In developing students’ understanding of the effects of Western Imperialism on colonized peoples, it is important for students to hear the voices of the people themselves.  This site provides passages from Indian writers on the Indian independence movement for students to examine in constructing their understanding of the Indian perspective. 

Relevant California Content Standards in History/Social Studies ask that

10.4 Students analyze patterns of global change in the era of New Imperialism
       in at least two of the following regions or countries: Africa, Southeast Asia,
       China, India, Latin America, and the Philippines. 

       1. Describe the rise of industrial economies and their link to imperialism and
           colonialism (e.g., the role played by national security and strategic advantage; moral
           issues raised by the search for national hegemony, Social Darwinism, and the
           missionary impulse; material issues such as land, resources, and technology).

      2. Discuss the locations of the colonial rule of such nations as England, France,
          Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain, Portugal, and the United States. 

      3. Explain imperialism from the perspective of the colonizers and the colonized and the
          varied immediate and long-term responses by the people under colonial rule. 

       4. Describe the independence struggles of the colonized regions of the world,
           including the roles of leaders, such as Sun Yat-sen in China, and the roles of ideology
           and religion.

 www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook34.html
This is a modern history source book for web resources. 

 http://www.nara.gov
The National Archives site contains teacher materials for the analysis of primary source documents.  You can download handouts for the analysis of documents and other artifacts. 

 http://members.aol.com/TeacherNet/World.html
Contains sources for British Empire Imperialism. 
 

 http://users.erols.com/mwhite29/
This site gives the India death toll against the British. 
 

Textual references for this site:
 Visions of India. New Delhi: Indian Council for Cultural Relations, 1983. 

 Koul,Sudha. Come with Me to India: On a Wondrous Voyage through Time. Pennington,N.J.: Cashmir, Inc.,1997. 
 
 
 

To set up the unit on British Imperialism in India, it might be useful to use this role-playing lesson to start students thinking from different perspectives.  Developed by a teacher at my school, Mike Dohr, the lesson provides an advanced organizer before reading the class text on India.
 
 

Activity 1: Role Play on British Colonialism in India

Teacher: divide the students into British nationals and Indians. Tell the students that they will be making all their decisions based on the following assumptions. 
 

If you are Indian, make all your decisions using these three assumptions:

1. India had a thriving culture many centuries before the nation of England appeared. 
2. Although England is powerful, you naturally assume that your Indian culture is best for your people. 
3. Indians are mostly concerned about India and not the world at large. 

If you are British, make all your decisions based on these three assumptions:

1. England is the most advanced nation in the world, religiously, culturally, and industrially. 
2. Any other culture that becomes more like England will advance itself. 
3. Countries that help England can expect England to help them to advance as well. 

   Situation 1
A British corporation, the East India Company, hears of the great spices that abound in India.  It wants to set up trading posts in that country. 

How will you react? Why? 

Situation 2

A bloody revolt by Indian troops serving in the British army has killed many English living in India.  The revolt was caused by the troops reacting to a local superstition.  Others say that the officers were responding to the violation a sacred Hindu (or Muslim) belief. Finally the British army stops the revolt. 

Britain decides to rule India as a colony.  How do you react? 
 

Situation 3

Making cloth out of raw cotton is the biggest world trade item.  England has plenty of cotton spinning factories but doesn’t grow its own cotton.  India has grown cotton for centuries and produces much cloth through hand weaving. 

What should India do regarding the production of cotton? 

Situation 4
Christian missionaries want to teach Indians the English language and religion. 

Should this be allowed?  What are the advantages and disadvantages? 

Once the students have made their decisions based on their point of view, ask all the Indian students to gather together and discuss their rationale for their decisions.  Ask the students who acted as British nationals to do the same.  After 25 minutes of discussion, turn the students's attention to their textbooks.  Explain how these situations came from historical events and that they should read their texts with attention to how these events are portrayed.
 

Activity 2

Map work: The accompanying map shows regions of India and the lower Himalayan region.  From their study ask students to color in the predominant religions in those areas. Have them create a key to designate the  different religions.  Explain to them that different religious backgrounds created much strife in the creation of newly independent states following the withdrawal of the British from Colonial India. 

Activity 3

The Reading of the Indian Points of View

Students: read the following selections by Indians.  Highlight the important ideas. Then answer the questions that follow each passage.

Definition of Swadeshi by Mahatma Gandhi
 My definition of swadeshi is well known.  I must not serve distant neighbor at the expense of the nearest. It is never vindictive or punitive.  It is in no sense narrow, for I buy every part of the world what is needed for my growth, I refuse to buy from anybody anything however nice or beautiful if it interferes with my growth or injures those whom Nature has made my first care.  I buy useful healthy literature from every part of the world.  I buy surgical instruments from England, pies and pencils from Austria and watches from Switzerland.  But I will not buy an inch of the finest cotton fabric from England or Japan or any other part of the world because it has injured and increasingly injures the millions of inhabitants of India.  I hold it to be sinful for me (not to buy the cloth spun and woven by the needy millions of India's paupers and to buy foreign cloth, although it may be superior in quality to the Indian home-spun.  My swadeshi therefore chiefly centers round the hand spun khaddar and extends to every thing that can be and is produced in India.  My nationalism is as broad as my swadeshi.  I want India’s rise so that the whole world may benefit.  I do not want India to rise on the ruin of other nations.  If therefore India was strong and able, India would send out to the world her treasures of art and health-giving spices; but will refuse to send out opium or intoxicating liquors although the traffic may bring much material benefit to India. 

1. How does Gandhi explain his boycott of certain goods? 

2. Why does Gandhi say that he will buy surgical instruments from England?  How do these instruments differ from cloth produced in England? 

