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

Notes • Dalhousie who was not in favour of retaining an imperium in imperio had recognised the
succession of Prince Faqir-ul-Din, but imposed many strict conditions on him. After Faqir-
ud-Din’s death in 1856, Lord Canning announced that the prince next in succession would
have to renounce the regal title and the ancestral Mughal palaces in addition to the
renunciations agreed upon by Prince Faqir-ul-Din.
• The ‘absentee soverieigntyship’ of the British rule in India was an equally important political
factor which worked on the minds of the Indian people against the British. The Pathans and
the Mughals who had conquered India had, in course of time, settled in India and become
Indians.
• In the military services, the highest post attainable by an Indian was that of a Subedar on a
salary of Rs. 60 or Rs. 70 and in the civil services that of Sadr Amin on a salary of Rs. 500 per
month. The chances of promotion were very few. The Indians thought that British were out
to reduce them to ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water.”
• The administrative machinery of the East India Company was ‘inefficient and insufficient’.
The land revenue police was most unpopular. Many districts in the newly-annexed states
were in permanent revolt and military had to be sent to collect the land revenue. In the
district of Panipat, for example, 136 horsemen were maintained for the collection of land
revenue, while only 22 were employed for the performance of police duties.
• The Inam Commission appointed in 1852 in Bombay confiscated as many as 20,000 estates.
Thus, the new land revenue settlements made by the East India Company in the newly-
annexed states drove poverty in the ranks of the aristocracy without benefiting the peasantry
which groaned under the weight of heavy assessments and excessive duties.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.”
• The activities of Christian padris and efforts of Dalhousie and Bethune towards woman
education made Indians feel that through education the British were going to conquer their
civilisation. Even ‘education offices’ set up by the British were styled as shaitani daftars.
• During the Governor- Generalship of Lord Dalhousie three mutinies had occurred in the
army—the mutiny of the 22nd N. I. in 1849, of the 66th N. I. in 1850, and the 38th N. I. in
1852.
• In the opinion of Maulana Azad, the annexation of Oudh “marked the beginning of a rebellious
mood in the army generally and in the Bengal army in particular... it gave a rude shock to the
people... they suddenly realised that the power which the Company had acquired through
their service and sacrifice was utilised to liquidate their own king”.

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