British Wars > British Raj Wars

British Isles

-inspired by Fox's East India Act (1783)

-stripped East India Company of any and all role in the governance of India

-instead vesting it in an East India Commission of seven with members elected in staggered four year terms by the House of Commons

-serving supervisory and administrative court role over India

-with the power to appoint all officials in the governance of India, albeit with the most important officials needing to be confirmed by the Commons

-helped by body of assistant Commissioners

-additionally the formation of a Legislative Council of sixteen in India itself

-with the power to make laws only Parliament could override

-with four councillors elected by Indians from elites in four presidencies (Bombay, Madras, Bengal, Agra)

-additionally a representative from Maratha Empire, Delhi, and Oudh

-in practice as whites overrule at all times, it's just a consultative assembly

-with British Raj having settled a fair bit

-and Moderate Party in charge

-establishes Privy Council of India

-consisting of various classes of Indian nobles

-together have the right to make petitions

-sentence:

"With the East India Acts of 1832 and 1842, Radicals and Moderates alike believed they accomplished the mission of Burke, Fox, and Sheridan. The East India Company was stripped of all role in India's governance, and legitimacy had been placed on new axes of justice pointing to Parliament. The disarray that had come with the Popular Revolution was now over, and new institutions were created for mediated consultation of the right natives. The reformers believed that they had given India an end to the atrocities of the East India Company and a step towards civilization, and with it a small amount of liberty that befit that race, the Indians, that had only ever known despotism. Perhaps in several hundred years - some particularly daring souls said one or two hundred! - under proper tutelage, it might be ready for representative government and perhaps even independence, as an ally and friend forever grateful of having been lifted to modernity. Suffice to say, this did not happen."

-Great India Famine of 1876-8

-massive crop failures across India, esp. Deccan

-aid contingent on work, which starving peasants unable to do

-what little relief only granted with work requirement

-massive exports of Indian crops to Britain from same regions in famine

-while princely state of Maharashtra closed exportation of food sluggishly

-did nothing for peasants outside it

-disease outbreaks among starving peasants

-killed 7 million people

-effects of Famine

-Punjabi Republic famine caused Punjabi Revolution

-overthrew empire, created authoritarian, secularizing, modernizing republic

-all efforts cracked down autocratically due to fears of Punjabi-style revolt

-in princely state of Maharashtra reforms caused convening of convention of deputies Rashtra Mela

-convened in play to regain power against hereditary Peshwa

-backfired when Rashtra Mela made itself permanent and made modern limited constitution

-in Bombay Justice Mahadev Govind Ranade assembled grand reform society

-elected through it to Legislative Council and then wins enough support of electoral college to become Lord Agent-General of India

-led efforts to reform but failed

-in Maharashtra

-negotiation b/w legislature and monarchy causes reform led by monarch in 1890s

-state centralization and civil service

-reservations for non-Brahmins

-religious reform movement inaugurated by state

-missionaries being sent

-negotiates recognition in 1925 of full independence in Treaty of Allabahad

-thanks to growing confidence and "Mahratta" big part of imperial armies

-secures permanent alliance, gives consistent supply of soldiers to it

In modern-day Hindustan, British imperialist suppression of reform associations in the 1880s onward resulted in a degree of volatility. However, its politics were quickly deeply affected by those of Punjab. The anticlerical attitudes of Prem Nath Kaul's military junta quickly resulted in a backlash among Hindu and Muslim clerics, and this spread to Hindustan. The British sought to harness this to avert a Punjabi revolution by aligning with them, in an effort that proved partially successful; furthermore, Punjab's adoption of Perso-Arabic script resulted in the British promoting the use of Kaithi script for the Hindustani language. Britain gradually attempted to create a pro-British Hindustani identity to expel and remove Punjabi influence, in an effort that proved partially successful for a time with the creation of the National Hindustan College in Allahabad. However, when the pro-British Hindustani associations gradually began to advocate reform in the twentieth century, this resulted in a British crackdown, which in turn inspired further organization; over the 1910s, this resulted the formation of the oppositionist National Hindustan League, advocating expansion of the minor elective parts of British Raj elective councils. This proved partially successful, in 1920 and 1930, these elective parts were expanded. But at the same time, these elective members were refused any or all reference in actual policy. This resulted in protests, which the British quickly cracked down upon. When, in 1934, the British brutally cracked down upon a protest in Karnal and resulted in hundreds of deaths, this caused a massive protest movement spreading across the region. Finally, in 1936, this reached its peak when a British general sought to make an example of a protest in Patna through aerial bombardment of the entire city. As Patna burned, a wave of riots spread across Hindustan in sheer horror at the situation, and elected members of official councils separated from official institutions and assembled in Muzaffarpur. Here, they attempted some last-minute negotiation for autonomy, but when the British failed and declared them an "unlawful assembly, this assembly declared itself the "Hindustan National Council". When word came that the British were assembling an army to arrest the Council, they then issued a Declaration of Independence establishing the Hindustani Republic. Cries of "Liberty or Death" and "Death to the Britishers" were heard across the nation. The Hindustani War of Independence had begun.

