Dan Snow's History Hit - 2. The British Empire: The Raj and Indian Independence

Episode Date: March 27, 2024

This is the story of the British Empire in India. Over two episodes, we'll chart India's history from the birth of the Mughal Empire until the Partition of India. Joining us is Shrabani Basu, a journalist, historian and author of books including Victoria & Abdul: The True Story of the Queen's Closest Confidant.In this second episode, Dan and Shrabani discuss how East India Company officials abused their rule to amass vast personal fortunes. We hear about the transition to colonial rule under the British Raj, and how imperial dominance led to a fervent Indian independence movement and the disastrous Partition of India.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code DANSNOW sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/We'd love to hear from you- what do you want to hear an episode on? You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. If you go into the heart of Delhi, to Old Delhi, you can find in a few places the course of the walls of that ancient city. If you explore their length, you come to a place called the Kashmir Gate. It was built by the powerful Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan. It's so named because the road that passes through that gate leads north to Kashmir. Today, it's a quiet corner of a febrile city that never sleeps. There are multiple arches on the Kashmir Gate. They're made of red brick, very fine,

and they've got crenellation on top. But as you get closer, you can see damage of a particular kind, not just the general damage from the passing of the years, but the scars of battle. Here on a street in 21st century Delhi, the gouges in those bricks take you back to a particular moment of terrible violence. At first light on the 14th of September, 1857, a British-led force attacked delhi from multiple

directions inside the city holding out or what the british called rebels they were indians who were fighting to break the hold of the british on their homeland they'd rallied to delhi they'd concentrated there the traditional capital of the mughal Empire, to encourage the emperor himself, who had ruled as a British puppet for the last few years, to assert himself and throw off the British yoke. Now, to crush that mutiny or rebellion or liberation struggle, the British needed to capture Delhi, stamp out this dangerous, this existential challenge to British rule, to cut off the head of the serpent. And that attack was now underway. One column of the British force attacked the Kashmir Gate on the North Wall. Two engineers won the Victoria Cross in that terrible assault, Bethel and Hume and Salkeld. They led a suicidal mission carrying gunpowder forward. They propped up gunpowder against the gates. They covered the gunpowder with sandbags and they laid

a fuse. All of this despite the fact they were under fire from enemy sharpshooters just a couple of meters away. They successfully laid that charge and they ignited it, and the resulting explosion tore a huge hole through the Kashmir Gate. A bugler signalled the advance, and the column surged forward, charging into the narrow streets of Old Delhi. The result was a disordered, chaotic, horrific street fight. There was slaughter. Soldiers discovered stores of alcohol and got drunk. There was abuse and rape. Eventually, the city fell. The last Mughal, Bahadur Shah, was captured and he would be sent into exile, but his three sons, the last of the mighty Mughal dynasty, descendants of Genghis Khan himself,

were murdered in the alleys of Old Delhi by British soldiers. In this two-part series on the podcast, I'd ask the question of how distant people from a small group of islands in the Atlantic came to dominate and conquer one of the mightiest and richest empires on earth, thousands of miles away from their homeland. This is part two of that story, Triumph and Decline decline as well as the unlikely conquest of India I'm going to look at the eventual collapse of British power and its terrible consequences I'm very lucky to have Shrabani Basu back on the podcast she's the author of many wonderful history books she's taking me through centuries of history she's the author of Victorian Abdul, made into a hit movie, and many other wonderful history books as well.

And in this two-part series, she's taking me through this history step by step. If you haven't listened to the previous episode, you might want to do that. Check out your feed. But this is part two. Enjoy. Okay, Trabony, it's part two of our story of Britain and India. It's, say, 1800. The English and the British have been there for about 200 years in different ways. What does the Indian subcontinent look like around this time? What are the Brits doing there? Right, so this is the stage where we go literally from trade to empire. It's really crucial because they are now trading. So

let's start with what they're trading in and what this leads to. So they're trading in cotton, silk, indigo. Indigo is used for dyes, sugar, salt, tea, and very importantly, opium, very wickedly opium. All the essentials of life. Yes. So the loss of the American colonies means they need cotton. So India is a source for cotton now, and that's going to have a huge impact on the Indian economy later. Cash crops are being

grown where food should be grown. So we have indigo, dyes, which is used for dyes. Interesting. Being used. So local farmers are told, don't grow food, grow stuff that we can sell. Exactly. And of course, the third, I'll move to opium, and this is really crucial. So East India, big chunks of Bihar and Bengal, that region is forced. Farmers, local farmers are forced to grow poppy. So the poppy seeds, you know, the milk is taken, taken they're dried they're rolled into these bales of opium packed in crates and where do you think they're going famously they are going to

china so they go down the ganges river it's all planned right down to the last detail there's a whole administrative regime that is supervising this transport of the opium. And why is it important to them? Because up to now, the trade with China was not in favor of the British. They had to pay in silver for tea and Chinese silks. So it wasn't suiting them. So what do they do? They're going to barter. They're going to get in this opium, sell it to the Chinese, and give opium in exchange of tea and silks. the Chinese and give opium in exchange of tea and silks. So it's win-win for them, but of course, not so good for the local farmers or for the Chinese who are getting addicted to opium. Terrible for the Chinese who are becoming addicted. And by the way, the Brits also steal tea plants to transplant elsewhere. And then they go back and plant it. Don't blame them for that.

