrial hegemony as the beginning of a pervasive international economy. Many
modern economic historians have challenged the very idea of a British industrial
revolution. Instead, they emphasize the relative slow rate of growth of the British
economy during the period, as well as the partial and restricted nature of the its
industrial transformation. Despite our embrace of the gospel of economic growth, within
contemporary culture the British industrial revolution continues to conjure up a picture
of cataclysmic change, dark satanic mills, urban squalor, poverty, greed, and an
uncaring government dominated by a class and ideology that put the interests of some
individuals before the well-being of the community. How do we explain these very
different views?
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By the end of the 19th century, the island of Great Britain, which is about the size of the
state of Louisiana, controlled the largest empire in the history of the world—an empire
that covered one quarter of the world’s land mass. You will learn more about this empire
in the next chapter. But how did this little island come to rule an empire? How did Great
75
Why did the Industrial Revolution Start in England?
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Britain acquire so much military and economic power in the world? The answer, of
course, is that it had an enormous commercial and technological head start over the rest
of the world because the Industrial Revolution started in England. But why did the
Industrial Revolution occur first in England and not somewhere else in the world?
Historians describe a confluence—a coming together—of many factors and they do not
agree on which are most important. Some of these factors we discussed earlier because
they had their seeds in pre-industrial society. All of these factors came together in the
late 18th century to create the unique conditions in England that culminated in the firstever Industrial Revolution:
The Agricultural Revolution discussed earlier resulted in increased food production and
increased population in England first.
Population Growth, also discussed earlier, resulted in more people from the countryside
being freed up to work for wages in the new cities,— and eventually increased demand
for products such as clothing.
Financial Innovations—such as central banks, stock markets, and joint stock
companies—encouraged people, especially in Northern Europe, to take risks with
investments, trade, and new technologies.
The Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution encouraged scholars and craftspeople
to apply new scientific thinking to mechanical and technological challenges. In the
centuries before the Industrial Revolution, Europeans gradually incorporated science
and reason into their worldview. Some historians argue that these intellectual shifts
made English culture, in particular, highly receptive to new mechanical and financial
ideas.
Navigable Rivers and Canals in Great Britain quickened the pace and cheapened the cost
of transportation of raw materials and finished products. Adam Smith, the first modern
economist, believed this was a key reason for England’s early success. In 1776, in his
famous book An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, he wrote
that “Good roads, canals, and navigable rivers, by diminishing the expense of carriage,
put the remote parts of the country more nearly upon a level with those in the
neighbourhood of the town. They are upon that account the greatest of all
improvements” (Weightman 43).
Coal and Iron deposits were plentiful in Great Britain and proved essential to the
development of all new machines made of iron or steel and powered by coal—such as the
steam-powered machinery in textile factories, and the locomotive.
Government Policies in England toward property and commerce encouraged innovation
and the spread of global trade. The government created patent laws that allowed
inventors to benefit financially from the “intellectual property” of their inventions. The
British government also encouraged global trade by expanding the Navy to protect trade
and granting monopolies or other financial incentives to companies so they would
explore the world to find resources.
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The Cottage Industry, discussed earlier, served as a transition from a rural to an
industrial economy. Like the later industrial factories, the cottage industry relied on
wage labor, cloth production, tools and rudimentary machines, and a market to buy and
sell raw materials (cotton) and finished products (clothes).
76
World Trade gradually increased in the centuries before the Industrial Revolution and
provided European countries access to raw materials and a market for goods. It also
increased wealth that could then be loaned by banks to finance more industrial
expansion in an upward spiral of economic growth. By 1500, Europe had a technological
supremacy over the rest of the world in shipbuilding, navigation, and metallurgy (metal
working). In successive years, European countries would use these advantages to
dominate world trade with Asia, Africa, and the Americas.
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The Large and Lucky Continent of Eurasia. Evolutionary Biologist Jared Diamond takes
the long view to explain why the entire continent of Eurasia evolved to be so
technologically advanced. In his book Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fate of Human
Societies, Diamond argues that the good fortune of the entire continent of Eurasia was
evident for thousands of years. Eurasia invented agriculture 12,000 years ago because
large grains of rice and wheat just happened to originate and grow there. The efficiency
of agriculture allowed various civilizations to grow population, free up labor for tasks
besides food production, urbanize, invent writing, and create advanced technology.
Diamond argues that the largest of continents was also blessed with the largest
domesticated animals in the world—such as horses, donkeys, pigs, and cows. These
animals served as beasts of burden in agriculture and also as a much-needed food
source. And so the health of Eurasian populations improved.
These animals also brought epidemic diseases that killed millions of Eurasians over
thousands of years. But, after the plague ran its course through the population,
surviving Eurasians then had antibodies to these illnesses, which made them and their
ancestors resistant to them. So these plagues became a horrifying stroke of good luck for
invading Eurasians later on. People from the Americas had no medium to large
domesticated animals (with the exception of the Alpaca which didn’t leave the Andes
mountain area).
As a result, they did not experience devastating animal-based plagues and diseases.
That’s a good thing, right? Except that, unlike Europeans, the Americans did not then
have the anti-bodies to resist the European illnesses. So, when Europeans invaded the
Americas after 1492, people from the Americas were highly susceptible to Eurasian
deadly viruses and diseases. But no plagues went the other direction from the Americas
to Europe. The depopulation of the Americas made it easy for Europeans to conquer. In
short, Diamond, contrary to many historians, sees the Industrial Revolution as an
inevitable result of geography and evolutionary biology that played out not only in a
burst of activity, but over many thousands of years.
The Big Industrial Innovations: How the Industrial Revolution Began in Great
Britain
We have learned many reasons why industrialization started in Europe and England.
But which industry triggered the Industrial Revolution in England? Well, it all started
with the textile (cloth) industry. Making cloth, by hand, for pants, shirts, socks,
bedspreads and other domestic items had always required lots of skill and time. As
population grew in England, more people needed and were willing to buy textile goods.
The cottage industry showed how much people could produce in their homes through
spinning and weaving cloth by hand. But this domestic production system could not
keep up with the growing demands of England’s growing population. Instead, starting in
the late 18th century, a series of innovations shifted textile production to a new factory
system. And cotton led the way. As a result of the Industrial Revolution, cotton became
the world’s most important non-food agricultural product-- and it remains so to this day.
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One challenge of using cotton, however, was that the British did not grow any cotton
plants because of their cold climate. So, they revved up trade with cotton producers far
across the world, such as India and the Southern United States. Look at the table below
of American cotton production during the first stage of the Industrial Revolution. Almost
all of this raw cotton, processed by slave labor, was sold to England. This cotton
77
In the 1700s, cotton textiles had many production advantages over other types of cloth.
The first textile factory in Great Britain was actually for making silk. But, since only
wealthy people could afford the product, production remained very low. Cotton, on the
other hand, was far less expensive. It was also stronger and more easily colored and
washed than wool or linen.
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production soared as new inventions made textile production increasingly inexpensive
and efficient.
To know more refer below links