The war proved tough and brutal. Peasant armies in many cases overthrew rulers of princely states and other princes declared themselves sworn republicans, while at the same time the British treated the revolutionaries, and often simply peasants, with heavy brutality. These attempts to massacre just inspired new opposition. When it became increasingly clear French arms merchants were selling vast numbers of guns to revolutionaries through Punjab, the British army sought to close it through a heavy-handed occupation of the border region of Haryana. When the liberal-minded Maharaja of Gujarat made statements condemning British brutality, British officers quickly forced him out of power, though their attempts to pressure him to resign failed; he would return to power after the war. In 1937, the British finally decided to come to terms, and by the Treaty of Jabbalpur, the conflict lines were frozen and both British and Hindustani-controlled territory were unified under the framework of a "Confederation of Hindustan" that was an attempt to freeze the conflict. This attempt at peace withstood for a year, as both Hindustan and Britain prepared for a continuation of war, and in 1938 it finally broke down when a British general attempted to overthrow the National Council. The resulting conflict saw the better-armed Hindustani Army overthrow the Nawab of Oudh and take the Terai region of what was then part of Nepal, while also successfully entering into Rajasthan. When Britain brutally suppressed a Haryanvi revolt, it caused a vast refugee crisis which spilled into Punjab; this resulted in the Punjabi Army storming in to Haryana to occupy a "Haryana Border Strip" as a buffer against the conflict. This weakened British positions in Haryana massively, and finally the Hindustani Army defeated them. And so, finally, in 1939, the Treaty of Muzaffarpur granted Hindustan its independence as a country bounded below by Maharashtra and to its east by British Bengal and Orissa. The conflict finally came to an end. Now, the question was how best to heal the scars of the war, and how best to create a civil society from the ruins. And for all that today it has certainly successfully rebuilt and established a functioning society, the scars still exist.

Furthermore, with the 1939 restoration of the deposed Maharaja of Gujarat, and with the massively weakened position of the British Raj, he was successfully able to negotiate Gujarat's independence in 1940, along with the British holdings of Ahmedabad and Surat being brought under his rule; the independence of the Kingdom of Gujarat was secured, and it lasted until 1979 when revelations of vast corruption scandals involving the Maharaja resulted in his forced abdication and the establishment of the Republic of Gujarat.

In Maharashtra, this conflict caused a vast crisis. During the conflict, the king of Nagpur signed on to enter Maharashtra, while numerous deposed kings, including many of those of Maharashtrian descent, moved to Maharashtra. Maharashtrian soldiers' clear complicity in British war crimes resulted in a brewing anger; in 1941, this resulted in sweeping landslides for the opposition. It negotiated the Treaty of Puna, which put an end to Maharashtra's alliance with Britain; though it continued British recruitment of soldiers, it made the Federation of Maharashtra a genuinely independent state. It seemed to many that the British Raj was facing total disintegration, but further events made this clearer.

In 1938, longstanding brewing resentment by the peasantry of the princely state of Hyderabad towards its ruler, the Nizam, and the state's brutal feudal system, resulted in peasant rebellion with some support from the Andhra Mahasabha, a Telugu nationalist coalition of parties dominated by the radical Association of Workers and Peasants. Though the initial overthrow of some landlords saw little attention due to the vast conflict in Hindustan grasping peoples' attention, while the Nizam's forces proved successful in overthrowing them, when in 1939, the Nizam assembled a vast assembly of volunteer death squads known as "Razakars" against peasants, the Andhra Mahasabha decided to declare their full support for the peasant rebellions against the Nizam. The Andhra Revolution had truly began. Peasant assemblies at the village level were formed as parallel administrations, dominated by members of the Andhra Mahasabha to the extent it was unclear as to whether the party ended and the state began. Despite the Razakar death squads proving effective at first, the peasant rebels escalated in size and overwhelmed them. By late 1940 the peasant armies had swept most of Hyderabad state, and increasingly they were pointed towards the city of Hyderabad itself. When rebels rose up within the city itself, the Nizam finally made the decision to leave across Maharashtra, living for the rest of his life in exile in Turkey. With the Hyderabad princely state having all but collapsed, the Andhra Mahasabha issued a constitution establishing the Andhra Workers' and Peasants' Republic under a nominally democratic constitution; in practice, it was ruled by a coalition of parties led by the Associationists.

