British Rule Research Articles

Maulana Abu Bakr Siddiqi’s Participation in The Freedom Movement of India

Maulana Abu Bakr Siddiqi was a prominent religious personality, eminent intellectual and a great spiritual guide and social reformer. He had uprooted the religious blindness, unlawful customs and bida’h (heterodoxy) from the Muslim community and promoted the true creed and faith of Islam, as well as propagated the real and pure sunnah among his lakhs of devotees purifying the wrong method of tasauuf and worship, promoting awareness against the falsehood of fake spiritual guides, and pulling up the polytheism (shirk), heterodoxy (Bida’h) and apostatize (irtidad) by the roots through his demonstrated and proven speeches.
 In addition to that, he always urged his lakhs of devotees and disciples to be united against the British colonial power. To materialize this aim of unity against British, and to spread the cinder and flame of revolution in the hearts of common people he established several important organizations and newspapers for the Muslims of Bengal and Assam. These organizations of Ulema and scholars as well as its mouthpiece magazines and newspapers played vital unforgettable roles in Khilafat Movement, Quit India Movement, Non-Cooperation Movement and Complete Freedom Movement as well as worked for communal harmony and peace, what should be written by golden letter in the history.
 He presided over the regional branch of the historical freedom fighting organization Jamiat e Ulama e Hind in West Bengal until his death on 17th March of 1939 C.E, and organized several large public conferences against the British rule in various places of undivided Bengal and Assam, being accompanied by other Deobandi Ulema like Shaikhul Islam Hussain Ahmad Madani, Maulana Hafij Ahmad Saeed, Mufti Kifayatullah and many others, and had created an anti-British common phenomenon among the common people.

Illicit trafficking of cultural objects: the case of Cyprus

Rampant unregulated excavation, at a time when archaeological practice was still unknown, opened the way to massive exportation of cultural objects from Cyprus, in parallel with other countries under the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century. As ‘antiquarianism’ was concomitant with the beginnings of tourism, places with a rich cultural heritage became popular destinations or stopovers for the steamships. Collecting ‘antikas’ and ‘exploring’ was a pastime of the affluent, and the objects themselves were tokens of prestige, as, by tradition, they continued to be until the very recent past. The demand, not only by private individuals but also by newly established institutions, in the absence of what may now be termed ‘due diligence’, sustained availability. This dispersal forced the Cypriot Ottoman authorities to pass rudimentary legislation: its non-enforcement, however, allowed the trading of antiquities to continue unabated. During British Rule, while some regulations were in place, concerns of a different kind continued to allow the export and sale of antiquities. Bi-communal strife in the early 1960s, shortly after Independence, created sources of illicitly excavated objects which again, found their way into collections within the island or abroad. A second wave of Cypriot cultural heritage destruction followed the invasion of the island by Turkish troops in 1974: a large part of the island in the north was left unprotected and victim to both well-trained and untrained looters. Given this background, Cyprus is faced with a herculean task in remedying the situation. Despite a series of strict antiquities laws and the application of a number of preventive measures, the battle against illicit trading remains, and the past continues to haunt the present.

Broadcasting the ‘(anti)colonial sublime’: Radio SEAC, Congress Radio, and the Second World War in South Asia

AbstractThis article considers the Second World War’s effects on radio infrastructures and listening cultures in India through a detailed analysis of two radio stations: Radio SEAC and Congress Radio. Radio SEAC was a military radio station based in Ceylon targeting British soldiers stationed in Asia. It housed what was then one of the most wide-reaching transmitters. Congress Radio was a makeshift station in Bombay run by young and largely unknown anticolonial activists. While operating on vastly different scales and with rival goals, these stations’ political ambitions were surprisingly similar. Radio SEAC sought to restore confidence in the empire by invoking an old device of imperialism: what Brian Larkin calls the ‘colonial sublime’, the use of ‘technology to represent an overwhelming sense of grandeur’. Radio SEAC’s colonial sublime, however, was not aimed at colonized populations, but at disillusioned British soldiers, whose faith in the empire the station wished to revive. Congress Radio, in contrast, sought to summon what I call the ‘anticolonial sublime’ by deploying the aura of imperial technology against British rulers. Yet, whereas the colonial sublime required technologies to work smoothly, the anticolonial sublime did not. Congress radio broadcasters celebrated their station’s faulty reception, nurturing an aesthetic of rebelliousness. Analysing these two radio projects together, the article traces how the war shaped technological infrastructures while challenging conventional understandings about how radio connects with audiences. British administrators, like anticolonial activists, sought to bring about change less through programming content than through the aura of technological prowess they hoped their stations would generate.

