Class 9 History PDF
Class 9 History PDF
Class 9 History PDF
2018-19
ISBN 81-7450-536-9
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March 2006 Phalguna 1927
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2018-19
Foreword
The success of this effort depends on the steps that school principals and
teachers will take to encourage children to reflect on their own learning and
to pursue imaginative activities and questions. We must recognize that, given
space, time and freedom, children generate new knowledge by engaging with
the information passed on to them by adults. Treating the prescribed textbook
as the sole basis of examination is one of the key reasons why other resources
and sites of learning are ignored. Inculcating creativity and initiative is possible
if we perceive and treat children as participants in learning, not as receivers
of a fixed body of knowledge.
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of this textbook; we are grateful to their principals for making this
possible. We are indebted to the institutions and organisations, which
have generously permitted us to draw upon their resources, material and
personnel. We are especially grateful to the members of the National
Monitoring Committee, appointed by the Department of Secondary and
Higher Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development under
the Chairpersonship of Professor Mrinal Miri and Professor G. P.
Deshpande, for their valuable time and contribution. As an organisation
committed to systemic reform and continuous improvement in the quality
of its products, NCERT welcomes comments and suggestions which will
enable us to undertake further revision and refinement.
Director
iv
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History and a Changing World
As we live our life in the present and read about the happenings around the world in
newspapers, we do not usually pause to think about the longer history of these
events. We see change before our eyes, but do not always ask, why are things changing?
Very often we do not even notice that things were not the same in the past. History
is about tracking these changes, understanding how and why they are taking place,
how the present world in which we live has evolved.
The focus of the history books of Classes IX and X is on the emergence of the contemporary
world. In earlier classes (VI – VIII) you have read about the history of India. In the next
two years (Classes IX and X) you will see how the story of India’s pasts is related to the
larger history of the world. We cannot understand what was happening within India unless
we see this connection. This is particularly true about a world in which economies and
societies have become increasingly inter-connected. History cannot be always contained
within defined territorial boundaries.
In any case there is no reason to think of national territorial boundaries as the only valid unit
of our study. There are times when a focus on a small region - a locality, a village, an island,
a desert tract, a forest, a mountain - helps us understand the rich variety in people’s lives and
histories that make up the life of the nation. We cannot talk of the nation without the
people, nor the locality without the nation. Borrowing from the statement of a famous
French historian, Fernand Braudel, we may also say: it is not possible to talk of the nation
without the world.
The textbooks you will read in the next two years will combine these different levels of
focus. We move between a close focus on particular communities and regions to the
history of the nation; between the histories as they unfold in India and Europe to the
developments in Africa and Indonesia. Our focus will shift according
to themes.
What are these themes and how are they organised? What is the logic behind the
choices of themes?
All too often in the past, the history of the modern world was associated with the
history of the west. It was as if change and progress happened only in the west. As if
the histories of other countries were frozen in time, they were motionless and static.
People in the west were seen as enterprising, innovative, scientific, industrious, efficient
and willing to change. People in the east - or in Africa and South America - were
considered traditional, lazy, superstitious, and resistant to change.
For many years now these notions have been questioned by historians. We know
now that every society has had its history of change. So in understanding the making
of the modern world we have to look at the way different societies experienced and
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fashioned these changes. We have to see how the histories of these different countries
were inter-linked. Changes in one society shaped the other; developments in India and
other colonies impacted on Europe. The contemporary world was not shaped by the
west alone.
So the history of the contemporary world is not only about the growth of
industries and trade, technology and science, railways and roads. It is equally
about the forest dwellers and pastoralists, shifting cultivators and small peasants.
All these social groups in diverse ways have played their part in making the
contemporary world what it is. And it is this varied world which you will learn
about this year.
The textbooks of Classes IX and X have eight chapters each, divided into three
sections. We hope you will enjoy reading all the chapters. But you are requried
to read only five chapters: two each from Sections I and II, and one from
Section III.
Section I, in both books, focuses on some of the events and processes that are critical
to the understanding of the modern world. This year you will read about the French
Revolution, the Russian Revolution and Nazism in this section. Next year you will
know about nationalism and anti-colonial movements, in India and elsewhere.
Section II will move from dramatic events to the routines of people’s lives – their
economic activities and livelihood patterns. You will see what the contemporary
world has meant for forest people, pastoralists and peasants; and how they have
coped with and defined the nature of these changes. Next year you will read
more about the processes of industrialisation and urbanisation, capitalism
and colonialism.
Section III will introduce you to histories of everyday life. You will read about
the history of sport and clothing (Class IX) and about printing and reading, novels and
newspapers (Class X). Why should we study the history of sport and clothing, you
might ask. Do we not read about them every day in newspapers and magazines?
True, we read a lot about such issues. But what we read does not tell us about their
histories. They give us no idea of how things have evolved and why they change. Once
we learn to ask historical questions about all that is around us, history in fact acquires a
new meaning. It allows us to see everyday things from a different angle. We realise that
even seemingly ordinary things have a history that is important for us to know.
To know how the contemporary world has evolved we will therefore move from
India to Africa, from Europe to Indonesia. We will read both about the big events
and important ideas, as well as everyday life. In the process of these journeys you
will discover how history can be exciting, how it can help us understand the world
in which we live.
Neeladri Bhattacharya
Chief Advisor - History
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Textbook Development Committee
CHAIRPERSON, ADVISORY GROUP FOR TEXTBOOKS IN SOCIAL SCIENCE FOR THE
S ECONDARY STAGE
Hari Vasudevan, Professor, Department of History, Calcutta University, Kolkata
(Chapter 2).
C HIEF ADVISOR
Neeladri Bhattacharya, Professor, Centre for Historical Studies, School of Social
Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (Chapters 5 and 6).
Members
Monica Juneja, Professor, Maria-Goeppert-Mayer Guest Professor,
Historisches Seminar, University of Hanover, Germany (Chapter 1).
Vandana Joshi, Lecturer, Venkateswara College, University of Delhi,
New Delhi (Chapter 3).
Nandini Sundar, Professor, Department of Sociology, Delhi School of
Economics, University of Delhi, Delhi(Chapter 4).
Mukul Kesavan, Professor, Department of History, Jamia Millia Islamia,
New Delhi (Chapter 7).
Janaki Nair, Professor, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata (Chapter 8).
Rekha Krishnan, Head of Senior School, Vasant Valley School, New Delhi
Rashmi Paliwal, Eklavya, Hoshangabad, Madhya Pradesh.
Ajay Dandekar, Visiting fellow, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.
Pritish Acharya, Reader, Regional Institute of Education, Bhubaneswar,
Orissa.
Member–Coordinator
Kiran Devendra, Professor, Department of Elementary Education, NCERT,
New Delhi.
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2018-19
Acknowledgements
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Contents
Foreword iii
History and a Changing World v
2018-19
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SECTION I
Chapter I is on the French Revolution. Today we often take the ideas of liberty,
EVENTS AND PROCESSES
freedom and equality for granted. But we need to remind ourselves that these ideas
also have a history. By looking at the French Revolution you will read a small part
of that history. The French Revolution led to the end of monarchy in France. A
society based on privileges gave way to a new system of governance. The Declaration
of the Rights of Man during the revolution, announced the coming of a new time.
The idea that all individuals had rights and could claim equality became part of a
new language of politics. These notions of equality and freedom emerged as the central
ideas of a new age; but in different countries they were reinterpreted and rethought
in many different ways. The anti-colonial movements in India and China, Africa and
Revolution
South America, produced ideas that were innovative and original, but they spoke in
a language that gained currency only from the late eighteenth century.
In Chapter II, you will read about the coming of socialism in Europe, and the dramatic
events that forced the ruling monarch, Tsar Nicholas II, to give up power. The Russian
French
it faced and the measures it undertook. While Soviet Russia pushed ahead with
industrialisation and mechanisation of agriculture, it denied the rights of citizens
that were essential to the working of a democratic society. The ideals of socialism,
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however, became part of the anti-colonial movements in different countries. Today
the Soviet Union has broken up and socialism is in crisis but through the twentieth
century it has been a powerful force in the shaping of the contemporary world.
Chapter III will take you to Germany. It will discuss the rise of Hitler and the
politics of Nazism. You will read about the children and women in Nazi Germany,
about schools and concentration camps. You will see how Nazism denied various
minorities a right to live, how it drew upon a long tradition of anti-Jewish feelings
to persecute the Jews, and how it waged a relentless battle against democracy and
socialism. But the story of Nazism’s rise is not only about a few specific events,
about massacres and killings. It is about the working of an elaborate and frightening
system which operated at different levels. Some in India were impressed with the
ideas of Hitler but most watched the rise of Nazism with horror.
The history of the modern world is not simply a story of the unfolding of freedom
and democracy. It has also been a story of violence and tyranny, death and destruction.
India and the Contemporary World
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Chapter I
The French Revolution
On the morning of 14 July 1789, the city of Paris was in a state of
alarm. The king had commanded troops to move into the city. Rumours
spread that he would soon order the army to open fire upon the citizens.
Some 7,000 men and women gathered in front of the town hall and
decided to form a peoples’ militia. They broke into a number of
government buildings in search of arms.
R e v o l u t i o n
the commander of the Bastille was killed and the prisoners released –
though there were only seven of them. Yet the Bastille was hated by all,
because it stood for the despotic power of the king. The fortress was
demolished and its stone fragments were sold in the markets to all
those who wished to keep a souvenir of its destruction.
The days that followed saw more rioting both in Paris and the
countryside. Most people were protesting against the high price of bread.
Much later, when historians looked back upon this time, they saw it as
the beginning of a chain of events that ultimately led to the execution
of the king in France, though most people at the time did not anticipate
this outcome. How and why did this happen?
F rR e ev o l nu t i ocn h
T h T eh e French
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1 French Society During the Late Eighteenth Century
XVI, France helped the thirteen American colonies to gain their Nobility
independence from the common enemy, Britain. The war added more
than a billion livres to a debt that had already risen to more than 2
3rd estate
billion livres. Lenders who gave the state credit, now began to charge
10 per cent interest on loans. So the French government was obliged Big businessmen,
merchants, court
to spend an increasing percentage of its budget on interest payments officials, lawyers etc.
alone. To meet its regular expenses, such as the cost of maintaining
Peasants and
an army, the court, running government offices or universities, the artisans
state was forced to increase taxes. Yet even this measure would not
have sufficed. French society in the eighteenth century was divided Small peasants,
landless labour,
into three estates, and only members of the third estate paid taxes. servants
The society of estates was part of the feudal system that dated back to
the middle ages. The term Old Regime is usually used to describe the Fig.2 – A Society of Estates.
society and institutions of France before 1789. Note that within the Third Estate some were
rich and others poor.
Fig. 2 shows how the system of estates in French society was organised.
Peasants made up about 90 per cent of the population. However,
only a small number of them owned the land they cultivated. About
60 per cent of the land was owned by nobles, the Church and other
richer members of the third estate. The members of the first two
estates, that is, the clergy and the nobility, enjoyed certain privileges by
India and the Contemporary World
birth. The most important of these was exemption from paying taxes to
the state. The nobles further enjoyed feudal privileges. These included
feudal dues, which they extracted from the peasants. Peasants were obliged
New words
to render services to the lord – to work in his house and fields – to serve
in the army or to participate in building roads. Livre – Unit of currency in France,
discontinued in 1794
The Church too extracted its share of taxes called tithes from the peasants,
Clergy – Group of persons invested with
and finally, all members of the third estate had to pay taxes to the state.
special functions in the church
These included a direct tax, called taille, and a number of indirect taxes
Tithe – A tax levied by the church, comprising
which were levied on articles of everyday consumption like salt or tobacco.
one-tenth of the agricultural produce
The burden of financing activities of the state through taxes was borne
Taille – Tax to be paid directly to the state
by the third estate alone.
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‘This poor fellow brings everything,
grain, fruits, money, salad. The fat lord
sits there, ready to accept it all. He does
not even care to grace him with a look.’
Activity
Explain why the artist has portrayed the
nobleman as the spider and the peasant
as the fly.
demand. So the price of bread which was the staple diet of the majority
rose rapidly. Most workers were employed as labourers in workshops New words
whose owner fixed their wages. But wages did not keep pace with
Subsistence crisis – An extreme situation where
The
the rise in prices. So the gap between the poor and the rich widened.
Things became worse whenever drought or hail reduced the harvest. the basic means of livelihood are endangered
This led to a subsistence crisis, something that occurred frequently Anonymous – One whose name remains
in France during the Old Regime. unknown
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1.2 How a Subsistence Crisis Happens
Disease
epidemics
Activity
Fill in the blank boxes in Fig. 4 with
appropriate terms from among the following:
1.3 A Growing Middle Class Envisages an End to Privileges
Food riots, scarcity of grain, increased
In the past, peasants and workers had participated in revolts against number of deaths, rising food prices,
increasing taxes and food scarcity. But they lacked the means and weaker bodies.
programmes to carry out full-scale measures that would bring about
a change in the social and economic order. This was left to those
groups within the third estate who had become prosperous and had
access to education and new ideas.
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of the monarch. Rousseau carried the idea forward, proposing a
form of government based on a social contract between people
and their representatives. In The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu
proposed a division of power within the government between
the legislative, the executive and the judiciary. This model of
government was put into force in the USA, after the thirteen
colonies declared their independence from Britain. The American
constitution and its guarantee of individual rights was an important
example for political thinkers in France.
Source A
2. An Englishman, Arthur Young, travelled through France during the years from 1787 to
1789 and wrote detailed descriptions of his journeys. He often commented on what he
Revolution
saw.
Source
‘He who decides to be served and waited upon by slaves, ill-treated slaves at that, must
be fully aware that by doing so he is placing his property and his life in a situation which is
very different from that he would be in, had he chosen the services of free and well-
treated men. And he who chooses to dine to the accompaniment of his victims’ groans,
should not complain if during a riot his daughter gets kidnapped or his son’s throat is slit.’
French
Activity What message is Young trying to convey here? Whom does he mean when he speaks of‘ ‘slaves’?
The
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2 The Outbreak of the Revolution
Louis XVI had to increase taxes for reasons you have learnt in the
previous section. How do you think he could have gone about doing Some important dates
this? In France of the Old Regime the monarch did not have the 1774
Louis XVI becomes king of France, faces
power to impose taxes according to his will alone. Rather he had to empty treasury and growing discontent
call a meeting of the Estates General which would then pass his within society of the Old Regime.
proposals for new taxes. The Estates General was a political body to 1789
Convocation of Estates General, Third
which the three estates sent their representatives. However, the Estate forms National Assembly, the
monarch alone could decide when to call a meeting of this body. The Bastille is stormed, peasant revolts in the
countryside.
last time it was done was in 1614.
1791
A constitution is framed to limit the powers
On 5 May 1789, Louis XVI called together an assembly of the Estates of the king and to guarantee basic rights to
General to pass proposals for new taxes. A resplendent hall in all human beings.
Versailles was prepared to host the delegates. The first and second 1792-93
France becomes a republic, the king is
estates sent 300 representatives each, who were seated in rows facing beheaded.
each other on two sides, while the 600 members of the third estate Overthrow of the Jacobin republic, a
Directory rules France.
had to stand at the back. The third estate was represented by its more
1804
prosperous and educated members. Peasants, artisans and women Napoleon becomes emperor of France,
were denied entry to the assembly. However, their grievances and annexes large parts of Europe.
1815
demands were listed in some 40,000 letters which the representatives Napoleon defeated at Waterloo.
had brought with them.
Voting in the Estates General in the past had been conducted according
to the principle that each estate had one vote. This time too Louis
XVI was determined to continue the same practice. But members of
the third estate demanded that voting now be conducted by the
assembly as a whole, where each member would have one vote. This
was one of the democratic principles put forward by philosophers
like Rousseau in his book The Social Contract. When the king rejected
India and the Contemporary World
this proposal, members of the third estate walked out of the assembly
in protest. Activity
The representatives of the third estate viewed themselves as spokesmen
Representatives of the Third Estate take the
for the whole French nation. On 20 June they assembled in the hall oath raising their arms in the direction of
of an indoor tennis court in the grounds of Versailles. They declared Bailly, the President of the Assembly,
themselves a National Assembly and swore not to disperse till they standing on a table in the centre. Do you
had drafted a constitution for France that would limit the powers of think that during the actual event Bailly
the monarch. They were led by Mirabeau and Abbé Sieyès. Mirabeau would have stood with his back to the
was born in a noble family but was convinced of the need to do away assembled deputies? What could have
with a society of feudal privilege. He brought out a journal and been David’s intention in placing Bailly
delivered powerful speeches to the crowds assembled at Versailles. (Fig.5) the way he has done?
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Fig.5 – The Tennis Court Oath.
Preparatory sketch for a large painting by Jacques-Louis David. The painting was intended to be hung in the National Assembly.
Revolution
several districts seized hoes and pitchforks and attacked chateaux.
Regions not affected by the Great Fear
They looted hoarded grain and burnt down documents containing Areas of agrarian revolt early 1789
Epicentres of main panic movements
records of manorial dues. A large number of nobles fled from their The spread of the Great Fear
decree abolishing the feudal system of obligations and taxes. Members Chateau (pl. chateaux) – Castle or stately
of the clergy too were forced to give up their privileges. Tithes were residence belonging to a king or a nobleman
abolished and lands owned by the Church were confiscated. As a Manor – An estate consisting of the lord’s
result, the government acquired assets worth at least 2 billion livres. lands and his mansion
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2.1 France Becomes a Constitutional Monarchy
The National Assembly completed the draft of the constitution in
1791. Its main object was to limit the powers of the monarch. These
powers instead of being concentrated in the hands of one person,
were now separated and assigned to different institutions – the
legislature, executive and judiciary. This made France a constitutional
monarchy. Fig. 7 explains how the new political system worked.
OL VOTE
NTR
CO
Ministers Electors (50,000 men)
V
O
T
E
VOTE
Active citizens: entitled to vote. About 4 million of a
population of 28 million
10
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Fig.8 – The Declaration of the Rights of Man
and Citizen, painted by the artist Le Barbier in
1790. The figure on the right represents France.
The figure on the left symbolises the law.
Source C
by birth and could not be taken away. It was the duty of the state to 5. The law has the right to forbid only
actions that are injurious to society.
protect each citizen’s natural rights.
6. Law is the expression of the general
will. All citizens have the right to participate
in its formation, personally or through their
representatives. All citizens are equal
before it.
Source B
7. No man may be accused, arrested or
detained, except in cases determined by
Revolution
The revolutionary journalist Jean-Paul the law.
Marat commented in his newspaper 11. Every citizen may speak, write and print
L’Ami du peuple (The friend of the freely; he must take responsibility for the
people) on the Constitution drafted by abuse of such liberty in cases determined
the National Assembly: by the law.
‘The task of representing the people 12. For the maintenance of the public
has been given to the rich … the lot of force and for the expenses of
French
11
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Box 1
12
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Red Phrygian cap: Cap worn by a slave
upon becoming free.
Blue-white-red: The
national colours of France.
Activity
1. Identify the symbols in Box 1 which stand
for liberty, equality and fraternity.
Revolution
The winged woman:
Personification of the law. 4. Which groups of French society would have
gained from the Constitution of 1791?
Which groups would have had reason to
The Law Tablet: The law is the same for all, be dissatisfied? What developments does
and all are equal before it. Marat (Source B) anticipate in the future?
French
13
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3 France Abolishes Monarchy and Becomes a Republic
New words
14
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Fig.10 – Nanine Vallain, Liberty.
This is one of the rare paintings by a woman artist.
The revolutionary events made it possible for
women to train with established painters and to
exhibit their works in the Salon, which was an
exhibition held every two years.
The painting is a female allegory of liberty – that
is, the female form symbolises the idea of freedom.
Activity
Look carefully at the painting and identify the
objects which are political symbols you saw in
Box 1 (broken chain, red cap, fasces, Charter
of the Declaration of Rights). The pyramid
stands for equality, often represented by a
triangle. Use the symbols to interpret the
painting. Describe your impressions of the
female figure of liberty.
Revolution
In the summer of 1792 the Jacobins planned an insurrection of a
large number of Parisians who were angered by the short supplies
and high prices of food. On the morning of August 10 they stormed
the Palace of the Tuileries, massacred the king’s guards and held
the king himself as hostage for several hours. Later the Assembly
French
voted to imprison the royal family. Elections were held. From now
on all men of 21 years and above, regardless of wealth, got the right
to vote.
The
15
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government. There is no hereditary monarchy. You can try and New words
find out about some other countries that are republics and investigate
when and how they became so. Treason – Betrayal of one’s country or
government
Louis XVI was sentenced to death by a court on the charge of
treason. On 21 January 1793 he was executed publicly at the
Place de la Concorde. The queen Marie Antoinette met with the
same fate shortly after.
