Macaulay:
Macaulay found nothing good in Indian literature, philosophy and
medicine. Macaulay, in his minute of 1835 wrote: ‘I have no knowledge of either
Sanskrit or Arabic. But I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and
Sanskrit works. I have conversed both here and at home with men distinguished
by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I have never found one among them
who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole
native literature of India and Arabia.We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and themillions whom we govern, -a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes,in opinions, in morals and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernaculardialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western
nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the greatmass of the population.
Suppression of Thuggee
The Thugs were robbers operating between Delhi and Agra from the fourteenth century. They were bound together by oaths and ritual and murdered unsuspecting travellers in the name of the goddess Kali. Bentinck placed William Sleeman in charge of the operation to eliminate the Thuggee menace. Between 1831
and 1837 more than three thousand Thugs were convicted. Five hundred became approvers. By1860 the problem of thuggee had ceased to exist
Abolition of Sati
Bentinck showed great courage and humanity by his decision to abolish sati, the
practice of burning widows alive with the corpses of their husbands. Previous governors-general were reluctant to prohibit the custom as an interference in religion but Bentinck enacted a law (Sati Abolition Act, 1829) to put an end to
this practice. Raja Rammohan Roy’s campaigns and efforts played a decisive part in getting this inhuman practice abolished
Irrigation
The British neglected irrigation. The irrigation channels and tanks built by
Indian rulers fell into disuse and there was little effort on the part of the Company
to undertake repairs or renovation works. In Madras, Arthur Cotton as we will see in the following section, a few irrigation works were carried out because of the personal enthusiasm of Arthur Cotton, an Engineering officer. Against much opposition, Cotton built a dam across the Kollidam (Coleroon) in 1836. In 1853, a dam across the Krishna river had also begun. In the north, before the takeover of India by the Crown, Jumna canal was completed in 1830 and by 1857 the Ganges canal had been extended to nearly 450 miles. In the Punjab area the BariDoab canal had been excavated by 1856. But the canal water contributed to soil salinity and water logging causing great ecological distress
Forests
Land revenue was the mainstay of the British Indian government’s fiscal system.
Therefore, in their effort to extend the areas of cultivable land, forests were destroyed. Zamins were created out of Jungle Mahal forests and auctioned off for regular cultivation. The original inhabitants of this region, the Santhals were evicted. Therefore it was the Santhals who were the first tribal group to resist the
British rule in India. Slope cultivation was encouraged in the hilly and mountainous
tracts. Land was provided to European enterprises at a throwaway price for slope
cultivation. Further, in their enthusiasm to try plantation crops, zamindars and Indian rulers destroyed the forests. Coffee, for instance, did not grow in many places. Yet in the process of attempting coffee cultivation large tracts of
virgin forests were destroyed.
பத்தாம் வகுப்பு சமூக அறிவியல் 2022 ஆம் ஆண்டு அனைத்து மாவட்டங்களில் நடத்தப்பட்ட அரையாண்டு தேர்வு சமூகஅறிவியல் வினாத்தாள் கீழேPdf கொடுக்கப்பட்டுள்ளது
10th SS All District Half Yearly Question Paper 2022
were needed to build railway tracks. Indian trees, particularly sal, deodar, and teak, were preferred for their strength over other Indian timbers. These three species were intensively exploited. Much sal was extracted from the forests of the Jungle Mahals of West Bengal and Bihar. Timber went to England too for the building of railways. The myth that India’s forests were inexhaustible was exploded. It was in this background that the colonial state, in order to manage and control forest resources, started the Forest Department and passed the Indian Forest Act, 1865. This was a draconian act which restricted the use of forest resources by indigenous groups who resented it. In order to contain protest and resistance the British enacted the dreaded Criminal Tribes Act, 1871. During the entire colonial period there were frequent insurrections by tribal people against the colonial state. The legacy of the colonial forest acts continues to haunt
contemporary times as well.
Military and civil administrative costs in British India consumed an average of
eighty per cent of the budget, leaving twenty per cent to be divided among the various departments concerned. Agriculture was left to its deteriorating condition. Irrigation was neglected. Arthur Cotton wanted the colonial state to give priority to irrigation rather than building railway network, but his suggestion
was turned down by the imperial goverment in England. Outbreak of successive famines in the last quarter of the nineteenth century ultimately prompted the government under British Crown to initiate some steps for the building of dams.
The Ryotwari system intended to create a large body of independent peasants, who would be protected from the “corrupt and faithless zamindar,” however, in reality achieved the contrary result of strengthening the position of the big landlords. The government showed little interest in protecting the interests of tenants in
ryotwari areas. Since land was the main source of revenue, its rigorous collection became an imperative policy of the British. The Torture Commission, appointed by the Company government in Madras in its report presented in 1855 exposed the atrocities perpetrated by the Indian revenue and police officials in the process
of collecting land tax from the cultivators. The Torture Act which justified forcible collections of land revenue was abolished only after 1858.
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