Review of Related Backgrounds 1. India Under British Control

19 Smith, 1984:134. It is made possible by the ‘practico-social’ function ideology is called upon to perform. Althusser describes this function as performing through a process of interpellating concrete individuals as “[a] centre of initiatives, author of and responsible for its actions” Althusser, 1971:169.

C. Review of Related Backgrounds 1. India Under British Control

In the imperialism course India has acquired notable story. Her distinction is primarily developed by her acquaintance as the colony of the British Empire, a bond of allegiances to the King or Queen of Great Britain. As a country in which the Hindu caste system was so rigid in arrangement, India had maintained and justified for centuries a kind of segregation which was believed to be mandated by the sacred texts of that religion. Yet, the British seamen and missionaries, as the pioneers of the voyage to the Outside World, inferred that such ancient culture and social system should be placed upon by Western civilization. Here grew three reasons for the establishment of British Empire: the desire to increase trade, the search for new homes for a population overcrowded in the mother country, and the impulse to confer civilisation, Christianity and decent government upon peoples who have lacked those advantages Williamson, 1954: 3. Driven from those reasons, the Empire has made many policies and charters. As it was to the other colonies, such ideas have brought success and loss to India, beginning from the first trading post in Surat on the 16 th century to its independence in 1947. 20 The Great Britain got their control upon India since the establishment of the East India Company. The Company was a trading company from London and its improvement was rapid. Two centuries later the East India Company, granted full authority from the Crown of English for the trading posts in India, has gained power and prosperity: The actual state of affairs [in 1760] was, therefore, that the governor and council at Calcutta really controlled the country, since they could make or unmake the Nawab, and that the latter was much more a tax-collector for the British than an independent sovereign. It was a situation of which unprincipled men could take advantage, and it must be confessed that the company’s servants behaved badly… Europeans in India did not yet realize that they were the strongest power in the country. They thought of themselves as a feeble handful in face of vast native forces. The idea that they could be morally responsible for the welfare of the native multitudes had never occurred to them. They had been sent out, not as government officials, but as the clerks and merchants of a trading concern. No one had told them that it was their duty to provide just government for the native population; their primary duty was to make profits for the company and to defend its property from attack Williamson, 1954: 200-201. In 1773, a Regulating Act became a fact which gave the King’s ministers control upon the trading company. This Act concerns about providing good government in India for “events had made it evident that a trading company was not a fit instrument to rule millions of people” Williamson, 1954: 202. It must be said earlier that the home government had never desired any full responsibility in India. But, in regard to any scandals and irresponsibilities existing in the Company, and also a need to provide just government in India, William Pitt, as the Minister, passed into law the India’s Act wherein “the company remained in charge of its commercial affairs and kept the mass of the patronage, although the higher posts were to be filled by the crown” Williamson, 1954: 207. So, from that time, the British Crown became the effective ruler in the British India.. 21 As it has been said earlier, the British government was so reluctant to undertake power in India inasmuch as any attempt to extensify British rule in India was said to be contrary to the declaration made by Pitt. It was sincerely meant, for any responsibility in India “seemed to entail more peril than profit” Williamson, 1954: 207. However, the British parliament, regarding themselves as “a peace-loving power, yet with a valuable trade to defend”, were the neighbors of warlike native power who were likely to challenge the strength of the British; ultimately, it became a choice “between conquering or being conquered, with the Pax Britannica as the only permanent peace that India could hope to enjoy” Williamson, 1954: 207. As the events became history, British parliament, as sometimes stated by historians, have a justification for its rule in India: In practice it was much more of a liberating than a conquest of the peoples themselves, for it introduced equal justice and personal freedom where all had been violence and oppression. The trembling peasant had been used to bow low before his ruler and salute him as ‘Protector of the poor’ Williamson, 1954: 207. Acting as to ‘liberate’ indigenous people and to introduce equal justice, British sovereign then expresses their ideas that the lives of Indians should be improved. At this point, the British started to plant the seed of Western civilization within the Indian soil. Governor-general, placed as the representative of British parliament, in India then became the prime author of policies and law enforcer in