3.1 The Reign of Terror
The period from 1793 to 1794 is referred to as the Reign of
Terror. Robespierre followed a policy of severe control and
punishment. All those whom he saw as being ‘enemies’ of the Source D
republic – ex-nobles and clergy, members of other political
parties, even members of his own party who did not agree with What is liberty? Two conflicting views:
his methods – were arrested, imprisoned and then tried by a The revolutionary journalist Camille
revolutionary tribunal. If the court found them ‘guilty’ they Desmoulins wrote the following in 1793. He
was executed shortly after, during the Reign
were guillotined. The guillotine is a device consisting of two
of Terror.
poles and a blade with which a person is beheaded. It was named
‘Some people believe that Liberty is like a
after Dr Guillotin who invented it. child, which needs to go through a phase of
being disciplined before it attains maturity.
Robespierre’s government issued laws placing a maximum ceiling Quite the opposite. Liberty is Happiness,
on wages and prices. Meat and bread were rationed. Peasants Reason, Equality, Justice, it is the Declaration
were forced to transport their grain to the cities and sell it at of Rights … You would like to finish off all
your enemies by guillotining them. Has
prices fixed by the government. The use of more expensive white anyone heard of something more senseless?
flour was forbidden; all citizens were required to eat the pain Would it be possible to bring a single person
d’égalité (equality bread), a loaf made of wholewheat. Equality to the scaffold without making ten more
enemies among his relations and friends?’
was also sought to be practised through forms of speech and
address. Instead of the traditional Monsieur (Sir) and Madame On 7 February 1794,
(Madam) all French men and women were henceforth Citoyen Robespierre made a
speech at the
and Citoyenne (Citizen). Churches were shut down and their
Convention, which was
buildings converted into barracks or offices. then carried by the
newspaper Le Moniteur
India and the Contemporary World
Robespierre pursued his policies so relentlessly that even his Universel . Here is an
supporters began to demand moderation. Finally, he was extract from it:
convicted by a court in July 1794, arrested and on the next day ‘To establish and consolidate democracy, to
sent to the guillotine. achieve the peaceful rule of constitutional
laws, we must first finish the war of liberty
against tyranny …. We must annihilate the
Activity enemies of the republic at home and abroad,
or else we shall perish. In time of Revolution
Compare the views of Desmoulins and Robespierre. How does a democratic government may rely on terror.
each one understand the use of state force? What does Terror is nothing but justice, swift, severe
Robespierre mean by ‘the war of liberty against tyranny’? How and inflexible; … and is used to meet the
does Desmoulins perceive liberty? Refer once more to Source C. most urgent needs of the fatherland. To curb
the enemies of Liberty through terror is the
What did the constitutional laws on the rights of individuals lay
right of the founder of the Republic.’
down? Discuss your views on the subject in class.
16
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Fig.11 – The revolutionary government sought to mobilise the loyalty of its subjects through various means – one of
them was the staging of festivals like this one. Symbols from civilisations of ancient Greece and Rome were used to convey
the aura of a hallowed history. The pavilion on the raised platform in the middle carried by classical columns was made of
perishable material that could be dismantled. Describe the groups of people, their clothes, their roles and actions. What
impression of a revolutionary festival does this image convey?
Revolution
denied the vote to non-propertied sections of society. It provided
for two elected legislative councils. These then appointed a Directory,
an executive made up of five members. This was meant as a safeguard
against the concentration of power in a one-man executive as under
the Jacobins. However, the Directors often clashed with the legislative
councils, who then sought to dismiss them. The political instability
French
of the Directory paved the way for the rise of a military dictator,
Napoleon Bonaparte.
17
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4 Did Women have a Revolution?
From the very beginning women were active participants in the events
which brought about so many important changes in French society.
They hoped that their involvement would pressurise the revolutionary
government to introduce measures to improve their lives. Most
women of the third estate had to work for a living. They worked as Activity
India and the Contemporary World
18
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main demands was that women enjoy the same political rights as
men. Women were disappointed that the Constitution of 1791 reduced
them to passive citizens. They demanded the right to vote, to be
elected to the Assembly and to hold political office. Only then, they
felt, would their interests be represented in the new government.
Source E
Revolution
(1748-1793)
Olympe de Gouges was one of the most important of the politically
active women in revolutionary France. She protested against the
Constitution and the Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen as
they excluded women from basic rights that each human being was
French
for forcibly closing down women’s clubs. She was tried by the
National Convention, which charged her with treason. Soon after
this she was executed.
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Source F
Source G
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5 The Abolition of Slavery
Revolution
giving them European clothes to wear.
Slavery was finally abolished in French colonies in 1848.
Activity
New words
Record your impressions of this print
French
Negroes – A term used for the indigenous people of Africa (Fig. 14). Describe the objects lying on the
south of the Sahara. It is a derogatory term not in common use ground. What do they symbolise? What
any longer attitude does the picture express towards
Emancipation – The act of freeing non-European slaves?
The
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6 The Revolution and Everyday Life
Can politics change the clothes people wear, the language they speak
or the books they read? The years following 1789 in France saw many
such changes in the lives of men, women and children. The
revolutionary governments took it upon themselves to pass laws that
would translate the ideals of liberty and equality into everyday practice.
One important law that came into effect soon after the storming of
the Bastille in the summer of 1789 was the abolition of censorship. In
the Old Regime all written material and cultural activities – books,
newspapers, plays – could be published or performed only after they
had been approved by the censors of the king. Now the Declaration
of the Rights of Man and Citizen proclaimed freedom of speech and
expression to be a natural right. Newspapers, pamphlets, books and
printed pictures flooded the towns of France from where they
travelled rapidly into the countryside. They all described and discussed
the events and changes taking place in France. Freedom of the press Activity
also meant that opposing views of events could be expressed. Each
side sought to convince the others of its position through the medium Describe the picture in your own words. What
of print. Plays, songs and festive processions attracted large numbers are the images that the artist has used to
communicate the following ideas: greed,
of people. This was one way they could grasp and identify with ideas
equality, justice, takeover by the state of the
such as liberty or justice that political philosophers wrote about at
assets of the church?
length in texts which only a handful of educated people could read.
India and the Contemporary World
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Fig.16 - Marat addressing the people. This is a painting by Louis-Leopold Boilly.
Recall what you have learnt about Marat in this chapter. Describe the scene around him. Account for his great popularity.
What kinds of reactions would a painting like this produce among viewers in the Salon?
Conclusion
In 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself Emperor of France.
He set out to conquer neighbouring European countries, dispossessing
dynasties and creating kingdoms where he placed members of his family.
Revolution
Napoleon saw his role as a moderniser of Europe. He introduced many
laws such as the protection of private property and a uniform system of
weights and measures provided by the decimal system. Initially, many
saw Napoleon as a liberator who would bring freedom for the people.
But soon the Napoleonic armies came to be viewed everywhere as an
French
The ideas of liberty and democratic rights were the most important
legacy of the French Revolution. These spread from France to the Fig.17 – Napoleon crossing the Alps, painting
rest of Europe during the nineteenth century, where feudal systems by David.
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were abolished. Colonised peoples reworked the idea of freedom from Box 2
bondage into their movements to create a sovereign nation state. Tipu Raja Rammohan Roy was one of those who
Sultan and Rammohan Roy are two examples of individuals who was inspired by new ideas that were spreading
through Europe at that time. The French
responded to the ideas coming from revolutionary France. Revolution and later, the July Revolution excited
his imagination.
‘He could think and talk of nothing else when he
heard of the July Revolution in France in 1830.
On his way to England at Cape Town he insisted
on visiting frigates (warships) flying the
revolutionary tri-colour flag though he had been
temporarily lamed by an accident.’
Susobhan Sarkar, Notes on the Bengal Renaissance 1946.
Activities
1. Find out more about any one of the revolutionary figures you have read
about in this chapter. Write a short biography of this person.
2. The French Revolution saw the rise of newspapers describing the events of
each day and week. Collect information and pictures on any one event and
Activities
write a newspaper article. You could also conduct an imaginary interview
with important personages such as Mirabeau, Olympe de Gouges or
Robespierre. Work in groups of two or three. Each group could then put up
their articles on a board to produce a wallpaper on the French Revolution.
Questions
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Socialism in Europe and
Chapter ll
the Russian Revolution
1 The Age of Social Change
In the previous chapter you read about the powerful ideas of freedom
and equality that circulated in Europe after the French Revolution.
The French Revolution opened up the possibility of creating a
dramatic change in the way in which society was structured. As you
Europe
We will look briefly at some of the important political traditions of
the nineteenth century, and see how they influenced change. Then inthe Russian
we will focus on one historical event in which there was an attempt
at a radical transformation of society. Through the revolution in
Russia, socialism became one of the most significant and powerful
Socialism in Europe and
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favour of one religion or another (Britain favoured the Church of
England, Austria and Spain favoured the Catholic Church). Liberals
also opposed the uncontrolled power of dynastic rulers. They wanted
to safeguard the rights of individuals against governments. They
argued for a representative, elected parliamentary government, subject
to laws interpreted by a well-trained judiciary that was independent
of rulers and officials. However, they were not ‘democrats’. They
did not believe in universal adult franchise, that is, the right of every
citizen to vote. They felt men of property mainly should have the
vote. They also did not want the vote for women.
Such differing ideas about societal change clashed during the social
and political turmoil that followed the French Revolution. The
various attempts at revolution and national transformation in the
nineteenth century helped define both the limits and potential of
these political tendencies.
India and the Contemporary World
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Fig.1 – The London poor in the mid-nineteenth century as seen by a
contemporary.
From: Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, 1861.
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equal rights. After 1815, Giuseppe Mazzini, an Italian nationalist, conspired
with others to achieve this in Italy. Nationalists elsewhere – including India
– read his writings.
Socialists were against private property, and saw it as the root of all social ills
of the time. Why? Individuals owned the property that gave employment
but the propertied were concerned only with personal gain and not with
the welfare of those who made the property productive. So if society as a
whole rather than single individuals controlled property, more attention
would be paid to collective social interests. Socialists wanted this change and
campaigned for it.
How could a society without property operate? What would be the basis of
socialist society?
Socialists had different visions of the future. Some believed in the idea of
cooperatives. Robert Owen (1771-1858), a leading English manufacturer,
sought to build a cooperative community called New Harmony in Indiana
(USA). Other socialists felt that cooperatives could not be built on a wide
scale only through individual initiative: they demanded that governments
encourage cooperatives. In France, for instance, Louis Blanc (1813-1882)
wanted the government to encourage cooperatives and replace capitalist
enterprises. These cooperatives were to be associations of people who
produced goods together and divided the profits according to the work
done by members.
India and the Contemporary World
Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) added other ideas
to this body of arguments. Marx argued that industrial society was ‘capitalist’.
Capitalists owned the capital invested in factories, and the profit of capitalists
was produced by workers. The conditions of workers could not improve
as long as this profit was accumulated by private capitalists. Workers had to
overthrow capitalism and the rule of private property. Marx believed that
to free themselves from capitalist exploitation, workers had to construct a
radically socialist society where all property was socially controlled. This
would be a communist society. He was convinced that workers would
Activity
triumph in their conflict with capitalists. A communist society was the natural List two differences between the capitalist
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1.4 Support for Socialism
By the 1870s, socialist ideas spread through Europe. To coordinate
their efforts, socialists formed an international body – namely, the
Second International. Activity
Workers in England and Germany began forming associations to Imagine that a meeting has been called in
fight for better living and working conditions. They set up funds to your area to discuss the socialist idea of
help members in times of distress and demanded a reduction of working doing away with private property and
hours and the right to vote. In Germany, these associations worked closely introducing collective ownership. Write the
with the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and helped it win parliamentary speech you would make at the meeting if you
seats. By 1905, socialists and trade unionists formed a Labour Party in are:
Britain and a Socialist Party in France. However, till 1914, socialists never Ø a poor labourer working in the fields
succeeded in forming a government in Europe. Represented by strong Ø a medium-level landowner
figures in parliamentary politics, their ideas did shape legislation, but
Ø a house owner
governments continued to be run by conservatives, liberals and radicals.
Fig.2 – This is a painting of the Paris Commune of 1871 (From Illustrated London News, 1871). It portrays a scene from the
popular uprising in Paris between March and May 1871. This was a period when the town council (commune) of Paris was
taken over by a ‘peoples’ government’ consisting of workers, ordinary people, professionals, political activists and others.
The uprising emerged against a background of growing discontent against the policies of the French state. The ‘Paris
Commune’ was ultimately crushed by government troops but it was celebrated by Socialists the world over as a prelude to a
socialist revolution.The Paris Commune is also popularly remembered for two important legacies: one, for its association with
the workers’ red flag – that was the flag adopted by the communards ( revolutionaries) in Paris; two, for the ‘Marseillaise’,
originally written as a war song in 1792, it became a symbol of the Commune and of the struggle for liberty.
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2 The Russian Revolution
How did this come about? What were the social and political
conditions in Russia when the revolution occurred? To answer these
questions, let us look at Russia a few years before the revolution.
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2.2 Economy and Society
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the vast majority of
Russia’s people were agriculturists. About 85 per cent of the Russian
empire’s population earned their living from agriculture. This
proportion was higher than in most European countries. For instance,
in France and Germany the proportion was between 40 per cent and
50 per cent. In the empire, cultivators produced for the market as
well as for their own needs and Russia was a major exporter of grain.
Workers were a divided social group. Some had strong links with
the villages from which they came. Others had settled in cities
permanently. Workers were divided by skill. A metalworker of St.
Petersburg recalled, ‘Metalworkers considered themselves aristocrats
among other workers. Their occupations demanded more training
Despite divisions, workers did unite to strike work (stop work) when
they disagreed with employers about dismissals or work conditions.
These strikes took place frequently in the textile industry during
1896-1897, and in the metal industry during 1902.
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deeply religious. But except in a few cases they had no respect for the Source A
nobility. Nobles got their power and position through their services
Alexander Shlyapnikov, a socialist
to the Tsar, not through local popularity. This was unlike France
worker of the time, gives us a description
where, during the French Revolution in Brittany, peasants respected of how the meetings were organised:
nobles and fought for them. In Russia, peasants wanted the land of ‘Propaganda was done in the plants and
the nobles to be given to them. Frequently, they refused to pay rent shops on an individual basis. There were
and even murdered landlords. In 1902, this occurred on a large scale also discussion circles … Legal meetings
took place on matters concerning [official
in south Russia. And in 1905, such incidents took place all issues], but this activity was skilfully
over Russia. integrated into the general struggle for
the liberation of the working class. Illegal
Russian peasants were different from other European peasants in meetings were … arranged on the spur
another way. They pooled their land together periodically and their of the moment but in an organised way
commune (mir) divided it according to the needs of individual families. during lunch, in evening break, in front
of the exit, in the yard or, in
establishments with several floors, on
the stairs. The most alert workers would
2.3 Socialism in Russia
form a “plug” in the doorway, and the
All political parties were illegal in Russia before 1914. The Russian whole mass piled up in the exit. An
agitator would get up right there on the
Social Democratic Workers Party was founded in 1898 by socialists
spot. Management would contact the
who respected Marx’s ideas. However, because of government police on the telephone, but the
policing, it had to operate as an illegal organisation. It set up a speeches would have already been
newspaper, mobilised workers and organised strikes. made and the necessary decision taken
by the time they arrived ...’
Some Russian socialists felt that the Russian peasant custom of dividing Alexander Shlyapnikov, On the Eve of
land periodically made them natural socialists. So peasants, not 1917. Reminiscences from the
Revolutionary Underground.
workers, would be the main force of the revolution, and Russia could
become socialist more quickly than other countries. Socialists were
active in the countryside through the late nineteenth century. They
formed the Socialist Revolutionary Party in 1900. This party struggled
for peasants’ rights and demanded that land belonging to nobles be
transferred to peasants. Social Democrats disagreed with Socialist
Revolutionaries about peasants. Lenin felt that peasants were not
one united group. Some were poor and others rich, some worked as
labourers while others were capitalists who employed workers. Given
India and the Contemporary World
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parliament. Liberals in Russia campaigned to end this state of affairs.
Together with the Social Democrats and Socialist Revolutionaries,
they worked with peasants and workers during the revolution of
1905 to demand a constitution. They were supported in the empire
by nationalists (in Poland for instance) and in Muslim-dominated
areas by jadidists who wanted modernised Islam to lead their societies.
The year 1904 was a particularly bad one for Russian workers. Prices
of essential goods rose so quickly that real wages declined by 20 per
cent. The membership of workers’ associations rose dramatically.
When four members of the Assembly of Russian Workers, which
had been formed in 1904, were dismissed at the Putilov Iron Works,
there was a call for industrial action. Over the next few days over
110,000 workers in St Petersburg went on strike demanding a
reduction in the working day to eight hours, an increase in wages
and improvement in working conditions.
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and the war was fought outside Europe as well as
in Europe. This was the First World War.
Europe. By 1916, railway lines began to break down. Able-bodied The year is 1916. You are a general in the
Tsar’s army on the eastern front. You are
men were called up to the war. As a result, there were labour shortages
writing a report for the government in
and small workshops producing essentials were shut down. Large
Moscow. In your report suggest what you
supplies of grain were sent to feed the army. For the people in the
think the government should do to improve
cities, bread and flour became scarce. By the winter of 1916, riots at
the situation.
bread shops were common.
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3 The February Revolution in Petrograd
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striking workers had gathered to form a ‘soviet’ or ‘council’ in the
same building as the Duma met. This was the Petrograd Soviet.
The very next day, a delegation went to see the Tsar. Military
commanders advised him to abdicate. He followed their advice and
abdicated on 2 March. Soviet leaders and Duma leaders formed a
Provisional Government to run the country. Russia’s future would
be decided by a constituent assembly, elected on the basis of universal
adult suffrage. Petrograd had led the February Revolution that
brought down the monarchy in February 1917.
Box 1
‘Women workers, often ... inspired their male co-workers … At the Lorenz telephone
factory, … Marfa Vasileva almost single handedly called a successful strike. Already that
morning, in celebration of Women’s Day, women workers had presented red bows to the
men … Then Marfa Vasileva, a milling machine operator stopped work and declared an
impromptu strike. The workers on the floor were ready to support her … The foreman
informed the management and sent her a loaf of bread. She took the bread but refused to
go back to work. The administrator asked her again why she refused to work and she
replied, “I cannot be the only one who is satiated when others are hungry”. Women
workers from another section of the factory gathered around Marfa in support and
gradually all the other women ceased working. Soon the men downed their tools as well
and the entire crowd rushed onto the street.’
From: Choi Chatterji, Celebrating Women (2002).
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socialist revolution and the Provisional Government needed to be
supported. But the developments of the subsequent months changed
their attitude.
Fig.10 – The July Days. A pro-Bolshevik demonstration on 17 July 1917 being fired upon by the army.
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3.2 The Revolution of October 1917 Box 2
As the conflict between the Provisional Government and the Date of the Russian Revolution
Bolsheviks grew, Lenin feared the Provisional Government would Russia followed the Julian calendar until
set up a dictatorship. In September, he began discussions for an 1 February 1918. The country then changed to
uprising against the government. Bolshevik supporters in the army, the Gregorian calendar, which is followed
soviets and factories were brought together. everywhere today. The Gregorian dates are
13 days ahead of the Julian dates. So by our
On 16 October 1917, Lenin persuaded the Petrograd Soviet and
calendar, the ‘February’ Revolution took place
the Bolshevik Party to agree to a socialist seizure of power. A
on 12th March and the ‘October’ Revolution
Military Revolutionary Committee was appointed by the Soviet
took place on 7th November.
under Leon Trotskii to organise the seizure. The date of the event
was kept a secret.
The uprising began on 24 October. Sensing trouble, Prime Minister Some important dates
Kerenskii had left the city to summon troops. At dawn, military
1850s -1880s
men loyal to the government seized the buildings of two Bolshevik Debates over socialism in Russsia.
newspapers. Pro-government troops were sent to take over telephone
1898
and telegraph offices and protect the Winter Palace. In a swift Formation of the Russian Social Democratic
response, the Military Revolutionary Committee ordered its Workers Party.
supporters to seize government offices and arrest ministers. Late in 1905
the day, the ship Aurora shelled the Winter Palace. Other vessels The Bloody Sunday and the Revolution of
1905.
sailed down the Neva and took over various military points. By
nightfall, the city was under the committee’s control and the 1917
2nd March - Abdication of the Tsar.
ministers had surrendered. At a meeting of the All Russian Congress
24th October - Bolshevik unprising in
of Soviets in Petrograd, the majority approved the Bolshevik action. Petrograd.
Uprisings took place in other cities. There was heavy fighting –
1918-20
especially in Moscow – but by December, the Bolsheviks controlled The Civil War.
the Moscow-Petrograd area.
1919
Formation of Comintern.
1929
Beginning of Collectivisation.
India and the Contemporary World
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4 What Changed after October?
