'How India Lost Her Freedom' review: Nationalist's eye view of colonialism

Pandit Sunderlal had not only actively participated in the freedom struggle, but also published an intellectual critique of colonial rule in four volumes in Hindi titled Bharat Mein Angrezi Raj in 1929, which was banned by the British. As a votary of India’s multi-culturalism, he published in 1944 a famous book called Gita aur Quran which the author of the foreword to How India Lost Her Freedom describes as “one of the most powerful books that one can ever hope to recall as it conveys the message of the Bhagvad Gita and the holy Quran, emphasizing the commonality of their universal message”.
 

It is essential to mention the author’s ideological beliefs because his secularism and humanism are reflected in his assessment of India when the British first arrived via the East India Company. Instead of indulging in the kind of communal narrative that is in vogue these days, he takes pains to highlight India’s composite culture, which the British did much to destroy.

How India Lost her Freedom consists of a long introduction of 153 pages that surveys the arrival of the Europeans in India. Then follow 26 brief chapters, of which the first five deal with events leading to the Battle of Plassey in 1757 when Robert Clive effectively established British rule in Bengal. It is a story of traders becoming conquerors and colonisers. Chapters six to nine are devoted to the role of Clive’s successors in expanding British dominance in India, mostly by annexing princely states — Tanjore, Karnataka, Surat, Scindia or Bharatpur — not just by superiority of arms but also through outright treachery and deceit.

Pandit Sunderlal is not a professional historian, and this book may not be of great interest to students of history because the story is well known. Its importance chiefly lies in the fact that the book is written from the point of view of a secular nationalist. He has taken great pains to collect a lot of evidence to expose some of the classic falsehoods in colonialist histories, including false accusations against Indian rules and “a few examples of misappropriation of our history”. 

He highlights examples of outright British banditry and the loot of Indian wealth, quoting Herbert Spencer who wrote in 1851: “How black must have been their deeds when the directors of the company admitted that the vast fortunes acquired in the inland trade have been obtained by a scene of the most tyrannical and oppressive conduct that was ever known in any age or country.” The impeachment of Warren Hastings for corruption is an episode that, the author asserts, must be studied by all students of the history of that fateful period. 

The author also makes an important distinction between the British colonialists and the Muslims who ruled parts of India. Conversions to Islam, he said, were partly motivated by the attractions of a simple, egalitarian religion. Even the Hindu king of Malabar converted to Islam for this reason. Pandit Sunderlal has also emphasised the Mughals’ broadly tolerant approach to religion. “Leaving aside the much-debated and at least partly misrepresented time of Aurangzeb’s reign, the entire remaining period of the Mughal Emperors in India was undoubtedly an ideal period as regards broad-mindedness and tolerance in religious matters,” he asserts.

How did the British manage to colonise India, the author asks. The answer, he says, was provided by Joseph Francois Dupleix, governor general of French territories in India. Dupleix “discovered that the sentiments of ‘nationalism’ and ‘patriotism’ as understood by the western people were practically non-existent in the minds of the Indians of those days”. Therefore, according to Dupleix “…it was quite natural and easy for Europeans to make Indians fight among themselves and it was thus that India lost her freedom”. 

If the collapse of central government authority in north India after the death of Harshavardhan left India vulnerable to foreign invasion after the seventh century, Pandit Sunderlal says, the story was repeated after the collapse of the Mughal empire, when the British also fought wars against the Marathas and Deccan powers like Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan. This fragmentary integration continued till the popular revolt of 1857.  
 

In the current context, the section worth reading is Chapter 15, covering the wars Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan fought against the British. The British saw father and later son as threats to their expansionist aims in India, nothing more, nothing less, and they certainly respected Tipu’s abilities on the battlefield. The Sangh Parivar led by half-educated Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) historians have, however, chosen to depict Tipu as a religious fanatic. The author addresses this question squarely. “We have not come across any authentic document or statement about any ill-treatment of Hindus, who outnumbered his subjects belonging to all other communities. On the contrary, there is an overwhelming evidence in the historical records of his fair and friendly treatment of the Hindus”. 

Despite his mostly even-handed approach, Pandit Sunderlal occasionally allows his emotions to overcome his judgement in demonising the British and glorifying India’s past. One such unexpected statement: “Civilized Indians could be conquered by the uncivilized “British”. No professional historian would make such a judgement, but then, Pandit Sunderlal is not presenting his history from that standpoint either.

How India Lost Her Freedom

Pandit Sunderlal

SAGE Publications

517 pages; Rs 350