http://webs.bcp.org/sites/vcleary/ModernWorldHistoryTextbook/IndustrialRevol
ution/IRbegins.html
http://www.historytoday.com/stephen-clarke/industrial-revolution-why-britaingot-there-first
https://www.academia.edu/1940258/Why_was_Britain_first_The_industrial_revo
lution_in_global_context
http://www1.umassd.edu/ir/
16. The most striking features of the Indus Valley Civilization is its uniformity. It
may however not be ignored that the cities were not totally alike and had
some stunning differences among themselves. Critically examine the
argument in view of the various sites of the Indus Valley Civilization.
The Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) was a Bronze Age civilization (3300-1300 BCE;
mature period 2600-1900 BCE) extending from what today is northeast Afghanistan to
Pakistan and northwest India. Along with Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia it was one
of three early civilizations of the Old World, and of the three the most widespread It
flourished in the basins of the Indus River, one of the major rivers of Asia, and the
Ghaggar-Hakra River, which once coursed through northwest India and eastern
Pakistan. The discovery of Harappa, and soon afterwards, Mohenjo-Daro (on the bank of
Indus River), was the culmination of work beginning in 1861 with the founding of the
Archaeological Survey of India in the British Raj.
Inhabitants of the ancient Indus river valley developed new techniques in handicraft
(carnelian products, seal carving) and metallurgy (copper, bronze, lead, and tin). The
Indus cities are noted for their urban planning, baked brick houses, elaborate
drainage systems, water supply systems, and clusters of large non-residential
buildings.
GEOGRAPHY OF IVC
The Indus Valley Civilization encompassed most of Pakistan and parts of northwestern
India, Afghanistan and Iran, extending from Balochistan in the west to Uttar Pradesh
in the east, northeastern Afghanistan to the north and Maharashtra to the south.
The geography of the Indus Valley put the civilizations that arose there in a highly
similar situation to those in Egypt and Peru, with rich agricultural lands being
surrounded by highlands, desert, and ocean. It flourished in the basins of the Indus
River and the now dried up Sarasvati River, which once coursed through northwest India
and eastern Pakistan together with its tributaries flowed along a channel, presently
identified as that of the Ghaggar-Hakra River. The course of the Indus river in the third
millennium BC was more southeasterly and it flowed into the Arabian sea in the vicinity
of the Rann of Kutch. Coastal settlements extended from Sutkagan Dor in Western
Baluchistan to Lothal in Gujarat.
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1) Harappa. ( Montgomery district of Punjab, now in Pakistan)
 City followed grid planning.
 Row of six granaries.
 Only place having evidences of coffin burial.
 Evidences of fractional burial.
 Cementery-H of alien people.
78
VARIOUS SITES:
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6) Banwali (Situated in Hissar district of Haryana )
 Shows both Pre-Harappan and Harppan phase.
 Good quantity of barley found here.
7) Surkotada ( Situated in Kutch (Bhuj) district of Gujarat )
 Bones of horses, Bead making shops.
8) Sutkagendor (Situated in Baluchistan on Dast River )
 Trade point between Harappa and Babylon, belong to mature phase.
 Evidence of horse.
9) Dholavira ( situated in Gujarat in ran of kutch)
 Seven cultural stages.
 Three party of city.
 Unique water management.
10) Rangpur ( situated on the bank of mahar in Gujarat)
 Rice was cultivated.
11) Kot diji (situated on the bank of Indus)
 Wheel made painted pottery
 Traces of defensive wall and well aligned streets
 Knowledge of metallurgy, artistic toys etc
12) Ropar ( situated in Punjab on bank of satluj )
 Evidence of burying a dog below the human burial.
 One example of rectangular mudbrick chamber was noticed
 Five fold cultures – Harappan, PGW, NBP, Kushana – Gupta and Medieval
13) Balakot (situated on Arabian sea)
 Remain of pre Harappan and Harappan civilisation
79
2) Mohenjo-daro ( Larkana district in sindh, now in Pakistan)
 City followed grid planning.
 A large granary and a great bath, a college.
 Human skeletons showing invasions and massarcs.
 Evidence of horse come from superficial level.
 A piece of woven cotton along with spindle whorls and needles.
 Town was flooded more than seven times.
3) Chanhu-daro ( situated in sindh on the bank of Indus )
 The city has no citadel.
 Famous for bead makers shop.
 A small pot, possibly an inkpot.
 Foot print of dog chasing a cat.
 Three different cultural layers, Indus, Jhukar and Jhangar.
4) Kalibangan ( situated in rajasthan on bank of river ghaggar )
 Show both pre-harappan ad harappan phase.
 Evidence of furrowed land.
 Evidence of seven fire altars and camel bones.
 Many houses had their own well.
 Kalibangan stands for black bangles.
 Evidence of wooden furrow.
5) Lothal ( situated in Gujarat on bhogava river near gulf of cambay )
 A titled floor which bears intersecting designs of circles.
 Remains of rice husk.
 Evidence of horse from a terracotta figurine.
 A ship designed on a seal.
 Beads & trade ports.
 An instrument for measuring angles,pointing to modern day compass.
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
The mounds rise to the height of about 9.7mts and are spread 2.8 sq
hectare of area
14) Alamgirpur ( situated in Ghaziabad )
 The impression of cloth on a trough is discovered
 Usually considered to be the eastern boundary of the Indus culture
REFERRENCES:
1) https://selfstudyhistory.com/2015/02/24/indus-valley-civilisation/
2) http://www.crystalinks.com/induscivilization.html
3) http://www.preservearticles.com/2011101915699/short-essay-on-the-townplanning-of-harappan-civilization.html
For advance reading
Harappan Cities
The most striking feature of the Harappan cities is their town planning. The
Harappan City was divided into the upper town (also called the Citadel) and the lower
town. The various features of the Harappan town Planning is given below:
Granaries: The granary was the largest structure in Mohenjodaro, and in Harappa there
were about six granaries or storehouses. These were used for storing grain.
Great Bath: This was another important structure in Mohenjodaro. The floor of the bath
had five layers. It was so watertight that even today it holds water. There were changing
rooms. People probably used it during festivals and religious ceremoies.
Town Hall: A palace-like building that looked like an assembly hall for the city
government or for people to meet.
Lower Town: This was the residential area where the common people lived.
Streets: The roads and streets intersected at right angles, with covered drains along the
road. Houses were built on either side of the roads and streets.
Drainage System: The drainage system of the Harappan cities was the best known to
the world in ancient times. The brickwork prevented the dirty water from leaking.
Wooden screens stopped the solid wastes from being washed away with the water.
Drains were built on either side of the roads. They were covered with stones which could
be removed in order to clean them.
Houses: The houses varied in size. Some might have had two storeys. The houses were
made of burnt bricks. Most of the houses had a central courtyard, a well, a bathing area
and a kitchen.
The Indus Valley Civilization was an ancient civilization located in what is Pakistan and
northwest India today, on the fertile flood plain of the Indus River and its vicinity.
Evidence of religious practices in this area date back approximately to 5500 BCE.
Farming settlements began around 4000 BCE and around 3000 BCE there appeared the
first signs of urbanization. By 2600 BCE, dozens of towns and cities had been
established, and between 2500 and 2000 BCE the Indus Valley Civilization was at its
peak.
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Two cities, in particular, have been excavated at the sites of Mohenjo-Daro on the lower
Indus, and at Harappa, further upstream. The evidence suggests they had a highly
developed city life; many houses had wells and bathrooms as well as an elaborate
underground drainage system. The social conditions of the citizens were comparable to
80
THE LIFE OF THE INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION
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those in Sumeria and superior to the contemporary Babylonians and Egyptians. These
cities display a well-planned urbanization system.
THE EVIDENCE SUGGESTS THEY HAD A HIGHLY DEVELOPED CITY LIFE; MANY
HOUSES HAD WELLS AND BATHROOMS AS WELL AS AN ELABORATE
UNDERGROUND DRAINAGE SYSTEM.
There is evidence of some level of contact between the Indus Valley Civilization and the
Near East. Commercial, religious, and artistic connections have been recorded in
Sumerian documents, where the Indus valley people are referred to as Meluhhaites and
the Indus valley is called Meluhha. The following account has been dated to about 2000
BCE: "The Meluhhaites, the men of the black land, bring to Naram-Sin of Agade all kind
of exotic wares." (Haywood, p. 76, The Curse of Agade)
The Indus Civilization had a writing system which today still remains a mystery: all
attempts to decipher it have failed. This is one of the reasons why the Indus Valley
Civilization is one of the least known of the important early civilizations of antiquity.
Examples of this writing system have been found in pottery, amulets, carved stamp
seals, and even in weights and copper tablets.
Another point of debate is the nature of the relationship between these cities. Whether
they were independent city-states or part of a larger kingdom is not entirely clear.
Because the writing of the Indus people remains undeciphered and neither sculptures of
rulers nor depictions of battles and military campaigns have been found, evidence
pointing in either direction is not conclusive.
DECLINE OF THE INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION
By 1800 BCE, the Indus Valley Civilization saw the beginning of their decline: Writing
started to disappear, standardized weights and measures used for trade and taxation
purposes fell out of use, the connection with the Near East was interrupted, and some
cities were gradually abandoned. The reasons for this decline are not entirely clear, but it
is believed that the drying up of the Saraswati River, a process which had begun around
1900 BCE, was the main cause. Other experts speak of a great flood in the area. Either
event would have had catastrophic effects on agricultural activity, making the economy
no longer sustainable and breaking the civic order of the cities.
Around 1500 BCE, a large group of nomadic cattle-herders, the Aryans, migrated into
the region from central Asia. The Aryans crossed the Hindu Kush mountains and came
in contact with the Indus Valley Civilization. This was a large migration and used to be
