英国殖民统治下的印度是什么样子？印度人对此感激还是仇恨？ [美国媒体]

What was life like in British India?

英国殖民统治下的印度是什么样子？印度人对此感激还是仇恨？



Ashutosh Mehndiratta
Short Answer first -
The term ‘BritishIndia’ can broadly cover a long period of 350years, starting from the early 1600s when East India Company ships landed oncoastal India, until 1947. However, I have covered the 90 year period call the ‘British Raj’ from 1857–1947.
They were the best of times - This period witnessed thecreation and explosive growth in Infrastructure that came to define modernIndia (and Pakistan, Bangladesh) - Major Urban Centers, Hill Stations,Cantonments, Railroads, Major Highways, Bridges, Communication system (Post,Telegraph, Telecom), Irrigation system (Canals), Legal system, MajorUniversities and Colleges, Institutions, Archaeological Department, Politicalsystem, Bureaucracy, Armed forces, Police forces, and even some of the largestBusiness and Industrial Groups. There prevailed an air of intellectualcuriosity, and many bright people and ideas from Europe flowed into India. Thegreat Middle Class of India which numbers around 300 million today has roots inthis period. People could own land or transfer ownership while being protectedby law. First time in thousands of years, the lowest castes got an opportunityto improve their lot and were covered by law rather than customs. Lastly, Indiamanaged to escape from the clutches of a foreign power after hundreds of years.
They were the worst of times - OTOH this period witnessedthe most savage massacre of Indian rebels at the hands of the British after the1857 Rebellion was suppressed. Over a 100,000 were butchered, many blowndirectly from the cannons. In 1919, General Reginald Dyer ordered his troops tofire on a peaceful demonstration that left over 1,000 dead. The Britishintroduced Indenture system which was sort of Debt Bondage under which theysent 3.5 million Indian laborers to far away colonies like Mauritius, Guyana,Trinidad, Jamaica, Fiji, etc. Around 200,000 Indian soldiers died in the 2World Wars fighting for the British Indian Army. The Partition in 1947 lead to thelargest population migration in the human history with 15 million peoplegetting uprooted and anywhere from 200,000 to 2 million killed in riots. Therewas widespread discrimination against Indians, including the elite Indians, andmingling with the natives was strongly discouraged. Though the caste divide hasbeen ingrained in the subcontinent for thousands of years, the British ruleformalized and accentuated the divide. However, the most shocking part of thisperiod was the reckless management that was a major cause of several Faminesand lead to anywhere from 30 million to 50 million people dying of starvationor subsequent epidemic.
So how was life in this 90 year period? It depended on whoyou were. If you were one of the top ranking British officials or one of the1,000 odd British Civil servants, you literally lived like a king. Theremainder of British officials, soldiers, businessmen lived a very comfortablelife too as a superior. The rulers of the Princely states lived luxurious livestoo, some of them living like Sheikhs of the Middle East. The minority eliteIndians who got access to Western education and worked closely with the Britishlived a life full of opportunities too. Then there was the newly emergingMiddle Class comprising of thousands of Zamindars and Jagirdars, Moneylenders,Government Clerks, Army men, Railway employees, Supervisors, Engineers,Lawyers, Academics, Printers, small businessmen catering to the British, whowere living in urban centers lived reasonably comfortable lives. However, thebottom 90% Indians or more were tied to agriculture, toiled in the fields,often looking up towards the sky for rains, worrying about debt, the villagemoneylender, and worst case starvation and disease.

首先一个简短的回答。
“英属印度”一词可以涵盖长达350年的时间。上到17世纪初东印度公司的船只在印度沿海登陆开始，下到1947年。然而，我已经包括了1857-1947年长达90年的“英国统治”。

那段时间是印度最好的时期，这一时期见证了建设和爆炸性增长的基础设施。这些建设奠定了现代印度和巴基斯坦,孟加拉国的主要城市中心，营地,铁路,主要公路、桥梁、通讯系统(邮政、电报、电信),灌溉系统(运河),法律体系,主要的大学和学院,机构,考古部门、政治制度,官僚、军队、警察、甚至一些最大的商业和工业集团的基础。

那里洋溢着一种求知欲的气氛，许多聪明的人和想法从欧洲流入印度。今天，印度的中产阶级大约有三亿人，这一时期已经形成了中产阶级的雏形。在法律保护下，人们可以拥有土地或转让所有权。几千年来，最低的种姓第一次有机会改善自己的命运，并受到法律而不是习俗的保护。最后，在数百年之后，印度成功地摆脱了外国势力的控制。



