British Empire

Royal Prerogative, the British Empire in India and the Jurisprudence of Plunder

Rahul Govind’s book establishes the centrality of forms of royal authority to the conquests of the East India Company in the Indian subcontinent from 1600 to 1900.

Excerpted with permission from The King’s Plunder, The King’s Bodies: Prize Laws, The British Empire and the Modern Legal Order by Rahul Govind. Published by Tulika Books and distributed internationally by Columbia University Press.

This book establishes the centrality of forms of royal authority to the conquests of the East India Company in the Indian subcontinent from 1600 to 1900. A critical aspect of such conquests was the jurisprudence of plunder or “prize law” concerning the rules for the acquisition of property from enemies during hostilities and war and its distribution among the victors. In other words, the question revolved around the spoils of victory with no recognition of any rights of the vanquished. While parliamentary statutes on prize existed from the late 17th century, it was well-recognised that the original right to prize belonged to the King/Queen as part of his/her rights to conquest; a right which could be exercised independent of parliament. As this book argues, specific royal grants to prize money authorised the great territorial conquests of the East India Company in India. Though initially concerned with maritime warfare, prize law jurisprudence was transferred to territorial ‘acquisitions’ in the context of India.

By focusing on the sources and mechanics of prize law as central to imperial conquest, the book argues for the impossibility of separating England and imperial conquests by underlining 1) the central unifying role of monarchy across the range of jurisdictions that characterised the British Empire where political identity lay in personal allegiance and not in any notion of citizenship and 2) the nexus binding a specific jurisprudence of warfare, ‘trade’ and the emergence of international law, all of which were tethered to an agenda of conquest, in the making of modern state systems. The book thereby shows that the very methods of modern jurisprudence and political philosophy as to be found in figures from Jeremy Bentham to John Stuart Mill lies in the obfuscation and concealment of this history.

Most works on the East India Company and its conquests in the eighteenth century appear to give little thought to prize, prize money and plunder. The crucial legitimizing and governing law on prize money, sealed by His Majesty King George the Second, could be traced to September 1757 and January 1758, where the Company was granted powers to ‘cede, restore or dispose of any fortresses or any fortresses districts or territories, acquired by the conquest from any of the said Indian princes or governments’. The letters-patent of September 1757 and January 1758 [Prize charters] did not emerge in vacuo, but was the response to applications that the East India Company had made in 1756 to the attorney and solicitor generals, the pre-eminent law officers of the Crown, who in turn had forwarded the application with suitable recommendation and comment to William Pitt, one of the secretaries of the Crown, to be in turn forwarded to the King. With the application the law officers appended their own draft of what would become in essence the letters-patent of 1757 and 1758. In the applications of the East India Company, and the response of the attorney and solicitor general, one might glean the germ of the problems that collected again in the dispute between Company officials and the Court of Directors, and of course the fraught contested tendons of the British Empire.

The Company had written to His Majesty on 11 October 1756 with a request. Alluding to the war with the kingdom of France and the collusion – possible, actual and imaginary – between the latter and the local rulers in Bengal, the petitioners pointed to the fact that in the course of such war that has or may occur, in so far as all conquests were vested directly in him, His Majesty in his sovereignty kindly grant the right, to capture and recapture, ‘for their own [the Company’s] use, all such plunder and booty, ships, vessels, goods, merchandize, treasure and other things whatsoever, which may be taken by any of your petitioners land or sea forces from any of your majesty’s enemies, or from the Indian enemies of your petitioners’. Unless such right was granted, the petition argued, it would be difficult to maintain the armies that were required for the carrying out of such trade in the east. Encouragement to trade was conditional on the encouragement that could be given to those engaged in the arts of war. This requesting of powers over the use and disposal of territories and objects acquired in the course of war, treaty or grant with local principalities, was of course always subject to His Majesty’s ‘right of sovereignty’. The Company in its applications had more concrete questions regarding the norms to be followed, specifically in the distribution of prize between Admiral Watson, as representative of His Majesty, and the Company officers in the recent case of Gheria and Calcutta.

Rahul Govind
The King’s Plunder, The King’s Bodies: Prize Laws, The British Empire and the Modern Legal Order
Tulika Books, 2023

From the response and considered suggestions of the law officers, it is clear that the Company asked whether its actions were governed by the lately promulgated Act of 1756, passed in the context of the war with France. Writing on 16 August 1757, the law officers were responding to requests regarding the re-taking of Calcutta, and not a post-Plassey settlement. They wrote that in their considered opinion, the said Act of 1756 referred only to the war (with France) and could not be applicable to the case of the Company’s relations with powers in the subcontinent. And so, the most apposite way to deal with the Company’s question regarding its authority in such relations with local powers, in the event of war and with regard to prize, would be to apply and request the requisite letters-patent from His Majesty. With regard to what is re-taken, the law officers took the view that as far as the territory of Calcutta was concerned, it would be restored to the Company. However, ‘All places newly conquered accrue to his sovereignty and is vested in his majesty by right of conquest.’ All movable goods that had been altered while in the possession of the enemy as well as newly acquired movable goods would belong to His Majesty, ‘in whose name and under whose protection, and by the assistance of whose fleet, the same is regained’. These suggestions led to the letters-patent issued in September 1757. The Company in the meantime had written to Fort St George that they had been given a specific grant by the King, commending the agreement between Admiral Watson and the Secret Committee which stated that all plunder and booty would be deposited until His Majesty made his pleasure known. The result – the letters-patent of September 1757 – was therefore sent to the subcontinent. However, in response to further petitions and requests for further clarifications, on 24 December, the law officers elaborated on the urgent questions of sovereignty and prize.

While making no specific reference to Plassey although writing in a vein that would encompass actions such as the Battle of Plassey, the law officers reiterated that all conquests as such were vested with His Majesty, as also specific goods and items acquired therein. However, ‘in respect to such places as have been or shall be acquired by treaty or grant from the Mogul or any of the Indian princes or governments, your majesty’s letters-patent are not necessary, the property of the soil vesting in the company by the Indian grants, subject to only your majesty’s right of sovereignty over the settlements as English settlements, and over the inhabitants as English subjects, who carry with them your majesty’s laws, wherever they form colonies and receive your majesty’s protection, by virtue of your royal charters’… Allegiance was owed to the King despite the possible diversity of place and law. The law officers clearly wanted to deny the Company the sovereign authority to carry out conquest and make peace, which ultimately vested in His Majesty– specifically, His Majesty’s prerogative. Perhaps more significant however is the fact that the rights of the Company were being derived exclusively from a royal charter [the royal letters-patents referred to above] and not from any [parliamentary] Prize statute.

The precariousness and complexity of deciding prize and its legitimate claimants is evident in the attack, capture and plunder of the properties in Fort Vidyadurg in Benaras in 1776, amounting to 300,000 pounds. This incident received a great deal of publicity in the trial of Warren Hastings, linked as it was to what was called the charge of Benaras. After attempting to arrest Raja Chait Singh, the English attacked his fortress, Vidyadurg, where the raja’s mother and wife lived. It was believed to have housed much of Chait Singh’s property and money. The course of the trial revealed that Hastings had allowed Major Popham to capture, plunder and divide whatever property was found in the fortress. This was indicated in a private letter to Major Popham which sanctioned the plunder. Later Hastings tried to retrieve the divided plunder but did not succeed. While recognizing the right of soldiers to plunder, Hastings believed that the distribution should have been done under the aegis of the Company. Yet the fact of plunder and prize was not denied, even though Hastings argued in his defence that he did not give any direct order to plunder the fortress. On the other hand, Major Popham stated before the House of Lords that Hastings’s private instructions were well known, and it was understood by the army to mean that they did indeed have the right to plunder. In this context, it was argued that Hastings would have to take responsibility, since plunder could be recognized as prize only if it followed a legal procedure, whereas in the case of Vidyadurg no such procedure was followed.

British spellings from the archives/records have been retained and end notes have been removed.

Rahul Govind teaches history at the University of Delhi.