seen as an invasion, which was thought to be the reason for the collapse of the Indus
Valley Civilization, but this hypothesis is not unanimously accepted today.
Thus, the Indus Valley Civilization came to an end. Over the course of several centuries,
the Aryans gradually settled down and took up agriculture. The language brought by the
Aryans gained supremacy over the local languages: the origin of the most widely spoken
languages today in south Asia goes back to the Aryans, who introduced the IndoEuropean languages into the Indian subcontinent. Other features of modern Indian
society, such as religious practices and caste division, can also be traced back to the
times of the Aryan migrations. Many pre-Aryan customs still survive in India today.
Evidence supporting this claim includes: the continuity of pre-Aryan traditions; practices
by many sectors of Indian society; and also the possibility that some major gods of the
Hindu pantheon actually originated during the time of the Indus Valley Civilization and
were kept "alive" by the original inhabitants through the centuries.
http://www.ancient.eu/Indus_Valley_Civilization/
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http://www.ancient.eu/article/430/
81
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17.
The mass upsurge of the 1930s was closely related to the economic
conditions of those times. Discuss the impact of the Great Depression on the
National movement and its course.
The Great Depression of 1930s had a very severe impact on India, which was then under
the rule of the British Raj. The Government of British India adopted a protective
trade policy which, though beneficial to the United Kingdom, caused great damage to
the Indian economy. During the period 1929–1937, exports and imports fell
drastically crippling seaborne international trade. The railways and the agricultural
sector were the most affected. The international financial crisis combined with
detrimental policies adopted by the Government of India resulted in the soaring prices
of commodities. High prices along with the stringent taxes prevalent in British India
had a dreadful impact on the common man.
The discontent of farmers manifested itself in rebellions and riots. The Salt Satyagraha of
1930 was one of the measures undertaken as a response to heavy taxation during the
Great Depression. The Great Depression and the economic policies of the Government of
British India worsened the already deteriorating Indo-British relations. When the first
general elections were held according to the Government of India Act 1935, anti-British
feelings resulted in the Indian National Congress winning in most provinces with a very
high percentage of the vote share.
Some other prominent consequences :
Page
3) Impact on railways.
Due to a decline in exports and imports, and thereby, in the transportation of goods, the
railway revenues decreased exponentially. All the expenses for the years 1930–31 and
1931–32 were paid from the Railway Reserve Fund.
4) Dealing with home charges.
In British India, apart from existing imports and exports, there was also a particular
amount of money which colonial India contributed towards administration,
maintenance of the army, war expenses, pensions to retired officers and other
expenses accrued by Britain towards maintenance of her colony. These were known
as "Home charges" and were paid for almost entirely by India.
The Home charges was made of three components
 Interest payable on Indian debt.
 Interest on the railways.
 Civil and military charges
82
1) Economic policy .
During the Depression, the British Raj intensified the existing imperialistic economic
policies.While these policies protected Britain's economy, they destroyed India's.
Rice, wheat, etc., could be used for private consumption but the cash crops which they
now cultivated could not be used for private consumption.
Moreover, imports were severely affected by the Swadeshi movement and the boycott of
foreign goods imposed by Indian nationalists.There was a deficiency of money in
many places causing widespread poverty.
2) International trade.
International trade decreased a great deal. The imports fell by over 47% while the exports
fell by over 49% between 1929 and 1932.
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5) Effect on Indian farmers.
The Great Depression had a terrible impact on the Indian farmer. While there was a
steady, uninhibited increase in land rent, the value of the agricultural produce had
come down to alarming levels. Therefore, having incurred heavy losses.
6) Founding of Reserve Bank of India.
The policies of the Government of India during the Great Depression resulted in
widespread protests all over the country. As the national struggle intensified, the
Government of India conceded some of the economic demands of the nationalists,
including the establishment of a central bank. Accordingly, the Reserve Bank of India
Act was passed in 1934 and a central bank came into being on April 1, 1935 with Sir
Osborne Smith as its first Governor.
REFERRENCES:
1) http://appscgroup.blogspot.in/2014/01/great-depression-of-1929-causesimpact.html
2) https://www.quora.com
For advance reading
Great Depression
Great Depression, worldwide economic downturn that began in 1929 and lasted until
about 1939. It was the longest and most severe depression ever experienced by the
industrialized Western world, sparking fundamental changes in economic institutions,
macroeconomic policy, and economic theory. Although it originated in the United States,
the Great Depression caused drastic declines in output, severe unemployment, and
acute deflation in almost every country of the world. Its social and cultural effects were
no less staggering, especially in the United States, where the Great Depression
represented the harshest adversity faced by Americans since the Civil War.
Economic history
The timing and severity of the Great Depression varied substantially across countries.
The Depression was particularly long and severe in the United States and Europe; it was
milder in Japan and much of Latin America. Perhaps not surprisingly, the worst
depression ever experienced by the world economy stemmed from a multitude of causes.
Declines in consumer demand, financial panics, and misguided government policies
caused economic output to fall in the United States, while the gold standard, which
linked nearly all the countries of the world in a network of fixed currency exchange rates,
played a key role in transmitting the American downturn to other countries. The recovery
from the Great Depression was spurred largely by the abandonment of the gold standard
and the ensuing monetary expansion. The economic impact of the Great Depression was
enormous, including both extreme human suffering and profound changes in economic
policy.
Economic impact
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The Great Depression and the policy response also changed the world economy in crucial
ways. Most obviously, it hastened, if not caused, the end of the international gold
standard. Although a system of fixed currency exchange rates was reinstated after World
War II under the Bretton Woods system, the economies of the world never embraced that
83
The most devastating impact of the Great Depression was human suffering. In a short
period of time, world output and standards of living dropped precipitously. As much as
one-fourth of the labour force in industrialized countries was unable to find work in the
early 1930s. While conditions began to improve by the mid-1930s, total recovery was not
accomplished until the end of the decade.
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system with the conviction and fervour they had brought to the gold standard. By 1973,
fixed exchange rates had been abandoned in favour of floating rates. (See also money.)
Both labour unions and the welfare state expanded substantially during the 1930s. In
the United States, union membership more than doubled between 1930 and 1940. This
trend was stimulated by both the severe unemployment of the 1930s and the passage of
the National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act (1935), which encouraged collective
bargaining. The United States also established unemployment compensation and old-age
and survivors’ insurance through the Social Security Act (1935), which was passed in
response to the hardships of the 1930s. It is uncertain whether these changes would
have eventually occurred in the United States without the Great Depression. Many
European countries had experienced significant increases in union membership and had
established government pensions before the 1930s. Both of these trends, however,
accelerated in Europe during the Great Depression.
In many countries, government regulation of the economy, especially of financial
markets, increased substantially in the 1930s. The United States, for example,
established the Securities and Exchange Commission (1934) to regulate new stock
issues and stock market trading practices. The Banking Act of 1933 (also known as the
Glass-Steagall Act) established deposit insurance in the United States and prohibited
banks from underwriting or dealing in securities. Deposit insurance, which did not
become common worldwide until after World War II, effectively eliminated banking
panics as an exacerbating factor in recessions in the United States after 1933.
The Great Depression also played a crucial role in the development of macroeconomic
policies intended to temper economic downturns and upturns. The central role of
reduced spending and monetary contraction in the Depression led British economist
John Maynard Keynes to develop the ideas in his General Theory of Employment,
Interest, and Money (1936). Keynes’s theory suggested that increases in government
spending, tax cuts, and monetary expansion could be used to counteract depressions.
This insight, combined with a growing consensus that government should try to stabilize
employment, has led to much more activist policy since the 1930s. Legislatures and
central banks throughout the world now routinely attempt to prevent or moderate
recessions. Whether such a change would have occurred without the Depression is again
a largely unanswerable question. What is clear is that this change has made it unlikely
that a decline in spending will ever be allowed to multiply and spread throughout the
world as it did during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Causes of Great Depression
The Great Depression was a period of unprecedented decline in economic activity. It is
generally agreed to have occurred between 1929 and 1939. Although parts of the
economy had begun to recover by 1936, high unemployment persisted until the Second
World War.
The 1920s witnessed an economic boom in the US (typified by Ford Motor cars,
which made a car within the grasp of ordinary workers for the first time). Industrial
output expanded very rapidly.

