Plassey to partition pdf

From Plassey to Partition. From Plassey to Partition is an eminently readable account of the emergence of India as a nation. It covers about two hundred years of political and socio-economic turbulence. Share Your Materials at [email protected].

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But some other historians like Andre Wink have argued that the Mara- thas were also very much within the Mughal tradition, as they had built their power on the notion of sedition or [itua the Deccani cor- ruption of the word fitna , which the Mughal state always provided a space for. There was no "rebellion" as such, as "concurrent rights The old terminology was retained and even the differential urban tax rates continued to favour the Muslims.

Existing political conflicts between warrior families were resolved through a combination of coercion and conciliation, the deshmukhs remaining the co-sharers in the polity and rights being granted for building kingdoms. The Maratha state ultimately declined not so much because of factional- ism, but because of the increasing power of the English in the Deccan. It was difficult for the Marathas to resist this efficient army. Turning to north India in the eighteenth century, we find that the history of the Sikh Panth in Punjab was as old as that of the Mughal empire.

When Guru Nanak, born in , began to preach his mes- sage of inner devotion and equality among all human beings, Babur was founding the Mughal empire. The tenth guru, Guru Gobind Singh, took an important step in ; he transformed the Sikhs into a military organisation by establishing the brotherhood of Khalsa. It was a ceremony in which the guru himself and not his deputies or masands initiated the dis- ciples, who were obliged to maintain five distinctive insignia-includ- ing unkempt hair and carrying of weapons-that would publicly proclaim their identity.

Why he did it is a matter of conjecture. One reason possibly was the continuing conflict with the Mughals, which had convinced the gurus, first Guru Hargobind and then Guru Gobind Singh, about the necessity of armed resistance for the defence of the Panth The Jat peasants continued to dominate the Khalsa at the expense of the older Khatri leadership.

Their aspiration for equality was further fulfilled when Guru Gobind Singh decided to terminate the position of guru after his death; the power of the guru henceforth was to be vested in the Panrh and the Granth sacred texts. Thus, by invoking cultural resources, such as the sacred texts, and prescribing initiation and other life-cycle rituals the Khalsa sought to provide order in the life of the Sikhs in otherwise uncertain days of the eighteenth century, and in this way tried to construct a distinctive Sikh social and politi- cal identity.

From about he tried to carve out an autonomous domain in and around Anandpur, which brought the hostility of the hill chiefs of Himachal Pradesh, who approached the Mughal faujdar for protection. The siege of Anandpur by a combined force in compelled Guru Gobind to leave; but Aurangzeb, then busy in Deccan, soon reversed the stand and sought to conciliate the guru. However, the new emperor had to appease the hill chiefs as well, and therefore continued to postpone his final decision.

The stage of the contest now shifted to Majha between the rivers Beas and Ravi and Doab between rivers Beas and Sudej regions, where lived mainly the Jat peasants. MughaJ oppression around this time put tremendous pressure on the small zamindars and peasants. Not all of them, it is true, supported Banda Bahadur, whose main supporters were the small mulguzari zarnin- dars of the jar community.

Within a year a large area between the rivers jamuna and Ravi came under his influence and here he promptly established his own administration, appointed his own faujdars, diwan and kardars, minted a new coin and used his own seal for issuing orders. When Farruksiyar ascended the throne in , he appointed Abdus Samad Khan the faujdar of Lahore and gave him special orders to put an end to the Sikh upsurge.

The position of Banda Bahadur had also weakened by then to some extent, because of internal dissension within the Sikh community. Although in gen- eral the jat peasants supported him, some of the Jat zamindars went to the Mughal side, Churaman Jat of Agra being a major example.

The Khatri business class from around also went against the Sikh movement, as political stability and security of trade routes were essential to the smooth running of their business. At the same rime, when the Mughals introduced the ijaradari system in Punjab for collecting land revenue, many of the Khatri traders became reve- nue farmers and this naturally linked their interests to those of the Mughal state.

The emperors also tried to take advantage of this internal dissension within the Punjab society, as during the time of Jahandar Shah and Farruksiyar, many Khatris were given high posi- tions within the Mughal nobility. Farruksiyar tried to use Guru Gobind's widow to drive a wedge between Banda and his Sikh fol- lowers.

