In between the Lines
There is some level of craze over the ‘Making’ or ‘Behind the scenes’ concept. Be it in a book we read, a movie we see, or a sports event we watch. As an audience, we only get to know what the author says. We don’t often get to know the “How’s and the why’s”. Why did Todd Phillips decide to show Thomas Wayne negatively?, How Hans Zimmer came up with the epic Pirates of the Caribbean track?, Why J.K Rowling thought it’d be better to match Hermoine with Ron Weasley?, How MS Dhoni planned the infamous runout in 2016 World T20 against Bangladesh?
A ‘Behind the scenes’ concept gives us a wonderful insight into the creator’s mind. It shows the process involved in creating a masterpiece, be it any art form. Even though the information is widely available on almost every platform abundantly, sometimes the vast amount of information is in itself a curse. Because of so much data, it makes us concentrate only on the ‘What’ of any incident. But the beauty also lies in How it happened and why it happened that way?. Let me take a historical event that happened in India to weave ‘How and Why’ around that incident.
The’ What’
Our history books say, The Queen of England, Elizabeth signed a charter granting a corporate called East India Company to sail east of England in 1600. The objective is to initiate trade practices with the East Coast nations. The Portuguese and the Dutch were dominating the East Coast during that time for almost a century. So the company decided to break off that Monopoly in search of the riches. The Mughal Emperor Jehangir permitted the EIC to set up factories.
After this, the narration usually jumps to 1757 Battle of Plassey, Bengal, as this battle initiated the fate of the British in India.
The ‘Why’
After the Portuguese and the Dutch started trading with Indian coasts, the profits they made were almost 12 times larger than their investments. So more Portugal and Dutch Government officials began investing in their monarch’s respective companies. It made the officials super-rich in a very short span.
Watching their Portugal and the Dutch counterparts getting wealthy spurred the British interests. In 1599 when a group of merchants came seeking permission to establish sea trade routes to the eastern nations, the Queen was advised to put that on hold. England was constantly in war with Spain in the past. Early 1599, Spain showed a glimpse of peace with England. So the Queen decided not to jeopardize the peace situation by granting trade permissions to a corporate as it would be a direct competition to Spanish revenues from Portugal.
In 1600, Spain withdrew its peace accord. So the Queen signed a charter granting permission to the East India Company to sail east and trade in the name of the Queen.
What if
Imagine if Spain extends its peace treaty with England. Maybe the Englishmen wouldn’t have come to India after all. What would have happened? Would we be a Nation under the Mughals? Chaos theory’s Butterfly effect indeed makes sense. A small change in one state of a system can result in large differences in the later’s state.
The’ How’
In the 1600s, a naval journey from England took almost 16 months to reach the west coast of Indian ports. From 1600 to 1607, the East India Company made two such ordeal voyages. But the resultant profit was less than what they’ve invested. Basically, the two trips were at a loss.
Analyzing how to improve the profit, they came up with a solution. ‘To build a factory on the Indian terrain’. The factory is nothing but a warehouse to store things; the company buys from the local farmers. During the harvest, the company can buy the harvested crops directly from various farmers at low cost and store it at the factories. Whenever ships from England come to the port, they can transfer the contents to the vessel immediately.
Portuguese was doing a great deal of business at that time in and around goa. The arrival of British irritated them. To neutralize the trade enemies, Portugal armed itself not to let the English ships dock at surat. But it failed. To seek permission to build a warehouse on the Mughal sovereign, in 1607 William Hawkins came to India and docked his ship at surat. He was assigned the task of getting permission from the Mughal Emperor.
The Portuguese tried to assassinate Willaim Hawkins. A few attempts were even made. But Hawkins was lucky enough to escape. The Portuguese instigated the local authorities at surat to harass William Hawkins and his men. The local officials confiscated all the things the Englishmen brought from England as a gift to the Mughal Emperor.
Willaim Hawkins didn’t see this as a defeat. He hired 50 Pathan horseback riders as bodyguards and started his journey towards Agra to meet the Emperor.
Imagine the tenacity of him. He is in a land unknown to him, surrounded by people who consider him an enemy, wanted him dead. But he just kept on moving without thinking otherwise. It took him 80 days to reach Agra. Due to Portugal’s influence, Emperor Jahangir rejected Hawkin’s request.
So how did EIC got the nod from the Emperor? Sensing they have a trade monopoly over the west coast of India trade, the Portuguese started to misbehave with the local officials. This irritated the officials, so they sought British’s help to keep Portugal at check. This incident acted as a catalyst and got EIC into Mughal’s good books. Around 1612, they got their first permission to build the factory.
Divided we fall
British administration of India is a strong example of Unity because a nation of millions was ruled by hundreds of officials. Just Hundreds of officials. They were not even from the sub-continent. But we had so much crack in our society which gave them the excellent opportunity to rule over us.
From 1757 to 1947, there were so many incidents in which we trusted the British rather than joining hands with our neighbours. That’s how the Emperor fell. That’s how we were under British rule for almost 200 years. Yes, the British government did some good. There is no denying that.
The recent Tablighi incident too shows a similar pattern among our fellow citizens. Opinions were expressed instantly; the blame game started, Communal politic webs were weaved by the majority politicians targeting the minorities. It’s been over 70 years since we got our independence. After all this time, after what happened during partition, if we don’t learn to get along with our neighbours, maybe the English were right. We aren’t capable of being an independent nation. United we stand.