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Box 3
‘News of the revolutionary uprising of October 25, 1917, reached the village the following day and
was greeted with enthusiasm; to the peasants it meant free land and an end to the war. ...The day
the news arrived, the landowner’s manor house was looted, his stock farms were “requisitioned”
and his vast orchard was cut down and sold to the peasants for wood; all his far buildings were
torn down and left in ruins while the land was distributed among the peasants who were prepared
to live the new Soviet life’.
A member of a landowning family wrote to a relative about what happened at the estate:
‘The “coup” happened quite painlessly, quietly and peacefully. …The first days were unbearable..
Mikhail Mikhailovich [the estate owner] was calm...The girls also…I must say the chairman
behaves correctly and even politely. We were left two cows and two horses. The servants tell them
all the time not to bother us. “Let them live. We vouch for their safety and property. We want them
treated as humanely as possible….”
…There are rumours that several villages are trying to evict the committees and return the estate
to Mikhail Mikhailovich. I don’t know if this will happen, or if it’s good for us. But we rejoice that
there is a conscience in our people...’
From: Serge Schmemann, Echoes of a Native Land. Two Centuries of a Russian Village (1997).
Activity
4.1 The Civil War
Read the two views on the revolution in the
When the Bolsheviks ordered land redistribution, the Russian army countryside. Imagine yourself to be a witness
began to break up. Soldiers, mostly peasants, wished to go home for to the events. Write a short account from the
the redistribution and deserted. Non-Bolshevik socialists, liberals and standpoint of:
supporters of autocracy condemned the Bolshevik uprising. Their Ø an owner of an estate
India and the Contemporary World
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to cooperation with non-Russian nationalities and Muslim jadidists.
New words
Cooperation did not work where Russian colonists themselves turned
Bolshevik. In Khiva, in Central Asia, Bolshevik colonists brutally Autonomy – The right to govern
massacred local nationalists in the name of defending socialism. In themselves
this situation, many were confused about what the Bolshevik Nomadism – Lifestyle of those who do
government represented. not live in one place but move from area
to area to earn their living
Partly to remedy this, most non-Russian nationalities were given
political autonomy in the Soviet Union (USSR) – the state the
Bolsheviks created from the Russian empire in December 1922. But
since this was combined with unpopular policies that the Bolsheviks
forced the local government to follow – like the harsh discouragement
of nomadism – attempts to win over different nationalities were
only partly successful.
Activity
Why did people in Central Asia respond to the Russian Revolution in
different ways?
Source B
‘The Kirghiz welcomed the first revolution (ie February Revolution) with joy and the
second revolution with consternation and terror … [This] first revolution freed them
from the oppression of the Tsarist regime and strengthened their hope that …
autonomy would be realised. The second revolution (October Revolution) was
Source
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4.2 Making a Socialist Society
During the civil war, the Bolsheviks kept industries and banks
nationalised. They permitted peasants to cultivate the land that had
been socialised. Bolsheviks used confiscated land to demonstrate what
collective work could be.
Box 4
‘A commune was set up using two [confiscated] farms as a base. The commune
consisted of thirteen families with a total of seventy persons … The farm tools taken
from the … farms were turned over to the commune …The members ate in a communal
dining hall and income was divided in accordance with the principles of “cooperative
communism”. The entire proceeds of the members’ labor, as well as all dwellings and
facilities belonging to the commune were shared by the commune members.’
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Fig.15 – Children at school in Soviet Russia in the Fig.16 – A child in Magnitogorsk during the
1930s. First Five Year Plan.
They are studying the Soviet economy. He is working for Soviet Russia.
factory, to prevent the family from starving. Dear grandfather, I am 13, I study well
and have no bad reports. I am in Class 5 …
Letter of 1933 from a 13-year-old worker to Kalinin, Soviet President
From: V. Sokolov (ed), Obshchestvo I Vlast, v 1930-ye gody (Moscow, 1997).
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4.3 Stalinism and Collectivisation
The period of the early Planned Economy was linked to
the disasters of the collectivisation of agriculture. By 1927-
1928, the towns in Soviet Russia were facing an acute
problem of grain supplies. The government fixed prices
at which grain must be sold, but the peasants refused to sell their
grain to government buyers at these prices.
Stalin, who headed the party after the death of Lenin, introduced
firm emergency measures. He believed that rich peasants and traders
in the countryside were holding stocks in the hope of higher prices.
Speculation had to be stopped and supplies confiscated.
were not against socialism. They merely did not want to work in
collective farms for a variety of reasons. Stalin’s government allowed
some independent cultivation, but treated such cultivators
unsympathetically.
New words
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Source D
Source
been executed, 3673 have been imprisoned in labour camps and 5580 exiled …’
Report of K.M. Karlson, President of the State Police Administration of the Ukraine
to the Central Committee of the Communist Party, on 19 March 1930.
From: V. Sokolov (ed), Obshchestvo I Vlast, v 1930-ye gody
Source E
reserve of wood for repair of buildings and they sold the lot for the taxes. In
1936, they sold two of my buildings … the kolkhoz bought them. In 1937, of two
huts I had, one was sold and one was confiscated …’
Afanasii Dedorovich Frebenev, an independent cultivator.
From: V. Sokolov (ed), Obshchestvo I Vlast, v 1930-ye gody.
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5 The Global Influence of the Russian
Revolution and the USSR
Existing socialist parties in Europe did not wholly approve of the
way the Bolsheviks took power – and kept it. However, the possibility
of a workers’ state fired people’s imagination across the world. In
many countries, communist parties were formed – like the
Communist Party of Great Britain. The Bolsheviks encouraged
colonial peoples to follow their experiment. Many non-Russians from
outside the USSR participated in the Conference of the Peoples of
the East (1920) and the Bolshevik-founded Comintern (an international
union of pro-Bolshevik socialist parties). Some received education in
the USSR’s Communist University of the Workers of the East. By
the time of the outbreak of the Second World War, the USSR had
given socialism a global face and world stature.
Yet by the 1950s it was acknowledged within the country that the
style of government in the USSR was not in keeping with the ideals
of the Russian Revolution. In the world socialist movement too it
was recognised that all was not well in the Soviet Union. A backward
country had become a great power. Its industries and agriculture
had developed and the poor were being fed. But it had denied the
essential freedoms to its citizens and carried out its developmental
projects through repressive policies. By the end of the twentieth
century, the international reputation of the USSR as a socialist
country had declined though it was recognised that socialist ideals
still enjoyed respect among its people. But in each country the ideas
of socialism were rethought in a variety of different ways.
Box 5
India and the Contemporary World
Among those the Russian Revolution inspired were many Indians. Several
attended the Communist University. By the mid-1920s the Communist Party was
formed in India. Its members kept in touch with the Soviet Communist Party.
Important Indian political and cultural figures took an interest in the Soviet
experiment and visited Russia, among them Jawaharlal Nehru and Rabindranath
Tagore, who wrote about Soviet Socialism. In India, writings gave impressions of Fig.20 – Special Issue on
Soviet Russia. In Hindi, R.S. Avasthi wrote in 1920-21 Russian Revolution, Lenin, Lenin of the Indo-Soviet
Journal.
His Life and His Thoughts, and later The Red Revolution . S.D. Vidyalankar
Indian communists
wrote The Rebirth of Russia and The Soviet State of Russia. There was much mobilised support for the
that was written in Bengali, Marathi, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu. USSR during the Second
World War.
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Source F
Source G
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Activities
1. Imagine that you are a striking worker in 1905 who is being tried in court
for your act of rebellion. Draft the speech you would make in your defence.
Act out your speech for your class.
2. Write the headline and a short news item about the uprising of 24 October
1917 for each of the following newspapers
Ø a Conservative paper in France
Ø a Radical newspaper in Britain
Ø a Bolshevik newspaper in Russia
Activities
3. Imagine that you are a middle-level wheat farmer in Russia after
collectivisation. You have decided to write a letter to Stalin
explaining your objections to collectivisation. What would you write about
the conditions of your life? What do you think would be Stalin’s response
to such a farmer?
Questions
1. What were the social, economic and political conditions in Russia before
?
1905?
2. In what ways was the working population in Russia different from other
countries in Europe, before 1917?
3. Why did the Tsarist autocracy collapse in 1917?
4. Make two lists: one with the main events and the effects of the February
Revolution and the other with the main events and effects of the October
India and the Contemporary World
Revolution. Write a paragraph on who was involved in each, who were the
leaders and what was the impact of each on Soviet history.
5. What were the main changes brought about by the Bolsheviks immediately
after the October Revolution?
6. Write a few lines to show what you know about:
Ø kulaks
Ø the Duma
Ø women workers between 1900 and 1930
Ø the Liberals
Ø Stalin’s collectivisation programme.
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Chapter III
Nazism and the Rise
of Hitler
In the spring of 1945, a little eleven-year-old German boy called
Helmuth was lying in bed when he overheard his parents discussing
something in serious tones. His father, a prominent physician,
deliberated with his wife whether the time had come to kill the entire
family, or if he should commit suicide alone. His father spoke about
his fear of revenge, saying, ‘Now the Allies will do to us what we did to
the crippled and Jews.’ The next day, he took Helmuth to the woods,
where they spent their last happy time together, singing old children’s
songs. Later, Helmuth’s father shot himself in his office. Helmuth
remembers that he saw his father’s bloody uniform being burnt in the
family fireplace. So traumatised was he by what he had overheard and
what had happened, that he reacted by refusing to eat at home for the
following nine years! He was afraid that his mother might poison him.
Although Helmuth may not have realised all that it meant, his father
New words
Allies – The Allied Powers were initially led by the UK and France.
In 1941 they were joined by the USSR and USA. They fought
Fig.1 – Hitler (centre) and Goebbels (left)
against the Axis Powers, namely Germany, Italy and Japan. leaving after an official meeting, 1932.
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came to be called Crimes Against Humanity, raised serious moral
and ethical questions and invited worldwide condemnation. What
were these acts?
Under the shadow of the Second World War, Germany had waged
a genocidal war, which resulted in the mass murder of selected
groups of innocent civilians of Europe. The number of people killed
included 6 million Jews, 200,000 Gypsies, 1 million Polish civilians,
70,000 Germans who were considered mentally and physically
disabled, besides innumerable political opponents. Nazis devised
an unprecedented means of killing people, that is, by gassing them in
various killing centres like Auschwitz. The Nuremberg Tribunal
sentenced only eleven leading Nazis to death. Many others were
imprisoned for life. The retribution did come, yet the punishment
of the Nazis was far short of the brutality and extent of their crimes.
The Allies did not want to be as harsh on defeated Germany as
they had been after the First World War.
Everyone came to feel that the rise of Nazi Germany could be New words
partly traced back to the German experience at the end of the
First World War. Genocidal – Killing on large scale leading
to destruction of large sections of people
What was this experinece?
India and the Contemporary World
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1 Birth of the Weimar Republic
This republic, however, was not received well by its own people
largely because of the terms it was forced to accept after Germany’s
defeat at the end of the First World War. The peace treaty at
Germany 1914
Land taken from Germany
Land under League of Nations control Fig.2 – Germany after the
Demilitarised zone Versailles Treaty. You can see in
this map the parts of the
territory that Germany lost after
the treaty.
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Versailles with the Allies was a harsh and humiliating peace. Germany lost
its overseas colonies, a tenth of its population, 13 per cent of its territories,
75 per cent of its iron and 26 per cent of its coal to France, Poland,
Denmark and Lithuania. The Allied Powers demilitarised Germany to
weaken its power. The War Guilt Clause held Germany responsible for
the war and damages the Allied countries suffered. Germany was forced
to pay compensation amounting to £6 billion. The Allied armies also
occupied the resource-rich Rhineland for much of the 1920s. Many
Germans held the new Weimar Republic responsible for not only the
defeat in the war but the disgrace at Versailles.
The First World War left a deep imprint on European society and
polity. Soldiers came to be placed above civilians. Politicians and
publicists laid great stress on the need for men to be aggressive, strong
and masculine. The media glorified trench life. The truth, however,
was that soldiers lived miserable lives in these trenches, trapped with
rats feeding on corpses. They faced poisonous gas and enemy shelling,
India and the Contemporary World
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Fig.3 – This is a rally organised by the radical group known as the Spartacist League.
In the winter of 1918-1919 the streets of Berlin were taken over by the people. Political demonstrations became common.
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98,860,000 marks by December, the figure had run into trillions. As
the value of the mark collapsed, prices of goods soared. The image of
Germans carrying cartloads of currency notes to buy a loaf of bread
was widely publicised evoking worldwide sympathy. This crisis came
to be known as hyperinflation, a situation when prices rise
phenomenally high.
The German economy was the worst hit by the economic crisis. By
1932, industrial production was reduced to 40 per cent of the 1929
level. Workers lost their jobs or were paid reduced wages. The number
of unemployed touched an unprecedented 6 million. On the streets
of Germany you could see men with placards around their necks
saying, ‘Willing to do any work’. Unemployed youths played cards
or simply sat at street corners, or desperately queued up at the local
India and the Contemporary World
The economic crisis created deep anxieties and fears in people. The
middle classes, especially salaried employees and pensioners, saw
their savings diminish when the currency lost its value. Small
businessmen, the self-employed and retailers suffered as their
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businesses got ruined. These sections of society were filled with the
fear of proletarianisation, an anxiety of being reduced to the ranks
of the working class, or worse still, the unemployed. Only organised
workers could manage to keep their heads above water, but
unemployment weakened their bargaining power. Big business was
in crisis. The large mass of peasantry was affected by a sharp fall in
agricultural prices and women, unable to fill their children’s
stomachs, were filled with a sense of deep despair.
New words
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2 Hitler’s Rise to Power
This crisis in the economy, polity and society formed the background
to Hitler’s rise to power. Born in 1889 in Austria, Hitler spent his
youth in poverty. When the First World War broke out, he enrolled
for the army, acted as a messenger in the front, became a corporal, and
earned medals for bravery. The German defeat horrified him and the
Versailles Treaty made him furious. In 1919, he joined a small group
called the German Workers’ Party. He subsequently took over the
organisation and renamed it the National Socialist German Workers’
Party. This party came to be known as the Nazi Party.
New words
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Fig.8 – Nuremberg Rally, 1936.
Rallies like this were held every year. An
important aspect of these was the
demonstration of Nazi power as various
organisations paraded past Hitler, swore
loyalty and listened to his speeches.
Hitler was a powerful speaker. His passion and his words moved
people. He promised to build a strong nation, undo the injustice of
the Versailles Treaty and restore the dignity of the German people.
He promised employment for those looking for work, and a secure
future for the youth. He promised to weed out all foreign influences
and resist all foreign ‘conspiracies’ against Germany.
and public meetings to demonstrate the support for Hitler and instil
a sense of unity among the people. The Red banners with the
Swastika, the Nazi salute, and the ritualised rounds of applause after
the speeches were all part of this spectacle of power.
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Nazi propaganda skilfully projected Hitler as a messiah, a saviour, as
someone who had arrived to deliver people from their distress. It is
an image that captured the imagination of a people whose sense of
dignity and pride had been shattered, and who were living in a time
of acute economic and political crises.
On 3 March 1933, the famous Enabling Act was passed. This Act
established dictatorship in Germany. It gave Hitler all powers to
sideline Parliament and rule by decree. All political parties and trade
unions were banned except for the Nazi Party and its affiliates. The
state established complete control over the economy, media, army
and judiciary.
India and the Contemporary World
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2.2 Reconstruction
Hitler assigned the responsibility of economic recovery to the
economist Hjalmar Schacht who aimed at full production and full
employment through a state-funded work-creation programme. This
project produced the famous German superhighways and the
people’s car, the Volkswagen.
Hitler did not stop here. Schacht had advised Hitler against investing
hugely in rearmament as the state still ran on deficit financing.
Cautious people, however, had no place in Nazi Germany. Schacht
had to leave. Hitler chose war as the way out of the approaching
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economic crisis. Resources were to be accumulated through
expansion of territory. In September 1939, Germany invaded
Poland. This started a war with France and England. In September
1940, a Tripartite Pact was signed between Germany, Italy and
Japan, strengthening Hitler’s claim to international power. Puppet
regimes, supportive of Nazi Germany, were installed in a large
part of Europe. By the end of 1940, Hitler was at the pinnacle of
his power.
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3 The Nazi Worldview
The crimes that Nazis committed were linked to a system of belief Source A
and a set of practices.
‘For this earth is not allotted to anyone
Nazi ideology was synonymous with Hitler’s worldview. According nor is it presented to anyone as a gift. It
is awarded by providence to people who
to this there was no equality between people, but only a racial
in their hearts have the courage to
hierarchy. In this view blond, blue-eyed, Nordic German Aryans conquer it, the strength to preserve it,
were at the top, while Jews were located at the lowest rung. They and the industry to put it to the plough…
The primary right of this world is the right
came to be regarded as an anti-race, the arch-enemies of the Aryans.
to life, so far as one possesses the
All other coloured people were placed in between depending upon strength for this. Hence on the basis of
their external features. Hitler’s racism borrowed from thinkers like this right a vigorous nation will always
find ways of adapting its territory to its
Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer. Darwin was a natural scientist
population size.’
who tried to explain the creation of plants and animals through the
Hitler, Secret Book, ed. Telford Taylor.
concept of evolution and natural selection. Herbert Spencer later
added the idea of survival of the fittest. According to this idea, only
Source B
those species survived on earth that could adapt themselves to
changing climatic conditions. We should bear in mind that Darwin ‘In an era when the earth is gradually
never advocated human intervention in what he thought was a purely being divided up among states, some of
natural process of selection. However, his ideas were used by racist which embrace almost entire continents,
we cannot speak of a world power in
thinkers and politicians to justify imperial rule over conquered connection with a formation whose
peoples. The Nazi argument was simple: the strongest race would political mother country is limited to the
survive and the weak ones would perish. The Aryan race was the absurd area of five hundred kilometers.’
finest. It had to retain its purity, become stronger and dominate the Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 644.
world.
New words
3.1 Establishment of the Racial State
Nordic German Aryans – One branch of
Once in power, the Nazis quickly began to implement their dream those classified as Aryans. They lived in
of creating an exclusive racial community of pure Germans by north European countries and had German
physically eliminating all those who were seen as ‘undesirable’ in the or related origin.
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extended empire. Nazis wanted only a society of ‘pure and healthy
Nordic Aryans’. They alone were considered ‘desirable’. Only they
were seen as worthy of prospering and multiplying against all others
who were classed as ‘undesirable’. This meant that even those Germans
who were seen as impure or abnormal had no right to exist. Under
the Euthanasia Programme, Helmuth’s father along with other Nazi
officials had condemned to death many Germans who were considered
mentally or physically unfit.
Fig.13 – Police escorting gypsies who are
Jews were not the only community classified as ‘undesirable’. There
being deported to Auschwitz, 1943-1944.
were others. Many Gypsies and blacks living in Nazi Germany were
considered as racial ‘inferiors’ who threatened the biological purity
of the ‘superior Aryan’ race. They were widely persecuted. Even
Russians and Poles were considered subhuman, and hence undeserving
of any humanity. When Germany occupied Poland and parts of
Russia, captured civilians were forced to work as slave labour. Many
of them died simply through hard work and starvation.
New words
1939-1945, aimed at concentrating them in certain areas and eventually
killing them in gas chambers in Poland. Gypsy – The groups that were classified as
‘gypsy’ had their own community identity.
Sinti and Roma were two such communities.
3.2 The Racial Utopia
Many of them traced their origin to India.
Under the shadow of war, the Nazis proceeded to realise their Pauperised – Reduce to absolute poverty
murderous, racial ideal. Genocide and war became two sides of the Persecution – Systematic, organised
same coin. Occupied Poland was divided up. Much of north-western punishment of those belonging to a group
Poland was annexed to Germany. Poles were forced to leave their or religion
homes and properties behind to be occupied by ethnic Germans Usurers – Moneylenders charging excessive
brought in from occupied Europe. Poles were then herded like interest; often used as a term of abuse
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cattle in the other part called the General Government, the
Activity
destination of all ‘undesirables’ of the empire. Members of the Polish
See the next two pages and write briefly:
intelligentsia were murdered in large numbers in order to keep the
Ø What does citizenship mean to you? Look at
entire people intellectually and spiritually servile. Polish children
Chapters I and 3 and write 200 words on how
who looked like Aryans were forcibly snatched from their mothers
the French Revolution and Nazism defined
and examined by ‘race experts’. If they passed the race tests they
citizenship.
were raised in German families and if not, they were deposited in
Ø What did the Nuremberg Laws mean to the
orphanages where most perished. With some of the largest ghettos
‘undesirables’ in Nazi Germany? What other
and gas chambers, the General Government also served as the killing
legal measures were taken against them to
fields for the Jews.
make them feel unwanted?