Ghana’s Stolen Crown Jewels Are Going Home – but Only for 3 Years

Exactly 150 years after they were plundered by a British military expedition, more than 30 exquisite pieces of Asante gold held by the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum are being returned to Ghana on a ‘long-term loan’.

In a landmark act of restitution, Ghana’s ‘crown jewels’ are going home. Exactly 150 years after they were plundered by a British military expedition, more than 30 exquisite pieces of Asante gold held by the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum are being returned. They will go on display in a museum in Kumasi, the capital of Ghana’s Asante region.

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty

Museums in the West are stuffed full of artefacts that were seized, looted or sold under duress. If it wasn’t for the legacy of the Empire, some of Britain’s main museums would be bare. Tristram Hunt, the director of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, says the British military ransacking of Kumasi in 1874, during which the gold was taken, ‘stands as one of the most infamous episodes in the history of British colonial plunder’.

The decision to send some of the gold back to Ghana, Hunt insists, ‘is not about reparative justice for the colonial past’ but that’s how many around the world may see it. And it will fuel the debate about how much of the spoils of the Empire and war should be given back: the Elgin marbles, part of the Parthenon sculptures, could soon be on display in Athens; some Benin bronzes in British museums are being returned to Nigeria; should all museum items acquired in questionable circumstances be sent back to the country of origin?

Sad to say, loot and plunder have been part of military conquest across the world and through the centuries. The word ‘loot’ is derived from Hindi and, it seems, developed during the early part of British military expansion in India. While deriving booty from war is ages old, Western imperialism brought plunder – of wealth, fine arts, sacred items and cultural heirlooms – to a new level.

Garnet Wolseley, the British general who led the punitive expedition against the Asante king, had form when it came to serving the Empire. In his 20s, he fought at Lucknow during the 1857 Rebellion – and was contemptuous of the people the British colonised. His burning of Kumasi and seizing of the Asante gold was seen in Britain at the time as an act of heroism: he was promoted, received the formal thanks of both houses of Parliament and was awarded a grant of £25,000 (a staggering amount and the equivalent today of £3.5 million or Rs 35 crore).

The gold items seized, and now being returned, include a sword of state and a ceremonial pipe, as well as badges worn by members of the ruler’s entourage responsible for ‘washing’ the soul of the king. There were not simply exceptional pieces of craftsmanship, but items which represented the authority of the ruler – the Asantehene.

Tristram Hunt has described the items as the Asante equivalent of Britain’s crown jewels and believes their return represents ‘a new spirit of partnership and cultural exchange’. Nana Oforiatta Ayim, a Ghanaian cultural expert, said it’s ‘a sign of some kind of healing and commemoration for the violence that happened’.

The agreement about the return has been made not with the Ghanaian government but with the current Asantehene, Otumfo Osei Tutu II, and the gold will be displayed at the palace museum in Kumasi. But the items are not simply being handed back to the Asante royal family. They are being given , initially of three years. This has angered many heritage experts in Africa, who say it’s disgraceful that Britain should lend back items its army looted rather than making an act of unqualified restitution.

The museum directors in London are constrained by legislation which outlaws the big museums from giving away or selling any of their principal holdings. That law could be changed, of course, but there is no early prospect of new legislation.

Some British commentators justify the plunder on display in British museum by arguing that it is kept well, properly conserved and can be seen by millions of visitors from around the world who come to London every year. But the tide is running in the opposite direction. It’s likely that many more heritage items will return home to be displayed in the countries, and amid the cultures, in which they were created.

But just in case you are wondering, don’t expect the Koh-i-Noor to be heading back. It’s not simply that this spectacular diamond is now part of Britain’s crown jewels, nor that there’s no real clarity about whether Britain stole the stone. There are three nations – Pakistan and Afghanistan and India – that claim the Koh-i-Noor, so the diplomatic complications of any restitution would be too daunting.

Andrew Whitehead is an honorary professor at the University of Nottingham in the UK and a former BBC India correspondent.

London Calling: How does India look from afar? Looming world power or dysfunctional democracy? And what’s happening in Britain, and the West, that India needs to know about and perhaps learn from? This fortnightly column helps forge the connections so essential in our globalising world.

An Immoral Defence of the British Empire

Nigel Biggar’s ‘Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning’ contains no reckoning at all.

There was a time in the 17th and 18th centuries when conquerors from the West went out to convert pagans and acquire territories with the Bible in one hand and a sword or a gun in the other. Nigel Biggar’s Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning is an example of a commander of the British Empire going out into the world as a herald of a vanished empire with his knowledge of the Bible as his armour and his keyboard/pen as his weapon. Biggar has the letters CBE following his name, he has a PhD in Christian theology from the University of Chicago and is the Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford.

The subtitle of this book is misleading because there is no reckoning here. It is a defence of the British Empire. For Biggar, the British Empire, to use the words of W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman in that classic, 1066 and All That, was “a good thing”.

Nigel Biggar
Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning
William Collins, 2023

Portions of Biggar’s remarkable balance sheet of the empire deserve to be quoted if only to strain the reader’s credulity. The British Empire, according to the gospel of Biggar “was not essentially racist, exploitative or wantonly violent. It showed itself capable of correcting its sins and errors, and learning from them. And, over time, it became increasingly motivated by Christian humanitarianism and intent upon preparing colonized peoples for liberal self-government”. These virtues of empire – a “cause for admiration and pride” for those who, like Biggar, “identify with Britain” – more than make up for the “sins” of empire. What were those sins, according to the gospel writer of the British empire?

Let me quote Biggar again. The “evils” of empire included “brutal slavery; the epidemic spread of devastating disease; economic and social disruption; the unjust displacement of natives by settlers; failures of colonial government to prevent settler abuse and famine; elements of racial alienation and racist contempt; policies of needlessly wholesale cultural suppression; miscarriages of justice; instances of unjustifiable military aggression and the indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force; and the failure to admit native talent to the higher echelons of colonial government on terms of equality quickly enough to forestall the build-up of nationalist resentment”.

As any reader will notice, the two sections quoted run completely contrary to each other. If the first quotation is valid, the second cannot be valid let alone the former compensating or making up for the other. Moreover, a close reading of the text reveals that almost each of the “evils” enumerated by Biggar are actually justified by him in the relevant parts of the book. The other thing to note that is that economic exploitation of the colonies by Britain does not merit a mention in Biggar’s list of “sins”. He offers no explanation of how, to take an example, India – often described by the British rulers, as the brightest jewel in the British crown – became by 1900 one of the poorest countries in the world. Economic exploitation does not feature in Biggar’s list because he does not believe there was any economic exploitation of the colonies and certainly not of India.

Also read: How Colonial Racism Built and Maintains Unjust Global Order

There are a couple ingenuous sleights-of-hand that Biggar uses which deserve to be exposed. After making his own list of the “evils” of empire, Biggar comments, “In the history of the British Empire, there was nothing morally equivalent to Nazi concentration or death camps, or to the Soviet Gulag.” Biggar has obviously not heard of the Cellular Jail in the Andaman Islands which the British constructed as their equivalent of a concentration camp. Ignorance aside, Biggar compares the British Empire to the two most oppressive regimes of the 20th century and on that basis justifies the cruelties and oppressions embedded in the British empire. What could be morally more reprehensible?

Further, Biggar, as a part of his justificatory framework, makes the argument that what are considered (even by him) the more contemptible features of the British Empire were all replicated in the “history of any long-standing state”. Ergo the British Empire should not be singled out for condemnation.

Let us move from these general considerations to some specific points that Biggar tries to make. As an advocate holding a brief for the British Empire, Biggar, to make it convenient for his readers, enumerates the eight questions he wants to address:

(1) was the imperial endeavor driven primarily by greed and the lust to dominate;
(2) should we speak of colonialism and slavery in the same breath, as if they were the same thing;
(3) was the British Empire essentially racist;
(4) how far was it based on the conquest of land;
(5) did it involve genocide;
(6) was it driven fundamentally by the motive of economic exploitation;
(7) since colonial government was not democratic, did that make it illegitimate; and
(8) was the empire essentially violent and was its violence pervasively racist and terroristic.

