Rise of the Christian Power in India

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

Introduction

STRUGGLES OF DIFFERENT CHRISTIAN NATIONS FOR SUPREMACY IN INDIA

It is said that once Maharaja Ranjit Singh was shown the map of India by one of his Christian officers. Ranjit Singh was an illiterate sovereign." He did not understand why the map was coloured red, green, blue, yellow, etc. He requested the Christian officer to explain to him the meaning of the different colourings in the map. The officer was good enough to do so. He explained that the red colour represented the territories of India which had passed into the hands of the Christian merchants of England constituting the East India Company. Ranjit immediately exclaimed: "Sab lal ho jaega" (i. e., the whole map of India would become red-coloured). There was a ring of prophecy in his exclamation. Hardly had twenty years passed after his death when his words came to be verified to the very letter, for the Christian merchants became masters of almost the whole continent of India and the map of the country became coloured red all over.

It is the object of this history to narrate how this was brought about. The establishment of British, supremacy in India is something like a romance in history, for no Christian nation ever came out to India to conquer the country.

THE DISCOVERY OF THE SEA-ROUTE TO INDIA BY EUROPEANS

India has always, since time immemorial, played a prominent part in the civilization of the nations of the Earth. It was to discover the sea-route to India, that Columbus begged the leading sovereigns of Christian Europe to equip him with a fleet, and it is also a matter of history, well-known to every school-boy, how the European nations vied with one another in discovering the sea-route to India. Vasco Da Gama, a native of Portugal, succeeded in discovering the route to India. The European nations had no intention to conquer the country, their object was to establish commercial relations with India. It was commercial instinct and no other motive which led them to discover the sea-route to India. India-Golden India, the theme of poets, the wonderland of travellers, haunted them in their dreams. In their imagination India was the richest country in the world, a country which supplied the markets of Europe with so many wonderful articles of commerce. In the eleventh century, the Christians of Europe, known as Crusaders, resorted to the East, under the superstitious idea that by so doing they would be absolved of all sins and gain eternal felicity. But the Christians of the fifteenth century, in marked contrast with their co-religionists of the eleventh, set sail to the East to amass earthly riches. They were not prompted by any higher motive or religious zeal when they fitted out expeditions to discover the sea-route to India. They were anxious to discover the sea-route, because this would save much trouble and incor venience, shifting of luggage and also some expenses. Nor was this all. Land journey in the middle ages was not without risk to life and property-there was the peril of robbery in conveying merchandise and the certainty of extortion, for tolls had to be paid in passing a bridge, along the high way, and at the market. Moreover, in the middle ages it was the sea-port towns of Italy, like Venice and Genoa, which took the lead in trading with the Eastern countries. The Western and Northern countries of Europe had no facilities to carry on any commercial intercourse with the East. It was, therefore, only natural for these countries to seek the sea-route to India so that the might get Indian articles at a cheaper price than they were then obliged to pay. Europe was not then so rich as now. The European Christians had not then brought any non-Christian nations under subjection, or annihilated them. They became rich after they had set out to discover the sea-route to India. They were stimulated by the desire of the precious luxuries of the East, specially of India, and these wants were the means by which these Christian nations attained by degrees the position which they now occupy in the world.