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STEPS TO DEATH
Stage 1: Exclusion 1933-1939
YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO LIVE AMONG US AS CITIZENS
New words
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Stage 3:Annihilation 1941 onwards:
YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO LIVE
Fig.18 – Killed while trying to escape. The Fig.19 – Piles of clothes outside the gas chamber.
concentration camps were enclosed with live wires.
Jews from Jewish houses, concentration camps and ghettos from different parts of Europe were brought to death factories by
goods trains. In Poland and elsewhere in the east, most notably Belzek, Auschwitz, Sobibor, Treblinka, Chelmno and Majdanek,
they were charred in gas chambers. Mass killings took place within minutes with scientific precision.
Fig.21 – A concentration camp. Fig.22 – Shoes taken away from prisoners before
A camera can make a death the ‘Final Solution’.
camp look beautiful.
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4 Youth in Nazi Germany
The Youth League of the Nazis was founded in 1922. Four years later
it was renamed Hitler Youth. To unify the youth movement under Activity
Nazi control, all other youth organisations were systematically dissolved
If you were a student sitting in one of these
and finally banned.
classes, how would you have felt towards
Jews?
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Source: C
All boys between the ages of six and ten went through a
preliminary training in Nazi ideology. At the end of the training
they had to take the following oath of loyalty to Hitler:
‘In the presence of this blood banner which represents our
Fuhrer I swear to devote all my energies and my strength to
the saviour of our country, Adolf Hitler. I am willing and ready to
give up my life for him, so help me God.’
From W. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
Source: D
Activity
Look at Figs. 23, 24, and 27. Imagine yourself
to be a Jew or a Pole in Nazi Germany. It is
Fig.25 – ‘Desirable’ children that Fig.26 – A German-blooded
September 1941, and the law forcing Jews to
Hitler wanted to see multiplied. infant with his mother being
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themselves from Jews, look after the home, and teach their
children Nazi values. They had to be the bearers of the Aryan
culture and race.
In 1933 Hitler said: ‘In my state the mother is the most important
citizen.’ But in Nazi Germany all mothers were not treated equally.
Women who bore racially undesirable children were punished
and those who produced racially desirable children were awarded.
They were given favoured treatment in hospitals and were also
entitled to concessions in shops and on theatre tickets and railway
fares. To encourage women to produce many children, Honour
Crosses were awarded. A bronze cross was given for four children,
silver for six and gold for eight or more.
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Source F
The Nazis made equal efforts to appeal to all the different sections of Ø A Jewish woman
the population. They sought to win their support by suggesting that Ø A non-Jewish German woman
Nazis alone could solve all their problems.
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GERMAN FARMER
YOU BELONG TO HITLER!
WHY?
The German farmer stands in between two great dangers
today:
The one danger American economic system –
Big Capitalism!
The other is the Marxist economic system of Bolshevism.
Big Capitalism and Bolshevism work hand in hand:
they are born of Jewish thought
and serve the master plan of world Jewery.
Who alone can rescue the farmer from these dangers?
NATIONAL SOCIALISM.
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5 Ordinary People and the Crimes Against Humanity
Many saw the world through Nazi eyes, and spoke their mind in
Nazi language. They felt hatred and anger surge inside them when
they saw someone who looked like a Jew. They marked the houses
of Jews and reported suspicious neighbours. They genuinely believed
Nazism would bring prosperity and improve general well-being.
But not every German was a Nazi. Many organised active resistance
to Nazism, braving police repression and death. The large majority
of Germans, however, were passive onlookers and apathetic witnesses.
They were too scared to act, to differ, to protest. They preferred to
look away. Pastor Niemoeller, a resistance fighter, observed an
absence of protest, an uncanny silence, amongst ordinary Germans
in the face of brutal and organised crimes committed against people
in the Nazi empire. He wrote movingly about this silence:
So I did nothing, Was the lack of concern for Nazi victims only
because of the Terror? No, says Lawrence
Then they came for the trade unionists, Rees who interviewed people from diverse
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What Jews felt in Nazi Germany is a different story altogether.
Charlotte Beradt secretly recorded people’s dreams in her diary and
later published them in a highly disconcerting book called the Third
Reich of Dreams. She describes how Jews themselves began believing in
the Nazi stereotypes about them. They dreamt of their hooked noses,
black hair and eyes, Jewish looks and body movements. The
stereotypical images publicised in the Nazi press haunted the Jews.
They troubled them even in their dreams. Jews died many deaths
even before they reached the gas chamber.
Yet the history and the memory of the Holocaust live on in memoirs,
fiction, documentaries, poetry, memorials and museums in many
India and the Contemporary World
parts of the world today. These are a tribute to those who resisted it,
an embarrassing reminder to those who collaborated, and a warning
to those who watched in silence. Fig.32 – Denmark secretly rescued their Jews
from Germany. This is one of the boats used
for the purpose.
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Box 2
DEAR FRIEND,
Friends have been urging me to write to you for the sake of
humanity. But I have resisted their request, because of the feeling that
any letter from me would be an impertinence. Something tells me that
I must not calculate and that I must make my appeal for whatever it
may be worth.
It is quite clear that you are today the one person in the world
who can prevent a war which may reduce humanity to the savage
state.
Must you pay that price for an object however worthy it may appear
to you to be? Will you listen to the appeal of one who has deliberately
shunned the method of war not without considerable success?
Anyway
I anticipate your forgiveness, if I have erred in writing to you.
I remain,
Your sincere friend,
M. K. GANDHI
THE COLLECTED WORKS OF MAHATMA GANDHI
VOL. 76.
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Activities
Activities
Ø as a Jewish survivor of a concentration camp
Ø as a political opponent of the Nazi regime
2. Imagine that you are Helmuth. You have had many Jewish friends in school
and do not believe that Jews are bad. Write a paragraph on what you would
say to your father.
Questions
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SECTION II
will look at how the lives of forest dwellers, pastoralists and peasants changed in the
modern world and how they played a part in shaping these changes.
All too often in looking at the emergence of the modern world, we only focus on
factories and cities, on the industrial and agricultural sectors which supply the market.
But we forget that there are other economies outside these sectors, other people too
who matter to the nation. To modern eyes, the lives of pastoralists and forest dwellers,
the shifting cultivators and food gatherers often seem to be stuck in the past. It is as
if their lives are not important when we study the emergence of the contemporary
world. The chapters in Section II will suggest that we need to know about their
lives, see how they organise their world and operate their economies. These
communities are very much part of the modern world we live in today. They are
not simply survivors from a bygone era.
Chapter IV will take you into the forest and tell you about the variety of ways the
Forest Society and Colonialism
forests were used by communities living within them. It will show how in the
nineteenth century the growth of industries and urban centres, ships and railways,
created a new demand on the forests for timber and other forest products. New
demands led to new rules of forest use, new ways of organising the forest. You will
see how colonial control was established over the forests, how forest areas were
mapped, trees were classified, and plantations were developed. All these developments
affected the lives of those local communities who used forest resources. They were
forced to operate within new systems and reorganise their lives. But they also rebelled
against the rules and persuaded the state to change its policies. The chapter will give
you an idea of the history of such developments in India and Indonesia.
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Chapter V will track the movements of the pastoralists in the mountains and deserts,
in the plains and plateaus of India and Africa. Pastoral communities in both these
areas form an important segment of the population. Yet we rarely study their lives.
Their histories do not enter the pages of textbooks. Chapter V will show how their
lives were affected by the controls established over the forest, the expansion of agri-
culture, and the decline of grazing fields. It will tell you about the patterns of their
movements, their relationships to other communities, and the way they adjust to
changing situations.
In Chapter VI we will read about the changes in the lives of peasants and farmers. We
will discuss the developments in India, England and the USA. Over the last two
centuries there have been major changes in the way agriculture is organised. New
technology and new demands, new rules and laws, new ideas of property have
radically changed the rural world. The growth of capitalism and colonialism have
altered rural lives. Chapter VI will introduce you to these changes, and show how
different groups of people – the poor and rich, men and women, adults and children
– were affected in different ways.
We cannot understand the making of the contemporary world unless we begin to see
the changes in the lives of diverse communities and people. We also cannot understand
the problems of modernisation unless we look at its impact on the environment.
India and the Contemporary World
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Forest Society and
Chapter IV
Colonialism
Take a quick look around your school and home and identify all
the things that come from forests: the paper in the book you are
reading, desks and tables, doors and windows, the dyes that colour
your clothes, spices in your food, the cellophane wrapper of your
toffee, tendu leaf in bidis, gum, honey, coffee, tea and rubber. Do
not miss out the oil in chocolates, which comes from sal seeds, the
tannin used to convert skins and hides into leather, or the herbs
and roots used for medicinal purposes. Forests also provide bamboo,
wood for fuel, grass, charcoal, packaging, fruits, flowers, animals,
birds and many other things. In the Amazon forests or in the
Western Ghats, it is possible to find as many as 500 different plant
species in one forest patch.
Society
ForestForest and Colonialism
Society and Colonialism
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1 Why Deforestation?
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the production of commercial crops like jute, sugar, wheat and Source A
cotton. The demand for these crops increased in nineteenth-century
Europe where foodgrains were needed to feed the growing urban The idea that uncultivated land had to
population and raw materials were required for industrial be taken over and improved was popular
with colonisers everywhere in the world.
It was an argument that justified
Box 1 conquest.
In 1896 the American writer, Richard
The absence of cultivation in a place does not mean the land was Harding, wrote on the Honduras in
uninhabited. In Australia, when the white settlers landed, they Central America:
claimed that the continent was empty or terra nullius. In fact, they ‘There is no more interesting question of
were guided through the landscape by aboriginal tracks, and led the present day than that of what is to
be done with the world’s land which is
by aboriginal guides. The different aboriginal communities in
lying unimproved; whether it shall go to
Australia had clearly demarcated territories. The Ngarrindjeri the great power that is willing to turn it
people of Australia plotted their land along the symbolic body of to account, or remain with its original
the first ancestor, Ngurunderi. This land included five different owner, who fails to understand its value.
The Central Americans are like a gang of
environments: salt water, riverine tracts, lakes, bush and desert
semi-barbarians in a beautifully furnished
plains, which satisfied different socio-economic needs. house, of which they can understand
neither its possibilities of comfort nor its
use.’
production. Second, in the early nineteenth century, the colonial
Three years later the American-owned
state thought that forests were unproductive. They were considered
United Fruit Company was founded, and
to be wilderness that had to be brought under cultivation so that grew bananas on an industrial scale in
the land could yield agricultural products and revenue, and enhance Central America. The company acquired
such power over the governments of
the income of the state. So between 1880 and 1920, cultivated area
these countries that they came to be
rose by 6.7 million hectares. known as Banana Republics.
Quoted in David Spurr, The Rhetoric of
We always see the expansion of cultivation as a sign of progress.
Empire, (1993).
But we should not forget that for land to be brought under the
plough, forests have to be cleared.
New words
Fig.3 – Converting sal logs into sleepers in the Singhbhum forests, Chhotanagpur, May 1897.
Adivasis were hired by the forest department to cut trees, and make smooth planks which would serve as sleepers for the
railways. At the same time, they were not allowed to cut these trees to build their own houses.
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By the early nineteenth century, oak forests in England were
disappearing. This created a problem of timber supply for the Royal
Navy. How could English ships be built without a regular supply of
strong and durable timber? How could imperial power be protected
and maintained without ships? By the 1820s, search parties were
sent to explore the forest resources of India. Within a decade, trees
were being felled on a massive scale and vast quantities of timber
were being exported from India.
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Source B
Activity
‘The new line to be constructed was the Indus Valley Railway
between Multan and Sukkur, a distance of nearly 300 miles. At
Each mile of railway track required between
the rate of 2000 sleepers per mile this would require 600,000
sleepers 10 feet by 10 inches by 5 inches (or 3.5 cubic feet 1,760 and 2,000 sleepers. If one average-
apiece), being upwards of 2,000,000 cubic feet. The sized tree yields 3 to 5 sleepers for a 3 metre
locomotives would use wood fuel. At the rate of one train daily wide broad gauge track, calculate
either way and at one maund per train-mile an annual supply
approximately how many trees would have to
of 219,000 maunds would be demanded. In addition a large
supply of fuel for brick-burning would be required. The sleepers be cut to lay one mile of track.
would have to come mainly from the Sind Forests. The fuel
from the tamarisk and Jhand forests of Sind and the Punjab.
The other new line was the Northern State Railway from Lahore
to Multan. It was estimated that 2,200,000 sleepers would be
required for its construction.’
E.P. Stebbing, The Forests of India, Vol. II (1923).
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1.3 Plantations
Large areas of natural forests were also cleared to make way for
tea, coffee and rubber plantations to meet Europe’s growing need
for these commodities. The colonial government took over the
forests, and gave vast areas to European planters at cheap rates.
These areas were enclosed and cleared of forests, and planted with
tea or coffee.
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2 The Rise of Commercial Forestry
In the previous section we have seen that the British needed forests
in order to build ships and railways. The British were worried that
the use of forests by local people and the reckless felling of trees by
traders would destroy forests. So they decided to invite a German
expert, Dietrich Brandis, for advice, and made him the first Inspector
General of Forests in India.
Activity
If you were the Government of India in 1862
and responsible for supplying the railways
with sleepers and fuel on such a large scale,
what were the steps you would have taken?
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Fig.10 – A deodar plantation in Kangra, 1933.
From Indian Forest Records, Vol. XV.
once in 1878 and then in 1927. The 1878 Act divided forests into
three categories: reserved, protected and village forests. The best
forests were called ‘reserved forests’. Villagers could not take anything
from these forests, even for their own use. For house building or
fuel, they could take wood from protected or village forests.
Foresters and villagers had very different ideas of what a good forest Scientific forestry – A system of cutting
should look like. Villagers wanted forests with a mixture of species trees controlled by the forest department,
to satisfy different needs – fuel, fodder, leaves. The forest department in which old trees are cut and new ones
on the other hand wanted trees which were suitable for building planted
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Fig.12 – Collecting mahua ( Madhuca indica) from the forests.
Villagers wake up before dawn and go to the forest to collect the mahua flowers which have fallen on the forest floor. Mahua
trees are precious. Mahua flowers can be eaten or used to make alcohol. The seeds can be used to make oil.
ships or railways. They needed trees that could provide hard wood,
and were tall and straight. So particular species like teak and sal were
promoted and others were cut.
In forest areas, people use forest products – roots, leaves, fruits, and
tubers – for many things. Fruits and tubers are nutritious to eat,
especially during the monsoons before the harvest has come in. Herbs
are used for medicine, wood for agricultural implements like yokes
Forest Society and Colonialism
and ploughs, bamboo makes excellent fences and is also used to make
baskets and umbrellas. A dried scooped-out gourd can be used as a
portable water bottle. Almost everything is available in the forest –
leaves can be stitched together to make disposable plates and cups,
the siadi (Bauhinia vahlii) creeper can be used to make ropes, and the
thorny bark of the semur (silk-cotton) tree is used to grate vegetables.
Fig.13 – Drying tendu leaves.
Oil for cooking and to light lamps can be pressed from the fruit of The sale of tendu leaves is a major source of
the mahua tree. income for many people living in forests. Each
bundle contains approximately 50 leaves, and if a
The Forest Act meant severe hardship for villagers across the country. person works very hard they can perhaps collect
as many as 100 bundles in a day. Women,
After the Act, all their everyday practices – cutting wood for their children and old men are the main collectors.
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Fig.14 – Bringing grain from the threshing
grounds to the field.
The men are carrying grain in baskets from the
threshing fields. Men carry the baskets slung
on a pole across their shoulders, while women
carry the baskets on their heads.
houses, grazing their cattle, collecting fruits and roots, hunting and
fishing – became illegal. People were now forced to steal wood
Activity
from the forests, and if they were caught, they were at the mercy of Children living around forest areas can often
the forest guards who would take bribes from them. Women who identify hundreds of species of trees and plants.
collected fuelwood were especially worried. It was also common for How many species of trees can you name?
In shifting cultivation, parts of the forest are cut and burnt in rotation.
Seeds are sown in the ashes after the first monsoon rains, and the crop is
harvested by October-November. Such plots are cultivated for a couple
of years and then left fallow for 12 to 18 years for the forest to grow
back. A mixture of crops is grown on these plots. In central India
and Africa it could be millets, in Brazil manioc, and in other parts of
Latin America maize and beans. Fig.15 – Taungya cultivation was a system in
which local farmers were allowed to cultivate
European foresters regarded this practice as harmful for the forests. They temporarily within a plantation. In this photo
taken in Tharrawaddy division in Burma in
felt that land which was used for cultivation every few years could not 1921 the cultivators are sowing paddy. The
grow trees for railway timber. When a forest was burnt, there was men make holes in the soil using long bamboo
poles with iron tips. The women sow paddy
the added danger of the flames spreading and burning valuable timber. in each hole.
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Fig.16 – Burning the forest penda or podu plot.
In shifting cultivation, a clearing is made in the forest, usually on the slopes of hills.
After the trees have been cut, they are burnt to provide ashes. The seeds are then
scattered in the area, and left to be irrigated by the rain.
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Fig.18 – Lord Reading hunting in Nepal.
Count the dead tigers in the photo. When British colonial officials and Rajas went hunting they were accompanied by a
whole retinue of servants. Usually, the tracking was done by skilled village hunters, and the Sahib simply fired the shot.
would civilise India. They gave rewards for the killing of tigers, wolves Source C
and other large animals on the grounds that they posed a threat to Baigas are a forest community of
cultivators. 0ver 80,000 tigers, 150,000 leopards and 200,000 wolves Central India. In 1892, after their
shifting cultivation was stopped, they
were killed for reward in the period 1875-1925. Gradually, the tiger
petitioned to the government:
came to be seen as a sporting trophy. The Maharaja of Sarguja alone
‘We daily starve, having had no
shot 1,157 tigers and 2,000 leopards up to 1957. A British foodgrain in our possession. The only
administrator, George Yule, killed 400 tigers. Initially certain areas wealth we possess is our axe. We
India and the Contemporary World
their traditional occupations and started trading in forest products. Verrier Elwin (1939), cited in Madhav
Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha, This
This happened not only in India but across the world. For example, Fissured Land: An Ecological History of
India.
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with the growing demand for rubber in the mid-nineteenth century, Source D
the Mundurucu peoples of the Brazilian Amazon who lived in villages
on high ground and cultivated manioc, began to collect latex from
wild rubber trees for supplying to traders. Gradually, they descended Rubber extraction in the Putumayo
to live in trading posts and became completely dependent on traders. ‘Everywhere in the world, conditions of
work in plantations were horrific.
In India, the trade in forest products was not new. From the medieval
The extraction of rubber in the Putumayo
period onwards, we have records of adivasi communities trading region of the Amazon, by the Peruvian
elephants and other goods like hides, horns, silk cocoons, ivory, Rubber Company (with British and
Peruvian interests) was dependent on
bamboo, spices, fibres, grasses, gums and resins through nomadic
the forced labour of the local Indians,
communities like the Banjaras. called Huitotos. From 1900-1912, the
Putumayo output of 4000 tons of rubber
With the coming of the British, however, trade was completely was associated with a decrease of some
regulated by the government. The British government gave many 30,000 among the Indian population due
to torture, disease and flight. A letter
large European trading firms the sole right to trade in the forest
by an employee of a rubber company
products of particular areas. Grazing and hunting by local people describes how the rubber was collected.
were restricted. In the process, many pastoralist and nomadic The manager summoned hundreds of
Indians to the station:
communities like the Korava, Karacha and Yerukula of the Madras
He grasped his carbine and machete
Presidency lost their livelihoods. Some of them began to be called
and began the slaughter of these
‘criminal tribes’, and were forced to work instead in factories, defenceless Indians, leaving the ground
mines and plantations, under government supervision. covered with 150 corpses, among them,
men, women and children. Bathed in
New opportunities of work did not always mean improved well- blood and appealing for mercy, the
survivors were heaped with the dead
being for the people. In Assam, both men and women from forest
and burned to death, while the manager
communities like Santhals and Oraons from Jharkhand, and shouted, “I want to exterminate all the
Gonds from Chhattisgarh were recruited to work on tea Indians who do not obey my orders
about the rubber that I require them to
plantations. Their wages were low and conditions of work were
bring in.” ’
very bad. They could not return easily to their home villages
Michael Taussig, ‘Culture of Terror-Space
from where they had been recruited. of Death’, in Nicholas Dirks, ed.
Colonialism and Culture, 1992.
Source
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3 Rebellion in the Forest
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the earth by making some offerings at each agricultural festival. In
addition to the Earth, they show respect to the spirits of the river,
the forest and the mountain. Since each village knows where its
boundaries lie, the local people look after all the natural resources
within that boundary. If people from a village want to take some
wood from the forests of another village, they pay a small fee called
devsari, dand or man in exchange. Some villages also protect their forests
by engaging watchmen and each household contributes some grain
to pay them. Every year there is one big hunt where the headmen of
villages in a pargana (cluster of villages) meet and discuss issues of
concern, including forests.
