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How Did the Queen's Proclamation of 1858 Impact Indian Society?
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British Empire – The Documents of Indian Independence, 1858-1950
This course examines the transformation of India from British colonial rule to independence, focusing on: (i) the 1858 Queen's Proclamation, which transferred power to the Crown and created religious divisions between Hindus and Muslims; (ii) the 1860 Indian Penal Code, which secularised religious offences and influenced modern legal responses; (iii) Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj (1909), advocating for nonviolent self-rule and moral governance; (iv) the 1928 Nehru Report, which prioritised liberty over equality, contributing to the 1947 Partition; (v) the 1940 Lahore Resolution, calling for a separate Muslim state and leading to the creation of India and Pakistan; and (vi) the 1950 Indian Constitution, which introduced universal suffrage but retained colonial-era powers.
How Did the Queen's Proclamation of 1858 Impact Indian Society?
In this lecture, we examine the Queen’s Proclamation of 1858 and its impact on British-Indian relations, focusing on: (i) the proclamation’s context following the 1857 revolt, marking the transfer of rule from the East India Company to the British Crown; (ii) promises to Indian princes, offering non-interference in royal appointments under British oversight; (iii) assurances to Hindus and Muslims of religious freedom and equal opportunity, intended to pacify tensions related to British interference in religious practices; (iv) the proclamation’s establishment of a secular model in India, distinct from Britain’s own Anglican-centered religious order; and (v) the unintended consequence of defining Indian society primarily by religious identity, positioning Hindus and Muslims as rival communities under British arbitration, which shaped the social and political dynamics of colonial India.
My name is Faisal Dev ji,
00:00:06and I'm professor of Indian history at the University of
00:00:07Oxford.
00:00:10Let's talk about the queen's proclamation of eighteen fifty eight.
00:00:13It's an incredibly important document because it was the
00:00:16first communication by Queen Victoria
00:00:19as the new ruler of India
00:00:22following the mutiny of eighteen fifty seven.
00:00:26Eighteen fifty seven marked the most serious threat the British
00:00:30Empire had faced
00:00:34from its subjects.
00:00:36In eighteen fifty seven,
00:00:38regiments of the Indian army,
00:00:41which were run by the East India Company,
00:00:44revolted against that company and turned to Delhi to raise up
00:00:47the decrepit Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah,
00:00:52as their head in an effort to clear the British out of
00:00:56India altogether.
00:01:00After it was brutally crushed,
00:01:03the East India Company was removed from power,
00:01:07and the British crown took over direct rule of India.
00:01:10And this is what occasioned the Queen's Proclamation of
00:01:15eighteen fifty eight.
00:01:18Now what's interesting about this proclamation
00:01:19is that it addresses
00:01:22two sets of people.
00:01:25First, the Indian princes.
00:01:27Many Indian princes had risen in support of the revolt in
00:01:29eighteen fifty seven.
00:01:33And the revolt indeed had in part
00:01:35been about securing their positions in India.
00:01:39So the queen in her proclamation promises
00:01:43not to interfere further
00:01:46in the appointment and the removal of Indian royalty.
00:01:49Of course, they had to be subordinated to the British crown.
00:01:53But these were not the most important figures in the proclamation.
00:01:57Far more important were Hindus and Muslims.
00:02:00And this was because Hindus and Muslims had come together in
00:02:05the mutiny against the British.
00:02:08But also because by far the most important complaint of the
00:02:11mutineers was that the British were
00:02:16interfering in their religious customs and practices,
00:02:19and discriminating
00:02:23between Hindus and Muslims on the one hand and Christians on the other.
00:02:26So the Queen's proclamation promises
00:02:31both non interference in the customs and practices of
00:02:35Hindus and Muslims, but also
00:02:38promises them equal opportunity in the new
00:02:42order that was coming into being after the mutiny.
00:02:47Now the Queen's proclamation was understood by the British
00:02:51themselves as a largely symbolic document,
00:02:54but it was immediately taken up by Indians as what they call
00:02:57their Magna Carta.
00:03:01So they made a constitutional precedent,
00:03:02a constitutional document of it.
00:03:05Now the British themselves, of course,
00:03:08played up this document in various ways.
00:03:12If you were to go, for instance,
00:03:14to the Victoria Memorial in Calcutta or Calcutta as it then
00:03:16was known, which was the capital of British India,
00:03:20you would see in the massive monument
00:03:24under its dome,
00:03:28the Queen's proclamation written out,
00:03:30inscribed in stone in various Indian languages.
