172 Part III: South Asia
and was granted a vast territory to rule and right to collect revenues; this grant
is known as the Diwani of Bengal. The East India Company was now a great
Raj of India, in control of a region that included much of what is now Bengal,
Bihar, Orissa, and Bangladesh.
For the next century the Company learned to govern India under a mix of
indigenous and British customs and laws. They attempted to rationalize taxation
and land revenues, reshaping the structure of land use and the landed class. They
built a large army based on a small number of English officers and a large force
of sepoys, that is, “native” regiments. However, in 1857 a bloody rebellion broke
out (called the “First War of Independence” or the “Indian Mutiny,” depending
on your point of view), in which atrocities on all sides included the slaughter of
women and children. This was the end of John Company Raj, as the British
Crown took over direct control and Victoria became Empress of India.
Under British rule, modern institutions in education, medicine, land
reform, and democratic values produced a Western-educated Indian elite with
an eye on ultimate independence. In 1885 the Indian National Congress was
formed, fostering nationalist sentiments over the next half century under the key
concept of swaraj—self-government. Under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi,
Jawaharlal Nehru, and Mohammad Ali Jinnah, and after World War II had
exhausted Britain, swaraj was attained on August 15, 1947 (see chapter 12).Era of Independence
When the flags of the Republic of India and the Islamic Republic of Paki-
stan were raised over Delhi and Lahore, the British Indian Empire was divided
into two (and later three) nations, with large Hindu and Muslim majorities in
their respective nations, but with substantial minorities of the other group.
However, these were not the only sources of identity politics causing friction.
There were 562 “princely states” that had never been entirely absorbed by the
British government of India and whose rulers had to be retired so that all of
India could be part of the republic. There were numerous regional and linguis-
tic divisions. The 29 current states (there are also seven union territories) are
the product of no less than 12 redrawings of boundaries to satisfy “linguistic
nationalism,” the latest in 2014. No one language, faith, or race holds India
together; yet it is the world’s largest democracy, a secular state with a constitu-
tion guaranteeing free speech, a free press, and equality before the law. It did
NOT ban the caste system (our next topic), as many people believe, but it did
ban “untouchability” and some of the worst offenses of caste.The Caste System
Caste is a controversial topic. It is indiscreet to refer to it in public settings.
It is rude to ask a person’s caste. Many Hindu organizations deny that caste is
intrinsic to the Hindu religion (e.g., HAF 2011). The pervasive hierarchy of the
caste system is contradicted by the principle of equality under the law of the