This did not necessarily weaken Banda's movement, as op- pressive Khatri ijaradars often drove desperate Jat peasants into the rebel's camp. But ultimately in Banda had to surrender to Abdus Samad Khan. He was taken to Delhi along with some of his close followers; in March all of them were executed. The execution of Banda did not mean the end of Sikh power in Punjab, although there was no one immediately available to take up the leadership.

Even the Afghan invader Ahmad Shah Abdali failed to bring Punjab under his command; his governors were soon thrown out and by Septem- ber the Sikhs came to control wide regions of Punjab from rivers Surlej to Indus.

Abdali himself came to Punjab in , but retired oon to Kabul without fighting a single battle. The Sikhs once again establi hed their political power in Punjab once Abdali retired from the Indian scene. But at this stage, power in the Sikh polity became more horizontally structured, as misls, or combinations based on kinship ties, now held territories as units. Whenever a misl conquered new territory, it was distributed among its members according to the nature of contribution made by each member towards the conquest.

The highest share obviously went to the chief, but even the lowest soldier got his own patti or a portion of land, which he could enjoy as a co-sharer with absolute freedom.

Above them was the Dal Khalsa with a chosen leader. The misls did unite on occasions, as they did in against the Afghans. After repelling the third Afghan invasion under Abdali's successor Zaman Shah in , Ranjit Singh emerged as one of the out- standing Sikh chiefs and conquered Lahore.

Leading an army with improved artillery and infantry trained by European officers, by he had brought under his control large areas in the five doabs of Punjab. By the Treaty of Amritsar in that year the English recog- nised him as the sole sovereign ruler of Punjab. This gave him the opportunity to round his conquests off by ousting the Afghans from Multan and Kashmir and subduing most of the other Sikh chiefs, many of whom were reduced to the status of tribute-paying vassals.

By the time of his death, his authority was recognised in territories between the river Surlej and the mountain ranges of Ladakh, Kara- koram, Hindukush and Sulaiman. Although Mughal and Afghan rules were displaced from Punjab, the new administration which Ranjit Singh or the other Sikh rulers before him had introduced remained, like the Maratha polity, a care- ful mix between the Mughal system and local traditions.

Trade and commerce flourished in Punjab because a powerful state under Ranjit Singh provided safe passage to traders and their caravans; but still land revenue remained the main source of income for the state. And although the amount of land rev- enue collection increased, about 40 per cent of it was alienated as jagir. Local traditional hierarchies and the concept of a cen- tralised monarchical state thus existed in a delicately balanced rela- tionship, or in other words, in the dualism between 'national' and 'local' systems of governance.

This process of incorporation and adjustment as a part of the construction of a monarchical state could be seen at the cultural level as well, where the Khalsa attempt to con- struct an exclusive Sikh identity gradually incorporated the non- Khalsa Sikhs or the sahajdharis as well.

Within a decade of his death independent Sikh rule disappeared from Punjab, as struggle for power among the mighty Sikh chiefs and the royal family feuds helped the English to take over without much difficulty-a story we will return to in a short while. In the eighteenth century, a few smaller states, apart from the larger powers described earlier, had also emerged in north India by taking advantage of the weakness of the Mughal empire.

The Jat kingdom of Bharatpur is an important example of this. The Jats were an agriculturist and pastoral caste inhabiting the Delhi-Mathura region. Caste affinity with their zamindars brought solidarity within the community and they began to revolt against the Mughal state from the time of Jahangir. The first revolt of the Jat peasants took place in and the emperor himself had to proceed to suppress this rebellion.

In the jars revolted again; this time the Mughal imperial commander Bishen Singh Kachhwa achieved some success against them, but failed to curb their power completely. In this way, first the local zamindar Gokla and then Rajaram and Churaman Jat used the discontent of their peasants against the Mughal state and founded the Jat kingdom at Bharatpur.

Mughal authorities to recognise him. He successfully withstood a siege by Abdali's army and supported the Marathas in the Third Bat- tle of Panipat. However, as for the organisation of this rebel polity, the Jat state, although founded with the active support of the peas- ants, continued to retain its feudal character. The state had to depend on the zamindars who held both administrative and revenue powers and their revenue demands sometimes were even higher than those under the Mughal system.

Suraj Mal in the s tried to reduce this dependence on the overmighty kinsmen and members of his caste, began to drive them off from positions of power, tried to raise an army with foreigners and introduced the Mughal system of revenue collection.