I am a tea addict. So the Chinese lose their monopoly on tea and gain a huge opium addiction problem. And this issue of the farmers in India is interesting because they are being paid for those opium crops. The trouble is there are famines and there isn't enough food as a result of these fields being set aside for other cash crops. Exactly. And they're not being paid enough. They're being paid really low, low money for this crop that they're growing, which is of no use to them. They're also getting addicted to opium themselves back in India, which is not good either. And of course, this in China, it leads to the opium wars, where Britain then defeats the Chinese and gets Hong Kong. So it's win-win

on that side for them as well. And you do get a series of infamous famines. Obviously, there are cyclical weather events and famines in this part of the world. But your contention is that these famines are exacerbated by East India Company policies. Well, if you're going to lose ground to grow dye, indigo dye and opium, where are you going to plant your food crops? So that is definitely going to have an impact. And the whole region, Bengal is very fertile. That's rice growing area. And Bihar is where all this, you know, the opium is grown or is Bihar.

Huge, huge, large scale poppy cultivation. Apparently around the 1880s, I have a figure for 60,000 chests of opium are being exported by then. So way into the 19th century, this is going on. Because when they have the second opium war, China has defeated again and they allow them. Opium imports become legal and they allow them to open more ports and operate from there.

So they are expanding. And if people want to read damning criticism of the East India Company's rule in this period, they need look no further than the House of Commons in England, because these issues are debated, they're known about, the management of the East India Company is pilloried by various people in parliamentary debates. Warren Hastings is, what is he, Governor General? Yeah, he was Governor General, and he was famously, seven years his impeachment trial lasted in the House of Commons. It was a lengthy impeachment trial, and all of this was used in evidence before and against him. And it is clear that this was controversial even at the time and even in Britain.

Yes, it was seen as immoral. And even Clive was investigated in Parliament for two years, but all the charges against him were dropped. And these were also to do with the manner of conduct of the East India Company, which was seen as pretty brutal, pretty exploitative. One of the chief criticisms, as you say, there was no flexibility in their rule. They were driven by profit. So when there were harvest failures, the East India Company didn't mitigate, they didn't allow farmers to keep more of their crops, and they didn't disperse food. It was all, they kept driving people to the wall in order to maximise their revenue.

Exactly. So they are getting increasingly unpopular. And of course, all this is going to build up to a very important event in India later, the mutiny of 1857. Traditionally, the supporters of what the British were doing in India would argue that in this period, the East India Company was doing other things. There were schools, there was a sense of kind of quote-unquote modernizing India. And eventually, famously, people talk about the railways and then electrification, things like that. So what's going on in this period? Yeah, it's always the railway. So let's

deal with that first. Well, the East India Company needed these railways. They needed them to transport troops in times of trouble to get them quickly into an area. They also needed the railways to transport goods that they are going to export back to England. So the network of railways is made to facilitate the East India Company. It was not done to facilitate commuter transport in India. So that's definitely there. Yeah, it's a military strategic commercial asset. Absolutely. Built by the Indians, of course, at terrible prices. Education, very famously, we have the figure of Thomas Macaulay. He's the man who introduced English education in India. This is in 1835. So he replaces Persian, which is the language of the court so far from the Mughal courts, with English. And he writes that it will create a class of persons, Indian in blood and color, but English in test, in opinions, in morals and intellect.

but English in test, in opinions, in morals and intellect. Well, what happens is basically it is to create a class of clerks and babus as they used to call them, because they needed this whole bureaucracy of the East India Company, these files that have to be copied and carried forward. They need them done in English. And so they have to train these people who will be able to do this in English. And that was one of the big reasons for introducing English as the official language. There is a building in Calcutta. It's actually called Writer's Building. It's a big red brick building. And that is exactly what happened there. They were writers. They were clerks who were just copying these extensive files of the east india company and so unlike canada and australia and the usa and one of the americas this is not european colonialism replacing indigenous populations is i mean would there because

it's still very dangerous for brits to be in india this life expectancy is very short and there's mosquitoes and there's malaria. If you'd walked through Calcutta in 1835 when Macaulay was there, you wouldn't have seen many white faces, would you? You would see the East India Company soldiers, the profiteers, those who'd come down, the clerks, basically lots of clerks. There were a lot of teachers who started coming down with the introduction of education. So young women would start, you know, it was an adventure for them. They would start going crossing the seas and it was employment, maybe find a husband. There was this whole fishing fleet, you know, looking for husbands that started arriving, especially

after the opening up of the Suez Canal. There were quite a few Europeans in cities like Calcutta, especially. Calcutta was the capital of British India. I mean, the governor general is stationed in Calcutta. So a lot is happening around Calcutta, but also cities like Madras or Bombay. They are familiar figures. And are Indians welcomed into, sort of high status Indians welcomed into this British society? Are they able to exercise commercial, financial, political, military power under the British rule? Or is it very, very exclusive, only these white migrants arriving and wielding power? So the locals, many of the Maharajas and the local

businessmen, they do have their power. And there are many court cases that are fought by them. They keep coming to London to fight these court cases. There's one of them was Raja Ram Mohan Roy. He finally died here in Bristol, but he was a big reformer. And he came here to appeal for land that had been taken away in various complicated court cases. So that would happen. They were all fighting for their property, which was being taken away, or business deals that were not working. There's the Tagore family. Ravindranath Tagore's grandfather was an early, early businessman there. He worked with the English. They set up this company called Carr and Tagore.

And they were trading in many things, including opium. The Parsis in India, in Bombay, they were trading in opium. They were very close to East India Company officials. So there was mixing at the top level. So many of the business houses and businesses would mix because those are commercial interests. Yeah, because money talks. And so what about the East India Company slowly acquiring more territory? Because there's an idea, what's it called, the doctrine of lapse or something where basically they reserve the right to annex seemingly any principality going in South Asia.

