UNIVERSITE D’ANTANANARIVO
ECOLE NORMALE SUPERIEURE
DEPARTEMENT DE FORMATION INITIALE LITTERAIRE C.E. R. EN LANGUE ET LETTRES ANGLAISES
ASPECTS OF BRITISH IMPERIALISM IN INDIA AS SEEN THROUGH PAUL SCOTT’S THE RAJ QUARTET WITH SELECTED TEXTS FOR PEDAGOGICAL USE
Presented by: RANESA Miarisoa Rakotonjanahary
Dissertation Advisor: Mrs Ascence RAZAIARIVELO
09 March 2007 À l’innoubliable papa,
À la courageuse maman,
Aux trois autres Ranesa mes deux frères et ma sœur. ACKOWLEDGEMENTS
I am most grateful to all those who took part in the realization of this work namely Mr MANORO Régis and Mrs RAZAIARIVELO Ascence, my dissertation advisors whose invaluable help, advice and understanding contributed much in the achievement of this dissertation in time.
I am also grateful to Mrs RABESAOTRA Sahondra who has willingly accepted to preside over the members of jury and who has greatly helped me by her suggestions for the completion of this piece of research.
I would like to express my thankfullness to Mr RAZAFINDRATSIMA Eugène who made useful criticisms and comments which were important for the final version of this work.
To anyone who has, knowingly or otherwise, helped to shape the ideas that have gone into this dissertation, please find here the expression of my best gratitude.
i
TABLE OF CONTENTS
General Introduction...... 1
PART ONE: THE BRITISH EXPANSION IN THE INDIAN PENINSULA...3
Introduction to Part One...... 4 1.1. COMMERCIAL EXPANSION...... 4 1.1.1. The Decline of the Moghul Empire...... 4 ...... 1.1.1.1. The Moghul Dynasty...... 5 1.1.1.2. Political Instability...... 7 1.1.2. The Elimination of European Rivals by the East India Company...... 7 ...... 1.1.2.1. The Portuguese Settlement...... 7 ...... 1.1.2.2. The Dutch Verenigde Oost Indische Companie...... 8 ...... 1.1.2.3. La Compagnie Française Permanente des Indes...... 9 ...... 1.1.2.4. The British East India Company...... 9 ...... 1.1.2.5. The British Supremacy...... 9 1.1.3. The Monopoly of Trade in India and China...... 11 1.1.3.1. The Royal Charter of 1600...... 11 1.1.3.2. Trade with India...... 12 ...... 1.1.3.3. Trade with China...... 13 1.2. THE PAX BRITANNICA...... 14 1.2.1. Conquest and Annexation...... 14 1.2.1.1. The Battle of Plassey...... 14 ...... 1.2.1.2. The Gurkha War 1814-1816...... 15 1.2.1.3. The Mahratta Wars...... 15 1.2.1.4. The Mysore Wars...... 16 1.2.1.5. The Burmese Wars...... 16 1.2.1.6. The First Afghan War 1838-1842...... 17 1.2.1.7. The Sikh Wars1845-1846 and 1848-1849 ...... 17 ...... 1.2.1.8. Annexation of Sind and Oudh...... 19 1.2.2. British Colonial Administration...... 19 ...... 1.2.2.1. Direct Rule...... 19 1.2.2.2. Indirect Rule ...... 20 ii
1.2.3. The Indian Civil Service...... 22 ...... 1.2.3.1. The Origin of the Service...... 22 ...... 1.2.3.2. Access to the I.C.S...... 23 ...... 1.2.3.3. The Colonial Government...... 24 1.3. LEGISLATIVE AND POLITICAL CHANGES...... 33 1.3.1. The Rise of Indian Nationalism...... 33 ...... 1.3.1.1. The Mutiny of the Sepoys 1857...... 33 ...... 1.3.1.2. The Durbars...... 35 1.3.1.3. The Indian National Congress...... 37 1.3.2. The Legislative Councils...... 38 1.3.2.1. The Partition of Bengal...... 38 1.3.2.2. The Morley-Minto Reforms 1909...... 39 1.3.2.3. The Montford Reforms 1919...... 41
1.3.3. The Struggle for Independence...... 42 1.3.3.1. Gandhi 1869-1948...... 42 1.3.3.2. The Rowlatt Bills 1919...... 43 1.3.3.3. The Government of India Act 1935...... 44 1.3.3.4. The Quit India Campaign...... 46 1.3.3.5. The Partition of India and Pakistan...... 47 Conclusion to Part One...... 49
PART TWO: SOCIO-CULTURAL MANIFESTATIONS OF IMPERIALISM IN THE RAJ QUARTET...... 51 Introduction to part two...... 51 2.1. THE HISTORICAL EVENTS TREATED BY EACH NOVEL...... 53 2.1.1. Strikes and Riots ...... 53 2.1.2. The Second World War...... 54 2.1.3. Religious Strife...... 55 2.1.4. The British Departure...... 56 2.2. COLONIAL SETTINGS OF THE RAJ QUARTET...... 57 2.2.1. The District of Mayapore...... 57 2.2.1.1. The Civil Lines...... 58 2.2.1.2. The Native Town...... 59 2.2.1.3. The Eurasian Community...... 61 2.2.2. The Hill Station of Pankot...... 61 2.2.3. The Princely State of Mirat...... 63 2.3. THE INHABITANTS OF THE BRITISH RESIDENTIAL AREAS...... 64 iii
2.3.1. The Civil Servants...... 64 2.3.2. The Mission Teachers...... 65 2.3.3. The Simple English Civilians...... 68 2.3.4. The British Military...... 69 2.3.5. Some Privileged Indians...... 70 2.4. RONALD MERRICK AS AN ABUSIVE POLICE OFFICER...... 71 2.4.1. Kumar Father as a complete admirer to Imperialism...... 72 2.4.2. Social ostracism...... 73 2.4.3. The Case of Kumar...... 74 2.4.4. Institutional intrusion into a personal relationship...... 75 iv
2.5. CHANGES OF COLONIAL OUTLOOK...... 75 2.5.1. The Release of Hari Kumar...... 75 2.5.2. The Price of Oppression...... 76 Conclusion to part two...... 77
PART THREE: USING PAUL SCOTT’S THE RAJ QUARTET IN THE TEACHING OF SUBSTANTIVES FOR ‘SECONDE’ CLASSES78
Introduction to Part Three...... 79 3.1. LITERARY TEXTS AS TEACHING MATERIALS IN ENGLISH COURSES...... 79 3.1.1. Advantages of the Use of Literary Texts...... 79 3.1.2. Criteria for Text Selection...... 82 3.1.2.1. The Text...... 82 3.1.2.2. The Teacher...... 82 3.1.2.3. The Students...... 85 3.2. PARTICULARITIES OF THE RAJ QUARTET...... 86 3.2.1. Connection with Lycée syllabus ...... 86 3.2.2. Suitability of the Novels to the Reality in Madagascar...... 86 3.3. ADOPTED PEDAGOGICAL USE OF THE RAJ QUARTET...... 87 a) - Experimentation N°1...... 88 b) - Experimentation N°2...... 93 c) - Experimentation N°3...... 98 d) - Experimentation N°4...... 101 e) - Experimentation N°5...... 105 f) – Experimentation N°6...... 109 g) – Other Texts that Could Be Exploited...... 111 Conclusion to Part Three...... 114 General Conclusion...... 115 Glossary...... 116 BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 119 v
MAPS
. Map one: The European Powers in India 1550-1775...... 10 . Map two: India, Nineteenth Century...... 18 . Map three: The Indian Empire in 1901...... 21 . Map four: British India 1857-1947...... 27 . Map five: British Expansion in India 1775-1858...... 36
. Map six : India in 190640 . Map seven : Independence and Partition of India and Pakistan 1947...... 48 . Map eight: Violence in India 1919-1947...... 50
PICTURES
- Picture1: Governors Generals...... 32 - Picture2: General Reginald Dyer...... 45 - Picture3: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi...... 45 - Picture 4: The Raj Quartet...... 52 - Picture 5: A British Quarter in India...... 60 - Picture 6: Indian huts near Calcutta...... 60
1
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
Among other British colonies, India was very different to the crown of England in the way that it was at the same time the most precious and also the largest one. India was firstly used as a colony for marketing goods but starting from 1857, the year when Queen Victoria was named Empress of India, the British had a sole devotion for India which was the administration of the land. Army played a great importance in the conquest of India. At the beginning, the British implantation in the peninsula was achieved thanks to two main reasons. First of all, the Moghul rulers were weakening little by little. Secondly, the British army had better technology and was also a powerful seafarer. The conquest had been fulfilled through wars against local rulers or by treaties. The British domination was shown by the East India Company elimination of other European powers. It did not limit itself to commercial exploitation but also streched to land occupation. Thus, the political aspect of imperialism in India had been carried out through the administration of the land during almost a century. In the social field, imperialism was manifested especially by power abuse. The British oppression was symbolized in The Raj Quartet by the theme of rape which could be considered as a serious or even a barbaric crime. From the Mutiny of Sepoys in 1857 on, Indians had always tried to resist and get rid of the British. This mutiny strongly affected the British attitudes towards India and Indians. The Indians’ long hatred for their colonizers burst out after the massacre in Jallianwallah Bagh and was clearly felt when Gandhi launched the ‘Quit India Campain’. Imperialism was also seen in the British behaviour and attitudes towards Indians in everyday life. They had the tendency to reject and banish the majority of population who were the owners of the land. Paul Mark Scott was a contemporary British novelist born in London in 1920. However, he had a different view of India compared to his fellow countrymen. The Raj Quartet was his principal achievement and in it he evoked his preoccupation with the process of history of this country. Scott, though British he was, showed in his novels the loosening of the British hold on India and the moral change among the British community which felt troubled in front of violence and struggle for Independence. The present work is divided into three main parts and is meant to show these aspects of imperialism in India as seen through The Raj Quartet. In the first part is 2 developed the process of conquest and the British expansion in the Indian peninsula. The second part concerns the manifestation of imperialism in people’s social and cultural life before India’s Independence whereas the last part deals with the exploitation of some selected extracts from The Raj Quartet as teaching materials for teachers of English in lycées, more precisely the substantives which are included in the Unit two of the curricula for ‘seconde’ classes. 3
PART ONE:
THE BRITISH EXPANSION
IN THE INDIAN PENINSULA 4
In England, the Industrial Revolution increased imperatives of commercial expansion tenfold and pushed the country to open and extend trade in America and the Far East. The expansion was easily achieved thanks to her mastery of the seas. All these events together with the loss of the Thirteen Colonies led Britain to strengthen her establishment in India. In 1783, she recognized the independence of these Colonies by the Treaty of Versailles.
‘India had succeeded the Old Thirteen as the indispensable makeweight without which Britain would sink to the status of a second-class power.’1
Fascinated by the fabulous riches of Indian princes and the multiplicity of means to get rich in India, the agents of the East India Company had gradually stretched the administrative and military control of the peninsula.
1. COMMERCIAL EXPANSION
Trade used to be the main interest of Britain in India. John Company, as the Company was formerly called, bought cheap pepper, tea, opium, calicoes and cotton textiles from the Far East and imported them to Europe. The Company could largely influence the land when the previously dominant Moghul Empire declined and European rivals were eliminated.
1.1.The Decline of the Moghul Empire
The reign of Emperor Aurangzeb (1658-1707) represented both the culminating point and the source of the weakening of the Empire. The fall was thought to be mainly caused by religious strife but had political consequences. Aurangzeb associated government with religion. Muslim theologians influenced little by little the State policy. Consequently, the Moghul Government no longer worked effectively. There was military and political helplessness. The country could not defend itself and Aurangzeb could no more resist the Church pressure.
1 GRIERSON, Edward, The Imperial Dream: The Commonwealth and Empire 1775-1769, London , 1972, Collins, p.78. 5
Besides, during the reign of Bahadur Shah (1719-1748), three great nobles began to build up their own domains. They were Asaf Jah the Nizam ul Mulk in Deccan, Burhan ul Mulk Saadat Khan in Avadh, and Murshid Ouli Khan in Bengal. After Aurangzeb died, a new ruler was needed to establish order in India because anarchy was slowly overtaking the land. The Moghul Empire practically went into pieces by its own internal weaknesses and not by the British power establishment.
1.1.1. The Moghul Dynasty
The Moghul Empire dated back to 1526. That year, Zahir-ud-din Muhammad Babur, a Muslim ruler from central Asia, defeated Ibrahim, the Lodi ruler and gained control over Delhi and Agra. Babur and his son Humayun built the Empire. His grandson Akbar had just consolidated it. On April 24, 1526 Babur brought twelve thousand men on horseback with him and defeated one hundred thousand soldiers and one hundred elephants in the battle of Panipat. The foundation of the Moghul Empire started that year and would last for two centuries. The reign of Humayun (1530-1556) was broken into two by the Great Afghan Sher Shah’s settlement and domination over Northern India between 1540 and 1555. Humayun died at Delhi in 1556 before he could cover the whole of his former Empire. Emperor Akbar (1556-1605) tried to reconcile Hindu to Muslim rule. Akbar began The policy of marrying Hindu princesses. At the time, every Hindu prince who gave a daughter to the Moghul ruler polluted his Rajput blood by his alliance with an Untouchable as all non-Hindus are classified to belong to this lowest caste. It should be noticed, however, that such marriage strengthened the Moghul power which therefore could use Rajput princes as allies? But still, the Muslim conquest had never covered the whole land of India but only the Ganges Valley and the east of Punjab. The reign of Jahangir and Shah Jahan (1605-1858) were noted for political and economic stability. Jahangir permitted the establishment of the East India Company’s factories on Indian soil whereas Shah Jahan was famous for the building of the Taj Mahal, the famous tomb that stood in a garden at Agra in Northern India. About twenty thousand workers crafted it between 1632 and 1653 in memory of Shah Jahan’s favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal ,who died in 1629 while she was giving birth to her fourteenth child. Aurangzeb (1658-1707) was the last of the Great Moghuls. For a decade, he was 6 fully controlling his Empire which, however, fell soon after his death in 1707. The Emperors who ruled after Aurangzeb were known as Later Moghuls. The following genealogy represents the Great Moghuls. Names in capital letters were those of the reigning Emperors of the time.
BABUR (1483-1530) r 1526-1530
HUMAYUN (1508-1556 ) Kamran Askari Hindal r 1530-1556
AKBAR ( 1542-1605 ) Hakim r 1556-1605
JAHANGIR ( 1569-1627 ) Murad Daniyal r 1605-1627
Khusram Parniz SHAH JAHAN (1592-1666) Shahiyar r 1627-1658
Dara Shikah Shah Suja AURANGZEB (1618-1707) Murad Bakhsh2 r 1658-1707
1.1.2. Political Instability
2 GASCOIGNE, Bamber, The Great Moghuls, New Delhi, 1971,Dass media, p.250. 7
Aurangzeb, a devout Muslim ruler, tried to convert all his non-Muslim people to Islam. He even imposed special taxes on Hindus and destroyed many of their temples and icons. He also pulled down statues and works of art because he feared they might be worshipped as idols. Even so, Muslim believers remained a minority till his death. As a response to this religious oppression, Hindu landholders and powerful chieftains of the Empire revolted many times. The Jat peasant farmers created their own state whereas the Mahratta movement revived and occupied the entire west and the greater part of the centre of India. These series of revolt began as early as 1669 and kept going on even after the death of Aurangzeb. This political instability affected the administration and the economy of the Empire. Corruption increased in all branches of public services. In Avadh, Bengal and the North-Western Deccan, Hindu warriors and merchants grew richer and became Zamindars or holders of superior landrights. Apart from that, the ten other Later Moghuls did not live long. The fast succession to the throne and their inefficiency quickened the decay of the Moghul Empire. Meanwhile, European countries starting from Portugal were coming and establishing trade in the Indian peninsula.
1.2.The Elimination of European Rivals by the East India Company
From the fifteenth century, India stood as an attraction for European trading companies such as those of Portugal, the Netherlands, Britain and France. Until the middle of the eighteenth century, the European Company traders in India neither quarrelled with each other nor with Indian princes. This peace ceased with the war of the Austrian succession (1740-1748) when both the British and French Governments sent fleets to India. The British Company introduced and fortified its army and made India not only a market for manufactured goods but also a part of the British Empire.
1.2.1. The Portuguese Settlement
Thanks to Vasco Da Gama’s discovery of the sea route to India in 1498, the Portuguese adventurers had the honour of being the first European seafarers to come to India. They aimed at conquering land, developing trade and converting people 8 to Christianity. The Zamorin, a Hindu Rajah of Malabar, welcomed them and expressed his wish to trade with the King of Portugal.
‘Vasco Da Gama, a nobleman of your household, has visited my kingdom and has given me great pleasure. In my kingdom there is abundance of cinnamon, cloves, ginger, pepper, and precious stones. What I seek from thy country is gold, silver, coral and scarlet.’3
In 1509, Alfonso de Albuquerque was nominated Governor of Portuguese affairs in India. He started with the conquest of Goa and Malacca. The Portuguese had the command of the sea and possessed forts along the coast. They monopolized trade on the Malabar Coast, the Persian Coast, India and Malacca till 1595. The monopoly ceased because Indians grew tired of their dishonesty and acts of piracy.
‘The Portuguese treatment of their nature subjects and opponents showed a consistent and systematic cruelty and barbarity lower even than the standards of a cruel age.’4
Besides, Portugal decided to colonize Brazil and focussed her attention and effort there. In addition to that, her European rivals arrived and laid hands on her profits.
1.2.2. The Dutch Verenigde Oost Indische Compagnie
In 1595, the Dutch Companies entered India by wars against the Portuguese who were expelled gradually from all their territorial possession including Ceylon. The Dutch private companies interested themselves in spices, rice, opium, indigo, silk and cotton textiles. In 1602, these private companies combined together to form the United East India Company of the Netherlands with an exclusive right to trade with India and the East Indies for twenty-one years. The Dutch Government supported the Company in all its undertakings, especially in the establishment of trade with the Indonesian archipelagos, Sumatra and Java.
3 3 (ed.)YUST, Walter, Ency clopaedia Britannica : A New Survey of Universal Knowledge, volume 12, Chicago, 1768, the University of Chicago, p.171. 4 BHARATIYA Vidya Bhavan, The History and Culture of the Indian People: The Moghul Empire, Bombay, 1974, p.507. 9
1.2.3. ‘La Compagnie Française Permanente des Indes’
Jean Baptiste Colbert, the Finance Minister of Louis XIV initiated the ‘Compagnie des Indes Orientales’ in 1664. Being one of the shareholders, the King himself controlled the Company. The Dutch opposed the French intrusion in India and took hold of Pondicherry. However, the Treaty of Reyswick in 1697 gave it back to France, and the Compagnie des Indes Orientales was renamed ‘Compagnie permanente des Indes’ under the leading of Lenoir and Dumas. Joseph François Dupleix (1697-1794) firstly worked in the commercial service of the French East India Company and later became the Governor of Pondicherry in 1742. He aimed at establishing French supremacy in southern India.
1.2.4. The British East India Company
In Tudor England, cattle had nothing to eat during winters and it was necessary to kill them beforehand. People therefore needed salt and spices to preserve and season meat. The situation led some merchants from London to venture trade in the East. They were granted a Royal Charter allowing them to trade in Asia on the last day of 1600. After the Company’s victory over the Portuguese, Jahangir the Moghul Emperor of the time permitted these merchants to build factories on his land.
