Question 1
Evaluate the interpretations in both of the two passages and explain which you think is more convincing as an explanation of the consequences of the war of 1857 on India in the period from
1858 to 1876.
Passage A Adapted from S Wolpert, 'A New History of India', page unknown, Oxford University Press, 1977. Item removed due to third party copyright restrictions.
*Laissez-faire – non-interventionist policy/governance
Adapted from: S. Wolpert, A New History of India, published in 1977.
Passage B
The British preferred to emphasise their investment in infrastructure, especially railways and irrigation works (‘trains and drains’). They pointed to the country’s generally favourable balance of payments. Critics, though, were less impressed by India’s theoretical prosperity and more concerned by Indians’ actual poverty. As early as 1866 Dadabhai Naoroji, a future Congress leader, had begun to wonder whom the trains benefited and where the drains led. His ‘drain theory’ maintained that India’s surpluses, instead of being invested so as to create the modernised and industrialised economy needed to support a growing population, was being drained away by the ruling power. The main drain emptied in London with a flood of what the government called ‘home charges’. These included salaries and pensions for government and army officers, military purchases, India office expenses, debt repayments and returns to investors in Indian railways. These came to nearly a quarter of India’s annual revenue. It was not surprising that Indians lived in such abject poverty or that famines were so frequent. Lord Lytton’s Imperial Assemblage at Delhi was the sort of wasteful extravaganza to which Indians of almost every perspective took exception. It coincided with the worst famine of the century which claimed perhaps 5.5 million lives in the Deccan and the south.
From: J. Keay, India: A History, published in 2000.
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Answer