Sales were often promoted through buying on credit. However, by early 1929, the
steam had gone out of the economy and output was beginning to fall.

The stock market had boomed to record levels. Price to earning ratios were above
historical averages.

The US Agricultural sector had been in recession for many more years

The UK economy had been experiencing deflation and high unemployment for
much of the 1920s. This was mainly due to the cost of the first world war and
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
84
Background To Great Depression:
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attempting to rejoin the Gold standard at a pre world war 1 rate. This meant
Sterling was overvalued causing lower exports and slower growth. The US tried to
help the UK stay in the gold standard. That meant inflating the US economy, which
contributed to the credit boom of the 1920s.
Causes of Great Depression
Stock Market Crash of October 1929
During September and October a few firms posted disappointing results causing share
prices to fall. On October 28th (Black Monday), the decline in prices turned into a crash
has share prices fell 13%. Panic spread throughout the stock exchange as people sought
to unload their shares. On Tuesday there was another collapse in prices known as 'Black
Tuesday'. Although shares recovered a little in 1930, confidence had evaporated and
problems spread to the rest of the financial system. Share prices would fall even more in
1932 as the depression deepened. By 1932, The stock market fell 89% from its
September 1929 peak. It was at a level not seen since the nineteenth century.

Falling share prices caused a collapse in confidence and consumer wealth.
Spending fell and the decline in confidence precipitated a desire for savers to withdraw
money from their banks.
Bank Failures
In the first 10 months of 1930 alone, 744 US banks went bankrupt and savers lost their
savings. In a desperate bid to raise money, they also tried to call in their loans before
people had time to repay them. As banks went bankrupt, it only increased the demand
for other savers to withdraw money from banks. Long queues of people wanting to
withdraw their savings was a common sight. The authorities appeared unable to stop
bank runs and the collapse in confidence in the banking system. Many agree, that it was
this failure of the banking system which was the most powerful cause of economic
depression.
Britain and Indian currency crisis of 1930-2
THE early 1930s were crucial years in the development of the imperial relationship
between Britain and India. Previous accounts of the period have seen this in
predominantly political terms and have concentrated on the narrow process of
constitutional reform that culminated in the 1935 Government of India Act.^ The origins
of this Act are certainly an important subject, but one that cannot be properly
understood without a wider knowledge of the priorities and concerns of British policymakers for India and the empire over a wide range of issues. Part of the larger context
needed for such a study can be seen through an analysis of the causes, course, and
consequences of the Indian currency crisis of I930-2.
Many aspects of the relationship between Britain and India were altered by the great
depression of the early 1930s and its political consequences. For example,
as has only recently been pointed out, this period was one in which the attitude of
British policy-makers towards the problem of maintaining sales of Lancashire
It is also important as illustrative of one important aspect of the imperial relationship.
The year 1931 was the occasion for one of the last acts of naked aggression, so beloved
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The decision of the British government in September 1931 to take sterling off the gold
standard and to impose a sterling standard on the rupee was momentous in itself.
85
cotton goods in India underwent a fundamental change, with the carrot of bilateral
consultation being substituted for the stick of imperial command.* It was also the period
in which important questions about the financial relationship between Britain and India
and the monetary link between sterling and the rupee were at last dragged into the open
although, in the event, they were then dodged rather than faced squarely.
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for propaganda purposes by Indian nationalists, by the British government against the
government of India. Despite the protests and threatened resignations of the Viceroy and
the whole of his Executive Council, Whitehall imposed a harsh budget and a rigid
monetary policy on India. These events seemed to support nationalist accusations that
Indian monetary policy was designed solely to advance the interests of Britain, and that
London's claims to be about to confer greater autonomy on the government of India in a
new constitutional settlement were transparently false. They also gave rise to new
indictments—that the rupee was being manipulated to prop up sterling and to
expropriate the gold of the Indian peasant for the Bank of England.
.
To know more refer below links
https://www.britannica.com/event/Great-Depression
http://www.icrim.eu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Britain-and-the-Indiancurrency-crisis.pdf
https://mostlyeconomics.wordpress.com/2008/11/24/great-depression-impactedindia-as-well/
https://books.google.co.in/books?
http://econ.economicshelp.org/2008/10/causes-of-great-depression.html
https://www.thebalance.com/the-great-depression-of-1929-3306033
18. The policy of Non-Alignment despite its initial successes, proved to be a
complete failure by the 1971 India-Pakistan war. Critically comment.
Non alignment:
Non-Alignment, for India, was a policy and a strategy to survive and negotiate with a
world that was getting dragged into the politics of cold war. To a considerable extent,
non-alignment represented an un-conventional approach to power politics.
India after independence, was presented as an ancient but resurgent India, full of
enthusiasm and idealism talking in the larger perspective of history and looking forward
to the future of mankind. India propagated her passion for peace and cooperation rather
than war or confrontation and Policy of Non Alignment and anti-colonism. The core idea
was that, the very sense of India, with its history and civilisation attributes, demands the
pursuit of an independent foreign policy. Decisions relating to India’s vital interests
should not be externally determined. Maintaining and, if possible, expanding the
country’s strategic autonomy is a continuing objective. Via Non-alignment, Nehru
proposed that India should avoid entering into “other people’s quarrels“, unless,
and this is important and “our interest is involved”.
Implications of Non-Alignment :


