Rule Bequeath To Independent India? Essay, Research Paper

In the about two hundred old ages of British regulation in India, the British did many things that still have an impact on India. The civil service set up by the British has managed to last comparatively integral until the present twenty-four hours for illustration, and big parts of the Indian conveyance web were built under British supervising. Two hundred old ages of colonial regulation must hold a major consequence on the settlement, for it & # 8217 ; s people were non allowed to regulate themselves ; they had to trust on the colonial power to enforce Torahs on them as they had small power in their ain right. This paper aims to analyze closely the British regulation in India and its subsequent independency, and effort to determine what impact British colonial regulation has had on Indian political relations since the British left. India & # 8217 ; s colonial experience is in many ways atypical of the colonial experience of the remainder of the British Empire. One of the major grounds for this was the exceptionalism of India itself, the & # 8216 ; gem in the Crown & # 8217 ; of the British imperium. Logistically, India was ( and is ) a monolithic state, one that did non impart itself to harsh regulation from the Centre, unlike some other British settlements. It would be incorrect, nevertheless, to paint a image of the British as some sort of enlightened pedagogues of the Indian multitudes, for their original and major ground for colonizing India was to work the great untapped wealth of the Indian subcontinent. Bearing this point in head, it would besides be incorrect to disregard the British regulation of India as bring forthing nil good, despite the fact that some of the advantages that India gained through colonial regulation were non achieved with the express intent of bettering India & # 8217 ; s batch. A good illustration of this is the fact that colonial regulation bequeathed to India an first-class ground forces and constabulary force, while these were set up by the British to safeguard their ain colonial involvements and maintain order. It is impossible to do a instance that any of the ex-colonies, on deriving independency, did non hold some kind of colonial bequest. The major inquiry is how much the colonial period affects states after their independency in the many different domains of national life. Britain left India a bequest in most countries of Indian life after independency, but the political bequest that they left was peculiarly strong, both in the political system that was drawn up after independency and in the political civilization. The Indian Constitution that emerged in January 1950 & # 8220 ; bore an eldritch resemblance to the Government of India Act of 1935 & # 8243 ; ( Manor, 1990: p33 ) . The Act expanded the electorate to about one-sixth of the grownup population and greatly increased Indian engagement in authorities, with one of the most noteworthy effects of this being that the members of the Congress gained valuable regulating experience which was to help them to govern India when it finally gained independency. The Act besides provided for a federal construction of power for India, with provinces deriving their ain powers, and the Congress gained power in 7 of the 11 states. It was one of the chief political bequests of the British that the Congress gained some ( albeit limited ) governmental experience and it helped greatly in the Indian passage to independency. In many former settlements, their post-independence politicians had small or no experience in authorities but the 1935 Government of India Act provided a good interim step between British and Indian regulation and became the footing for the Indian fundamental law. Although the Act provided the footing for India & # 8217 ; s fundamental law, it was non merely repeated sweeping as the new fundamental law. Important alterations had been made, such as the debut of cosmopolitan right to vote, the guaranteeing of certain cardinal rights, and the remotion of the rule of diarchy, but the nucleus of the two paperss remained unusually similar. The surprising thing about this province of personal businesss is that Nehru himself described the Government of India Act as a & # 8220 ; charter of bondage & # 8221 ; in the 1930 & # 8217 ; s. In Nehru & # 8217 ; s defense mechanism, a instance could be made that the Indian framers of the fundamental law were preoccupied with two potentially contradictory purposes and how to accommodate them: societal stableness and a demand and desire for alteration. Social stableness was a peculiarly relevant concern of the constitutional framers, for divider in 1947 and its wake proved highly violent, caused frights of go oning widespread spiritual, cultural and cultural agitation. Partition provoked major turbulences and force as whole communities were left on the incorrect side of the boundary line, possibly the best known illustration of this being & # 8220 ; in the Punjab [ where ] the boundary award, as anticipated, divided the cohesive and hawkish Sikh community about every bit between the two provinces. Here, in mounting craze, force and atrociousness, Muslims fell upon Sikhs and Hindus in the West, and Sikhs and Hindus upon Muslims in the East. Before the terminal of the twelvemonth half a million people had been killed & # 8221 ; ( Hardgrave & A ; Kochanek,1993: p52 ) . This force and agitation had a major consequence on the framers of the fundamental law, and is portion of the ground why the Indian fundamental law besides has an autocratic facet to it. However, the fact must besides be borne in head that the history of the British in India was besides marked by some grade of dictatorship, so it is possible that the new Indian politicians had learnt the lesson from the British that dictatorship, in times of exigency, could turn out to be a powerful political and societal arm. However, in this instance the inquiry remains as to whether T

