My SCRAPBOOK (సేకరణలు): A COLLECTION of articles in English and Telugu(తెలుగు), from various sources, on varied subjects. I do not claim credit for any of the contents of these postings as my own.A student's declaration made at the end of his answer paper, holds good to the articles here too:"I hereby declare that the answers written above are true to the best of my friend's knowledge and I claim no responsibility whatsoever of the correctness of the answers."

Wednesday, September 03, 2014

1626- British rule, wa it in any way useful to India?

I accept that British were not philanthropists. 
The East India company received a Royal Charter from Queen Elizabeth in 1600, making it the oldest among several similarly formed European East India Companies. Wealthy merchants and aristocrats owned the Company's shares. The government owned no shares and had only indirect control. The company eventually came to rule large areas of India with its own private armies, exercising military power and assuming administrative functions.Company rule in India effectively began in 1757 after the Battle of Plassey and lasted until 1858 when, following the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the Government of India Act 1858 led to the British Crown to assume direct control of India in the new British Raj.

over the course of two centuries, British intellectuals and Indian specialists made the highest priority bringing peace, unity and good government to India. They offered many competing methods to reach the goal. For example, 

-Cornwallis recommended turning Bengali Zamindar into the sort of English landlords that controlled local affairs in England.
-Munro proposed to deal directly with the peasants. 
-Sir William Jones and the Orientalists promoted Sanskrit, 
-while Macaulay promoted the English language. 
-I need not tell about CPBrown who did yeoman service to Telugu and in turn to the Telugus. 

In the long-run, what matters most about the legacy of the Raj is the British political ideologies which the Indians took over after 1947, especially the belief in unity, democracy, the rule of law and a certain equality beyond caste and creed.
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