The History of India Since 1900 Essay

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Introduction

In the beginning of 1900, India was ruled by British Empire and it attained independent in 1947. In most parts of the 19th century, India was under the rule of British. India was taken as the core of the British Empire and Queen Victoria was created as Empress of India. The main British military was deployed in India and this made Indian citizens to have no powers in local and central government and they had less authority in policy and decision-making.

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Indian National Conference (INC) was established in 1884 by some of the learned Indians and they intended to obtain greater authority in the way India was ruled (Blackwell 56). In return to this progress, there was establishment of the Morley-Minto reforms in 1909 and Morley was then the Secretary of State for India.

Das (6) contended that in 1850, Indian population was merely 500 million heads. By 1900, there was increase in population to around 1.5 billion heads and was increasing very fast, to around 3.2 billion in the year 1965. The population was increasing within a shorter time and this rapid population increase was mostly due to a reducing death rate, which was faster than birth rate and especially a raise in average people age.

In 2000, the number of people in India was reported to have reached around six billion people. However, the growth in population began to reduce after 1965 due to reducing birth rates (Hiralal 28). This paper would discuss the transformations in India since 1900 including the British Empire, economy and population change in India.

Discussion

British Empire in India

After 1919, nationalism in India strengthened and this was because of the following reasons (Blunt 431):

  1. Several learned people in India were not really pleased with the Morley-Minto reforms. British still ruled India and they did not reduce their powers or raise the Indians authority in the government. The INC aimed for more powers in their country.
  2. Woodrow Wilson had inspired the minds of several Indian nationals with his consideration of national independence; i.e. citizens of a country to have powers to rule themselves.

The entire idea of national independence destabilized the crucial concept of the British Empire where the British ruled this empire or individuals chosen by the British to perform the same. For national independence to function completely, India was supposed to be ruled by the Indian nationals residing there. In the beginning of 1919, there was implementation of the Government of India Act and this helped in introduction of national parliament (Chandrasekhar 169).

Around five million of the richest and influential Indian nationals were offered the right to vote which was a very minimal ratio of the sum population. Central government, ministry of education, and some civil positions were governed by Indian citizens. However, the British managed the entire central authority and British retained the core positions, such as tax and law and order posts, in the provincial government.

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Lord Birkenhead, 1924 to 1928, was fully opposing the concept of self-governance and this made very hard for Indians to obtain self-governance (Chandrasekhar 169). Three influential men, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi, and Muhammed Jinnah, created a major impact on the Indian government where they fought for self-rule. Gandhi influenced most of his supporters to employ non-violent demonstration.

They used sit-down strikes, declined to work, declined to pay for government taxes, and so forth. Most of the Indians desired to use more extreme means and in the section of 1919 Government of India Act declared that a body would be formed after ten years to examine if India should have the desired self-governance (Blunt 432). The commission initially met in 1928 which was called the Simon Commission.

There were implementation of the Government of India Act in 1935 and that time the British had founded national Government and development were created over India just since Stanley Baldwin, who was the Tory leader and head of labor, Ramsey-MacDonald, decided on a mutual way of action and Winston Churchill was resentfully in contrary to this (Hiralal 28). This Act brought in elected Indian leaders to have powers in most sections apart from foreign affairs and defense.

It also introduced the 11 provincial assemblies which were intended to have valuable full powers over local government. Indians citizens were not pleased with this since the Act did not facilitate authority status and British authority was permitted to manage their own defense and foreign affairs. Also some off the princes were governing some parts of India still declined to associate with the provincial assemblies hence the second section of the Act was insignificant (Blackwell 56).

The key failure of the Act was that it disregarded the religious opposition between the Hindus and Muslims. Almost 60% of the Indian nationals were Hindus and this made Muslims to fear that they will not be treated equally in a self-governing and democratic India. There were provincial elections in 1937 and Hindus won eight out of 11 provinces (Levie 96).

The Muslim League under Jinnah insisted for their province to be named Pakistan. These competitions between the Muslims and Hindus had greater impact on the Indian progress. World War Two put on hold the Indian matter – although momentarily. The Indians presented significant military assistance in the struggle against Japan in particular in the movement in Burma. The British assured power positions for Indians once the battle had finished.

The religious enmity within India was intensifying and this created any possible solution extremely hard. Efforts to put together a cooperate constitution which satisfied both religious opponents were unsuccessful. The British intention was to permit the provincial authority broad powers at the same time as central government would simply have the partial rules (Robertaon 218).

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The Labor government placed its belief in the expectation that many Muslims resided in one or two provinces and that the authority in the two provinces should consider this in policy making. If this arrangement functions, the demand for a separate province for Muslim would not be necessary.