United States kept supplying arms to Pakistan despite repeated admonition from
India.
From New Delhi’s perspective, US was an unreliable partner, it was proved in
1960s during financial crisis and food crisis.
USSR reassured India regarding the security measures against a potential
Chinese attack.
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Despite of initial rumblings from US congress, India was fairly successful in its policy of
non-alignment. India received aid from both blocks and neither took India as a threat. In
Nehru Era, India was able to maintain satisfactory relations with US as well as USSR.
However, India found herself moving closer and closer to the Soviet Union. The reasons
were:
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


India and US remained in contravention over the nuclear question.
India was subject to a nuclear blackmail by US (allegedly) when it deployed its
aircraft carrier USS Enterprise during the India – Pakistan War of 1971.
India did not like the US presence at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean
Failure of Non-Alignment:
The critics of Non-alignment say that the biggest failure of the policy was the India’s
failure to deal with China in 1962. It was said that India could move closer to US to
counter the abject poverty, grim state of economy and problems in foreign trade.
However, these were problems of India as a state and not India as a country with
independent foreign policy. The failure was not of non-alignment, but of an economy
spiralling out of control (the concurrence with the China war/ pushing of India’s Five
Year Plans off schedule) and held policies held to because they had become articles of
faith than strategies.
1971 India Pakistan War :
It was in the year 1971 when the two South Asian rivals declared war on each other,
causing a great loss to the lives, property and territory in case of Pakistan.
Before 1971, Bangladesh used to be a part of Pakistan as East Pakistan. Bengalis in
East Pakistan also resisted the adoption of Urdu as the state language. The revenue from
export, whether it was from the Cotton of West Pakistan or Jute of East Pakistan, was
handled mainly by West Pakistan. Lastly, in an election conducted just some months
before the war, the victory was gained by the East Pakistani leader and still he was not
given the power, thus fueling the movement in East Pakistan.
Pakistani army started its operation in East Pakistan to contain the movement and anger
among the Bengalis. It is reported that the army was involved in mass killing of public
and mass rape of women. India was aware of this and was only waiting for a trigger to
start the war. India started receiving huge number of refugees which became
unmanageable, pushing it to intervene in the situation. The situation soon attracted the
attention of many other countries. Thus the war later was not only between India and
Pakistan, but many countries were involved in 1971 Indo Pakistani war (War of
Liberation of Bangladesh) directly or indirectly.
REFERRENCES:
1) http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/14818/7/07_chapter%202.p
df
2) http://www.theworldreporter.com/2011/10/1971-india-pakistan-war-role-ofrussia.html
For advance reading
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The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) was created and founded during the collapse of the
colonial system and the independence struggles of the peoples of Africa, Asia, Latin
America and other regions of the world and at the height of the Cold War. During the
early days of the Movement, its actions were a key factor in the decolonization process,
which led later to the attainment of freedom and independence by many countries and
peoples and to the founding of tens of new sovereign States. Throughout its history, the
Movement of Non-Aligned Countries has played a fundamental role in the preservation of
world
peace
and
security.
While some meetings with a third-world perspective were held before 1955, historians
consider that the Bandung Asian-African Conference is the most immediate antecedent
to the creation of the Non-Aligned Movement. This Conference was held in Bandung on
87
History of Non-Aligned policy
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April 18-24, 1955 and gathered 29 Heads of States belonging to the first post-colonial
generation of leaders from the two continents with the aim of identifying and assessing
world issues at the time and pursuing out joint policies in international relations.
The principles that would govern relations among large and small nations, known as the
"Ten Principles of Bandung", were proclaimed at that Conference. Such principles were
adopted later as the main goals and objectives of the policy of non-alignment. The
fulfillment of those principles became the essential criterion for Non-Aligned Movement
membership; it is what was known as the "quintessence of the Movement" until the early
1990s.
In 1960, in the light of the results achieved in Bandung, the creation of the Movement of
Non-Aligned Countries was given a decisive boost during the Fifteenth Ordinary Session
of the United Nations General Assembly, during which 17 new African and Asian
countries were admitted. A key role was played in this process by the then Heads of
State and Government Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Shri
Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Ahmed Sukarno of Indonesia and Josip Broz Tito of
Yugoslavia, who later became the founding fathers of the movement and its emblematic
leaders.
Six years after Bandung, the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries was founded on a
wider geographical basis at the First Summit Conference of Belgrade, which was held on
September 1-6, 1961. The Conference was attended by 25 countries: Afghanistan,
Algeria, Yemen, Myanmar, Cambodia, Srilanka, Congo, Cuba, Cyprus, Egypt, Ethiopia,
Ghana, Guinea, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Lebanon, Mali, Morocco, Nepal, Saudi Arabia,
Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Yugoslavia.
The Founders of NAM have preferred to declare it as a movement but not an organization
in order to avoid bureaucratic implications of the latter. The membership criteria
formulated during the Preparatory Conference to the Belgrade Summit (Cairo, 1961)
show that the Movement was not conceived to play a passive role in international politics
but to formulate its own positions in an independent manner so as to reflect the
interests of its members.
Thus, the primary of objectives of the non-aligned countries focused on the support of
self-determination, national independence and the sovereignty and territorial integrity of
States; opposition to apartheid; non-adherence to multilateral military pacts and the
independence of non-aligned countries from great power or block influences and
rivalries; the struggle against imperialism in all its forms and manifestations; the
struggle against colonialism, neocolonialism, racism, foreign occupation and domination;
disarmament; non-interference into the internal affairs of States and peaceful
coexistence among all nations; rejection of the use or threat of use of force in
international relations; the strengthening of the United Nations; the democratization of
international relations; socioeconomic development and the restructuring of the
international economic system; as well as international cooperation on an equal footing.
Since its inception, the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries has waged a ceaseless battle
to ensure that peoples being oppressed by foreign occupation and domination can
exercise their inalienable right to self-determination and independence.
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During its nearly 50 years of existence, the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries has
gathered a growing number of States and liberation movements which, in spite of their
ideological, political, economic, social and cultural diversity, have accepted its founding
88
During the 1970s and 1980s, the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries played a key role
in the struggle for the establishment of a new international economic order that allowed
all the peoples of the world to make use of their wealth and natural resources and
provided a wide platform for a fundamental change in international economic relations
and the economic emancipation of the countries of the South.
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principles and primary objectives and shown their readiness to realize them. Historically,
the non-aligned countries have shown their ability to overcome their differences and
found a common ground for action that leads to mutual cooperation and the upholding
of their shared values.
The Sources of India’s Foreign Policy
Systemic, national and decision-making factors helped shape post-independence India’s
foreign policy choices. However, this paper will argue that India’s policymakers chose,
quite deliberately to ignore systemic constraints and decided to pursue an explicitly
ideational foreign policy and with mostly disastrous consequences. The pursuit of such
a policy left India utterly unprepared to cope with a serious security threat from the
People’s Republic of China and culminated in a disastrous border war in 1962. Only in
the aftermath of the border war did India embark on a “self-help” strategy designed to
guarantee its security.
The systemic constraints on India’s foreign policy stemmed from the onset of the Cold
War which virtually coincided with India’s independence in 1947. Interestingly enough,
neither the Soviet Union nor the United States evinced any great interest in India at the
onset of the Cold War. The United States was virtually ignorant about India and had few
cultural, strategic or economic links with the nascent nation. Consequently, in the
immediate aftermath of India’s independence it paid scant attention to India.
Simultaneously, the Soviet Union did not attach any strategic significance to India. This
mutual lack of interest in India actually worked to India’s advantage as it gave the
country considerable room for maneuver. However, at a regional level, the distribution of
power placed India at a disadvantage. The other major regional state, the People’s
Republic of China (PRC) posed a significant security threat to India one which it chose to
ignore at its own peril.
At a national level, the memories of colonial rule contributed to political culture which
privileged the concept of national autonomy. The desire to maintain the greatest possible
independence in the conduct of India’s foreign affairs was a sentiment that pervaded the
country. Public opinion, to the limited extent that it was concerned with foreign affairs,
would find any notion of deference to external powers to be intolerable. The country had
been under the yoke of colonial rule for two hundred years and the weight of this
colonial past was considerable.
Not surprisingly, India’s post-independence policymakers were acutely sensitive to the
significance of this colonial legacy. Accordingly, they explicitly sought to forge a pathway
that would keep India outside the ambit of the Cold War. Such a strategy was possible
because anti-imperialist sentiments were widespread within the Indian polity across the
political spectrum. This strategy came to be known as non-alignment and Indian
policymakers were at pains to distinguish it from “neutralism”.
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At least two factors can be adduced to explain Nehru’s adoption of non-alignment as the
lodestar of India’s foreign policy. First, he was acutely concerned about the opportunity
costs of defense spending. Any involvement with the two emerging blocs, he feared,
would draw India into the titanic struggle and divert critical resources from economic
development. Second, he was intent on maintaining India’s hard-won independence.
89
The real architect of this policy was Prime Minister Nehru. Even though he was
temperamentally a Western liberal, he was deeply skeptical of the United States. In part,
his skepticism was the consequence of his highly Anglicized personal and professional
background. In effect, he had come to share the British upper class disdain for the
United States. His views toward the Soviet Union were more ambivalent. He was also
cognizant of the horrors of Stalin’s collectivist enterprise though admiring of the
achievements of the forced-draught industrialization program. His partiality toward the
USSR also stemmed from his own social democratic predilections.
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Moving into the ambit of either superpower could compromise such freedom of
maneuver.
Foreign Policy: The Nehru Era
India’s efforts to pursue an independent foreign policy was a highlight of post-1947
politics. A product of its long history and recent past, this policy was marked by a great
deal of consistency and continuity. Despite revolutionary changes in the international
situation, the broad parameters which were evolved during the freedom struggle and in
the early years of independence still retain their validity. Jawaharlal Nehru stands as the
architect of this not mean achievement. He realized that given her great civilization, India
could not but aspire to the right to speak in her own voice. The recent, hard-won
freedom from the colonial yoke would also be meaningless unless India found expression
in the international arena. Being subcontinental in size, too, ruled out an assumption of
client status for India. An independent voice was not merely a choice, it was an
imperative.
It was Nehru who gave this voice a shape in the form of the idea of non-alignment and an
organizational cohesion through the non-aligned movement. The immediate context for
the emergence of this movement was the division of the world into two hostile blocs after
the Second World War, one led by the US and the Western powers and the other by the
Soviet Union. Nehru’s understanding was that newly independent, poor countries of Asia
and Africa had nothing to gain and everything to lose by falling for the temptation of
joining the military blocs of the big powers. They would end up being used as pawns in
contests for power of no relevance to them. Their needs were to fight poverty, and
illiteracy and disease, and these could not be met by joining military blocs. On the