Yes, so this is Dalhousie, Lord Dalhousie. He is the governor general of West Bengal. And he starts this doctrine of laps, which means that by this, if there is an illegitimate heir to any of the thrones, they will seize that kingdom. If there is an illegitimate heir to any of the thrones, they will seize that kingdom. And also, if they deem that the ruler is not competent, and I would say incompetent in quote marks, they have the right to take his kingdom. So under Dalhousie, the first thing they look at is Punjab. And Punjab earlier is ruled by Maharaja Ranjit Singh, known as the Lion of Punjab. Punjab is important because it is just at the bottom of Afghanistan. It is where the great game was being played.

I mean, many things are happening in this theater at this time. And Punjab is important. So they want to get Punjab. They can't get it as long as Ranjit Singh is alive. But after his death, it becomes again, right, pickings. There's lots of feuds, lots of killings, his successors. And finally, this five-year-old son of his, Tulip Singh, is put on the throne with his mother as the regent.

And then there is a series of Anglo-Sikh wars. And the second Anglo-Sikh war is won by the East India Company forces. And here they annex Punjab. And this is huge because Punjab at this time is from Afghanistan on the west to Kashmir in the north. It's big and it's rich. So the treasurers of Punjab are transferred. I mean, he's only 11 years old.

He signs the treaty, Dilip Singh. And of course, this is when the Kohinoor is taken. The famous diamond. The famous diamond comes up again because it had been brought back to India by Ranjit Singh, who used to wear it as an armband. And then by his son, Dilip Singh. And now Dalhousie really wants that diamond. He sees it as symbolic of this victory. And he wants to send it to, naturally, Queen Victoria. So Dalhousie is so interested in this diamond, he actually travels to Punjab.

He takes it himself. He asks his wife to stitch a little leather pouch, which he can stitch into his clothing and carry the diamond himself. He takes the train with this attached to himself. And he comes back comes back and finally it's put in a box and sent to England. Goes first to Ledenhall Street to the East India Company who then transferred it to Queen Victoria. And then Duleep Singh ends up seeing it as a grown man. He meets Queen Victoria and she shows him the diamond. She's kind of almost a bit embarrassed about it, isn't she? And they have this terrible moment. She's very guilty about it.

She knows she's taken it from this young boy. He was only 11 at the time. He's 15 now. He's her ward. He's there. His portrait is being painted. And she's cut it. What's worse is... Yeah, they've chopped it up.

They've chopped it up. They've reduced it from something like an oyster egg to a quail's egg. Well, she shows it to him and says, how do you like it? And there is this moment where he he looks at it he goes to the window and it's recorded that you know they think he's just going to throw it out he recovers he composes himself and he goes back to the queen and he says it is my honor to gift it to you and it's gone again and it did not appear at the coronation did it no no they kept it away for very good reasons the crown jewels it's in the crown jewels now and it's often worn at the coronation but was not at this one tell me about opposition to east india company and british rule

in india i mean is it sort of regionally based or is it is the developing a kind of national consciousness by sort of 1850? Is anyone talking or writing about getting rid of these blasted people? Well, there is a lot of discontent. And now what happens is, thanks to Dalhousie again and his doctrine of lapse, he looks at the empire of Awadh, as it's called, which is now modern day Lucknow. And the ruler is Wajid Ali Shah. He's a poet. He's a poet king. He has this palace, which is music and courtesans dancing, and they celebrate the spring festival. It's famous. And he looks at him and he says, he's incompetent. He does nothing, no administration. So his

kingdom's got to go. And so Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, we got big power in Bengal in the east. Punjab's now fallen right up in the northwest. This is sort of in between, is it? In between, yeah. On the way to Delhi, it's about a few hundred miles from Delhi. Well, Wajid Ali Shah is very famous. He's very popular. He may not, you know, he was a poet.

And when they take his kingdom, this is really unpopular. Because 1856, his kingdom is seized and he is taken, he is sent away, exiled to Calcutta. Everybody like, you know, Tipu's sons were taken to Cal in India. It's about a bride, a young bride leaving her house. The poem is to her father and she's saying, I'm leaving your house and I'm going to my new house. And it's all about everything around her that she misses, the courtyard, the flowers, the trees. Of course, it's a metaphor for him leaving his kingdom. And it's a beautiful poem, which is sung. It's called a ghazal, and it is still sung in India. It is like, everybody wells up when they sort of hear this song sung in India. It's very beautiful. And so under Dalhousie, even though it's happened under Wellesley, who's in the late

18th century, under Dalhousie, what, it just becomes clear that any pretense that the East India Company is just a trading interest and sort of shares power with local, any pretense that the East India Company is just a trading interest and shares power with local, any pretense has dropped. It's now just a straightforward imperial entity. Absolutely. There's no doubt. He's cherry picking all these Indian states, rich Indian states, and just annexing them basically to the British rule in India. This is 1856. So you can see that the very next year, the discontent is going to really reach sky highs because we now have the mutiny. Let's talk about that discontent. Tell me how it begins with this, the strange trigger, which sees these Indian troops employed by the East India Company, these so-called sepoys,

why do they mutiny against their officers? Well, the mutiny is seen in two ways. It's described sometimes as the sepoy mutiny, which is how it started. And in other sort of Indian historians see it also as the first war of Indian independence. So depending how you want to read this, but it does start as a sepoy mutiny. It starts in Barakpur in Bengal. Now Bengal has always had this revolutionary movement. They have been ruled by the Brits for a long time. They don't like them. There's discontent because the army pay is not equal to that of the British counterparts. So there's all that happening. And the trigger is this rumour that goes around that the new Enfield rifles, they have a cartridge that is greased with cow fat and pig fat.