1.2.5. The British Supremacy
The defeat of four Portuguese ships in 1612 and Armada in 1615 at Swally instituted the British supremacy over the Indian sea. The Dutch monopoly of trade between Indonesia and India went down with the fall of Vijayanagar. This large kingdom was situated in the south of the Krisna river and was disintegrated in 1565. The Dutch traders, like the British ones, believed that they had prior rights in the Far East. But at the end, they suggested cooperation with the English Company and together they ratified a treaty of defence in 1619. In spite of that, rivalry continued until the massacre of Amboyna in 1623 during which nine English residents were tortured 10
Map 1: The European Powers in India 1550-17755 and executed. Later in 1654, the British Prime Minister Oliver Cromwell took revenge on the Dutch Company which this time lost all its possession in India.
5 GILBERT, Martin, British History Atlas: 118 Maps from 50 B.C. to the Present, 1968, Great Britain, The Macmillan Company, p72 11
The conflict between the British and French invaders for the domination of the Coromandel Coast lasted more than twenty years. The advantages of the East India Company actually laid in the fact that it received support from the English Government, possessed numbers of naval bases and ports in Bengal and Bombay and was master of the seas. During the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) which ended with the Treaty of Paris, the British troops demolished the French cities of Chandarnagore in west Bengal and Pondicherry in south-east India. On August 12, 1765 the Moghul Emperor granted the Diwani or rights to collect revenue in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa to the East India Company which would be supervised by the British Parliament after the passing of the Regulating Act in 1773. The French Company weakened and disappeared during the French Revolution of 1789. The previous map indicates that during more than two centuries starting from the beginning of the sixteenth century, different European powers were dividing India. The Portuguese settled themselves along the western coast from Daman to Mangalore whereas the Dutch preferred the southern part of the peninsula including Ceylon and Maldive islands. The French Company chose Pondicherry as a capital city for French India and settled along the Coromandel coast on the west. The East India Company was the latest European power to come to India but its settlement was different in the way that it stretched out inland. The Company also defeated both its European rivals which would give up their territories like Bombay in 1661 and Northern Circars in 1786, and the native rulers like that of Plassey in 1757 and Buxar in 1764.
1.3.The Monopoly of Trade in India and China
The immense profits from Indian trade attracted a number of private traders who came to be known as interlopers. The aggravation of the situation pushed the Company to monopolize the Indian trade in 1683.
1.3.1. The Royal Charter of 1600
This original Charter of Elizabeth I granted London Merchants a monopoly of trade for fifteen years with all countries lying beyond the Cape of Good Hope or the Strait of Magellan. The Charter placed the control of the Company in the hands of a Governor. In London, a chairman and a court of directors exercised control 12 over the company servants in India. The Charter could be renewed so as to extend the Company’s privileges and to make it more profitable to the realm.
‘The Charter renewed the monopoly, defined the powers and composition of the General Court of directors and confirmed the Company’s authority over its ‘fort’ factories and plantation in India’6
At the time, the British thought of Indonesia as the East India because only Kerala and part of Mysore produced spices in India. Attention was focused there only when the Dutch Company expelled them from Indonesian Spice Islands. The Royal Charter was entitled ‘The Governor and Company of Merchants of London, trading into the East Indies’. At first, it did not plan to annex territory yet but just limit liability of partners. The monopoly consisted in importing to England and not exporting from India. One hundred and twenty-five shareholders backed the Company with a capital of £ 72,000. In 1609, James I renewed the Charter to maintain the Company’s privileges and to emphasize its need for close relations with Indian rulers. Cromwell did the same in 1657 when he provided that Indian trade should be directed by a joint stock company. Later on, Charles II granted five other Charters and developed the East India Company into a great chartered one.
1.3.2. Trade with India
By the end of the seventeenth century, the East India Company was firmly rooted in India. Captain Hippon planted the first English factories in the mainland of India at Masulipatam, in the bay of Bengal at Pettapoli and in Surat in 1612. Ninety employees worked in the existing twenty-three factories. The major factories became Fort William in Bengal, Fort Saint George in Madras and the Bombay Castle. Bombay shifted to be the chief seat of the English Company in 1665. Calcutta was founded in 1690. England mainly imported cotton and silk which were therefore in competition with the English wool. Thus, the Calico Act of 1721 prohibited the wearing of Indian calicoes and chintzes in England. Indian people also disliked wearing wool. For that,
6 BAYLY, C.A.(ed.), An Illustrated History of Modern India 1600-1947, Oxford, 1991, Oxford University Press, p.64. 13 the Company brought silver and copper to pay for their purchases of Indian cloths and silks. Silver imports helped the smooth functioning of the Moghul revenue system. This fact created a problem for the British balance of payment. Finally, the Company sold British textiles in Sumatra where it bought spices to be brought to London with Indian textiles so as to reduce export of ‘bullion’7. Trade prospered and Indian imports to Britain reached £ 1,750,000 in 1740. The Charter Act of 1813 put an end to the Company’s monopoly of trade with India. It also established British sovereignty over captured territories and permitted Christian missionaries to settle there.
1.3.3. Trade with China
China alone covered three fourths of the imports from the East. The Company trade with this country proved more profitable than that with India.
‘The eighteenth century was very interested in all forms of Chinoiserie as one can see from its furniture and its china ; but the most successful of all Chinese innovation was tea. The dish of tea was a British national institution by Sheridan’s day’8
Trade with China brought in three fourths of the profits the Company obtained from the East between 1793 and 1810. However, tea was to be paid with bullion or with Indian opium because Chinese people did not use British goods much. Trade profits from the British West Indies or American colonies still appeared far more important than that from India, China and Indonesia together. In 1813, Lord Liverpool passed a bill which gave the Board of control authority over the Company’s commercial transactions. This decision abolished the monopoly of trade in India. Earl Grey’s Act of 1833 put an end to the monopoly of valuable trade with China. Henceforward, the East India Company stopped its trading concern and exercised only administrative functions in India.
2. THE PAX BRITANNICA
7 ZINKIN, Taya and Maurice, Britain and India : Requiem for Empire, London, 1964, Chatto & windus, p.13 8 ZINKIN, Taya and Maurice, op.cit., p.13. 14
The British policy in India consisted in carrying out expansion till Pax Britannica was accepted within all Indian States.
‘The British aim for the Middle East was the establishment of a Pax Britannica – a Victorian conception, it might seem in the twentieth century, yet one which circumstances in the area singularly favoured’9
2.1.Conquest and Annexation
All along the second half of the eighteenth century, the British Army was defeating almost its native and European rivals and was looking for further extension of territory. The French Governor of Pondicherry, the British Governor of Bengal, the Nizam of Hyderabad, the Sultan of Mysore and the Mahratta rulers altogether ran for the Moghul succession. The victory of Robert Clive, a young captain in the Company service, in the battle of Plassey was considered as the beginning of the foundation of British Empire in India. In June 1758, the British Robert Clive was nominated Governor of Bengal by the town council of Calcutta. The post was approved and legalized by the British company in the later months. By 1850, almost the whole of India, Ceylon and part of Burma had been brought under British control.
2.1.1. The Battle of Plassey 1757
This decisive but easily won battle happened in Bengal on June 23, 1757. Clive had beforehand corrupted the officers of Siraj-ud-Dowlah, the Nawab of Bengal, and urged him to sign the Treaty of Alinagar. The treaty allowed the Company to settle, to restore trade and to transport goods freely in Bengal. Subsequently, Clive accused Siraj of breaking the treaty and of allying secretly with French settlers. Irritated, Siraj took hold of Calcutta in 1756 and his officers locked many English people up in the Black Hole where most of them died of suffocation. The battle of Plassey was planned as a revenge. Through bribery, the victorious Clive lost twenty five men against five hundred Bengalis. The wars against the Gurkhas and the Mahrattas characterized the continuation of British expansion under Governor Warren Hastings.
9 THORNTON, A.P., The Imperial Idea and Its Enemies : A Study in British Power, London, 1959, Macmillan and co ltd, p.184. 15
2.1.2. The Gurkha War 1814-1816
The Gurkhas of Nepal were Hindu immigrants from Rajputana. They organized themselves in a military and feudal system. They were progressing to the north of India and that led them into conflicts with the British troops. The British General Daird Ochterlony invaded one by one the existing hill forts and valleys of Katmandu. He also asked the Nepal Darbar to make peace. By the treaty of Segauli, the Gurkhas withdrew from Sikkim and the Western Himalayas.
‘Frontier war with the Gurkhas in Nepal ended in Gurkha defeat and the establishment of another relationship of dependence, whereby the Gurkhas retained nominal independence but effectively under British control’10
During the Anglo-Nepalese War of 1814, the British soldiers learnt about the Gurkhas’ fighting qualities. After peace was established, the Magars and the Gurungs of Central Nepal together with the Lumbus and the Rais of Eastern Nepal began serving in the British Army. In 1818, Gurkhas were forced into a subsidiary alliance following skirmishes over trade privilege and border security.
2.1.3. The Mahratta Wars
After a series of wars and treaties, the Government of Bombay kept on expanding its territory in order to increase its privileges. Warren Hastings sent General Thomas Goddart to conquer Gujarat and Captain Popham to storm the rock fortress of Gwallior. When Sivaji the Great died in 1680, the Peshwa or Brahman minister took hold of the power at Poona and made it a hereditary dynasty. In 1775, Ragunath Rao, one of the claimants to the throne of the Peshwa, agreed to cede Salsette and Bassein to the British, in consideration of being himself restored to Poona. The military operations that followed are known as the First Mahratta War. Several Mahratta generals like Gaikwar in Gujarat, Sindhia and Holkar in Malwa and the Bhonsla raja of Berar and Nagpur built themselves independent kingdom. By the treaty of Salbai in 1782, Warren Hastings and
10 EVANS, Eric, The Complete A-Z 19 th & 20 th Centuries British History Handbook, Great Britain, 1998, Hodder & Stoughton, p.131. 16 the Mahadaji Sindhia of Gwallior concluded peace for twenty years. Ragunath Rao was set aside, Gujarat was restored and only Salsette and some other small islands were left to the Company. The last Mahratta war of 1817-1818 resulted in the pacification of Central India.
2.1.4. The Mysore Wars
The two strongest Muslim powers Hyder Ali of Mysore and the Nizam of Deccan did not appreciate much the Madras Government of their time. Consequently, Hyder Ali attacked the British possession in the Carnatic and ravaged the territory whereas the Nizam fell under the diplomacy of Warren Hastings. The war went so badly that the Bengal Army interfered to save British honour. Hyder built a prosperous and militarily powerful domain in the Southern Deccan but he died in 1782 and Cornwallis subdued the Tippu Sultan of Mysore in 1784. During the second Mysore War of 1780-1792, the Nizam and the Mahratta confederacy allied with the Company. Tippu surrendered, paid £ 3,000,000 as cost of the war and gave up half of his dominion.
2.1.5. The Burmese Wars
English soldiers fought three wars against Burma. According to F.W.R. Fryer’s explanation,
‘The first Burmese war, 1824, was due to the encroachment of the King [of Burma] upon our borders. The second war, 1852, was due to a succession of outrages committed on British subjects by the Government of Burma . The third war, 1885, was due to the oppressive action of the King towards a British Company, and to his advances towards a foreign Power.’11
Wars with Burma led to further extension of British territory in the subcontinent. The menace upon the territory of Bengal turned out to be the King of Ava’s acceptance
11 MORRIS, James, Pa x Brittannica : The Climax of an Empire, San Diego, 1968, A Harvest / Harcourt Brace Jovanovich book, p.44. 17 to sign a treaty after discovering his loss of about twenty thousand lives and an expenditure of £ 14,000,000. The second war was known to be the revenge to the ill-treatment and insolence toward European merchants and a Captain at Rangoon. As a result Pegu could not avoid annexation.
2.1.6. The First Afghan War 1838-1842
Success over Kabul of Dost Mohammed Barakzai in 1839led to Afghanistan remain under British military occupation. In the meantime, the son of Mohammed murdered Sir William Macnaghten, the chief political advisor of the British Army. The Army could not stay more than two months and decided to return to India in the middle of winter. Some of them died of cold and others of Afghan knives and matchlocks. Apart from few women and children prisoners, only Doctor William Brydon survived from four thousand fighting men with twelve thousand camp followers.
2.1.7. The Sikh Wars 1845-1846 and 1848-1849
The Khalsa or Sikh Army numbering sixty thousand men with one hundred and fifty guns crossed the Sutlej and assaulted British territory in 1845. Within three weeks, four battles cropped up and the British troops were defeated in each occasion. At long last, Lahore surrendered and signed an agreement with the British Governor. The assassination of two British officers was at the origin of the second Sikh War of 1848. On the field of Chillianwallah, the British lost two thousand and four hundred officers and men though the war ended with the destruction of the Khalsa. Eventually, Punjab was integrated into British India which was made up of provinces ruled directly by the British Company. 18
Map 2: India Early Nineteenth Century12 2.1.8. A nnexation of Sind and Oudh
The Meers or the Mohammedan rulers of Sind had never willed to surrender their independence. Yet, after the battle on Meeanee in 1843, Sind was annexed to the British dominated territory of Bombay.
12 TREVELYAN, G.M., A Shortened History of England, 1959, Great Britain: A Pelican book.
19
Oudh seemed to be an independent state but in fact, it depended on British protection from foreign invasion and local rebellion. In 1856, Lord Dalhousie ordered General Outram, the resident at the Court of Lucknow to assume direct administration over Oudh which was thus annexed without any resistance , at least until the Mutiny of the Sepoys broke out. The Sipahi or Sepoys were soldiers in the service of European trading Companies such as the East India Company. The map above shows India in the early nineteenth century, more precisely from 1798 to 1805. This map stresses on the fact that the British conquest was done progressively. It began from the western coast such as Bengal, North Circars, the coast of Ceylon and a small part of the Carnatic. In 1805, annexation reached highland places like Delhi, Meerut and the whole Carnatic region. However, the Maratha confederacy which boundary has been clearly traced in the map, has resisted the British troops and has never been conquered.
2.2.British Colonial Administration
Before 1833, the East India Company developed trade and conquered land at the same time. That year, however, it abandoned trade to devote itself thoroughly to the administration of India. This task was indeed complex in the way that the country was politically divided into large provinces and states.
2.2.1. Direct Rule
In colonial India, 2,600,000 sq km of the land area containing three-quarters of the population formed British India. It was made up of eleven provinces and six commissioner’s provinces.
‘British India, directly administered through a chain of command which ran from the Parliament at Westminster , via a secretary of State in London, a Viceroy / Governor-General with his Executive Council in Calcutta, downwards through the Provincial Governors or Lieutenant-Governors and their Councils, to the Collectors and District Officers who brought law and administration to the myriad villages of plain and jungle’13
13 GRIERSON, Edward, op. cit. p.197. 20
In the directly ruled provinces, British Indians were integrated into the British community and could benefit from the rights and status of British citizens. This style of administration was typical to French, Belgian and Portuguese colonists. However, it was applied in some part of India. Actually, the former Nawabs who were high-ranking political and military officials in Moghul India and Maharajas or Great Kings were thought to represent dangers to the colonial security, so that they were often executed and replaced by some of their rivals. Such case, for instance, happened to the Nawab Siraj-ud- Dowlah of Bengal who was captured and killed by Clive, then replaced by Mir Jafar, a bribed nobleman of his entourage. Structures of administration, legislation and economy in a directly ruled colony were copies of the system of organization existing in the mother country. Though widespread in the world, the system did not really match with the British taste. Warren Hastings wanted to expand British power at minimum expense by extending indirect rule through series o Subsidiary Alliances with Indian princes.
2.2.2. Indirect Rule
Except for British India, the authority of Governors-General comprised around seven hundred and sixty four princely states. Native States or Indian States were bound to the Company by treaty. By 1818, the East India Company introduced what came to be known as Paramountcy in India. The term Paramountcy was used to describe the relationship between the British Crown acting through the Secretary of State for India and the Governor-General on one hand, and the Indian princes on the other. This meant that the semi-independent States recognized the British as supreme rulers. Through Subsidiary Alliances, Company troops protected Indian rulers who in return, provided them subsidies or tribute. Indian princes possessed internal autonomy whereas the British rulers assumed external relations and worked as their guides. The sovereign powers granted to the Native 21
Map 3: The Indian Empire in 190114 rulers were a mere imposition to hide British rule. The mass of population were living under a new organisation but with their usual native institutions and Chiefs, that is Maharajas in large States and Nawabs in smaller ones. An English official called the Resident stayed in each large State and exercised general control over the administration. Any States where Nawabs died without direct heirs came
14 GILBERT, Martin, British History Atlas: 118 Maps from 50 B. C. to the Present, 1968, Great Britain, The Macmillan Company, p95. 22 automatically under British authority. The Crown of England did not have to interfere in the Indian customs, traditions and religions. As we can see in the map above, the British power was firmly established in India at the beginning of the twentieth century. The divisions of Native States from British India could be clearly noticed. The Native States comprise Kashmir, Baluchistan, Chitral, Rajputana, Cutch, Sindhia, Bhutan, Manipur, Orissa, Nizam’s Dominions, Mysore, and Travancore. These States, the population of which reached sixty-seven millions in 1901, accepted the British Paramountcy. At the time, there were nine Indian provinces with two hundred and twenty-two million inhabitants.
2.3. Indian Civil Service
In 1765, the sole objective of the establishment of civil servants in India concerned revenue collection from Bengal, Bihar and Orissa where the Company had been granted Diwani or the right to collect revenues by the Moghul Emperor.
2.3.1. The Origin of the Service
Formerly, the first British civil servants in India had worked as private organisation employees or industrial and financial agents in their country. The Charter Act of 1793 passed by the British Parliament set the Indian Civil Service (I.C.S.). Lord Cornwallis had firstly instituted the Covenanted Service within which workers won high salaries so as to reduce graft and corruption in the Company. In 1858, it was formally named Indian Civil Service as soon as the British Crown assumed sovereignty over the Indian domains of the East India Company. This important body in the British Indian Empire had always been admired for its achievements and organization.
‘Some political scientists describe the Indian Civil Service as approaching the Weberian model of bureaucracy : a politically neutral, impersonal, legal body of salaried professional men with standards of personal integrity, organized hierarchically in departments’15
15 SURJIT, Mansingh, Historical Dictionary of India, New Delhi, 1998, Vision books, p.184. 23
2.3.2. Access to the I.C.S.
‘No native of India, or any natural-born subject of His majesty , shall be disabled from holding any place, office, or employment by reason of his religion, place of birth, descent or colour.’16
At the time when Lord Bentinck was the Governor-General of India, the British Parliament passed the Charter Act of 1833 which would permit Indians to enter The Indian Civil Service. The Secretary of State organized the recruitment and examination which Special Commissioners supervised. All examinations were held in London. At the beginning, places were restricted to British upper - middle class with a qualifying age ranging from nineteen to twenty-three . In 1861, however, Indians could apply for subordinate service or junior posts. The written examination for the junior executive grade consisted of English, arithmetic and general knowledge together carrying a maximum of 400 marks. Added to that were three optional subjects from languages, mathematics, history, geography, economics, physics, chemistry, biology, botany and zoology combined to carry 600 marks. The written examination would be followed by an interview having a maximum of 300 marks. Addition of marks between the written test and the interview determined the final placing. Most of the time, the selected Indians belonged to rich families who could afford to send their sons to study and sit for examination in the United Kingdom. The first Indian to pass I.C.S. entry examinations was Satyendranath Tagore, in 1864. The number of native Indians increased and reached sixty-three in 1915. The work of the Service included revenue collection, judicial administration, maintenance of law and order and essentially the preservation and strengthening of British power in India.
