Sunday Posts

The Company state was in the middle of a rapid transformation in the 1790s. It was to be engaged in wars, with local rulers as well as in the broader global war with the French, for the next quarter century. Starting with Cornwallis’ wars with Tipu Sultan followed by Wellesley brothers’ wider conflicts across India and the Anglo-Maratha wars, the wars expanded the Company territories across the Indian peninsula and established the Company as the preeminent power in India. There were other changes equally as significant: The rise of evangelical christianity and the English nationalism rekindled by the French wars led to a separation between the English and the Indians in a much greater degree. Cornwallis’ administration had excluded Indians from all important government positions. The more moralistic positions of these administrations discouraged gambling, drinking, cohabitation with Indian women and embezzlement of government funds. Also, the conflicts between Indian and English ...

Alternative history is usually treated as nonsense or worse - by historians! Justifiably so, as there is so much falsification of history already. At a time of battle against the alternative facts, it is best to stand guard against the intrusion of even the slightest hint of imaginary history-making.  What-ifs have no space in real life. History has happened, irreversibly so it seems, and there is no point going back on what could have happened. But, in that very statement itself, there is a hint why alternative historical imaginary may be useful. History may have happened, but it was no way inevitable: Speculations of alternative history guards against the tendency of treating history as it happened as inevitable; emphasising the contingency leads to an escape from teleology trap. So, that was my indulgence on a World Cup free day: What if the British did never rule India? Sure, they did rule India, for about 190 years starting the triumph in Bengal, and now we see that ...

The story of British influence on Indian Education, to which Macaulay's Minutes of 1835 belong, has been told in six distinct phases. Syed Nurullah and J P Naik's very popular and influential History of Indian Education calls these 'six acts' of the drama:  From the beginning of Eighteenth Century to 1813   The British East India Company received its charter in 1600 but its activities did not include any Educational engagement till the Charter Act of 1698, which required the Company to maintain priests and schools, for its own staff and their children. And, so it was until the renewal of its charter in 1813, when the evangelical influence led to insistence of expansion of educational activities and allowing priests back into company territory. From 1813 to Wood's Education Despatch of 1854 The renewal of Charter in 1813 re-opened the debate, which seemed to have been settled in the early years of the company administration, between the Orientalis...