Raja Rammohun Roy, known as the first modern man of India, was convinced that despite the evils inherent in imperialism, the British rule in India was destined to play a historic role. He saw how the country had fallen apart and got divided into numerous kingdoms and principalities mutually antagonistic to one another following the decline of the Mughal Empire that was supposed to have begun with the death of Aurangzeb in 1707.
A central rule under a constitutional system of Governance was the need of the hour and the British with its long and cherished democratic-administrative traditions could meet the demand of time, he strongly felt. Rammohun considered British rule in India as a historical necessity, a divine providence, albeit as a stopgap proposition, to facilitate India’s transition from the Middle Ages to the modern era.
He was convinced that if the forward movement of history was somehow reversed it would mean the restoration of the antediluvian mode of governance right from the Middle Ages. He was of the view that till such time the country’s progressive historical forces got rightly integrated to become capable of taking over the responsibility of running the country by themselves there was no alternative to accepting British rule. He was aware though of the evils inherent in the alien rule in respect to the interests of the natives. He made no bones about them.
Rammohun along with others like Dwarakanath Tagore, the grandfather of Rabindranath Tagore, was in favour of unrestricted trade involving the Europeans as well as settlement of the Europeans in India, as he thought it would bring European capital and machinery to pump new life in the long stagnating arenas of industry and agriculture. He asked the Europeans to get settled down in India and invest their newly acquired capital here in setting up industries and in modernising agriculture. He argued for unfettered trade and considered these inevitable for progress in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution of England.
He knew around 11 crore pounds had been shipped into England from the country between 1765 and 1820. Opposed as he was to the flight of this capital, he was for this capital to be used in India’s industrialisation. He took the side of the ‘industrial capital’ that the bourgeois class in post-Industrial Revolution England represented against the ‘merchant capital’ that the East India Company was identified with.
The latter remained focused on increasing revenue through merchant trade and was against setting up new industries in India with the European capital. The orthodox group led by Radhakanto Deb opposed Rammohun’s move and took the side of the East India Company. They were for continuance of the trade monopoly being enjoyed then by the Company.
This was nothing short of a revolutionary thinking, given the mood of the time. Even now the debate as to whether such opening would be beneficial for the long and short-term interests of the country keeps occupying the central space of the national discourse with arguments and counter—arguments generating grueling heat.
The views of Swami Vivekananda on the matter were no different from those of Rammohun. “Conquering another country is very bad; foreign domination is also very bad; but sometimes good comes out of evil. British conquest of India is an amazingly novel occurrence. They were a new and strange power. Their flag was the chimney of a factory; their force consisted of commercial ships; their equipment of war was the world’s merchandise… Such a powerful and all-pervasive system of Government had never before taken over the administration in our country. Consequently peace, discipline and rule of law have been established.
In the course of establishing domination over trade and commerce, merchandise from one end of the world is being carried to another end. The ideas and thoughts of many countries are penetrating Indian marrow. As a result of this impact, a nation long in slumber is gradually waking up. This awakening has resulted in a slight unfolding of free thinking. The admixture of the two civilisations would give birth to an ideal society in India and a new age would be ushered into the world.”
let us now see how Rabindranath Tagore viewed the Colonial State and its potential for India. In two essays in Kalantar and Chotto O Baro, he made his ideas about the Islamic and British rules clear. “Islam was not a modern power; it was inhibited by the centuries of the past. It did not possess the spirit of new creations. It did not open our eyes to the world outside.”
Referring to the British, he said: “But the arrival of the British was an unprecedented occurrence in the history of India”. Visualising the British as the harbinger of the Occidental spirit, he said: “European dynamism had a tremendous impact on our static minds.” Rabindranath divided Englishmen into two categories-the large- hearted liberals and the small-minded traders. He termed the first one as ‘who were creative, who were among the principal performers in the great movement known as European civilisation, the prime ideal in life of the English nation being veneration for justice, truth and freedom’.
He defined the other as “those who did not advance at all, who have made the country immobile…Initially they had done some creative works, but thereafter, for ages, it became their sole objective to protect and enjoy the privileges of their imperial power and commercial domination.” It would not be out of place here to mention that the Bengali intelligentsia which was in the vanguard of the ascendant nationalism in the country, by and large, had turned its back on the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny which was later glorified in history as the First War of India’s Independence.