And the cartridge has to be bitten before it's loaded. So it goes against the religious principles of both Hindus and Muslims. And they don't want to use these rifles. So the first mutiny happens in Barakpur, in the cantonment in Bengal. And he's a sepoy called Mangal Singh. He doesn't want to use the rifle. He shoots the English officer. He doesn't kill him.

He just shoots him. But of course, he's captured, he's killed. And then the others rally around him. And this spreads within months. So this happens in March 1857 in Bengal. By May, there is another sipoy revolt. And this happens in Meerut. It's bigger, about more than 80 soldiers mutiny. They don't want to use the rifles, and they start attacking

the English officers. And this is the bit that the historians are fascinating on. This then transforms, does it, from a series of mutinies to a kind of much more widespread, what we'd call a popular revolt. And not just popular, the last Mughal ruler, who at this stage is just a puppet sitting on his throne in Delhi, he declares for the rebels. So it does become a sort of national enterprise. It does, very quickly. It's like a powder keg has been lit. This is happening in North India, of course. So it's the plains of India. And so suddenly Agra, Kanpur, Lucknow, they're all burning. And many of the rulers start siding with them. So we have famous image of the Rani of Jhansi.

She's sitting astride her horse, her favorite steed with her sword flashing, sort of Joan of Arc type of figure. And she's taking on the East Indiaia company army and so these are local rulers who the east india companies kind of left in place they're sort of so-called puppets but they're deciding no we're gonna we're gonna make a stand exactly and there are also those whose lands have been usurped who are obviously angry so there's this other peshwa who's a maratha peshwa nana sahib he joins he's one of the rulers who also joins. So some rulers have joined, but largely it's the army. And they start marching north to Delhi, where they want to fight under,

it's symbolic, as you say, Badushah Zafar. At this stage, he's about 82 years old. The last Mughal. He's a poet himself, not into administration. His rule, his remit is just around the Red Fort at this time. He's actually just confined to the Red Fort. But he says yes, and he declares himself the emperor of India. And there is a siege of Delhi. But there's this moment that used to be part of every school child's education in Britain, this kind of so-called heroic holdouts in various sort of European cantonments under siege with these... Kanpur.

Yeah, Kanpur. The Bibi Garh Massacre, famous. Krishnapur and all these... All these places, yes. So the rebels have taken these places and there are atrocities. I mean, women and children are killed in Kanpur. There's no doubt about that. But they march to Delhi and they hold Delhi for four months.

And the British scramble. So some seaport units remain loyal. Yeah. And there are some British troops knocking about and they sort of scrabble this force together and they march on Delhi. They do. They come from Punjab. So they have, the Sikhs are actually loyal to them and the Gurkhas. So they come down the ridge in Delhi, seize Delhi again. And now what happens is really brutal because Delhi is sacked. There's vandalism in the Red Fort. Civilians are killed. The rebels are tied to the mouths of the cannons and fired off. Those who are caught, very minimum trial, they're hanged and their bodies are left hanging from the trees

as a warning to anybody who dares rebel against the company. So it's complete carnage. And what happens is there's a very brief trial. Bahadur Shah Zafar is now exiled and he is sent to Rangoon in Burma. So the last Mughal emperor of this huge dynasty that we've been talking about actually leaves Delhi, an aging emperor with his wife, leaves on an ox cart and goes away. It is humiliating and it is also tragic for the Indians to watch this. So there's a lot of literature, a lot of poetry around this whole event. One of those British commanders is, I think,

John Nicholson, who became a Victorian legend, didn't he? And he was very motivated by the atrocities towards Europeans, the rape of white women. This was like a red line. And as a result, he was one of those who initiated some of these incredibly violent reprisals, didn't he? Exactly. Torture and murder of vast numbers of rebels. And he was killed in this terrible fight for the Gate of Delhi, which you can still go to today, can't you? And in Lucknow, you have Fort Lawrence as well. You have the memorial for Lawrence.

And the person who really took on and came to be known was General Roberts. Indeed, they'd go on to become the great British imperial hero, General Roberts. So he got his Victoria Cross for the suppression of the mutiny in Lucknow. Wow. So there was a lot that happened then. British India was fighting for its existence at that point.

I wouldn't say it was fighting for its existence, but it realised that there is discontent. It may be in small pockets, but it is there. And if we don't suppress it, it's going to get bigger. And so it wasn't a threat to a place like Calcutta then? It didn't extend that far? No. I mean, it started in Barakpur, but threat to places like Calcutta then? It didn't extend that far? No. I mean, it started in Barakpur. It goes. But Calcutta is always a trouble spot. And Bengal is a trouble spot.

The revolutionaries are very active in Bengal. And they would be later in the story as well. So to what extent did it shake Britain's hold on India? It was a scare. It was a scare. But it was also, I mean, it's a point where they finally see that East India Company is just not viable anymore. There has been misgovernment. They realised this in parliament. So this is when they passed this act, the Government of India Act, 1858. And basically,

the power now moves to Westminster. The Queen, Queen Victoria, is the Queen of India. She is going to be represented by the Viceroy, who will have his office in Calcutta. And so power shifts, and this is now the beginning of the Raj era, as we know it. You're listening to Dan Snow's History. This is part two of my series on the British in India. More coming up. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Janaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions,

and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. even though the East India Company was sort of in power in name only finally after starting in basically a pub or I can't remember what it was a coffee house or something in London under Queen Elizabeth I it finally racks up it's extraordinary isn it? 250 years later with a very changed world. We should say, I think sort of 6,000 or so Brits were killed in the so-called mutiny and several hundred thousand Indians in the violence and the dislocation, the famine. I mean, it's extraordinary. Absolutely. Especially Delhi. Delhi really felt the brunt and merit. Even in Agra, the citizens of Agra were collectively fined for supporting the rebels. So they took it out on

everybody, every citizen. And Delhi, I mean, a lot of poetry. The poet Kali Abhis lived in old Delhi and he writes about it. So it is one of those moments in history where Delhi was desecrated. Now that the British are formally in charge, so this is now the British Empire, like just as Canada or Australia is part of the formal empire, does anything change on the ground? Do the British take their governing responsibilities more seriously? There is actually. There's a remarkable cultural shift that happens. So it's interesting that while they are the East India Company, many of the British, we have these examples of people like Charles Stewart, who would wear Indian clothes. He had many Indian wives. He would take his elephant into the

