The Coming of the British to India India in the 15-17the centuries It will be useful to trace the historical background in the period before the British came to India (17th century) and got politically involved (18th century). Hindu kingdoms and feudal chieftainships dotted the country until the end of the 12 century but at the end of this century, their power had been broken by Muslims of Turkish origin. When the British arrived, they found that it is the Muslims who were ruling the country while the majority Hindus had been reduced to marginal actors. The Chalukyas ruled in the north (973-1163), among them Vikramaditya VI (1076-1126) and his son Someshvara III (1126-38). The Yadavas (c860-1310) were dominant in the south. In 1310, the Deccan was overrun by the Muslim armies from the Khiljis (1290-1320), followed by the Tughlaqs (1320-1414). They set up a Deccan Sultanate which later split into five kingdoms, the largest being the Adilshahs of Bijapur. For the later years, we shall be guided mainly by Percival Spear’s A History of India, volume 2 (1990). 15th century: For two centuries (13th and 14th), the Delhi Empire (or Sultanate as it is called) controlled the north and at times the central region of the country. In 1398, the Turkish conqueror Taimur or Tamerlane invaded India and sacked Delhi, reducing the Delhi kingdom into disparate chieftainships. The Afghans who had accompanied the Turks to India and joined in their expeditions now took advantage of the power vacuum and their leader Daulat Khan Lodi (1451-88) seized power in Delhi. Together with his son, Sikander, and later his grandson, Ibrahim, the Lodi Afghans extended their rule from the Punjab and Uttar Pradesh to the borders of Bengal. In central India and to the south there were other Muslim rulers but beyond the river Kistna was the great Hindu empire of Vijayanagar (of Andhra and Telegu origin), except for the Malabar coast that was run by a number of smaller kingdoms, including Calicut headed by the Zamorin. Vijayanagar was a lavishly constructed city, extending 7 miles from north to south. Its culture was dominated by the Hindu gods Vishnu and Shiva. Brahmins were the privileged caste. Eating of meat except beef was allowed Burning of widows (sati) was widely practised and temple prostitution was common.    16th century: Babur the first Mughal Emperor The Portuguese explorer, Vasco da Gama, arrived on the Malabar coast in 1497 and made contact with the Zamorin of Calicut.. He was followed by Afonso de Albuquerque who captured Goa in 1510. The Portuguese empire was confined to Goa and two small areas in Gujarat. Zahiruddin Babur, great grandson of Tamerlane, was on his mother's side descended from the famous Genghis Khan. He came to India in 1517 at the request of the Afghan governor of the Punjab to dislodge Ibrahim Lodi, the last head of the Afghan-ruled Delhi Sultanate. Babur defeated Lodi at Panipat, not far from Delhi, and came to establish the Mughal Empire in India.  (Mughal suggests Mongol but Babur was Turkish.) His father’s branch had been reduced to the small principality of Farghana in Badakshan (in today’s Afghanistan). Babur succeeded his father in 1494 at age 12 and south to recover Tamerlane’s possessions, including Samarkhand. In 1504, he added Kabul and Kandahar to Badakshan. In 1513, he next turned his attention to India. He launched two invasions in 1523 and 1525, seizing Delhi. He pushed on to Agra where he was confronted by 100,000 Rajputs under Rana Sanga. But they were defeated by the skilled Mughal cavalry. Babur’s first act was to lay out a garden in Persian style. He is considered a most attractive figure in history – he was not just a soldier-statesman but a poet and man of letters,  a man of great personal charm, high sensibility and taste. He loved sports, was humorous and not vengeful. He felt behind his Memoirs, written in Turki, considered a masterpiece in this genre and translated into Persian and English. A man of such refinement could not witness the condition of the toiling Hindu masses without anguish and recording his impressions. Here is what he wrote about Hindustan: “Hindustan is a country with few pleasures to recommend it. The people are not handsome. They have no idea of the charms of friendly society, of mixing together, or social intercourse. They have no intelligence, no comprehension of mind, no politeness of manner, no kindness or fellow feeling, no ingenuity or mechanical skill in planning or architecture. ”They have no horses, no good meat or fruits, no grapes or melons, no good food or bread in their bazaars, no baths or colleges, no torches or candles…” This passage was quoted by Percival Spear in his book (p25) and was taken from the “Memoirs of Babur”, an English translation by J Leyden & W Erskine, (Ed, L King, OUP 1921), 2 volumes. A more recent version appeared in 2007: Babur Nama – Journal of Emperor Babur Edited by Dilip Hiro [Penguin), pg 385. Hindus- inward looking It was a damning verdict. Did the Hindus defend themselves? We don’t know because they didn’t seem to keep records. Historian William Dalrymple, author of White Mughals & The Last Mughal, commented with insight in Outlook (Mar 2004): ”Naipaul goes on to lament the fall of Vijayanagar, this "great centre of Hindu civilisation, then one of the greatest (cities) in the world". It was pillaged in 1565 "by an alliance of Muslim principalities". It fell, according to Naipaul, because already the Hindu world it embodied had become backward-looking and stagnant: it had failed to develop, and in particular had failed to develop the military means to challenge the aggressive Muslim sultanates that surrounded it. The Hinduism Vijayanagar proclaimed had already reached a dead end". ”For Naipaul, the Fall of Vijayanagara is a wound on the psyche of India, part of a long series of failures that he believes still bruises the country's self-confidence. The wound was created by a fatal combination of Islamic aggression