A couple of small Afghan kingdoms were also established in north India following the weakening of the Mughal empire. The Afghans, who started migrating to India from the fifteenth century, were bands of roving warlords, who continually moved from camp to camp. During the early phase of Afghan state formation in India in the fifteenth-sixteenth century, the Lodi Sultanate remained only "a pastoral confederation of tribal lords".

In the mid-sixteenth century, Sher Shah Suri during his rule in Delhi D , transformed this horizontal structure of Afghan polity into a vertical relationship based on military service and direct loyalty to the king. Thus tribal principles of equality and inherited rights were replaced with the concept of centralised power, subordination and royal prerogatives. But Sher Shah's rule did not last long and the Afghans continued to operate as a fluid ethnic group of mercenary soldiers in the military labour market of north lndia.

The breakdown of authority in north India that followed Nadir Shah's invasion gave opportunity to another Afghan leader, Ali Muhammad Khan, to establish a petty kingdom of Rohilkhand at the foothills of the Himalayas. But the new kingdom acquired hardly any influence at all, as it suffered heavily at the hands of the neighbouring powers, like the Marathas, jars, Awadh and later the English.

Another independent Afghan kingdom to the east of Delhi in the area around Farukhabad was established by Ahmad Khan Bangash. Apart from the successor states and the rebel states, which came into existence following the weakening of the Mughal empire, there were also a few principalities, like the Rajput kingdoms, Mysore or Travancore, which already enjoyed considerable amount of auton- omy in the past and now in the eighteenth century became com- pletely independent.

Gradually pro- fessional specialisation was offering these people ethnic identities, Rajput being one of them, as social mobility from peasant to Raj- put became a frequent occurrence during this period. It was by sixteenth-seventeenth century that the Rajputs came to be organised into about twenty major clans, with their chiefs gradually establish- ing their centralised control over territory, with the patronage of the Mughal emperors following a policy of indirect rule.

Since the time of Akbar, different Rajput chiefs were being incorporated into the Mughal structure as peshkashi zamindars. They paid an annuaJ trib- ute peshkash to the Mughal emperor as a mark of subordination, and enjoyed autonomy in matters of internal administration.

Many of them were also given high military ranks within the Mughal army and contributed to the strength of the empire, and in return were given help in their effort to consolidate their own control over their kingdoms. Thus as many of the Rajput chiefs sought to claim cen- tralised authority in their territories, this significantly affected the power relations within the Rajput states based on land ownership. Previously, entitlement to land depended on inherited rights given by the brotherhood of the clan or marriage relations.

But now grad- ually this relationship of "corporate egalitarianism", as Norman Zieglar calls it, was replaced by the hierarchical principles of service and loyalty that entitled clients to pattas on land. When someone rebelled, he was helped by his own immediate kinsmen and their marriage alliances; but rebels when unsuccessful were usually accommodated within the polity and therefore rebellion happened to be an accepted norm of political behaviour.

Even in the early nineteenth century, in a Rajput polity like Sirohi, the darbar remained "a synthesis of the powers of the sovereign and the nobles", and "there was not a single noble To put it in another way, Rajput polities, to quote Norbad Pea- body, "were built on webs of criss-crossing, non-exclusive political relationships that produced state formations chat were neither founded on the basis of territorial integrity nor absolute and exclu- sive political loyalties.

In the seven- teenth century during the time of Aurangzeb the harmonious rela- tionship between the two seemed to break down, though, contrary to popular historical myths, this was not because of religious reac- tions or Rajput nationalism.

Aurangzeb did not discriminate against the Rajput sardars in matters of recruitment; but he could hardly tolerate the continuous territorial expansion of Mewar under Raj Singh at the expense of other Rajput chieftains, as this would contra- vene the traditional Mughal policy of balance of power.

So to con- tain him; he began to patronise other neighbouring Rajput sardars. The situation actually began to take an ugly turn when he interfered in the succession question of Marwar. After the death of Rana jaswant Singh, a son was born to Rani Hari, but Aurangzeb refused to recognise him as the new Rana and instead put up Inder Singh as his own candidate for the position.

Such interference was not unprecedented, as in the past the Mughal emperors had used clan rivalries and exerted their right to appoint successors to Rajput states. And now, particularly as Marwar was situated in the strategic route between Agra and Ahmedabad, it could not be left in charge of a child ruler. The question of religious difference did not arise, as the Maharani was prepared to accept Sharia and pay a higher peshkash if her son Ajit Singh's claim was recognised.