‘Macaulay’s famous Minute on Education laid out a master plan for India. This aimed at creating a class of ‘Indians in blood and colour, but English in taste, opinions, morals and intellect’ because no notion can be perfectly well-governed till it is competent to govern itself.’17 16 TREVELYAN, G.M., A Shortened History of England, Great Britain, 1959, a pelican book, p.305. 17 ZINKIN, Taya, The Modern World : India, London, 1964, Oxford University Press, p.53. 24
2.3.3. The Colonial Government
It should be noticed that all the government sections of India, except the military was controlled by the I.C.S. The British colonial government of India was organized in the following hierarchy:
- METROPOLE: Secretary of State
- COLONY: Governor General/ Viceroy
- PROVINCE: Province Governors - DISTRICT: British India Native States
- District Commissioner/ - Resident Deputy Commissioner - Native ruler
The Secretary of the State for India was the chief responsible of the government of colonies like India after the Parliament and he used to be a member of government in London. His tasks consisted in giving instructions about England’s general policy, taking measures in front of government decisions and also controlling the Governor-General or the Viceroy who depended on him by statute. The Governor-General represented the Crown of England that had appointed him. His mission was the government of the British Raj. He received orders 25
from the Secretary of State for colonies, controlled territory revenue with the civil and military governments. The province governor is in charge of the existing provinces which subdivision were regions under direct rule. In British India, the Collectors/District Magistrates or the Deputy commissioners are responsible for the two hundred and sixty-seven districts, especially the judiciary and executive functions. They should have competences in matter of law, economy, account, agronomy and civil engineering. Most of them come from the gentry and belong to the I.C.S. The princely states are governed by ancient Hindu Rajput or by great Mahratta warriors together with a British Resident who is a diplomatic representative of the colonial government. These regions were governed in this way because the British troops had never managed to defeat them through wars and treaties. Princes did not distinguish their own riches from the states budget that most of the time, these states are more profitable to the government than British India where local leaders are not natives and thus are not linked closer to their people. The Regulating Act of 1773 set up the British Parliament control over the East India Company. From 1600 till 1833, the Company’s sole concern was the development of its trade. This Act had also raised the Governor of Bengal to the rank of Governor- General hence the appointment of Warren Hastings. Later in 1833, the passing of Earl Grey’s Act stopped the Company monopoly of trade with China and from that year on , the Governor-General of Bengal was entitled Governor-General of India . The Company gave up trade and devoted itself to conquest and administration. This Company rule was succeeded by the Crown rule in 1858 when, after the Mutiny of 1857, the British Parliament took over the Government of India. The Government of India Act (1858) was a legislation passed so as to settle the country down. The Company was nullified and its Governor-General was substituted by a Viceroy, whose mandate did not exceed six year renewable. The following table lists out all of the succeeding Governor General and Viceroys during both the Company and the Crown rule in India whereas the map indicates the British Crown full control of India despite the few Portuguese and French coastal settlements starting from 1857 until Independence in 1947.
East India Company rule 26
.Governors-General of Bengal
.Warren Hastings 1774 – 1785 .Lord Cornwallis 1786 – 1793 .Sir John Shore 1793 – 1798 .Lord Wellesley 1798 – 1805 .Lord Minto 1807 – 1813 .Lord Hastings 1813 – 1823 .Lord Amherst 1823 – 1828 .Lord William Bentinck 1828 – 1833 , 1833 – 1835
.Governors-General of India
.Lord Auckland 1836 – 1842 .Lord Ellenborough 1842 – 1844 .Lord Hardinge 1844 – 1848 , 1910 – 1916 .Lord Dalhousie 1848 – 1856 .Lord Canning 1856 – 1858 , 1858 – 1862
Crown rule
.Lord Elgin 1862 – 1863 , 1894 – 1899 .Lord John Lawrence 1864 – 1869 .Lord Northbrook 1872 – 1876 .Lord Lytton 1876 – 1880 .Lord Ripon 1880 – 1884 .Lord Differin 1884 – 1888 .Lord Landowne 1888 – 1894 , 1894 – 1899 .Lord Curzon 1899 – 1905 .Lord Minto 1905 – 1910 , 1910 – 1916 - Lord Chelmsford 1916 – 1921 .Lord Reading 1921 – 1925 .Lord Irwin 1926 – 1931 .Lord Willingdon 1931 – 1936 .Lord Linlithgow 1936 – 1943 .Lord Wavell 1943 – 1947 .Lord Mountbatten March – August 194718
18 SURJIT, Mansingh, Historical Dictionary of India, New Delhi, 1998, Vision books, p.507. 27
Map 5: British India 1857-194719 a)Warren Hastings 1732 – 1818
Lord Clive quitted India in 1767. Five years later, Warren Hastings was nominated Governor by the Court of Directors. He first went to India as a clerk for the East India Company in 1750 and rose to occupy its highest ranks. He had as mission to appoint
19 GILBERT, Martin, Recent History Atlas: 120 Maps of Major World Events from 1870 to the Present , 1966, Great Britain, The Macmillan Company, p19. 28
European officers to work as collectors, to supervise the revenue collection and preside over the Civil Court. From 1772 to 1774, Warren Hastings was Governor of Bengal. The North’s Regulating Act of 1773 raised him to the place of first Governor-General of India. While in Bengal, he had admired Indian people and their culture.
‘In earlier days, and even in the days of Clive and Hastings, Englishmen had mixed in a free social intercourse with the natives, learnt their language, and appreciated their culture.’20
His greatest achievements were his victories over Hyder Ali of Mysore and the Mahratta of Surat. To reach Surat, Warren Hastings sent his troops across India from Calcutta to Bombay, a distance covered by an express train only in two nights and two days.
‘His policy was to build up a strong British India, to extend its territories, when opportunity arose, and to knit to this paramount power independent Indian princes by offering them military protection against enemies.’21
Warren Hastings retired to England in 1785 and was impeached the following year by the House of Common for high crimes and misdemeanours during his tenure in India. His trial took seven years. At the end, the House of Lords acquitted him of all charges.
‘Allowance must be made for a perilous situation in a distant land and for the weight of enormous national interest committed to the charge of the one man capable of sustaining them.’22
Previously, Robert Clive who was admired as an Empire builder had also been
censured by Parliament and actually committed suicide.
b)Lord William Bentinck 1774 – 1839
20 PLUMB, J.H., England in the Eighteenth Century (1714 – 1815 ), Great Britain, 1950, Hunt, Barnard & co. ltd, the pelican history of England, p.177. 21 Ibid. p.175. 22 ZINKIN, Taya, op. cit., p.49. 29
The governance of Lord William Cavendish Bentinck (1828 – 1835) brought administrative as well as cultural reforms in India. He widened the way through which Indians could enter the service of the Company. Backed by Thomas Babington Macaulay, the law member of his Council, Bentinck declared in 1835 that the content of higher education financed by the Company would be Western learning and English would be in India the language of instruction from 1835 on. Macaulay resided in India from 1834 to 1838 and his Minute on Education, as mentioned before, resulted in the adoption of the English language as the basis for all higher education in India. This measure was previously advocated by the Bengali reformer and scholar Ram Mohan Roy. For Macaulay,
‘All native cultures were bad. Where they were not cruel, they were obscurantist, ridiculous, altogether unworthy of consideration in any educational policy for the future.’23
On December 4, 1829, Bentinck carried regulation in Council and declared guilty of culpable homicide those who practised suttee. This measure was taken after agitation led by Ram Mohan Roy. The Mahratta and the Portuguese Albuquerque had equally forbidden the practice which consisted in the Hindu widow’s burning herself on the funeral pyre of her husband. Rajputs used to kill their infant daughters to liberate themselves from the obligation of giving them lavish dowries and in a few aboriginal areas, children were sacrificed. In the system of Meriahs, villagers would fatten a human sacrifice before dismembering it. Seeing all that, Bentinck made infanticide illegal as well as the practice of Thuggee, a ritual murder and robbery in the name of Kali, by which the Thugs strangled their victims as offering to Kali, the goddess of Destruction. Between 1826 and 1835, one thousand five hundred and sixty-two Thugs were apprehended in different parts of British India. Bentinck’s administration coincided with the end of the Company’s monopoly over trade in India. He began the process of making of India a modern nation but also sowed the seed of Mutiny. It should be noted that Bentinck dared to pull down the Taj Mahal and sold its marble at auction, in spite of the fact that historians claimed that:
23 GRIERSON, Edward, op. cit. p.90. 30
‘(...) the benevolent side of British rule, and the sense of trusteeship for the Indians was strongly emphasized by Lord William Bentinck and by other able and earnest public servant.’24
c) Lord Charles Cornwallis 1738 – 1805
Lord Cornwallis was voted Governor-General of Bengal by the British Directors of the East India Company in London to cleanse the administration of Calcutta from corruption. He removed private trade from the hands of Company officials and separated commercial and administrative functions. At the time, the company’s sale for British goods in India appeared insignificant and exportation of gold and silver from England to pay for Indian goods was prohibited. Thus, the company decided to collect taxes. In 1793, Cornwallis brought a regulation of the procedure for levying taxes. The British did as if all land belonged to the State. They registered the local tax collectors called Zamindars as owners of the land in their district. The Zamindars were to collect and deliver the taxes and were free to decide how much to demand from cultivators. Due to the Industrial Revolution in England, the objective was no longer to import from India, but to sell English products in India. A large number of weavers became unemployed and migrated to the rural areas to search for land to farm. The increasing revenues made the Zamindars so wealthy that they no longer went to collect tax themselves but leased this office to others. It was possible to have twenty intermediaries between the government and the farmers. The Zamindari system was not introduced in the whole of India, the provinces were assigned other taxation systems. The Ryotwari system was introduced in Madras, Bombay and Assam. Under that system, the government claimed the property rights to all of the land. In North India and in the Punjab was applied the Mahalwari system. Taxation was imposed on village community as theoretical landlord. The village community had to distribute these taxes among cultivators. Subleasing and indebtedness became more and more common. Number of people became landless and property were concentrated in the hands of a few wealthy people. Cornwallis raised the salaries of British Officials and excluded Indians
24 TREVELYAN,G.M., op.cit., p.504 31
from Covenanted or executive positions and established the system of district collectors which was at the origin of the Indian Civil Service. In 1805, Cornwallis was reappointed for a second term but he died three months after his arrival in India. It should be noticed that he led the war against Mysore in 1790.
d)Lord Ramsay Dalhousie 1812 – 1860
James Andrew Brown Ramsay or Lord Dalhousie was appointed Governor General of India in 1848. He focussed his attention on the development of material conditions in India: he founded the public work department, opened the Ganges Canal and built the Grand Trunk Road joining Peshawar with Calcutta via Delhi. He introduced irrigation on a gigantic scale, developed India’s ports and began the building of the railways. He also promoted steam boat communication with England via the Red Sea, and introduced cheap postage and the electric telegraph. The first railroad lines were built in 1850 from Howrah to Bihar which made a distance of 240 km. In 1851, the first electric telegraph line was laid in Bengal. The regional postal systems merged in 1854. Lord Dalhousie had drafted the Hindu Re-marriage Act because at the time Hindu widows belonging to higher castes were supposed to practise suttee whereas those of the lower castes were no more allowed to marry again. As well, he adopted the Doctrine of Lapse which consisted in refusing to recognize Indian princes’ heirs by adoption. n case they did not have natural male heirs, the territory would be brought under direct British rule. That way, Dalhousie conquered Satara in 1848, Baghat, Jaipur and Sambalpur in 1850, Udaipur in 1852, Tanjore and Jhansi in 1853, Nagpur in 1854, Oudh in 1856 and Karauli in 1859. Lord Dalhousie fought two wars: the second Anglo-Sikh War of 1848 and the second Burmese war of 1852. 32 33
3. LEGISLATIVE AND POLITICAL CHANGES
Indians who were sent to be educated in England were penetrated by the notions of democracy and patriotism. Soaked in Anglo-Saxon liberalism, those elites felt frustrated with the situation they found in India and claimed for legislative and government changes.
3.1. The Rise of Indian Nationalism
Many reasons generated the rise of nationalism in India. Through years, natives grew more and more dissatisfied with their foreign masters’ interference in their cultural, social and religious life. This attitude represented a menace to India’s own civilization in their thoughts. The abolition of suttee not only gave offence to the Hindu masses in general but caused disquiet in the Muslim mind as well. The disaffected Sepoys complained this way :
‘(. . .) they have doubled and quadrupled and raised tenfold the chowkeedaree tax and have wished to ruin the people. Thirdly, the occupation of all respectable and learned men is gone, and millions are destitute of the necessaries of life. When anyone in search of employment determines on proceeding from one Zilla to another, every soul is charged six pie as toll on roads, and has to pay from four to six annas for each cart. Those only who pay are permitted to travel on the public roads. How far can we detail the oppression of the tyrants.’25
During the five years preceding the Mutiny, a commission nominated by Lord Dalhousie confiscated twenty thousand properties of noble landowners in Deccan alone.
3.1.1. The Mutiny of Sepoys 1857
The Madras officers of the Company Army ordered that the men they commanded should not only prove smart in act but look smart as well. They found the turban distinguishing the Sepoys’ castes odd and replaced it with a leather cockade made of cow and pig skin. Their beards should be trimmed to a standard level even if Muslims would
25 SURENDRA, Nath Sen , Eighteen Fifty-Seven, In dia, 1957,The publication division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, p.1 34 not like to shave their beards which are associated to their faith. The Sepoys dreaded passing the Indus River which implied the loss of their caste. Eventually, the greased cartridges in the Sepoys’ new Enfield rifles triggered the Mutiny. They were not willing to bite cartridges smeared with a mixture of beef and pig fat. Beef was sacred to the Hindus and pig was abhorred by Muslims.
‘The obnoxious grease, by itself, could hardly cause such a mighty conflagration, had it not been suspected to be a covert instrument of conversion.’26
The immediate causes of the Mutiny was the policy of State annexation under Lord Dalhousie. The Indian States grew indebted by the subsidiary alliances with its ruthlessly extractive revenue system. Property owners were expropriated from their lands. Above all, the Muslim part of the mass was shocked by the Governor- General’s plan to expel the Moghul descendants and the Hindu by his refusal to pay Nana Saheb’s pension after the death of the Peshwa, the supreme executive of the Mahrattas, Baji Rao II. The latter was defeated by the forces of the East India Company in the third Mahratta war (1817 – 1819 ) and was maintained on a British pension to 1853. The non- payment of pension to Baji Rao II’s adopted son Nana Saheb was among the leading causes of the uprising of 1857. Indian traditional world was also preoccupied with the abolition of customs like that which forbade the remarriage of widows. The centres of the Mutiny were Meerut, Lucknow, Cawnpore and Delhi. On May 10, 1857, the Sepoys freed their fellows in jail, killed European officers and burnt their houses. The next day, they invaded Delhi, massacred Europeans and proclaimed Bahadur Shah II the Emperor of Delhi, Emperor of India. The losses on both sides were heavy. The battle for Delhi alone cost the British three thousand, eight hundred and thirty-seven men and officers. After the Mutiny, the British troops collected Indian weapons like toradar (matchlock musket), talwar (sword), bokemar (carbine) and katar (dagger). The events of 1857 entailed the end of the East India Company. The British Parliament became henceforth responsible for the Government of India. The revolt had deeply affected the British who effectively withdrew from the native life to build their own
26 Op.cit, p.1 35 clubs and residential quarters. Their relationship with Indians was reduced to purely administrative and authoritarian fields. As the following map shows, the British conquest of India did not happened at a time. It was finished after a series of wars and annexations. In 1775, the British domination was mainly in the west: in Bengal and Northern Circars. Thirty years later, Gujarat, Ceylon, Carnatic and Rohilkhand submitted and were followed by Kumaon, Assam, Bombay and Central Ceylon in 1836. Only twenty years after that would the British troops achieved to conquer the Eastern and Central part of India that are Punjab and Sind together with Nagpur and Oudh. That year was also marked by the annexation of Pegu in Burma. However, there were native rulers who managed to reconquer their territory such as that of Mysore in 1881. Apart from that, this map also points out the centres of the Mutiny of 1857 which numbered forty-five and were mainly grouped in the North part around Delhi, Oudh and Punjab.
3.1.2. The Durbars
The Moghuls first introduced the word ‘Darbar’ or ‘Durbar’ in India. It originated in Persia and could describe a ruler’s court, his executive government and even the ruler himself who was referred to as ‘Darbarsaheb’. The British applied the same word to the great imperial assemblies organized in British India. The first Durbar, held in Delhi on January 1, 1877, celebrated the assumption by Queen Victoria of the title of Kaisar – i – Hind or Empress of India. The Durbar aimed at impressing Indian princes since in 1857, fierce battles between British and Indian troops had taken place. As Lytton said:
‘Princes are easily affected by sentiment and are susceptible to the influence of symbols, to which facts very inadequately correspond.’27
Seventy-nine princes, one thousand and two hundred civil servants, fourteen thousand British and Indian troops attended by about sixty-eight thousand persons participated in the festivities which would last for a week. Twenty-six years later, on January 1, 1903 the Viceroy Lord Curzon arranged
27 (ed.) PRABHA, Chopra, Delhi History and Places of Interest, India, 1970, Publication division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, p.77. 36
Map 4: British Expansion in India 1775-185828
28 GILBERT, Martin, British History Atlas: 118 Maps from 50 B.C. to the Present,1968, Great Britain, The Macmillan Company, p77. 37 the second Durbar at Delhi to proclaim Edward VII the King Emperor. That time, the festivities lasted for fourteen days and included thirty to forty thousand Indian and British troops. The State entry was in a picturesque elephant procession. The third Durbar occurred on December 12, 1911 in the presence of George V and the Queen. George V announced the transfer of the capital city of India from Calcutta to Delhi. During a Durbar,
‘The various princes advances according to protocol to the dais where the King and Queen were seated and did their ‘mujras’ (salutes).(. . .) First was the Nizam, who gave the King a ruby necklace in which each ruby was as big as pigeon’s egg. Then the other princes followed – Baroda, Gwallior, Mysore, Kashmir – each presenting the King with other items of jewellery which must have been lying in their coffers for centuries but were unearthed and brought to light for this great occasion’29
The Indian media criticized strongly the Durbar :
‘The Indian Government has the callousness to squander million sterlings on a spectacle of a barbaric pomp and magnificence in order to pander the oriental instincts of the lordings and princes, the Rajas and Maharajas of India and this is called statesmanship.’30
This map depicts India after the Mutiny until the Independence. It mainly shows the British domination of the land and the cohabitation with Portuguese and French settlers. After 1857, the East India Company was dissolved and the Crown ruled India directly. Burma and the north-eastern of the peninsula were henceforth put under Crown rule.
3.1.3. The Indian National Congress
Back to their native country, Indians who got scholarships to study in England formed the Indian middle class. This new social class found the British in India different, arrogant and unworthy of sympathy and friendship. As a result, they united and created
29 ALLEN, Charles and Sharada Dwivedi, Lives of the Indian Princes, New York, 1984, crown publishers, p.210. 30 (ed.) PRABHA, Chopra, op. cit., p.80. 38
Map 6: India in 190631 an association. The Indian National Congress with British approval saw light in 1885.
31 TREVELYAN, G.M., A Shortened History of England, A Pelican Book, 1959,Great Britain. 39
The founders were Allan Octavian Hume, a retired Indian Civil Servant with seventy-two Indian elites from Bombay, Calcutta and Madras. The organization welcomed members from every part of India and the many religious groups and castes. The Congress demanded inclusion of more Indians in the higher administrative offices, broadening the base of representative bodies, reducing taxes and military expenditure and assisting Indian industry. From 1919, the party served as a political debating society where Indians could discuss their problems. With the leadership of Gandhi, the Congress objective was defined as the attainment of Swaraj or Independence by peaceful and legitimate means.
3.2. The Legislative Councils
The Mutiny caused the passing of the Government of India Act of 1858 which disbanded the East India Company and transferred the responsibility for Government to a new Indian Department under the Secretary of State for India. The Viceroy assisted by a Council replaced the Governor-General. From 1861 on, Legislative Councils were established in India.