that country. Among many resolutions and policies, which concerned defence and trading, there were policies regarding culture and belief worth notion. In 1828-1835, Lord William Bentinck became the governor-general and he has made illegal “the 22 taking of life on pretext of religion widow-burning and the murders by the thugs and he introduced the European system of education in newly founded Indian colleges” Williamson, 1954: 213. However, the well meant reform didn’t reach its aim and it was more visible when Dalhousie, a later official, became the chief official: During Dalhousie’s rule India came more closely into contact with Western ideas than ever before. The new system of postage by means of adhesive stamps was a novelty displeasing to conservative minds, and still more so was the electric telegraph whose lines began to spread over the country. A beginning was also made with railway construction, although the great main lines of later days remained only in the stage of planning and discussion. European education and the efforts of missionaries had in some quarters a disturbing effect. These matters have often been described as contributing causes of the great rising that was to follow in 1857, and to a small extent they were, but their importance should not be exaggerated. The Mutiny was what its name implies, a revolt primarily of the soldiers, and their discontent was chiefly due to military reasons Williamson, 1954: 217-218. The Indian Mutiny happened in 1857 which was caused by military discontentment. It follows that in 1858 the parliament passed the Government in India Act which “ended the authority of the East India Company and transferred all its functions to the crown” Williamson, 1954: 220. Since that date, peace has prevailed throughout India and the government then devoted more revenues for military expenditure for “if it has been necessary to depose a reigning prince for misgovernment, his state has nevertheless reserved its privileged position.” Williamson, 1954: 353. Also in this era, there were much reformation on other aspects of medicine, transportation and education system. This reformation has produced an awareness for political body among the natives, which was supported by the home government: 23 The first meeting of the Indian National Congress took place in 1885. It was a body of reformers who assembled to discuss their projects. Government then under the viceroyalty of Lord Dufferin regarded it as a healthy sign of interest in public affairs and was ready to make such concessions as were warranted by the state of the country. These did not include “swaraj”, or self-government, but they did extend to further consultation of Indian opinion. Williamson, 1954: 359-360. Though at the beginning there is no discussion of self-government, native remofmers have understood, after learning from English literature and living within Western sense of freedom and liberation, that they should assume more responsibility for their own nation. The late of 19 th century and towards the two world-wars India has undergone critical period. In that time, a most notable Viceroy, Lord Curzon, has made at least two great reforms that should be noted here. First was in defence: he reformed the Punjab province to the North West Frontier Province. This reform has been caused because the province is the neighbor of warring tribesmen who lived in the border between India and Afghanistan. Curzon also pursued “the plan of enlisting irregular forces from the tribes, placing them under British officers, and letting them fight their refractory brethren when necessary” Williamson, 1954: 358. The second is in education: “In 1904 he passed a Universities Act to remedy the wasteful state of affairs by which multitudes of half-educated persons were turned loose upon society without any real competence for the jobs they aspired to fill” Williamson, 1954: 359. There were those great reforms in India at the turnover of the century, while at the same time a resentment to white people were spreading in Asia and India seemed to shared that feeling. 24 From Curzon’s time onwards there were “alternate periods of intense unrest and comparative quiescence” Williamson, 1954: 359. The majority of people seemed to enjoy the state of the country, but the revolutionries consisting in the minority were active and intelligent. At this time of political unrest, British government was effaced by difficult condition: The National Congress became the platform of impassioned orators who pictured themselves as the future rulers of an independent India… [British officials] had the difficult task of restraining agitation whilst admitting that the agitators, from their own point of view, were not men who ought to be regarded as criminals Williamson, 1954: 360. Shortly after Curzon resigned from his office, a new Liberal government came into power. Its Secretary for India, Lord Motley, then proposed a clause that it is the British government which is responsible to lead India for the self-government. But he understood that any radical changes of sellf-government would resulted in chaos, so he thought that prolonged training was necessary to teach the inexperienced natives to work out a sound governmnet over “a population of three hundred millions amid all the difficulties that beset rulers of India” Williamson, 1954: 360. That was the state of affairs before the first