But when this did not happen, the Rather sardars, ably helped by Mewar, rose in revolt against the Mughal empire. The other Rajput clans, like the Kachchwas, Haras, Bhartis and the Rathors of Bekanir, did not participate in this revolt of ; some of them even supported the Mughals. Indeed, the movement soon dissipated due to internal rivalries among the Rajput sardars, each crying to consoli- date or expand territorial control at the expense of other clans.

In the sec- ond half of the eighteenth century, the Rajput polities had to face constant depredations of the Marathas and Afghans, although none of them succeeded in permanently subjugating the region. In south India the emergence of Mysore as a significant power in the mid-eighteenth century was most spectacular. Originally a vice- royalty under the Vijaynagara empire in the sixteenth century, Mysore was gradually transformed into an autonomous principality by the Wodeyar dynasty.

Its centralised military power began to increase from the late seventeenth century under Chikkadevaraja Wodeyar ,66 but it reached its real period of glory under Haidar Ali. A man of humble origin, Haidar had started his career as a junior officer in the Mysore army and gradually rose to promi- nence. Haidar modernised his army with French experts, who trained an efficient infantry and artillery and infused European discipline into the Mysore army.

It was organised on a European model through the system of risalas, with a clear chain of command going up to the ruler. Each risala had a fixed number of soldiers, with provision for weaponry and modes of transport and a commander appointed directly by Haidar himself. His power was further consolidated by the subjugation of the local warrior chiefs or hereditary overlords like deshmukhs and palegars poligars , who had until then complete mastery over the countryside through their control over agricultural surpluses and local temples.

Haidar, and later his son Tipu Sultan, introduced the system of imposing land taxes directly on the peas- ants and collecting them through salaried officials and in cash, thus enhancing enormously the resource base of the state. This land reve- nue system was based on detailed survey and classification of land; sometimes fixed rents and sometimes a share of the produce were collected from different categories of land, such as wet or dry lands, the rate of rent varying according to the productivity of soil.

It did not completely dispense with the Mughal institution of jagir, but restricted it to a very small proportion of the available land. Even his arch enemies had to concede that "his country was the best cultivated and its population the most flourishing in India". He sent ambassadors to France to bring in European technology, went on to build a navy, with ambi- tion to participate in oceanic trade.

He launched in what can be described as a "state commercial corporation", with plans to set up factories outside Mysore. In course of time Mysore state began to participate in a lucrative trade in valuable goods like sandalwood, rice, silk, coconut, sulphur etc. But his plans of modernisation went far beyond his resources and therefore, Mysore remained, as Irfan Habib argues, "far away from a real opening to modern civilization".

Its territo- rial ambitions and trading interests got it engaged in a state of con- stant warfare, which overshadowed all other aspects of its history during this period. Haidar Ali had invaded and annexed Malabar and Calicut in , thus expanding the frontiers of Mysore signifi- cantly. On the other hand, the boundaries of the Maratha kingdom extended over the coastal areas of Konkan and Malabar, which made conflict with Mysore inevitable.

There was also conflict with the other powers in the region, like Hyderabad and then the English, on whom Haidar Ali inflicted a heavy defeat near Madras in After his death in , his son Tipu Sultan followed his father's policies. His rule came to an end with a defeat at the hands of the English in he died defending his capital Srirangapatnam. We shall return to that story shortly, but before that it is important to remember that in a significant way Tipu's reign represented a dis- continuity in eighteenth century Indian politics, as his kingship, argues Kate Brittlebank , was rooted firmly in a strong regional tradition.

But he too "did not com- pletely sever links" with the Mughal monarch, who still commanded respect in the subcontinent. Being a "realist" as he was, Tipu recog- nised Mughal authority when it suited him and defied it when it did nor.? It gained in impor- tance after when its king Marranda Varma started expanding his dominions with the help of a strong and modern army trained along Western lines and equipped with modern weapons.

The Dutch were ousted from the region; the English were made to accept his terms of trade; local feudal chiefs were suppressed; and smaller principalities governed by collateral branches of the royal family were taken over.