Ganges River. So there were lots of people who adopted the Indian culture. They wore and used Indian clothes. They would eat Indian food. They were known as nabobs when they returned to Britain and they would hanker for their curries, which is why the first of the curry houses actually started catering to these, what they called returning nabobs.

But there is a culture shift with the Raj. Suddenly it's very English. So mixing with the locals is frowned upon very much. So it's this exclusive culture that starts. The English are just confined to the clubs, which are white only. No Indian ever allowed in there, except for serving staff, of course. And they're in the plains in the summer. They retire to the hills in winter.

They have their place. It's very segregated at this stage. The segregation starts. Even the menus change. So you have French menus for dinner. You don't have Indian food anymore. It's all an interesting culture shift that happens. Marrying an Indian woman would be really frowned upon in the days of the Raj. So it's sort of more classically colonial, as we might picture it. Absolutely. And with administrators kind of rotating through rather than these East India Company staff going out becoming lifers and learning the language and very imperfect, but engaging a bit more. Engaging, definitely engaging a bit more.

Even the French were engaging, the others were engaging. So there was much more interaction. But with the Raj, it's a very strict rule from Westminster. You've got to follow the rules and the segregation really increases. Where does the Indian independence movement go after the mutiny or the first war of independence? How does it take a different form? So basically, well, death of Queen Victoria, 1901, is a bridge. Victoria was quite popular in many places in India, especially Calcutta.

The Victoria Memorial is built for her. Still the biggest memorial to Queen Victoria in the world. And popular not just with white colonial people. You think genuinely there was affection among... There was affection. I mean, Indian princes paid the money for that. The subscription was raised faster than for any other memorial anywhere in the world. So that was interesting.

That was by Lord Curzon. But then Curzon goes on to do something quite divisive. And that is in 1905, he decides to partition Bengal. And as I mentioned before, Bengal was always the heart of sort of revolution. A lot of literature, you know, revolutionary literature coming out of Bengal. And he decides to partition it, saying it's administrative reasons, because it's all very big. But basically, the line goes between Hindus and Muslims. So Muslim majority is in East Bengal, and the Hindus are in West Bengal, and he partitions it on religious lines. And this causes a storm. There's

a huge opposition to it, protests, demonstrations, and this whole buildup of boycott of foreign goods. So they say no more of these imported goods that are coming from England, clothes. They want to wear homegrown cotton, homespun cotton, and they burn. There are big bonfires of foreign goods. So this movement really picks up and it keeps escalating till we have the Delhi Darbar. And that happens 1911, a few years later, where the king and queen travel to India. It's the first time a reigning monarch arrives. So all the regalia. And this Darbar, interestingly, is to be held in Delhi because they're going to make some really important announcements here.

So King George V, Queen Mary arrive. They stand in the Delhi winter in their robes and their armen and all this jewellery. Every bit of dazzling jewellery is worn and these heavy crowns as well. And a whole city, mini city is built for this coronation. All the princes are invited. And it's a show of strength of British imperial power. You know, the king is here and all of you rulers, though the rulers were independent,

but, you know, they were there in the tents. We should say there was the British Raj, then there were pockets of India still ruled over by these... Exactly, by the Indian princes and rulers. They're allowed their currency, their seals, their flags, etc. But they have to bend the knee to their British overlords. Absolutely. And many of them did. And they are all housed in these tents, there's little mini trains that run between and this whole platform is constructed. And on the day, the Gaikwad of Baroda, this is the ruler of the Maharaja of Baroda, he comes up to the stage and he pays his obeisance. And then he actually turns his back and walks down very firmly.

And it's all on film as well, you know, grainy footage that you can see. And this is not what they were supposed to do. They're supposed to walk backwards after they've met royalty. And so everyone saw it as, you know, act of defiance, etc. He said he just made a mistake, but he'd done it. So there is this, the 1911 Darbar, two very important announcements. They say the capital is to be shifted from Calcutta to Delhi. And this is hugely significant because, again, Delhi was the Mughal capital. This is where they're going to be. Calcutta, house of all the rebels,

you know, leave them behind. Don't want them. And of course, King George V, he also makes another announcement. He says, Indian soldiers from now on will also be eligible to get the Victoria Cross because up to now, they weren't. They would only get the Indian Order of Merit. So there was a lot of discontent because in the mutiny, the English officers got the Victoria Crosses and they didn't get it. So this was a sop to those in the British Indian Army. Three years later, the world would be at war and Indians would win over the world. There's telegraphs and trains. And it's not just in India, but nationalism is on the march. Anti-colonialism is beginning. Is there a sort of a growing awareness and Indian consciousness at this point? And is there a lively independence movement brewing?

There is. It's not lively at this stage, but it is there. There is discontent, definitely so. And there have been few assassination attempts. 1909, there was an assassination attempt. So there is discontent, but things overtake them because suddenly, a few years later, 1914, you have the First World War. because 1.5 million Indians go to the fight in trenches in France and Flanders. And there are turbans there for the first time, along with the tummies in their helmets in these trenches. They're also fighting in Egypt, in Basra, in Constantinople.