world war happened in 1914; there was growing sense of nationality, extrimists were noisy but few, but the majority were pleased by the existing government. At the home government in London, there also growing a proposal and the beginning of the Commonwealth of Nations. In the twentieth century a sense of imperial federation was growing much greater than before in the Parliament. It was started in 1885 by the Imperial Conference which was held in friendly atmosphere and has made some notable 25 policies. The problem was that it assumed a form of super-government which came into conflict with another feeling equally strong, “the nationalism of the dominions and the greater colonies” Williamson, 1954: 371. India has also included in the allegiance to the British sovereign, and at the warring time in the African Seven Years War and the First World War India gave a notable support: Her vast population contained a majority of very poor and ignorant people with no conception of history or politics or the meaning of the issues at stake. Large sections of the Indian races were avowedly unmilitary and outside the scope of recruitment, the fighting peoples being in the minority. Yet from these latter a million men were sent into the field Williamson, 1954: 379. British statesmen has corrected their underestimation of India which was regarded as ‘young nation’ among the ‘old nations of ancient civilization of European’; they then tried to find a way in expressing their made-up mind. It is then became the cause of Treaty of Versailles which has established the League of Nations with India become ‘distinct national member’, “accepting the same rights and responsibilies as the other nations whether new or old” Williamson, 1954: 381. This League of Nations then became the British Commonwealth in 1919. The granting of the ‘same rights with other old nation’ doesn’t assume the self- government for India, and Indian political leaders still not ceased to be impatient for it. The First World War was guessed to be short, and it made any discussions of India’s self-government to be postponed. Eventually, the Indian National Congress, formerly representing many shades of opinion, has fallen to the power of extrimists “[who] suspected that the British were playing false” Williamson, 1954: 395. It was at this time 1919-1920 when Mr. M. K. Gandhi became Head 26 of the Congress and devoted himself to the ending of British rule. “He had a horror of cruelty and violence, and taught that British rule should be overthrown by moral resistance without the use of force”, nevertheless, his doctrines were the cause of violence and bloodsheds, “for he roused his followers to a pitch of excitement in which neither could they control themselves nor he them” Williamson, 1954: 398. Gandhi began his non-co-operation to British authority in the 1920’s that advised that Hindu people should not enroll in the position of British government in India. This has hardened and consolidated the Congress but different condition and assumption was flowing in the majority of Indians: Many were employed in the public services and in the army, and they put loyalty to the state above revolutionary doctrines. Many moderate politicians saw that an estremists’ revolution would end in chaos and disaster for all India. They refused to boycott a government which meant to do its duty to the country, and they took office in the new ministries and learned to be competent administrators. These Indian liberals were patriotic men no less than the Congress leaders, and they were serving India to greater purpose. In the ten years that followed the Act of 1919 they made solid progress in creating a body of Indian ruling men fit to take fuller responsibility Williamson, 1954: 399. Formerly non-violences were placed by violence and assassinations of officials, in which “many of them Indians who were devotedly serving their country” Williamson, 1954: 400. It become the sacrifices for the upcoming self- governance. Full province self-government has been achieved by some central provinces. But it was a fact that some princes was in conflict with this term because they “were satisfied with their existing positions and had no wish to change it” Williamson, 1954: 401. But the real difficulty was between the Moslems and Hindus: 27 The Moslems were incurably suspicious of an intended Hindu tyranny, and the proceedings of the Congress party gave ground for their fears. The British government could not resign control when the inevitable result would have been civil war Williamson, 1954: 401-402. Yet, finally, after the Second World War the British government has been ready for an all-Indian government after a long discussion mainly for the determination of the Moslems in having the separate state of Pakistan: In 1946 the real decisions were taken. Mr. Attlee, the British Prime Minister, stated that the self-determination of India would be complete and that she would be free to leave the Commonwealth if she chose to do so… In England Parliament passed the Indian Independence Act, which created the two dominions of Pakistan and India and came into force on August 15, 1947 Williamson, 1954: 426. India chose to be a republic, having no allegiance to the King of Great Britain but still becoming the member of the Commonwealth, which becomes a new kind of relationship, “and was ratified… in 1949” Williamson, 1954: 426.