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Source F
Elders living in Bastar recounted the story of this battle they had heard
from their parents:
Podiyami Ganga of Kankapal was told by his father Podiyami Tokeli that:
‘The British came and started taking land. The Raja didn’t pay attention
to things happening around him, so seeing that land was being taken,
his supporters gathered people. War started. His staunch supporters
died and the rest were whipped. My father, Podiyami Tokeli suffered many
strokes, but he escaped and survived. It was a movement to get rid of
the British. The British used to tie them to horses and pull them. From
every village two or three people went to Jagdalpur: Gargideva and
Michkola of Chidpal, Dole and Adrabundi of Markamiras, Vadapandu of
Baleras, Unga of Palem and many others.’
‘On the people’s side, were the big elders – Mille Mudaal of Palem, Soyekal
Dhurwa of Nandrasa, and Pandwa Majhi. People from every pargana
camped in Alnar tarai. The paltan (force) surrounded the people in a
Source
flash. Gunda Dhur had flying powers and flew away. But what could those
with bows and arrows do? The battle took place at night. The people hid
in shrubs and crawled away. The army paltan also ran away. All those
who remained alive (of the people), somehow found their way home to
their villages.’
The British sent troops to suppress the rebellion. The adivasi leaders
tried to negotiate, but the British surrounded their camps and fired
upon them. After that they marched through the villages flogging
and punishing those who had taken part in the rebellion. Most
villages were deserted as people fled into the jungles. It took three
months (February - May) for the British to regain control. However,
they never managed to capture Gunda Dhur. In a major victory
for the rebels, work on reservation was temporarily suspended,
India and the Contemporary World
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4 Forest Transformations in Java
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introduction of a forest service. In 1882, 280,000 sleepers were Source G
exported from Java alone. However, all this required labour to cut
Dirk van Hogendorp, an official of the
the trees, transport the logs and prepare the sleepers. The Dutch
United East India Company in colonial
first imposed rents on land being cultivated in the forest and then Java said:
exempted some villages from these rents if they worked collectively ‘Batavians! Be amazed! Hear with
to provide free labour and buffaloes for cutting and transporting wonder what I have to communicate. Our
fleets are destroyed, our trade
timber. This was known as the blandongdiensten system. Later, instead
languishes, our navigation is going to
of rent exemption, forest villagers were given small wages, but their ruin – we purchase with immense
right to cultivate forest land was restricted. treasures, timber and other materials
for ship-building from the northern
powers, and on Java we leave warlike
and mercantile squadrons with their
4.3 Samin’s Challenge
roots in the ground. Yes, the forests of
Around 1890, Surontiko Samin of Randublatung village, a teak forest Java have timber enough to build a
respectable navy in a short time, besides
village, began questioning state ownership of the forest. He argued that as many merchant ships as we require
the state had not created the wind, water, earth and wood, so it could not … In spite of all (the cutting) the forests
own it. Soon a widespread movement developed. Amongst those who of Java grow as fast as they are cut,
and would be inexhaustible under good
helped organise it were Samin’s sons-in-law. By 1907, 3,000 families care and management.’
were following his ideas. Some of the Saminists protested by lying down Dirk van Hogendorp, cited in Peluso, Rich
on their land when the Dutch came to survey it, while others refused to Forests, Poor People, 1992.
pay taxes or fines or perform labour.
India and the Contemporary World
Fig.22 – Most of Indonesia’s forests are located in islands like Sumatra, Kalimantan and West Irian. However, Java is
where the Dutch began their ‘scientific forestry’. The island, which is now famous for rice production, was once richly
covered with teak.
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4.4 War and Deforestation
The First World War and the Second World War had a major impact
on forests. In India, working plans were abandoned at this time, and
the forest department cut trees freely to meet British war needs. In
Java, just before the Japanese occupied the region, the Dutch followed
‘a scorched earth’ policy, destroying sawmills, and burning huge
piles of giant teak logs so that they would not fall into Japanese
hands. The Japanese then exploited the forests recklessly for their
Fig.23 – Indian Munitions Board, War Timber
own war industries, forcing forest villagers to cut down forests. Sleepers piled at Soolay pagoda ready for
Many villagers used this opportunity to expand cultivation in the shipment,1917.
The Allies would not have been as successful
forest. After the war, it was difficult for the Indonesian forest service in the First World War and the Second World
to get this land back. As in India, people’s need for agricultural land War if they had not been able to exploit the
resources and people of their colonies. Both
has brought them into conflict with the forest department’s desire
the world wars had a devastating effect on the
to control the land and exclude people from it. forests of India, Indonesia and elsewhere.
The forest department cut freely to satisfy war
needs.
4.5 New Developments in Forestry
Since the 1980s, governments across Asia and Africa have begun to
see that scientific forestry and the policy of keeping forest
communities away from forests has resulted in many conflicts.
Conservation of forests rather than collecting timber has become a
more important goal. The government has recognised that in order
to meet this goal, the people who live near the forests must be
involved. In many cases, across India, from Mizoram to Kerala, dense
forests have survived only because villages protected them in sacred
groves known as sarnas, devarakudu, kan, rai, etc. Some villages have
been patrolling their own forests, with each household taking it in
turns, instead of leaving it to the forest guards. Local forest
communities and environmentalists today are thinking of different
forms of forest management.
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Activities
Activities
1. Have there been changes in forest areas where you live? Find out what these
changes are and why they have happened.
2. Write a dialogue between a colonial forester and an adivasi discussing the
issue of hunting in the forest.
Questions
?
1. Discuss how the changes in forest management in the colonial period affected
the following groups of people:
Ø Shifting cultivators
Ø Nomadic and pastoralist communities
Ø Firms trading in timber/forest produce
Ø Plantation owners
Ø Kings/British officials engaged in shikar (hunting)
2. What are the similarities between colonial management of the forests in Bastar
and in Java?
3. Between 1880 and 1920, forest cover in the Indian subcontinent declined by 9.7
million hectares, from 108.6 million hectares to 98.9 million hectares. Discuss
the role of the following factors in this decline:
Ø Railways
Ø Shipbuilding
Ø Agricultural expansion
Ø Commercial farming
Ø Tea/Coffee plantations
India and the Contemporary World
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Chapter V
Pastoralists in the Modern W
World
orld
Pastoralists rarely enter the pages of history textbooks. When you Pastoralists in the Modern World
read about the economy – whether in your classes of history or
economics – you learn about agriculture and industry. Sometimes
Pastoralists
In this chapter you will see how pastoralism has been important in
societies like India and Africa. You will read about the way
colonialism impacted their lives, and how they have coped with the
pressures of modern society. The chapter will first focus on India
and then Africa.
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1 PPastoral
astoral Nomads and their Movements
Even today the Gujjar Bakarwals of Jammu and Kashmir are great Writing in the 1850s, G.C. Barnes gave
herders of goat and sheep. Many of them migrated to this region in the following description of the Gujjars
the nineteenth century in search of pastures for their animals. of Kangra:
Gradually, over the decades, they established themselves in the area, ‘In the hills the Gujjars are exclusively
a pastoral tribe – they cultivate scarcely
and moved annually between their summer and winter grazing
at all. The Gaddis keep flocks of sheep
grounds. In winter, when the high mountains were covered with and goats and the Gujjars, wealth
snow, they lived with their herds in the low hills of the Siwalik consists of buffaloes. These people live
in the skirts of the forests, and maintain
range. The dry scrub forests here provided pasture for their herds.
their existence exclusively by the sale
By the end of April they began their northern march for their summer of the milk, ghee, and other produce
grazing grounds. Several households came together for this journey, of their herds. The men graze the
forming what is known as a kafila. They crossed the Pir Panjal passes cattle, and frequently lie out for weeks
in the woods tending their herds. The
and entered the valley of Kashmir. With the onset of summer, the women repair to the markets every
snow melted and the mountainsides were lush green. The variety of morning with baskets on their heads,
grasses that sprouted provided rich nutritious forage for the animal with little earthen pots filled with milk,
butter-milk and ghee, each of these
herds. By end September the Bakarwals were on the move again, this pots containing the proportion required
time on their downward journey, back to their winter base. When for a day’s meal. During the hot
the high mountains were covered with snow, the herds were grazed weather the Gujjars usually drive their
herds to the upper range, where the
in the low hills.
buffaloes rejoice in the rich grass which
In a different area of the mountains, the Gaddi shepherds of the rains bring forth and at the same
time attain condition from the
Himachal Pradesh had a similar cycle of seasonal movement. They temperate climate and the immunity
too spent their winter in the low hills of Siwalik range, grazing their from venomous flies that torment their
flocks in scrub forests. By April they moved north and spent the existence in the plains.’
summer in Lahul and Spiti. When the snow melted and the high From: G.C. Barnes, Settlement Report
of Kangra, 1850-55.
passes were clear, many of them moved on to higher mountain
India and the Contemporary World
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Fig.3 – Gaddis waiting for shearing to begin. Uhl valley near Palampur in Himachal Pradesh.
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1.2 On the Plateaus, Plains and Deserts
Not all pastoralists operated in the mountains. They were also to be
found in the plateaus, plains and deserts of India.
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In Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, again, the dry central plateau was
covered with stone and grass, inhabited by cattle, goat and sheep
herders. The Gollas herded cattle. The Kurumas and Kurubas reared
sheep and goats and sold woven blankets. They lived near the woods,
cultivated small patches of land, engaged in a variety of petty trades
and took care of their herds. Unlike the mountain pastoralists, it
was not the cold and the snow that defined the seasonal rhythms of
their movement: rather it was the alternation of the monsoon and
dry season. In the dry season they moved to the coastal tracts, and
left when the rains came. Only buffaloes liked the swampy, wet
conditions of the coastal areas during the monsoon months. Other
herds had to be shifted to the dry plateau at this time.
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Fig.7 – A camel fair at Balotra in western Rajasthan. Camel herders come to the fair to sell and buy camels. The Maru
Raikas also display their expertise in training their camels. Horses from Gujarat are also brought for sale at this fair.
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Fig.9 – A Maru Raika genealogist with a group of Raikas.
The genealogist recounts the history of the community. Such oral traditions give pastoral groups their own sense of identity.
These oral traditions can tell us about how a group looks at its own past.
Fig.10 – Maldhari herders moving in search of pastures. Their villages are in the Rann of Kutch.
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2 Colonial R ule and P astoral L ife
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specified, and the number of days they could spend in the forest Source D
was limited. Pastoralists could no longer remain in an area even if In the 1920s, a Royal Commission on
forage was available, the grass was succulent and the undergrowth Agriculture reported:
in the forest was ample. They had to move because the Forest ‘The extent of the area available for
grazing has gone down tremendously
Department permits that had been issued to them now ruled their
with the extension of area under
lives. The permit specified the periods in which they could be cultivation because of increasing
legally within a forest. If they overstayed they were liable to fines. population, extension of irrigation
facilities, acquiring the pastures for
Third, British officials were suspicious of nomadic people. They Government purposes, for example,
defence, industries and agricultural
distrusted mobile craftsmen and traders who hawked their goods
experimental farms. [Now] breeders find
in villages, and pastoralists who changed their places of residence it difficult to raise large herds. Thus their
every season, moving in search of good pastures for their herds. earnings have gone down. The quality
of their livestock has deteriorated,
The colonial government wanted to rule over a settled population. dietary standards have fallen and
They wanted the rural people to live in villages, in fixed places indebtedness has increased.’
with fixed rights on particular fields. Such a population was easy The Report of the Royal Commission of
Agriculture in India, 1928.
to identify and control. Those who were settled were seen as
peaceable and law abiding; those who were nomadic were
considered to be criminal. In 1871, the colonial government in
India passed the Criminal Tribes Act. By this Act many
communities of craftsmen, traders and pastoralists were classified
as Criminal Tribes. They were stated to be criminal by nature
and birth. Once this Act came into force, these communities were
expected to live only in notified village settlements. They were
not allowed to move out without a permit. The village police
kept a continuous watch on them.
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2.1 How Did these Changes Affect the Lives of Pastoralists?
These measures led to a serious shortage of pastures. When grazing
lands were taken over and turned into cultivated fields, the available
area of pastureland declined. Similarly, the reservation of forests
meant that shepherds and cattle herders could no longer freely pasture
their cattle in the forests.
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2.2 How Did the Pastoralists Cope with these Changes?
Pastoralists reacted to these changes in a variety of ways. Some
reduced the number of cattle in their herds, since there was not
enough pasture to feed large numbers. Others discovered new
pastures when movement to old grazing grounds became difficult.
After 1947, the camel and sheep herding Raikas, for instance, could
no longer move into Sindh and graze their camels on the banks of
the Indus, as they had done earlier. The new political boundaries
between India and Pakistan stopped their movement. So they had
to find new places to go. In recent years they have been migrating
to Haryana where sheep can graze on agricultural fields after the
harvests are cut. This is the time that the fields need manure that
the animals provide.
Over the years, some richer pastoralists began buying land and
settling down, giving up their nomadic life. Some became settled
peasants cultivating land, others took to more extensive trading.
Many poor pastoralists, on the other hand, borrowed money from
moneylenders to survive. At times they lost their cattle and sheep
and became labourers, working on fields or in small towns.
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3 Pastoralism in Africa
Let us move to Africa where over half the world’s pastoral population
lives. Even today, over 22 million Africans depend on some form of
pastoral activity for their livelihood. They include communities like
Bedouins, Berbers, Maasai, Somali, Boran and Turkana. Most of
them now live in the semi-arid grasslands or arid deserts where rainfed
agriculture is difficult. They raise cattle, camels, goats, sheep and
donkeys; and they sell milk, meat, animal skin and wool. Some also
earn through trade and transport, others combine pastoral activity
with agriculture; still others do a variety of odd jobs to supplement
their meagre and uncertain earnings from pastoralism.
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Fig.13 – Pastoral communities in Africa.
The inset shows the location of the Maasais in Kenya and Tanzania.
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south Kenya and north Tanzania. The Maasai lost about 60 per cent
of their pre-colonial lands. They were confined to an arid zone with
uncertain rainfall and poor pastures.
Large areas of grazing land were also turned into game reserves like
the Maasai Mara and Samburu National Park in Kenya and Serengeti
Park in Tanzania. Pastoralists were not allowed to enter these
reserves; they could neither hunt animals nor graze their herds in
these areas. Very often these reserves were in areas that had
traditionally been regular grazing grounds for Maasai herds. The
Serengeti National Park, for instance, was created over 14,760 km.
of Maasai grazing land.
India and the Contemporary World
Fig.14 – Without grass, livestock (cattle, goats and sheep) are malnourished, which means less food available for families
and their children. The areas hardest hit by drought and food shortage are in the vicinity of Amboseli National Park, which
last year generated approximately 240 million Kenyan Shillings (estimated $3.5 million US) from tourism. In addition, the
Kilimanjaro Water Project cuts through the communities of this area but the villagers are barred from using the water for
irrigation or for livestock.Courtesy: The Massai Association.
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Fig.15 – The title Maasai derives from the word Maa. Maa-sai means 'My People'. The Maasai
are traditionally nomadic and pastoral people who depend on milk and meat for subsistence.
High temperatures combine with low rainfall to create conditions which are dry, dusty, and
extremely hot. Drought conditions are common in this semi-arid land of equatorial heat. During
such times pastoral animals die in large numbes. Courtesy: The Massai Association.
Source E
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Source F
In most places in colonial Africa, the police were given instructions to keep a
watch on the movements of pastoralists, and prevent them from entering white
areas. The following is one such instruction given by a magistrate to the police,
in south-west Africa, restricting the movements of the pastoralists of Kaokoland
in Namibia:
‘Passes to enter the Territory should not be given to these Natives unless
exceptional circumstances necessitate their entering … The object of the above
Source
proclamation is to restrict the number of natives entering the Territory and to
keep a check on them, and ordinary visiting passes should therefore never be
issued to them.’
‘Kaokoveld permits to enter’, Magistrate to Police Station Commanders of Outjo
and Kamanjab, 24 November, 1937.
The loss of the finest grazing lands and water resources created
pressure on the small area of land that the Maasai were confined
within. Continuous grazing within a small area inevitably meant a
deterioration of the quality of pastures. Fodder was always in short
supply. Feeding the cattle became a persistent problem.
Like the Maasai, other pastoral groups were also forced to live within
the confines of special reserves. The boundaries of these reserves
became the limits within which they could now move. They were
not allowed to move out with their stock without special permits.
India and the Contemporary World
Pastoralists were also not allowed to enter the markets in white areas.
In many regions, they were prohibited from participating in any
form of trade. White settlers and European colonists saw pastoralists
as dangerous and savage – people with whom all contact had to be
minimised. Cutting off all links was, however, never really possible,
because white colonists had to depend on black labour to bore mines
and, build roads and towns.
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both their pastoral and trading activities. Earlier, pastoralists not
only looked after animal herds but traded in various products. The
restrictions under colonial rule did not entirely stop their trading
activities but they were now subject to various restrictions.
But from the colonial period, the Maasai were bound down to a
fixed area, confined within a reserve, and prohibited from moving
in search of pastures. They were cut off from the best grazing lands
and forced to live within a semi-arid tract prone to frequent droughts.
Since they could not shift their cattle to places where pastures were
available, large numbers of Maasai cattle died of starvation and disease
in these years of drought. An enquiry in 1930 showed that the Maasai
in Kenya possessed 720,000 cattle, 820,000 sheep and 171,000 donkeys.
In just two years of severe drought, 1933 and 1934, over half the
cattle in the Maasai Reserve died.
As the area of grazing lands shrank, the adverse effect of the droughts
increased in intensity. The frequent bad years led to a steady decline
of the animal stock of the pastoralists.
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Fig.17 - Even today, young men go through
an elaborate ritual before they become
warriors, although actually it is no longer
common. They must travel throughout the
section's region for about four months,
ending with an event where they run to the
homestead and enter with an attitude of a
raider. During the ceremony, boys dress in
loose clothing and dance non-stop throughout
the day. This ceremony is the transition into a
new age. Girls are not required to go through
such a ritual. Courtesy: The Massai Association.
But the life history of the poor pastoralists who depended only
on their livestock was different. Most often, they did not have
the resources to tide over bad times. In times of war and famine,
they lost nearly everything. They had to go looking for work
in the towns. Some eked out a living as charcoal burners, others
did odd jobs. The lucky could get more regular work in road
or building construction.
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and warriors, was disturbed, though it did not break down
entirely. Second, a new distinction between the wealthy and poor
pastoralists developed.
Conclusion
So we see that pastoral communities in different parts of the world
are affected in a variety of different ways by changes in the modern
world. New laws and new borders affect the patterns of their
movement. With increasing restrictions on their mobility,
pastoralists find it difficult to move in search of pastures. As pasture
lands disappear grazing becomes a problem, while pastures that
remain deteriorate through continuous over grazing. Times of
drought become times of crises, when cattle die in large numbers.
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Activities
1. Imagine that it is 1950 and you are a 60-year-old Raika herder living in
post-Independence India. You are telling your grand-daughter about the
changes which have taken place in your lifestyle after Independence. What
would you say?
Activities
2. Imagine that you have been asked by a famous magazine to write an article
about the life and customs of the Maasai in pre-colonial Africa. Write the
article, giving it an interesting title.
3. Find out more about the some of the pastoral communities marked in Figs.
11 and 13.
Questions
?
1. Explain why nomadic tribes need to move from one place to another.
What are the advantages to the environment of this continuous
movement?
2. Discuss why the colonial government in India brought in the following
laws. In each case, explain how the law changed the lives of
pastoralists:
Ø Waste Land rules
Ø Forest Acts
Ø Criminal Tribes Act
Ø Grazing Tax
3. Give reasons to explain why the Maasai community lost their grazing
lands.
India and the Contemporary World
4. There are many similarities in the way in which the modern world forced
changes in the lives of pastoral communities in India and East Africa.
Write about any two examples of changes which were similar
for Indian pastoralists and the Maasai herders.
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Chapter VI
Peasants and Farmers
In the previous two chapters you read about pastures and forests,
and about those who depended on these resources. You learnt about
shifting cultivators, pastoral groups and tribals. You saw how access
to forests and pastures was regulated by modern governments, and
how these restrictions and controls affected the lives of those who
used these resources.
In this chapter you will read about peasants and farmers, with a
special focus on three different countries. You will find out about
the small cottagers in England, the wheat farmers of the USA, and
the opium producers of Bengal. You will see what happens to different
rural groups with the coming of modern agriculture; what happens
when different regions of the world are integrated with the capitalist
world market. By comparing the histories of different places you
will see how these histories are different, even though some of the
processes are similar.
s and Farmers
Let us begin our journey with England where the agricultural
revolution first occurred.
a n andt Farmers
P e a s Peasants
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1 The Coming of Modern Agriculture in England
Captain Swing was a mythic name used in these letters. But who
were the Swing rioters? Why did they break threshing machines?