Sanjeev Prasad M
My grandfather who is no more told me this.
His uncle was a temple trustee for the local temple in thelate 20s. The villagers wanted to celebrate the annual temple festival withfireworks and they procured some raw materials for the same. All hell brokeloose. The police registered a case and initiated action for prosecution of thetrustee on the charge of possessing explosives!! Those were the early days ofindependence movement. The police considered the fire works as explosives
Our family was shaken and deeply disturbed. Family'sprestige was at stake. My grandpa told us that they tried to reason with thepolice inspector but he wouldn't listen and was bent upon proceeding with thecase . Someone even tried to negotiate with the inspector a bribe of twentytolas of gold ( 220 gms apprx). But the inspector wouldn't relent. ( at leastone should appreciate the incorruptibility here)
To these worried men, someone brought some usefulinformation that the district collector, a white ICS, would be passing throughthe nearby village road the next day on his way to taluk head quarters. Thesemen and a group of villagers gathered with garlands and some dry fruits andwaited on the road. There came a dignified and authoritative looking whiteofficer riding his BSA motor bike . He pulled over on the road side and askedin broken local lingo what was the commotion about. They garlanded him andoffered the eatables and explained him that they were peace lovingagriculturists and lived by family honour, far removed from any notion ofviolence. And that they were only preparing fireworks for the festivities andabsolutely innocent of any kind of explosives. But the local inspector washarassing them by booking a false case against them that would badly hurt thefamily honour
The white man somehow saw the truth in their disclosure. Noone would have dared to come in front and say lies to the authority must havebeen his inner feeling.Whatever, he asked them to see him in the local court.Those days the district collector was also a first class magistrate. He heardthem fully and the police inspector. He drew his own conclusion and announcedthat the inspector was absolutely lacking in diligence to distinguish fireworksfrom explosives and correctly gauze the motives of the people he booked. Theuncle was acquitted of all charges and the police inspector was chided forlacking in the required prudence and diligence. The village celebrated withfull fervor. And my grandpa told this story with all admiration for thefairness of the collector and his able situation appraisal capability to seethrough the truth uninfluenced by the subordinate staff. He was full of awe,praise and respect. He affirmed that was justice well done !
Encouraged by this experience, my grandpa, in the WWII timesboldly confronted a tahsildar for booking a case while a cart of grain wasbeing transported from the fields to our village home.Those were the times of seriousshortage food. Grain was rationed and possession of more than the prescribedquantity was deemed hoarding. The tahsildar, an Indian, wouldn't listen toreason that a farmer would need to transport the grain to stock at home. A casewas booked and the cart of grain seized. My grandpa made a trip to the districthead quarters and met the collector, a white man. My grandpa argued that hebeing the head of a big family with quite a few farmers under him, would needsufficient grain to not only feed them but also for seeding the next crop. Onecannot deprive him of that right. The collector heard him patiently and orderedto release the grain cart and it seems he even said sorry for the over zealousapproach of the civil administration!!
He told these stories and their small victories fightinginjustice and how a white man stood fair not only in colour but in justice aswell. My grandpa lived another 25 years post independence and always rued howincompetent and unjust our rulers have turned out compared to the earlieradministration. He had extensive dealings in land matters and civil courtissues. So he was fully aware of the decline of honesty in post independenceadministration and used to vocally express that. These are some I heard fromhim. With such goodwill only a white man never felt threatened about hissecurity to travel alone on a motor bike on a desolated road in an aliencountry. And that's how a small number of about only a thousand officers couldadminister the country from Khyber pass to Burma. They used our own guys whodid their dirty work willingly and crawled when asked to bend.
Though our Bollywood likes to show the British officers assome kind of rapacious villainy characters, in general, the villagers have avery positive view of British administration. The continued awe and respectmany have for the IAS officers even today stems from that rooting.
Sans political masters, the ICS officers were quite powerfulthose days yet they remained mostly above reproach. It is said the ICS was anexperiment in India by the enlightened Ox-Bridge educated, which in fact wassaid to be superior to the then prevailing public administration in Britain.They couldn't implement their new ideas there due to the political situationbut found an opportunity to implement in nascent India.
Despite gross corruption and incompetence of our 2nd rungpost independence politicians, if our country still runs means, it owes much tothe strength of administrative systems established then.

我的祖父已经去世了，他告诉我这些故事。
他的叔叔是20年代末当地寺庙的寺庙托管人。村民们想用烟花来庆祝一年一度的庙会，他们也购买了一些原材料。但一切都乱套了。警方已登记一宗案件，并就藏有爆炸品的指控向受托人提出检控。那是独立运动的早期。警方认为这些东西是爆炸物。

我们的家庭深受影响和困扰。家族的声望岌岌可危。我爷爷告诉我们，他们想和警察探长讲道理，但他不听，执意要继续办案。有人甚至试图与检查员协商用20托拉斯的黄金来息事宁人。但是巡查员不肯让步。(至少应该认识到这里还有些廉洁)

对这些忧心忡忡的人来说，有人带来了一些有用的信息。一个白人收藏家，第二天要经过附近的乡村公路，前往塔鲁克总部。这些人和一群村民带着花环，和一些干果聚集在路上等待。一位威严、威严的白人军官骑着他的BSA摩托车过来了。他把车停在路边，用蹩脚的当地方言问道:“这是怎么回事?”