Queer Ecologies and Anti-Colonial Abundance in Lionel Wendt's Ceylon

Abstract Published posthumously in 1950, queer Sri Lankan photographer Lionel Wendt's photobook Ceylon crafted an aesthetic of queer environmental abundance. His photographs, ranging from documentary-style to surrealist-inspired images, were taken between 1933 and 1944, shaped by and contributing to rising waves of national consciousness and anti-colonial movements ahead of the island's independence in 1948. British rule since 1815 had destroyed common land and outlawed homosexuality for being ‘against the order of nature’. Wendt sought to confront and challenge colonial control over both ecology and sexuality, imagining alternative possibilities through both experimental and social realist photography. Other queer representations of the island (by Bevis Bawa, Ernst Haeckel and Edward Carpenter) are considered alongside the photographer's collaboration with queer, anti-imperialist filmmaker Basil Wright. Drawing on a queer ecological methodology and decolonial theory, this essay argues that Ceylon celebrated a queer environmental aesthetic of abundance by picturing Sri Lankan sexuality and landscapes as unbounded by colonial rule.

Littoral Piracy in Colonial Nigeria: The Lagos Lagoon in The Interwar Years

Abstract: The antiquity of piracy in Nigeria's coastal waters has been traced to the precolonial period, especially the nineteenth century. However, the period of British colonial rule, specifically, the interwar years, has been neglected in the literature. This paper examines piracy on the Lagos Lagoon during the interwar years in the framework of concurrent concepts of piracy. It contributes to the literature on piracy by reclassifying piratical acts in association with specific water bodies. Hence, this case study of "littoral piracy" is situated in the geography, population movements, economic activities, and colonial policing in the Lagos Lagoon system. Several incidents reported between 1918 and 1937 highlight the incidence of piracy, the attendant human and material toll, the consequent police operations, and judicial adjudication of these incidents. The paper demonstrates how littoral piracy evolved as organized (state-backed) and haphazard (freelance) enterprises in changing contexts of contested and uncontested hegemonies during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Jodhpur and the aeroplane: aviation and diplomacy in an Indian state 1924-1952.

This paper is a study of the intersection between aviation and diplomacy in the semi-autonomous Indian state of Jodhpur in the final decades of British colonial rule in India. Jodhpur's Maharaja Umaid Singh established a major international aerodrome, patronized one of India's first flying clubs and collaborated with British authorities to make aviation laws for the Indian states. He would also serve in the Royal Air Force during the war and placed Jodhpur state's aviation resources at the disposal of the king-emperor. This paper argues that Jodhpur was able to leverage its aviation resources to wield substantial influence both within and beyond the British Empire through both war and peace. An analysis of Jodhpur's engagement with aviation diplomacy is also revealing of some of the limitations as well as possibilities for the deployment of science diplomacy frameworks, especially in non-Western contexts.

Alien flora of Nigeria: taxonomy, biogeography, habitats, and ecological impacts

Biological invasions remain one of the greatest threats to biodiversity and livelihoods, and are predicted to increase due to climate change and globalization. In this study, we produced a comprehensive checklist of alien plants in Nigeria from online flora databases, herbarium records, published field surveys, and questionnaires administered to botanical gardens. The resulting alien flora was classified into naturalized, invasive, and cultivated plants. We then fitted a random forest model to identify the attributes which facilitate the naturalization of alien plants in Nigeria. We also used separate chi-squared tests to investigate if the frequency of these attributes is significantly different between the naturalized and invasive plants. The results include 1,381 alien plant taxa, comprising 238 naturalized, 190 invasive, and 953 cultivated species. The naturalized and invasive plants (428 species) are from 91 families, with Fabaceae and Poaceae having the highest representations. The random forest model showed that life forms and local economic uses were the most important drivers of alien plant naturalization in Nigeria. Chi-squared tests revealed a non-random distribution of life forms, higher frequencies of naturalized plants from the Indomalaya and the Neotropics, greater introductions during the British colonial rule, and that naturalized species are mostly used for medicinal, ornamental, food, or animal fodder purposes. Naturalized and invasive plants were recorded in all regions of Nigeria and are mostly found in urban and agricultural landscapes. This baseline information can support further ecological studies and conservation actions in Nigeria.