I have deliberately italicised some words that are used by Biggar when he is setting up his agenda. As is obvious, these words and their implications are both ambiguous and subjective. What one person considers fundamental/essential/pervasive to a historical phenomenon may not necessarily chime with another person’s notions of the same terms. There are no prizes for guessing Biggar’s answers to these questions.

Nigel Biggar. Photo: University of Oxford website

Biggar argues, quite predictably, that there was nothing like the colonial project. In his view, the British empire was not “a single, unitary enterprise with a coherent essence”. To make a caricature of the arguments made by critics of the British Empire, he adds, “No one woke up one sunny morning in London and said, ‘Let’s go and conquer the world’.” Which serious historian has ever made such a suggestion? Biggar asserts that “There was no essential motivation behind the British Empire.” The implication of this assertion is that the colonies were acquired and the British Empire established through a series of accidents. This is worse than flogging a dead horse since the argument goes back to John Seeley, who wrote in the 19th century that the British Empire was acquired in a fit of absentmindedness. No motives, no plans, no strategies – a vast global empire emerged through a concatenation of circumstances. There is an important point of historical method lurking in the assertions made by Seeley and his latter day epigoni.

The logic of empire is located at a different analytical level than in the motives and intentions of the many paladins of the British empire. It is one thing to delve into the manifold secrets of the minds of governors-general and politicians and then to discover that none of them actually wrote down that they wanted to conquer, dominate and exploit large parts of the world. But this cannot lead to the conclusion that the British Empire had no pattern, logic or compulsions. The latter are questions related to structure, not to subjective motivations. This point needs to be reiterated because there is a pronounced tendency among historians like Biggar and his ilk to deliberately ignore the structural logic of empire – a logic which binds together in a single interconnected process the development of capitalism and prosperity in Britain with the political control, the economic exploitation and the impoverishment of the colonies. It is this structural logic and interconnected process that some historians have called the colonial project.

Also read: Goa Remained a Portuguese Colony when India Became Independent

The prejudice embedded in this book is obvious. Again, that prejudice is an old and tedious one – the British set out to civilise the colonies, train them for self-government. What is shocking, however, is the ignorance and the refusal to read what writers and scholars have written about British rule. I concern myself here with only India; I am sure scholars from other parts of the world will notice omissions from their fields of specialisation. Biggar writes without reference to R.C. Dutt, A.K. Bagchi, Ranajit Guha, Partha Chatterjee, Eric Stokes, Brijen Gupta, Holden Furber, Bernard Cohn, Elizabeth Whitcombe, Asiya Siddiqui… the list is endless. And all those named are major historians. Biggar’s book fails the most elementary test of scholarship.

To use Dorothy Parker’s memorable dismissal of a novel: “This is not a book that should be tossed aside lightly, it should be thrown out with great force.” This is an immoral book. But it might earn for Nigel Biggar, CBE, a knighthood: ersatz plumes for a false scholar.

Rudrangshu Mukherjee is chancellor and professor of History at Ashoka University. All views expressed are personal.

Edited by Jahnavi Sen.

Book Review: An Intimate Glimpse Into the Life of a Sindhi ‘British Asian Refugee’

Ram Gidoomal’s book spans continents and relationships with ease while narrating a story of overcoming obstacles.

The most striking – the most intense – experience Ram Gidoomal describes in his memoirs is the feeling that overwhelmed him when he arrived in Bombay at the age of 14. Suddenly, unexpectedly, for the first time in his life, he knew what it felt to fit in – these were people he could relate too, who were like him in many ways. It brought home the paradox of “home” for an immigrant: on one side homesickness for the country of origin, a sense of cultural belonging, allies in appearance, and the freedom from fear these bring. And on the other, the cords of daily life that tie one to the birthplace and local community.

My Silk Road: The Adventures and Struggles of a British Asian Refugee
Ram Gidoomal
Pippa Rann Books and Media U.K.

Ram’s family endured the transition from citizen to refugee twice. Displaced both times by political whim, they experienced a harsh wrenching from community, culture, status and education, and were summarily swept from wealth and comfort to situations of continued struggle – twice. Once as refugees when the Indian subcontinent was partitioned and Pakistan was formed, and the second when his family was deported from Kenya.

As a teenager in immigration queues, he would discover that he was an “alien”. And, despite his academic brilliance and significant contribution to early workplaces, he would remain painfully conscious that he was different.

In this book about his life, Gidoomal begins by describing his happy childhood in Kenya, followed by the challenges of adapting to Britain in the late 1960s – unwelcoming, and one where this family with a multinational trading operation begins afresh with a corner shop – and yet an obvious choice for the time.

There are intimate glimpses into a family of large and complex but congenial groups, and the poignancy of family tragedies including the loss of his birth father and then of his father-figure uncle who brought him up; precious memories handed down from the past, including those of links to the lost homeland of Sindh. There are fascinating peeps into business practices and secret codes among community networks.

Later, during his blissful days with a young family in Switzerland, he was that role-model father who changed his working hours so that he could spend time with his children, returning to office after they went to bed. As the years passed, Ram moved from his life in the corporate world to one centred on social issues and philanthropy, using his business skills to transform others’ lives. His contribution earned him a CBE, Commander of the British Empire, from the Queen of England in 1998.

In between comes a huge, surprising transformation: “By my early twenties, I had lost two fathers but gained a heavenly one in God.”

This wholehearted embracing of Jesus is disconcerting, coming from one whose community sacrificed all they had to escape conversion. As a child in a Sindhi family, Ram grew up Hindu with Sikh influences. At the Aga Khan School in Mombasa, he absorbed Islamic teachings. The choice he later made, with the backdrop of his exceptional intelligence and crystal-clear rationality, resulted from the pull of faith. Succumbing to the warmth of its embrace, he selected a life of devotion to the Church.

Through it all, his Sindhiness remained intact. He writes of his feeling of comfort on reading Matthew chapter 27 verse 59, about Joseph of Arimathea wrapping the body of Jesus in cloth: “The Greek word for this cloth is Sindhon, a cloth from Sindh. A cloth created in my homeland, holding the body of Christ.”

Indeed, the Sindhiness pervades his life: English was the language of instruction but Sindhi was the language his mother spoke to him in, the language the old men swore in, the language he was scolded in. When he fell in love, it was to a highly eligible Sindhi girl – one who, however, was initially forbidden to him as she was of another “caste”. Sunita was from a progressive Amil family, too progressive to consider caste and perhaps just worried about how she would adapt in his traditional Bhaiband family. Indeed, Gidoomal observed with admiration that his father-in-law treated his daughters and sons equally, inspiring him to do the same with his own children.

One of the most prominent themes of this book is Gidoomal’s tremendous network of relationships in every area of life. As a young executive in the 1970s, his complacent and supercilious managers failed to comprehend this tremendous asset which could have taken the bank into new markets with valuable new customers. For Gidoomal, the connections were simply a way of life, partly the community and business networks inherited from his family; partly his own aptitude to thrive on and develop relational networks – ties of location as much as shared cultural traditions among the diaspora flung across the continents. Working at Inlaks, a global company with a huge base in Nigeria, he could speak in Sindhi with the senior executives who preferred to do so when communicating confidential commercial information.

This book has an elegant story-telling style, weaving in humour, and creating a build-up of suspense as the plot unfolds. Despite being put together by a professional writer, Gidoomal’s voice comes through clearly and is the same as in his 1997 UK Maharajas, which was also written by a professional. Through the book, Gidoomal’s personal motto stands out clearly:

“Don’t let what you can’t do stop you from doing what you can.”

Saaz Aggarwal is a Pune-based author and painter.

Is Gandhi Passé?

There was nothing conventional about Gandhi, and the fundamental questions he raised will not be wished away by conventional wisdom.

The following is an excerpt from Reading Gandhi in the Twenty-First Century, by Niranjan Ramakrishnan (Palgrave Pivot, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

“Mahatma Gandhi was OK, but he was no Manmohan Singh,” remarked a friend of mine. I laughed out loud at this deadpan humour, only to realise that my friend, a smart and successful technology baron in Silicon Valley, was serious. He genuinely thought that Gandhi’s contribution was merely to freeing the country from the British, and that Singh, who as Indian finance minister had freed the Indian economy from governmental shackles in the early 1990s, thus ushering India into the global economy, was clearly the larger figure.

