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Michael travels to India to uncover how the British East India Company - the world's first multinational corporation - raised a private army to create an empire.
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00:01A century ago, Britain ruled over a quarter of the planet.
00:07In this series, I will go in search of Britain's imperial past.
00:13I have found gold.
00:15And uncover its legacies.
00:19How did a small island on the edge of Europe end up dominating the world?
00:25He turned a miserable group of accountants into swashbuckling pirates.
00:32From its proudest achievements to its most shameful failures.
00:37We're ripped away from Mother Africa into a strange land.
00:42And how has the history of empire transformed Britain?
00:47We became the black people of Britain.
00:49On this journey, I uncover the extraordinary story of the biggest empire that the world has ever seen.
01:00In this program, I'm exploring the jewel in the crown of empire.
01:06The way that Britain established its rule here would provide a model for the globalization of today.
01:12In India, Britain's imperial power was founded upon one of the world's first great multinational companies.
01:20Unlike today's corporate giants, it exercised political power directly with guns.
01:26This company went in for a type of exploitation that the world has not seen.
01:32They had a divine right to rule. It was as simple as that.
01:35Opportunities to trade and corporate greed led Britain into entanglements all over the world.
01:42But in India, those base motives were gradually converted into the pomp, grandeur and glory of the British Raj.
02:06India has long gripped the British imagination.
02:11A vast and exotic subcontinent, home to ancient civilizations, powerful rulers and untold riches.
02:19Here, Britain honed its imperial skills.
02:23And possessing India attracted the grudging admiration of rivals and added to British power.
02:31This is the Queen Victoria Memorial Hall, dedicated to the Empress of India.
02:37The Raj was at its pinnacle during her reign.
02:40It was, in a way, the perfection of the colonial idea.
02:44A moment when Britain was totally committed to the governance of the Queen's 300 million subjects here.
02:51And when India seemed indispensable to Britain's prestige.
02:56At the time of Queen Victoria's death in 1901, Britain ruled over a quarter of the planet and 400 million
03:05people.
03:05No other possession competed with the glamour of India, with its capital at Calcutta.
03:13British authority did not originate with the state or military conquest.
03:18The father of empire in India, the man responsible for securing British power, was a businessman.
03:25He was bold, opportunistic and visionary.
03:28Some would say, a greedy villain.
03:32The back wall of these houses must be the outer wall of the Clive House.
03:38Clues about how Robert Clive led a profit-hungry corporation, with its own private army, to rule over millions, lie
03:46hidden in these back streets.
03:48The fine brickwork of the Clive House now forms one side of that little street.
03:55Clive completely transformed Britain's role in India.
03:59But his former home now lies in ruins, all but forgotten.
04:06This filthy rubbish strewn passageway is now the way into the house.
04:13I don't think it was the main entrance, although there are steps left here.
04:17And the place has been taken over by crows, and goodness knows what other creatures.
04:25And this must have been a spectacularly grand room, where there has been some restoration, I think.
04:31Look at these wonderful classical pillars.
04:33I imagine before they were rendered and maybe made to look like marble.
04:37Clive took over a Mughal villa of a single storey, and he added another one.
04:44And here you see the two storeys.
04:48Robert Clive was the delinquent son of a minor Shropshire landowner.
04:53When he was 17, his family bought him a job in the East India Company.
04:58It had existed for more than a century, but this young firebrand would lead it to become a superpower.
05:06I found one of the present-day inhabitants.
05:12Beautiful high ceiling here.
05:14This could also have been a grand room.
05:17And here, I think, the main entrance.
05:20Very handsome flight of rounded steps.
05:25And the visitor would be confronted with this set of magnificent arches.
05:29Very imposing.
05:32Clive knew how to live.
05:35The India that Clive stepped into was ruled by the Mughals.
05:40At its height, their mighty empire stretched from modern-day Afghanistan down the length of the subcontinent.
05:47They built awe-inspiring forts, mosques and mausoleums that expressed their immense wealth and power.
05:56But in the 18th century, the Mughal empire was fracturing.
05:59And Clive challenged its waning power with the help of the East India Company's private army.
06:06With no military training, he deployed the company's troops against the French in India.
06:12And when the Mughals occupied Calcutta, he expelled them at the Battle of Plassey in 1757.
06:20With actions like that, the company was transformed from a trading venture into a military and imperial power.