Role of women in non-cooperation movement

The paper explores the integral role of women in India's Non-Cooperation Movement, a pivotal phase in the nation's fight for independence led by Mahatma Gandhi in the 1920s. Amid this nonviolent resistance against British rule, women assumed multifaceted roles that extended beyond societal boundaries. Engaging in protests, rallies, and boycotts, they vehemently rejected British-made products, institutions, and symbols, showcasing their resolute dedication to change. Despite societal constraints relegating women to domestic roles, they defied convention, organizing picketing and promoting indigenous khadi cloth as alternatives to British imports, fostering self-reliance. Their involvement not only disrupted British economic activities but also reshaped gender dynamics, endowing women with newfound agency and empowerment. This abstract emphasizes that women's contributions were not passive or peripheral; instead, they were driving forces in reshaping the movement's landscape. Their resilience and commitment left an enduring impact on India's struggle for independence, while simultaneously propelling a transformative shift in women's societal roles and aspirations, setting an enduring precedent for their sustained involvement in subsequent phases of the freedom movement and beyond.

Customary Mortgages and the Moral Economy of Kinship in Chinese Lineage Villages, 1905–1965

This article illustrates the development and characteristics of two customary forms of mortgage lending by analyzing a total of 3,630 mortgage cases found in four lineage communities in rural Hong Kong during the period 1905–1965 under British colonial rule. Two major findings are presented. First, there was a progressive decline of the dian 典 form, in sharp contrast to the increasing popularity of the diya 抵押 form. Second, while dian practices distinctly followed prevailing kinship-based moral values and obligations to help needy agnates, agnatic ties were not a significant factor in determining the terms of diya loans. This suggests that needy villagers did not feel disinclined to get a loan from lineage outsiders who could offer reasonable or attractive terms. The popularity of the diya practice demonstrates the existence of a strategic balance between self-interest and communal moral values and mutual obligations in lineage communities.

Racial Segregation in Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and JM Coetzee’s Disgrace

This paper makes a comparative analysis of racial discrimination faced by the characters in the novels, The Kite Runner and Disgrace. Both novels are based on non-western settings and the characters become the victim of racial segregation. British rulers first promoted racial injustice in the process of expanding colonialism. As a result, racism emerged as a dominant factor of oppression of the people by power holders. Authors, in both novels, have shown their characters victimized by racial domination. In Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, the central character, Hassan becomes the victim of ethnic oppression as Amir and Assef dominate him and force Hassan and his father leave their home. Amir and Assef belong to Pashtuns and Hassan and his father belong to Hazaras in the Muslim community. They belong to different ethnic groups and the majority group dominates minority groups. Next, they become victims of Taliban oppression and are tortured and killed mercilessly. In Coetzee’s Disgrace, the central character, David Lurie as a white professor seduces his black student, Melanie Isaac, using his predominant racial power. Next, his daughter, Lucy is raped by three black men as a byproduct of the post-apartheid era. Racial attitude has created problems in the lives of the characters as they undergo many kinds of suffering in the novels. For analyzing the novels, racism has been used as a theoretical tool to explore the problems concerning human relationships. In The Kite Runner, there is the domination of one ethnic group over another ethnic group treating them as inferior and non-human. In Disgrace, there is the domination of whites over blacks and the domination of blacks over whites. Both novels reflect that racism based on any level is a social evil caused by human relationships and it has always negative effects on society. Due to racial segregation, one group dominates another group creating social problems.

Jawaharlal Nehru’s Vision for Citizen-centric Administration

After Independence from the British rule, India adopted a new Constitution in 1950 framed by the Constituent Assembly. Under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru as the first Prime Minister, India followed the path of ‘democratic socialism’ to establish the ‘socialistic pattern of society’. Though Nehru started with a new vision and vigour, yet he was left with a traditional administrative machinery inherited from the colonial era. Nehru wanted to overhaul the Indian Civil Service (ICS) machinery to suit the objectives of new India by making it more citizen-centric and more participatory, and constituted the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) in its place. This article tries to outline the vision of Nehru for a citizen-centric public administration. The article analyses the role of the Preamble to the Constitution and Nehru’s Objectives Resolution in defining popular moorings and sanctions for public administration. Delineating major colonial inheritances in the administrative machinery, the article in its later part, analyses Nehru’s thoughts on citizen-centric administration, especially focusing on a human touch in Indian public administration.