3.2.1. The Partition of Bengal
Lord George Nathaniel Curzon, the Viceroy of India in 1898 suggested the division of the largest province of India. London approved this new solution to repress the nationalistic influence of Bengal over the rest of India. Curzon created therefore the new West frontier Province for the purpose of introducing consistency of policy and firmness of control. Despite many protest meetings, the partition took place in 1905, joining seven Eastern districts and four hills of Bengal to Assam and drawing a new province of East Bengal. The British policy of Divide and Rule found its very application in the partition of Bengal with a separate Muslim majority province. Immediately, Indians especially Bengali Hindus demonstrated to show their rejection of British domination and power abuse. They threw bombs and assassinated British colonists. They most of all resorted to the boycott of British goods, strikes and Swadeshi movements. Swadeshi was 40 the nationalist movement to encourage the use of Indian-made goods instead of British imports. Ultimately, the British Parliament was led to translate new constitutional reforms into the India Council Act, 1909.
3.2.2. The Morley – Minto Reforms, 1909
The Morley – Minto reforms were the popular names for the Government of India Act, 1909, sponsored by the Secretary of State for India John Morley and Governor- General Gilbert Eliot, fourth Earl of Minto. These reforms enlarged the Legislative Councils to elected Indians for the first time. They introduced an Indian member, Sinha Satyendra Prasanna, in the Viceroy Council. Two Indians : a Hindu and a Muslim were as well inserted to the Council of Secretary of State for India in London.
‘Important classes among you, representing ideas that have been fostered and encouraged by British rule claim equality of citizenship, and a greater share in legislation and government. The politic satisfaction of such a claim will strengthen, not impair, existing authority and power. Administration will be all the more efficient if the officers who conduct it have greater opportunities of regular contacts with those whom it affects and those who influence and reflect common opinion about it.’32
The Legislative Councils had the power to introduce the principle of election, discuss on matters of general public interest and move resolutions on the annual budget. Nevertheless, Defence, foreign affairs and Princely states remained on the prohibited list. Due to the insufficiency of the number of elected members, special constituencies including universities, chambers of commerce and separate class or community for Mohammedans were formed. Muslims remained a minority within the Indian National Congress and feared to be swallowed by the Hindus. To improve their political position, they resorted to the creation of the Muslim League in 1906. The president Sir Ahmad Khan asked for a separate electorate and a new state for Muslims.
32 (ed.) YUST, Walter, op. cit., p. 179. 41
3.2.3. The Montford Reforms 1919
‘The policy of His Majesty’s Government with which the Government of India are in complete accord, is that of the increasing association of Indians in every branch of the administration, and the gradual development of self- governing institutions, with a view to the progressive realization of responsible government in India as an integral part of the Empire.’33
The Montagu – Chelmsford reforms officially expressed the Government of India Act, 1919, backed by the Secretary of State for India Edwin Montagu and Frederick John Thesinger, third baron of Chelmsford and Viceroy of India. Diarchy or dual form of Government in the eight provinces of Assam, Bengal, Bihar, Bombay, Central Provinces, Orissa, Punjab and United Provinces stood among the main features of the reforms. The Viceroy’s Council was enlarged to six members, three of whom were Indians. The Legislative Assembly elected one hundred and six members out of one hundred and forty-six. For the first time, Indian ministers were in charge of subjects such as education, agriculture, local government and public health. Other reserved subjects including finance, irrigation, law, land revenue, labour and police remained under the power of the Governor-General and his Executive Council. The vote was given to men as well as to women. The Congress denounced the reforms as a travesty of the Montagu declaration promising responsible Government and adopted non-cooperation toward them. Besides, the reforms coincided with the end of the war and the Russian Revolution. Finally, Diarchy failed in practice but was nevertheless introduced as a feature of Central Government in the Government of India Act 1935. In the map above is found that in 1906, all part of India was put under British control except the upper east part of the country that are Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim which remained independents until 1906. The annexation began in the seventeenth century when the British took hold of Madras, Bombay and Fort William whereas the eighteenth century was marked by the establishment of subsidiary treaties in Bengal, Oudh, Travancore, Nizam and Mysore. That policy ended in Baluchistan in1854. The British covered almost
33 ZINKIN, Taya, op. cit., p.66.
42 the whole land of India during the nineteenth century when they conquered twenty-one more towns and signed six other subsidiary alliances.
3.3.The Struggle for Independence
Even if the Rowlatt Bills were never enacted, widespread uproar ensued to them. These troubles eventually led Gandhi to adopt Satyagraha or the non-violent resistance for social and political reforms.
3.3.1. Gandhi 1869 – 1948
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was a Gujerati man who followed up his studies in England (1881 – 1891) to become a lawyer. On his return to Bombay, his caste expelled him because he refused to do penance for crossing the sea. From May 1893, he lived in South Africa among Indians who went there as indentured labourers. He became a social leader thanks to his successful passive resistance movement against racial discrimination. After twenty years, Gandhi returned to India. At the end of the First World War, the Turk Empire was divided and the Sultan was deprived of his power. He was the leader of the Muslim religion of his time that his fall deeply affected Indian Muslims. Gandhi organized a movement and presided the All- India Khalifat Conference. He menaced to launch a non-cooperation movement if Great Britain does not find a solution acceptable for Muslims to the Turk problem. That time Gandhi managed to attract the Muslims who seemed reluctant to join nationalist movement. He persuaded the Congress to join him in a non-violent non-cooperation movement as the shortest way to attain Swaraj.
‘I want to avoid violence. Non-violence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed.’34
For the next twenty-five years, Mahatma Gandhi led the Congress though he was formally president only in 1924. The British made him a martyr but also negotiated directly with him.
3424 GRIERSON, Edward, The Imperial Dream : The British Commonwealth and Empire 1775 – 1969, London, 1972, Collins, p.207. 43
3.3.2. The Rowlatt Bills 1919
Justice Rowlatt report recommended special power to subvert activities for Government. The Rowlatt bills which were thought to be a repressive legislation in British India was at the source of violence such as the killing of five Englishmen and the beating of an English woman, house burning, attack upon railway stations and cutting of telegraphic communication in Amritsar on April 11, 1919 ; in the Jallianwallah Bagh shooting, Gurkha troops under Brigadier Reginald Edward Harry Dyer (1864 – 1925) fired on an unalarmed crowd. In fact, some ten thousand or more unarmed men, women, and children gathered in Amritsar’s Jallianwallah Bagh to attend a protest meeting. Many neighbouring village peasants also came to celebrate the Hindu Baisakhi Spring Festival. Giving no words of warning, Dyer ordered fifty soldiers to fire into the gathering. Indians who were passing along the street where Englishmen had been murdered were asked to crawl. There were three hundred and seventy-nine Indians killed and one thousand and two hundred injured. Dyer attempted to justify his firing and orders for the crawling of Indians on ground as a necessity to quell possible rebellion. It was, however, concluded that he was motivated by racial revenge and may also have been suffering from mental illness. When the Secretary of State Montagu learned of the slaughter, he appointed a commission of inquiry, lead by Lord Hunter. Dyer was censured by the Hunter Commission for his action. He retired and was sent back to England. There, however, the Tories and the majority of the members of the House of Lords rallied to his support. The army counsel which took up the case charged him only for an error of judgement, and recommended his retirement on half pay with no prospects of further employment. A British court even exonerated him of this charge. When the Viceroy assented to the Rowlatt Bills, Gandhi announced a day of general mourning and stop of work in industry, administration and transport. This Hartal, a day-off during which business and labour were suspended, was to be devoted to fast and prayer all over the country. The crisis that India endured after the First World War drove Gandhi to protest using non-cooperation movements in 1920. Indians boycotted both colonial institutions 44 like offices and schools and European products especially British goods. They picketed shops, renounced their titles, deserted the Army and the Police and refused to pay taxes.
‘He [Gandhi] kept harassing the Government, from boycott to fast, from fast to demonstration, from demonstration to courting arrest.’35
Gandhi launched the start of a universal campaign of civil disobedience in 1930. Students and women were inspired by him and participated actively. The Dandi March on April 12, 1930 characterized this campaign. Gandhi staged to march 241 miles to the sea to manufacture salt. Civil disobedience was in full swing despite Government repression. However, disorder spread throughout the country. An attempt was made to blow up the Viceroy’s train near Delhi. Gandhi was at last prosecuted and imprisoned. The Gandhi Irwin Pact signed in 1931 put an end to civil disobedience. In September 1940, the second Civil disobedience movement was fixed. The Congress stood eager to sustain the United Kingdom at war only if London promised Dominion status or self-government for India.
3.3.3. The Government of India Act 1935
In 1927, a statutory commission under Sir John Simon was appointed to report on what initiative should be taken because Diarchy was to be abandoned. This report arose Indian reactions.
‘What should be boycotted was not only the Simon Commission but the whole conception behind it, that India would be forever a part of the British Empire and the British Parliament had the right to give India what it wished and deny her what it liked. Freedom was India’s fundamental right, and as all commissions sent out from England denied that right they could receive no quarter in India ‘ 36
Three Round Table Conferences of Indian representatives met in London to discuss further legislation. A new constitution was embodied in the Government
35 ZINKIN, Taya, op. cit., p.72. 36 NEHRU Jawaharlal : A Biography, volume one : 1889 – 1947, Delhi, 1975, Saver palli Gopal, p.116. 45
Brigadier Reginald Edward Harry Dyer (1864 – 1925)
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869 – 1948) 46 of India Act, 1935, separating Burma from India and giving full responsible government to the provinces of British India then increased from nine to eleven : Assam, Bengal, Bihar, Bombay, Central Provinces, Madras, Northwest Frontier Province, Orissa, Punjab, Sind and United Provinces. It also provided for a Federal Government of India responsible to a Federal Legislative composed of representatives of both Indian States and British India with the reservation of defence and foreign affairs. The Muslim League feared that their community of ninety million persons would become a permanent minority so they urged the creation of a Muslim State to be called Pakistan.
3.3.4. The Quit India-Campaign
‘On April 26, 1942, Gandhi published an article in Harijan calling for an orderly and timely British withdrawal from India so as to permit the emergence of a self-reliant and dignified India.’37
The Quit India-Campaign was the widest and most bitter mass movement against British rule in India. There was a burst of anger across the country, especially among students who used violence against railways, post offices and police stations. Congress adopted the resolution on August 7, 1942 when the Party got annoyed with refusal of Prime Minister Winston Churchill to consider any meaningful transfer of power. The disturbances started in Delhi earlier in the morning of August 9, 1942. The Cripps mission on March 1942 failed as well. The Congress appealed to the British to withdraw in good will or face massive civil disobedience.
‘Our aim is a completely free India and we have nothing to discuss except on this basis.’38
The British Government arrested Gandhi and all the members of the All-India Congress Committee. Estimation gave more than one thousand killed and more than three thousand injured between August and November 1942. In 1944, Gandhi was released for health reason. By that time, the movement had collapsed, the Communist Party of India and the All-India Muslim League were cooperating with the British authority 37 SURJIT, Mansingh, op. sit., p.338. 38 NEHRU Jawaharlal : A Biography, op.cit., p.117. 47 that approved the creation of Pakistan. On 20th February, 1947, the British Prime Minister Attlee announced that the British settlers were going. The resolution to divide India into India for Hindus and Pakistan for Muslim is represented in this present map. Muslim from central India either moved westward or eastward to join the two Pakistans. Hindus in their turn migrated inward. However, there were from both sides people who remained where they were. On their way across the new borders, there were riots and twenty-two intense battlefields could be seen in the west against eleven in the East. It should also be noticed that Hyderabad did not accept to unite with India though it is situated in the centre of the land. Consequently , India annexed it in 1948.
3.3.5. The Partition of India and Pakistan
‘Do or die (. . .) Everyone of you from this moment consider himself a free man or woman and even act as if you are free and no longer under the heel of Imperialism.’39
The Independence of India from British rule on 15th August, 1947 was accompanied by partition. It was a plan announced by Lord Mountbatten to avoid civil war. The line was drawn by Cyril Radcliffe of the Boundary Commission and separated the Muslim majority provinces from the rest of India. India with New Delhi as a capital city was designated for Hindus and Pakistan for Muslims. Pakistan was made up of West Pakistan and East Pakistan which was to become Bangladesh later after many years of civil war that ended in 1971. The partition resulted in about twenty-five hundred thousand deaths against eleven million Hindu and Muslim refugees. The new states were born in bloodshed: there were massacres and other atrocities; people were moved from their homes, fourteen millions were forced to migrate across the new border. The partition of India and Pakistan and the riots which followed saddened Gandhi because he had always desired a united country where Hindu and Muslim citizens lived together in peace. The Hindus disliked him for his aim of uniting all Indian ethnic
39 Secretariat for commemoration of 50th Anniversary of India’s Independence, 50 th Anniversar y of India’s Independence, volume one, National Calendar of Events, New Delhi, Vigyan Bhawan Annexe, p.13. 48
Map 7: Independence and Partition of India and Pakistan 194740 and religious communities whereas the Muslims did so because Gandhi was a Hindu follower.
40 GILBERT, Martin, Recent History Atlas: 120 Maps of Major World Events from 1870 to the Present, 1966, Great Britain, The Macmillan Company, p100. 49
At the age of seventy-eight, Gandhi was assassinated by the Hindu fanatic Nathuram Godse Vinayak (1911 – 1949). The latter belonged to a Brahman family of Poona and was intensely proud of Hindu culture. Being a journalist and a militant activist, he opposed Gandhi’s program of tolerance for all creeds and religions. After bowing to Gandhi at his daily prayer meeting in New Delhi he shot him three times on January 30, 1948. Godse was sentenced to death on February 10, 1949, and was executed by hanging on November 15, of the same year. However, the death of Gandhi grieved most of Indian people, except the high Hindu caste. The poet Rabindranath Tagore had named him Mahatma of Great Soul, a name which made him known all over the world. According to the map below, the first half of the twentieth century India was characterized by widespread violence. Indian violence could be grouped into three different periods of time: 1918 – 1924, 1924 – 1932 and 1937 – 1939 and took place mainly in upper India. The Police use of arms and shooting counted five times during twenty-eight years starting from 1919. In 1944, Bengal was touched by a Famine killing one million and a half Bengalis. In the south, Hyderabad, Mysore and Travancore manifested violence between 1924 and 1932.
* * * From the sixteenth century, there had always been a perpetual antagonism between Hindus and Muslims. In 1525, Babur a powerful Muslim ruler established himself in Northern India and built what came to be known as the Moghul Empire. Effectively, Hindu-Muslim cohabitation became unavoidable though these two races never managed to live together in peace. The main causes of that turned around the facts that Muslim people were immigrants and thus remained a minority whereas Hindu people were oppressed majority. Besides, European powers had occupied the land for many centuries. They brought western civilization and especially developed trade. In 1833, Great Britain stopped trade and made India a colony of settlement. During the East India Company time, missionaries came to India to evangelize and make the gospel understood. For that, they taught English language too. Indian nationalist movement was born in 1885. Until Independence in 1947, opposition, violence and riots was greatly shown in the field of politics and ended with the partition of India and Pakistan. 50
Map 8: Violence in India 1919-194741
41 GILBERT, Martin , British History Atlas: 118 Maps from 50 B.C. to the Present , 1968, Great Britain, The Macmillan Company, p105. 51
PART TWO:
SOCIO-CULTURAL ASPECTS
OF IMPERIALISM IN
THE RAJ QUARTET
The Raj Quartet, a tetralogy written and published from 1966 to 1975, is at 52 the basis of the present study. These novels could be classified as historical ones because they are focused on a specific time of the history of India and comprise events that led to the end of British rule in India. They especially cover the final five years of the British Raj in India 1942-1947, a period of time during which Paul Scott himself had been in the subcontinent. At the time, the system of government applied in India was somehow a replica of that of Great Britain including institutions like the Indian Police, the native army and the Indian Civil Service.
The second Durbar on January 1, 1903 a period when the British Raj was at its thriving time in India. 53
2.1. THE HISTORICAL EVENTS TREATED BY EACH NOVEL
While Paul Scott was writing each of the four novels of The Raj Quartet, he made as if the major events of the stories told in them were in link with the real situations of the country. In fact, the novels were trying to show the influence of history in people’s destiny.
2.1.1. Strikes and Riots
The fictional events in The Jewel in the Crown had been laid upon the situation of strikes and rebellions taking place in India in 1942. This novel could be said to be the aftermath of Lord Dalhousie’s governorship of the peninsula. After the mutiny of sepoys in 1857, there had always been a persisting Indian discontent towards the British. This situation had been exploited by Ronald Merrick, a major character of this novel who would accuse Hari Kumar of political agitation. These agitations were the background of the rape occuring in the Bibighar Gardens. If there had not been riots, Daphne Manners would not have been raped.
Paul Scott centralized this first volume on two different events happening to two Englishwomen in a fictitious subdivision of British India: Maypore. Miss Crane, the district superintendent of mission school was attacked by a mob on her way from the city of Dibrapur. Daphne Manners, an English young lady had been raped by five or six men in a place called the Bibighar Gardens when she was back from work. These stories happened in 1942, the year when Great Britain proposed that after the Second World War from 1939 to 1945, India would become an independent dominion inside the Commonwealth of Nations. The proposition did not work because it was rejected by all the Indian nationalist parties that existed. Finally, the British resorted to the establishment of a government of transition which would take charge of India affairs except the national defence and foreign affairs. Apart from that, the Cripps Mission also failed in April 1942. Gandhi launched the Quit India Campaign and began to preach sedition all over the country. In some ways, he invited the Emperor of Japan to come and help him rid India of Great 54
Britain. That was also the year when the Japanese defeated the British and Indian armies in Burma. The central events of the novel occurred on August 9, 1942; a date historically known for the arrests of the Congress Party leaders after the passing of the Quit India Resolution by the All-India Congress committee in Bombay. They demanded the immediate withdrawal of the British from India. The disturbances led the local government to take some measures of repression.
‘Section 144 of the criminal procedure code enables the civil authority to decide for itself that such and such man is a potential local threat to public peace, and thus to order him to stay quiet on pain of arrest and imprisonment. If he disobeys the order he gets prosecuted and punished under section 188.’42
2.1.2. The Second World War
The second novel, The Day of the Scorpion depicted the Second World War when Indians changed attitudes towards the British as compared to the First World War. The Indian National Army manifested it by organizing a kind of mutiny. This mutiny showed that they did not approve fighting on the British side in the war. The reason was that the British have not kept their promise to grant India self-government in case they won the First World War.
In this second book, the story was mainly set in the hill station of Pankot where a family, the Laytons, lived. The central theme was the hastened wedding of Susan Layton , the younger daughter of Colonel John Layton , with an officer named Teddie Bingham. A year after that, Teddie was killed in the war against the Indian National Army (INA) in Imphal plain. Meanwhile, Susan gave birth to their only son named after his father. In parallel to that, Mohammed Ali Kasim, the ex-chief Minister of Ranpur, was arrested as one of the Congress Party leaders. The Province Governor of Ranpur at the time, Sir George Malcolm, beseeched him to give up the party. If he did so, he would
42 SCOTT, Paul, The Raj Quartet : The Jewel in the Crown, London, Granada Publishing ltd, 1966, Panther books, p 273. 55 not be imprisonment and kept in the Fort of Premanagar but he refused. After a few months of imprisonment, his eldest son , Sayed was captured in Kuala Lumpur for joining the INA. By Governor Malcolm’s order and under the request of Lady Manners, the former Governor’s wife, the Bibighar affair had been reconsidered by Captain Rowan. Hari Kumar, the first suspect of the rape was released. The Day of the Scorpion was characterized by the application of the Defence of India rule, more precisely the detention under Rule 26. At the time, the Jiffs who were Indian soldiers before and prisoners of the Japanese in Burma and Malaya turned coat and killed their fellow countrymen together with their former British officers and chiefs. For them,
‘The Japanese were freeing all Asia from the white man’s yoke and self-respecting Indians couldn’t just sit by and let another nation do their job for them.’43
During the many years of colonization in India, the British had always tried to hamper Indian officers to reach higher military rank like that of general.