06:29And Robert Clive became the undisputed ruler of Bengal.
06:35The traders of the East India Company had ventured in search of fortunes for themselves and their shareholders in Britain.
06:43At that time, India offered a dazzling concentration of riches, representing well over a fifth of the world's wealth.
06:55Here's what lured the European powers to India.
06:59Pepper, spices, silks, cottons, perfumes.
07:03The appetite for such fineries was insatiable.
07:07For 150 years, the British East India Company competed with others to win or force trading concessions from the wealthy
07:15Mughals.
07:19Jawa Sirkar is a noted historian and a former secretary of India's Ministry of Culture.
07:27How did it happen that a man who's bought his position as a clerk become a military leader?
07:33He came in as a clerk and pushed his pen for two dull years, didn't excite him much.
07:39But then when the battle started, he showed an extraordinary courage.
07:43He had an inbuilt suicidal streak.
07:47And that earned him more and more pips on his shoulder and he rose very fast.
07:53What change do you think Robert Clive brought about in the East India Company?
07:56No one before him or after him was such a buccaneer.
08:01Without his bravado, without his excesses, without his stratagem, his cunning, his ruthlessness in getting things done, which are most
08:13untrader-like.
08:15He turned a miserable group of accountants into swashbuckling pirates.
08:24He turned the East India Company into a power to reckon with.
08:30Battlefield success and backroom deals gave Clive the leverage to force an extraordinary concession from the Mughals.
08:39The right to collect Bengal's taxes.
08:42A company of traders, answerable to no one but its shareholders, now had the power of emperors.
08:50And that unleashed an era of rapacious corporate greed.
08:55Clive made a lot of money. He would never have made that in shop share.
09:01Oh, they would not make it anywhere. It was mind-boggling.
09:07For the East India Company, profit was king.
09:10As long as the corporation made money, employees were free to line their own pockets, too.
09:16Clive, now one of Britain's wealthiest men, bought up grand houses back home and stuffed them with priceless Indian treasures.
09:24Company men like him also used their plundered riches to acquire political power in Britain, putting MPs on the payroll
09:33and buying elections to Parliament.
09:35Here in Bengal, the greed went unchecked.
09:39It had disastrous consequences.
09:42One third of the population of this province, which was 30 million, one third, that's almost 10 million people died.
09:51And the Brits are held responsible even till today.
09:56They died how?
09:57Starvation.
09:59Starvation. He started tampering around with natural lines of supply, storage, taxing, overtaxing.
10:07So the peasants fled their farms.
10:11It's very much part of the psyche that we had what is called this great man-made famine.
10:19The East India Company after Robert Clive, the way he develops it, can you compare it to anything in our
10:25modern life?
10:26This company went in for a type of exploitation that the world has not seen.
10:32The convergence of profit with state power, with military power, is the prototype of all transnational exploitative companies that you've
10:46seen.
10:46The actions of the East India Company caused scandal in Britain, with parliamentarians condemning the rampant greed and corruption.
10:55The East India Company's mismanagement in Bengal sent its shares crashing.
11:02But as in the recent banking crisis, it was deemed too big to fail.
11:07It was bailed out by the government, which acquired influence over how it was run, in a sort of public
11:14-private partnership.
11:16Within a year, Robert Clive was dead in mysterious circumstances.
11:22Samuel Johnson said he'd acquired his fortunes by such crimes that his consciousness of them impelled him to cut his
11:30own throat.
11:30Others have suggested that he overdosed on the highly addictive drug that would become the East India Company's most profitable
11:39commodity.
11:40Its trade would turn the company, backed by the British state, into history's biggest narcotics dealer.
12:01By the 1770s, the traders of the East India Company had laid the foundations of Britain's empire in India.
12:10Calcutta was at its heart, and its arteries of international trade reached across the globe.
12:21From the west coast of Africa, British ships carried enslaved people to the Caribbean to grow sugar for the British
12:28market.
12:29From China, East India Company ships brought the tea on which the British were hooked.
12:35But to quench Britain's growing thirst, the company needed to sell to Chinese people a product they wanted to buy.
12:44The answer was a highly addictive drug grown here in Britain's Indian territories.
12:51In the opium agency of the East India Company, 2,500 clerks in 100 offices toiled to control the cultivation
13:00of the narcotic by Indian farmers.
13:03Its quality and its transport to warehouses like this.
