Book Description
Raj - This is the magnificently recounted story
of one of the wonders of the modern world. In less than one
hundred years, the British made themselves masters of India.
They ruled it for another hundred, departing in 1947, leaving
behind the independent states of India and Pakistan. Both
nations owed much to Britain: British rule taught Indians to
see themselves as Indians, and its benefits included
railways, roads, canals, schools, universities, hospitals,
law, and a universal language. There were also habits of mind
and government that where derived from British custom.
None of this however, was planned. A series of emergencies
in the eighteenth century transformed the East India Company
into the most formidable war machine in Asia, and conquest
gathered its own momentum. Fortunes were made, but the
conscience of Britain was troubled by the despotism that was
being created in its name. The result was a government that
balanced firmness with benevolence, and had as its goal the
advancement of India. There was resistance, both to the
conquerors and, in the Indian mutiny, to the Raj they had
made. This is a story of wars won against the odds and
astonishing heroism, but it is also a tale of how, for many
reasons millions of Indians collaborated with their new
rulers and made possible the government of so many by so few.
Raj contains much that is new, hidden, and
controversial on areas as varied as the Mutiny, the Great
Game, and the taxing of India.
The Raj, outwardly so monolithic and magnificent, was
always precarious. Its masters knew that its survival
ultimately depended on the goodwill of Indians, which was why
pressure for self-government was met with a mixture of
compromise and sternness. The twists and turns of the
struggle for independence are told with a wealth of fresh
material. Lawrence James galvanizes a subject already rich in
incident and character: the India of the Raj was that of
Clive, the Marquess Wellesley, Havelock, Kipling, Curzon, and
Gandhi and a host of lesser known but vivid men and women. Raj
probes their world and how they reacted to it. It will also
provoke debate, using recently released official and private
papers--to shed new light, flattering and unflattering, on
Mountbatten and the other central and tragic events of
1946-47 that ended what had been simultaneously an exercise
in benign autocracy and an experiment in altruism.