They're in Turkey. So they're everywhere. My great-grandfather was a doctor with the Indian Army in Gallipoli. Really? Yeah. A lot of Sikhs. A lot of with the Indian Army in Gallipoli. Really? Yeah. A lot of Sikhs. A lot of Sikhs. Went to Gallipoli. And over 73,000 died. But when they were returning four years or five years later, they were going to return to a changed India. The economic crisis, many of them are

farmers, mainly from Punjab. They may have lost an arm or a leg. They weren't going to be able to farm anymore. And also two soldiers on one of the ships going back was not feeling well, and he was carrying the Spanish flu. By the time he landed in Bombay, he had infected everybody else. And this would then go through the population of Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, the cities. Millions would die from the Spanish flu.

So that was just one side effect. And was there a sense that, just as with working class men and some women in Britain being given the vote after the First World War, did many Indians feel that their sacrifice, their contribution, had earned them more political freedom, more autonomy from the British, and those aspirations were unmet. Well, that's what they wanted. They wanted Dominion status. It was the reason for them going out there and sacrificing their lives.

But it didn't happen. Instead, they got the worst possible treatment because this Rollout Act was announced where there was ban on meetings, gatherings of more than four people. So that happened. So there's restriction on the press, there's a restriction on gatherings. There is discontent with the soldiers who've come back, their pensions weren't enough, they've lost their land. And then of course, we have 1919. This is when the peace talks are still going on in Paris, five months into the end of the war. On the 13th of April, 1919, in Amritsar, it's the holiest day of the Sikhs. It's their new year.

And so they've all gone to the Golden Temple. And after their prayers at the Golden Temple, there's a park next to it called Jallianwala Bagh. And they all go sit in the park and they're dressed in their festive pairs. There's women, there's children, they're having a picnic. And at the same time, there's some political leaders who are giving speeches because some political leaders had been arrested. So this is happening. What they didn't know was that General Dyer had actually imposed a curfew because this is their most important day in the Sikh calendar. It was their festival day. They had no idea that a curfew has been declared. And as they were sitting in this park, suddenly General Dyer comes with his troops. And this park had three sides that are enclosed

and only one entrance. And the entrance is a narrow entrance. It's literally between two high walls. And suddenly they hear these boots coming in and General Dyer's troops surround the whole park. And then he just orders them to fire at everybody in the park. This is women, children. And he orders them to keep firing till the last bullet is used. And so people can't escape because the exit is blocked. They jump into the wells and they're just mowed down, basically. And to think about it, the Sikhs, they were the ones who had the largest representation in the army in the First World War. The largest number of volunteers came from the whole Punjab region, which is from Pakistan.

So Muslims and Sikhs. But Sikhs were prominent in the war. And this has been done to them. So the figures were, I think the official figures were just about 379. But unofficially, they say it was anything between 1000 to 1500. And about 1200 were injured severely anyway. I'm Matt Lewis and I'm Dr. Eleanor Janaga and in Gone Medieval we get into the greatest mysteries the gobsmacking details

and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history we're talking Vikings Normans Kings and Popes who were rarely the best of friends murder

rebellions and crusades find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. So this, the Jallianwala Bagh massacre is one of the darkest spots of British rule in India. And it changed the course of history. There's absolutely no doubt. Did it? So as well as being a massacre and a crime admitted to by people like Churchill and others,

did it really move the dial on Indian independence among Indian people? Absolutely. So the poet Ravindranath Tagore, he's a Nobel laureate at this stage. He returns his knighthood. And I think the freedom movement just moves up a gear. It literally goes into third gear, fourth gear even at this stage. There's no going back from Jallianwala Bagh. What happens after was also worse because they were made to crawl in the area. General Dyer returns, but there is a fund raised for him with Kipling, Radyar Kipling, making the first contribution of 50 pounds, saying he saved the empire. So all this leads to a lot of bad blood in India. And there's no going back from 1919.

And 1919 is also a significant year because on one of the ships coming back from London, is a certain Indian lawyer who was trained in the bar in London, practiced in South Africa, and his name is Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. And he's going to change the course of history as well. How does he change history? Well, Gandhi returns to India, 1919. And the first thing, so he's lived abroad for a long time. He's been active in South Africa in political struggle. And he's learned from the suffragettes in London, incidentally, about hunger strikes. So he uses this as a method of protest. And he practices civil disobedience in South Africa.

And he's going to use these skills in India to just gather the troops and to resist British rule. So very quickly, he also realizes that India is in the villages. India is not just in the towns. He wants to familiarize himself with India. And the very first campaign he takes on is with indigo workers in Bihar who are forced to grow indigo instead of food crops. So he starts that struggle from Champaran in Bihar. And of course, he takes it up. He grows. We have the famous Dundee Salt March. And it's all civil disobedience. Those are his tactics, that we will fight the British Empire by resisting. He obviously practices nonviolence, which doesn't go down well with some others but that's Gandhi and he leads this march in 1930 his famous Dundee march he resists the salt tax he marches to the beach in Gujarat

and he makes salt and a simple gesture like this was like reported in the international media this man is taking on the British empire. So things were changing by now. And then, of course, Gandhi is invited to London in 1931 because the British are trying to bring about some changes in the constitution. They're trying to provide provincial assemblies. They send a commission to India, led by some MPs and headed by John Simon. But it had no Indians on it. It's a Simon commission to look at constitutional reform. And he's just met with posters saying, Simon, go home.

When his report comes out, Gandhi describes it as a post-dated check on a failing bank. So he had a way with words. He's then invited, Gandhi's invited to London for the roundtable conference, where they're looking at more provincial government. So he arrives. The talks are a huge failure. Nothing happens. But Gandhi scores a real PR coup. He chooses to live not in the fancy hotels. He chooses to live in Kingsley Hall in East London.

