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Indian Freedom Struggle (1707–1947 A.D.)

Notes England. The Court of Directors retained their patronage and their right of dismissing their servants.
The head of the Board was at first one of the Secretaries of State without special salary, but after 1793
a special President of the Board was appointed and this officer was ultimately responsible for the
government of British India until he was succeeded in 1858 by the Secretary of State for India. Pitt’s
India Act thus settled the main lines of the Company’s Home and Indian Government down to 1858.
Secondly, the Act reduced the number of members of the Executive Council to three, of whom the
Commander-in-Chief was to be one. It also modified the Councils of Madras and Bombay on the
pattern of that of Bengal.
Among the most striking provisions of the Act was the prohibition not merely of all aggressive wars
in India but of all treaties of guarantee with Indian Princes like those with the nawabs of Carnatic and
Oudh on the ground that “to pursue schemes of conquest and extension of dominion in India are
measures repugnant to the wish, the honour and the policy of this nation.” But this declaration was
more honoured in breach than in observance in subsequent years. In fact the Act was a very skilful
measure bearing all the marks of a political compromise. Burke admitted that it was “as able and
skilful a performance for its own purposes as ever issued from the wit of man.” Pitt, as Sir Courtney
Ilbert has pointed out, has done two things: (i) he had avoided the charge of conferring patronage on
the Crown, and (ii) the appearance of radically altering the Company and the Government in England.
Self-Assessment
1. Choose the correct options:
(i) ............... was the first Governor General of India.
(a) Lord Hastings (b) Waren Hestings (c) Dalhousie (d) Cornwallis.
(ii) The Supreme Court was established in Calcutta in the time of ............... .
(a) Waren Hastings (b) Dalhousie (c) Cornwallis (d) Lord Hastings.
(iii) Asiatic Association of Bengal was established in ............... .
(a) 1781 (b) 1783 (c) 1784 (d) 1788.
(iv) Who is regarded as the fever of civil services and police service.
(a) Lord Kening (b) Cornwallis (c) Lord Hastings (d) Dalhousie
(v) Who propagated subsidiary Alliance?
(a) Dalhousie (b) Wellesley (c) Cornwallis (d) Lord Canning.

2.4 Summary

• The decades following the retirement of Lord Hastings saw the rapid increase of the influence
of the Company in the internal administration of the states. The British Residents were usually
the organs of communication between the Government of India and the rulers of Indian states.
Gradually their influence and power increased. Mountstuart Elphinstone explained his work
as Resident thus—intelliegence work, reporting situation of native Raja’s armies and palace
intrigues, performing military duties.
• The Charter Act of 1833 metamorphosed the character of the Company. The Company was
asked to wind up its commercial business. It assumed political functions in fact and name. A
radical change followed in the policy towards the Indian states. The Company adopted the
practice of insisting on its prior sanction and approval in all matter of succession in states. Later
they found it practicable to advise the princes on the choice ministers.
• Even after the establishment of the East India Company’s undisputed supremacy in 1818, the policy
of the East India Company vis-a-vis the Indian states was “chaotic, indefinite and contradictory.”
• “Besides the rights vested by treaty in the Company, there had arisen, under no sanction but
that of superior power on the one side and reluctant acquiescence on the other, a body of
precedents relating to successions and to interference in the internal administration of the states.
Together these constituted the Company’s paramountcy— undefined, undefinable, but always
tending to expand under the strong pressure of political circumstances.”

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