2.1.3. Religious Strife
The Towers of Silence threw lights to the fact that evangelizing India stood impossible. The novel mentioned the presence of two women, Miss Crane and Miss Barbie Batchelor, working as missionary teachers whereas both Muslim and Hindu traditions did not value women much, let alone their leadership and without mentioning that these missionaries were unmarried ones. The suicide of Miss Crane demonstrates her disappointment and loss of faith in her mission. Conversion of Hindus and Muslims to Christianity seems impossible. Paul Scott, by Crane’s self-immolation stated that, in India, Evangelization had been a failure. In this third novel of The Raj Quartet, Paul Scott inserted a new character, Barbie Bachelor, an old teacher of the mission school who would move to Pankot after her retirement. Besides, a little girl was born on May 7,1943 of Daphne Manners and an unknown father as a result of the rape in Mayapore. Daphne
43 SCOTT, Paul, The Raj Quartet : The Day of the Scorpion, London, Granada Publishing ltd, 1968, Panther books, p 394. 56 gave birth in Srinagar where she died of peritonitis. At the end of the novel, Barbie appeared to be greatly shocked by the deaths of her landlady and her colleague teacher, Miss Crane. Barbie underwent the same fate later after five weeks of hospitalization from bronco-pneumonia. In fact, the situations in this novel also concerned the army. The INA recruited prisoners of war and this fact created problems within the British and Indian armies. The two nationalists, the Boses, represented a threat to the British government. Rash Behari Bose was an old Indian revolutionary man and was living in Japan. Yet, he was at the head of military movements together with Mohan Singh of the INA. In December 1940, an eminent member of the Indian National Congress escaped from India: Subhas Chandra Bose. While the Congress leaders were kept in jail, the latter decided to take arms and struggle for independence. Impressed by the USSR, he was elected president of the Congress in 1938. However, he had to resign in 1939 because his ideology of using violence was completely the opposite of Gandhi’s position. In February 1943, Hitler sent Bose by submarine to Japan. The following June, the Japanese Admiral Tojo declared that his country sustained the Indian emancipation.
2.1.4. The British Departure
A Division of the Spoils dealt with the partition of India and Pakistan, the Muslim immigration to Pakistan and Hindu to India. The British were always preoccupied by the alternated and continuous disturbances caused by either Muslims or Hindus. The Division of the Spoils closed this tetralogy and told about the partial release of Mohammed Ali Kasim, who had to live under restriction in Mirat. The progression of the story was specified by the omnipresence of Sergeant Perron of the Army Education Corps. He was sent by his friend, Captain Purvis, to attend a party organized by Maharanee Aimee. Susan Layton and Ronald Merrick got married and lived in Mirat. There, Merrick was murdered in a thuggee way. As a consequence, Susan had some kind of breakdown. The novel ended with the departure of seven adults, little Edward and ayah from Mirat to Delhi were they would embark to England. Their train compartment would be attacked by rioters who would take hold of Ahmed, the younger son of Mohammed Ali Kasim. 57
Events in The Division of the Spoils coincided with Hiroshima and Nagasaki bomb explosions and the death of Hitler. On August 14, 1945 the Japanese war cabinet in Tokyo persuaded their Emperor to decide to surrender.
‘I find myself uncertain which of two recent events – the election of a socialist government in London and the distruction of Hiroshima by a single bomb – will have the profounder effect in India’s future.’44
In India, the Viceroy Lord Wavell announced a conference for Indian leaders at Simla to discuss proposals to attain full self-government. The conference was held from June 25, 1947 to July 14, 1947 after several riots. The Governor broadcasted that the division of India into two self- governing dominions of India and Pakistan was inevitable. All the British and Anglo-Indian people were to resign and leave India starting from August 15, 1947.
2.2. COLONIAL SETTINGS OF THE RAJ QUARTET
In his novels, Paul Scott had selected places which represented the different colonial administration applied in India. He chose fictitious places such as Mayapore, Pankot and Mirat as settings of The Raj Quartet. However, the whole story could be localized to have taken place in the northern part of India around Srinagar, Delhi and Punjab which were real places the novel characters sometimes visited.
2.2.1. The District of Mayapore
The Mayapore town could be considered as an old town because it had been built a long time ago. It used to be a kingdom before the annexation of the province. At the time, real life was only on one side of the river which crossed it. No building yet was seen to stand on the other side until the British came and built a modern and western town. Paul Scott wrote The Jewel in the Crown in 1966 when he described the administration of the district.
‘The Mayapore district of the province is still administered 44 SCOTT, Paul, The Raj Quartet: The Towers of Silence, London, Granada Publishing ltd, 1971, Panther books, p397. 58
in five subdivisions as it was in the days of the British . It covers an area of 2,346 square miles. In 1942 the population was one and a quarter million.’45
Like any town, Mayapore had institutions like banks, churches and temples, schools and even factory and airport. Roads were named after outstanding or heroic British or Indian names like that of the Empress Victoria, the governor generals or the Mahatma Gandhi. Mayapore town was divided into three separate quarters that are the Civil lines, the Eurasian community and the native town.
2.2.1.1 The Civil Lines
The Civil Lines was the British residential area in Mayapore.This part of the town contained the airport, the British Electrical Factory, the Mayapore Technical College, the Government Higher School, the St Mary’s Church, the Mayapore General Hospital and the Imperial Bank. This side of the town was particularly clean with wide streets, well-built bungalows and clubs. In the Civil Lines could also be found a place called The Maidan, a large square where the British held their annual gymkhana, flower show and cricket weeks. The inhabitants were mainly the English civil servant families, military people, missionaries, Anglo-Indians and a very few westernized Indians. They were minority in number but were the ruling ones. These people seemed to be always grouped as if they feared possible violence from the other side of the river. Their lives appeared to be complicated by the demands of white solidarity and supremacy. They often met at the club, the exclusive place where they could spend leisure time together, talk, play, drink and organize sport competitions. From outside, the club building was remarkably shabby but it was the place where English people feel comfortable. However, the club had a very bad reputation.
‘ Someone is always drunk, the talk is mostly scurrilous, there were inviolable rules for heartless gossip and insufferable behaviour.’46
45 op. cit., vol.1, p 169. 46 op. cit., vol.1, p 115. 59
The Civil Lines was put in communication with the native town by means of two bridges.
2.2.1.2. The Native Town
Paul Scott stressed on the contrasts between the Civil Lines and the Indian Town as it was also called when he gave a vivid description of the Native Town.
‘(…)the native town frightened her with its narrow dirty streets, its disgusting poverty, its raucous dissonant music , its verminous dogs, its starving, mutilated beggars, its fat white sacred brahmini bulls and its ragged population of men and women who looked so resentful in comparison with the servants and other officiating natives of the cantonment.’47
This part of the town comprised the Tirupati Temple, a Hindu temple after which was named one of the bridges, ‘Mandir’Gate , an Indian word for temple. The river was situated nearby and this made the place very unpleasant because the untouchable, the people belonging to the lowest caste of Indian society came there to wash their clothes and empty their bowels. Indian children attended the Chillianwallah Bazaar school. The building dated at least seventy years old. Apart from the fact that Indians were not very keen on sending their children to school, the age of the schoolhouse might also discourage them and besides, it was situated next to the market which was not very pedagogical. The house formerly belonged to Mr Chillianwallah, a Parsee who came to make fortune in Mayapore. At the time, he also built the church of St Mary, the bungalow of the Deputy Commissioner and the Native Town bazaar. Apart from the hospital, there was no other outstanding institutions like Christian church in this place. The means of transportation used were not cars or horse tongas like in the Civil Lines but mostly cycle rickshas. The main attraction in the Native Town was the Bibighar. In the old days, a prince built the Bibighar which meant house of women where he kept his courtesans. The house was destroyed by a Scotsman later because he caught his Indian girlfriend with an Indian young man there. The ruins of the house were still seen and the wild garden remained green. This place became frequented by Indians where they had picnics and
47 op. cit., vol.1, p 18. 60
Indian huts near Calcutta
A British quarter in India 61
children used it as a playground. British people rarely visited it. The place was said to be haunted and not good for lovers. The Native Town was overpopulated with people who still stick to their customs and traditions and did not care much about education and hygiene. Here, people were trying hard to survive.
2.2.1.3. The Eurasian community
‘Between the Mandir Gate bridge, on the Civil Lines side, and the second bridge, the Bibighar bridge, lived the Eurasian community.’48
The novels did not mention much details about the Eurasians. However, it was obvious that the community was born of the miscegenation between British and Indian people who had been living in the same land for centuries starting as early as 1600. Both the whites and the blacks had always rejected interracial marriages. However, liaisons between English men and Indian women could be tolerated . The exclusion from both communities entailed the building and creation of this little community which was under the control of missionaries. The formation of the group was the result of love affairs between soldiers, railway officials and junior civil servants, and natives . They had their own institutions like the Joseph Wainwright Christian School where Eurasian teachers taught Eurasian pupils.
2.2.2. The Hill Station of Pankot
Pankot was built upon three hills in the province of Ranpur. It was one of the places where official people of the province came to spend hot weather and even to retire. English people liked staying there for the reason that it recalled them of England.
‘There were English people who said they were reminded Of Surrey hills near Caterham. Upon retirement from the civil or the military some of them came to Pankot- not to die but to enjoy their remaining years in a place that was peculiarly Indian but very much their own, and where servants were cheap, and English flowers could be grown in the gardens, and life stake on the serenity of fulfilment,
48 Op. Cit., vol.1, p 35. 62
of duty done without the depression of going home wondering what it had been done for.’ 49
Pankot was also inhabited by both Hindus and Muslims and is different for its architecture. The Pankot bazaar was built in the Indo- Tyrolean way whereas the governor’s summer residence in the Swiss Gothic style. There are also the Kali temple and the mosque. A phallic stone monolith could be seen in the War Memorial Square in remembrance of soldiers of the Pankot rifles who died during the First World War.Scott had made a clear description of Pankot marketplace.
‘There were Indian coffee shops, fortune-tellers, The local branch of the Imperial bank of India, a garage, a bicycle shop, the Hindu hotel, the Muslim hotel. At the tip of the V the buses halted. Here there were ponies and tongas for hire, even a taxi or two. This was the favourite place of pedlars and itinerant holy men and small boys in rags and moth-eaten fur caps who competed with each other to shine the visitor’s shoes . The shop signs were in English and in the vernacular in both the Nagari and the Arabic scripts.’50
In the novels, the family Layton lived in Pankot. The father, Colonel Layton and his wife Mabel, their two daughters Sarah and Susan. They occupied one of the oldest bungalows in Pankot: the Rose Cottage. Its main attraction was the garden. Its previous owner was a tea planter and he built the house in an Anglo-Indian style which meant surrounded by a large veranda. The Fort of Premanagar was constructed by the Rajputs, held by the Moghuls who lost it to the British. It used to belong to an English sailor but after 1939, the Fort became a prison for civil detention. There, prisoners could create gardens to while the time away.
49 op. cit., vol.2, p 62. 50 Op.cit., vol.2, p 61. 63
2.2.3. The Princely State of Mirat
The state of Mirat was ruled by Nawab Ahmed Ali Guffur Kasim Bahadur and his Chief Minister Count Dmitri Bronowsky. As it was indirectly ruled, its government was conducted under the Resident in Gopalakand: Robert Conway. There was a lake in Mirat and the first Nawab declared that the Kasims would rule until the lake dried up. It was thought to symbolize the Nawab’s power. The population was not allowed to use it. Because of the lake, there seemed to be two Mirats. The Mirat of palaces, mosques, minarets and a crowded bazaar and the Mirat of open spaces, barracks, trees and roads. People living in Mirat were mainly Muslims like their leader. The Kasims had always been rich and influential. It was in Mirat that the wedding of Susan Layton and Teddie Bingham was celebrated. Ahmed Kasim, the younger son of Mohammed Ali Kasim was sent to Mirat to learn about the administration of a native state. He was the social secretary of the Nawab. The administration of this state had been completely modernized since the Russian Count Bronowsky had been appointed Chief Minister of the Nawab.
‘Ahmed had worked under the secretary to the Minister for Education, under the secretary to the Minister for Health, Under the chief clerk to they Attorney-General. Most of these ministers were related to the Nawab; two bore the name of Kasim. All were nominated by the Nawab and served as Members of his council of State. The Council of State was Bronowsky’s brain-child. In the twenty years of his administration he had transformed Mirat from a feudal autocracy where Ruler met ruled only at periodical durbars into a miniature semi- democratic state where the durbars still took place but where the machinery of Government was brought out of the dark recesses of room and passages in the palace into, comparatively, the light of day.’51
After independence, the state would be inserted into the provincial administration of Ranpur.
51 op. cit., vol.2, p 102. 64
2.3. THE INHABITANTS OF THE BRITISH RESIDENTIAL AREA
Once India was mentioned, English people could picture in their minds of a land where the sun was hot, the climate difficult, strange and even frightening. Whenever they went out of their houses, women always wore hats and brought parasols. British living in Mayapore included civil servants, mission teachers, soldiers or simple civilians. The social status of each character living in the Civil Lines represented the different types of people who came to India and generally called British colonists. Paul Scott made the readers understood the reality of colonial India through the characters: their nature, behaviour and possible historical dimension.
2.3.1. The Civil Servants
Civil Servants in colonies were most of the time people who went further in their studies which were often about administration law or medicine . Once they arrived in India, they occupied the highest posts of the colonial administration. A great part of the story of The Raj Quartet happened in a place called Mayapore. This town district which was put under the authority of a Deputy Commissioner, Robin White and his Assistant Commissioner, Jack Poulson. Robin White first arrived in Mayapore in 1938. In 1942, White and his wife Constance had been living in India for four years. They had twin boys who, like other children of civil servants, were sent home when they were at the age of entering school. Scott gave a description of Robin White’s physical appearance when White brought the Minister for Education to the Gymkhana Club.
‘He was quite a young man, still in his thirties, very tall, and with one of those narrow English faces which used to appal us when we saw them for the first time because they seemed to be incapable of expressing any emotion.’52
It was in May 1939 that this visit to Gymkhana Club took place and that might mean that White was sometimes fed up with social class restriction or racial discrimination because the Minister was too honourable to enter the club which was lead by the Indian, lieutenant Taylor. The visit made everybody embarrassed and ill at ease . Compared to
52 Op.cit.,vol 3, p197. 65 his predecessor called Stead, White seemed to be more liberal and had broader mind. Stead was very strict and thought that all Indians were inferior.
‘Stead was almost a caricature of the traditional choleric collector. We always said that he punished the district to avenge himself for what he considered unfair treatment by his own superiors in the service.’53
As a Deputy Commissioner, Robin listed the Congress Party members to be arrested under the Defence of India rule in his district. He gave orders of arrest on August 9, 1942. That day six men were taken into custody as suspects of the rape of an English young lady in the Bibighar Gardens. This measure created disorders in Mayapore. Robin got so much troubled that he handed the control of the district to the local Brigade Commander. Apparently, White did not want to be cruel with Indians and yet he had to be obedient to his superior. When he was appointed Deputy Commissioner in Mayapore, he recommended the coming of Jack Poulson as his Assistant Commissioner. Jack and his wife Mavis were friends to the Whites. Poulson could be thought to be calm and had a balanced thinking. He was also the Joint Magistrate. The Deputy entrusted to him the Bibighar affair of rape. Jack himself led the questioning of Hari Kumar, the first man suspected of the crime. Both families of the Deputy Commissioner and his Assistant Commissioner lived in bungalows in the Civil Lines. Constance White always organizes dinner at their bungalow. In these families, Paul Scott portrayed people of high social class in England. They were not bound by the Government policy, what really matters to them was that they came to India to work as civil servants.
2.3.2. The Mission Teachers
English people also came to India to convert people into Christianism. In The Raj Quartet, the work of the mission was mainly seen through the building of schools everywhere. All the mission teachers in the novels were common in the way that none of them was married, they had no more member of family left in England and were most of the time women. In Mayapore they were especially in charge of the Joseph
53 Op.cit., vol.1, p 198. 66
Wainwright School for Eurasians, the Chillianwallah Bazaar School for Indians and the village school in Dibrapur. Miss Edwina Lavinia Crane was the superintendent of the Church of England schools and the supervisor of the Protestant Mission Schools. Crane was an English woman who first came to India as a travelling nurse companion to a lady making passage to India with two young children. When the family returned to England, she decided to stay because she had no more family member alive. She began her career as a teacher in the Eurasian school. She had no qualification for teaching and did not have strong faith in god but was automatically the superior because, at the time, she was the only English person among all the other teachers of the school. Miss Crane came from moderate well-to-do middle class parents but they died leaving her penniless. Though English she was, Crane felt more at ease with Eurasians especially. Scott interpreted this taste as the manifestation of her neutral character:
‘She had to admit that a searching analysis of her work would show that in the main the people she had got on with best of all were those of mixed blood; which seemed, perhaps, to emphasize the fact that she was neither one thing nor the other herself. She had never been wholly accepted by Indians and had tended to reject the generality of the English.’54
Miss Crane’s job consisted in supervising the work of the Anglo-Indian class mistresses, taught mathematics and English to the older Eurasian and Indian Christian girls and visiting the school in Dibrapur. On August 9, 1942 people shouting ‘Quit India’ attacked her and Mr Chaudhuri on their way from Dibrapur. Mr Chaudhuri was murdered whereas Miss Crane caught pneumonia because of the rain and was sent to Mayapore General Hospital. At the time of the accident, she was also in charge of the school in Muzzafirabad in the North West Frontier Province. Mr Chaudhuri was a westernized Indian who decided to sacrifice his life career for depressed classes of people. He considered Miss Crane a benefactor of India that he defended her against the mob’s insults on her. The rioters took him as a traitor of the nationalist movement. In front of the situation, Miss Crane gave wrong to the British
54 SCOTT, Paul, The Raj Quartet: A Division of the Spoils, London, Granada Publishing ltd, 1977,Panther books, p12 67 her own fellow countrymen. She committed suicide by practising the Hindu ritual of suttee, although she was a Christian and an unmarried woman. Miss Crane had a friend called Barbie Batchelor who was a retired superintend of Protestant mission schools. She went on retirement on September 1939 at the time when the Second World War began. Compared to Miss Crane, Barbie was rather pious. She had no more relatives in England and had been living in India for thirty years in 1939. She joined the mission and came to India when both her parents were dead. Barbie used to be a good teacher but thought that the teaching of Christianity was more important than arithmetic, writing or reading. The existence of God, Christ the redeemer and heaven was true for her. She felt satisfied when she managed to bring Hindu and Muslim children to God. Besides, the pupils’ parents were just anxious to give a good grounding of English to their sons especially. Very few of them were baptized. Barbie replied to an advertisement in the Ranpur Gazette looking for a single woman to share accommodation with in Pankot. Barbie found the place interesting because she had always wanted to work in Ranpur province. Later, she died of bronco-pneumonia later on June 30, 1945. The lives of these mission teachers showed the failure of Christianism in India where people stuck much to their native religions. The following figures show the religious composition of India in 1981 and depict that although many European powers of different origins had occupied the land for centuries, western religion had not rooted there:
RELIGIONS Hindus Muslims Christians Sikhs Buddhists Jain Others PERCENTAGE 82,64% 11,35% 2,43% 1,96% 0,71% 0,48% 0,43%
Miss Crane and Barbie were mission teachers but Paul Scott states that schooling had also been a failure.
‘In later years he was found of quoting figures from the provincial census taken round about this time, that showed a male population of twenty-four and a half million and a female population of twenty- three million. Of the males one and a half million were literate; of the females less than fifty-six thousand.’55
55 Op.cit., vol.3, p213. 68
All these failure seemed to predict that the British would soon had to give India up.