What were they protesting against? To answer these questions, we
need to trace the developments in English agriculture in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries.
Over the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the English The threatening letters circulated widely.
countryside changed dramatically. Before this time in large parts of At times the threats were gentle, at
India and the Contemporary World
England the countryside was open. It was not partitioned into others severe. Some of them were as
brief as the following.
enclosed lands privately owned by landlords. Peasants cultivated on
strips of land around the village they lived in. At the beginning of
Sir
each year, at a public meeting, each villager was allocated a number
This is to acquaint you that if your
of strips to cultivate. Usually, these strips were of varying quality threshing machines are not destroyed
and often located in different places, not next to each other. The by you directly we shall commence our
labours.
effort was to ensure that everyone had a mix of good and bad land.
Beyond these strips of cultivation lay the common land. All villagers
Signed on behalf of the whole
had access to the commons. Here they pastured their cows and grazed
Swing
their sheep, collected fuelwood for fire and berries and fruit for food.
From E.J. Hobsbawm and George Rude,
They fished in the rivers and ponds, and hunted rabbit in common Captain Swing.
forests. For the poor, the common land was essential for survival. It
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supplemented their meagre income, sustained their cattle, and helped Source B
them tide over bad times when crops failed.
This Swing letter is an example of a
In some parts of England, this economy of open fields and common sterner threat:
lands had started changing from about the sixteenth century. When
the price of wool went up in the world market in the sixteenth Sir,
century, rich farmers wanted to expand wool production to earn Your name is down amongst the Black
hearts in the Black Book and this is to
profits. They were eager to improve their sheep breeds and ensure
advise you and the like of you, who are
good feed for them. They were keen on controlling large areas of …… to make your wills.
land in compact blocks to allow improved breeding. So they began Ye have been the Blackguard Enemies
dividing and enclosing common land and building hedges around of the people on all occasions, ye have
not yet done as ye ought.
their holdings to separate their property from that of others. They
drove out villagers who had small cottages on the commons, and
Swing
they prevented the poor from entering the enclosed fields.
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1.2 New Demands for Grain
Why was there such a frantic effort to enclose lands? What did the
enclosures imply? The new enclosures were different from the old.
Unlike the sixteenth-century enclosures that promoted sheep farming,
the land being enclosed in the late eighteenth century was for grain
production. The new enclosures were happening in a different context;
they became a sign of a changing time. From the mid-eighteenth
century, the English population expanded rapidly. Between 1750 and
1900, it multiplied over four times, mounting from 7 million in 1750
to 21 million in 1850 and 30 million in 1900. This meant an increased
demand for foodgrains to feed the population. Moreover, Britain at
this time was industrialising. More and more people began to live
and work in urban areas. Men from rural areas migrated to towns in
search of jobs. To survive they had to buy foodgrains in the market.
As the urban population grew, the market for foodgrains expanded,
and when demand increased rapidly, foodgrain prices rose.
By the end of the eighteenth century, France was at war with England.
This disrupted trade and the import of foodgrains from Europe.
Prices of foodgrains in England sky rocketed, encouraging landowners
to enclose lands and enlarge the area under grain cultivation. Profits
flowed in and landowners pressurised the Parliament to pass the
Enclosure Acts.
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100
SHILLINGS PER BUSHEL
80
60
India and the Contemporary World
40
20
0
5
0
-7
-8
-8
-9
-9
-0
-1
-1
-2
-2
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-5
80
71
76
81
86
91
01
05
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21
26
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36
41
46
-1
17
17
17
17
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18
18
18
18
18
18
18
18
18
18
96
17
YEARS
average price
Fig.2 – Annual average wheat prices in England and Wales: 1771-1850. Activity
Look at the graph carefully. See how the price
New words line moves up sharply in the 1790s and slumps
Bushel – A measure of capacity. dramatically after 1815. Can you explain why the
Shillings – An English currency. 20 shillings = £1 line of the graph shows this pattern?
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Fig.3 – Suffolk countryside in the early nineteenth century.
This is a painting by the English painter John Constable (1776 -1837). Son of a wealthy corn merchant, he grew up in the
Suffolk countryside in east England, a region that had been enclosed much before the nineteenth century. At a time when
the idyllic countryside was disappearing, the open fields were being enclosed, Constable painted sentimental images of open
countryside. In this particular painting we do see some fences and the separation of fields, but we get no idea of what was
happening in the landscape. Constable's paintings usually did not have working people. If you look at Fig.1, you will see that
Suffolk was surrounded by regions where threshing machines were broken in large numbers during the Swing riots.
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century. It was in about the 1660s that farmers in many parts of England
began growing turnip and clover. They soon discovered that planting
these crops improved the soil and made it more fertile. Turnip was,
moreover, a good fodder crop relished by cattle. So farmers began
cultivating turnips and clover regularly. These crops became part of
the cropping system. Later findings showed that these crops had the
capacity to increase the nitrogen content of the soil. Nitrogen was
important for crop growth. Cultivation of the same soil over a few
years depleted the nitrogen in the soil and reduced its fertility. By
restoring nitrogen, turnip and clover made the soil fertile once again.
We find that farmers in the early nineteenth century used much the
same method to improve agriculture on a more regular basis.
the land. They found their customary rights gradually disappearing. What happened to the women and children?
Deprived of their rights and driven off the land, they tramped in search Cow keeping, collection of firewood,
of work. From the Midlands, they moved to the southern counties of gleaning, gathering of fruits and berries from
England. This was a region that was most intensively cultivated, and the common lands was earlier mostly done
there was a great demand for agricultural labourers. But nowhere could by women and children.
the poor find secure jobs. Can you suggest how enclosures must have
affected the lives of women and children?
Earlier, it was common for labourers to live with landowners. They
Can you imagine how the disappearance of
ate at the master’s table, and helped their master through the year,
common lands might have changed the
doing a variety of odd jobs. By 1800 this practice was disappearing.
relationship between men, women and
Labourers were being paid wages and employed only during harvest
children within the family?
time. As landowners tried to increase their profits, they cut the
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amount they had to spend on their workmen. Work became insecure, Source C
employment uncertain, income unstable. For a very large part of
the year the poor had no work. One peasant who lost his rights to
common land after the enclosures wrote
to the local lord:
‘Should a poor man take one of your
1.5 The Introduction of Threshing Machines sheep from the common, his life would
be forfeited by law. But should You take
During the Napoleonic Wars, prices of foodgrains were high and the common from a hundred poor men’s
farmers expanded production vigorously. Fearing a shortage of sheep, the law gives no redress. The
poor man is liable to be hung for taking
labour, they began buying the new threshing machines that had come
from You what would not supply you with
into the market.They complained of the insolence of labourers, their a meal; & You would do nothing illegal
drinking habits, and the difficulty of making them work. The by depriving him of his subsistence;
…What should be the inference of the
machines, they thought, would help them reduce their dependence
poor…when the laws are not accessible
on labourers. to the injured poor and the government
gives them no redress?’
After the Napoleonic Wars had ended, thousands of soldiers returned
Source: J.M. Neeson, Commoners:
to the villages. They needed alternative jobs to survive. But this was Common Rights, Enclosures and Social
a time when grain from Europe began flowing into England, prices Change, 1700-1820 (1993).
declined, and an Agricultural Depression set in (see prices in Fig.2).
Anxious, landowners began reducing the area they cultivated and
demanded that the imports of crops be stopped. They tried to cut
Source D
wages and the number of workmen they employed. The unemployed
poor tramped from village to village, and those with uncertain jobs
In contrast many writers emphasised the
lived in fear of a loss of their livelihood. advantages of enclosures.
The Captain Swing riots spread in the countryside at this time. For ‘There can be no question of the superior
profit to the farmer of enclosures rather
the poor the threshing machines had become a sign of bad times. than open fields. In one case he is in
chains; he can make no changes in soil
or prices, he is like a horse in team, he
must jog along with the rest.’
Conclusion
John Middleton, an 18th century writer.
The coming of modern agriculture in England thus meant many
different changes. The open fields disappeared, and the customary
rights of peasants were undermined. The richer farmers expanded
grain production, sold this grain in the world market, made profits, Activity Peasants and Farmers
and became powerful. The poor left their villages in large numbers. Read Sources C and D and answer the
Some went from the Midlands to the Southern counties where jobs following.
were available, others to the cities. The income of labourers became Ø What is the peasant trying to say in
unstable, their jobs insecure, their livelihood precarious. Source C?
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2 Bread Basket and Dust Bowl
Now let us travel across the Atlantic to the USA. Let us see how
modern agriculture developed there, how the USA became the
bread basket of the world, and what this meant to the rural people
of America.
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Fig.6 – The agricultural belts in the USA in 1920.
Adapted from several essays by Baker published in Economic Geography in the 1920s.
movement of the white settlers who took over the land. After the
American War of Independence from 1775 to 1783 and the formation
of the United States of America, the white Americans began to move
westward. By the time Thomas Jefferson became President of the
USA in 1800, over 700,000 white settlers had moved on to the
Appalachian plateau through the passes. Seen from the east coast,
America seemed to be a land of promise. Its wilderness could be
turned into cultivated fields. Forest timber could be cut for export,
animals hunted for skin, mountains mined for gold and minerals.
But this meant that the American Indians had to be cleared from
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1775 1830
1850 1920
Fig.7 – The westward expansion of white settlement between 1775 and 1920.
first decade of the eighteenth century, and then moved into the
Mississippi valley between 1820 and 1850. They slashed and burnt
forests, pulled out the stumps, cleared the land for cultivation, and
built log cabins in the forest clearings. Then they cleared larger
areas, and erected fences around the fields. They ploughed the land Fig.8 – Sod houses in the Frontier. (Courtesy:
Fred Hultstrand History in Pictures Collection, NDIRS-NDSU,
and sowed corn and wheat. Fargo.)
A typical sod house that settlers lived in when
In the early years, the fertile soil produced good crops. When the they began clearing the grasslands. Timber for
soil became impoverished and exhausted in one place, the migrants houses was not available in this area.
would move further west, to explore new lands and raise a new
crop. It was, however, only after the 1860s that settlers swept into New words
the Great Plains across the River Mississippi. In subsequent decades
this region became a major wheat-producing area of America. Sod – Pieces of earth with grass
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Let us follow the story of the wheat farmers in some detail. Let us
see how they turned the grasslands into the bread basket of America,
what problems they faced, and what consequences followed.
In 1910, about 45 million acres of land in the USA was under wheat.
Nine years later, the area had expanded to 74 million acres, an
increase of about 65 per cent. Most of the increase was in the Great
Plains where new areas were being ploughed to extend cultivation.
In many cases, big farmers – the wheat barons – controlled as much
as 2,000 to 3,000 acres of land individually.
Fig.10 – A walking plough.
2.3 The Coming of New Technology Note the front resting on a small wheel. At the
rear is the handle with which the ploughman
This dramatic expansion was made possible by new technology. guided the plough.
The plough was hitched to a team of oxen or
Through the nineteenth century, as the settlers moved into new horses. (See Fig.13)
habitats and new lands, they modified their implements to meet
their requirements. When they entered the mid-western prairie,
the simple ploughs the farmers had used in the eastern coastal areas
of the USA proved ineffective. The prairie was covered with a thick Peasants and Farmers
mat of grass with tough roots. To break the sod and turn the soil
over, a variety of new ploughs were devised locally, some of them
12 feet long. Their front rested on small wheels and they were
hitched on to six yokes of oxen or horses. By the early twentieth
century, farmers in the Great Plains were breaking the ground
with tractors and disk ploughs, clearing vast stretches for
wheat cultivation.
Once the crop had ripened it had to be harvested. Before the 1830s,
the grain used to be harvested with a cradle or sickle. At harvest Fig.11 – Cyrus McCormick invented the reaper
time, hundreds of men and women could be seen in the fields in 1831.
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Fig.12 – The scythe was used for mowing grass before the Fig.13 – Breaking ploughs before the age of
mid-nineteenth century. mechanisation.
(Courtesy: Fred Hultstrand History in Pictures Collection, NDIRS-
NDSU, Fargo.)
You can see the twelve ploughs hitched to a
team of horses.
Fig.15 – Breaking the ground on the Great Plains in North Dakota, 1910. (Courtesy: Fred Hultstrand History in Pictures Collection, NDIRS-
NDSU, Fargo.)
You can see a Minneapolis steam tractor pulling a John Deere plough with metal shares that cut into the ground.
The plough could break the soil quickly and cut even strong grassroots effectively. Notice the deep furrows behind the
machine and the unploughed land with grass on the left. Only big wheat farmers could afford these machines.
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cutting the crop. In1831, Cyrus McCormick invented the first
mechanical reaper which could cut in one day as much as five
men could cut with cradles and 16 men with sickles. By the early
twentieth century, most farmers were using combined harvesters
to cut grain. With one of these machines, 500 acres of wheat could
be harvested in two weeks.
For the big farmers of the Great Plains these machines had many
attractions. The prices of wheat were high and the demand seemed
limitless. The new machines allowed these big farmers to rapidly
clear large tracts, break up the soil, remove the grass and prepare
the ground for cultivation. The work could be done quickly and
with a minimal number of hands. With power-driven machinery,
four men could plough, seed and harvest 2,000 to 4,000 acres of
wheat in a season.
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Fig.17 – Drought Survivors. Painted by Alexander Hogue, (1936).
Hogue dramatised the tragic scenes of death and destruction that he
saw, in a series of paintings. Life Magazine referred to Hogue as the
artist of the dust bowl.
the skies darkened, and the dust swept in, people were blinded and
choked. Cattle were suffocated to death, their lungs caked with
dust and mud. Sand buried fences, covered fields, and coated the
surfaces of rivers till the fish died. Dead bodies of birds and animals
were strewn all over the landscape. Tractors and machines that had
ploughed the earth and harvested the wheat in the 1920s were now
clogged with dust, damaged beyond repair.
What had gone wrong? Why these duststorms? In part they came
because the early 1930s were years of persistent drought. The rains
failed year after year, and temperatures soared. The wind blew with
ferocious speed. But ordinary duststorms became black blizzards
only because the entire landscape had been ploughed over, stripped
of all grass that held it together. When wheat cultivation had
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3 The Indian Farmer and Opium Production
Let us now move to India and see what was happening in the Indian
countryside in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
As you know, British rule was gradually established in India after the
Battle of Plassey (1757). Over the period of colonial rule, the rural
landscape was radically transformed. The British saw land revenue as a
major source of government income. To build the resources of the state,
efforts were made to impose a regular system of land revenue, increase
revenue rates, and expand the area under cultivation. As cultivation
expanded, the area under forests and pastures declined. All this created
many problems for peasants and pastoralists. They found their access to
forests and grazing lands increasingly restricted by rules and regulations.
And they struggled to meet the pressures of government revenue demand.
In the colonial period, rural India also came to produce a range of crops
for the world market. In the early nineteenth century, indigo and opium
were two of the major commercial crops. By the end of the century,
peasants were producing sugarcane, cotton, jute, wheat and several other
crops for export, to feed the population of urban Europe and to supply
the mills of Lancashire and Manchester in England.
How did Indian cultivators respond to their entry into the modern
world of international commerce and trade? Let us look at the history
of one crop – opium – to get an idea of what colonial rule meant to
peasants, and how the market operated in the colonies.
England. As tea became a popular English drink, the tea trade became
more and more important. In 1785, about 15 million pounds of tea was
being imported into England. By 1830, the figure had jumped to over
30 million pounds. In fact, the profits of the East India Company came
to depend on the tea trade.
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authority. So the Manchus were unwilling to allow the entry of
foreign goods.
While the English cultivated a taste for Chinese tea, the Chinese Activity
became addicted to opium. People of all classes took to the drug –
shopkeepers and peddlers, officials and army men, aristocrats and On the arrows in the map indicate the
commodities that flowed from one country to
paupers. Lin Ze-xu, Special Commissioner at Canton in 1839,
another.
estimated that there were over 4 million opium smokers in China.
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Fig.19 – A ship arrives from China.
This is a painting by Thomas Daniell, an English artist who came to India with his nephew William Daniell in 1786.
The Daniells went first to China, stayed there for while, and then sailed from Canton (in south China) to India. The
ship in which they came was registered in an Indian port and was engaged in trade in Eastern waters. The illegal trade
in opium with China was carried on, in such ships.
Source E
In 1839, the Chinese Emperor sent Lin Ze-xu to Canton as a Special Commissioner
with instructions to stop the opium trade. After he arrived in Canton in the spring of
1839, Lin arrested 1, 600 men involved in the trade, and confiscated 11,000 pounds
of opium. Then he forced the foreign factories to hand over their stocks of opium,
burnt 20, 000 crates of opium and blew the ashes to the wind. When he announced
that Canton was closed to foreign trade, Britain declared war. Defeated in the Opium
War (1837-42) , the Chinese were forced to accept the humiliating terms of the
subsequent treaties, legalizing opium trade and opening up China to foreign
merchants.
Before the war, Lin wrote a strong letter to Queen Victoria criticizing the trade in
opium. Here is an extract from Lin’s “Letter of Advice to Queen Victoria”
‘All those people in China who sell opium or smoke opium should receive the death
penalty. We trace the crime of those barbarians who through the years have been
selling opium, then the deep harm they have wrought and the great profit they have
usurped should fundamentally justify their execution according to law. …
Peasants and Farmers
We find your country is sixty or seventy thousand li [three li make one mile, ordinarily]
from China. Yet there are barbarian ships that strive to come here for trade for the
purpose of making a great profit. The wealth of China is used to profit the barbarians.
That is to say, the great profit made by barbarians is all taken from the rightful share
of China. By what right do they then in return us the poisonous drug to injure the
Chinese people?...Let us ask, where is your conscience? I have heard that the smoking
of opium is very strictly forbidden by your country; that is because the harm caused
Source
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A British doctor in Canton put the figure at 12 million. As China
Activity
became a country of opium addicts, British trade in tea flourished.
The returns from opium sale financed the tea purchases in China. Imagine that you were asked by the Emperor
of China to prepare a leaflet for young people
about the harmful effects of opium. Find out
3.2 Where did Opium come from?
about the effect of opium on the human body.
This is where the Indian peasants come into the story. Design your leaflet and give it an eye-
catching title
When the British conquered Bengal, they made a determined effort
to produce opium in the lands under their control. As the market
for opium expanded in China, larger volumes of opium flowed out
of Bengal ports. Before 1767, no more than 500 chests (of two
maunds each) were being exported from India. Within four years,
the quantity trebled. A hundred years later, in 1870, the government
was exporting about 50,000 chests annually.
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meet their immediate needs and pay back the loan at a later stage. Source F
But the loan tied the peasant to the headman and through him to the
government. It was the government opium agents who were advancing The Deputy Opium Agent of Allahabad
the money to the headmen, who in turn gave it to the cultivators. By wrote in 1833:
taking the loan, the cultivator was forced to grow opium on a specified ‘The Board appears to think that the
cultivators are not unwilling to cultivate.
area of land and hand over the produce to the agents once the crop For two years past I have had constant
had been harvested. He had no option of planting the field with a communications with the cultivators in
some of the districts south of the Jumna
crop of his choice or of selling his produce to anyone but the
and state positively the people are
government agent. And he had to accept the low price offered for discontented and dissatisfied almost to
the produce. a man. I have made many enquires on
the subject and the impression left on
The problem could have been partly solved by increasing the price my mind is that cultivation of the poppy
is considered a curse by the people and
of opium. But the government was reluctant to do so. It wanted to
that only by undue authority is it upheld
produce opium at a cheap rate and sell it at a high price to opium … The cultivation was introduced at the
agents in Calcutta, who then shipped it to China. This difference request, nay I may say, at the command
of the Collector; … The people tell me,
between the buying and selling price was the government’s opium they are ill used and abused and even
revenue. The prices given to the peasants were so low that by the beaten by the chuprassies … The people
early eighteenth century angry peasants began agitating for higher almost uniformly told, they suffered loss
from poppy …’
prices and refused to take advances. In regions around Benaras,
From Benoy Chowdhury, Growth of
cultivators began giving up opium cultivation. They produced Commercial Agriculture in Bengal.
sugarcane and potatoes instead. Many cultivators sold off their crop
to travelling traders (pykars) who offered higher prices.
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Conclusion
In this chapter you saw how rural areas in different parts of the
world changed in the modern period. While looking at these changes
we must remember that their pattern was not the same everywhere.
All sections of rural people were not affected in the same way. Some
gained, others lost. Nor was the history of modernisation simply a
glorious story of growth and development. It was also a story of
displacements and impoverishment, ecological crises and social
rebellion, colonisation and repression. We need to look at these
variations and strands to understand the diverse ways in which
peasants and farmers confronted the modern world.