contrary, India and other similarly placed countries needed peace and quiet to get on
with the business of development. Their interests lay in expanding the ‘area of peace’,
not of war, or hostility. India, therefore, neither joined nor approved of the Baghdad Pact,
the Manila Treaty, SEATO and CENTO which joined the countries of West and East Asia
to the Western power bloc.
But India went far beyond just neutrality or staying out of military blocs. Nehru was
quick to reject the charge of ‘immoral neutrality’ hurled at India by John Foster Dulles.
Non-alignment meant having the freedom to decide each issue on its merits, to weigh
what was right or wrong and then take a stand in favour of right. To quote:1
So far as all these evil forces of fascism, colonialism and racialism or the nuclear bomb
and aggression and suppression are concerned, we stand most emphatically and
unequivocally committed against them . . . We are unaligned only in relation to the cold
war with its military pacts. We object to all this business of forcing the new nations of
Asia and Africa into their cold war machine. Otherwise, we are free to condemn any
development which we consider wrong or harmful to the world or ourselves and we use
that freedom every time the occasion arises.
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A basic objective of Indian foreign policy, that of extending support to colonial and excolonial countries in their struggle against colonialism, was well served by the policy of
non-alignment. Another objective, that of promoting world peace, was also facilitated by
it. Nehru’s passionate opposition to war and the threat of nuclear conflict which loomed
large after Hiroshima is well known. It grew out of his experience of non-violent struggle
90
Non-alignment came to symbolize the struggle of India and other newly independent
nations to retain and strengthen their independence from colonialism and imperialism.
India being the first to become independent, rightly gave the lead to other ex-colonies in
this respect. And collectively these nations counted for a great deal. In the UN, for
example, whose membership had swollen with their entry, the one country, one vote
system enabled the non-aligned bloc, often helped by the Soviets, to check domination
by the Western bloc. Non-alignment, thus, advanced the process of democratization of
international relations.
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and his conviction in Gandhi who had resolved to make it his mission to fight and
outlaw the atom bomb. Inspired by Gandhi, and supported by great intellectuals like
Einstein and Bertrand Russell, Nehru made it India’s role to place the goal of peace,
nuclear and general disarmament before the world.
At about this time when Nehru was pointing out the dangers of world extinction through
nuclear conflict, Chairman Mao, it is believed, told Nehru in a conversation that a future
nuclear war was only another stage in the inevitable march towards socialism, and that
if 300 million Chinese died in it, another 300 million would survive! Nehru constantly
emphasized that peaceful coexistence of countries with different ideologies, differing
systems, was a necessity and believed that nobody had a monopoly on the truth and
pluralism was a fact of life. To this end he outlined the five principles of peaceful
coexistence, or Panch Sheel, for conducting relations among countries. These were
mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, non-aggression, noninterference in each other’s internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful
coexistence.
While Nehru tirelessly articulated his ideas about international conduct of nations in
every available forum, there were some landmark moments in his quest. Before
independence, in March 1947, at his inspiration, an Asian Relations Conference
attended by more than twenty countries was held in Delhi. The tone of the conference
was Asian independence and assertion on the world stage. While this conference
concerned itself with general issues, the next one was called in response to a very
specific problem: the Dutch attempt to re-colonize Indonesia in December 1948. Nehru
invited states bordering the Indian Ocean, and most Asian countries as well as Australia
came. The conference resolved to deny all facilities to Dutch shipping, and sent its
resolutions to the UN. Within a week the Security Council resolved that a ceasefire be
declared, and the Indonesian national government be restored. The de-colonization
initiative was carried forward further at the Asian leaders’ conference in Colombo in
1954 and the Afro-Asian conference called by India and other Colombo powers in
Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955. The conference was also a precursor to the Belgrade Nonaligned Conference, as it passed resolutions on world peace and the dangers of nuclear
weapons. The pinnacle of Nehru’s efforts was reached in 1961 when he stood with
Nasser of Egypt and Tito of Yugoslavia to call for nuclear disarmament and peace in
Belgrade. By now he was convinced that the remnants of colonialism would give way
soon and the next challenge the world faced was that of preventing a nuclear war.
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For military equipment, India spread the net far and wide across the ideological divide.
In the Nehru years alone she bought, for example, for the Air Force, 104 Toofani aircraft
from France, 182 Hunters and 80 Canberras from the UK, 110 Mysters from France, 16
AN-12s and 26 Mi-4 helicopters from the Soviet Union and 55 Fairchild Packets from the
US. Two hundred and thirty Vampire aircraft were produced under licence from the UK
in India. For the Navy and Army as well, similar purchases were made. In addition,
efforts were made to establish a defence production base and licences were obtained
from various foreign countries to produce the following equipment: Gnat interceptor
aircraft from the UK, HS-748 transport aircraft from the UK, Allouette Helicopters from
France, MiG interceptors from the Soviet Union, L-70 anti-aircraft guns from Sweden,
Vijayanta tanks from the UK, Shaktiman trucks from Germany, Nissan one-ton trucks
91
A major function of Indian foreign policy was to promote and protect Indian economic
interests and to facilitate her on the path that she had chosen for herself. Nonalignment, by not tying India to any one bloc, enabled her to develop economic ties with
countries on both sides of the divide as and when neccessary. India needed and got
capital, technology, machines and food from the Western countries. She also relied,
especially after 1954, on the Soviet Union for building up the public sector industries,
something which the US was reluctant to do.
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and Jonga-jeeps from Japan, Brandt mortars from France, 106 mm recoilless guns from
the US, Sterling carbines from the UK, wireless sets from different countries.2
The variety of sources from which defence equipment alone was acquired shows that
India succeeded in maintaining sufficiently friendly relations with a large number of
countries. Spreading her net wide also ensured that excessive dependence on any one
country was avoided and better bargains could be driven since potential partners knew
that rivals existed. In this way, many of the inherent weaknesses of a newly independent,
underdeveloped and poor country were reduced. On the same lines, India maintained an
active membership of various UN bodies as well as of the IMF and the World Bank. It is
no small credit to India’s economic diplomacy that she has been the biggest recipient of
concessional funding in absolute terms (not per capita) from multilateral international
agencies.
Indian foreign policy sometimes linked apparently irreconcilable goals. For example, the
Soviet Union and India initiated in 1963 and signed in August 1964, August 1965 and
November 1965, major arms deals by which the Soviet Union became the largest arms
supplier to India and Indo-Soviet relations entered a qualitatively new phase. At the
same time, India decided to adopt the Green Revolution technology for agricultural
development which was backed by the US, The arms deals with the Soviet Union and the
Green Revolution which led to India becoming self-sufficient in food in a few years’ time
increased India’s capacity to stand on her own feet and take a more independent stand
in world affairs. Similarly, both the US and the Soviet Union at different times agreed to
be paid in rupees, thus saving India precious hard currency.
India also maintained an active profile in multilateral bodies and sought continuously to
use her presence there to her advantage. Soon after independence Nehru decided to stay
within the Commonwealth for this very reason. Despite strong public opinion to the
contrary, he felt that once India was independent and there was no question of Britain
dominating over her, India could benefit from her presence in a multinational body.
Besides, membership of the Commonwealth provided a certain security in a situation
when India was yet to find out who her friends (and enemies) were going to be. India also
played an active role in the UN peacekeeping forces in various parts of the world, often at
heavy cost to Indian lives. A closer look at some of the international situations in which
India played an active part would help illustrate the complex tasks dictated by her nonaligned foreign policy.
To know more refer below link http://mea.gov.in/in-focusarticle.htm?20349/History+and+Evolution+of+NonAligned+Movement
http://www.ncert.nic.in/ncerts/l/leps204.pdf
http://erenow.com/exams/indiasinceindependence/14.html
https://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact
=8&ved=0ahUKEwik2tiY5dHOAhWDt48KHQn3Ci0QFggqMAI&url=https%3A%2F%2Fww
w.ufmg.br%2Fcei%2Fwpcontent%2Fuploads%2Findianforeignpolicy_ganguly.doc&usg=AFQjCNGA6lG27rhhE_63U5KYC6RcP6ZQA&sig2=HxLYoWcugjbgS5GVnPLIgw
ASSAM MOVEMENT:
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19. What started as a consolidation struggle as the Assam Movement, fragmented
into various ethnic strands by the time the movement ended with the
signing of the Assam Accord in 1985. Elaborate.
92
http://internationaljournals.co.in/pdf/GIIRJ/2014/August/2.pdf
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The Assam Movement (or Assam Agitation) (1979-1985) was a popular movement against
illegal immigrants in Assam. The historic Assam movement was one of the famous
movements in post-colonial India mainly led by students of Assam .This movement was
started in 1979 under the leadership of All Assam Students Union (AASU) and the All
Assam Gana Sangram Parishad (AAGSP) and officially ended on 15 August,1985 after
coming of an understanding with the Government of India whichf ound official
expression in the memorandum of understanding popularly known as the Assam Accord
1985.While the movement leaders claimed that it was a peaceful Gandhian movement,
others saw it violent and fascist character. Many renowned Assamese intellectuals like
Amalendu Guha, Monirul Hussain, Sanjib Baruah, Hiren Gohain, Udayon Misra,
Tilottoma Misra, Humen Borgohain and some foreign scholars like Myron Weiner, Abdur
Rob Khan, Gail Omvedt etc had analysed this movement from different perspective.
"By Assam Movement we specially refers to that movement which demand to stop(i)The illegal immigration of foreign nationals to Assam from the neighbouring countriesBangladesh and Nepal and
(ii) their participation in the electoral process in Assam/India and
(iii) deportation of all foreigners living illegally in Assam so as to
(iv) enable the people of Assam to protect their distinct identity in their traditional
homeland from threat of foreign nationals
ASSAM ACCORD:
The Assam Accord (1985) was a Memorandum of Settlement (MoS) signed between
representatives of the Government of India and the leaders of the Assam Movement in
New Delhi on 15 August 1985.[1][2] The accord brought an end to the Assam Agitation
and paved the way for the leaders of the agitation to form a political party and form a
government in the state of Assam soon after.
The years from 1979 to 1985 witnessed political instability in the stale, collapse of state
governments, imposition of President's Rule, sustained, often violent, agitation, frequent
general strikes, civil disobedience campaigns which paralyzed all normal life for
prolonged periods, and unprecedented ethnic violence.
The central government's effort to hold a constitutionally mandated election to the state
assembly in 1983 led to its near total boycott, a complete breakdown of order, and the
worst killings since 1947 on the basis of tribal linguistic and communal identities. Nearly
3,000 people died in statewide violence. The election proved to be a complete failure with
less than 2 per cent of the voters casting their votes in the constituencies with Assamese
majority.
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The task of revising the electoral rolls, on the basis of the agreement, was now taken up
in earnest. The existing assembly was dissolved and fresh elections held in December
1985. A new party, Assam Gana Parishad (AGP), formed by the leaders of the antiforeigners movement, was elected to power, winning 64 of the 126 assembly seats.
93
The 1983 violence had a traumatic effect on both sides, which once again resumed
negotiations in earnest. Finally, the Rajiv Gandhi government was able to sign an accord
with the leaders of the movement on 15 August 1985. All those foreigners who had
entered Assam between 1951 and 1961 were to be given full citizenship, including the
right to vote; those who had done so after 1971 were to be deported; the entrants
between 1961 and 1971 were to be denied voting rights for ten years but would enjoy all
other rights of citizenship. A parallel package for the economic development of Assam,
including a second oil refinery, a paper mill and an institute of technology, was also
worked out. The central government also promised to provide ‘legislative and
administrative safeguards to protect the cultural, social, and linguistic identity and
heritage’ of the Assamese people.
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Prafulla Mahanta, an AASU leader, became at the age of thirty-two the youngest chief
minister of independent India. Extreme and prolonged political turbulence in Assam
ended, though fresh insurgencies were to come up later on, for example that of the Bodo