This is a notion shared by increasing numbers of the intelligentsia, both in India and abroad. To many, Gandhi is no more than a goodygoody icon who talked about nonviolence and held Luddite views on industry and trade. True, he may have been honest and upright, but then those were different times.

Some (mistakenly, in my opinion) associate Gandhi with India’s pursuit of economic protectionism after independence (a policy followed by his associate Jawaharlal Nehru) and hold Gandhi responsible for India’s perceived backwardness. Others consider his approach to Muslims and Pakistan naive and gullible. All in all, they conclude, the coward who shot him in 1948 did India a favour, for Gandhi would have been an albatross around our modern necks. In a world where terrorism lurks at every corner and smartphones sit in every pocket, Gandhi is passé.

Is he?

As I watch world events unfold, Gandhi’s life appears increasingly relevant. With each passing day, his words and methods seem even more uncannily prescient. Gandhi had numerous interesting and formidable personal characteristics— prodigious courage both physical and political, enormous self-discipline, asceticism and industry (more than a hundred volumes of writings and twenty-hour days), a fine sense of humour, and the ability to laugh at himself—that must have played a major role in the making of the Mahatma. But if I were to condense his political philosophy into one phrase, it would be this: the freedom of the individual.

Gandhi saw that millions had lost their livelihood because the British, in a former era of globalisation, had systematically destroyed India’s cottage industries to create a market for the products of the Industrial Revolution. Gandhi was the chief architect of India’s revived cottage industry. Although this was a magnificent achievement in itself, even more telling was the way he brought it about. He did not run complaining to the British government, asking it to reduce exports to India. Instead, he mobilized people to buy Indian-made goods. Huge bonfires of foreign cloth resulted in the handspun Indian fabric khadi replacing foreign mill-cloth to become, in Jawaharlal Nehru’s words, “the livery of India’s freedom.”

To have demanded something of the government would only have increased its power. Gandhi instead chose to empower each individual to make a statement by shedding foreign cloth and wearing khadi.

Gandhi was an exponent of “demand-side economics.” This was a much longer and more arduous path than supply-side economics, but a more enduring one, and one with fewer deleterious side-effects. He believed that, ultimately, the only guarantee of good society lay in the quality of the citizenry. Benjamin Franklin’s famous reply upon being asked whether the United States had a republic or a monarchy—“A republic, if you can keep it”—approximates Gandhi’s belief. A society with no demand for cigarettes, for instance, would soon stop manufacturing them. Gandhi believed the gift of liberty carried with it the utmost moral responsibility for its use. He always connected individual morality and public policy.

Consider the drug war, for example. We do practically nothing to discourage the taking of drugs. Instead, we pour money into drug interdiction efforts, change foreign governments, denude entire countrysides, and fight endlessly (Panama, Colombia, Peru) because we don’t have the guts to demand the highest of our own citizenry. Gandhi was unafraid of public opprobrium, even assassination. Every politician is willing to tell us what is wrong with someone else; Gandhi was different because he told us what was wrong with us. “Let us turn the searchlight inward,” he once said, to the astonishment of a crowd that had gathered to hear some rousing rhetoric condemning the British, only to find him spouting uncomfortable home truths about how Indians themselves enabled British rule in a hundred small ways.

If we turn the searchlight upon our own contradictions, we might wonder how, while complaining about the disappearance of our forests, we continue to build new housing developments (and prize this as an index of economic health

[L]ooking around us there is certainly plenty to argue that Gandhi may be out of date, even out of place, in our current context. A world infinitely more complicated, connected, and conflicted than in Gandhi’s time hardly seems the venue to advance his prescriptions of smallness, localness, and self-restraint. Before talking about where we go from here, therefore, it is fair that we examine some key elements of the “Gandhi is passé” meme.

Technology is not going away
Consumption culture is unlikely to reverse
Globalism will roll on
Combining religion and la dolce vita is now normal
“Public bad, private good” is now common wisdom
Militarism is now so prevalent that it is no longer noticed
With the proliferation of media, everyone believes that information is free
Individual liberties are negotiable in exchange for comfort and safety
Civil disobedience worked in the old days; it will not work now
Corruption and the environment are two areas of lingering doubt

The first is often explained away as a third world phenomenon, with hopes expressed that suitable regulations and cultural recalibrations will provide a suitable corrective. In the matter of the environment, media-led campaigns such as “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle,” along with technological advances such as resorting to nuclear power, are expected to do the same.

It is not necessary to pit Gandhi’s arguments against every single technological advance or scientific innovation, any more than we need to test Newton’s laws for every new material or shape. For Gandhi, it was in the end an eternal and persistent question: “How does one live ethically?” No technology can alter the fact of life, birth, and death. Until one faces up to this fundamental issue of human existence, everything else is a mirage. Distinct from most politicians, he disdained the promise of endless material gratification. More fundamentally, he had grasped early in life that there could be no technological answers to essentially moral questions, a notion he reiterated often: “The evil does not lie in the use of bullock-carts. It lies in our selfishness and want of consideration for our neighbours. If we have no love for our neighbours, no change, however revolutionary, can do us any good.”

All the arguments listed earlier questioning the practicability of Gandhi’s ideas are true in a limited sense, some of them even obvious. The “obvious” is inertia’s customary resort against the trouble of changing for the wiser. I use the word “obvious,” too, because Gandhi can be classed with Galileo or even Einstein in the way he kept on challenging the conventional wisdom. As anyone originating a new paradigm must seem, Gandhi often appeared to be unrealistic, if not unreal. A man leading a population of 300 million facing a foreign ruler of infinitesimally smaller numbers declared that he would rather go without his country’s freedom than have it won by violent or deceitful means. A man who had guided his ancient land of freedom in a manner unprecedented in history chose to observe the day of independence not by whooping it up in the capital city, but by fasting half way across the continent to bring peace among rioting factions. A man whose intelligence and business acumen could have made him a top industrialist saw instead the depredation set in motion by industrialism and spoke out against it. There was nothing conventional about Gandhi, and the fundamental questions he raised will not be wished away by conventional wisdom.

Some time ago, the Indian socialist Rammanohar Lohia wrote that the twentieth century had produced one innovation, the atom bomb, and one innovator, Mahatma Gandhi. As paranoia and insanity sweep our times, Lohia’s terms come into sharper focus: fear versus freedom. In this consequential contest, Gandhi is not merely relevant; he is central.

Niranjan Ramakrishnan was a long-time contributor to Counterpunch and Countercurrents and his work has been carried by Z-Mag, Common Dreams and Dissident Voice. Among the print outlets that have featured his writings are The Oregonian, the Indian Express, The Hindu, India Today and the Economic Times. His first book, Bantaism – The Philosophy of Sardar Jokes (2011), was hailed for its audacity by noted author and historian Khushwant Singh.

Review: Caroline Elkins’s History of the British Empire Is Indifferent to Indian Scholarship

Elkins is aware of the hypocrisy inherent in the liberal justification of the British Empire in India. However, ‘Legacy of Violence’ refuses to recognise that these arguments have been worked out by a number of Indian historians.

The book, Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire, has already won its share of praise from many quarters. It has been hailed as the most detailed expose of the British Empire and the violence that was embedded in its acquisition, expansion and preservation.

All the accolades are well-deserved. But what this tsunami of acclaim does is submerge a particular kind of indifference and poverty that haunts much of Western writings on the Empire, the violence that was integral to it and its ingrained racism.

This review doesn’t aim to add to the rising chorus of praise that already envelops Caroline Elkins’s tome. My purpose is a little different, and my review is written from the perspective of Britain’s work in India – the “brightest jewel in the British Crown’”, as India was often referred to.