2.3.3. The Simple English Civilians
Among these civilians could be quoted Daphne Manners. Her coming to India was not really on her own free will. The young lady had lost all of her family before and during the war. Lady Ethel Manners was her only relative left and was living in India. Daphne was the only daughter of the former Province Governor of Ranpur, Sir Henri Manners’s brother. Both of them worked in India, Henry was an administrator whereas George, Daphne’s father a doctor. George did not remain long in India.
‘Daphne was born in the Punjab but didn’t remember any of it because her mother couldn’t stand the climate and her father resigned from his service and went home into private practice when Daphne was still almost a baby. He was IMS.’56
Physically, Daphne was rather plain, big and unattractive. She wore spectacles. In Maypore, she lived with Lady Chatterjee, a Rajput princess in the Civil Lines. Daphne did not care much about class consciousness and did not like to go to the club because English women made fuss of the lady with whom she lived. Daphne made acquaintance with Harry Coomer, an Indian youth who had been in England for sixteen years. After being with him on August 8, 1942 evening she was raped by five or six men in the Bibighar Gardens. Her daughter Parvati was also brought up by Lady Chatterjee later on. Daphne used to do voluntary work at hospital and visit a place called sanctuary from time to time. The sanctuary belonged to Mrs Ludmila Smith.
‘(…) the white woman - said to be mad – who dressed like a nun, kept a refuge for the sick and the dying and was called Sister Ludmila by Indians.’57
Ludmila was the widow of an engineer. When her husband died, she started to devote her life to the poor. She received a pension every month and she used it to finance her activities. She collected people she found lying in the street. She fed hungry people, healed sick ones and comforted those who were in sorrow. Nobody knew 56 Op.cit, vol.1 , p 99. 57 Op. cit., vol 3, p 35. 69 what her nationality was and the English did not really like her though she was living in the Civil Lines. They considered her as mad. Simple civilians like Daphne and Sister Ludmila were the inhabitants of the British residential area who most got in touch with Indians. They thought of the natives as their equals, human beings who needed love and care from others. They had respect for human rights and did not understand the British change in attitudes and behaviour once they came to India.
2.3.4. The British Military
Paul Scott introduced Ronald Merrick as the antagonistic character in the central story of The Raj Quartet. He was the only character present in each novel through direct intervention in the story. Physically, Merrick had fair hair, red arms and blue eyes. He was handsome but quarrelsome at the club. He had been in Mayapore for two years in 1942. Being a bachelor, he was the centre of British unmarried young women’s eyes. At work, Merrick excelled in his duties and this quality made the other civil servants respect him although they did not really appreciate his behaviour.
‘Neither Robin White nor Jack Poulson liked him much, but they said he was good at his job. Judge Menen couldn’t stand him, but never said so in so many words. I had him round at Macgregor House because I’d been on good terms with his predecessor, a rather old man called Angus MacGilvray.’58
As a District Superintendent of Police in Mayapore, Merrick occupied a rather high position especially in the eyes of Indians. The administration of British India which had been directly ruled by the colonists was done hierarchically from Province Governors to the District Superintendent of Police. However, Ronald Merrick’s sub-inspector was an Indian Muslim called Rajendra Singh. Scott depicted a typical colonial government representative and an oppressor in Merrick : a male character and a policeman. Army career expressed autocratic power, capable of any kind of punishment, especially physical violence. Merrick was self- opinionated and held on to what he thought to be the truth. He was arrogant and liked to
58 Op.cit., vol.1, p 92 . 70 exhibit his superiority, and sometimes put himself in a risky situation. Later, Merrick left the Indian Police to join the army. The Raj Quartet reflected parts of Paul Scott’s life. In the novels, three army agents come to India to wage war. They were Captain Teddie Bingham, Sergeant Guy Perron and Captain Nigel Rowan. Perron and Rowan used to be students at Chillimborough in England. Sergeant Perron arrived in India in 1943 and has studied about Indian history in Great Britain. His role was to rescue and protect widows and spinsters from India. This scene was mainly felt during their travel from Mirat to Delhi when Rowan and Perron discovered that Merrick was a homosexual. Captain Rowan was the man who released Kumar from prison. He acknowledged Merrick’s faults and tried to help Kumar to find a livelihood. Rowan found it illogical that Kumar was arrested for rape but imprisoned for political reasons. Besides, he had never involved himself in politics.
2.3.5. Some Privileged Indians
In order to avoid possible revolted against power abuse and to make ruling easier, the British Government in India gave a very small chance for Indians to become civil servants. Once those Indians finished their studies in England, the British colonists treated them according to their diplomas. In The Raj Quartet, Menen was the judge of Mayapore, a very high position as far as the administration of a district was concerned.
‘Only the district and sessions Judge, who together with the Deputy Commissioner and the Superintendent of formed the triumvirate of civil authority in the District.’59
Despite his administrative place as an authority, Menen was not granted a specific role in the story. His presence was just to show the historical reality. He was the only Indian who could continue his studies further and become civil servant. Judge Menen was a friend of Lady Chatterjee, a Rajput Princess who lived in the Macgregor House.
59 Op.cit., vol.4, p 41. 71
Lady Chatterjee was a Westernized Indian. She was educated in Geneva and Paris and her title was due to her late husband’s service to the Crown. She was fully portrayed by Scott: ‘Westernized though she was , Lady Chatterjee was of Rajput stock, a Hindu of the old ruling-warrior caste. Short, thin, with greying hair cut in European style, seated upright on the edge of a sofa, with the free end of her saree tight wound round her shoulders, and her remarkably dark eyes glittering at you, her beaky Rajput nose and pale skin proclaiming both authority and breeding, she looked every inch a woman whom onl y the course of history had denied the opportunity of fully exercising the power she was born to.’60
Paul Scott made Lady Chatterjee the leader of the Indian society in Mayapore though woman she was. Her dwelling, the Macgregor House, reflected the relationship existing between English and Indian people in England. It was the place where the two races were treated equally. On the interpersonal level, Lady Chatterjee was acting as guardian to Daphne Manners and later to her daughter, but on the political scene, she was instrumental to the reviewing of Kumar’s case.
2.4. RONALD MERRICK AS AN ABUSIVE POLICE OFFICER
Paul Scott evoked in The Raj Quartet the manifestation of British exploitation and domination during colonial time in India. Kumar, the protagonist of the novels stood as a victim of this oppression. His life turned into a tragedy because the local District Superintendent of Police, Ronald Merrick adopted unfair, cruel and sadistic attitudes and treatments over him. These scenes were mostly dealt with in the two first novels. Merrick was abusive in the way he carried out his duties. Merrick took profit of his place in administration and Kumar’s innocence to avenge a rival in love. Consequently, Kumar submitted to an unfair situation. However, he was not the only victim. There were ather five men who were caught drinking in a hut and were imprisoned, also of political agitation. At the time, any people who attempted to harm the public peace could be imprisoned without trial. Through Merrick, Paul Scott represented the British type of imperialist: the arrogant man thinking of himself belonging to the best race in the world.
60 Op.cit., vol.1, p42. 72
2.4.1. Kumar Father as an admirer of Imperialism
The Raj Quartet asserted that imperialistic attitudes weighed much on people’s life that they pushed native Indians to do their best in their studies so as to imitate and join the advantageous minority group. Education was for them the only means to become well-considered and got inserted into British residential areas. Duleepji Kumar, the father of Hari Kumar, was among those Indians who strongly desire to become the like of British people. He thus established tremendous plans for his son’s education and devoted all his efforts for that. In order to achieve his goal, Duleepji brought Hari to England. There, he sent him to Chillingborough to be educated. He knew this type of school already defined the social class of students in England. Hari was the first Indian admitted at Chillingborough. After Lord Bentick, discrimination in the field of education had been abolished. This was at the origin of Duleep Kumar’s ambition and plans for his only son. While he was still in Mayapore, he had always envied the British standard of living. He hadn’t managed to go further in his studies that he planned a thorough English education for Hari. Through his son, he wanted to be assimilated within the English community. He had never been against the British policy for India and always wished to enjoy and become equal to Anglo-Indians once they returned home. However, this was not the case for his son Hari when he was back in India. The reversal of fate was shown in the way that Kumar became an alien. He stood different as compared to his family members and the other Indians in his society and was rejected by the Anglo-Indians who were jealous of his English upper-class characteristics. Hari Kumar or Harry Coomer was a tall, black-haired and brown-faced young Indian man. He was only two years old when he first arrived in England. He spoke, acted and thought just like an English boy. He experienced life of foreigners among British citizens and adopted western attitudes and manners. He was proud of his father’s plan about his future career.
‘I will become’, he told himself, ‘exactly what my father wanted me to become. I’ll become an Indian the English will welcome and recognize.’61
61 Op.cit., vol.1, p 246. 73
Paul Scott portrayed in Kumar a character put in a situation of incapacity and powerlessness in front of life. He was left parentless, no brother, no sister and ignored by his father’s family. He was obliged to come back to India without diplomas, valueless and ignored.
‘Certainly in later years, in the matter of his own son Hari’s welfare , no interest was shown by and no help forthcoming from those of Duleep’s elders who survived him.’62
Life has completely reversed for Kumar, he was lonely, far away from the comfort and riches he used to live with in England. Having no more chance for studies, he actually worked as a newspaper reporter at Mayapore Gazette.
2.4.2. Social Ostracism
After the mutiny,members of Indian ruling class had been granted a status. Lili Chatterjee, for instance,became Lady Chatterjee. Colonial India had been formed by Anglo- Indians, senior civil servants like Robin White and Jack Poulson and also educated Indians such as Judge Menen and Lady Chatterjee. In this social class, not much social discrimination could be seen in the people’s behaviour. Not all British people coming to India were, thus, civil servants. Some of them arrive in the peninsula for business or commercial purposes. These people often decided to stay in India, the land where they thought they could build a better life. This class of people did not part from the British society but their attitudes toward Indians are different. For them, a qualified Indian remains as low as the majority. Kumar was deeply deceived not only with the poverty he noticed in the Native Town but especially the changes in behaviour in the British in India. In England, they do not exteriorize race discrimination towards people from the colonies. Harry had never experienced such situation during his almost twenty years there. Reality in India was unfortunately deceiving. In this land, the British and Indians rarely mingled between themselves. The British were of a superior race. The presence of Lady Chatterjee in the different British activities, for instance, made some ladies reluctant
62 Ibid, p 213. 74 to participate in their organization. In an other occasion, she went to visit Miss Crane at Mayapore General Hospital and was asked to go out by an English woman in the same room. Love relationship between black and white was thought to be possible only in a rape case. It was shown in the novels that Daphne Manners’s being on familiar terms with Kumar was at the origin of all the sufferings both of them would endure.
‘This is a story of a rape, of the events that led up to it and followed it and of the place on which it happened.’63
2.4.3. The Case of Kumar
In 1835, Lord Bentinck reformed the chart dealing with racial discrimination. He allowed Indians of all castes or social classes to frequent school and even spent years in England for further studies especially those who wanted to become civil servants. However, reality of the novel in 1942, showed that the situation remained as it was before. Kumar’s status of educated Indian was at the origin of his being professionally discriminated. The issue of discrimination in the field of work was common and did not part from the reality of colonial India. Scott tried to convey that the education values of Indians were rather ignored and depreciated. In The Raj Quartet, for instance, Mr Chaudhuri who had BA, BSc qualifications was a simple school teacher supervised by Miss Crane, a British woman without diplomas. The language register and accent used define one’s social class but British office workers in India did not recognize and even dislike public school educated Indians. Kumar failed to get a post at the British –Indian electrical factory because his English was more fluent than that of his interviewer.
‘The man Hari fell foul of probably spoke English with a Midlands accent, and resented the fact that an Indian spoke it like a managing director.’ 64
The English language had been introduced as the official language in education in India, yet, like in other colonies, getting a job depends on one’s colour of skin rather than on his or her diploma, competence or experience.
63 Op.cit, vol 1, p 9. 64 Op. cit., vol.2, p 256. 75
2.4.4. Institutional Intrusion into a Personal Relationship
The establishment of the Indian Police in Mayapore was meant to administer and establish law and order. It worked to keep the native population from revolting. However, law had been wrongly used in the Bibighar affair of rape. It had been applied for personal revenge. The victim did not drag the affair into court but still, Kumar was imprisoned for political reasons which was not the truth. Recruitment for police did not require specific qualification at the time and jobless or dismissed British civil servants tended to go to India in search for a better life.
2.5. CHANGES OF COLONIAL OUTLOOK
The Raj Quartet not only depicted the British supremacy in India but also the reversal of the situation which was mainly shown in the two last novels. The Parsee towers in Ranpur seemed to predict that the troubles and riots in India, the Second World War and the British Parliament indifference were signs of the fall of the British Raj. There were many changes in a very small period of time including the British departure and the consequences of India-Pakistan partition.
2.5.1. The Release of Hari Kumar
Merrick, the District Superintendent of Police in Mayapore arrested Kumar twice. First, Hari was found drunk at the sanctuary and brought to the Police station. Merrick was in search of Moti Lal, a clerk at Maypore Gazette, who escaped from prison and organized subversive activities against the local government. That day, Merrick’s search for Moti Lal was in vain that he took Kumar to the station without any clear reason. Lady Chatterjee, convinced of Kumar’s innocence, intervened as the leader of Indian society in Mayapore. She stood as someone of consideration because she was a member of the board of Governors at the Mayapore Technical College and also a member of committee at the Purdah Hospital. At the beginning, she was suspicious of Kumar’s relationship with Daphne. She became interested in Kumar’s case when Dr Klaus explained to her who Kumar was. She asked Judge Menen to inquire about Kumar’s arrest. His uncle Romesh Chand Gupta Sen 76 also sent for his lawyer, Mr Srinivasan. Merrick recorded him in his book, questioned and released him.
The second time arrest of Kumar took him about two years imprisonment without trial. He was suspected of the rape of August 9,1942. This time, people of Kumar’s acquaintance including Lady Chatterjee asked Mr Laxminarayan, the boss at Mayapore Gazette to take some steps to save Kumar but he was reluctant.
‘ I did not see why I should raise a finger to help him. If the British couldn’t see for themselves that he was innocent, who was I to intervene.’65
While in jail, Kumar had always been separated from his other six Hindu friends despite the fact that they were all arrested for the same crime. One year after Daphne’s death and the birth of her daughter Parvati , Lady Manners asked for a reconsideration of Kumar’s case. Captain Rowan led the questioning and released Kumar afterwards.
2.5.2. The Price of Oppression
The Bibighar affair was a decisive turning point in the life of Merrick. The Indian inhabitants of the town never forgave him for having destroyed Kumar’s life. Besides, the district authorities in Mayapore discovered that Merrick had mingled his personal life with his work. However, no direct harm could be done to him.
‘And Merrick. Nothing can happen to Merrick, can it? –everything in the file of the uncorroborated evidence of a prisoner. Nothing will touch him. That is part of the charade too.’66
Having failed in the eyes of the inhabitants of Mayapore especially the Deputy Commissioner, Merrick was moved Superintendent of Police in Sandarnagar. Later on, he applied to enter the army but wherever he went someone always remind him of the Bibighar event by words, by signs or even by act. When he was at the military camp,
65 Op.cit., vol. 1, p 266. 66 Op. cit., vol.2, p317. 77 for instance, someone had put a damaged bicycle in front of his door so as to remind him of Daphne’s bicycle. He was the best man in his friend Teddie’s wedding and someone threw stone at their car for hatred of Merrick despite the fact that the wedding took place in Mirat, a princely state situated a bit far from Mayapore. Merrick’s career in India ended badly. Merrick withdrew from the Second World War because he was badly wounded, burnt and had to lose his left arm. Although he was decorated in Simla for his courage, he was not happy. He was returned commander of a Police detachment in Mirat. There, the Thugs chose him as one of their victims that he was found dead strangled in his bungalow. In Merrick, Paul Scott put into practice racial discrimination. He symbolized both the British thriving time and fall in India.
* * * Through The Raj Quartet, Paul Scott had shown some manifestations of imperialism within Indian society. He used many characters of different nationality: British, French, Russian and Indian and of different social status to convey the situation in which people were living in at the time, that is, from 1942 to 1947. While in India, colonial power had changed British natural attitudes and behaviour in their country and damaged the local Indian order of life. However, very few students of the colony managed to reach British status civil servants. But still, there were also the native majority who remained oppressed until few westernized Indians found ways to liberate their country and make the British Raj fall. 78
PART THREE:
USING PAUL SCOTT’S
THE RAJ QUARTET IN
THE TEACHING OF
SUBSTANTIVES FOR ‘SECONDE’
CLASSES
After our training practice in lycées, we have come to the conclusion that success in the learning of English depends much on the teacher himself as well as 79 his methods. This idea led us to idea lead us to devote this part of work to the students’ acquiring the language in an easy and pleasant way. For that, we suggest the use of appropriate literary text extracts as teaching materials as a contribution to the improvement of the teaching of English substantives in Malagasy lycées.
3.1. LITERARY TEXTS AS TEACHING MATERIALS IN ENGLISH COURSES
Many teachers of English in lycées use texts they have themselves invented or found easy in books at their disposal. This method get the students used to practical and ordinary texts. Thus, the introduction of some knowledge of literature not only makes a good part of language learning experience but also improve their general culture and studies. Students need both work of art they read in literature and also texts rooted in everyday life.
3.1.1. Advantages of the Use of Literary Texts
CUDDON J.A. views literature in this way :
‘ The term carries with it qualitative connotations which imply that the work in question has superior qualities ; that it is well above the ordinary run of written work’ 67
Exposing students to literary texts offers them opportunities to meet and learn language in a special and unusual way. Literary texts help learners have a good basis for vocabulary because these texts offer them new words and get them in touch with linguistic features. To rationalize this part of work, investigation among one hundred and forty students has been carried out. This number makes up three classes of seconde of about forty-six students each. Some questions have been asked to them but only after we have finished experimenting the texts.
67 CUDDON, J.A., A Dictionary of Literary Terms, Great Britain, Hazel Watson& Viney limited,
1977,Penguin reference, p 365. 80
The following tables show the percentage of students who like or dislike English and those who preferred the grammar point as compared to the text used among those who like the subject matter:
Table N°1:
CHOICES NUMBER OF STUDENTS PERCENTAGE Like English 103 73,80 % Dislike English 27 19,05 % No answer 10 7,15 % TOTAL 140 100 %
Table N°2:
LANGUAGE ELEMENTS NUMBER OF STUDENTS PERCENTAGE Grammar 70 67,96 % Text 33 32,04 % TOTAL 103 100 %
Table N°1 depicts that almost a three- quarter of the students like English. This stands as a positive sign for us because the learners then appear motivated to learn the language. Their tendency to choose the grammar point in Table N°2 is not surprising and does not lessen the value of literary text at all. The reason for that is simple, if they enjoyed the grammar point it means that they have undestood it well and the use of literary texts played a big part in this comprehension. Using literature texts in class can be advantageous in the way that they are enjoyable to read and motivating to learn . Students like literary genre like poems or prose works which they find original. At their age, lycée students are curious to know more about the outside of their world. Asking them to read poems or dialogues with gestures may be an effective way to internalize vocabulary and intonation. They would also be proud to remember a famous sentence of a worldly known author. Literary texts are authentic materials. They are mostly written by the native speaker. Thus, the texts contain the culture of the country in question and was written in the appropriate way. They provide examples of style and represent various use of language. While reading these texts, students acquire general educational value as CUMMING states it : 81
‘The aim of any introduction to literature is to develop in a student an intuitive sense for what is important in a work, and to teach him to find and to describe the sources of his intuition in the text.’68
Literature broadens students’ mind and helps students understand the culture of the language they are learning. They become aware of what people read in other countries and also aware of what is happening outside their world. Apart from language learning, literary works make students receive education at the same time , build in themselves critical and creative thinking and express their opinions and feelings. Above all, appropriate literary texts fit lycée students well because they help much to attain the objectives of the current syllabus. They have a high value and status and fulfil the condition that teaching English implies putting students in contact with the essential cultural traits and the proper notions of the speaker of the language. Moreover, the English subject matter is supposed to expand their language awareness. Thus, students who have experienced dealing with literary extracts in class are more advantageous in the way that they become aware of social, political and historical events which form the background of the text they read, and have attained a higher level of language expressed in a deeper way. Literature may highly motivate students because if the materials are well chosen, they will feel that what they do at school is relevant and meaningful to their own lives . They may watch films or cartoons on television which they have already read and understood in class. Teacher may focus discussion on a point of view of the author or a character of the text and all the four skills that are speaking, writing, reading and listening could be exploited. Literary texts may also incite students to go further in their studies after they finish their secondary school. If the text is written by an author who comes from a different country, there the students come also to know how other people reflect about the language.
