Anatomy of the Raj: Russian Consular Report

This selection from Russian consular reports from Calcutta to St. Ptersburg between the years 1912 and 1917 is available to the English-speaking readers for the first time. Translated, edited and with an introduction by the author the volume is an welcome edition to our library on the history of modern India in the early decades of the present century. Primarily concerned with the period of Hardinge’s viceroyalty the Blue Book is replete with rare insights into the policy decisions of the British in India. In an impressive and densely documented introduced to the Blue Book the author has achieved singular distinction in tracing a meaning and a pattern in these disjointed official dispatches. He has sifted a rich range of original material drawn from public archives as well as private papers. The author maintains that British response to Indian situations was determined but it lacked a firm consistency. The pyrrhic adventures of Curzon had been replaced by the cautious steps of Hardinge. Under the increasing strains of the war, the ascendancy of an endemic violent cult, growing pressure for concessions, the tenuous political internal security system of the country, the situation for the British had become desperate though not dangerous. The official reaction was given a fresh encouragement; commanding positions of Indian politics were sought to be manipulated; attempts were made to clothe the Raj with conservation public opinion as the capital of the empire moved away from the ‘pernicious’ influence of Calcutta to a more stable Delhi in search of the Mughal legitimacy. The work has an extensive coverage. The Delhi Durbar, the unpartition of Bangal, the Kanpur mosque incident, the rise of the young Turks within the Muslem League, the gradual disintegration of Turkey, the problems given rise to by the strategic and economic importance of Mesopotamia, Baghdad, basra and Persian Gulf, the Ghadar movement, the Hindu and the Muslim university movements, the basic fiasco of the Islington commission, Indian’s contribution to the war, Gandhi’s last satyagraha in South Africa have been examined in the introduction with excellent cross-references. It is a study of the policies and responses of imperialism in India in an age of crisis making a decisive bid to maintain itself.