Caroline Elkins
Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire
Penguin Random House (March 2022)

Caroline Elkins, like many Western scholars, works on the assumption that most of the empirically solid and theoretically insightful work on the British Empire in India (I cannot speak of other parts of the globe that the British conquered and dominated) has been produced by Western academics. Nothing could be further from the actual state of play.

In the field of modern Indian history, the writings of Ranajit Guha, both empirically and theoretically, opened up new dimensions in the understanding of the colonial state and its operations – the violence of the conquests, the brutality of its counter-insurgency operations and the intellectual scaffolding the Empire fashioned to justify and camouflage its terrible work in the colonies and over the colonised.

There is no recognition and acknowledgement of Guha’s seminal contribution in Elkins’s book. In what is best described as a feat of bravado, she writes without making any reference to Guha’s Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India, Dominance without Hegemony and The Prose of Counter Insurgency, to name only three of Guha’s most important pieces which are of direct relevance to the narrative and the argument that Elkins constructs.

But is hers merely a feat of bravado? The propensity to marginalise Indian history and Indian history writing has a long lineage. In the early 19th century, James Mill in The History of British India – mandatory reading for any Briton who wanted to come to India to help in the administration of British India and make a personal fortune – had announced that “the subject [Indian history] forms an entire and highly interesting portion of the British history.”

The implication was obvious: India had no history of its own before the arrival of the British in India, and thus, logically, there could be no Indian history of India. The implication blossomed into a larger imperial truism: the history of India, even when it came to acknowledging the wonder that was India’s ancient past, had to be written by British/Western academics. This idea refused to go away.

Till the early 1970s, Oxford undergraduates who wanted to do a special paper on India had to study a course entitled ‘Warren Hastings and Oudh’. Only in the early 1970s was this replaced by a paper called Constitutional Developments and the Indian National Movement. But the James Mill mindset continued to have an afterlife. In the 1990s, one of India’s finest historians was asked in a job interview at Oxford how he would teach Indian history as a part of British history. The question came from one of the most distinguished historians in the Oxford History Faculty. Needless to add the Indian historian did not get the job.

Watch | Ramachandra Guha on 7 Forgotten Western Rebels Who Fought for India’s Independence

India’s experience of British rule

In the grand narrative of global or comparative history, India’s experience of British rule and British exploitation and oppression is made just a part, sometimes a minor part, of a wider and bigger story. In this move, the Indian experience is denuded of its own autonomous and unique trajectory.

The Revolt of 1857 (called the Mutiny of 1857 by British writers and historians) is a landmark event in the narrative of violence in British India – Elkins aptly calls it an “explosive” event. She claims that it is one of the events she will “investigate”. But there is no coherent analytical account of the uprising in the book. There are references to it, most of them passing and fleeting. It will be an exaggeration to call such references an “investigation”. And what she writes on the Revolt has no recognition or acknowledgement of the body of work produced by Indian historians on various aspects of the great uprising.

Revolt of 1857. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Full disclosure requires that I mention myself as one of those several historians who have published extensively on the Revolt of 1857 – so I can hardly be alone in feeling the need to show Elkins’s intellectual inheritance from the elder Mill.

The violence and prejudice embedded in British rule in India have been written about extensively by Indian historians. Elkins chooses to ignore the work of Gyanendra Pandey on the history of prejudice. Three of the writings of Partha Chatterjee, who has written extensively on these themes and on nationalism in India, get mentioned in the bibliography. But in the text, only a comment of his on Charles Tegart, a particularly vicious police officer in British India, is quoted. This can hardly be considered an original contribution by Chatterjee.

The latter, in fact, made several important observations on British rule in India which Elkins could have used to elaborate and enrich her narrative. She chose not to. I will turn to one of Chatterjee’s analytical points in a later paragraph. Elkins’s comments on Gandhi without any reference to Ramachandra Guha’s magisterial two-volume biography of Gandhi which, too, cannot have escaped her notice since it was published and reviewed globally.

Similarly, she writes about Jawaharlal Nehru without any reference to Sarvepalli Gopal’s three-volume biography of Nehru. I could cite other examples but that would be to labour the point about Elkins’s bizarre and seemingly wilful indifference to Indian scholarship.

It is difficult to find a parallel to such indifference within a book that has garnered so much praise. If this sounds harsh, consider Elkins’s view that Gandhi’s non-violent mass mobilisation against British rule was largely ineffectual and the only language that the British imperial official mind of the Empire understood was violence. This indirectly echoes the opinion of the Cambridge historian, Jack Gallagher, who in the late 1960s and early 1970s peddled in scintillating prose the view that independence of the colonies was “not usually a victory won by freedom-fighters”.

The famous Gallagher quip was “Indian nationalists were once non-cooperative, twice shy”. By ignoring most of the enormous body of work by Indian scholars on the strength of the national movement in India, Gandhian and non-Gandhian, Elkins comes close to flying Gallagher’s flag. To do this half a century after Gallagher’s callow version of the “Cambridge School” was discredited (including from the inside by the Cambridge historian Chris Bayly) calls for rare and unenviable intellectual courage.

Caroline Elkins. Photo: Screengrab via YouTube/Vintage Books

The men who conquered India in the second half of the 18th century were shameless about the use of violence in establishing British rule and control. Philip Francis, an important British administrator in the 1770s and one of those who worked to set up systems and processes for maintaining the Empire, wrote with unabashed candour that “there was no power in India but the power of the sword, and that was the British sword and no other.” Francis’s famous rival, Warren Hastings, the first governor-general, also admitted that the sword was the most valid title the British had to sovereignty in India.

British rule in India carried on it the indelible birthmark of violence. Whenever rebellion challenged British dominance, the latter reasserted itself through deployment of violence and terror. There was no attempt to justify and cover up the violence. Might was seen as right.

This brazenness moved to an elaborate intellectual justification with the rise of liberalism and with the thrust to improve and westernise Indian society. Elkins, drawing on the works of scholars like Uday Mehta and Karuna Mantena, exposes the hypocrisy and the double standards embedded in the liberal project. The two Mills, James and John Stuart – father and son – argued at different levels of sophistication that India was barbaric and backward, stagnant and unprogressive. The only way India could be rescued from this plight was through a kind of parental despotism.

Indians were in no state to embrace the virtues of liberalism – freedom, democracy and so on. Indians had to be trained to accept these virtues. The training period was never announced: it was like the receding horizon. Many, if not all, British politicians and administrators believed that British rule in India was permanent. The liberal prime minister, William Gladstone, wrote in 1872 to Lord Northbrook, the then viceroy of India, “when we go, if we are ever to go…”

The principle of equality so central to the liberal doctrine appeared seriously compromised when those who were perceived as “subject races” laid claims to be brought into the ambit of that principle. The rule of law, crucial to the functioning of a democracy, was seldom honoured in India. British rule in India did not see itself embodying democratic principles. It fashioned itself as a ‘despotism’.

James Fitzjames Stephen, a legal member of the Colonial Council in India, was forthright on the matter. According to him, (a passage quoted by Elkins) the empire

“is essentially an absolute government, founded, not on consent, but on conquest. It does not represent the native principles of life or of government, and it can never do so until it represents heathenism and barbarism. It represents a belligerent civilization, and no anomaly can be so striking or so dangerous as its administration by men who, being at the head of a Government…having no justification for its except [the superiority] [of the conquering race], shrink from the open, uncompromising, straightforward assertion of it, seek to apologize for their own position, and refuse, from whatever cause, to uphold and support it.”

On the basis of a sense of superiority and, by implication, the inferiority of Indians, it was argued by John Stuart Mill and others that Indians had only a choice of despotism and should have no access to the government of democratic representation as they were incapable of benefiting from free and equal discussion. India was, thus, excluded from the liberal understanding of the world. It was the exception that upheld the general rule.

What was it that made India an exception? The fact that it was a colony of the British Empire. It had to be ruled by a superior power, and imperial rule, because it was made possible, and violence could only justify itself by making India and Indians inferior, incapable of having access to liberal values.