An equal death: Satyendranath Dutta’s poem on sati and widow remarriage

ABSTRACT The Bengali poet Satyendranath Dutta (1882–1922) is admired for his mastery of prosody and metre. “Sahamaran” – first published in 1906 and translated here into English – is one of his memorable poems centring on the themes of child marriage, sati (widow-burning), and widow remarriage, social issues that engaged the attention of the colonizers and Bengali intelligentsia alike in the heyday of British rule in India. Retaining much of 19th- and early-20th-century Bengali literature’s social reformist zeal, the poem spotlights the complicity of patriarchy and religion in the victimization of women and conveys the message that transgressing socio-religious codes is the only means of overcoming patriarchal oppression and violence. It further suggests that a woman’s financial independence is vital to supporting herself and her family and having equality in her relationship with her husband. The poem, however, falls short of envisaging a female subjectivity that is not male-defined.

The Philosophy Behind My Forty-Five Years Successful Social Services

During British rule, my grandfather the late Gopalsamy Gounder was an interesting attraction to the local office bearers and elected body members. He was one of the counselors for the Coimbatore Police Department by holding the President of honorary office of Village Vigilance Committee My great grandfather the late Chinna Nachimuthu Gounder was a juror in the British ruling. Also, my father’s elder brother the late G. Shanmugasundaram[ commonly known as GS] served as the President of Kanjampatti Panchayat Board for 25 years namely from 1954 to 1979. During these four generations our family earned a good reputation in the society and accumulated a lot of experiences. Also, my mother’s father and her two eldest fathers served the poor and the needy. They were most popular and famous in Coimbatore district when the British ruled India. Two of them studied law in the 1920s and practiced in the Taluk and District courts. They helped the poor by attending their cases freely. My six uncles were highly cultured, qualified and interested in doing social services by helping the poor families. My mother’s father, the late Mylsamy Gounder, was the Village Munshif in the revenue department during the British rule of India. Their ancestors held this prestigious position for more than 100 years!These facts were told to me not by my family members but by my villagers and neighboring hamlets. Needless to say, our family was /is very familiar in more than 36 villages. These social services phenomena captivated my childhood and I made up my mind to become an EXTRAORDINARY & OUTSTANDING social worker. 

The Travels of Treason

The law of treason has been criticised for being based on ‘outdated’ statutes which are inflexible and unsuitable for modern needs. However, a historical examination of the evolution of treason in Britain and its empire suggests that the law was often adaptable. In nineteenth century England, jurists wished to rein in older constructive treasons, to leave the 1351 Act as the appropriate law for wartime treasons, while the more lenient 1848 Act was to be used against ‘political’ conspiracies to subvert the state by force. However, the ‘constructive’ treasons remained part of the law, and were given new life in imperial contexts. In Ireland and Canada, the idea that plotting the king's ‘political’ death was treason remained central to understandings of the 1351 Act. In India, the interpretation of the provision of the penal code against ‘waging war’ against the government was influenced by old English ideas of ‘constructive’ treason and used against those who challenged British rule. Imperial understandings of treason were also shaped by cases arising out of the Boer war, where the underlying law was Roman‐Dutch law. Rather than being restrictive and unable to adapt to modern needs, the law of treason was flexible and malleable.

Gender Concepts In The Novels of Nazar Sajjad In The Context Of Feminist Reform

Thousands of years ago, system “Madr sari” system was prevalent. Women used to live independent life. Modern agricultural system introduced “Padar.shahi” system which changed the whole situation and women became subjugated and negligible, which placed them in defiance of the historical powder and dominance under the British Rule women were granted some of basic rights giving rise to their recognition in the society. The authors including female writers presented women as a subject of their novels. One of the female writers of that era is Nazar Sajjad Haider who presented the concept of modern and independent women with bravely.She is the mother of Qrat u lain Haider. She emphasized over the issues such as modern and higher education for the women, important of women consent at the time of marriage and men’ s right of second marriage, in her writings . This research work will analyze the social position of women under the novels of Nazar Sajjad Haider. She was practically a feminist who fought against the old fashioned and feudal prevalent traditions of her time.