So he's with the people, the local people, and he's photographed there. Of course, he's dressed in his dhoti and his shawl and his sandals. And Churchill describes him famously as a half-naked fakir walking up the steps of Buckingham Palace. But it's Gandhi who's scoring. He then goes to the Lancashire mills. He meets the workers. And once again, he's photographed. And this is a beautiful photograph. There's Gandhi in his dhoti and his shawl. And he's arm in arm with all these Lancashire women workers. And they relate to him because he explains why they are boycotting the cotton that's going back from England and why they need to use their own homespun and use their own cotton, weave their own cotton and garments. so it's a PR coup for Gandhi

he goes back talks are a failure but very quickly the world is changing again we have the second world war and again vast numbers of Indians are recruited to serve in British imperial forces and they fight at Alamein in North Africa and in Italy and in Burma and against Japanese. How does the Second World War give a boost to Indian independence? So basically, the Congress now won Dominion status. And they say, we are not going to support this unless we get Dominion status. The British are not prepared to give it. So all the Congress leadership are now locked up.

So Gandhi, Nehru, everyone is locked up in the duration of the war. 2.5 million Indians have gone to fight. It's the largest volunteer army in the world, more than any of the other colonies. So they are making supreme sacrifice, but the Congress leadership is locked up. So five years in the jail, and this is all going to lead to, of course, the end of the war. Britain knows it's not sustainable. Government of Clement Attlee knows they have to give independence. There's no way they could sustain this anymore. And could they not sustain it? Because A, Britain was bankrupt. B, it's a bit odd to fight a gigantic war for national liberation and then fight a war of suppression.

And was there a suggestion in 1945 that India would have required military force to maintain it? I mean, it would have been a war. Absolutely. And the Americans are watching. The Americans are totally against it. But also, India has paid a huge price. So the anger is very visible. I mean, in the middle of the war, we had the Bengal famine, 1943.

So 3 million die in this Bengal famine. And the British administration and Churchill himself are blamed for not releasing grain when it is needed. So a ship from Australia laden with grain docks in Calcutta and is not allowed to unload because it's in Churchill words that, you know, more worthy to stockpile this grain for the future liberation of the Greeks and the Yugoslavians rather than feed the starving Bengalis. So that's obviously did not go down well. And he made many, you know, they're all on the record.

He made many disparaging comments. And when his own office say that it's very bad in India and they send him these notes, well. And he made many, you know, they're all on the record. He made many disparaging comments. And when his own office say that it's very bad in India, and they send him these notes, including Leo Emery, whose diaries tells us the tension that was going on. Churchill just writes in the margins, if it's so bad, why is Gandhi still alive? So it just shows that he is not. He's focused on the war, but he completely does ignore what's happening in Bengal. So three million die. There are these images and they're building airfields using women who are starving, you know, but they have no choice.

And there are photographs of women carrying rubble and building airfields because obviously Japan is there at the border. They have to fight there. These women have to do it because they're all starving. is there at the border. They have to fight there. These women have to do it because they're all starving. When the war does come to an end, Mountbatten, a member of the royal family, is sent as the last viceroy. The end comes very quickly. In fact, it comes so quickly that there's then another catastrophe. Of course. So March 1947, Mountbatten is sent to India. He's a popular man. He was the commander of the Southeast Asian Army. He was the Supreme Commander. So he's known in India. Of course, he's the Queen's cousin.

He's there, comes in all his regalia, his medals. He's a flashy man with Edwina next to him. They get on very well with Nehru. Famously, Edwina and Nehru get very close. But of course, what's happened in the war years is also the fact that because the Congress leadership were in jail for so long, five years, Jinnah and the Muslim League have been out and they have managed to get their support. Because Congress is a movement for independence, but the Muslim League are separate to Congress. They are separate. They want more rights for Muslimslims that's how it starts they are led by jinnah muhammad jinnah who's also a lawyer trained in england and by now he's become more powerful so the riots start and they start calling for partition so this being on the cards

mountbatten just feels the riots have started and he actually brings forward the date of independence. So the date of independence, it was supposed to be in 1948. He brings it forward and says 15th August 1947. And then he has a Mountbatten plan for the partition, but now a barrister from England is sent. His name is Sir Cyril Radcliffe. from England is sent. His name is Sir Cyril Radcliffe. He's never been to India. He has no idea about India, Indian culture, Indian economy. It's a complex country with so many different religions, a huge country as well. Radcliffe has never been east of Paris. He has no idea. Radcliffe is taken in to India. He is given five weeks to draw the line of partition. And Congress, people like Gandhi and Nehru were saying, please don't partition the country. We can build a big cosmopolitan India with Islamic and Hindu and everything else.

They're trying. The negotiations go on, but they keep failing. So it's really fraught at this stage. In these five weeks, they have to actually divide the country. They've accepted partition. They have to divide the country. Jinnah wants Calcutta. Nehru wants Lahore. They are fighting over cities. They are fighting over books in libraries.

Literally, the army has to be divided. Where are these people going to go? They all fought together in two wars. And now they have to be divided. So hugely fraught tension, five weeks. Radcliffe is ill. He's got deli belly day one. He is a miserable man.

I mean, it's a job that nobody would envy. He was miserable. He does it. He delivers this plan on the 9th of August. Literally, you know, 15th August is your Independence Day. He delivers it and he goes straight back to England and he never goes back to India. Mountbatten says that independence will happen on 15th of August, but we won't reveal the plan. Let them celebrate their independence for two days. And then on the 17th of August, this line of partition is going to be revealed.