John Stuart Mill. Photo: London Stereoscopic Company/The Conversation

Partha Chatterjee has called this “the rule of colonial difference”. By the operation of this rule “a normative proposition of supposedly universal validity…is held not to apply to the colony on account of some inherent moral deficiency of the latter. Thus, even as the rights of a man would be declared in the revolutionary assemblies of Paris in 1789, the revolt on Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) would be put down on the ground that those rights could not apply to black slaves. John Stuart Mill would set forth with great eloquence and precision his arguments establishing representative governments, but would immediately add that this did not hold for India.’’

It is not that Elkins is unaware of “the rule of colonial difference”. She mentions it in passing in the text but does not elaborate on it nor does she say that it is a formulation made by Chatterjee. The reader has to turn to the voluminous endnotes of this book to find out the author of this rule. It is indeed amazing that Elkins in the text cites and quotes Chatterjee on Tegart, but fails to mention Chatterjee on the important and insightful “rule of colonial difference”.

Elkins is fully aware of the hypocrisy and double standards inherent in the liberal justification of the British Empire in India. What she refuses to recognise is that the hollowness of such justification, both empirically and theoretically, has been worked out by a number of Indian historians, most of whom do not get even a cursory nod in her narrative. This implicates the author of The Legacy of Violence in a related legacy of intellectual and epistemological violence by which the research of Indian historians is ignored and marginalised.

What do they know of empire who know the empire only as a political and economic institution and thus continue to perpetuate the empire’s intellectual dominance?

Rudrangshu Mukherjee is chancellor and professor of History at Ashoka University. All views expressed are personal.

The Queen Has Left Her Mark Around the World. But Not All See It as Something To Be Celebrated

Is it possible to disentangle the personal attributes of a gentle and kindly woman, from her role as the crowned head of a declining global empire that waged numerous wars? Many don’t think so.

From the very beginning, Queen Elizabeth II’s reign was deeply connected to Britain’s global empire and the long and bloody processes of decolonisation.

Indeed, she became Queen while on a royal visit to Kenya in 1952. After she left, the colony descended into one of the worst conflicts of the British colonial period. Declaring a state of emergency in October 1952, the British would go on to kill tens of thousands of Kenyans before it was over.

Is it possible to disentangle the personal attributes of a gentle and kindly woman from her role as the crowned head of a declining global empire that waged numerous wars and resisted those demanding independence across the globe?

Even though she was a constitutional monarch who generally followed the lead of her parliament, many of Britain’s ex-subjects don’t think so, and some historians agree, with one commenting that “Elizabeth II helped obscure a bloody history of decolonisation whose legacies have yet to be adequately acknowledged”.

In Australia, too, while some Australians remember with nostalgia the time they waved small flags along the route of royal tours as children, one Indigenous scholar has pointed out that the queen “wasn’t a bystander to the effects of colonisation and colonialism”.

It depends who’s remembering

How the queen and her reign is being remembered depends on where the remembering is taking place and by whom.

This isn’t a new phenomenon. Unforgettable is the royal tour of the Caribbean in March 2022, when the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were bluntly told by the prime minister of Jamaica the region was “moving on” from the British monarchy.

Others, too, noted the British monarchy was a constant reminder of the period of slavery, with a government committee in the Bahamas urging them to offer “a full and formal apology for their crimes against humanity”.

Also read: Queen Elizabeth II Handled Her Delicate Constitutional Role With Great Political Skill

This ongoing process of national distancing from a British royal past is continuing today, even in the week of the queen’s death.

In India, for example, only days ago the once grand boulevard of empire, Rajpath (and before that Kingsway in honour of the British Emperor of India, George V) has been renamed Kartavya Path and headed with a giant statue of Subhas Chandra Bose, one of India’s most strident (and controversial) anti-British nationalists.

At the unveiling of this statue, Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared that “another symbol of slavery has been removed today” and urged all Indians to visit the site.

Complicated histories

The theme of a “complicated historical relationship” with the monarchy is also prominent in South Africa, with one African news site declaring that “South Africa’s relationship with the British monarchy is as complicated as it gets”.

It was in South Africa that Elizabeth declared her intention to devote herself to Britain’s “imperial family” of colonies on her 21st birthday. But it was also on the question of South Africa’s apartheid regime that the queen showed a rare moment of dissent with one of her prime ministers, refusing to accept quietly Margaret Thatcher’s decision not to join other countries in placing economic sanctions on the regime.

Elsewhere, Iraq’s complicated history with the United Kingdom, which stretches back to the 1920s, has also been noted in local reports. More recently, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed during the war that Britain began alongside the United States, Australia and other nations in 2003.

In Malaysia, the role of the British in massacres and mass resettlement programs during the bloody Malayan Emergency (1948-60) and the period of decolonisation is also still clearly remembered. Not only did this conflict rumble on during the early years of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign, all attempts at an inquiry into events in Malaya have been stymied by British governments.

Even in neighbouring Ireland, which has sought to smooth relations with its nearest neighbour, President Michael D. Higgins has spoken euphemistically of Queen Elizabeth’s relationship with “those with whom her country has experienced a complex, and often difficult, history”.

Newspapers there also ponder what her death might mean for Northern Ireland, the site of the Anglo-Irish conflict euphemistically known as the “Troubles” as well as recent strained relations.

The queen may have “charmed” some in Ireland with her commemoration of those who fought the British there. But few will have forgotten the role of the British army in Northern Ireland, including the now infamous “Bloody Sunday” Massacre of 1972, nor the queen’s statement on behalf of Boris Johnson’s government rejecting its victims’ demands for justice.

Some might suggest the tortured history of the declining British Empire should be seen as separate from the reign and person of Elizabeth II. Certainly nothing suggests the queen was particularly bellicose in her demeanour.

But as Thomas Paine once remarked, while a monarch might personally be kind and generous, they remain the monarch, the head of the state which fights its wars and (on occasion) commits its crimes – all in the name of the Crown.

The role of Queen Elizabeth II in the history of British colonialism will continue to be debated well after her death.

Matt Fitzpatrick, Professor in International History, Flinders University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

These ‘Foreign Hands’ Left Their Homes to Fight For India’s Freedom

Ramachandra Guha’s new book explores the lives of seven such foreign rebels.

India was not simply the jewel in the crown of the British Empire. It was also the cockpit where the very concept of Empire was most keenly contested. In the first half of the last century, as India’s nationalist movement got into its stride, the struggle against the iniquity of Imperial rule galvanised tens of thousands of people in the west: liberals, radicals, communists, evangelicals and many others. They took India’s side. Most were British, championing a colonial freedom movement over motherland, but the cause resonated in the west well beyond Britain’s shores and indeed beyond the English-speaking world.

Ramachandra Guha
Rebels Against the Raj: Western Fighters for India’s Freedom
Penguin India (January 2022)

The motives of these men and women were varied – shaped sometimes by religion, or by ideology, but also born out of a deep sense of a shared humanity and a belief in equity and justice. India’s case was strengthened by its deep civilisational and spiritual heritage, the vigour of its nationalism and the huge moral authority of Mahatma Gandhi who, along with Nelson Mandela, is the most inspirational political figure of the 20th century, far surpassing the likes of Lenin, Mao and Winston Churchill.

Rebels Against the Raj recounts the story of seven of these ‘western fighters for India’s freedom’ – and Ramachandra Guha sets the bar high to be worthy of inclusion. The seven not only supported India’s cause; they embraced India and made it their home – indeed, all but one died on Indian soil. More than that, all were either jailed, deported, interned or externed by the British Raj because of their support for India’s claim to nationhood.

Guha is a superlative historian and a commanding public intellectual. In retrieving these personal stories, he has gained access to papers in family chests and some of the less well-trodden of libraries, as well as turning to those two beacons of scholarship, the British Library in London and the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in Delhi.

He wants to tell the story of people who went against the grain, moved away from family and friends, and embraced an alien country and culture because they believed it was right. In an age when self-interest and the easy option is all too prevalent in public life, it brings to mind a time when ideals and values held sway, at least for some. And it’s a reminder that while India’s freedom was of course secured mainly by Indians, they had valuable allies to aid them on their way.

