SOAS Research Online

Abstract

The history of India from the mid-1880's to independence was at one time presented as a straightforward struggle for power between Hindu and Muslim nationalists and British officialdom. Of late there has been more attention to the complexities of the Indian side of that struggle - the pulls of provincialism, the emergence of new leaderships as the levels at which politics operated were altered, Muslim divisions between those who saw Pakistan as a threat to religious life and those who saw it as its precondition. But there has been less attention to the British side - scarcely any, indeed, to the role played by the small but influential non-official British [European] community in India. It is the purpose of this thesis to throw light on the political, economic, social and religious activities of this complex non-official community, on its composition and its performance as a pressure group from the years immediately precedent to the founding of the Indian National Congress to the Montagu-Chelmsford era. The prologue reviews in outline the community's development down to the 1880's. Chapter II discusses the emergence of the community's political arm - the European and Anglo-Indian Defence Association - in 1883 as a result of the Ilbert Bill controversy, and the next chapter the later roles of this association down to the beginning of the twentieth century. Chapter IV examines the impact of the business segment of the community and Chapter V discusses constitutional, civil service and later Defence Association developments - all down to World War I. The final chapter provides a broad analysis of the community's activities over the years 1914 to 1920.