3.1.2. Criteria for Texts Selection
68 BASSNETT, Susan and Peter GRUNDY, Language through Literature, England, Canterbury, Pilgrims, Longman, preface. 82
At first glance, literary texts may seem difficult for lycée students’ level. In addition to that, these may appear new to them that he students may meet obstacles while coping with them in their courses. However, stating that literature implies difficulties does not always stand true. Learners won’t find much difficulty with well selected extracts used in an appropriate way and situation. It is possible for teachers to use simplified versions. Good preparations from the part of the teacher is thus crucial for the success of the lesson. These kinds of text may also be time-consuming that a good time management is necessary.
3.1.2.1.The text
Literary text exploitation in lycées would be easier if the three following points are respected and studied in advance. First, the text should have a theme corresponding to one of the units in the official syllabus. Secondly, it should be rich enough to contain the aspects of language to be exploited and developed during the lesson. Finally, its vocabulary level should be possible for learners to reach. Consequently, the teacher needs to take into account the choice of book to be used, the length of the text, the time available and the use of the text. In order to make students understand the text, the following background information might help and could be provided :
.A brief and clear biography of the author ; .The setting,country, place or region where the story takes place ; .The literary genre of the text ; .An explanation of the background culture; .And the relationship between what has been written and the country’s history, politics or philosophy of the time;
3.1.2.2. The teacher
Teaching English in Madagascar means teaching a foreign language. This fact defines the types of activity, the teaching materials and the methods and techniques to be adopted by the teacher. During the whole process of learning and all along each stage of the lesson, the teacher always plays an important role. 83
The teacher’s consideration of the classroom situation is also important whether it is a large class or not, how it is organized, what conditions the students are living in, the lycée is situated in town or in the countryside and how intensive the course is. Not only the text content needs evaluation but it should also coincide to the teacher’s methods and techniques, the stage of the lesson in which he wants to apply the material and also the available time. In the whole, evaluation of a textbook could be established in a table where the teacher is supposed to put a cross in each case corresponding to the category he finds appropriate to him. 84
Table N°3:
Categories 1) Excellent 2) Suitable 3) Will do 4) Not very 5)Useless for for my suitable my purposes purposes A) Local situation
B)Teacher / students needs C) Language and Ideational Content D) Linguistic Coverage and Organization E) Activities
F) Practical Considerations G) Enjoyment Index
Table N°4 :
Age 14 15 16 17 18 19 2nde 3 24 21 2nde 4 12 38 1 2nde 5 1 11 31 1 1 Number/140 1 11 43 63 21 1
3.1.2.3. The students 85
From table N°4, it could be drawn that the majority of students in ‘classes de seconde’ are aged between fourteen and nineteen. These teenagers have their own view of life. To know his students interest is necessary for the teacher so as to choose texts relevant to his learners’ life experiences, emotions and imaginations. He has also to consider whether his class is made up of only boys, and girls or a mixed one. These conditions avoid students to be bored. At their age , learners become more motivated to learn when the extracts coincide to their dreams and needs. For instance, students in C and D sections may find literature irrelevant to them. However, they would be attracted to learn if the teacher knows how to show them how important the passage is. Difference in number between boys and girls does not affect much their interests in English or in literature and does not make a class more or less dynamic.The present figures show the percentages of girls and boys in the three seconde classes with which we have experimented this part of research.
2nde 3 2nde 4 2nde 5
Apart from that, their abilities in the language should also be taken into account. The evaluation of the class experience in the reading of literature should limit the use of text. Students should not meet difficulties every step of the way because this fact might discourage them. Teachers should find ways to overcome students’ linguistic obstacles and help them comprehend the text. They should find the passage challenging and possible to be understood. The requirements may not be fulfilled in one try and that pushes the teacher to make evaluation anytime he finishes a course. 86
3.2. PARTICULARITIES OF THE RAJ QUARTET
Although The Raj Quartet mainly deals with Indian history, it also highlights episodes of world history which are studied by lycée students in their curricula. Hence, the use of text passages that are relevant to each unit stands more helpful and even a priority among others.
3.2.1. Connection with lycée syllabus
Numerous are the topics and themes developed in The Raj Quartet which coincide with what is given in the lycée syllabus. Each teacher of the three existing levels ‘Seconde, Première and Terminale’ can select extract from the novels and resort to them as teaching materials either for topics, language functions or usage. We have particularly devoted some extracts of The Raj Quartet to the teaching of substantives to ‘seconde’ classes.
3.2.2. Suitability of the novels to the reality in Madagascar
The contents of The Raj Quartet are not very different from the reality Malagasy students are living in. This tetralogy deals with the history of India In fact,Malagasy ancestors are said to come from Asia and parts of them are probably Indians. Indian people have been migrating to Madagascar starting even before 1900. They established trade with the northern and western part of Madagascar especially in Helville, Antsiranana, Mahajanga and Maintirano. Later on, they also came to dwell in Antananarivo, Morondava, Morombe and Tuléar. All these are to show that Malagasy and Indian people have been cohabiting generally in peace for centuries. A great number of Indians have asked for Malagasy citizenship after India’s Independence because of the Citizenship Act of December 30th , 1955 enacted by the Indian Parliament which dictates that after seven years’ absence in India, Indian lose their nationality.
3.3. ADAPTED PEDAGOGICAL USE OF THE RAJ QUARTET 87
In lycées, the aim of English teaching is the learning of it as a communicative language and does not deal with literary text analysis. Consequently, teachers would adopt literary extracts rather as teaching materials than as a focus of their courses. We have paricularly chosen ‘ classe de seconde’ because in this level, the students have just experimented life in lycées. However, this situation does not stand as a problem for them in coping with literature. After some courses, they have been put into a test of evaluation one week after the lessons and its result could be said to be satisfactory.
Table N°5:
Marks 2nde 3 2nde 4 2nde 5 ]0,5] 4 2 0 ]5,10] 11 8 3 ]10,15] 16 15 13 ]15,20] 13 21 29
The Raj Quartet could be used in the teaching of English in lycées because it contains many themes that could be applied to any stage of the lesson and aimed at making students produce certain language elements or skills in an acceptable way .By them, the teacher provides students opportunities to express the part of language that they have just learnt. In a text-based activity, it is better if the text is short and simple but contains language which is useful for students to understand. Their work can be conducted through individual, pair or group works. Teachers should anticipate students’ possible problems and help them as much as possible. In case the class is still used with the usual mode of education and students are not yet used to express themselves, the teacher has to help them not feel too remote from the text and encourage them to respond in a reasonable amount of time.
a)- EXPERIMENTATIONS N°1: 88
Introduction: This text is about an Anglo-Indian family which came to live in India . The father Manners used to be a Province Governor in Mayapore whereas Text N°2 is a member of staff discussion about who to invite for an evening dinner.
Text N°1: The Manners
She was born in the Punjab but didn’t remember any of it because her mother couldn’t stand the climate and her father resigned from his service and went home into private practice when Daphne was still almost a baby. He was IMS. Years younger than his brother Henry. I don’t think he minded leaving India at the time. He obviously chose to be a doctor instead of an administrator so that he wouldn’t have to compete with clever brother Henry all his life. By all accounts his wife, Daphne’s mother, was a tartar. She had to have everything her own way and she was a frightful snob. India obviously didn’t suit her as the wife of a junior man in the IMS. Law and medicine are the two things we Indians have always shone at so I expect George – Daphne’s dad – had too many Indian colleagues for Mrs George’s liking. She wanted him to be what today you people call a Top Person, with rooms in Harley Street and masses of top hospital appointments. But when he was in a fair way to getting what she wanted she changed her tack and saw herself as a leader of county society, so then there was the flat in town and the house in Wiltshire and poor George working himself to death dashing off from one place to the other.
The Jewel in the Crown, p 99
Text N°2: Who to invite for dinner? 89
‘Yes. Nigel told me. I’m sorry about the havildar. Is daddy very upset?’ ‘ Not too upset to have invited Ronald Merrick to dinner this evening. I don’t want just a family dinner. I want Captain Rowan here too.’ ‘ He’ll come if he can.’ ‘I want you to make sure he does. I must have another man at the table.’ ‘If you want to make sure you’d better invite someone else Nigel’s not definitely free. There’s always Edgar Drew.’ ‘ I said man, not boy. And a man of our own sort.’ ‘ Then ask Ronald to bring Guy Perron. I gather he’s brought him up to Pankot.’
A Division of the Spoils,p381.
Unit: 2 Class: 2nde 3 90
Duration: 45 mn Aim : Students will be able to use proper nouns. Documentation: - The Jewel in the Crown, p 99 - A Division of the Spoils, p381 - A Communicative Grammar of English, p 55
PROCEDURE
TIMING Methods and techniques CONTENTS
3mn Using text N°1 Step 1: Introducing the text This text is about a family called ‘The Manners’ which is made up of the father, the mother, the daughter and the uncle and also the place where they lived.
Step 2: Vocabulary 5 mn Examples - Couldn’t Stand (v): couldn’t bear, couldn’t support e.g. I can’t stand cleaning the blackboard. It makes me sneeze all the time. - to resign (v): to leave, to quit e.g. Uncle John resigned from the army because he wanted to have freedom. - to mind (v): to care, to think of e.g. Mind your own business. - obviously (adv); obvious (adj): clear e.g. Beef Rice 2006 3600 Ar 1000 Ar It is obvious that life is getting more and more difficult. Step 3: Use and form 10mn Everyday life situation
Teacher: Look at text N°1! Have you any idea of the words in italics ? 91
What are they? Student 1: name of person. Student 2: noms propres. Teacher: Yes, they are names of people and places, they are proper nouns. The use: A proper noun is a special word used to name a person, an animal or a thing. e.g. Miarisoa is a proper noun for a person. Madagascar is a proper noun for a country. The Form:- Proper nouns always begin with a capital letter. - They usually take no article. - Proper nouns of people could be preceded by a title. Personal names e.g. Pr Ratsimamanga, Mr Bean, President Ravalomanana Names of the months e.g. November, Step 4: Written check-up and the week Saturday Geographical names e.g. Tritriva, Betafo Teacher shares text and then explains that it is a discussion between two persons about who to invite for a dinner. Vocabulary 15 mn Text N°2 .havildar (n): a watchman, the person who looks after the village gate. .To be upset (v): to be disappointed .Definitely (adv): once and for all Underline all the proper nouns you can find in text 92
N°2 and mention whether it is of : - a person; - an animal; - a place
Step 5: students’ production
Build up your family tree starting from your grandfather.
12mn Students’ family reality 93
Remark:
Some of the students in this class opted for ‘B’ option at the academic examination of BEPC but this lesson does not seem difficult for them. The aim could be said to be generally achieved. Apparently, students found this lesson a fun because they found it simple and agreeable to built one’s own family tree. 94
Sample works of students:
•Family tree by student N°1:
•Family tree by student N°2: 95
b)EXPERIMENTATION N°2:
Introduction: Hari Kumar is a native Indian who spent his childhoodin England. Later on , he had to return in India but he knew nothing about Indian education . Text N°3: The Education of Hari Kumar
‘Your father took you to England when you were aged two, according to this document. You were born in the United Provinces. Your father was a landowner there. Have you an inheritance in the United Provinces?’ ‘No. My father sold his interest to his brothers before leaving for England.’ ‘Your father never taught you your native tongue?’ A pause. ‘He was at pains to try to teach me nothing.’ ‘Why?’ ‘He wanted me brought up in an entirely English environment so far as that was possible. I had a governess, then a tutor. Then I went to a private school and on to Chillingborough. I didn’t see much of him.’ ‘ Why was he wanting this. Did he tell you?’ ‘He wanted me to enter the Indian Civil Service, as an Indian, but with all the advantages of an Englishman.’ ‘What were those advantages, was he saying?’ ‘I think he thought the English character, manner, attitude and language were superior to the Indian?’ ‘No. More viable in relation to the operation of the administration.’ ‘I am not fully understanding that reply.’ ‘It is an English administration, based on English ideas of government. He thought an Indian at a disadvantage unless he had been trained to identify himself completely with these ideas. He admired the administration as such. He thought it would be best continued by fully anglicized Indians. 96
The Day of the Scorpion, p 248
Class: 2nde 3 Unit: 2 Aim: Students will be able to use concrete nouns. Duration: 45 minutes Documentation: - The Day of the Scorpion, p248 - Living English Structure, p2 PROCEDURE
TIMING Methods and techniques CONTENTS 97
5mn Text N°3 Step 1: Review of proper nouns Teacher: Look at the underlined words of the text. What are they? Students:The United Provinces,Chillingborough Teacher: If we look at the beginning of each word, we can see that all of them begin with capital letters, don’t they? Students: Yes Teacher: So they are proper nouns. OK? Students: OK.
7mn Definition Step 2: Vocabulary a landowner: someone who has a land as a property. Native tongue: the language that you learn as a child. e.g. Malagasy is our native tongue. inheritance: parcel of land, houses or riches that you get from your parents when they die.
3mn Text N°3 Step 3: Elicitation of the lesson title Teacher informs students that there are words in the text that are different from the other words. e.g. a father, brothers, an Indian , these ideas
Teacher: Are these words proper nouns? Students: No. Teacher: Are they nouns? Students: Yes. Teacher: Good! They are nouns. They are concrete nouns. 10mn Classroom situation, text Step 4: Use and forms
The use: Concrete Nouns are often nouns expressing objects, elements with physical 98
Sample work of students:
•Student N°1: If I had two million Ariary, I would buy: - a coloured TV set - a computer - a scooter •Student N°2: If I won two million Ariary in PMU, I would buy : .a hairdryer 99
. a fashionable dress .a golden necklace with a ring .a pair of shoes
Remark:
Some students seem not to have understood the forms of concrete nouns very well. Apparently, they thought that apart from proper nouns, all nouns are concrete nouns because we haven’t dealt with abstract and mass nouns yet.This was noticed in their answers for the forth and fifth sentences of the oral exercise. In general, students were interested in learning this new item of language. This was felt in the way they are asking questions . 100 c)- EXPERIMENTATION N°3: Introduction: Hari Kumar, the protagonist in The Raj Quartet has been put in jail for a crime he did not commit and thus he reacted strangely to anyone who tried to interview him. Text N°4: The interview
Iyenagar: Have you any complaints to make about your treatment while in custody? Kumar: No. Iyenagar: If it were suggested that you had been subjected to physical violence of any kind, would there be any truth in that? Kumar: I have nothing to add my first answer. Iyenagar: If it were suggested that you had been forced to eat any food which your religion made distasteful to you, would there be any truth in that suggestion? Kumar: I have no religious prejudices about food. Iyenagar: You understand that you have the opportunity here of making a complaint, if one is justified, which you need not fear making? Kumar: I had nothing more to say. Iyenagar: You have no complaint about your treatment from the moment of your arrest until now? Kumar: I have no complaint. The Day of the Scorpion, p 296
Unit: 2 Class: 2nde 4 The aim: Students will be able to use Abstract Nouns. Duration: 30 mn Documentation:- The Day of Scorpion, p296 - Odds and Ends, p30
PROCEDURE TIMING Methods and techniques CONTENTS 5mn Giving definition Step 1: Vocabulary and text to complain (v): to say that you are annoyed or dissatisfied. Treatment (n): method to cure illness. Distasteful (adj): very unpleasant. 101
Prejudices (n): dislike and distrust of people who are different from you. Teacher explains that the text is an interview between a prisoner and his lawyer and ask students to pay attention to the underlined words.
7mn Text words and sentence Step 2: Use and form
The Use: Abstract nouns are nouns referring to states, events or feelings. e.g. Opportunity, violence, truth The form:- Abstract nouns have no indefinite article, and usually no plural. e.g. I have no religious prejudices about food. - If we want to divide an abstract noun, we can use : A unit noun A piece e.g. A piece of research A species noun A kind e.g. A kind of behaviour
7mn Asking students to answer in chorus
8mn picture Step 3: oral check-up Say whether the following nouns are concrete or abstract nouns: Darkness – breath – music – dress – stupidity- television – friendship – book Step 4: production Look at this picture and find out what character or 102
attitudes might each man of the picture has.
Remark: During the production stage of this lesson, students were permitted to use dictionaries.They enjoyed the activity with which we used a picture of two men: the one handed a gun and the other was in despair..
Sample work of students:
• Student N°1: They might have fear, courage, hope, quietness.
• Student N°2:
Pickpocket Poor man - Laziness - frankness - Coldness - surprise 103
- anger 104 d) EXPERIMENTATION N°4: Introduction: The following text tells about the childhood of Susan, the daughter of a British military who came to live in India. Text N° 5: Susan’s Childhood
When she was a child and before the years of exile at school in England they had trekked on ponies through the Pankot hills, making camp at tea-time, striking camp at dawn; rather, the servants had made camp ahead of them and done all the striking. What’s for breakfast? Her father used to say. Hard boiled egg and cold bacon sandwich. With mugs of hot sweet tea. Eaten and drunk before the sun had risen and scorched the mist away. Night found her so tired that she slept before she had time to fix in her mind the position of the jackal packs in relation to the camp. That was the year of the map-reading lessons when she had been initiated to the mysteries of orientation, six point references and compass bearings; lessons began on the verandah of Rose Cottage which had a view of the hills and distant peaks which he taught her to relate to the hatchings and the contours of a map pinned to a board, under talc upon which the coloured chinagraph pencils left mark you could rub out with your finger and obliterate entirely with a rolled-up handkerchief. He taught her the tewt – the tactical exercise without troops- and she had seldom looked at a landscape since without being alerted to its topographical influence on what was and was not military feasible to perform in it. But she had never grasped as a man could do the points of weakness, the conditions that were favourable to the daring stroke that spelt success. Everything, hill, valley, hedge, tree, lake, river, bank, forest, seemed –militarily- overwhelming dangerous.
A Division of the Spoils, p125 105
Unit: 2 Class: 2nde 5 Aim: Students will be able to use mass nouns Duration: 40 minutes Documentation: A Division of the Spoils, p 125
PROCEDURE TIMING Methods and techniques CONTENTS
5mn Classroom situation Step1: Introducing the lesson Teacher asks students to look at a picture in the wall. Teacher: What do you find in this picture? Students: table, pizza, orange,water, glass,egg, house, tree, window
Questions Step 2: Examples Do you like fried egg? Butter? Eau vive? MN MN MN
12mn Using incorrect examples Step 3: Use and form The form: - A mass noun is neither singular nor plural. We do not use ‘a, an’ or add ‘-s’ with a mass noun. e.g. a water ) false two waters )false - Unit nouns can be used to subdivide a mass with separate pieces. e.g. A piece of bread, a sheet of paper
The use: Mass nouns are nouns referring to substances wether liquid or solid. e.g. oil, water, butter 106
10mn Writing exercise Step 4: written check-up
Add ‘a’ or ‘an’ where necessary: 1-…cigarette is made of … tobacco and …paper. 2-…milk comes from… cow. 3-We make…butter and …cheese from … milk. 4-…window is made of … glass. 5-…handkerchief is made of…piece of cloth. 6-…grass always grows in …English field. 7-… ring is made of…gold or…silver. Living English Structure, p2
Step 5: production 10 mn Pair work Give a recipe for a soup that you like best.