他们给他戴上花环，给他提供了吃的，并解释说他们是爱好和平的耕作者，以家族荣誉为生，远离任何暴力。他们只是在为庆祝活动准备烟花，完全没有任何爆炸物。但当地的巡视员却对他们进行了骚扰，对他们进行了虚假起诉，这将严重损害他们的家族荣誉。

那个白人不知怎么地在他们的揭露中看到了真相。没有人敢走到前面对当局撒谎，这一定是他内心的想法。无论如何，他要求他们在当地法院见他。那些日子，地区收藏家也是一流的地方法官。他和警察都听得一清二楚。他得出了自己的结论，并宣布巡视员在区分烟花和爆炸物方面缺乏勤勉的工作，并且掩盖了他登记的人的动机。
我叔叔被宣告无罪，警察检查员因缺乏必要的谨慎和勤勉而受到责备。这个村庄热烈庆祝。

我爷爷讲了这个故事，他非常钦佩收藏家的公正和他的个人能力和评估能力，能够看透不受下属员工影响的真相。他对此充满了敬畏、赞美和尊敬！
在这次经历的鼓舞下，我的爷爷，在第二次世界大战期间，他勇敢地面对一个税收官员，因为他订了一个箱子，而一辆车正从田野运往我们村的家。

那是粮食严重短缺的时代。粮食的配给和占有超过规定的数量被认为是囤积。印度人税收官，不想听农民需要将谷物运输回家储存的理由。订了一箱粮食，并没收了粮食。我爷爷去了地区总部，找到了那个收藏家，那个白人。

我爷爷说，作为一个大家庭的首领，他手下有不少农民，他不仅需要足够的粮食养活他们，还需要足够的粮食来播种下一季的庄稼。不能剥夺他的权利。收藏家耐心地听了他的话，命令税收官把谷物车放出来。他甚至还为了民政部门的过分执法而道歉!!



Aditya Thimmaiah
Depended on where you lived . If you were in a princelystate governed by an excellent ruler then you probably had the best life . MyGreat Grandfather was the Superintendent of police under the princely state ofMysore . Mysore was arguably one of the best governed kingdoms in the world atthat time . They pretty much brought everything to India
1. First Hydro-electric project
2. Women’srights and their voting rights
3. Women’seducation
4. Endowments and allotment of land to IISc
5. Definitely , less corruption
6. Patronage to art and literature (We barely see thisanymore)
there are many more but for that you can look forachievements of wodeyars.
I know this may not be the intention of the question but ifyour trying to relive the past glory ,don’t . What’sdone is done , India was no doubt a great civilization before the Britishoccupation .
Whatever I heard about my great grandfather’s time was from my grandfather since mygreat grandfather was killed in Issur four days after his enlistment along withan amaldar when they went to collect tax , he was off duty and went as afriend. This incident later lead to the Issur rebellion and subsequentretaliation .Issur is a village in Shimogga district which became the firstvillage in modern day India to declare itself independent and part of theSovereign Republic of India(Which didn’texist back then). People fought hard for independence and we got it . Now, letsfocus on making that fight worthwhile .

这取决于你住的地方。如果你处于一个由一位杰出的统治者统治的贵族王国，那么你的生活可能是最美好的。我的曾祖父是迈索尔王子国的警察局长。迈索尔可以说是当时世界上管理最好的王国之一。他们几乎把一切都带到了印度

1、第一个水电项目
2、妇女的权利和投票权
3、女性教育
4、土地的捐赠和分配。
5、当然,更少的腐败
6、对艺术和文学的赞助(我们已经很少看到这个了)

还有很多，你可以自己寻找这位国王的成就。我知道这可能不是问题的本意，但如果你试图重温过去的辉煌，那就算了。所做的一切都已完成，在英国占领之前，印度无疑是一个伟大的文明。

关于我曾祖父的时代，我听说的所有故事，都是来自我祖父。因为我的曾祖父在入伍四天后被杀害了。当时他们去收税，本来他已经下班，但是他为朋友去顶了缸。这一事件后来导致了叛乱和随后的报复。Issur是位于shimogga区的一个村庄，它成为了现代印度第一个宣布独立的村庄，也是印度主权共和国的一部分（当时还不存在）。人民为独立而奋斗，我们后来终于得到了独立。但现在，让我们集中精力，使这场战斗变得有价值。