13:08The highly profitable export of a few thousand tons per year kept a swathe of China's population addicted.
13:16And when their government objected, Britain fought two wars rather than give up the trade.
13:22All that was about buying China tea so that the British Empire could enjoy a lovely cuppa.
13:35At the end of the 18th century, Britain appointed a governor general with a grand imperial plan.
13:41Richard Wellesley was a close ally of the Prime Minister William Pitt.
13:46He'd been politically ambitious at home and in India was attracted more by power than profit.
13:53Under his governorship, the East India Company's private armies marched across India, conquering vast territories and installing puppet princes.
14:08With Wellesley at the helm, this great multinational company was creating empire.
14:17Richard Wellesley was the elder brother of the man who would become the Duke of Wellington.
14:22He was responsible not only for Government House in Calcutta, but also this more personal Villa of the Caesars out
14:30here at Barrett-Poor.
14:31The British in India ruled over regional royalty and aristocracy.
14:37Leaders of great wealth who dressed flamboyantly and built palaces of extraordinary ostentation.
14:46And Wellesley believed that the imperial power should not be outdone in display.
14:54In 1801, Wellesley started building this palatial country retreat for the governor general, 15 miles upriver from Calcutta.
15:04A magnificent entrance, you might say, but in fact this is simply the back door to the garden.
15:11The principal approach, which would have been experienced by visitors, lies on the other side, where at the moment major
15:18works are underway.
15:20Wellesley was imitating Mughal splendor, but he expressed it in an unmistakably British style.
15:28The first thing, the scale of it, superb proportions, wonderful tall ceilings, marbled floor.
15:37This is just the rear veranda and into the ballroom.
15:42And although from the outside it really could pass as a British stately home, I think not so inside.
15:49There are an almost uncountable number of double doors because the point was that air should flow.
15:58I should have arrived under the portico, protected from the typhoon.
16:04And then I would have come up one of these twin staircases.
16:07And then I should have arrived here in the entrance lobby.
16:11This is the proper way to enter the house.
16:22These days, Bharatpur is home to the Bengali police training academy and is being painstakingly restored by its director general,
16:31Shoman Mitra.
16:33Shoman, during Wellesley's tenure, what happened to the British Empire? Was it expanding?
16:39The empire wasn't established during that time. It was part of the East India Company.
16:42But he had a vision towards that.
16:45He acquired a lot of land. He also fought a lot of wars.
16:49And I would say, while doing this, he realized if one has to control India, one has to be like
16:55a raja or a king or a maharaja.
16:57And that's how he built these grand palaces and mansions.
17:02And how do you view that now? Because in a way, he was foreseeing the future of the British Empire.
17:07Indeed, he was creating the future of the British Empire.
17:09Yes, this is one of the important markers, establishing big mansions, big houses, government houses, so that people, they have
17:21come to rule, are awestruck.
17:24What did the East India Company think of that?
17:27Oh, they were horrified.
17:30They rebuked him. They called him back in 1805 and said that, we have sent you for trade.
17:36This is not what you should be doing.
17:37You are a free nation. You are a republic. Why do you want to restore colonial history?
17:44I'm not talking about whether colonialism was good or bad or whatever.
17:49But certainly, it was a part of our shared history.
17:53And this particular building was built with the hard work of our craftsmen, Indian craftsmen.
18:01True, it might be designed by Britishers, but it's part of our shared global architecture.
18:07So, how can I deny our past?
18:11When Richard Wellesley left India, there was no mistaking that the British had assumed control.
18:17But in the subsequent decades, influential voices at home argued that it wasn't enough for the company to rule India.
18:26Their view was that the British had to civilize it too.
18:30Despite company resistance, Parliament was convinced to allow Christian missionaries into India.
18:36It would lead to tensions, especially amongst the troops on which British rule depended.
18:45The East India Company's armies consisted mainly of Indian soldiers known as sepoys.
18:53The company behaved insensitively, toppling local rulers arbitrarily and greedily, trampling on local hierarchies and customs.
19:02Whilst the sepoys feared that Christian missionaries were out to destroy their religions.
19:08These issues were emotive, explosively so.
19:12Less than a mile from the Governor-General's Bharatpur retreat, one sepoys was pushed to the point of insurrection.
19:21The British introduced the Enfield rifle.