Sample works of students: Pair N°1: Pair N°2: Vegetable soup: Chinese soup: For two persons: For one person: .Carrots ¼ Kg - noodles 1 .Potatoes ¼ Kg - mushrooms 1 .Leek (100 Ar) - eggs 2 . beans ¼ Kg - prawn ¼ Kg .celery (100 Ar) - sauce 1 .beef ¼ Kg .pumpkin (100 Ar) .cauliflower 1
Remark: 107
The text used in this experimentation has been used differently from the previous ones. Here, it has been introduced only in the practice stage and with it students are supposed to make the difference between mass and concrete nouns. The reason for this use is that we haven’t been able to select a paragraph which contains enough mass nouns. However, this comparison also appears very effective. The students did not much to this lesson, they were not participating much yet they did not seem not to understand the lesson.
e)EXPERIMENTATION N°5:
Introduction: This passage is an article telling about the sudden death of an English missionary in a district called Mayapore.
Text N°6: The Tragic Death of an English Missionary
The death is reported in Mayapore two days ago o f Miss Edwina Crane, Superintendent of the district’s Protestant Mission Schools who was roughly handled by a mob during the August riots and narrowly escaped with her life when another teacher, Mr D.R. Chaudhuri, was murdered. Police have so far been unable to apprehend their attackers. At an inquest held yesterday in Mayapore a statement obtained from Miss Crane’s servant was submitted by the police. According to this man his mistress sent him to the bazaar at 3:45 p.m. to collect a package from the chemist. Since her return from hospital he had frequently gone on such errands. On this occasion however the chemist said he knew nothing of a prescription for Miss Crane. The servant then returned home. Reaching there he smelt burning and saw smoke. A shade in the compound was in a mass o f flames and servants from neighbouring houses were attempting to extinguish it. One of these men called out that Miss Crane was in the shed. 108
The police submitted a statement from this other man. Shortly before 4p.m. he had seen a woman in a white saree in the compound o f the mission superintendent’s bungalow. Thinking it was someone who had no business there he challenged her. She motioned him to go away. He observed that the woman in white saree was Miss Crane. Neither he nor her own servant had ever seen her adopt this mode of dress. He watched her go into the shed and then returned to his work. Shortly afterwards he smelt smoke and noticed that the shed was on fire. The Towers of Silence, p 96. 109
Unit: 2 Class: 2nde 5 Aim: Students will be able to use the nouns relation expressed by ‘of’ Duration: 45 minutes Documentation:- The Towers of Silence, p96 - Ways and Means, p22
PROCEDURE TIMING Methods and techniques CONTENTS 7mn Using situation of the Step 1: context explanation text Teacher tells students that the present text reports about an attack made by a group of people on the car of a missionary teacher in India. 5mn Text expressions Step2: examples Teacher asks students to think of the following examples: e.g. 1-The death of Miss Crane 2- superintendent of district 3- compound of the mission 13 mn Text examples Step 3: use and form The use: ‘ of’ is generally used as a means to indicate relations between the meaning of two nouns. e.g. compound of the mission = the mission has a compound superintendent of a district = the district has a superintendent The form: ‘of’ is put between two related nouns. 110
Matching Step 4: written check-up 10mn By means of ‘of’ link each element of line 1 with line 2. Elements of line 1 could be repeated many times. 1 2 Table Policeman Scissors Guide oven Miner Shoes butcher Knife judge grocer Helmet baker Cap Cyclist Pull-over driver lamp Hairdresser taylor footballer sailor
writing 10mn
Ways and Means, p 22 Step5: production What groups of things or animals might we meet if we enter a very thick forest? 111
Sample work of students: •Student N°1: We might meet a group of trees, a group of birds, a group of gorillas and a group of bees. •Student N°2: -a group of tigers; -a group of wolves; -a group of worms. Remark: For the fifth step of the lesson, students were allowed to use dictionaries. Students in this class really like using dictionaries that the lesson could reach its end without much problem except for the few students who did not use dictionaries who found it hard to find new vocabularies. 112
f)EXPERIMENTATION N°6: Introduction: This is an extract taken from a passage showing people’s joy and happiness to have the privilege of meeting again after the Second World War. Text N°7: I should think all a file would tell you about Colonel Merrick is that he left the comparative safety of the police for active service in the army and was decorated with the Distinguished Service Order, since when there has been a history of regular promotion, no doubt well- deserved. (…) It will be a military court. (…) I don’t want just a family dinner. The Towers of Silence, pp 380-381
Unit: 2 Class: 2nde 4 Aim: Students will be able to use group nouns. Duration: 40 mn Documentation:- The Towers of Silence, pp 380-381 - A Communicative Grammar of English, p44
TIMING Methods and techniques CONTENTS 5mn Text words Step 1: examples Teacher : What is a family made up? Students: a father, a mother and children Teacher: What is an army made up? Students: soldiers 15 mn examples Step 2: Use and form The use: Group nouns refer to a set of objects or group of people. e.g. an army (of soldiers) a crowd (of people) a constellation ( of stars) The form: We can use a singular or a plural 113
verb depending on whether you mean a group as a unit or the sum of its members. e.g. The government never makes up its mind in a hurry. The government never make up their minds in hurry. 10mn Matching exercise Step 3: written practice Match line A with line B A B A herd Directors A flock Sailors A crew Indians A gang Cards A pack Puppies A tribe Thieves A litter Cattle A board Sheep
7 mn Pair work
Step 4: oral production Build the map of Madagascar and explain to your friend whereabout in it he/ she can find such or such groups of people that make up Malagasy population? 114 f) – OTHER TEXTS THAT COULD BE USED FOR THE TEACHING OF SUBSTANTIVES
Text N°8: English Women Attacked
It has just been officially disclosed that on the afternoon and evening of August 9th, two English women were victims of violent attacks in the Mayapore district of this province. In the first case which occurred in the rural area of Tanpur no arrest have yet been made. In the second which took place in the town of Mayapore six Hindu youths are being held. It is understood that a charge is likely to be made under section 375 Indian Penal Code. The prompt action of the Mayapore police in apprehending the suspects within one hour or two of this disgraceful attack will be applauded. The arresting party was under the personal command of the District Superintendent of Police. In a statement issued to the press DSP said, ‘It is not in the public interest to reveal the name of the girl at this time. She worked on a voluntary basis at the Mayapore General Hospital. Her family is one that distinguished itself in service to India. According to her statement she was attacked by about six Indian males who stopped her on her way home at night from the place where she also did voluntary and charitable work for sick and dying people of the scheduled castes. She was dragged from her bicycle into the derelict site known as the Bibighar Gardens where she was criminally used.’ DSP confirmed that among the men arrested was one with whom she was acquainted in the course of her work at the poor people’s dispensary. The Day of the Scorpion, p 52
Glossary: .been disclosed(v): made known .occured (v): happened .rural (adj): town .apprehending (v): understanding .applauded (v): approved .derelict (adj): abandoned (This text could be used in the teaching of amount words) 115
Text N°9: Guy Perron and Captain Purvis
‘I didn’t know that . Poor Captain Purvis.’ I felt suddenly like laughing. Such a useless, farcical death. Nigel had been leafing through the book. Here it is ‘Society is a wave’. One of Miss Barbie Batchelor’s favourite passages too if the markings are anything to go by. He handed the book back to me. I read the passage. It leant nothing to me. I put the book on the table. I think Sergeant Guy Perron should have it if you don’t want it, although a self-reliance is hardly what he needs. Will you be seeing him? I’m not sure. I’ve given him this number to ring. He didn’t know where he’d be billeted. Poor Guy. Two suicides in one week and an order attaching him to Ronald Merrick’s department. Incidentally, coming up last night he told me you’d met another old Chillingburian, Jimmy Clark, or Clark- Without as we called him. The Jewel in the Crown, p247
Glossary: .farcical (adj): absurd, of or like a farce .to leaf through a book: to turn over the pages quickly. .Billet: place .Chillingburian: from Chillingborough ( This text could be used in the teaching of singular and plural nouns) 116
Text N°10: The misunderstanding
‘ Then I’ll let these papers with you’, Kumar announced , and leave them on the desk. The young man took them up and put them into a wire basket.’ ‘They are written urgent, by the way, Kumar insisted.’ ‘ Then why don’t you keep them with you? Why don’t you bring them with them and search for Mr Nair in the station master’s office?’ ‘ Because that’s your job, not mine’, Kumar mentioned, and moved as if to enter in. These documents are handed to you, not me.’ They looked at each other. Kumar told that, ‘If you’re not competent to take care of them by all means let them stay in your little wire basket. I’m only a delivery boy.’ When he was at the door the other man shouted, to have it shown that the other man shouted, I see, Coomer! He moved, annoyed to have it shown that the other man did recognize who he was. ‘If your uncle wishes to know whom you handed these papers to, inform - Moti Lal.’ It was a name he hoped not to remember but in fact had cause to forget. Glossary: .shout (n): loud call .to remember (v)≠ to forget . deliver (v): take letters or parcels to the persons to whom they are addressed.
(This text could be used for the teaching of dual class membership nouns)
* * * 117
Compared to practical texts, the use of literary extracts as teaching materials in lycées could be applied to any secondary class level or linguistic competence. All through the activities we suggested, learners do not need to fully understand the text during class hours to finish the tasks and exercises successfully. That situation, however, does not prevent them from analysing the text at home. These experimentations were meant to show that lycée students, even at their age, are capable of dealing with literary texts. Their great interest in the passages lead us to draw that this kind of text should be part of all teachers of English in lycées’ teaching materials because it appears very effective. 118
GENERAL CONCLUSION
Imperialism had greatly affected the lives of Indians and the fate of India. It begins with the British monopoly of trade in the peninsula which was disbanded in 1857. During the struggle for independence, Lord Mountbatten, the Governor-General and also the grandson of Queen Victoria, stated that the British would not leave India unless the natives decide to divide themselves. The partition which stood as the biggest rural exodus of humanity was taking place. The Muslims which made one fourth of the population moved to Pakistan: the land of pures. Gandhi’s dream of Hindu and Muslim living in peace together failed. His demand to leave India to anarchy but not to partition has failed. After three wars , Kashmir has remained a problem between India and Pakistan. In the social context it could be noticed that most Englishmen took mistresses when they arrived in India. Consequently, an entire race of Eurasians had been brought into existence by these practices and formed a new social stratum. The British in India could be divided into two distinct types: the Anglo-Indians who, after four months of voyage to India arrived there as merchants and decided to settle for life whereas junior civil servants returned to get married in England after five years services and sent their children home to frequent schools. After twenty years service, they went back in their country to retire in peace to the English shires. The Raj Quartet is maked up of four contemporary novels written with standard English which made the book easy to understand. Variations of narrative passages and dialogues avoid students to get bored by monotony. However, imperialism has some positive sides for India especially in the field of health, schooling and culture. The independence, which is the fruit of the hard work of intellectual persons, is won thanks to the British government which allowed native Indians to continue further studies in England. . Like India, Madagascar also used to be a colony. Both countries have been submitted to a long time succession of European countries domination such as the Portuguese, the French and the British. Up to now, both countries remain underdeveloped. Historically, the two of them fought together for Independence. Students would find it fascinating and interesting to know more about a country whose history is close to theirs. 119
GLOSSARY
.Ahimsa: non-violence .Chappati: kind of pancake .Chaukidar: a watchman .Hartal: day of general mourning .Mandir: temple .Maharajah: a great king .Maharanee: wife of a Maharajah .Memsahib: Mrs .Purna swaraj: complete independence .Raj: sovereignty .Sahib: Mr .Sannyasi: an old Brahman who leaves his worldly life to live as a hermit .Satyagraha: resistance by truth .Swadeshi: nationalist movement .Swaraj: self- government 120 BIBLIOGRAPHY
LITERATURE
1. ALLEN, Charles & Sharada DWIVEDI, Lives of the Indian Princes, New York, 1984, Crown Publishers inc., 352p. 2.BAYLY, C. A. (Ed), An Illustrated History of Modern India 1600-1947, Oxford, 1991, Oxford University Press, Pearson, 432p. 3. (ed) BENIANS, E.A.; BUTLER, J.R.M.; CARRINGTON, C.E., The Cambridge History of the British Empire, Volume Three: The Empire – Commonwealth 1870- 1919, 1959, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 948p. 4. BHARATIYA, Vidya Bhavan, The History and Culture of the Indian People: The Moghul Empire, 1964, Bombay, 1004p. 5. CAMPBELL, G. A., The Civil Service in Britain, Great Britain, The Whitefriars Press Ltd, Penguin Books, 1955, A Pelican Book, 382p. 6.DANIELOU, Alain, Histoire de l’Inde, 1971, Fayard, 418p 7. ENSOR, R.C.K., England 1870-1914: The Oxford History of England, G. N. Clark, 1936, Oxford, Clarenden Press, 634p. 8. EVANS, Eric, The Complete A-Z 19 th &20 th Century British History Handbook, 1998, Hodder & Stoughton, 380p. 9.GASCOIGNE, Bamber, The Great Moghuls, New Delhi, 1971, Dass Media, 264p. 10. GRIERSON, Edward, The Imperial Dream: The British Commonwealth and Empire 1775-1969, London, 1972, Collins, 320p. 11. M’BOKOLO, Elikia, Afrique Noire et Civilisations, Université Francophones, Tomes II, XIX-XXè siècle, 1992, Hatier, AUPELF, 576p. 12. MORRIS, James, Pax Britannica: The Climax of an Empire, San Diego, 1968, A Harvest Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Book, 544p. 13. MUNSHI, K.M., The History and Culture of Indian People: The Age of Imperial Unity, 1951, Bombay, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 733p. 14. MUNSHI, K.M., The History and Culture of Indian People: Struggle for Freedom, Vol.XI, 1969, Bombay, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1144p. 15.NEHRU, Jawaharlal, Glimpses of World History, Oxford University Press, 1934- 35, Indraprastha Press, Nehru House, 992p. 121
16. NEHRU, Jawaharlal: A Biography, Volume One 1889-1947, Sarvepalli Gopal, Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1975, R. Dayal, 398p. 17. PERCIVAL, Spear, A History of India, Volume two, 1965, Penguin Books, 298p. 18. (ed) PRABHA, Chopra, Delhi History and Places of Interest, 1970, Publication Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 222p. 19. ROBB, Peter, A History of India, Wales, 2002, Creative Print & Design ltd, Palgrave, 344p. 20. SARKAR, Jadunath, Fall of the Mughal Empire, Volume four 1789-1803, 1950, Calcutta, M.C. SARKHAR and sons ltd, 355p. 21.SUBRAHMANYAN, K., India Defence, Publication Division, November 1972, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 38p. 22. SURENDRA, Nath Sen, Eighteen Fifty-seven, The Publication Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, 1957, Government of India, 466p. 23.THAPAR, Romila, A History of India, Volume One, 1966, Great Britain, Hazell Watson & Viney Ltd, Penguin, 380p. 24. THORNTON, A.P., The Imperial Idea and its Enemies: A Study in British Power, London, Macmillan & co.ltd, 1959, 372p. 25.TREVELYAN, G.M., A Shortened History of England, A Pelican Book, 1959, Great Britain, 603p. 26.ZINKIN, Taya and Maurice, Britain and India: Requiem for Empire, London, 1964, Chatto & Windus, 191p. 27. ZINKIN, Taya, The Modern World: India, London, 1964, Oxford University Press, 126p.
NOVELS/ SHORT STORIES 1. FORSTER, E. M., A Passage to India, Great Britain, 1924, Oliver Stallybrass, Penguin Modern Classics, 362p. 2. ORWELL, Georges, Burmese Days, London, 1934, Secker & Warburg, 287p. 3. SCOTT, Paul, The Raj Quartet: - The Jewel in the Crown, 480p. - The Day of the Scorpion, 495p. - The Towers of Silence, 397p. - A Division of the Spoils, 598p. London, Granada Publishing Ltd, 1973, Panther Books. 122
DICTIONARIES/ ENCYCLOPAEDIA
1. GILBERT, Martin, Recent History Atlas: 120 Maps of Major World Events from 1870 to the Present, 1966, Great Britain: The Macmillan Company, 121p. 2. GILBERT, Martin, British History Atlas: 118 Maps from 50 B.C. to the Present, 1966, Great Britain, The Macmillan Company, 118p. 3. (Ed) ROBINSON, Francis, The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, 1989, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 520p. 4. SURJIT, Massing, Historical Dictionary of India, 1998, Visions Books, New Delhi, 511p. 5. YUST, Walker, Encyclopaedia Britannica: A New Survey of Universal Knowledge, Volumes 4-7-12, Chicago, 1948, The University of Chicago. 6. CUDDON, J.A., A Dictionary of Literary Terms, Great Britain, Hazel Watson& Viney limited, 1977,Penguin reference, 761p.
CAPEN DISSERTATIONS
1. RAFARASOABETOKOTANY Yvonne, The British in India through Ruth Prawer Jhabwala’s Three Books: A Backward Place; A New Dominion and Heat and Dust With selected Texts for Pedagogical Use, Antananarivo,September 1996, 127p. 2.RAKOTOARISOA Nivomalala Virginie, Portraits of the English Civil Servants in a Few British Colonies under the Principle of Indirect Rule through some English Works, Antananarivo, December 1999,77p. 3. TONDRA Joëlle, The Indian and British Socio- cultural Relations before and after the Independence as seen in E.M. FORSTER’s A Passage to India, Antananarivo, September 1997,106p.
LITERATURE IN METHODOLOGY 123
1. BASSNETT, Susan and Peter GRUNDY, Language through Literature, England, Canterbury, Pilgrims, Longman, 136p. 2.Joanne COLLIE and Stephen SLATER, Literature in the Language Classroom, Cambridge University Press, 1987, Cambridge, A Resource Book of Ideas and Activities, 266p. 3.LAZAR Gillian, Literature and Language Teaching: A Guide for Teachers and Trainers, Cambridge: Cambridge Teacher Training Development, Cambridge University Press, 1993, Bell and Bain ltd, 267p.
OFFICIAL SYLLABUS 1- MINESEB, Programmes Scolaires: Classe de Seconde, 1996, Antananarivo, CRESED/ CNAPMAD/ UERP.
UNIVERSITE D’ANTANANARIVO ECOLE NORMALE SUPERIEURE CER LANGUE ET LETTRES ANGLAISES
TITLE: ASPECTS OF BRITISH IMPERIALISM IN INDIA AS SEEN THROUGH PAUL SCOTT’S THE RAJ QUARTET WITH SELECTED TEXT EXTRACTS FOR PEDAGOGICAL USE
AUTHOR: RANESA Miarisoa Rakotonjanahary
ADDRESS: Bloc 33 Porte 7, CU ANKATSO II
To provide different ways of using literary extracts in the teaching of substantives in seconde classes stands as the principal objective of this piece of work which has been elaborated through the following three main parts: -The first part describes some important events of the history of India suring the long period of British intallation in this country. -The second part analyzes the social and cultural aspects of British imperialism in people’s everyday life as shown through The Raj Quartet -The third part proposes some experimented lesson plans and text extracts that could be used as teaching materials in the teaching of substantives in seconde classes.
KEY WORDS: MOGHUL – WAR- CONQUEST – COMMERCE – TRADE – IMPERIALISM – LEGISLATIVE COUNCILS – ACTS – LITERATURE- SUBSTANTIVES.
NUMBER OF PAGES: 123
NUMBER OF PICTURES,MAPS AND TABLES: 23