The Ungrudging Indian: The Political Economy of Salt in India, c. 1878–1947

This article investigates the long background to Mohandas K. Gandhi’s choice of salt as a symbol of protest against British colonial rule. Arguably the largest of all the colonial monopolies in India, the salt tax had the smallest effect on the lives of Indians when compared with other forms of deprivation and inequality. How was the salt monopoly different from other kinds of extractive colonialism? Why did salt never become part of the lexicon of protest against British rule until 1930? The article discusses the operation of the salt monopoly, its impact on consumption and health, the criticism it provoked, and the growth of support in the 1920s for protection for the domestic salt industry.

The Colossus and the Sphinx: Two Cartographies of Africa in Nineteenth-Century Britain

This article compares G. F. Watts’s unfinished portrait of the mining magnate and imperialist Cecil John Rhodes (1898) with the artist’s earlier “portrait” of the Sphinx at Giza (1887). When he invoked this comparison, Rhodes revealed a clash between both men’s cartographies of the British empire. While Rhodes wished to see the entire African continent under British rule “from Cape Town to Cairo,” Watts found in Egypt an orientalist aesthetics that left the artist conflicted about the British empire’s presence there. For Watts, this disjuncture between Orientalism and imperialism elucidated the totality and fragility of the British empire.

The Pursuit of Gandhāran Sculptures: A Record of Amateur Excavations in the Former Khyber Agency

This article explores the history of clandestine activities concerning Buddhist antiquities in the former Khyber Agency of the British Indian Empire. To this end, the archives kept at the Directorate of Archives and Libraries at Peshawar prove that Gandhāran sculptures recovered during these clandestine excavations were transported to England in violation of the law in force. In addition, some sculptures belonging to senior officers have disappeared and are to this day unknown. This article envisions and considers some of these facts and therefore focuses particularly on the discovery, hasty excavation, and devastation of Buddhist ruins near the great stupa called Shpola which was part of the Khyber Agency under the British Kingdom.

‘Compliments from the Housewives’: Contesting White Public Space in Late-Colonial Nairobi

AbstractThis article examines the racial politics of decolonization in late-colonial Nairobi in the decade before independence through the unique space of the colonial bus using archival letters from a group of European women who called themselves ‘The Housewives’. In letters to Nairobi's mayor and the Kenya Bus Service (KBS), the Housewives argued against a newly proposed transportation policy that would make all seating on the colonial buses the same price, doing away with the first-class section. The letters reveal that African bus riders, particularly Muslim women riders, were centrally important in this crucial time in Kenya's urban history. With Nairobi still under a ‘State of Emergency’ as military operations against the Land and Freedom Army (Mau Mau) were coming to an end, these letters show colonial buses as battlegrounds during the final years of British colonial rule in Kenya with extremely porous social borders and transportation vehicles serving as rich sites of urban life.

Manifestation of Spaces in Gurukul System of Education

Abstract: In ancient India education was a sacred tradition and the main aim was development of an individual as a whole by up lifting the individual intellectually, skillfully, cultural and spiritually. Living in the proximity of the Guru, students learn every aspect of life. The teaching and learning then was a continuous process. But this unique system was crushed during British rule and the glorious eco system came to a downfall. Gurukuls in ancient ages leave us unsolved clues for this setup of education, where students outreach their maximum potential and remain focused for attainment of knowledge. Now with the upcoming generation facing huge problems related to education such as unskillfulness, lack of focus, stress, lack of moral and ethical values, lost traditional and cultural inherence, calls for revival of Gurukul system for a holistic development, and so for the need of a physical setup which is traditional in concept but also fulfilling present day needs. There are some Gurukuls running in country but present Gurukuls and especially the Vedic Gurukuls are unplanned and are just organic growth of buildings as per the need and resources, leaving the place without any character and not even fulfilling the basic facilities. Now with a change in the outlook of the society the Gurukuls are again gaining a recognition. This paper aims to find physical spaces and environment for a gurukul which could aid for the holistic development of students providing traditional and simple solutions for enhancing learning. An effort is made to find the needs of spaces in present and future gurukuls though surveys and interviews. Traditional approach in planning of such spaces is done through various case studies. The project focuses toestablish a healthy and uplifting relationship between the teacher and student reviving the Gurushishya Parampara by spaces for more interaction between the two. Creating a balance between built and unbuilt forms. Result of study indicates that spaces designed for special training, skills, spiritual upliftment are equally important along with the spaces for daily activities like cleaning, cooking, praying etc. To encourages pupils being self-sufficient. The spaces and architecture need to be simple and sustainable for promoting simple living and high thinking