tribes for a separate state and of the secessionist United Liberation Front of Assam
(ULFA).
REFERRENCES:
1) http://www.academia.edu/4795710/ASSAM_MOVEMENT_not_published_
2) http://www.assam.gov.in/documents/1631171/0/Annexure_10.pdf?version=1.0
&t=1444717500526
For advance reading
Unlike the other creatures of this earth, humankind has since time immemorial striven
to create bonds on the basis of region, country, language, culture, religion, etc. When
such groups feel their identity is getting eroded because of factors like subjugation,
migration, etc., they have found ways to assert themselves to preserve their identity.
Recent events across the country like movements for a separate Telangana, Gorkhaland,
etc., stem from the assertion of people of a particular region of their identity. While these
movements emphasised the issues of discrimination and development, the most notable
forerunner to such movements i.e. the movement in Assam (1979-85) spearheaded by
the All Assam Students Union (AASU) revolved around the question of not just assertion
of identity but also the eviction of illegal migrants from the state to safeguard Assamese
language and culture.
Assamese identity
On completion of three decades of this popular movement and the consequent historic
Assam Accord, Prof. Nandana Dutta has presented detailed study of Assamese identity
combined with a historical background in her bookQuestions of Identity in Assam
Location, Migration, Hybridity published under the SAGE Studies series on India’s North
East.
This empirical study on the question of Assamese identity acts as a breath of scholarly
fresh air on perceptions of India’s North East given the violent movement and the
emergence of militant groups such as the ULFA. Prof. Dutta points out that “This is a
location where migration indeed was responsible for spawning separatist movements,
and where the internal dynamics generated by migration gave birth to the autonomy
movements of many of the larger tribal groups within the state.”
According to noted scholar Hiren Gohain, “the frustration, anger and discontent of the
Assamese have been made even more complex by the suspicion and anger of the tribal
towards the Assamese on the grounds that the Assamese have exploited and suppressed
them both economically and culturally.”
Migrations analysts posit that a host community’s perception of migrant develops
through stages of welcome, then indifference, then the perception of threat and finally
outright hostility. The increase of hostility in the host society is in direct proportion to
the increase in numbers.
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According to Scholar Alaka Sarma, there are two phases during the British rule from
1826 to 1905 and again from 1905 to 1947. In the first phase, three classes of people
migrated into Assam – tea plantation labourers, ‘Amolas’ (office employees from Sylhet,
94
In order to utilise the vast lands of Assam, the British induced migration to ensure
labour for their plantations. In the last 150 years, Assam has seen immigration into its
territory at the behest of British rulers. Many scholars have identified the same periods
and phases and the same sets of migrants.
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Dacca, Mymensing, Rampur and other districts of Bengal) and merchants and
tradesmen from Rajasthan and Bengal. In the second phase, while the Muslim peasants
from East Bengal settled in the rural areas of Assam, Bengali Hindu migrants continued
to pour into its towns.
Anti-Muslim bias
While the dominance of Bengali in the realm of education and employment opportunities
was unsettled during the language movement of 1960s, with the advent of AASU in
1970s, the issue of illegal migrants caught the imagination of Assamese middle class,
youth and students. Though the movement was started against the illegal migrants, over
the time, it become violent and morphed into a communal movement with anti-Muslim
bias. This movement also became responsible for an attitude of indifference to the art
and craft of Assam’s tribal groups thus galvanising these groups in the last 30 years to
demand autonomously administered areas.
While remembering the Assam movement, Prof. Dutta also points out that the key aspect
of the movement, the participation of young adolescents and the subsequent scarring of
an entire generation, has to be viewed in terms of its after effects, the turn to militancy,
and the criminalisation of a whole society. The entry or seepage of practices of militancy
into social and economic practices has affected modes of social exchange, and a denial of
otherness has sprung from this exchange. Such groups are not involved in industry or
production or in any thing else that is remotely developmental.
The rivalry in Assam was not between Hindus and Muslims, but between the speakers of
two major languages in colonial Assam — the Bengalis and Assamese. But the arrival of
Bangladeshi migrants released emotions that subverted or destroyed the host’s habitual
ways of living.
With the entry of the Muslims from East Bengal/East Pakistan/ Bangladesh, a different
way of being Muslim became visible, because this was a group distinguished not only by
language and attire but by a more overtly patriarchal/hierarchical internal organisation.
This situation has been responsible for the currency given to a renewed image of the
obedient, submissive, passive women that is at odds with the respectable position that
women were believed to traditionally occupy in Assamese society.
Considering the fallout of the Assam movement within and outside the state, the recent
violence at Goalpara, Kokrajhar and other places calls for a deep understanding of the
migrant issue, and urgent measures to resolve it. As the saying goes, hatred spreads
farther than the wind.
Assam on the Boil Again, this Time Over Hindu Migrants from Bangladesh
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However, AASU and local ethnic groups see the Centre’s decision as coming in to direct
conflict with the core principles of the Assam Accord. AASU advisor Samujjal
Bhattacharya says that his organisation is opposed to the Modi government’s decision
because “Assam can no longer be the dumping ground for Bangladeshi migrants. Assam
took a lot of refugees during and after Partition and during the 1971 war. It is after all, a
small state with a high unemployment rate. These people can be given space in some
other state.”
95
According to Assam-based organisations representing the community of Displaced
Bengali Hindus (DBH), there are anywhere between 59 and 75 lakhs of them in Assam,
out of a total of 3.5 crore said to be scattered across India. They say that religious
persecution in Bangladesh makes it impossible for them to go back, and have for years
demanded that they be granted not just refugee status but Indian citizenship. These
demands were once again made recently during their meetings with Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP) leaders in New Delhi and Guwahati. The BJP-led Centre, by allowing them to
continue to stay in the state without legal papers, has in effect met their demand half
way.
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He further says that they are also opposed to the decision because the BJP is
approaching the issue from the religious point of view. “In Assam, it can’t be done that
way because there is already an Accord in place. For us, that Accord is the rulebook
which says anyone from Bangladesh residing in Assam from March 1, 1971 onwards,
whether he/she is a Hindu or a Muslim, is an illegal immigrant and therefore [must] be
expelled from the State,” he says.
Sahadev Das, president of the Assam chapter of the Nikhil Bharat Bengali Udbastu
Samanay Samiti (NBBUSS), one of the main pan-India organisations championing the
cause of the DBH, welcomes the Modi government’s move but reiterates their main
demand for Indian citizenship. “Refugee status doesn’t fully solve the problem. We want
citizenship for the Bengali Hindus from Bangladesh residing not just in Assam but
across India simply because they can’t go back. If they do, they run the risk of being
killed for religious reasons. Where else will they come if not to India? The illegal
Bangladeshi Muslims can be sent back because they don’t have any such problem.”
Das’s organisation, along with another Assam-based organisation, Bengali Lok Manch,
have been demanding amendments to the four Acts under which a person is declared an
undocumented migrant by the tribunals set up by Assam Government under the
instruction of the Supreme Court. (The SC has recently raised the number of such
foreigner detection tribunals to 100 considering the large number of pending cases.)
A historically sensitive issue
The issue of undocumented immigrants from Bangladesh has been an age-old, pesky
and highly emotional subject for the ethnic Assamese population. It has hinged on
concerns that the high influx of people from Bangladesh through the porous border and
their subsequent enrolment in the state’s electoral rolls (often believed to be done
surreptitiously by political parties looking for easy vote banks) will harm their indigenous
identity. Census figures showing an abnormal spurt in the state’s non-Assamese
population in the period from 1971 till now has further heightened their concern.
Riding on that fear, the students’ agitation was launched in the early ’80s, leading to
violent street protests and deaths before it finally ended with the signing of the Accord.
While the Accord came with a slew of sops aimed at economic development of the state,
the prime succour for the agitators was the cut-off date of March 1, 1971.
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States Bhattacharya, “People of Assam launched an agitation for six years on the issue;
so many people died for the cause. Since then, people waited for 30 years for the
government to safeguard their ethnic identity, but look at the latest Census. If it
continues to go this way, ethnic Assamese people are soon going to be a minority in their
own state. The Guwahati High Court has already said that Bangladeshi migrants are
becoming kingmakers in Assam. The Supreme Court, while striking down the IMDT Act
as unconstitutional in 2005, in response to a writ petition by Sarbananda Sonowal (then
an AASU leader and now a Modi government minister), said Assam is facing external
aggression and internal disturbance because of the influx of illegal migrants from
Bangladesh. These are not mere fears. In such a scenario, instead of implementing the
Accord which would safeguard the rights of the Assamese people, the BJP is trying to
dilute it. It is just not agreeable.”
96
Though little from that bouquet of promises has been delivered in the last three decades,
“there is a general understanding among the local Assamese population that those who
came from Bangladesh on or after March 1, 1971, will have to leave Assam one day even
if they manage to wrest voter I-cards, rations cards, etc. through political nexus or
otherwise,” says Bhattacharya.The Central government’s latest notification, mentioning
the new cut-off date of December 31, 2014, therefore, is being looked at by various
groups that took part in the agitation as a prelude towards the dilution of the core
principles of the Accord.
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AASU threatens to launch second Assam movement
The All Assam Students Union (AASU) today threatened to launch a second Assam
movement to protest against the Centre's decision to give citizenship to all Hindu
Bangladeshis who came here after 1971.
Addressing a gathering during its 'Gana Satyagrah' programme here, AASU Chief Advisor
Sammujjal Bhattacharjya said, "Assam will not bear the burden of illegal migrants
whether they are Hindus or Muslims.
We are neither anti-Muslims nor anti-Bengalis, but we are against illegal Bangladeshis.
"The people who came here illegally from the neighbouring country after 1971 are all
Bangladeshis," said the leader of AASU, which had spearheaded the six-year-long Assam
movement in the early '80s against illegal Bangladeshi migrants in the state.
Terming the Centre's decision to grant Indian citizenship to Hindu Bangladeshis as a
"shameful act", Bhattacharjya said, "Assam will not bear any extra burden of
Bangladeshis".
Addressing the gathering, ASSU secretary Lurinjyoti Gogoi said, "If the Central
government will not cancel its decision of giving citizenship to Hindu Bangladeshis, then
Assam will again face a second Assam Movement."
Urging the people of the state to again start a second Assam Movement, Gogoi
categorically said, "Assam will not bear the burden of illegal migrants from Bangladesh
after the cut off base year 1971 (as per the Assam Accord)".
"The Prime Minister had assured us before the elections that the illegal Bangladeshi
problem in Assam will be solved but after the polls he cheated us.
"Chief minister Tarun Gogoi also remained silent in this regard. We urge Gogoi to
support the indigenous Assamese people instead of the Bangladeshis," the student
leader demanded
To know more refer the below link
http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/33043/11/11_chapter%201.
pdf
http://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/aasu-threatens-to-launchsecond-assam-movement-115101000572_1.html
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/national-register-ofcitizens-in-assam-issue-of-illegal-foreigners-continues-to-be-a-major-politicalone/articleshow/47657561.cms
http://www.thehindu.com/books/books-reviews/three-decades-after-assam-movementa-study-on-identity/article5415216.ece
http://thewire.in/10622/assam-on-the-boil-again-this-time-over-hindu-migrants-frombangladesh/
Tribals revolted so as to safeguard their honour protect their cherished freedom and to
get redressed against the money lenders. Also their religious beliefs were scoffed at,
when their freedom was attacked and their traditional beliefs and customs, civil rights,
judicial system standards and etiquettes, prestige and code of honour was brushed
aside.
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97
“Tribals revolted more often and far more violent than any other community
including peasants in India.” Elaborate.
Page
20.
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The anger against British policies which affected social, economic and political
conditions of tribal people, gave birth to tribal revolts.