Of Guha’s chosen seven, four are men and three women; four are British, two are American and one is of Irish descent; four are obvious candidates for inclusion, while for three, the case is less clear-cut.

Annie Besant is a complex figure who was already in her mid-forties when she first set foot on Indian soil in 1893. From a disastrous marriage to a bigoted rural clergyman, she turned to atheism, radicalism, women’s rights, trade unionism and – most scandalous of all at the time – the public advocacy of contraception. Then a new turn in her life brought her to Theosophy and to India, where she embraced the nationalist movement, established educational institutions, and generally got things done with an energy and sense of purpose which are almost frightening. As with so many headstrong public figures, she made both friends and enemies – but the sincerity of her commitment to India was unquestioned. She was, among many landmark achievements, the first woman to become president of the Indian National Congress and a founder of the Banares Hindu University. Not bad for a foreigner!

Madeleine Slade, who took the name Mirabehn, was the English daughter of a naval officer – again, both impetuous and determined – who became one of Gandhi’s closest aides. She was at the heart of the Gandhian endeavour, devoted both to the man and the movement and almost as ascetic in lifestyle as her mentor. In her late 60s, ill-health prompted Mira to head back to Europe, but her heart remained with India – and almost her last benevolent act was helping to pave the way for Richard Attenborough’s movie Gandhi (she was played in the film by Geraldine James), which brought his message to a new global audience.

Mirabehn. Photo: India Post, Government of India, Public Domain

B.G. Horniman, after whom Mumbai’s Horniman Circle is named, was the best-regarded newspaper editor of his era who developed the Bombay Chronicle as one of nationalism’s most effective platforms. He was to journalism, says Guha, ‘what Annie Besant was to public affairs: a free-born white person who had made it his mission to see that Indians were given the same rights of liberty and freedom that Englishmen took for granted’. The Raj was so fearful of him that he was expelled from India and not allowed to return for seven painful years.

B.G. Horniman. Photo: By Unknown illustrator/Bombay Chronicle Weekly, Public Domain

Philip Spratt, a Cambridge-educated Communist, came to India to help build the Party and foment revolution. He was the principal defendant in the notorious Meerut conspiracy case in the early 1930s when the Imperial authorities tried to smash India’s incipient Communist movement and the militant labour unions they led. Later, he became a supporter of M.N. Roy and later still an obsessive Cold War anti-communist who sought to draw parallels between the totalitarianism of left and right. ‘Spratt’s analysis of how even right-wing parties are Leninists in inspiration’, Guha comments waspishly, ‘speaks directly to how the Bharatiya Janata Party has exercised power in India today.’

Philip Spratt. Photo: Norahspratt via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

The other three ‘rebels’ we have to take on trust from the author. Samuel (later Satyanand) Stokes and Dick Keithahn were both Americans; Catherine Heilemann, who took the name Sarala Devi, was British. All three were active in establishing ashrams and educational institutions and exploring Indian spirituality, as well as challenging forced labour and untouchability and working towards environmental sustainability.

At the centre of this seven-sided web is Gandhi – as you might expect of a historian who has written so magisterially of India’s founding father. To Annie Besant, Gandhi was a rival as much as a colleague, though his more militant mass-based style of politics quickly superseded the constitutionalism of Besant’s Home Rulers. For others of the seven, he was a guide and a guru, and a friend too. Even Spratt, who as a Communist was no admirer of non-violent resistance, was touched when Gandhi visited the Meerut prisoners, and decades later wrote a generally admiring book about him.

Rather than seven successive potted political biographies, Guha has opted for a more chronological approach. Each chapter focuses on one of his chosen bands, but their stories are sliced and diced. It does feel at times as if you are heading repeatedly down the same track.

A more substantial reservation is Guha’s insistence on describing these rebels – an honourable term – as ‘renegades’. That’s a pejorative word that implies betrayal. The women and men Guha so clearly admires did not betray their nation of birth. On the contrary, they believed that Empire and the grotesque racial inequalities on which it was founded was a betrayal of the values to which the western democracies were nominally committed.

Ramachandra Guha, Ram Guha, Ahmedabad University, ABVP, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad

Ramachandra Guha. Photo: The Wire

This is a powerful and important work of history, an absorbing account of exceptional people. ‘These individuals came to India at different points of time from widely different backgrounds and with widely varying motivations’, Guha writes as a closing peroration.

‘What unites them was, first, the courage and fearlessness they displayed in their personal lives; second, the depth and duration of their commitment to their new homeland; and third, the contemporaneity, indeed, timelessness, of what they lived and struggled for. So many years after the last of these rebels passed on, what they did and what they said still speaks to Indians today.

If only we could listen.’

Thanks to Guha’s scholarship, we can all now listen and learn.

Andrew Whitehead is an honorary professor at the University of Nottingham in the UK and a former BBC India correspondent.

Records of 3.2 Lakh Punjabi Soldiers Who Served in World War I Unearthed, a Portion Digitised

The ‘Punjab Registers’ were lying unread in the basement of the Lahore Museum in Pakistan. The records of 45,000 troops have been digitised in time for Armistice Day on November 11.

New Delhi: A portion of the service records of more than 3.2 lakh troops from undivided Punjab who fought for the British Army in the First World War have been digitised by UK historians, giving descendants and relatives the chance to gain access to written proof of the contribution of Indian soldiers.

The ‘Punjab Registers’, compiled by the Punjab government after the war ended, were lying unread in the basement of the Lahore Museum in Pakistan, according to the Guardian. Amandeep Madra, the chair of the UK Punjab Heritage Association, heard about these records from military historians and approached the museum. He was sent samples by a curator and found that they were organised by village and provided extensive details.

Subsequently, Madra and the University of Greenwich were able to digitise the files. Madra told the Guardian, “Punjab was the main recruiting ground for the Indian army during world war one. And yet the contribution of the individuals has largely been unrecognised. In most cases we didn’t even know their names.”

The pilot project has been uploaded in time for Armistice Day, on November 11, which marks the end of the war. The pilot project contains 45,000 records from three districts – Jalandhar and Ludhiana in India and Sialkot in Pakistan. According to the Guardian, the successful completion of the pilot project is hoped to lead to the release of the registers for the remaining 25 districts of Punjab that were administered by the British government, comprising the records of an estimated 275,000 soldiers.

Punjab sent more than 5 lakh soldiers to World War 1, comprising a third of all Indian troops and more than other commonwealth territories such as Australia. According to the Indian Express, the records show that Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims – the three major faiths in the region – sent soldiers to fight the war in far-flung theatres like France, the Middle East, Gallipoli, Aden and East Africa.

It is yet unknown if similar records exist for men from princely states such as Patiala, Jind, Nabha, Kapurthala who had volunteered for World War I.

The Punjab Registers show that in some villages, as many as 40% of the men who were eligible had volunteered.

According to the Guardian, opposition leader Tanmanjeet Dhesi has uncovered proof among the files that his great-grandfather had served in Iraq and had been wounded in action, losing a leg. “These records give people written proof that our ancestors were there, fighting for Britain. This is about recognising both the contribution my family made, but also the contribution and sacrifice that people from across the Commonwealth made for the war effort,” he told the newspaper.

Gavin Rand of the University of Greenwich said: “The personal and family histories of Punjab’s first world war volunteers are largely unknown, even to many descendants. Few Indian veterans left written records of their service, and many Punjabi family histories are dominated by the upheavals and migrations which followed Punjab’s partition in 1947.”

He added, “Whereas the ancestors of British and Irish soldiers can easily search public databases of service records, no such facility exists for the descendants of colonial soldiers. By making some of the unique data recorded in the registers widely available for the first time, Punjabis can access records of their ancestors’ wartime service.”

Also Read: The Colossal Indian Contribution to A War That Wasn’t Its Own

Indian contribution to the war

European historians had long ignored the contribution of soldiers from Indian and other British colonies to the war. Historical records show that in many cases, these soldiers were used as cannon fodder, shipped off the frontlines in Europe’s harsh winter while still wearing cotton khakis.