3. Do you think Gandhi’s vow was successful? Why? 

4. Why are opium and alcohol mentioned by Gandhi?  Do you know of any cases of countries exporting intoxicants to other countries? Can you think of why the local populations would see these imports as threatening? 

5. What parallels exist today that mirror Gandhi’s vow? 
 
 

Selection from Rabindranath Tagore
 There was yet another movement started about this time called the National.  It was fully political, but it began to give voice to the mind of our people trying to assert their own personality.  It was a voice of impatience at the humiliation constantly heaped upon us by people who were not oriental, and who had, especially at the time, the habit of sharply dividing the human world into the good and the bad according to the hemispheres to which they belong. 

This contemptuous spirit of separateness was perpetually hurting us and causing great damage to our own world of culture.  It generated in our young men a distrust of all things that had come to them as an inheritance from their past.  The old Indian pictures and other works of art were laughed at by our students in imitation of the laughter of their European schoolmasters of that age of philistinism. 

1. Why would Indians laugh at their own art? 

2. Can a nation have a personality?  What others words could you use to describe this thought? 

3. What does it mean to be oriental? What parts of the world does that term include? 

4. How would the separation of things into good and bad categories lead to humiliation of the Indian people?  Are there other ways to look at actions of people rather than good and bad?  What categories can you generate? 

5. The artist expresses his/her visions through his/her art.  What is the role of culture in that expression? 
 
 

Selection from Sri Radharishnan
 Gandhi does not reject machinery as such.  He observes: “How can I be against all machinery when I know that even this body is a most delicate piece of machinery?  The spinning wheel is a machine; a little toothpick of a machine.  What I object to is the craze for machinery, not machinery as such.  The craze is for what they call laborsaving machinery.  Men go on 'saving labor' ’till thousands are without work and thrown on the open streets to die of starvation.  I want to save time and labor, not for a fraction of mankind but for all.  I want the concentration of wealth, not in the hands of a few,but in the hands of all.  Today, machinery merely helps a few ride on the backs of millions.  The impetus behind it all is not the philanthropy to save labor, but greed.  It is against this constitution of things that I am fighting with all my might.  The machine should not tend to atrophy the limbs of man. Factories run by power-driven machinery should be nationalized, state-controlled.  The supreme consideration is man.” 

1. Gandhi says he is not against machinery. What then is he against? 

2. Could you call Gandhi a socialist or a communist?  Why or why not? 

3. Gandhi says that he wants the concentration of wealth “not in the hands of a few,but in the hands of all.”  What is threatening about this idea?  Is this realistic or idealistic idea? 

4. How do you think the distribution of wealth has changed in India since Gandhi said these words?  How would you find out? Where would you find this information? 
 

Selections from Jawaharlal Nehru
Nationalism is a healthy and desirable state in a people; when suppressed, it reacts strongly, but when allied to too much power, it may become aggressive and chauvinistic.  Modern nationalism has been a reaction against foreign imperialism and racialism. . . 

Imperialism or colonialism, whatever form it may take, is also completely out of place today in the world and the sources of conflict.  It exists still in many places and its philosophies influence our minds.  But it is a discredited creed and is everywhere on the defensive.  A world policy must therefore be to bring about the end of racialism and imperialism and leave countries to work out their own destinies.  This might lead to disorder and chaos in some countries, but that will be limited and not affect larger areas and will probably right itself after a while.  What is wrong and leads to dangerous consequences today is the attempt of one country to impose its will on another. 

1. What is Nehru saying about nationalism?  Summarize the thoughts of the first paragraph into one sentence. 

2. Has imperialism ended?  In what ways has it survived? 

3. How do countries “work out their own destinies”?  Can you think of recent examples in the last ten years of countries becoming newly independent?  What means did they use? 
 

Activity 4
 View portions of the Indian film Lagaan and/ or Passage to India.  The first film is from the Indian perspective by Indians; the second, while sympathetic to the Indian point of view, is based on a novel by an Englishman.  Both films deal with British colonialism in India and would provide students with a visual portrayal of British colonialism.  Lagaan is very long but it contains a fanciful, feel-good  view of Indian villagers fighting the British on the cricket field. Passage to India works with the stereotypes and disintegration of British control of India. 
 

Final Assessment Project: Colonial Newspaper

DK Publishing produces a book called the Chronicles of the World.   In a very readable style, the book contains front pages of fictional newspapers from 6000 BC through to the 1990s.  Each page has color illustrations and articles about events happening in the world. 

Create a color transparency of one page (there are several articles on the British in India beginning with the British East India Company) and go over the components of a front page (banner, photographs, headlines, the format of news articles,etc.). 

Then ask students to produce their own front page of a newspaper from the Indian point of view.  They can chose any date for their front page, but the articles should be appropriate to the time.  They should include illustrations and advertisements if they wish.  I typically assign a four page newspaper which usually allows a lot more latitude as students enjoy drawing cartoons and including advertisements, “Dear Abby” type columns, etc.  However, a front page may best suit a short unit of 6-8 days. 

The specifications for the front page are as follows:

It must include a banner and a title that is appropriate. 

It should contain at least two illustrations or pictures. 

It should contain three news articles. 

It should have one brief editorial statement. 

Articles need to be written from the Indian perspective with Indian names for by-lines. 

The articles need to be historically accurate. 

Criteria for grading include 
historical accuracy 
consistency in perspective (banner, by-lines, content of stories) 
presence of all components (banner, 2 pictures, 3 articles, editorial) 
presentation (layout and design) 
adherence to written conventions and organization