New exploitative British policies which affected the old traditional system, created
much dissatisfaction among tribal people.

New land revenue and taxation system introduced a large number of middleman
and moneylender, who exploited the tribal people and made them agricultural
and landless labor.

The forests right were taken away from the tribal peoples.

Earlier , tribal areas were ruled by their own tribal chief but after the British
conquest of those tribal areas, the area came under the British control which
replaced their political and administrative setup.
Due to all these reasons there were many tribal revolts in India like Sanyasi uprising,
Fakir uprising, Velu Thampi Revolt, Pagal Panthis revolt, revolts of Ho and Kol tribes,
Romosi uprising, Khasi uprising, Wahabi movement, Moplah uprising, Kittu
Chenamma revolt, Paik rebellion, Dinghpos revolt, Gadkari uprising, Ahom uprising,
Sawantwadi Revolt, Bundella revolt.
Between 1765 and 1857 a large proportion of revolts were led by Hindu or Muslim
petty rulers or Rajas or Nawabs or tribal chiefs supported by masses of peasants and
sometimes de-mobilized soldiers. The goals of these revolts were expulsion of the
British and reversion to the previous government and agrarian relations.
But the movements after 1850’s were large insur­rections in which the peasants
provided the leadership and were the sole dominant force. They fought directly for
their demands and against the indigenous zaminadars, moneylenders, alien rulers
and planters. These revolts proved wrong the assumption that the Indian
downtrodden has always been passive docile, fatalistic and unresisting.
The historical significance of these revolts lie in that the established strong and
valuable tradition of resistance to British rule upon which the Indian people were to
draw inspiration in later nationalistic struggle. Also by these revolts the vulner-able
sections of the society were made apprehensive of their political, social and economic
rights.
REFERRENCES:
1) http://www.historydiscussion.net/articles/peasant-and-tribal-movementsduring-british-east-india-company/2081
2) https://anarchyindia.wordpress.com/the-tribal-revolt/
For advance reading
Peasant and Tribal Movements in India during Independence
Indigo Revolt (1859-60):
In April 1860 all the cultivators of the Barasat sub-division and in the districts of Pabna
and Nadia resorted to strike. They refused to sow any indigo. The strike spread to other
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The revolt began in Govindpur village in Nadia district, Bengal and was led by Digambar
Biswas and Bishnu Biswas who organised the peasants into a counter force to deal with
the planters lathiyals (armed retainers).
98
The Indigo revolt of Bengal was directed against British planters who forced peasants to
take advances and sign fraudulent contracts which forced the peasants to grow Indigo
under terms which were the least profitable to them.
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places in Bengal. The revolt enjoyed the support of all categories of the rural population,
missionaries and the Bengal intelligentsia.
This was vividly portrayed by Din Bandhu Mitra in his play, Neel Darpan enacted in
1869. It led to the appointment of an Indigo Commission in 1860 by the government by
which some of the abuses of Indigo cultivation was removed.
Pabna Movement (1872-76):
In East Bengal the peasantry was oppressed by zamindars through frequent recourse to
ejection, harassment, arbitrary enhancement of rent through ceases (abwabs) and use of
force. The zamindars also tried to prevent them from acquiring the occupancy rights
under the Act of 1859.
In May 1873 an Agrarian League was formed in the Yusufzahi Pargana of Pabna district
(East Bengal). Payments of enhanced rents were refused and the peasants fought the
zamindars in the courts. Similar leagues were formed in the adjoining districts of Bengal.
The main leaders of the Agrarian League were Ishan Chandra Roy, Shambu Pal and
Khoodi Mullah. The discontent continued till 1885 when the Government by the Bengal
Tenancy Act of 1885 enhanced the occupancy rights.
The Deccan Peasants’ Uprising, 1875:
The Deccan peasants uprising was directed mainly against the excesses of the Marwari
and Gujarati money lenders. Social boycott of moneylenders by the peasants was later
transformed into armed peasant revolt in the Poona and Ahmadnagar districts of
Maharashtra. The peasants attacked the moneylender’s houses, shops and burnt them
down.
Their chief targets were the bond documents, deeds and decrees that the money lenders
held against them. By June 1875 nearly a thousand peasants were arrested and the
uprising completely suppressed. The Government appointed the Deccan Riots
Commission to investigate into the causes of the uprising. The ameliorative measure
passed was the Agriculturists Relief Act of 1879 which put restrictions on the operations
of the peasants land and prohibited imprisonment of the peasants of the Deccan for
failure to repay debts to the moneylenders.
Punjab Peasants Discontent (1890-1900):
Rural indebtedness and the large scale alienation of agricultural land to non-cultivating
classes led to the peasant discontent in Punjab. The communal complexion of the
Punjab rural situation and the martial character of the Sikhs called for an early effective
action by the government. The Punjab Land Alienation Act, 1900 was passed which
prohibited the sale and mortgage of lands from peasants to moneylenders. The Punjab
peasants were also given partial relief against oppressive incidence of land revenue
demand by the Government and it was not to exceed 50% of the annual rental value of
land.
Champaran Satyagraha (1917):
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Accompanied by Babu Rajendra Prasad, Mazhar -ul-Huq, J.B. Kripalani, Narhari
Parekhand Mahadev Desai, Gandhiji reached Champaran in 1917 and began to conduct
a detailed inquiry into the condition of the peasantry.
99
The peasantry on the indigo plantations in the Champaran district of Bihar was
excessively oppressed by the European planters. They were compelled to grow indigo on
at least 3/20th of their land (tinkathia system) and to sell it at prices fixed by the
planters.
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The infuriated district officials ordered him to leave Champaran, but he defied the order
and was willing to face trial and imprisonment. Later the Government developed cold feet
and appointed an Enquiry Committee (June 1917) with Gandhiji as one of the members.
The ameliorative enactment, the Champaran Agrarian Act freed the tenants from the
special imposts levied by the indigo planters.
Kaira Satyagraha (1918):
The Kaira (Kheda) campaign was chiefly directed against the Government. In 1918, crops
failed in the Kheda districts in Gujarat but the government refused to remit land revenue
and insisted on its full collection. Gandhiji along with Vallabhai Patel supported the
peasants and advised them to withhold payment of revenues till their demand for its
remission was met. The satyagraha lasted till June 1918. The Government had to
concede the just demands of the peasants.
Moplah Rebellion (1921):
In August 1921, peasant discontent erupted in the Malabar district of Kerala. Here
Moplah (Muslim) tenants rebelled. Their grievances related to lack of any security of
tenure, renewal fees, high rents, and other oppressive landlord exactions.
In 1920, the Khilafat Movement took over the tenant rights agitation (which had been
going on in the Malabar region since 1916) after the Congress Conference held at Manjeri
in April 1920. The arrest of established leaders of the Congress and the Khilafat
movement left the field clear for radical leaders.
In the first stage of the rebellion, the targets of attack were the unpopular jenmies
(landlords), mostly Hindu, the symbols of Government authority such as courts, police
stations, treasuries and offices, and British planters.
But once the British declared martial law and repression began in earnest, the character
of the rebellion underwent a definite change. It took communal tones because the class
divide approximated the communal divide. The movement was severely depressed by
December 1921
Bardoli Satyagraha (1928):
Enhancement of land revenue by 22% in the Bardoli district of Gujarat by the British
government led to the organisation of a ‘No-Revenue Campaign’ by the Bardoli peasants
under the leadership of Vallabhai Patel. Unsuccessful attempts of the British to suppress
the movement by large scale attachment of cattle and land resulted in the appointment
of an enquiry committee. The enquiry conducted by Broomfield and Maxwell come to the
conclusion that the increase had been unjustified and reduced the enhancement to
6.03%
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Rural India had been inhabited by the tribal population from the beginning. The tribal
communities lived in relative seclusion and isolation for centuries and in varying states
of economy. In spite of their contacts with the non-tribals, they maintained their
separate identity. Each tribal community maintained its own socio-religious and cultural
life and its political and economic organisations. Until the arrival of the British in the
tribal areas, the main means of production and s~bsistence for the tribals were land and
forests. The forests were of great significance for the pibals all over India. They had
customary rights to use the minor forest products. Firewood, flowers, fruits, leaves,
honey, housing material, edible nuts, medical herbs etc. formed the essential items of
the daily requirements of tribals. They used forest products for food, constructing houses
and shifting cultivation. They grazed their cattle in the forests. The forests provided them
with security. About the significance of the forests for the tribals Kr. Suresh Singh says:
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SOCIO-ECONOMIC PROFILE OF THE TRIBALS DURING THE COLONIAL PERIOD
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"They (Tribal communities) can, therefore, subsist onconditions in which members of
these more civilized race could not exist.
When the crop fails, jungle fruits and vegetables of all kinds (sag) are valuable
reserve.With the help of these they succeed in teething over the period of stress which
could play havoc. "
In addition, the tribals practised weaving, basket making, fishing, hunting and food
gathering.* Their instruments of labour and livelihood were not very developed. Bows
and arrows were the main instruments of self-defence and hunting.
The tribal communities had their respective chiefs and clan councils (panehayat) to look
after them and manage their social, religious, economic and political affairs. Each tribal
paid some amount of land produce to his respective chief. But it. was not a legal right; it
was a moral requirement. The chiefs were given voluntary contribution in kind and a few
days of free labour every year by the people.
Tribal Uprising/Resistance/Rebellion
The peasant rebellions in pre-1857 India were participated exclusively by the tribal
population, whose political autonomy and control over local resources were threatened
by the establishment of British rule and the advent of its non-tribal agents. In 1980s,
Sumit Sarkar, Ranajit Guha and others attempted to catch the plural voice
(marginalized/unheard voices) of Indian national movement. They showed the mass
participation in the Indian nationalist movement. In his book, “Modern India: 18851947”, Sumit Sarkar also captured the participation of the tribal and lower strata of
people in anti-imperialist, political and nationalist movement. But Sarkar is also critical
about the tribal and peasant movements as these, according to him, tended to drive
against immediate oppressor rather than the distant British overload.
Normally, the term ‘tribe’ reflects a way of life that predates, and is more natural, than
that in modern states. Tribes also privilege primordial social ties, are clearly bounded,
homogeneous, and parochial and stable. In Indian context, according to Sumit Sarkar,
“the term ‘tribe’ is used to distinguish people socially organized from ‘caste’ and should
not convey a sense of complete isolation from the mainstream of Indian life”. Further, he
argues that, apart from some isolated & primitive food-gatherers, the tribals were and
are very much a part of Indian society on the lowest stratum of the peasantry subsisting
through shifting cultivation, agricultural labourers, and increasingly, coolies recruited
for work in distant plantations, mines and factories.
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The tribal peasant who lived at the periphery of the settled Hindu peasant societies and
enjoyed autonomy of culture was based on an egalitarian ethos. But over the period, the
Hinduisation brought them under the dejection of ritual hierarchy and the extension of
the British land revenue system fully destroyed the autonomy of the tribal peasants.
Further, the imposition of British rule had resulted in the loss of their autonomous
domains of power, freedom and culture. The destruction of their imagined golden past by
the intruding outsiders- the ‘suds’ and ‘dikus’- led to violent outbursts. These peasants
and tribal uprisings of the early colonial period have been imagined and taken in
different ways such as British administration treated them as problem of law and order;
the rebels were portrayed as primitive savages resisting civilization and the nationalists
projected peasant and tribal histories as the pre-history of modern nationalism. Others
like D.N. Dhanagare would regard the peasant rebellions as ‘pre-political’, because of
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Quite similarly, as the other part of society such as peasants, tribes were also being
badly exploited by the domination of British Raj. In 1880s & 90s, British started
increasing its control in the forests & revenue purposes. The social life of the tribal
society intervened by the middleman or officials who were instrumental to the collection
of revenue for British authorities. Even so many forest areas were made to monopolize
and reserved for the economic purposes.
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their lack of organization, program and ideology. Ranajit Guha, on the other hand, has
argued that “there was nothing in the militant movement of……[the] rural masses that
was not political”. Guha contends that these movements were very much political in
character and had an agenda, objective and programme.
As mentioned earlier, similar to peasant movements, tribal uprising was also the product
and offspring of the extreme unbearable exploitation of British rule. Now, we will briefly
study some of the major tribal revolts and resistance. One of the most important and
effective tribal movement was the Santhal hool (rebellion) of 1855-56. The Santhals
were located in Rajmahal hills and adjoining areas, now a part of Jharkhand state.
Earlier, they had their autonomy over the land and forest areas but with the arrival of
British power, they had to loose their natural autonomy. Due to various activities like
railroad construction, deforestation and driven out of tribal lands in the hands of nonSanthal zamindars and moneylenders invoked them to attack against outsiders which
led to the clash with authorities. They were displaced and driven from their homeland.
This penetration of outsiders called dikus by Santhals- completely destroyed their
familiar world, and forged them into action to take possession of their lost territory.
In July 1855, when their ultimatum to the Zamindars and the government unheeded,
several thousand Santhals, armed with bows and arrows, started an open insurrection
“against the unholy trinity of their oppressors-the zamindars, the Mahajans and the
government.” The insurrection spread rapidly and a wide region between Bhagalpur and
Rajmahal the Company’s rule virtually collapsed. The Santhal rebels were also being
actively helped by the low caste non-tribal peasants. This invited brutal counterinsurgency measures; the army was mobilized and Santhal villages were burnt one after
another with vengeance. According to one calculation, out of thirty to fifty thousand
rebels, fifteen to twenty thousand were killed before the insurrection was finally
suppressed. Hence, the British government became more cautious about them and the
Santhal inhabited areas were constituted into a separate administrative unit, called the
Santhal Paraganas, which recognized the distinctiveness of their tribal culture and
identity.
It is important to note that the tribal groups were also one of the worst victims of the
British rule in India. In 1879-80, a frightening tribal rebellion occurred in the hills of the
neighbouring Godavari agency. This revolt was waged against their overlord in the
Rampa area of Chodavaram and major reasons for this revolt were the increase in taxes
on timber & grazing, exploitation by the moneylenders, prohibition on shifting cultivation
(podu) and preparation toddy in forests.
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Another major tribal rebellion was the Bhils (1818-1831), who were concentrated in the
hill ranges of Khandesh in the previous Maratha territory. The Bhils were basically
agriculturalists and were being perpetrated atrocities, harassed and oppressed by the
moneylenders and zamindars. As a reaction, this led to a feeling of strong resentment
among the Bhils. They started a general insurrection in 1819 but the situation still
remained unsettled until 1831 when the Ramoshi leader Umaji Raje of Purandhar was
finally captured and executed.
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Mundas were another group which rose in rebellion during 1899-1900 under the
leadership of Birsa Munda, residing in Chhota Nagpur region. Munda were used to
collective farming but their system of collective farming was totally destroyed after the
arrival of the British raj. Thousands of Mundas joined the leader Birsa, who declared
himself as a messenger of God and Mundas started looking upto him as their liberator.
They came up with their armed movement against the British domination and attacked
government offices. The rebellion was ruthlessly suppressed and destroyed by the army
and Birsa also known as Birsa Bhagavan was captured during 1900 and died while
being lodged in the jail.
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During 1831-32 a similar revolt took place among the Kols who were located in the
Chhota Nagpur region. This was also subdued and mollified by the superior British
forces. Thus, the period between 1818-1831 saw many turbulent uprisings among the
Bhils. Hence, these tribal movements had contributed a significant role in the Indian
struggle for freedom.
To know more refer below links:
http://vle.du.ac.in/mod/book/print.php?id=10820&chapterid=19256

http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/14229/9/09_chapter%205.p
df

http://www.nios.ac.in/media/documents/213_learnerguide_english.pdf

http://www.upscsuccess.com/sites/default/files/documents/Unit-15%20AntiColonial%20Tribal%20Movements%20In%20India.pdf

https://anarchyindia.wordpress.com/the-tribal-revolt/

http://www.cambridgescholars.com/download/sample/61335
Page
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