As C. Uday Bhaskar noted in his review of Shrabani Basu’s book For King and Another Country for The Wire, almost 15 lakh Indians (combatants and non-combatants) crossed the ocean and went to the frontline in Europe and other theatres. The imperial records also noted that a total of 172,815 animals that included horses, mules and camels were part of India’s contribution to the war. “By the time the war ended in November 1918, nearly 10% of the Indians were either killed, missing or grievously wounded. The numbers are staggering – 72,000 killed and a little under 80,000 wounded,” he wrote.

The British government in April this year apologised after a report found that entrenched prejudices, preconceptions and pervasive racism of contemporary imperial attitudes meant that nearly 50,000 Indian soldiers who died fighting for the Empire during World War I were not commemorated the same way as other martyrs.

These findings were part of a special report commissioned by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) to investigate potential gaps in the commemoration of those who died during and after World War I. The CWCG commemorates the 1.7 million Commonwealth servicemen and women who died during the two World Wars.

The report found that an estimated 45,000-54,000 casualties, predominantly Indian, East African, West African, Egyptian and Somali personnel, were commemorated unequally. A further 116,000 casualties, potentially as many as 350,000, were not commemorated by name or possibly not commemorated at all.

UK defence secretary Ben Wallace made a formal apology on behalf of the government in the House of Commons in relation to the findings. “There can be no doubt prejudice played a part in some of the Commission’s decisions,” the minister told the members of parliament.

The Modern Indian State Continues To Doggedly Cling To Draconian Colonial Powers

Sections that give the police the power to disperse a crowd with force have been abused, resulting in hundreds of deaths.

The right to democratic protest under Articles 19(1)(a) and (b) of the constitution has been enunciated in several judgments, starting from Romesh Thappar (1950), but in practice, its exercise is riddled with difficulties. Article 19(2) empowers the state to impose ‘reasonable restrictions’ on the exercise of this right. The catch is that a dispute whether the restrictions imposed are reasonable or not, can be settled only by the courts and that, by itself, makes it impracticable for most people.

In Anita Thakur (2016), the Supreme Court held that the right to peaceful protests without arms is a fundamental right. However, in those situations where the crowd becomes violent, it may necessitate and justify using reasonable force. Now ‘violent’ is a subjective term. No law or judgment defines what exactly the people have to do to be called violent – whether cops must be injured, public property damaged or something else – if so, to what extent? Interpretations are always subjective and in a manner that helps the government.

In Amit Sahni (2020), about the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests at Shaheen Bagh, the Supreme Court held that public protests and demonstrations expressing dissent must be organised in ‘designated places’ only. The question is where do we have a mechanism that those desirous of protest, that if they approach the administration, will automatically be ‘allotted’ place, time and duration of protest without any discrimination?

In any case, the police have a battery of laws for preventive detention also. In this unique example of ‘constitutional tyranny’, one could be arrested on the mere apprehension that he could commit some act prejudicial to the state – the question of the right to protest does not even arise then.

A crowd can be dispersed by a sub-inspector using force (in which they can kill also) under Section 129 CrPC. For that, at least on record, the police have to declare it an unlawful assembly. Now the question is who determines it, and how sure the suffering public could be that the aforesaid determination is correct?

In a country where even experienced police officers are known to have fired in panic (as in Edesmetta) or out of sheer perversity (as in Thoothukudi) killing many, it does not make any sense to grant the power of life and death to a mere sub-inspector, who might be a young man of 23 years and facing a mob for the first time in his life, making him nervous like hell.

In Charan Singh (2004) and Bhanwar Singh (2008), the Supreme Court had held that an assembly of five or more would be called an unlawful assembly if its common object falls within the definition of Section 141 IPC. This section, being a classic relic of the spirit of oppression that had characterised the British rule, provides a long list of the common objects, which turn an assembly into an unlawful assembly. The modern Indian state continues to cling to such draconian colonial powers with maniacal doggedness.

Photos: PTI. Illustration: The Wire

I will comment on those parts of Section 141 IPC, which are most often invoked by the police in using force on the protesting public.

First: ‘To overawe by criminal force, or show of criminal force, the central or any state government or parliament or the legislature of any state, or any public servant in the exercise of the lawful power of such public servant.’

How in the world can a crowd, howsoever large, ‘overawe’ the Union government, any state government, parliament or the legislature of any state? Are these so powerless? We have 2.1 million state police personnel and about a million paramilitary personnel in the country. We have the largest army in the world with 1.4 million soldiers. And yet, this law would have us believe that a mob could overawe the governments and the legislatures!

In effect, any demonstration in front of the parliament or state legislatures could be argued to be an attempt to overawe the parliament or the legislature and be fired upon.

Second: To resist the execution of any law, or of any legal process.

The very words of this part of the law betray its real intention.

The difference between the ‘legal right’ to protest and ‘illegal resistance’ to any law or legal process has deliberately been left vague all these 160 years so that it may always be construed in favour of the state. Literally, it means to say that once the government passes any law, it becomes fait accompli and the citizens lose any right to register their protest against it. It means that the citizens are obliged to disperse immediately the moment a sub-inspector, in his whim, arrogance or fear, wrongly commands them to do so. There is no answer to what happens then to their right to protest guaranteed by the Constitution?

Third: To commit any mischief or criminal trespass, or other offence.

Under Section 427 IPC, damage of more than Rs 50 is punishable mischief. While Rs 50 in 1861 was a substantial amount, now it is simply ridiculous and the provision obviously open to abuse. Forcibly entering (trespassing) government property under Section 441 IPC can be understood for military campuses or vital installations. However, the office of a district collector or SP is a public place, where everybody is entitled to go. If protesters try to go there say, for example, to submit a memorandum to the government and merely because the collector or SP get jittery over it, invoking this section is atrocious. The provision of ‘other offence’ is so ridiculous that it needs no comment.

Also Read: Police Abuse the Laws Because the Laws Are Designed to Be Abused

The state does not tolerate disobedience of any order

The laws pertaining to ‘contempt of the lawful authority of public servants’ is contained within Sections 172 to 190 IPC, with the most abused of them being Section 188 that speaks of disobedience to an order duly promulgated by a public servant.

The British had enacted these laws because they could never tolerate that the ‘native subjects’ dared to disobey the orders of the officials of the Empire. To defy the servants of the Empire was tantamount to defying the Empire itself. Still, they used Section 188 mainly against pro-freedom demonstrations only. The Indian state has abused it to such an extent that several lakhs of cases were registered under this for something as trivial as a violation of COVID-19 lockdown norms.

In effect, the existence of this law means that the government servants can issue any order, howsoever stupid or irrational, and the citizens are obliged to obey them or face prosecution. Implicit in the law is the arrogant presumption that the state and its servants can never be wrong.

Magistrates keep on imposing so many restrictions under Section 144 CrPC on the public that the Indian state has, for all practical purposes, become a ‘Ban State’.

Even as judgments like Anuradha Bhasin (2020) and Ramlila Maidan (2012) sought to prevent abuse of Section 144, the state has been abusing the powers because the law lends itself to such absurd interpretations that render the power of the magistrate almost absolute. The fundamental problem with the abuse of Section 144 is that by the time one approaches the high court and get an order on the violation of fundamental rights, the rights would already have been infringed.

The word ‘curfew’ has not been defined anywhere in the CrPC. The so-called shoot-at-sight business for violating the curfew order is utterly illegal, whether by the police or the military. This position was made clear in Jayantilal (1975) itself. Still, such orders were seen issued even during the 2020 Delhi riots. If the Indian state and its police pretend ignorance of an order 46 years later also, it only demonstrates their malfeasance.

No other country in the world has killed as many as 796 people in six years in police firing. It is clear that the absolutist Indian state is inherently intolerant of any protest and has deliberately retained such colonial laws that, under the cover of the laws, it may continue oppressing the people even to the extent of killing them with abandon.

N.C. Asthana is a retired IPS officer and a former DGP, Kerala. The author of 49 books, his latest book is ‘State Persecution of Minorities and Underprivileged in India’. He tweets @NcAsthana. This is the third in a four-part series on the ‘Defective Gene Pool of Indian laws’.