British India Dbq

While the British government was efficient at ruling India and left India peacefully, the overall political Impact that the British had on India was quite negative, because they governed only for themselves and created mass amounts of conflict when they left. In the article Why Britain should be proud of its rule in India by Dr. Kartar Lalvani, it states that “The British administration of India, a country with a population of 500 million, diverse religions and spread over 17,000 square miles was superbly efficient.” However true this is, Dr. Lalvani forgets that there are people other than the British that lived in India. In fact, according to document 2, only 60 of the 960 governmental positions in India were held by Indians themselves. This
However, the British government intentionally created conflict between the two religious groups that made up India, causing Hindus and Muslims both to be concerned about their governmental role in the new India. In the Gandhi movie, we learn that from this tension, at least one million people died in conflict, including Gandhi himself. One million people dying in a fight that was caused by the British is anything but peaceful. Overall, these two political effects of British rule on India were negative, not positive. Indians were not represented in government, leading in civil rights oppressions (such as the right to free speech), and because the British were able to manipulate two large religions, they caused one million to die in the transition of
While document 5 shows a slight increase in literacy during British rule, it was the ability to communicate with other people in person that made the largest impact. As Lalvani says, “The English language allowed communication between people of different backgrounds”. With the power of a language, the people of India could stand up against the negative political impacts that the British had, even if their attempts to protest were decimated by unjust laws. Another nightmare India was dealing with when the British gained control was the epidemics of multiple deadly diseases spread throughout the country. Smallpox and Malaria were spread from corner to corner and people were dying in large numbers. While document 7 shows that an additional 22 million people died due to starvation under British rule, more people could have died from smallpox and malaria epidemics. Between 1926 and 1930, there were just under 1 million cases of smallpox in India (Indian Journal of Medical Ethics). Being that smallpox was one of the two major deadly diseases and this was merely a 4-year period, the number of casualties could have easily topped 200 million, if not for the British. The cures they brought to the helpless people of India saved countless lives, and the