00:03:33So it was a crucial, crucial document.
00:03:35Now what's interesting about this document in particular
00:03:39is that it introduces
00:03:43a form of secular rule in India,
00:03:47which did not yet exist in Britain.
00:03:49So Britain at the time, recall,
00:03:51had a blasphemy law, and it had,
00:03:54as it still does today, an established church.
00:03:58So the queen's proclamation, for instance,
00:04:01begins with,
00:04:03you know, by the grace of God, Victoria, by the grace of God,
00:04:05queen and defender of the faith,
00:04:09the faith here being the Anglican faith.
00:04:11So it is as an act of Christian charity
00:04:14that the queen confers freedoms
00:04:18upon Hindus and Muslims.
00:04:23They're allowed to practice their faith, unmolested,
00:04:25and they're offered equal opportunities.
00:04:28But it's only the Anglican church that is seen in the
00:04:30document as being a representative
00:04:33of religious truth.
00:04:37Hindus and Muslims are tolerated
00:04:38just as in the great reform acts of the eighteen fifties,
00:04:41Catholics and Jews came to be tolerated in Britain,
00:04:44but their religions could not claim the status of truth for themselves.
00:04:49So interesting about this document, therefore,
00:04:54is the fact that it sets up a kind of secular order in
00:04:57India, which does not yet exist in Britain itself.
00:05:01Because even though the queen is defender of the faith in this document,
00:05:05she enjoys that role only in Britain and not in India.
00:05:11In India, after all,
00:05:15Hindus and Muslims are the dominant religions.
00:05:17Christianity, therefore, has no privilege,
00:05:20compared to any other religion in that country.
00:05:23So it is as an act of while it may be as an act of Christian
00:05:27charity that the secular order
00:05:30or this order of tolerance is promulgated in India,
00:05:34in fact, what it does is set up
00:05:40a form of secularism in which no religion,
00:05:44neither Christianity in its Anglican form,
00:05:47nor Hinduism or Islam, are seen as possessing
00:05:50either priority or truth.
00:05:54So that's one important aspect of the queen's proclamation,
00:05:59and Indians return to it over and over again because they see
00:06:05it as the legal justification
00:06:08for them to protest any alleged interference in their religious
00:06:14beliefs and and practices.
00:06:18But a more sinister effect of the proclamation
00:06:20is that in privileging Hindus and Muslims as
00:06:26the only two non aristocratic,
00:06:31non royal actors or figures in this document,
00:06:35it really makes them into potential competitors within
00:06:40British Indian history, because they are,
00:06:46you will recall, promised equal treatment in
00:06:50the text.
00:06:55Now during the mutiny, of course,
00:06:56Hindus and Muslims had worked together,
00:06:59so there was no competition between them.
00:07:01But the queen's proclamation, as it were,
00:07:03divides them up again,
00:07:05and places the queen or the state that she authorizes
00:07:08in India as the mediator between its subjects,
00:07:12conceived of primarily in religious terms as Hindus and
00:07:18Muslims.
00:07:21This sets up a major precedent
00:07:22by which religious communities come to be seen as the major
00:07:26or the only real
00:07:31political and social units of Indian society.
00:07:34Even though caste is equally, if not more important,
00:07:38it remains unnamed in the queen's proclamation.
00:07:42So what it gives with one hand,
00:07:47a kind of secular order or the precedent of secularism in
00:07:50India, it, as it were,
00:07:53removes on the other or takes away on the other
00:07:55by constituting Hindus and Muslims
00:07:59as potential competitors whose rivalry is to be mediated
00:08:02by and resolved by the queen,
00:08:06at least through the authority she has set up or authorized to
00:08:10rule India.
00:08:16So what you have created in the proclamation is a triangular
00:08:17structure with the British state on top at the peak of the
00:08:22triangle and Hindus and Muslims largely forming its base.
00:08:25It's both intensely religious way of thinking about Indian
00:08:30society through Hindus and Muslims,
00:08:35and yet at the same time,
00:08:37a completely secular way of doing so.
00:08:39
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Devji, F. (2024, November 13). British Empire – The Documents of Indian Independence, 1858-1950 - How Did the Queen's Proclamation of 1858 Impact Indian Society? [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/british-empire-the-documents-of-indian-independence
MLA style
Devji, F. "British Empire – The Documents of Indian Independence, 1858-1950 – How Did the Queen's Proclamation of 1858 Impact Indian Society?." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 13 Nov 2024, https://massolit.io/courses/british-empire-the-documents-of-indian-independence