Number of words: 730

The East India Company had received permission from the Mughal Emperor to start a factory at Surat early in the seventeenth century. Some years later they purchased a patch of land in the south and founded Madras. In 1662 the island of Bombay was presented to Charles II of England by way of dowry from Portugal, and he transferred it to the company. In 1690 the city of Calcutta was founded. Thus by the end of the seventeenth century the British had gained a number of footholds in India and established some bridge-heads on the Indian coastline. They spread inland slowly. The battle of Plassey in 1757 for the first time brought a vast area under their control, and within a few years Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, and the east coast were subject to them. The next big step forward was taken about forty years later, at the beginning of the nineteenth century. This brought them to the gates of Delhi. The third major advance took place after the last defeat of the Marathas in 1818; the fourth in 1849, after the Sikh wars, completed the picture.

Thus the British have been in the city of Madras a little over 300 years; they have ruled Bengal, Bihar, etc., for 187 years; they extended their domination over the south 145 years ago; they established themselves in the United Provinces (as they are now called), central and western India about 125 years ago; and they spread to the Punjab ninety-five years ago. (This is being written in June, 1944.) Leaving out the city of Madras as too small an area, there is a difference of nearly 100 years between their occupation of Bengal and that of the Punjab. During this period British policy and administrative methods changed repeatedly. These changes were dictated by new developments in England as well as the consolidation of British rule in India. The treatment of each newly acquired area varied according to these changes, and depended also on the character of the ruling group which had been defeated by the British. Thus in Bengal, where the victory had been very easy, the Moslem landed gentry were looked upon as the ruling classes and a policy was pursued to break their power. In the Punjab, on the other hand, power was seized from the Sikhs and there was no initial antagonism between the British and the Moslems. In the greater part of India the Marathas had been opponents of the British.

A significant fact which stands out is that those parts of India which have been longest under British rule are the poorest to-day. Indeed some kind of chart might be drawn up to indicate the close connection between length of British rule and progressive growth of poverty. A few large cities and some new industrial areas do not make any essential difference to this survey. What is noteworthy is the condition of the masses as a whole, and there can be no doubt that the poorest parts of India are Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, and parts of the Madras presidency; the mass level and standards of living are highest in the Punjab. Bengal certainly was a very rich and prosperous province before the British came. There may be many reasons for these contrasts and differences. But it is difficult to get over the fact that Bengal, once so rich and flourishing, after 187 years of British rule, accompanied, as we are told, by strenuous attempts on the part of the British to improve its condition and to teach its people the art of self-government, is to-day, a miserable mass of poverty-stricken, starving, and dying people.

Bengal had the first full experience of British rule in India. That rule began with outright plunder, and a land revenue sys- tem which extracted the uttermost farthing not only from the living but also from the dead cultivators. The English historians of India, Edward Thompson and G. T. Garrett, tell us that ‘a gold-lust unequalled since the hysteria that took hold of the Spaniards of Cortes’ and Pizarro’s age filled the English mind. Bengal in particular was not to know peace again until she has been bled white.’ ‘For the monstrous financial immorality of the English conduct in India for many a year after this, Clive was largely responsible.’*

Excerpted from pages 320-322 of ‘Jawaharlal Nehru The Discovery of India, by Jawaharlal Nehru