19:24To load it, the sepoys was required to bite off the end of the cartridge, which might have been greased
19:29with either pig or cow fat.
19:32One was repugnant to Muslims and the other to Hindus.
19:36On the 29th of March 1857, a devout upper caste Hindu sepoys called Mangal Pandey, in disgust, urged his fellow
19:47soldiers to rise up in revolt.
19:49And he himself attacked two officers.
19:53Legend has it that he was hanged by the British from a banyan tree.
19:59It was an incident at the start of the year of the Indian rebellion, an event which would prove extremely
20:06bloodthirsty and of great political significance.
20:10Rebellion in the army swiftly spread to the civilians of North and Central India.
20:16For the British, the uprising of an indigenous population who greatly outnumbered them was the stuff of nightmares.
20:24Murderous attacks on Europeans were met with brutal reprisals.
20:28To understand why company rule broke down in such a shockingly violent way, I'm meeting historian Professor Rudrangshu Mukherjee.
20:38What do you think were Mangal Pandey's reasons for going on his rampage?
20:42There was the persistent and very deep fear among the sepoys that there was a full-blown conspiracy on the
20:54part of the British government
20:55to spoil the caste and the religion of the sepoys.
20:59The British government was seen to be interfering with the way people lived their lives and the way society had
21:08been held together, had been made to function for generations and centuries.
21:13This list of insensitivities, who's to blame for this? Who is insensitive? The British government, the East India Company, the
21:22individual? Where does it come from?
21:23These are administrators who are coming out to India and they find a society that is completely alien to them.
21:33And they think that this is an inferior civilization because they don't match up to our European standards.
21:41Therefore, it is our duty to change and civilize this people of India.
21:47So, does that mean that these people with attitudes that we now regard as appalling, so condescending, so contemptuous, does
21:56it mean that nonetheless they could themselves have been conscientious and well-meaning?
22:02Yes, but they were totally insensitive to what impact their policies would have on the people who were being affected
22:12by those policies.
22:13There's a mismatch there, a complete divorce between intention and consequence.
22:21The number of people killed during the rebellion and its aftermath is almost unimaginable.
22:28800,000 people died, the great majority of them Indians.
22:34When the news reached Britain, there was outrage at the scale of the violence.
22:39Out of this horror, a reformed empire would emerge, personified by an empress who claimed to rule India's teeming millions
22:48with the affection of a mother.
22:58The shocking violence of the Indian rebellion shook British rule in India to its core.
23:06After a year of bloodshed, control was restored, but the British government could no longer allow the company to rule.
23:17The government removed the East India Company from control. Its corruption had long been an embarrassment and formalized rule by
23:26the crown.
23:27Queen Victoria would become the Empress of India, commencing the high point of the British Raj.
23:33Queen Victoria would be portrayed as mother to her subjects in India.
23:39The company's monumental buildings were repurposed and sumptuous new ones were built.
23:45Creating a capital city worthy of India's status as the jewel in the crown of the British Empire.
23:53This magnificent dome, borne aloft by 28 Corinthian columns, is the old post office and a metaphor for British colonial
24:01rule.
24:02Staffed mainly by Indians, the postal service spread out across the country, bringing letter deliveries to all.
24:10After the rebellion, just 20,000 British officials and soldiers were required to run Indian civil servants and troops who
24:21administered a subcontinent of 300 million.
24:27To understand how the empire now claimed legitimacy and distanced itself from the East India Company, I'm speaking to Anthony
24:36Katchaturian, a Kolkata historian and writer.
24:39So after 1857, what would you say about the British rebooting of its empire here in India?
24:46They had to truly start governing. It couldn't just be hoarding chests full of diamonds from the mines of Hyderabad.
24:53Queen Victoria's proclamation says we are here to provide you with equal governance and fair play and trade for everybody.
25:01Everybody will be treated equally. We will not impose religion on you.
25:05But the giveaway is right at the end. There are two or three words along the lines of but don't
25:09forget we are here to rule you because you are our subjects.
25:13How do you think it's possible that only about 20,000 British officials and soldiers are able to administer India?
25:21All of India going across from what we now call Pakistan right the way across to Bangladesh was chopped up
25:28into 250-odd districts.
25:30And they broke it down. So every district had an Indian civil services officer and a police superintendent.
25:37And these were the two left and right hands of the empire. They were the be all and end all
25:43for those districts.
