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

Notes their sympathy for them. The taluqdars of Oudh were the hardest hit. In the words of Asoka
Mehta:” Out of the 25,543 villages included in their estates at the time of the annexation of the
kingdom, 13,640 paying a revenue of Rs. 35,06,519 were settled with taluqdars, while 11,903
villages paying Rs 32,08,319 were settled with persons other than taluqdars... the taluqdars had
lost half their villages, some had lost their all.” The ruthless manner in which the Thomasonian
system was carried into effect may be clear from the resumption of the revenue of free villages
granted for the temple Lakshmi in Jhansi.
British economic policies in India worked against the interests of Indian trade and industry. The
East India Company used its political power to destroy Indian handicrafts and industry and
developed it into an appendage of a foreign exploitative system.
The ruination of Indian industry increased the pressure on agriculture and land, which lopsided
development in turn resulted in the pauperization of the country in general.

Writing in 1853 Karl Marx, a very shrewd observer, very aptly remarked: “It was
the British intruder who broke up the Indian hand-loom and destroyed the spinning-
wheel. England began with depriving the Indian cottons from the European market;
it then introduced twist into Hindustan and in the end inundated the very mother
country of cotton with cottons”.

Social and Religious Causes: Like all conquering people the English rulers of India were rude
and arrogant towards the subject people. However, the English were infected with a spirit of
racialism. The rulers followed a policy of contempt towards the Indians and described the Hindus
as barbarians with hardly any trace of culture and civilisation, while the Muslims were dubbed as
bigots, cruel and faithless.
The European officers in India were very exacting and over-bearing in their social behaviour. The
Indian was spoken as nigger and addressed as a suar or pig, an epithet most resented by the
Muslims. Even the best among them like Bird and Thomason insulted “ the native gentry whenever
they had the opportunity of doing so”.
European officers and European soldiers on their hunting sprees were often guilty of indiscriminate
criminal assaults on Indians. The European juries, which alone could try such cases, acquitted
European criminals with light or no punishment. Such discrimination rankled in the Indian mind
like a festering sore.
It may be easy to withstand physical and political injustices but religious persecution touches
tender conscience and forms complexes that are not easy to eradicate. That one of the aims of the
English in Indian was to convert the Indians to Christianity is clear from the speech of Mr.
Mangles, the Chairman of the Directors of the East India Company, in the House of Commons:
“Providence has entrusted the extensive empire of Hindustan to England in order that the banner
of Christ should wave triumphant from one end of India to the other. Everyone must exert all his
strength that there may be no dilatoriness on any account in continuing in the country the grand
work of making all Indians Christians,” Major Edwards had openly declared that “the
Christianization of India was to be the ultimate end of our continued possession of it.” Vir Savarkar
has pointed that the superior military and civil officers used to abuse the very names of Ram and
Mohammad and prevail upon the sepoys and the civilians to embrace the Christian faith. Sepoys
were promised promotions if they accepted the True Faith. The missionaries were Given ample
facilities and the American Missionary Society at Agra had set up an extensive printing press.
Idolatry was denounced, Hindu gods and goddesses ridiculed, Hindu superstitions dubbed as
ignorance. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan mentions that “it has been commonly believed that government
appointed missionaries and maintained them at its own cost.” The Evangelical opinion was voiced
by Lord Shaftesbury who believed that the failure to Christianize India was the cause of the whole
trouble.

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