Nehru was requested to create a temporary government by the Governor-General of India and the Governor General expected that the information of this government could be reformed afterward; however he expected that the formation of full government led by Indian citizens would satisfy most of the people.

There were inclusion of two Muslims in Nehru cabinet but it was not efficient in preventing violence. Jinnah was persuaded that Nehru might not be relied on and he requested all the Muslims to pursue a direct action to attain a self-rule Muslim nation. Violence started and more that 6000 people died in Calcutta and there were civil war in India (Levie 97).

In the beginning of 1947, Atlee stated that British would go back to Britain before mid 1948 and another viceroy, Mountbatten, was chosen and he stated that peace might be simply be attained if partition was implemented. The Hindu Assembly had the same opinion with him.

Mountbatten became persuaded that whichever holdup might raise violence and he announced that the British would leave the country in August 1947. In August 1947, there was signing of the Indian Independence Act and this helped in dividing the Muslim major regions from India to form the self-rule nation of Pakistan. However, the Act was very hard to implement (Levie 96).

Indian Transformations

Indian is famous in architecture and they have the great architects which have inspired most of the countries and societies. This architect has originated from ancient society and it continues to the modern structures. Indian architecture includes broad series of geographically and traditionally broadens systems and was changed by the history of the state of India.

These transformations have led to series of architecture inventions which, even though it is hard to recognize a particular representative approach, nevertheless maintains a particular sum of permanence across history. The multiplicity of Indian society is symbolized in its architecture. It is a mixture of prehistoric and diverse local traditions, with construction forms, kinds, and technologies from Western and some parts of Asia along with Europe.

The Indian transformations as from independence appear to be in flagrant opposition with conventional Western theories of economic growth. The concept of Arthur Lewis on the transition from a 6% to a 12% saving investment rate being the necessity of the growth of economy and the two-gap method has satisfied huge inflows of international legislative or private investment (Das 5).

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Examination on the economy in 1900 to 1975 reported that a huge growth rate in companies is to be established merely when its conditions of trade relative to agriculture are not extremely below their long-term standard level.

Conclusion

Most of the people found themselves on the worst part of frontiers particularly in the combined provinces of Bengal and Punjab. Many people migrated to new frontiers where the Muslims moved to newly established Pakistan and the Hindus migrated to India. However, some regions where the groups met experienced violence.

In Punjab, around 300,000 people were killed in religious violence. Violence reduced in the end of 1947 but in the beginning of 1948, there was assassination of Gandhi by a Hindu. This intensified the hatred between the Hindu and Muslim and created a huge instability in both states.

The real wages in the sector of agriculture have risen since 1900, while in major companies these may have risen by minimal margin in many years after independence. There is considerable increase in public fixed investments since 1950s, however once suitable modifications are created this intention is observed to be not relatively applicable (Das 5).

Their style of architect includes post-modern, modern, western classical and Islamic. This architecture styles have been changing since 1900s and some of the ancient styles have been maintained in India. Various transformations have been seen in India since independence and even the population is more rapidly increasing the current population of 6 million.

Works Cited

Blackwell, F. India:a global studies handbook. Santa Barbara: CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2004. Print.

Reason: This book has a lot of information about India and it explains many things that I need to understand and then use it in my paper.

Blunt, Alison. “Imperial Geographies of Home: British Domesticity in India, 1886-1925.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series 24.4 (1999): 421-440. Print.

Reason: An important time in the Indian history, when England took over India and how these events affected the Indian history.

Chandrasekhar, S. “Population Pressure in India.” Pacific Affairs 16.2 (1943): 168-184. Print.

Reason: This article was written in the middle of the last century, and I need to use some statistic in my paper.

Das, Gurcharan. “The India Model.” Foreign Affairs 85.4 (2006): 2-16. Print.

Reason: This article focuses on the economy in India and I need to write about the Indian economy.

Hiralal, Kalpana. “Indian Family Businesses in Natal, 1870– 1950.” Natalia 38.4 (2008): 27-37. Print.

The introduction of ‘passenger Indians’ in the region of Natal from the 1870s indicated a fresh age in colonial history. This is extensively e4xplained in this book where he described the foundations of the Indian commercial status in the imperial era.

Levie, Howard S. “The Indo-Pakistani Agreement of August 28, 1973.” The American Journal of International Law 68.1 (1974): 95-97. Print.

Reason: I need to write about the conflict between India and Pakistan during last century.

Robertaon, S. “Politics and Religion in India: An Analysis.” Asia Journal of Theology 23.2 (October 2009): 217-243. Web.

Reason: India has many religions and an article like this will help me when writing my paper.

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IvyPanda. 2024. "The History of India Since 1900." April 2, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/india-since-1900/.

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