25:44It strikes me that the British took their imperial duties seriously in the sense that, for example, the second sons
25:51of important families in Britain would come out here for decades.
25:56They'd bring up their families here and they would in a way be committed to India.
25:59They had a supreme belief that they were sent out here by the Queen herself and God above her.
26:06They had a divine right to rule. It was as simple as that.
26:14Towards the end of Queen Victoria's reign, a man took charge determined to exhibit the splendors of the Raj.
26:21George Nathaniel Curzon came from an old aristocratic family and in India he would perfect the empire's display in the
26:30most grandiose way.
26:32This footage from 1911 shows the scale of the Delhi Durbars, a spectacular imperial pageant, pioneered by him in 1903.
26:43It's a huge, huge statement.
26:46Curzon is trying to put across that the age of rapacity, of loot, have now ended.
26:51Now it is about the King Emperor ruling India. It's about governance.
26:55This is the grand statement that all of you kings and Maharajers from across the country come down here on
27:02bended knee and accept the right of the King Emperor to rule across the country in harmony.
27:11Curzon would also give an old company institution a new lease of life.
27:16At Barrackpore, the viceroys and their families could take their leisure in an exclusive British enclave.
27:28Calcutta was then the capital of British India. That meant an immense area including even present day Burma.
27:38And so from here was ruled an enormous number of human beings and to this place came people from all
27:47over the empire.
27:50So would I be right in thinking this is the ballroom?
27:52Yes it is. It is a ballroom with, as you can see, a sprung floor.
27:58Historian Manabi Mitra has researched the rarefied world of Bharatpur when it was home to the empire's leaders at play.
28:06It was probably one of the most celebrated ballrooms of British India because everybody who was somebody and was close
28:15enough to merit the viceroy's attention came here.
28:19We have people like Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill, George V, as well as royalty and nobility from all across Europe.
28:29And here's a rather surprising item. A fireplace. Would you need such a thing here?
28:34Bharatpur was an approximation of home. It was a grafting of a piece of little England on an Indian territory.
28:43So I suppose the fireplace was used as a reminder that here was a little slice of England.
28:54These photographs captured the British in India when they were off duty. They show a world of characteristically British pursuits,
29:03the lifestyle of Britain's upper classes transplanted to Asia.
29:07But how did the Raj's rulers relate to India all around them?
29:12So what we have here is a typical round of tiffin, which would have the usual fish dish and the
29:22meat dish, but done in a little different way. This is roast lamb, as you can see.
29:27Should I serve you some? Oh, thank you very much.
29:30Oh, and this looks delicious. What is this? Yes, this is maligatoni soup. It's soup made with lentils and chicken
29:37broth.
29:39Delightful. Right.
29:41Today I'm being served a tiffin lunch, the kind of food that would have been enjoyed by the Raj's top
29:47brass and their guests.
29:50Are you going to try the maligatoni?
29:52Yes.
29:54In their social life, did the British ever invite Indians here?
30:00The thing about Government House Barrackpore was that it was a kind of a sacred, inviolable zone where only friends
30:09would be invited.
30:10But waited upon hand and foot by Indians, I assume.
30:15Oh, yes. Yes.
30:15In all the photographs that we have seen of dining under the banyan tree, we see an army of Babachis
30:24and Khitmat cars and servers standing behind in full regalia, but always to wait upon the sahibs.
30:33What about the Indians, as it were, on the outside who probably couldn't even see in? What did they feel
30:38about this way of life?
30:39In this park, there are two portions. One is the private portion and the public portion. And in the public
30:45portion, people were allowed in. So they were allowed to have a glimpse of the park.
30:50They could come and gape at the imperial markers and they could look at them approvingly.
31:02The British in India were always a tiny minority. The imperial institutions that they created allowed them to rule over
31:11a vast population.
31:13But a challenge to British supremacy was brewing within one of the institutions that have made the Raj a success.
31:23Trams started running in Calcutta in 1901. The British famously covered India in railway tracks, built for their own purposes,
31:33of course, but nonetheless a useful legacy of infrastructure.
31:38The colonists also decided that they needed a broad class of Indian educated to be the administrators of the empire.
31:47But, of course, such educated civil servants would form the nucleus of those looking for self-government and, later, demanding
31:56independence.
32:00Then, in 1905, Curzon made a controversial decision with long-lasting consequences for the empire in India.
