How, When and Where?

1.0How Important are dates?

"The disintegration of the Mughal Empire was followed by the emergence of a number of small regional states. The period also witnessed European traders from nations such as Britain, France & Portugal entering & establishing their trading posts."

There was a time when historians were fascinated with dates. There were heated debates about the dates on which rulers were crowned or battles were fought. In the commonsense notion, history was synonymous with dates. You may have heard people say, "I find history boring because it is all about memorising dates." Is such a conception true?

History is certainly about changes that occur over time. It is about finding out how things were in the past and how things have changed. As soon as we compare the past with the present, we refer to time, we talk of "before" and "after".

Living in the world we do not always ask historical questions about what we see around us. We take things for granted, as if what we see has always been in the world we inhabit. But most of us have our moments of wonder, when we are curious, and we ask questions that actually are historical. (i) Watching someone sip a cup of tea at a roadside tea stall you may wonder-when did people begin to drink tea or coffee? (ii) Looking out of the window of a train you may ask yourself - when were railways built and how did people travel long distances before the age of railways? (iii) Reading the newspaper in the morning you may be curious to know how people got to hear about things before newspapers began to be printed.

All such historical questions refer us back to notions of time. But time does not have to be always precisely dated in terms of a particular year or a month. Sometimes it is actually incorrect to fix precise dates to processes that happen over a period of time. People in India did not begin drinking tea one fine day; they developed a taste for it over time. There can be not one clear date for a process such as this. Similarly, we cannot fix one single date on which British rule was established, or the national movement started, or changes took place within the economy and society. All these things happened over a stretch of time. We can only refer to a span of time, an approximate period over which particular changes became visible.

There was a time when history was an account of battles and big events. It was about rulers and their policies. Historians wrote about the year: (i) a king was crowned, (ii) he married, (iii) he had a child, (iv) he fought a particular war, (v) he died, (vi) then, the next ruler succeeded to the throne.

For events such as these, specific dates can be determined, and in histories such as these, debates about dates continue to be important.

Historians now write about a host of other issues, and other questions.

(i) They look at how people earned their livelihood, (ii) What they produced and ate? (iii) How cities developed, and markets came up? (iv) How were kingdoms formed and new ideas spread? (v) How cultures and society changed?

2.0Hindoostan by James Rennel, 1782

• Rennel an enthusiastic supporter of British conquest of India was asked by Robert Clive to produce maps of Hindustan. Rennel saw preparation of maps as essential to the process of domination.
• So, he depicted Brahmans offering the Shastras to Britannia, as a frontispiece to the first map produced by him in 1782.
• The picture here tries to suggest that Indians willingly gave over their ancient texts to Britannia as if asking her to become the protector of Indian culture.

3.0Which dates?

By what criteria do we choose a set of dates as important?

• The dates we select, the dates around which we compose our story of the past, are not important on their own. They become important because we focus on a particular set of events as important.
• If our focus of study changes, if we begin to look at new issues, a new set of dates will appear significant. Consider an example, in the histories written by British historians in India, the rule of each Governor-General was important. These histories began with the rule of the first Governor-General, Warren Hastings, and ended with the last Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten.
• In separate chapters we read about the deeds of others Hastings, Wellesley, Bentick, Dalhousie, Canning, Lawrence, Lytton, Ripon, Curzon, Harding, Irwin. It was a seemingly never-ending succession of Governor - Generals and Viceroys. All the dates in these history books were linked to these personalities - to their activities, policies, achievements. It was as if there was nothing outside their lives that was important for us to know. The chronology of their lives marked the different chapters of the history of British India.
• History tells a story in a way that makes some sense and can be followed. In the process we focus only on those events that help us to give shape to the story we are telling. In the histories that revolve around the life of British Governor-Generals, the activities of Indians simply do not fit, they have no space.
  
  Governor General Warren Hasting

What, then, do we do?

• Clearly, we need another format for our history. This would mean that the old dates will no longer have the significance they earlier had. A new set of dates will become more important for us to know.

4.0How Do We Periodise?

• In 1817, James Mill, a Scottish economist and political philosopher, published a massive three-volume work, A History of British India. In this he divided Indian history into three periods - Hindu, Muslim and British.
• Mill thought that all Asian societies were at a lower level of civilisation than Europe. According to his telling of history, before the British came to India, Hindu and Muslim despots ruled the country. Religious intolerance, caste taboos and superstitious practices dominated social life. British rule, Mill felt, could civilise India.
• To do this it was necessary to introduce European manners, arts institutions and laws in India. Mill, in fact, suggested that the British should conquer all the territories in India to ensure the enlightenment and happiness of the Indian people. For India was not capable of progress without British help.
  