India and the Contemporary World
Fig.20 – Packed chests of opium being taken to Ghazipur railway station in the nineteenth century.
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Activities
Activities
1. Draw a timeline from 1650 to1930 showing the significant agricultural changes
which you have read about in this chapter.
2. Fill in the following table with the events outlined in this chapter. Remember,
there could be more than one change in a country.
Questions
1. Explain briefly what the open field system meant to rural people in eighteenth-
century England.
?
Look at the system from the point of view of :
Ø A rich farmer
Ø A labourer
Ø A peasant woman
2. Explain briefly the factors which led to the enclosures in England.
3. Why were threshing machines opposed by the poor in England?
4. Who was Captain Swing? What did the name symbolise or represent? Peasants and Farmers
5. What was the impact of the westward expansion of settlers in the USA?
6. What were the advantages and disadvantages of the use of mechanical
harvesting machines in the USA?
7. What lessons can we draw from the conversion of the countryside in the USA
from a bread basket to a dust bowl?
8. Write a paragraph on why the British insisted on farmers growing opium in
India.
9. Why were Indian farmers reluctant to grow opium?
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India and the Contemporary World
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SECTION III
Section III will introduce you to the history of everyday life. In this section you will
read about the history of sports and clothing.
History is not just about the dramatic events in the world. It is equally about the
small things in our lives. Everything around us has a history – the clothes we wear,
the food we eat, the music we hear, the medicines we use, the literature we read, the
games we play. All these have evolved over time. Since we relate to them in our daily
lives, their history escapes us. We never pause to think what things were like a
century ago; or how people in different societies see these everyday things – food
and clothing for instance – differently.
Chapter VII is on History and Sports. You will study this history through the story
of one game that in India has captured the imagination of the nation for some decades.
News of cricket today hits the headline of newspapers. Cricket matches are organised
to establish friendship between nations and cricketers are seen as ambassadors of the
History and Sport: The Story of Cricket
country. The game has, in fact, come to represent the unity of India. But did you
know that this was not always so? This chapter will tell you about the long and
chequered history of the game.
At one time, a century and half ago, cricket was an English game. It had been invented
in England and became intimately linked to the culture of nineteenth century
Victorian society. The game was expected to represent all that the English valued –
fair play, discipline, gentlemanliness. It was introduced in schools as part of a wider
programme of physical training through which boys were to be moulded into ideal
citizens. Girls were not to play games meant for boys. With the British, cricket
spread to the colonies. There again it was supposed to uphold the values of Englishness.
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The colonial masters assumed that only they could play the game as it ought to be
played, in its true spirit. They were, in fact, worried when the inhabitants of the
colonies not only began to play the game, but often played it better than the masters;
and at times beat the English at their own game. The game of cricket thus got linked up
closely with the politics of colonialism and nationalism.
Within the colonies the game had a complex history. As Chapter VII will show, it was
connected to the politics of caste and region, community and nation. The emergence of
cricket as a national game was the result of many decades of historical development.
From cricket you will move to clothing (Chapter VIII). You will see how a history of
clothing can tell us so much about the history of societies. The clothes people wear are
shaped by the rules and norms of societies. They reflect people’s sense of beauty and
honour, their notions of proper conduct and behavior. As societies change, these norms
alter. But these changes in the norms of society and styles of clothing come about as a
consequence of long years of struggle. They have a history. They do not just
happen naturally.
Chapter VIII will introduce you to this history. It will show how the shifts in clothing
in England and India were shaped by the social movements within these societies, and
by changes within the economy. You will see how clothing too, is deeply connected to
the politics of colonialism and nationalism, caste and class. A look at the history of
clothing helps us discover new layers of meaning in the politics of Swadeshi and the
symbol of the charkha. It even helps us understand Mahatma Gandhi better, for he was
one individual who was highly sensitive to the politics of clothing, and wrote
India and the Contemporary World
extensively on it.
Once you see the history behind one or two such issues, you may begin to ask historical
questions about other such aspects of ordinary life which you have taken for granted.
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Chapter VII
II
History and Sport:
The Story of Cricket
Cricket grew out of the many stick-and-ball games played in England
500 years ago, under a variety of different rules. The word ‘bat’ is an old
English word that simply means stick or club. By the seventeenth century,
cricket had evolved enough to be recognisable as a distinct game and it
was popular enough for its fans to be fined for playing it on Sunday Fig.1 – The oldest cricket bat in existence.
Note the curved end, similar to a hockey
instead of going to church. Till the middle of the eighteenth century, bats
stick.
were roughly the same shape as hockey sticks, curving outwards at the
bottom. There was a simple reason for this: the ball was bowled underarm,
How that early version of cricket played in village England grew into
the modern game played in giant stadiums in great cities is a proper
subject for history because one of the uses of history is to understand
how the present was made. And sport is a large part of contemporary
life: it is one way in which we amuse ourselves, compete with each
other, stay fit, and express our social loyalties. If tens of millions of
Indians today drop everything to watch the Indian team play a Test
match or a one-day international, it is reasonable for a history of India
to explore how that stick-and-ball game invented in south-eastern
England became the ruling passion of the Indian sub-continent. This
is particularly so, since the game was linked to the wider history of
colonialism and nationalism and was in part shaped by the politics of
Sport:
religion and caste.
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1 The Historical D evelopment of Cricket
as a Game in England
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and the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) was founded in 1787. In
1788, the MCC published its first revision of the laws and became
the guardian of cricket’s regulations.
While many important changes occurred during the nineteenth Fig.4 – The laws of cricket drawn up and
century (the rule about wide balls was applied, the exact revised by the MCC were regularly published in
this form. Note that norms of betting were also
circumference of the ball was specified, protective equipment like formalised.
pads and gloves became available, boundaries were introduced where
previously all shots had to be run and, most importantly, over-
arm bowling became legal) cricket remained a pre-industrial sport
that matured during the early phase of the Industrial Revolution,
the late eighteenth century. This history has made cricket a game
with characteristics of both the past and the present day.
Cricket’s connection with a rural past can be seen in the length of History and Sport: The Story of Cricket
a Test match. Originally, cricket matches had no time limit. The
game went on for as long as it took to bowl out a side twice. The
rhythms of village life were slower and cricket’s rules were made
before the Industrial Revolution. Modern factory work meant that
people were paid by the hour or the day or the week: games that
were codified after the industrial revolution, like football and
hockey, were strictly time-limited to fit the routines of industrial
city life. New words
In the same way, cricket’s vagueness about the size of a cricket Codified – Made into a formalised system
ground is a result of its village origins. Cricket was originally played with clearly established rules and laws
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on country commons, unfenced land that was public property.
The size of the commons varied from one village to another, so
there were no designated boundaries or boundary hits. When the
ball went into the crowd, the crowd cleared a way for the fieldsman
to retrieve it. Even after boundaries were written into the laws of
cricket, their distance from the wicket was not specified. The laws
simply lay down that ‘the umpire shall agree with both captains on
the boundaries of the playing area’.
If you look at the game’s equipment, you can see how cricket both
changed with changing times and yet fundamentally remained true to
its origins in rural England. Cricket’s most important tools are all made
of natural, pre-industrial materials. The bat is made of wood as are
the stumps and the bails. The ball is made with leather, twine and
cork. Even today both bat and ball are handmade, not industrially
manufactured. The material of the bat changed slightly over time. Once
it was cut out of a single piece of wood. Now it consists of two pieces,
the blade which is made out of the wood of the willow tree and the
handle which is made out of cane that became available as European
colonialists and trading companies established themselves in Asia. Fig.5 – This poster announces a match at
Unlike golf and tennis, cricket has refused to remake its tools with Lord’s in 1848.
It shows the difference between the amateurs
industrial or man-made materials: plastic, fibre glass and metal have and the professionals by calling the two sides
been firmly rejected. Australian cricketer Dennis Lillee tried to play an the Gentlemen and the Players.
Advertisements for nineteenth century
innings with an aluminium bat, only to have it outlawed by the umpires. matches looked like theatre posters suggesting
the dramatic nature of the game.
But in the matter of protective equipment, cricket has been influenced
by technological change. The invention of vulcanised rubber led to
the introduction of pads in 1848 and protective gloves soon afterwards,
and the modern game would be unimaginable without helmets made
out of metal and synthetic lightweight materials.
India and the Contemporary World
Fig.6 – The legendary batsman W.G. Grace coming out to bat at Lord’s
in 1895.
He was playing for the Gentlemen against the Players.
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1.1 Cricket and Victorian England
New words
The organisation of cricket in England reflected the nature of English
society. The rich who could afford to play it for pleasure were called Patronage – Agreement by wealthy
amateurs and the poor who played it for a living were called supporter to give financial support for a
professionals. The rich were amateurs for two reasons. One, they specific cause
considered sport a kind of leisure. To play for the pleasure of playing Subscription – Collected financial
and not for money was an aristocratic value. Two, there was not contribution for a specific purpose (such as
enough money in the game for the rich to be interested. The wages cricket)
of professionals were paid by patronage or subscription or gate
money. The game was seasonal and did not offer employment the
year round. Most professionals worked as miners or in other forms
of working class employment in winter, the off-season.
Source A
Thomas Hughes (1822-1896) studied at Rugby School during the headmastership of Thomas Arnold.
Based on his school experience, he wrote a novel, Tom Brown’s Schooldays. The book, published in 1857,
became popular and helped spread the ideas of what came to be called muscular Christianity that believed
that healthy citizens had to be moulded through Christian ideals and sports.
In this book Tom Brown is transformed from a nervous, homesick, timid boy into a robust, manly student.
He becomes a heroic figure recognised for his physical courage, sportsmanship, loyalty and patriotism.
This transformation is brought about by the discipline of the public school and the culture of sports.
——EXTRACT——
‘Come, none of your irony, Brown,’ answers the master. ‘I’m beginning to understand the game scientifically.
What a noble game it is, too!’
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leaving the energetic, hardworking aspects of the game, like fast
bowling, to the professionals. That is partly why the laws of the
game always give the benefit of the doubt to the batsman. Cricket is
a batsman’s game because its rules were made to favour ‘Gentlemen’,
who did most of the batting. The social superiority of the amateur
was also the reason the captain of a cricket team was traditionally a
batsman: not because batsmen were naturally better captains but
because they were generally Gentlemen. Captains of teams, whether
club teams or national sides, were always amateurs. It was not till the
1930s that the English Test team was led by a professional, the
Yorkshire batsman, Len Hutton.
It’s often said that the ‘battle of Waterloo was won on the playing
fields of Eton’. This means that Britain’s military success was based
on the values taught to schoolboys in its public schools. Eton was
the most famous of these schools. The English boarding school was
the institution that trained English boys for careers in the military,
the civil service and the church, the three great institutions of imperial
England. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, men like
Thomas Arnold, headmaster of the famous Rugby School and
founder of the modern public school system, saw team sport like
cricket and rugby not just as outdoor play, but as an organised way
of teaching English boys the discipline, the importance of hierarchy,
the skills, the codes of honour and the leadership qualities that helped
them build and run the British empire. Victorian empire builders
justified the conquest of other countries as an act of unselfish social
service, by which backward peoples were introduced to the civilising
influence of British law and Western knowledge. Cricket helped to
confirm this self-image of the English elite by glorifying the amateur
ideal, where cricket was played not for victory or profit, but for its
own sake, in the spirit of fair play.
India and the Contemporary World
In actual fact the Napoleonic wars were won because of the economic
contribution of the iron works of Scotland and Wales, the mills of
Lancashire and the financial houses of the City of London. It was
the English lead in trade and industry that made Britain the world’s
greatest power, but it suited the English ruling class to believe that it
Fig.7 – A cricket match at Lord’s between the
was the superior character of its young men, built in boarding schools, famous public schools Eton and Harrow.
playing gentlemanly games like cricket, that tipped the balance. While the game itself would look similar
wherever it is played, the crowd does not.
Notice how the upper-class social character
of the game is brought out by the focus on
gentlemen in bowler hats and ladies with their
New words parasols shading them from the sun.
From Illustrated London News,
Hierarchy – Organised by rank and status July 20 1872.
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Fig.8 – Croquet, not cricket, for women.
Sports for women was not designed as vigorous, competitive exercise. Croquet was a slow-paced, elegant game
considered suitable for women, especially of the upper class. The players’ flowing gowns, frills and hats show the
character of women’s sports. From Illustrated London News, 20 July, 1872.
Source B
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2 The Spread of Cricket
While some English team games like hockey and football became
international games, played all over the world, cricket remained a
colonial game, limited to countries that had once been part of the
British empire. The pre-industrial oddness of cricket made it a hard game
to export. It took root only in countries that the British conquered and
ruled. In these colonies, cricket was established as a popular sport either
by white settlers (as in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Australia, New Zealand,
the West Indies and Kenya) or by local elites who wanted to copy the
habits of their colonial masters, as in India.
New words
Fig.10 – A leisurely game for recreation, being played against the backdrop of Mulattos – People of mixed European and
the Himalayas.
The only Indians in the picture seem to be the servants seen near the pavilion. African descent
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amount of informal cricket on beaches, in back alleys
and parks, club cricket till as late as the 1930s was
dominated by white elites.
Despite the exclusiveness of the white cricket elite
in the West Indies, the game became hugely popular
in the Caribbean. Success at cricket became a measure
of racial equality and political progress. At the time
of their independence many of the political leaders
of Caribbean countries like Forbes Burnham and
Eric Williams saw in the game a chance for self-
respect and international standing. When the West
Fig.11 – A rough-and-ready cricket game being played by
Indies won its first Test series against England in Indians in a village in the Himalayas (1894).
1950, it was celebrated as a national achievement, as In contrast to Figure 10, notice the home-made wickets and bat,
carved out of rough bits of wood.
a way of demonstrating that West Indians were the
equals of white Englishmen. There were two ironies to this great
victory. One, the West Indian team that won was captained by a
white player. The first time a black player led the West Indies Test
team was in 1960 when Frank Worrell was named captain. And two,
the West Indies cricket team represented not one nation but several
dominions that later became independent countries. The pan-West
Indian team that represents the Caribbean region in international
Test cricket is the only exception to a series of unsuccessful efforts to
bring about West Indian unification.
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in Cambay. The first Indian club, the Calcutta Cricket Club, was
established in 1792. Through the eighteenth century, cricket in India
was almost wholly a sport played by British military men and civil
servants in all-white clubs and gymkhanas. Playing cricket in the
privacy of these clubs was more than just fun: it was also an escape
from the strangeness, discomfort and danger of their stay in India.
Indians were considered to have no talent for the game and certainly
not meant to play it. But they did.
The origins of Indian cricket, that is, cricket played by Indians are to
be found in Bombay and the first Indian community to start playing
the game was the small community of Zoroastrians, the Parsis.
Brought into close contact with the British because of their interest
in trade and the first Indian community to westernise, the Parsis
founded the first Indian cricket club, the Oriental Cricket Club in
Bombay in 1848. Parsi clubs were funded and sponsored by Parsi
businessmen like the Tatas and the Wadias. The white cricket elite in
India offered no help to the enthusiastic Parsis. In fact, there was a
quarrel between the Bombay Gymkhana, a whites-only club, and
Parsi cricketers over the use of a public park. The Parsis complained
that the park was left unfit for cricket because the polo ponies of the
Bombay Gymkhana dug up the surface.
When it became clear that the colonial
authorities were prejudiced in favour of
their white compatriots, the Parsis built
their own gymkhana to play cricket in.
The rivalry between the Parsis and the
racist Bombay Gymkhana had a happy
ending for these pioneers of Indian cricket.
A Parsi team beat the Bombay Gymkhana
at cricket in 1889, just four years after the
foundation of the Indian National
India and the Contemporary World
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continent. In the late nineteenth century, many Indian institutions Box 1
and movements were organised around the idea of religious
Caste and cricket
community because the colonial state encouraged these divisions and
was quick to recognise communal institutions. For example, the Palwankar Baloo was born in Poona in
Governor of the Bombay Presidency while dealing with an 1875. Born at a time when Indians weren’t
allowed to play Test cricket, he was the
application from the Islam Gymkhana for land on Bombay’s seafront
greatest Indian slow bowler of his time.
wrote: ‘… we can be certain that in a short time we shall get a similar
He played for the Hindus in the
application from some Hindu Gymkhana … I don’t see how we are
Quadrangular, the major cricket tournament
to refuse these applicants; but I will … refuse any more grants once a
of the colonial period. Despite being their
Gymkhana has been established … by each nationality’. (emphasis
greatest player he was never made captain
added). It is obvious from this letter that colonial officials regarded of the Hindus because he was born a Dalit
religious communities as separate nationalities. Applications that used and upper-caste selectors discriminated
the communal categories favoured by the colonial state were, as this against him. But his younger brother, Vithal,
letter shows, more likely to be approved. a batsman did become captain of the
Hindus in 1923 and led the team to a
This history of gymkhana cricket led to first-class cricket being
famous victory against the Europeans.
organised on communal and racial lines. The teams that played
Writing to a newspaper a cricket fan made a
colonial India’s greatest and most famous first-class cricket tournament
connection between the Hindus’ victory and
did not represent regions, as teams in today’s Ranji Trophy currently
Gandhiji’s war on ‘untouchability’:
do, but religious communities. The tournament was initially called
‘The Hindus’ brilliant victory was due more
the Quadrangular, because it was played by four teams: the
to the judicious and bold step of the Hindu
Europeans, the Parsis, the Hindus and the Muslims. It later became
Gymkhana in appointing Mr Vithal, brother of
the Pentangular when a fifth team was added, namely, the Rest, which Mr Baloo – premier bowler of India – who is
comprised all the communities left over, such as the Indian Christians. a member of the Untouchable Class to
For example, Vijay Hazare, a Christian, played for the Rest. captain the Hindu team. The moral that can
be safely drawn from the Hindus’
By the late 1930s and early 1940s, journalists, cricketers and political
magnificent victory is that removal of
leaders had begun to criticize the racial and communal foundations
Untouchability would lead to swaraj – which
of the Pentangular tournament. The distinguished editor of the
is the prophecy of the Mahatma.’
newspaper the Bombay Chronicle, S.A. Brelvi, the famous radio
A Corner of a Foreign Field by
commentator A.F.S. Talyarkhan and India’s most respected political
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3 The Modern Transformation of the Game
Source C
Read the following three extracts from Mahatma Gandhi’s writing and contrast them to the ideas on
education and sport expressed by Thomas Arnold or Hughes (Source A).
‘Now let us examine our body. Are we supposed to cultivate the body by playing tennis, football or
cricket for an hour every day? It does, certainly, build up the body. Like a wild horse, however, the
body will be strong but not trained. A trained body is healthy, vigorous and sinewy. The hands and
feet can do any desired work. A pickaxe, a shovel, a hammer, etc. are like ornaments to a trained hand
and it can wield them … A well-trained body does not get tired in trudging 30 miles …. Does the
student acquire such physical culture? We can assert that modern curricula do not impart physical
education in this sense.’
‘What Is Education’, 26 February 1926, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 34.
‘I should, however, be exceedingly surprised and even painfully surprised, if I were told that before
India and the Contemporary World
cricket and football descended upon your sacred soil, your boys were devoid of all games. If you have
national games, I would urge upon you that yours is an institution that should lead in reviving old
games. I know that we have in India many noble indigenous games just as interesting and exciting as
cricket or football, also as much attended with risks as football is, but with the added advantage that
they are inexpensive, because the cost is practically next to nothing’
Speech at Mahindra College, 24 November 1927, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi.
‘A sound body means one which bends itself to the spirit and is always a ready instrument at its
service. Such bodies are not made, in my opinion, on the football field. They are made on cornfields
and farms. I would urge you to think this over and you will find innumerable illustrations to prove my
statement. Our colonial-born Indians are carried away with this football and cricket mania. These
games may have their place under certain circumstances …. Why do we not take the simple fact into
consideration that the vast majority of mankind who are vigorous in body and mind are simple
agriculturists, that they are strangers to these games, and they are the salt of the earth?’
Letter to Lazarus, 17 April 1915, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 14.
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cricketing prime when he played for India in its first Test matches against
England starting in 1932, his place in India’s cricket history is assured
because he was the country’s first Test captain.
India entered the world of Test cricket in 1932, a decade and a half
before it became an independent nation. This was possible because Test
cricket from its origins in 1877 was organised as a contest between
different parts of the British empire, not sovereign nations. The first
Test was played between England and Australia when Australia was still
a white settler colony, not even a self-governing dominion. Similarly,
the small countries of the Caribbean that together make up the West
Indies team were British colonies till well after the Second World War.