32:09Bengal was India's largest province with a population of 85 million people.
32:17Curzon decided it would be easier for the British to rule if it were split into two.
32:22He partitioned it along religious lines with the western province being majority Hindu and the eastern being majority Muslim.
32:38The British decision to partition Bengal was met with massive anger.
32:44From these riverbanks, the writer Rabindranath Tagore led a great procession declaring a day of national mourning.
32:53India was set on the path of peaceful but wounding protest.
33:05This song played the key role in the partition of Bengal around 1905.
33:11The Nobel laureate Tagore, he composed this song because this song was written as a poem in the mid-19th
33:18century.
33:20Musicians Sarendra Malik and Sumirjit Das come from old Kolkata families.
33:28Musicians Sarendra Malik and Sumirjit Das can be heard by his story and the name of IndiananCry instrument is not
33:29made because of the other city.
33:29Musicians Sarendra Malik is the threat to the Latin and the United States.
33:34Musicians Sarendra Malik and Sumirjit Das can help us and understand ourworthiness of the world.
33:34Musicians Sarendra Malik and Sumirjit Das can be heard by his story so that you can as a response to
33:34the very first song.
33:34You can ask and understand our culture and a response to the story of northern
33:35...
33:37...
33:37...
33:37...
33:42...
33:55What he was saying was that you can't have your mother split into two, the country should
34:02not be split into two.
34:04It was a song which brought Hindus, Muslims, everyone together on the streets and gave
34:10them the power to fight.
34:17Thank you so much, what a beautiful voice you have and how well you play.
34:21How did you both feel performing that?
34:25It has a lot of bloodshed involved in it, passion of people to get their motherland for them.
34:31So it's not just a song for us, it gives a big goosebumps whenever we perform this.
34:37What was Tagore's view of the British Roush?
34:40I think from 1905 and the partition of Bengal, because he quite understood the political
34:46game that was happening of not only splitting the land of India, but splitting the major religion
34:54of India, you know, the Muslims that way and the Hindus that way, and in a way dividing
35:00them to rule them.
35:01British people would probably think, hmm, the struggle for Indian independence, Gandhi.
35:07But all of the things we've been talking about, well most of them, are while Gandhi is still
35:12in South Africa.
35:12So, for you, is Tagore as bigger figure, maybe a bigger figure in the movement as Gandhi?
35:19Yes.
35:20The partition had hurt Bangladesh and India, the two parts of Bengal.
35:24So these were the places which created the platform for the Nehru's, Gandhi's and the
35:29faces of the movement to stand where they are today.
35:32The British reversed their decision and reunited Bengal in 1911.
35:38But their insensitivity had launched India's independence movement.
35:43When the empire was drawn into the Great War, Indians offered their support but demanded new
35:49freedoms.
35:56For centuries, Mughal India was one of the world's great powers.
36:01It controlled a fifth of the world's wealth.
36:04But that changed when the British came.
36:14I invented a factory that sounds like the 19th century and looks like a Renaissance painting.
36:22These beautiful shafts of light which are illuminating the dust which is everywhere in
36:28the air.
36:29In 19th century India, factories like this were rare.
36:33At that time, Britain was the workshop of the world.
36:38And India's once thriving economy had been reduced to a supplier of raw materials for
36:44British factories.
36:46For Robert Clive, cotton was one of the great riches of India.
36:50But then jute, a versatile and cheap crop which had been used for millennia, was found
36:56to have new uses for rope, for sacking and as a backing for linoleum.
37:02During the First World War, Britain needed India to ramp up its manufacturing output.
37:09Bengali jute production went into overdrive for sandbags and tarpaulins in the trenches.
37:15And 1.4 million Indians answered Britain's call to arms.
37:21India's tremendous sacrifice for empire emboldened it to make demands.
37:29When Britain went to war in 1914, it summoned forces from across the empire, hugely boosting
37:36the numbers that could be deployed.
37:39Indians fought tenaciously for empire, but also with future freedom in mind.
37:44For why should not India gain as its reward the same self-government by then enjoyed by Australia
37:52and Canada?
37:57In the Great War, Britain promised India self-government.
38:01But in its aftermath, those promises were broken.
38:08Then a terrible massacre occurred in Amritsa.
38:13In this place, called the Djalianwala Bagh, British troops opened fire on unarmed civilians gathered in peaceful protest.