  James Mill - A Scottish economist and political philosopher
• In this idea of history, British rule represented all the forces of progress and civilisation. The period before British rule was one of darkness.
• Moving away from British classification, historians have usually divided Indian history into 'ancient', 'medieval' and 'modern'. This division too has its problems. It is a periodisation that is borrowed from the West where the modern period was associated with the growth of all the forces of modernity - science, reason, democracy, liberty and equality. Medieval was a term used to describe a society where these features of modern society did not exist.
• The term 'modern period' refers to the recent times. The modern period did not begin simultaneously in all parts of the world. It began first in Europe, around the fifteenth century AD.
• It came to be characterised by features such as the expansion of trade, industrialisation, urbanisation, swift transport and communication, widespread literacy, democratic political systems based on ideas like liberty and equality, and large-scale migration of people in search of new occupations.
• Modernisation led to rapid progress in Europe. In India the modern period began much later, around the mid-eighteenth century.
• Under the British rule people did not have equality, freedom or liberty. Nor was the period one of economic growth and progress.

Many historians therefore refer to this period as 'colonial'.

5.0What is Colonial?

In further chapters you will read about the way the British came to conquer the country and establish their rule, subjugating local nawabs and rajas. You will see how they established control over the economy and society, collected revenue to meet all their expenses, bought the goods they wanted at low prices, produced crops they needed for export, and you will understand the changes that came about, therefore. You will also come to know about the changes British rule brought about in values and tastes, customs, and practices. When the subjugation of one country by other leads to these kinds of political, economic, social, and cultural changes, we refer to the process as colonisation.

6.0Sources used by historians in writing about the last 250 years of Indian history

Administration produces records

• Official records are an important source of information for British administration, as they believed that the act of writing was important.
• Every instruction, plan, policy decision, agreement, investigation had to be clearly written up. Once this was done, things could be properly studied and debated.
• This conviction produced an administrative culture of memos, noting and reports.
• For Example: In 1946 the colonial government in India was trying to put down a mutiny that broke out on the ships of the Royal Indian Navy. Here are the kind of reports the Home Department got from the different dockyards: Bombay: Arrangements have been made for the Army to take over ships and establishment. Royal Navy ships are remaining outside the harbour. Karachi: 301 mutineers are under arrest and a few more strongly suspected are to be arrested ... All establishments ... are under military guard. Vizagapatnam: The position is completely under control and no violence has occurred. Military guards have been placed on ships and establishments. No further trouble is expected except that a few men may refuse to work.
• The British also felt that all important documents and letters needed to be carefully preserved. So, they set up record rooms attached to all administrative institutions.
• The village tahsildar's office, the collectorate, the commissioner's office, the provincial secretariats, the lawcourts - all had their record rooms.
• Specialised institutions like archives and museums were also established to preserve important records.
• For Example: When New Delhi was built, the National Museum and the National Archives were both located close to the Viceregal Palace. This location reflects the importance these institutions had in British imagination.
• Letters and memos that moved from one branch of the administration to another in the early years of the nineteenth century can still be read in the archives.
• In the early years of the nineteenth century these documents were carefully copied out and beautifully written by calligraphists - that is, by those who specialised in the art of beautiful writing.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, with the spread of printing, multiple copies of these records were printed as proceedings of each government department.

Surveys Become Important

• The British believed that a country had to be properly known before it could be effectively administered. By the early nineteenth century detailed surveys were being carried out to map the entire country.
• In the villages, revenue surveys were conducted. The effort was to know the topography, the soil quality, the flora, the fauna, the local histories, and the cropping pattern - all the facts seen as necessary to know about to administer the region.
• From the end of the nineteenth century, Census operations were held every ten years. These prepared detailed records of the number of people in all the provinces of India, noting information on castes, religions and occupation. There were many other surveys - botanical surveys, zoological surveys, archaeological surveys, anthropological surveys, forest surveys.
  
  Mapping and survey operations in progress in Bengal, a drawing by James Prinsep, 1832 In the above image note how all the instruments that were used in surveys are placed in the foreground to emphasise the scientific nature of the project.

7.0What Official Records Do Not Tell?

• Official record tell us what officials thought, what they were interested in, and what they wished to preserve for posterity. But these record do not help us understand what other people felt like and what they lay behind their actions.
• For this, we have diaries of people, autobiographies of famous personalities, accounts of pilgrims and travellers and popular booklets that were sold in local bazaars.
• As printing spread, newspapers were published, and issues were debated in public. Leaders and reformers wrote to spread their ideas, poets and novelists wrote to express their feelings.
• For Example: One of the report of Hindustan times state the following facts about a police strike in March 1946. More than 2000 policemen in Delhi refused to take their food on Thursday morning as a protest against their low salaries and the bad quality of food supplied to them from the Police Lines kitchen. As the news spread to the other police stations, the men there also refused to take food. One of the strikers said: "The food supplied to us from the Police Lines kitchen is not fit for human consumption. Even cattle would not eat the chappattis and dal which we have to eat."
• All these sources, however, were produced by those who were literate. From these we will not be able to understand how history was experienced and lived by the tribals and the peasants, the workers in the mines or the poor on the streets. Getting to know their lives is a more difficult task.

8.0Glossary

1. Brahmans - Brahmins were designated as the priestly class in a varna as well as a caste within Hindu society.
2. Shastras - A Shastra" commonly refers to a treatise or text on a specific field of knowledge. In early Vedic literature, the word referred to any precept, rule, teaching, ritual instruction or direction.
3. Britannia - the symbol of British power.

9.0MIND MAP