A bit of history

During my high school days (1938-42), besides Indian history with names of dynasties like Gupthas and Mauryas and kings like Harshavardhana, Ashoka etc. we had to study British history with Norman conquest, battle of Hastings, the court intrigues, beheading of kings the many wives of Henry the VIII, Oliver Cromwell, the Magna Carta etc. down to George V who was the ruling monarch then. Kanakaraj, the history teacher, was an Anglophile who spoke admiringly about Robert Clive, and the many Viceroys. Well, he had to earn his living and could not do otherwise than speak approvingly of the then masters.

Here, in America, the war of Independence was fought earlier than the Quit India movement. The British soldiers who were stationed in America wore red uniforms and were derisively called by a contemptuous term “Lobster backs”. At the time the British forces were being driven out of America they were gaining power in India and consolidating their empire by deceit, treachery, plunder and pillage. British diplomacy pitted Hindus against Hindus, Muslims against Muslims, Muslims against Hindus and visa-versa; a classic example of this being the Nizam of Hyderabad ranging against Tipoo Sulthan, another Muslim ruler. Lord Cornwallis who was decisively beaten in a battle at Yorktown in Virginia in October 1781 was just five years later Governor General of India (1786-93).

There was treachery in Bengal (Siraj ud-Daulah) and betrayal in Mysore (Mir Sadak). The British broke solemn treaties, imposed humiliating conditions on the defeated enemies (e.g., taking custody of Tipoo’s children), annexed territories on fictitious grounds, stationed their armies on an ingenious subsidiary system with an ostensible purpose of giving protection to warring factions, inventing and practicing the notorious “principle of lapsation” which was the most unprincipled. Under this device they refused to recognize any succession in a princely state other than by direct progeny and annexed that territory at the death of the incumbent ruler. Many a princely state thus became a part of the British possessions and the empire grew and India became the jewel in the British crown as a symbol of which the Kohinoor diamond taken from India adorns the crown of British royalty.