he ethnic and religious problems that erupted at this time were themselves a legacy of British colonial rule and its ‘divide and rule’ early philosophy. On closer examination, the British colonial authorities cannot be totally blameless in this area, although it is debatable to suggest that they were fully aware of what the outcomes of their policies towards the differing ethnic and religious groups would be. As the new constitution was being framed, it must be noted that all the Indians’ experience of parliamentary government and limited democracy had been under British rule. Also, the longevity of British rule in India must have left some imprint on the character of India, for its most immediate model of parliamentary democracy was one that, at the time, was widely respected as giving social stability and economic expansion; namely the British model. Add this to the fact that most of the new Indian middle classes (which were themselves one of the most enduring social legacies of the British) had studied in Britain at some point and it begins to look fairly inevitable that the British parliamentary system should prove to be the major influence on the prospective Indian parliamentary system. The Indian constitution provides for a parliamentary system comprising a bicameral legislature and a Prime Minister, both of which are major features of the British political system, but it also has a President and a Supreme Court, which owe more to American government than they do to the British system. The constitution also allows the election to be called at the discretion of the governing party during the maximum of five years that the government has in power, in the same way that the Prime Minister is allowed to do in the British political system. The authoritarian rule of the British, as already mentioned, played a role in shaping the constitution, but another consequence of it was to make the framers concerned to protect the rights of both the individual and the various ethnic and religious groups in India. This conflicted, however, with the fact that some parts of British authoritarian rule had proved effective in establishing and maintaining social order, so through necessity the constitution is a self-contradictory document in some parts. One of the major political legacies left to the newly independent India was the Indian bureaucracy, the ’steel frame’ that had aided the British so much in governing India and implementing its laws. This gave India another advantage over most former colonies, as they already had in place a highly organised, experienced and efficient bureacracy which made their job of governing easier. It is to the Indians’ credit that they were pragmatic enough to realise that British rule had given them some advantages in trying to govern a newly independent country, for they could have dismantled the apparatus of state left by the British in an outbreak of nationalism. The Indian post-independence leaders were, through necessity, pragmatists and they drew on the lessons of the British colonial period in governing the independent India. It must be noted also that the struggle for independence gave birth to the Indian National Congress, later to become the Congress Party, who have ruled India for virtually the whole period since independence and whose members were instrumental in drawing up the Indian constitution. This movement came into being because of a common desire to, first of all, have more say in the running of their own country, and later to gain independence for their country and eventually govern it. The Congress was a major unifying factor in both pre- and post- independence Indian political life and although it would be wrong to see them entirely as a British legacy, they and the whole independence movement came into being as a reaction to India’s colonial status. The Congress came into being as a direct consequence of British rule, and their history provides one of the most enduring legacies of British rule. Much of contemporary Indian political culture can be seen as a legacy of British rule and the independence movement. As has already been mentioned, the strands of authoritarianism in Indian politics can be directly traced to British rule, as can the principle of secularity that plays such a major role in both Indian political and social life. Add this to the lessons gained through the independence movement and the respect for the rule of law and it becomes obvious that British colonial rule still has great impact on India’s politics and political system. To conclude, there can be no doubt that India would be a radically different country today if it were not for the British colonial period, for over the approximately two hundred years of British rule India went through many changes that still directly affect it today. British rule has left a large political legacy in India, some of it good, some of it bad. It is impossible to speculate the state of India today if the colonial period had not occurred, but there is no doubt that it would be a radically different country. ` `Bibliography Hardgrave, R and Kochanek, S : 1993 `”India : Government and Politics in a Developing Nation” `(HBJ : Florida) Brass, P : 1990 `”The Politics of India since Independence” `(Cambridge University Press) Talbot, I : 1991 `”British rule in the Punjab 1849 – 1947? in “Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History” (Vol 19, No. 2) Manor, J : 1990 `”How and why liberal and representative politics emerged in India” in “Political Studies” (March 1990) Kothari, R : 1970 `”India” `(Little, Brown and Company : Boston)