2. The Indian Army

Just like in other dominions in the British Empire, the Indian Army in the nineteenth century was operated “alongside units of the British Army, funded by the British government in London” Raugh, 2004:179. The history of The Indian Army is often related to an occurrence in British Empire called the Indian Mutiny of 1857. At that incident, those who are recruited to the Indian Army were originated from Muslims in the Bengal Presidency and high caste Hindu mainly natives of Oudh. These troops took part in the Indian Mutiny, in order to reinstates the Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah II, partly as a result of insensitive treatement by their British officers. Accordingly, to overcome the chaos and to handle down 28 the situation, in 1858 the British Crown took over direct rule of British India from the former authority. During 1903-1947, Lord Kitchener, as the Commander-in-Chief, took his responsibility to reform the Indian Army. His reformation includes the institution of “higher level formations, eight army divisions, and brigaded Indian and British units” en.wikipedia.orgwikiBritish_Indian_Army . By the early 1900s, despite the less prestigious postings than the British’s, the pay of the Indian Army was significantly greater so that officers could live on their salaries. Moreover, vacancies of the Indian Army were much sought after and generally reserved for the higher placed officer-cadets graduating from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. The term ‘Indian Army’ itself refers to the force in which personnel was recruited locally and permanently based in India. As the sepoys have been recruited from local Indian in primarily Hindi areas, British officers were expected to learn to speak the Indian languages of their men. British officers commonly recruit the native soldier, or sepoy, from what the British called the ‘martial races’, including Sikhs, Awans, Gakhars, and other Punjabi Mussulmans. After the Kitchener’s reforms ended in 1909, the Indian Army was organized along British lines. An Indian Army division consisted of three brigades, in which three battalions were of the Indian Army and one battalion of British. The Indian battalions were “not segregated, with companies of different tribes, castes or religion.” en.wikipedia.org wikiBritish_Indian_Army . 29 At the clash of World War II, the Indian Army has enlisted 205,000 men. In supporting the British power, on the Second World War the Indian Army soldiers were raised up to 2,5 million all-volunteers men, becoming the largest in history. Additionally, with the establishment of two armoured divisions, an airborne division and also the providing of weapons, training and equipment the Indian Army had considerable independence. In this much sought war, the Germans and Japanese were successful in recruiting combat forces from Indian prisoners of war. Those Indians are prisoned men joining forces known as the Tiger Legion and the Indian National Army INA. At that war, about three-fifths of 55,000 Indians, taken as prisoners in Malaya and Singapore, then joined the INA which fought Allied Forces in the Burma Campaign, and some others became guards at Japanese camps. However, some Indian Army personnel resisted to be recruited by Japan and remained prisoners and were taken to Japanese-occupied areas of New Guinea as forced labor. On the aftermath of World War II, as a result of the Partition of India in 1947, [the] formations, units, assets, and indigenous personnel of the Indian Army were divided, with two thirds of the assets being retained by the Union of India, and one third going to the new Dominion of Pakistan Lapping, 1985:75. Most of the moslems in the Indian Army personnel then proceeded to join the Pakistan Army. Due to to a shortage of experienced soldiers, some British officers remained in Pakistan until the early 1950s. Soon after the Partition, from 1947 to 1948, a war called The First Kashmir War began, causing a rivalry which has continued into the 21st century. 30

D. Theoretical Framework