So 17th of August, those who were partitioned, it's literally a line drawn through the country. So the West of India, which has large Muslim population, went to Pakistan. The East Wing of India, which also has a large Muslim population, went to Pakistan. It becomes East Pakistan, West Pakistan, divided by this giant country that is India. So it's like, you know, your two arms have been cut off and a line has just been drawn straight through. People found that their farms in the villages, this line is running through the farms and their cattle are on the other side. Some people found that the loo is on the other side, used to have outside toilets. It was catastrophic. And the price is paid for by human lives because then 20 million people move.

It's the biggest migration of the human population in the world. So the Muslims move to the two sides and the Hindus move back to India. There are many Muslims still left in the middle who don't move. But there are riots and 1 still left in the middle who don't move. There are riots and one million die in the riots. There are trains that come back with dead bodies. There are atrocities on both sides, you know, just neighbors killing neighbors. It's absolutely horrendous. So this was partition. It was cut and run in a way, but it had such a deep impact by bringing it forward. And actually Radcliffe, when he went back, he saw what had happened and he refused his fee

of 40,000 rupees. He refused to take a fee. Many years later, in the 70s, he gave an interview to an Indian journalist and he said, if I had two or three years, I would have done a better job. But to draw a line through India in five weeks, it's just amazing. And your family found themselves on the quote, unquote, wrong side of that line. Yes. I'm Bengali, so I'm from Bengal. So yeah, the revolutionary Bengal was very much there in our So yeah, the revolutionary Bengal was very much there in our family history. So my father's side, they were in East Pakistan. Of course, my father then had just finished school.

He was going to go to university. He was still a teenager. And his father had died. So his mother, my grandmother, had about six children that she had to look after. And they had to get on that train and come. Initially, they didn't want to go. They said, this is our land, what's going to happen? The riots got worse and worse, so they had to leave. So, Muslim and Hindu communities fighting each other and trying to protect, yeah. Absolutely. Some relatives had got killed. They decided to move. My father was the younger of

the brothers. So, my elder, he was probably in his 20s. He said, we've got to go. My grandmother had all these six children and probably other cousins to take home. And they went to the railway station, which is like a mad, heaving place. And one of my uncle's friends, he was a policeman in East Bengal. So he saw this family and he just took them all and he put them inside. He just forced their way. He put them into a compartment and he said, lock it from the inside and don't open it. There are two bolts in these compartments.

He said, lock it, don't open it till you reach Calcutta. And that's how they traveled there. So reached, I guess, life for all refugees began on the platform in Calcutta station. Howrah station in Calcutta. And so the mighty British Raj ended in this just monstrous catastrophe. Absolute chaos, yeah. The biggest forced migration in history, millions of people killed, injured, displaced. It's a pretty grim epitaph. It is, it is.

And it's a legacy that's lasted, unfortunately. Even now, the two countries, India and Pakistan, they've had three wars between them. Kashmir remains a hotspot. And they're now nuclear-powered, eyeball to eyeball in some of the highest regions in the world, in the Siachen Glacier. It's 75 years since independence and it's not gone away. And then of course, in 1971, you had Bangladesh, which was East Pakistan, then wanting independence. So that independent struggle was supported by India and a new country was born. So out of this Indian subcontinent, which once stretched from Kabul to literally to Burma, three countries were born. So you had India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

And as you say, a legacy, although we like to think of the legacy of that period as one of industrialization and trains and modernity, you could equally argue that legacy is one of bitter religious division that shows no sign of abating. No sign. As I said, 75 years on, they are still eyeball to eyeball.

And within India itself, the issue of Hindu-Muslim identity is very powerful. Exactly. I mean, it's an ongoing thing that was stirred then, you know, and just keeps on. It's like a cancer, basically. That's how I see it. Well, Shravani, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Talk all about it. Sorry to be so grim, but yeah, I mean, things changed. Let's give the happy stories. Father's family was moved to Barakpur. Remember Barakpur, where the mutiny started? So,

many of the refugee families were moved to Barakpur. And my mother's side had moved before. You know, they had estates everywhere, and they moved. And my mother's side had moved before, you know, they had estates everywhere and they moved and they lived in Sirampur, which used to be a Danish colony. It's on the opposite side of the river. So Sirampur and Barakpur are divided by the Ganges River. And well, they met. And 10 years after independence, my eldest sister, their first child was born. So yeah, I'm here here now and I'll tell you one little secret so my birthday is actually on the 15th of August on Independence Day well not not that 15 years after independence so there we go so you're one of midnight's children I am sort of yeah born in Calcutta and we are are here now. Well, it's interesting.

So your life story, totally defined by the collapse of the Raj and our people that followed. My grandmother, born in Bangalore, to her dad, who was a doctor in the Indian Army, is a sort of Welsh, lower middle class guy who wanted to try and carve out a better life. And India was a land of opportunity in that period and both of our stories tied up with this indian this british empire in india empire yes it's all good now thank you thanks for having me Well, that's it, folks. That is the end of our barnstorm, our gallop through 400 years of history.

It's an extraordinary and exceptionally unlikely tale of how this small, rainy archipelago off the western tip of Eurasia managed to conquer one of the most populous, dynamic, rich, and storied parts of the globe. But how that conquest proved fleetingly short. I always smile to myself as I remember that Alexander the Great's Greek settlements in South Asia lasted longer than the British Empire in that same part of the world. Thanks for joining us. Make sure you hit follow wherever you get your podcasts and you won't miss an episode.

And make sure for that extra special experience that you subscribe. The link to do so is in the description. A huge thank you as ever to Sravani, a wonderful historian and the perfect person to have this conversation with. There's no one I'd rather have there in the recording booth. you