Although by this point it was unclear that Andhra was a radical associationist republic, the overthrow of a princely state by a peasant revolt panicked the British authorities. In 1941, it decided to assemble its South Indian holdings as the Dravidian Federation, a union of South Indian states under British authorities that included predominately Dravidian-speaking citizens with the notable exception of Oriya speakers in and around Vizakhapatnam, with autonomies that included virtual independence. This was fundamentally an attempt to keep Andhra-style revolutionary sentiments from the region. However, it became increasingly clear this federation was dominated by Tamils, and this quickly escalated when in 1942 it sponsored a Tamil revolt in Dutch Ceylon. When it was predictably suppressed, a Dravidian army landed on Jaffna and launched an invasion with the aim of invading and occupying the entire island, despite the Sinhalese-speaking majority. When the Dutch responded with a bombing campaign over Madurai, the Kaapenaar diplomat Hendrik de Booij successfully negotiated an International Forum occupation of Jaffna, with its status contingent on the holding of a referendum; it successfully defused a potentially disastrous situation while saving Dravidian face. However, the blatant Tamil irredentism behind the invasion of Jaffna resulted in the Dravidian Federation increasingly breaking down. In 1943, the sub-federal King of Mysore successfully negotiated the unification of other Kannadiga parts of the Dravidian federation with him as their head of state, and when the Dravidian Federation attempted to slap this down, he declared the independence of the Kingdom of Karnataka. This then sparked the secession of the Malayalam-speaking kingdoms of Cochin and Travancore from the Dravidian Federation as the State of Cochin-Travancore in the same year; the overt feudalism of the state resulted in a revolution in 1953 and the establishment of the Republic of Malabar in its place. Back to the 1940s, the increasingly prominent Tamil dominance of the state with the only prominent linguistic minorities being the Telugus in the north and the Oriya further north resulted in Telugu associations attempting to renegotiate the Dravidian Federation as a binational state. When these efforts failed, in 1945 the Telugu and Oriya districts seceded to create the North Coromandel Republic; however, almost immediately, in 1946 a peasant rebellion against the distinct feudal nature of the state resulted in this state almost entirely breaking down, and in 1947 Andhra-associated peasants declared the incorporation of the North Coromandel Republic within the Andhra Workers' and Peasants' Republic. However, the British sought to salvage the situation by declaring the secession of the Oriya-speaking parts around Vizakhapatnam and its incorporation within British Orissa, pending independence. This effort proved successful, and while the Andhra Workers' and Peasants' Republic incorporated most of the North Coromandel Republic, the area around Vizakhapatnam was not. Furthermore, the Dravidian Federation dropped any trace of multiethnic Dravidian nationhood, declaring itself the Republic of Tamil Nadu.

Britain at this point saw the writing of the wall. In 1948, it declared the independence of the Union of Orissa that incorporated princely states, in an attempt to keep the region friendly if not allied; after anti-feudal liberal elements won elections in 1952, they abolished the princely states and, in an attempt to decentre ethnic identity, renamed the state the Republic of Kalinga. In the year 1948, the British holding of Bombay was also given independence as the Republic of Bombay in an attempt to maintain British commercial dominance in the era of decolonization; it would be consumed by disagreements between its Gujarati elite and its Maharashtrian majority until it was finally incorporated into Maharashtra in 1963 as an autonomous republic. Finally, the last of the British holdings in India, Bengal, finally achieved independence in 1949 as the Republic of Bengal, which finally brought the long-suppressed reformist and radical elements to the centre stage. The British-aligned princely states of Assam, Jaintia, Tripura, and Manipur were generally dissatisfied with this and all declared independence rather than have a similar status with respect to Bengal; Tripura quickly collapsed into revolution in 1951, and the new rebels declared unification with Bengal. This inspired the unification of Assam and Jaintia in 1952 as the United Kingdom of Assam and Jaintia, while Manipur promulgated a formal constitution which established it as the Kingdom of Manipur.

And with that, all of India finally became independent.