Evening star., 1947-08-15
The British 'Rui' Ends

TOday MARKS the formal close or BrltlSh
rule over India, that vast subcontinent of
Asia, with an area of nearly 1000, 900
square miles and population approach
ing 400,000,000. Herewith ends what may
be considered the most majestic cycle of
empire since that of Rome.
Curiously enough, the British empire in
India was the result, not of planned con-
quest and dominion, but of the desire for
trade. The cycle begins with the formation
of the East India Company in the year
1900, when a group of shrewd merchant
adventures" got charter from Queen
Elizabeth to do business with the fabu-
lousy wealthy East Indies. The English
company at first did business in a small
way, alongside other European rivals
Portuguese, Dutch, and French. But, as
time passed, the powerful Mogul Empire
which had dominated linda sank into de-
cline, and the subcontinent fell into vir-
tual anarchy. This obliged all the Euro
pean trading companies to acquire forti-
fled coastal factories" guarded in part by
native mercenaries called Sepoys, to pro-
tect their interests. The companies were
likewise inevitably drawn into the squab-
bles of rival native princes. Lastly, the
companies fought each other when their
respective homelands were at war. The
upshot was the emergence of the British
East linda Company as the victor over it's
European rivals, whom it eliminated, and
as the most powerful single factor on the
Indian scene, although most of India still
remained under native rule Such was the
picture toward the close of the eighteenth
century.
BY that time, the company exercised
almost sovereign powers. Yet it's sover-
eighty was increasingly regulated by the
British government, and when the Sepoy
mutiny of 1857 shook it's authority and
revealed its shortcomings, John Com
pany' was dissolved and it's powers were
transferred to the British crown. Two
decades later, in 1877, Queen Victoria was
proclaimed Empress of India.
This event marks the full Towering of
British rule in India Britain's sovereign
thereby stepped into the shoes of the
vanished Mogul Emperor. The British
raj" was thenceforth supreme. The bal
ance of the nineteenth century witnessed
the Golden Age of the Raj. when a mere
handful of highly trained British officials
dispensed efficient justice with a moral
authority so great as to need only the
physical backing of a slender British
garrison.
However, already the very establishment
of peace and order, combined with the
spread of western ideas and methods, had
engendered aspirations for self-govern-
ment among the educated native elite,
and the movement gradually spread to
wider circles. The ensuing decades can be
summed up as process of devolution, with
Britain yielding more and more to ma
tionalist pressure, hastened by the cata-
clysnic wars within the western world
which so greatly weakened Brltains ma
terial power and undermined its moral
authority.
Now the cycle is completed, and Britain
hands over the reins of power to the In
dians. But this power devolves, not On q
united India, but on divided India-a
division rejecting the deep cleavages
within India itself. The great question
now is whether India is to progress toward
organic unity or whether it is to relapse
into anarchic discord not unlike that
which the Europeans encountered and
from which the British so greatly profted