and Hindu weakness—the tendency to 'retreat', to withdraw in the face of defeat.” In their retreat, the Hindus took refuge in religion. Naipaul in his book, India: A Million Mutinies Now (1990) wrote: [p144): “Religious myths touched every part of the land outside colonial Goa. It was the myths about gods and the heroes of the epics that gave wonder to the earth the people lived on.” Amartya Sen in his book The argumentative Indian (2005) also refers to the Indian tendency to retreat from the fray instead of hitting back at their critics by rational tools. “The colonial undermining of self-confidence drove Indians to look for sources of dignity with less opposition - in spirituality and religious practices.” ------------------------ Babur died in 1530, and was succeeded by his son Humayun, who gave the empire its first distinctive features. But it is Humayun's son, Akbar the Great, who is remembered as the glory of the empire. During his long reign (1556-1605), he extended the empire as far to the west as today’s Afghanistan, as far east as Bengal and down south to the Godavari river. He was a man of keen intellect and leadership qualities that attracted devoted followers as well as grudging admiration from enemies. He was humane, generous and tolerant ruler, who even sought to blend Islam with Hinduism, Christianity, Jainism, and other faiths. He issued a decree that “no man should be harassed because of his religion, and anyone is free to choose any religion that pleases him.” In contrast, in 16th century Europe, the Protestants under Martin Luther (a German monk) broke away  from Rome. Catholic Europe remained gripped by the Inquisition which censored books and launched witch-hunts against so called heretics. A philosopher of the time, Giordano Bruno, appalled by the prevailing Christian intolerance and wars, advocated an alternative religion and championed Copernicus’ heliocentric theory.  The Vatican was not pleased and the Inquisition burned Bruno at the stake in 1600. Astronomer Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), the inventor of the telescope, was found guilty of the heretical view that the sun is the centre of the universe and was warned to abandon this view. After a 10-day trial, he was allowed to return home but placed under house arrest. He died in 1642, the year of Isaac Newton’s birth. It was Newton who worked out the mechanics of the solar system 40 years later.  17th century  The remaining Mughal emperors Akbar was succeeded by his son Salim, who took the title of Jahangir. In his reign (1605-1627), Jahangir consolidated the gains made by his father. The courtly culture of the Mughals flourished under his rule; like Babur, he had an interest in gardens, and Mughal painting probably reached its zenith in Jahangir's time. Jahangir married Nur Jahan, "Light of the World", in 1611 and was deeply attached to her. Shortly after his death in October 1627, his son, Shah Jahan, succeeded to the throne. He inherited a vast and rich empire; and at mid 17th century this was perhaps the greatest known empire, exhibiting a degree of centralized control rarely matched before. Shah Jahan left behind an extraordinarily rich architectural legacy, which includes the Taj Mahal, the Delhi Fort and Jama Mashid, the first in memory of his wife Mumtaz Mahal. As he lay dying in 1658, a war of succession broke out between his four sons. The two principal claimants to the throne were Dara Shikoh, who was championed by the those nobles and officers who were committed to the eclectic policies of previous rulers, and Aurangzeb, who was favoured conservative Islamic policies. It is Aurangzeb who triumphed, and the Mughal Empire saw yet further expansion in the early years of his long reign (1658-1707). In 1681, he virtually transferred his capital to the Deccan to subjugate two remaining kingdoms there and to keep a check on the Marathas. He was succeeded by his son, Bahadur Shah who in his short reign of 5 years made a settlement with the Marathas, put down the Rajputs and decisively defeated the Sikhs in the Punjab. The Marathas included a band of warriors whose chiefs worked for the local Muslim states. They are described in Spear’s book as “short and stocky, unhandsome in appearance but tenacious” living in a region with “little taste for the graces of life and no history”. Their leader Shivaji disposed general Afzal Khan in 1659 and went to attack the Mughal port of Surat. He was summoned to Auranzeb’s court in Agra but he escaped. He died in 1680 after organising a kingdom in western India. The Hindus generally remained immersed in religious activities, such as the bhaki movement, the restoration of Krishna’s city Brindaban and the translation of the Ramayana into Hindi by Tulsi Das of Benares. The English make their appearance The East India Company (EIC) was founded in December 1600 charter under Queen Elizabeth I. This was in response to the Dutch East India Company (VOC) established a few years ago. While the Dutch set up base in the ‘East Indies’ (today’s Indonesia, the EIC set headquarters at Surat in 1612 and through their emissary Sir Thomas Roe obtained important trading concessions from the Mughals in 1618. In 1640 a factory was set up at Madras and in 1674 the EIC moved its headquarters to Bombay – which had given gifted as a dowry to Charles II’s Portuguese wife Catherine. {Note that these huge land transfers took place between Europeans unknown to the natives!]  The English next set a factory for trade in saltpetre and silks at Hughli in Bengal and transferred to a Calcutta factory in 1690, with a built in fort, Fort William. The EIC chairman, Josiah Child was already planning for a “well-grounded English dominion in India for all time to come.” He even sent a force to Chittagong to challenge the Mughals but it was beaten back by Aurangzeb’s men. The English merchants were expelled from Bengal and Surat. So the EIC lay low for a while, awaiting the demise of the Mughal empire.