Trade to Administration, and Administration to an Empire

It is amazing to trace the development of British rule in India. The East India Company came to India just to trade, and trade alone. This was in the 1600s! Volumes have been written, records documented and kept safe for posterity, tracing the Company’s origins, in every Presidential city occupied 

by the British.[1]

The East India Company was formed in 1600 and the first factory of the English came up at Surat, on getting the ‘firman’ or order from the Mogul King Jahangir himself in 1612.

At that time the main trade was in purchase of calicoes, chintz, and muslin made by the local weavers near Masulipatam, where the English had a permit to trade from the local ruler, Kuth Shah Abdullah, since 1611.

It was Francis Day, who obtained in 1639, from the local ruler, one Venkatapati Naik, a grant of territory and privileges and licence to build a fort and form a settlement in a town called ‘Madraspatam,’ three miles north of San Thome, built earlier by the Portuguese some 200 years back. This became the Fort city Madras.

Detailed records of the letters written by the local Agents of the Company are all available in today’s Archives at Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Similar records are available in all the three Presidencies of the English and their other settlements.

In 1668, the Company acquired Bombay, which was leased out to them by Charles II, the king, who received it as dowry after marrying Catherine Braganza. In 1688 they acquired Calcutta. Such were its beginnings.

Whenever and wherever the Company acquired territorial rights, in these trading centers, they established Law courts for the trial of civil and criminal cases and Corporations. The Chief Agents were given the power of Zemindars, to levy and collect rents and keep the villages given to them in order. Taxes on articles, customs dues, market dues and rents were all collected by them in their jurisdictions. Traders were transformed into administrators.

Still they were basically traders. Come 1757, all these will change. Robert Clive taught the Calcutta Agents how to defeat the Indian rulers! By bribes and playing one ruler against the other and gaining ascendancy over both! Defeat the Indian rulers, they did, at the Battle of Plassey in 1757. Seeds of an Empire had been sown.

To facilitate administration of the ever increasing territorial gains, the British constituted the Indian Civil Service, with supervisors called Collectors at the top. It was quite a corrupt administration that the Company ran in those days. Governors like Warren Hastings and Cornwallis in 1772 remodeled and reorganized the revenue administration and judicial system and brought the civil service to a honorable shape.

After the Indian Mutiny of 1857, the rule of the Company was superseded and the Crown of England directly oversaw the rule of India, through Viceroys, the direct representative of English Crown. The British Raj or the Empire stood rooted firm and strong.

What made these transitions, from a small Company dealing with muslin clothes in India, to administering justice and collection revenue, to rulers of the country? In what way the British stood apart from Indians, whom they gradually overcame and ruled, with so much ease?

Though these questions cannot be dealt with in a blog,[2] I will try and point out a few outstanding advantages the British had over the Indians of that time.

The British had come out of the Dark Ages or the Medieval Ages, due to Reformation, Renaissance and Enlightenment and were full of enthusiasm and the society was a reformed one. India was still in the Middle ages, with feudal lords lording over the peasants.

This reformed character of the society made the English see corruption as corruption and made their leaders to reform their civil administration in the colonies. In India, corruption is known as the way of life, an inconvenience to put up with and live on.

India witnessed no great transformation, for her religion was the same since time immemorial, infusing fatalism and submission as the prime virtues.

Christianity shaped the values of the rulers and the public in England.  Self-control, discipline, honesty, integrity, were all emphasized. Puritanism and Wesley’s Methodism shaped the 18^th and 19^th century Britain, infusing morals even in parliamentarians and leaders and rulers in England and elsewhere where they ruled.  

Public schools in England set themselves to shape the character of their students and most of them who became the ruling elite, carried these values and training in their hearts. Ethical teachings were rare in India, the only ethics taught being hierarchy of the caste system and the Dharma of every Hindu to uphold that system at any cost.

Christ, His life and His teachings were the foundations on which the ruling class of Britain arose and stood. So they ruled the world, something incredible for a small island country to have achieved. Not only they ruled, but they brought development and the Western mind of scientific inquiry and modernity to their colonies.

Though they had no excuse under Christ to exploit another country and fleece them, still they brought enormous strides of development wherever they went.

The abiding force was and is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, without whom no morality or greatness can be achieved.

What India lacked was precisely that. No real transformation in an individual or a country could be achieved without the Spirit of Christ working in the innermost parts of a human being and society.

We need that Spirit in India. We need to pray for it to happen.   

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[1] Like the “Vestiges of Old Madras: 1640-1800,” by Henry Davison Love, Asian Educational Services, Madras, 1996

[2] For details please see my book “Values and Influence of Religion in Administration,” Sage Publications, 2011.