By... ✒ Guru Balwant Gurunay ⛩
©How and why did the British come to use religion as an instrument of command and control in India and came to use 'Divide and Rule' as their policy here?
Why did they make religion not only the central peg of their new found policy but also an instrument of command and control?
Why and how did the Indian Politician start thinking that India is his ancestral property?
Here is a brief but precise take by me..............
Very few people can have the courage to accept acknowledge and respect it, but the truth is that before 1857, British loved and patronized loyalty, valor, chivalry, character, grit, determination etc etc, as the most desirable qualities in their native associates.
Mangal Pandey and people like him represented all this and were the hot favorites of British Officers and their masters.
But during and after the uprising of 1857 popularly known as Sepoy Mutiny, the British realized that Indians are more loyal to their religious values rather than to their masters or nations, (More than 550 nation states existed on Indian Subcontinent in those days ruled by different Rajas or Nawabs.)
After 1857, the British decided to use an Indian native's loyalty towards his religion as the instrument of dispersing, any and all disillusionment that the native could have towards his British officers. That is when a new policy to administer Indian troops and India at large was devised.
British made it a well established policy where all people with loyalty, valor, chivalry, character, grit, determination etc etc, were recruited into Native British army, commanded by directly appointed young british officers, called the commissioned officers who commanded the troops via native troop commanders, or platoon commanders risen from amongst the ranks, called junior commissioned officers.
British encouraged their troops to uphold their respective religious symbols and ensured a strict adherence to them in name of discipline and loyalty.
Most of the native lot came from poor illiterate rural India, which was vast in its expanse.
On the other hand people with similar qualities like loyalty, valor, chivalry, character, grit, determination etc, but literate and aware, namely Bhagat Singh CS Azad, Raj Guru, Bismil and their likes were finished off. Most of this lot came from the then Indian Middle class which was very less in numbers.
The British, made sure that the symbols of religion are glorified beyond a rational point and by building an irrational commitment to those symbols over and above mutual brotherhood.
They encouraged and exploited to their best advantage the devotion that Indians had for their respective religions. The modus operandi was to ask the loyalty from native troop's to their immediate command by masking it as loyalty for their respective religions.
Sikhs became their loyal followers. This was a direct result of a culture where religion and its symbols were deliberately elevated to build a fulcrum around which an army battalion's life would rotate.
So much so that a paltan on march would carry SGGS ji on its head where ever it went, even in war. Similarly a hindu Paltan would carry Thakur Ji or Devi Maa's etc etc. Temple, Gurdwara and Masjid 'parade' [Official praying Session], became a well established tradition.
Every British commanding officer made sure that he and his officers attended the temple parade as per the strict orders and norms laid out by policy makers. Even if a British Officer failed to Salute SGGS ji, or rise from his chair, he would be punished or even suspended.
Thus respect for their respective religions by Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and all was encouraged amongst the troops and exploited to the hilt by the British to their own best advantage.
For their civilian set up the British encouraged the sly calculative cowardly brown-nosers to come forward and serve them to the extent of pimping for them.
A well thought out importance started being given to sly, scheming, well read, British educated, calculative and manipulative class of Indians who later emerged as leaders of Masses with support of the then British Media.
Tragedy of India is that when British left they made sure the country gets divided on Hindu Muslim basis, the army gets divided on similar basis,...... and the civilian setups of both India and Pakistan, get passed on to sly pimps who continued the policy of religious and class divide in India to rule it, and pass it to their next generation, as if India and it's political set up is their ancestral property.
🕊 तत्तसत्त श्रीअकाल📿
✒ Guru Balwant Gurunay ⛩
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