The history of human civilization in India goes back to more than 8,000 years. There were well-planned cities with underground sewer system and public baths more than 5 to 6,000 years ago along the Sindhu (Indus) - Saraswati rivers. People had developed a very highly sophisticated language - Sanskrit. Epics like Rāmāyana and Mahābharata, scriptures like Veda-s, Upanishad-s and Bhagavad Gitā were composed by saints and scholars. There were universities like Takshashilā and Nālanda where scholars from other countries used to come and study. The concept of zero and higher math, astronomy, practice of medicine, metallurgy, chemistry, etc., were far more advanced than in any other nation of that period. Recent archaeological, genetic, carbon dating, and other modern techniques have shown that there was no Aryan invasion from outside India. The so-called light skinned Aryans and dark skinned Dravidians are the same people that have lived in India for millennia and their culture has continued in to modern times. Analysis of position of stars as described in ancient Indian texts like Rāmāyana and Mahābhārata confirm the authenticity of these texts.
Some Western scholars and historians have said:
“India was the motherland of our race, and Sanskrit the mother of Europe’s languages; she was the mother of our philosophy; and mother through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics; mother through the Buddha, of ideals embodied in Christianity; mother, through the village community, of self-government and democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all.”
Will Durant (1885-1981), American Historian
“India is the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and great grandmother of tradition. Our most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India only”
Mark Twain (1835-1910), American author
“The ancient civilization of India differs from those of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece, in that its traditions have been preserved without breakdown to present day.”
Arthur Basham (1914-1986), Australian Historian
There were many foreign invasions from North-West border of India. Alexander of Macedonia was one of the very early ones who invaded India in 326 BCE. Then from 11th century (CE) onwards came the Huns, Chinghiz Khan, Arabs, and Iranian invaders. Most of the foreign invaders’ aim was to plunder, destroy, and take slaves. Thousands of temples were destroyed, gold and jewels were looted, and millions of people were killed or taken as slaves. In one hundred years (from 1000-1100 CE) nearly 20 million, one-tenth of the population of India, was decimated by Muslim invaders. Muslims ruled over India for many years and then the British took over.
Vasco da Gama discovered the sea route to India in 1498. The East India Company was created in 1600 to trade with India. Just like their predecessors from other parts of Asia, it was the wealth of India that had attracted the Europeans to go to India. The first British ship arrived at the port of Surat on Western coast of India in 1608. East India Company slowly established more trade depots in other ports and made huge profit by taking spices and other goods from India to England and Europe. The British slowly established their monopoly in trade with India by removing all competition from the French, Portuguese, and Spaniards.
The trading posts were slowly converted in to forts with cannons, guns and ammunition without the permission of local rulers. In 1756, the ruler of Bengal attacked the English fort in Kolkata (Calcutta) and destroyed the illegal fort. Next year, Robert Clive defeated the ruler and took over Bengal. The British administrators would take more than a million dollar bribe and make someone a king. After a few years that ruler would be replaced by someone else who gave more money.
“The British conquest of India was the invasion and destruction of a high civilization by a trading company utterly without scruple or principle, careless of art and greedy of gain, over-running with fire and sword a country temporarily disordered and helpless, bribing and murdering, annexing and stealing, and beginning their career of illegal and ‘legal’ plunder which has now gone on ruthlessly for one hundred and seventy three years...”
Will Durant, in “The Case for India”, p. 5. 1930
Thomas Babington Macaulay was a conservative member of the British Parliament and later Secretary of War. He also served on the Supreme Council of India from 1834 to 1838. He believed that Britain was the most civilized nation in the world and Africans and Asians were barbarians. He introduced the British education system in India that would create a class of Indians who would serve the British:
“I have travelled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such caliber, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and, therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self-esteem, their native culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominant nation.”
The British were able to achieve what they had planned. Not only while they ruled over India but even now (2013), sixty-five years after they left India, the same educational system, same laws as the British, and same policies of ‘divide and rule’ are being followed by successive governments of independent India.
The violent uprising called the ‘Sepoy Mutiny’ started in May 1857. Indian soldiers employed by the British to do all their dirty work were unhappy about many things. This was the first large scale attempt to fight for independence from the British. It was very brutally and forcefully put down by the British with the help of their loyal Indian troops and superior firepower. The Indian sepoys (soldiers) and other fighters were not united and did not have a coordinated strategy. Hundreds of thousands of Indian soldiers and citizens were killed. In reaction to this mutiny, the famous author, Charles Dickens, wrote that he would “strike that Oriental Race . . . to blot it out of mankind and raze it off the face of the Earth”. A favorite way to punish Indians was to blow them to bits from the mouth of cannon. The British Government took over control of India from East India Company after the 1857 mutiny, increased their oppression and exploitation of the people and resources of India. They built railways to take raw materials to ports for export and distribute expensive imports to sell all over India. This practice impoverished Indians and destroyed all local industries. Poverty, famines and starvation became common because of British policies of excessive taxation and export of grains. Between 1854 and 1901, 28 million Indians died through starvation because of poverty and famines.
The British Government took over the control of Indian territories from the East India Company and paid the company handsome sum for the assets and also paid off the debt. The government in turn charged the people of India and the Indian peasants and workers who had to pay highest taxes in the world. One by one, states of India were taken over by the British by war, bribery or government decree. The cost of wars and army were again recovered from Indians through taxation. Transportation of troops from England to India and their maintenance in India and even the expenses of the war of independence in 1857 was charged to the Indian tax-payer. The national debt of India rose from $35 million in 1792 to $3.5 trillion in 1929. Indians were forced to fight for the British in wars to enslave Burma and First and Second World wars, just to name a few.
Britain was undergoing industrial revolution in nineteenth century. Their manufactured goods needed market. In India, they found this opportunity. Queen Victoria’s rule became the golden age for Britain and India became a poor nation. A British Viceroy stationed in New Delhi governed whole of India. The country was divided in to provinces (states) and governed by provincial governments. Then there were small semi-independent states within the provinces with Indian princes as heads of the state. They had nominal power since real power was with the British representative of the Viceroy in each princely state.
Will Durant, a Pulitzer Prize winning American historian, visited India in 1930 when he was working on “The Story of Civilization”. He was so appalled by what he read and saw how the British were ruling over India, that he wrote:
“...The more I read the more I was filled with astonishment and indignation at the apparently conscious and deliberate bleeding of India by England throughout a hundred and fifty years. I began to feel that I had come upon the greatest crime in history.”
“I have seen a great people starving to death before my eyes, and I am convinced that this exhaustion and starvation are due not, as their beneficiaries claim, to over-population and superstition, but to the most sordid and criminal exploitation of one nation by another in all recorded history.”
Will Durant, in “The Case for India”, p. 1. 1930
He wrote a book on his experiences in India called “The Case for India” because as a descent human being, he could not keep quiet. This book was banned by the British and was nearly lost to the public. Just recently (2007) it was published in Mumbai. It is very well researched with references to statements and statistics from British sources.
Gāndhi had organized three great Satyāgraha-s in India to achieve independence from the British rule. The first one of non-cooperation was in 1920, then the ‘Dāndi march’ in 1930, and last one ‘Quit India’ movement in 1942. More about the fight for India’s independence will be dealt with later on in the book.
The British troops left India after her independence. There was no sign of animosity or bitterness against either Indians or against the British at that time. The troops were cheered and not jeered when they took off in ships. Arnold Toynbee, British historian wrote that:
“Gāndhi had not only liberated India, he had also liberated Great Britain” (from their sinful exploitation of colonies).