The colonial flavour of world cricket during the 1950s and 1960s can be
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4 Commerce, Media and Cricket Today
The 1970s were the decade in which cricket was transformed: it was a
time when a traditional game evolved to fit a changing world. If 1970
was notable for the exclusion of South Africa from international cricket,
1971 was a landmark year because the first one-day international was
played between England and Australia in Melbourne. The enormous
popularity of this shortened version of the game led to the first World
Cup being successfully staged in 1975. Then in 1977, even as cricket
celebrated 100 years of Test matches, the game was changed forever, not
by a player or cricket administrator, but by a businessman.
celebrities who, besides being paid better by their cricket boards, now
made even larger sums of money by making commercials for a wide
range of products, from tyres to colas, on television.
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Matches in Sydney could now be watched live in Surat. This simple
fact shifted the balance of power in cricket: a process that had been
begun by the break-up of the British Empire was taken to its logical
conclusion by globalisation. Since India had the largest viewership
for the game amongst the cricket-playing nations and the largest
market in the cricketing world, the game’s centre of gravity shifted
to South Asia. This shift was symbolized by the shifting of the ICC
headquarters from London to tax-free Dubai.
A more important sign that the centre of gravity in cricket has shifted
away from the old, Anglo-Australian axis is that innovations in cricket
technique in recent years have mainly come from the practice of sub-
continental teams in countries like India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
Pakistan has pioneered two great advances in bowling: the doosra and
the ‘reverse swing’. Both skills were developed in response to sub-
continental conditions: the doosra to counter aggressive batsmen with
heavy modern bats who were threatening to make finger-spin
obsolete and ‘reverse swing’ to move the ball in on dusty, unresponsive
wickets under clear skies. Initially, both innovations were greeted
with great suspicion by countries like Britain and Australia which
saw them as an underhanded, illegal bending of the laws of cricket.
In time, it came to be accepted that the laws of cricket could not
continue to be framed for British or Australian conditions of play,
and they became part of the technique of all bowlers, everywhere in
the world.
One hundred and fifty years ago the first Indian cricketers, the Parsis,
had to struggle to find an open space to play in. Today, the global
marketplace has made Indian players the best-paid, most famous
cricketers in the game, men for whom the world is a stage. The
history that brought about this transformation was made up of many
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Box 2
Hockey
Modern hockey evolved from traditional games once current in Britain. Amongst its sporting ancestors, hockey can count the
Scottish game called shinty, the English and Welsh game called bandy and Irish hurling.
Hockey, like many other modern games, was introduced into India by the British army in colonial times. The first hockey club
in India was started in Calcutta in 1885-1886. India was represented in the hockey competition of the Olympic Games for the
first time in 1928. India reached the finals defeating Austria, Belgium, Denmark and Switzerland. In the finals, India defeated
Holland by three goals to nil.
The brilliance and skill of players like the great Dhyan Chand brought India a string of Olympic gold medals. Between 1928
and 1956, India won gold medals in six consecutive Olympic Games. During this golden age of Indian dominance, India
played 24 Olympic matches, and won them all, scored 178 goals (at an average of 7.43 goals per match) and conceded only
seven goals. The two other gold medals for India came in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
Box 3
Polo
Polo was greatly favoured as a game suitable for military and athletic young men. Following one of the earliest games in
England, a report in the Illustrated London News declared:
‘As an exercise … for military men this bold and graceful sport is likely to give increased dexterity in the use of the lance
or sabre, or other cavalry weapons, as well as a firmer seat in the saddle, and a faculty of quickly turning to the right hand
or to the left, which must be effective in the melee of battle.’
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Activities
Activities
would each say? Write out a conversation in the form of a dialogue.
2. Find out the history of any one local sport. Ask your parents and grandparents
how this game was played in their childhood. See whether it is played in the
same way now. Try and think of the historical forces that might account for
the changes.
Questions
1. Test cricket is a unique game in many ways. Discuss some of the ways in
which it is different from other team games. How are the peculiarities of
?
Test cricket shaped by its historical beginnings as a village game?
3. Explain why cricket became popular in India and the West Indies. Can you
give reasons why it did not become popular in countries in South America?
Ø The Parsis were the first Indian community to set up a cricket club
in India.
Ø Mahatma Gandhi condemned the Pentangular tournament.
Ø The name of the ICC was changed from the Imperial Cricket
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India and the Contemporary World
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Chapter VIII
III
Clothing:
A Social History
It is easy to forget that there is a history to the clothes we wear. All
societies observe certain rules, some of them quite strict, about the
way in which men, women and children should dress, or how
different social classes and groups should present themselves. These
norms come to define the identity of people, the way they see
themselves, the way they want others to see them. They shape our
notions of grace and beauty, ideas of modesty and shame. As times
change and societies are transformed, these notions also alter.
Modifications in clothing come to reflect these changes.
Social History
according to their regional codes, and were limited by the types of
clothes and the cost of materials that were available in their region.
Clothing styles were also strictly regulated by class, gender or status
in the social hierarchy.
many aspects of social and political life. The revolution also swept
away existing dress codes, known as the sumptuary laws. Let us
Clothing:
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1 Sumptuary Laws and Social Hierarchy
New words
Cockade – Cap, usually worn on one side. Fig.1 – An upper-class couple in eighteenth-century England.
Painting by the English artist Thomas Gainsborough (1727-
Ermine – Type of fur. 1788)
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Fig.3 – Woman of the middle classes, 1791.
Not all sumptuary laws were meant to emphasise social hierarchy. Look at Figures 2 - 5. Write 150 words on
Some sumptuary laws were passed to protect home production what the differences in the pictures tell us
against imports. For instance, in sixteenth-century England, velvet about the society and culture in France at the
caps made with material imported from France and Italy were popular time of the Revolution.
amongst men. England passed a law which compelled all persons
over six years of age, except those of high position, to wear woollen
caps made in England, on Sundays and all holy days. This law
remained in effect for twenty-six years and was very useful in building
up the English woollen industry.
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2 Clothing and Notions of Beauty
The end of sumptuary laws did not mean that everyone in European
societies could now dress in the same way. The French Revolution
had raised the question of equality and ended aristocratic privileges,
as well as the laws that maintained those privileges. However,
differences between social strata remained. Clearly, the poor could
not dress like the rich, nor eat the same food. But laws no longer
barred people’s right to dress in the way they wished. Differences in
earning, rather than sumptuary laws, now defined what the rich and
poor could wear. And different classes developed their own culture
of dress. The notion of what was beautiful or ugly, proper or Fig.6 – Scene at an upper-class wedding by the
improper, decent or vulgar, differed. English painter William Hogarth (1697-1764)
2.1 How Did Women React to These Norms? Fig.7 – A child in an aristocratic household by
the English painter William Hogarth (1697-
Many women believed in the ideals of womanhood. The ideals were 1764). Notice the tiny waist even at this age,
India and the Contemporary World
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girls. Such clothing restricted body growth and hampered blood
circulation. Muscles remained underdeveloped and the spines got
bent. Doctors reported that many women were regularly complaining
of acute weakness, felt languid, and fainted frequently. Corsets then
became necessary to hold up the weakened spine.
Source A
Activity
Mary Somerville, one of the first woman mathematicians,
describes in her memoirs the experience of her childhood days: Read Sources A and B. What do they tell you
‘Although perfectly straight and well made, I was encased in about the ideas of clothing in Victorian
stiff stays, with a steel busk in front, while above my frock, society? If you were the principal in Mary
bands drew my shoulder back until the shoulder blades met.
Somerville’s school how would you have
Then a steel rod with a semi-circle, which went under my chin,
was clasped to the steel busk in my stays. In this constrained justified the clothing practices?
state, I and most of the younger girls had to prepare our
lessons.’
From Martha Somerville, ed., Personal Recollections from Early
Life to Old Age of Mary Somerville, London 1873.
Source B
Source C
Activity
Do you know how the famous English poet John Keats (1795 –
1821) described his ideal woman? He said she was ‘like a In what ways do you think these notions of
milk-white lamb that bleats for man’s protection’.
Clothing: A Social History
weakness and dependence came to be
In his novel Vanity Fair (1848), Thackeray described the charm
reflected in women’s clothing?
of a woman character, Amelia, in these words:
‘I think it was her weakness which was her principal charm, a
kind of sweet submission and softness, which seemed to
appeal to each man she met, for his sympathy and protection.’
New words
Busk – A strip of wood, whalebone or steel in front of the corset to stiffen and support it
Pabulum – Anything essential to maintain life and growth.
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In America, a similar movement developed amongst the white settlers
on the east coast. Traditional feminine clothes were criticised on a
variety of grounds. Long skirts, it was said, swept the grounds and
collected filth and dirt. This caused illness. The skirts were
voluminous and difficult to handle. They hampered movement and
prevented women from working and earning. Reform of the dress,
it was said, would change the position of women. If clothes were
comfortable and convenient, then women could work, earn their
living, and become independent. In the 1870s, the National Woman
Suffrage Association headed by Mrs Stanton, and the American
Woman Suffrage Association dominated by Lucy Stone both
campaigned for dress reform. The argument was: simplify dress,
shorten skirts, and abandon corsets. On both sides of the Atlantic,
there was now a movement for rational dress reform.
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3 New Times
What were these new values? What created the pressure for change?
New words
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Yet until 1914, clothes were ankle length, as they had been since the
thirteenth century. By 1915, however, the hemline of the skirt rose
dramatically to mid-calf.
Clothes got shorter during the First World War (1914-1918) out of
practical necessity. By 1917, over 700,000 women in Britain were
employed in ammunition factories. They wore a working uniform
of blouse and trousers with accessories such as scarves, which was
later replaced by khaki overalls and caps. Bright colours faded from
sight and only sober colours were worn as the war dragged on. Thus
clothes became plainer and simpler. Skirts became shorter. Soon
trousers became a vital part of Western women’s clothing, giving
them greater freedom of movement. Most important, women took
to cutting their hair short for convenience.
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4 Transformations in Colonial India
During the colonial period there were significant changes in male and female
clothing in India. On the one hand this was a consequence of the influence
of Western dress forms and missionary activity; on the other it was due to
the effort by Indians to fashion clothing styles that embodied an indigenous
tradition and culture. Cloth and clothing in fact became very important
symbols of the national movement. A brief look at the nineteenth century
changes will tell us a great deal about the transformations of the twentieth
Fig.10 – Parsis in Bombay, 1863.
century.
When western-style clothing came into India in the nineteenth century, Indians
reacted in three different ways:
Western-style clothing was also especially attractive to some sections of Fig.11 – Converts to
society who now found it liberating. Here too, it was men rather than Christianity in Goa in 1907, who
have adopted Western dress.
women who affected the new dress styles.
Two. There were others who were convinced that western culture would
lead to a loss of traditional cultural identity. The use of Western-style clothes
was taken as a sign of the world turning upside down. The cartoon of the
Bengali Babu shown here, mocks him for
wearing Western-style boots and hat and coat
along with his dhoti. Clothing: A Social History
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trousers off in the street and walk home in ‘just tunic and undergarments’.
This difference between outer and inner worlds is still observed by some
men today.
Still others tried a slightly different solution to the same dilemma. They
attempted to combine Western and Indian forms of dressing.
upper cloths. Complaints were also filed in court against this dress change,
especially since Shanars were also refusing to render free labour for the
dominant castes.
At first, the Government of Travancore issued a proclamation in
1829 ordering Shanar women ‘to abstain in future from covering the
upper parts of the body.’ But this did not prevent Shanar Christian
women, and even Shanar Hindus, from adopting the blouse and
upper cloth.
Activity
Try and find out more about reformers of the
The abolition of slavery in Travancore in 1855 led to even more
time, such as Ayya Vaikunder, who were
frustration among the dominant castes who felt they were losing control.
engaged in dress and wider social reforms.
In October 1859, riots broke out as Shanar women were attacked in
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the marketplace and stripped of their upper cloths. Houses were looted
and chapels burned. Finally, the government issued another
proclamation permitting Shanar women, whether Christian or Hindu,
to wear a jacket, or cover their upper bodies ‘in any manner whatever,
but not like the women of high caste’.
Consider the case of the turban and the hat. When European traders
first began frequenting India, they were distinguished from the Indian
Fig.14 – Europeans bringing gifts to Shah
‘turban wearers’ as the ‘hat wearers.’ These two headgears not only
Jehan, Agra, 1633, from the Padshahnama.
looked different, they also signified different things. The turban in Notice the European visitors’ hats at the
India was not just for protection from the heat but was a sign of bottom of the picture, creating a contrast with
the turbans of the courtiers.
respectability, and could not be removed at will. In the Western
tradition, the hat had to be removed before social superiors as a sign of
respect. This cultural difference created misunderstanding. The British
were often offended if Indians did not take off their turban when they
met colonial officials. Many Indians on the other hand wore the turban
to consciously assert their regional or national identity.
Box 3
The Mysore turban, called peta, was edged with gold lace, and adopted
as part of the Durbar dress of the Mysore court in the mid-nineteenth
century. By the end of the nineteenth century, a wide variety of officials,
teachers and artists in Mysore began wearing the turban, sometimes
with the Western suit, as a sign of belonging to the princely state.
Fig.15 – Sir M. Visveswaraya. A leading
Today, the Mysore turban is used largely on ceremonial occasions and engineer-technocrat and the Dewan of Mysore
to honour visiting dignitaries. state from 1912 to 1918. He wore a turban
with his three-piece Western style suit.
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At the same time, Indians were expected to wear Indian clothes to office
and follow Indian dress codes. In 1824 - 1828, Governor-General Amherst
insisted that Indians take their shoes off as a sign of respect when they Source D
appeared before him, but this was not strictly followed. By the mid-
When asked to take off his shoes at the
nineteenth century, when Lord Dalhousie was Governor- General, ‘shoe Surat Fouzdaree Adawlut at Surat in
respect’ was made stricter, and Indians were made to take off their shoes 1862, Manockjee told the judge that he
when entering any government institution; only those who wore European was willing to take off even his turban
but not his shoes. He said:
clothes were exempted from this rule. Many Indian government servants
‘Taking off my pugree would have been
were increasingly uncomfortable with these rules. a greater insult to myself than to the
court, but I would have submitted to it,
In 1862, there was a famous case of defiance of the ‘shoe respect’ rule in because there is nothing of conscience,
a Surat courtroom. Manockjee Cowasjee Entee, an assessor in the Surat or religion involved in it. I hold no respect
Fouzdaree Adawlut, refused to take off his shoes in the court of the or disrespect, embodied or disembodied
in the shoes, but the putting on of our
sessions judge. The judge insisted that he take off his shoes as that was the turban is the greatest of all respects that
Indian way of showing respect to superiors. But Manockjee remained we pay. We do not have our pugrees on
adamant. He was barred entry into the courtroom and he sent a letter of when at home, but when we go out to
see respectable persons we are bound
protest to the governor of Bombay. by social etiquette to have it on whilst
we [Parsees] in our social intercourse
The British insisted that since Indians took off their shoes when they never ever take off our shoes before any
entered a sacred place or home, they should do so when they entered Parsee however great …’
the courtroom. In the controversy that followed, Indians urged that
taking off shoes in sacred places and at home was linked to two
different questions. One: there was the problem of dirt and filth.
Shoes collected the dirt on the road. This dirt could not be allowed
into spaces that were clean, particularly when people in Indian homes
sat on the ground. Second, leather shoes and the filth that stuck Activity
under it were seen as polluting. But public buildings like the Imagine yourself to be a Muslim pleader in
courtroom were different from home. the Allahabad high court in the late nineteenth
century. What kind of clothes would you wear?
But it took many years before shoes were permitted into
Would they be very different from what you
the courtroom.
wore at home?
India and the Contemporary World
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5 Designing the National Dress
There were also attempts to develop a dress style that would draw
on the tradition of different regions. In the late 1870s, Jnanadanandini
Devi, wife of Satyendranath Tagore, the first Indian member of the
ICS, returned from Bombay to Calcutta. She adopted the Parsi
style of wearing the sari pinned to the left shoulder with a brooch,
and worn with a blouse and shoes. This was quickly adopted by
Brahmo Samaji women and came to be known as the Brahmika sari.
This style gained acceptance before long among Maharashtrian and
Uttar Pradesh Brahmos, as well as non-Brahmos.
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However, these attempts at devising a pan-Indian style did not fully
succeed. Women of Gujarat, Kodagu, Kerala and Assam continue
to wear different types of sari.
Source E
You know that the British first came to trade in Indian textiles that
were in great demand all over the world. India accounted for one-
fourth of the world’s manufactured goods in the seventeenth century.
There were a million weavers in Bengal alone in the middle of the
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eighteenth century. However, the Industrial Revolution in Britain,
which mechanised spinning and weaving and greatly increased the
demand for raw materials such as cotton and indigo, changed
India’s status in the world economy.
Though many people rallied to the cause of nationalism at Clothing: A Social History
this time, it was almost impossible to compete with cheap
British goods that had flooded the market.
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made spinning on the charkha and the daily use of khadi, or coarse
cloth made from homespun yarn, very powerful symbols. These
were not only symbols of self-reliance but also of resistance to the
use of British mill-made cloth.
Fig.23 – Mahatma Gandhi (seated front right) London, Fig.24 – In Johannesburg Fig. 25 – In
1890, at the age of 21. Note the typical Western in 1900, still in Western 1913 in South
three-piece suit. dress, including tie. Africa, dressed
for Satyagraha
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Fig.26 – Mahatma Gandhi with Kasturba,
shortly after his return from South Africa.
Dressed simply, he later confessed to feeling
awkward amongst the Westernised Bombay
elite. He said that he was more at home
among the labourers in South Africa.
At this time, he did not want to use this dress all his life and only
wanted to ‘experiment for a month or two’. But soon he saw this
as his duty to the poor, and he never wore any other dress. He
consciously rejected the well-known clothes of the Indian ascetic Clothing: A Social History
and adopted the dress of the poorest Indian. Khadi, white and
coarse, was to him a sign of purity, of simplicity, and of poverty.
Wearing it became also a symbol of nationalism, a rejection of
Western mill- made cloth.
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5.3 Not All could Wear Khadi
Mahatma Gandhi’s dream was to clothe the whole nation in khadi.
He felt khadi would be a means of erasing difference between religions,
classes, etc. But was it easy for others to follow in his footsteps? Was
such a unity possible? Not many could take to the single peasant
loincloth as he had. Nor did all want to. Here are some examples of
other responses to Mahatma Gandhi’s call:
· Those who had been deprived by caste norms for centuries were
attracted to Western dress styles. Therefore, unlike Mahatma Gandhi,
other nationalists such as Babasaheb Ambedkar never gave up the
Western-style suit. Many Dalits began in the early 1910s to wear three-
piece suits, and shoes and socks on all public occasions, as a political
statement of self-respect.
· Other women, like Sarojini Naidu and Kamala Nehru, wore coloured
saris with designs, instead of coarse, white homespun.
Conclusion
Activity
Changes in styles of clothing are thus linked up with shifts in cultural
tastes and notions of beauty, with changes within the economy and Can you think of other reasons why the use
India and the Contemporary World
society, and with issues of social and political conflict. So when we see of khadi could not spread among some
clothing styles alter we need to ask: why do these changes take place? classes, castes and regions of India?
What do they tell us about society and its history? What can they tell
us about changes in tastes and technologies, markets and industries?
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Box 4
Some time after his return to India from South Africa in 1915, Mahatma Gandhi transformed the Kashmiri cap that he
sometimes used into a cheap white cotton khadi cap. For two years from 1919, he himself wore the cap, and then gave
it up, but by this time it had become part of the nationalist uniform and even a symbol of defiance. For example, the
Gwalior state tried to prohibit its use in 1921 during the non co-operation movement. During the Khilafat movement the
cap was worn by large numbers of Hindus and Muslims. A group of Santhals who attacked the police in 1922 in Bengal
demanding the release of Santhal prisoners believed that the Gandhi cap would protect them from bullets: three of
them died as a result.
Large numbers of nationalists defiantly wore the Gandhi cap and were even beaten or arrested for doing so. With the
rise of the Khilafat movement in the post-First World War years, the fez, a tasseled Turkish cap, became a sign of anti-
colonialism in India. Though many Hindus – as in Hyderabad for instance – also wore the fez, it soon became identified
solely with Muslims.
Fig.27 – Fig.28 –
1915. 1915. In an
Mahatma embroidered
Gandhi with a Kashmiri cap.
turban.
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Activities
Activities
1. Imagine you are the 14-year-old child of a trader. Write a paragraph on
what you feel about the sumptuary laws in France.
2. Can you think of any expectations of proper and improper dress which
exist today? Give examples of two forms of clothing which would be
considered disrespectful in certain places but acceptable in others.
Questions
1. Explain the reasons for the changes in clothing patterns and materials in
the eighteenth century.
?
2. What were the sumptuary laws in France?
3. Give any two examples of the ways in which European dress codes were
different from Indian dress codes.
Of this list, which kind of cloth would have definitely fallen out of use in the
early 1900s and why?
7. Why did Mahatma Gandhi’s dream of clothing the nation in khadi appeal
only to some sections of Indians?
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Credits
Journals
Individuals
Text
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