By the beginning of the s, Varma had con- structed a powerful bureaucratic state, which required control over larger resources. He resolved this problem by proclaiming a royal monopoly, first on pepper trade and then on all trade in the prosper- ous Malabar coast. Some of the profit that the state earned in this way was ploughed back into the community through development of irrigation, transport and communication systems and various other charities.

Although Travancore was not formally within the Mughal system, "royal and noble trade" was becoming an established Mughal tradition since the seventeenth century.

In his death towards the closing years of the eighteenth century the region lost its former glory and soon succumbed to British pre - sure, accepting a Resident in However, the internal social organisation of the state, marked by the dominance of the Nair com- munity in administration, landholding and social spheres continued for another fifty years, yielding to the forces of change in the second half of the nineteenth century. There was in other words, a transformation of the polity, rather than complete collapse.

Talking about Mughal Bengal, Richard Eaton concludes that "even while central power in Delhi declined, render- ing Bengal effectively independent from the second decade of the eighteenth century on, the ideological and bureaucratic structure of Mughal imperialism continued to expand in the Bengal delta". At a politi- cal level all these states continually made adjustments between concepts of centralised kingship and local loyalties, between pre- bended lordship and hereditary rights, or in more general terms, between centripetal and centrifugal tendencies.

This political heter- ogeneity also favoured the flourishing of a diverse cultural life, where religious strife was not a part of ordinary social life-despite some tension between the Shia and Sunni Muslims in Awadh-and where side by side with orthodoxy, there were also plebeian, syncre- tistic and rationalist schools of thought, which were patronised by the regional rulers.

Thus the devotional religion of Vaishnavism flourished in Bengal," the Firangi Mahal blossomed in Lucknow as a rationalist school of Islamic thought78 and even after the decline of its main centre at Bijapur the Deccani Sufi tradition and its literary culture survived in Hyderabad and Arcot.

Sarish Chandra has talked about the resilience of the economy, as trade, both internal and external, continued without disruption and even prospered.

There was now an expanding com- mercial economy and the revenue farmers and merchants with money power increased their political influence. Indigenous bankers handled considerable amounts of cash and operated extensive finan- cial networks across the country to transfer credit through hundis.

And as one theory would have it, they were now supposedly favour- ing the regional elite, rather than the central Mughal authority. Bayly has argued, resulted in the decline of the centralised Mughal power.

The English East India Company was founded by a royal charter on 31 December , as a joint stock company of London merchants uniting to combat Dutch competition in Eastern trade. It was given monopoly of all trade from England to the East and was permitted, even in an age dominated by mercantilist ideas, to carry bullion out of the country to finance its trade. It was not, however, given any overt mandate at that time to carry on conquest or colonisation.

The Company formally started trading in India from after settling scores with the Portuguese, who had arrived at the scene earlier. A [arman from Mughal emperor Jahangir gave them permission to establish their factories or warehouses in India, the first factory being set up in Surat in the western coast.

This was the modest beginning from where the Company gradually extended its trading activities to other parts of India, with Bombay, Calcutta and Madras emerging by the end of the seventeenth century as three major centres of its activities.

Political expansion started from the middle of the eighteenth century, and within hundred years almost the whole of India was under its control. Marshall has argued that until i. Authority at home remained divided between the Court of Directors of the East India Company and the tenuous regulatory power of the government, with no one seemingly interested in acquiring territories in India until , although by then a large empire had already been acquired.

Marshall acknowledged in an earlier essay that there was considerable commercial expansion during the early eighteenth century and the obvious connection between trade and empire was also hard to ignore.

Its history, therefore, needs to be traced in the developments of eighteenth-century Indian politics, where the Eng- lish were only "responding to these developments and exploiting the opportunities that came their way".

And even after the s, argues C. Bayly, the imperial expansion was primarily, motivated by the fiscal and mili- tary needs of the Company, rather than interests of trade-the "free traders [being] nothing more than the fly on the wheel".

There is, first of all, considerable evi- dence to suggest that from the very beginning use of force to promote trade was an axiom in the practices of the East India Company; its trade was always armed trade. But the situation began to improve with the restoration of Charles II to the throne of England.

To secure wealth and independ- ence for the crown, both he and his brother James II followed an aggressive commercial policy abroad. In real terms, this involved the use of naval power in the Indian Ocean and in the Indian coastal areas, where fortified bases and enclaves in the factory ports were constructed as a part of regular policy, which, in Philip Lawson's words, may be described as "the moral economy of English gunnery in these local markets".