38:31The slaughter was a turning point for many Indians, convincing them that they must break free.
38:40Well, how did Indians feel when in 1939, yet again, the British Empire asked them to go and fight?
38:48In 1939, the situation was much more complex.
38:52Kashyyyk Roy is a professor of military history.
38:55The political class, they are more clever, that it should not be 1919 again.
39:02Then that's why the Congress said that Britain must declare a debt for independence.
39:09Otherwise Congress would not give support.
39:11What is the view towards the First World War of Mohandas Gandhi?
39:15And what is his view towards the Second World War?
39:17Between the First World War and the Second World War, Gandhi's view completely transformed.
39:25He said, don't believe the British.
39:27The British will again go back to their promises as they have done after the First World War.
39:31Nobody could really trust Britain.
39:34In World War II, Britain once again mobilized the Empire, despite resistance from Indian leaders.
39:42Indian troops would play a crucial role in the Allies' victory.
39:47But even as Indian soldiers fought in theatres of war across the globe, here in Bengal, a catastrophic famine brought
39:55death to millions.
39:58How important is the Bengal famine of 1943 in the story of India?
40:05It is our Holocaust.
40:07Everybody knows about the Jewish Holocaust, but very few in the world know about the Bengal Holocaust, engineered by the
40:14British.
40:16So much so...
40:17That's your view, that it was engineered by the British?
40:19Yeah.
40:20It was structural because whatever food was there in Bengal, it had to be sucked out to feed the army.
40:28Remember, imperialism mostly depended not merely on brute force, but also on confidence, moral legitimacy.
40:34So that completely washed away.
40:59So that completely washed away.
41:03And Indian non-violence became unstoppably victorious.
41:11Britain partitioned India from Pakistan and gave them both independence in 1947.
41:18In the seven decades since, India has rediscovered its power and has become a global economic force once more.
41:26But how does it deal with its history of subjugation?
41:31When you look back at the British in Indian history, the fact that Indians were not allowed at the top
41:36table, the massacre at Amritsa, the famine in Bengal, are these still things that really rankle?
41:44They do rankle in some minds, especially in people who were directly affected by these things.
41:49Jayanta Sengupta is curator of the Victoria Memorial Hall, the most visited monument in Kolkata and the most visible relic
41:58of its British past.
42:00But by and large, I think we have come to terms with them.
42:03And the British rule, notwithstanding how exploitative and how brutal the empire was, is part of our being, is part
42:12of our soul.
42:13And we carry it with acceptance and tolerance.
42:16How do the British in their long time in India change India?
42:21If you look at the economic impact of how the British ruled India, the industries, the artisanal industries declined.
42:29It was reduced to a raw material producing country geared to the British colonial interests.
42:34Those who want to put the best gloss on British rule talk about good administration, railways, justice, education, a single
42:45language.
42:46What do you make of those things?
42:47These things were created in order to serve the interests of the empire.
42:50But if it was not a part of good governance in the colonial period, it has given us a legacy
42:58which we have shaped to our best interests over the long run.
43:02The Indians took it on and then made it into an expression of India's democracy.
43:15Britain came to India to exploit it.
43:18The East India Company looted its wealth and toppled its rulers.
43:23The Indian lived as a second-class citizen in his own country.
43:26But British colonial rule brought together 2,000 ethnic groups in a single country and gave it a unifying language
43:36and infrastructure and government and systems of law and education.
43:41The India of today, the world's largest democracy, one of its largest economies, is inevitably the product of the relationship
43:50between India and Britain.
43:53A number of India's industries have boomed and become multinationals, heavily invested in the British economy.
44:00Today, as India's wealth grows, it's easier to understand that this subcontinent was once a repository of riches.
44:14In the next programme, I discover how Britain's empire was built by pirates.
44:20They were given permission from the King of England to plunder, and plunder they did.
44:25How millions were ripped from their homelands and stripped of their identities.
44:29I cannot say exactly where I'm from. I just can't trace that back.
44:35And Michael's empire journey continues next Friday at 9.
44:39And when empirical shareholders got their dividends, they spent it on some serious stuff.
44:4410 Ways the Victorians changed Britain, new tomorrow at 7.50.
44:48Next to night, they may hate our songs, but we love the show, especially when Eurovision goes horribly wrong in
44:56just a tick.
44:56.
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