ZIP DEURBAN.PDF The Deurbanisation Of India PDF

# The Deurbanisation of India During the ancient and medieval periods of Indian history, urban centres functioned as centres of administration, trade, industry and culture. Cities and towns grew out of the economic and social needs of the kingdom or region. With the coming of colonialism, the urban...

# The Deurbanisation of India During the ancient and medieval periods of Indian history, urban centres functioned as centres of administration, trade, industry and culture. Cities and towns grew out of the economic and social needs of the kingdom or region. With the coming of colonialism, the urban scene in India witnessed widespread changes. ## The Deurbanisation of India The establishment of colonial rule in India saw the decay of several traditional urban centres and the growth of new ones. As old cities like Dhaka declined, people moved back to rural areas. This process of people moving back from urban to rural areas is called ruralisation or deurbanisation, and is normally a reflection of decline of the economy. ### Why was there deurbanisation in colonial India? The Industrial Revolution resulted in a growing demand for raw materials for factories in Europe. The factories, in turn, required large markets for the finished products. The supply of raw cotton to the mills of Manchester, the textile hub of Britain, was hard hit when the Civil War broke out in North America between 1861 and 1863. To make up for this loss, farmers in India were forced to grow cotton in the place of food crops. Duties on the import of raw cotton from India were abolished in Britain, while high taxes were imposed on imported Indian textiles. Laws were also introduced in Britain, banning the import of finished textiles from India. These measures ruined the textile industry in India, particularly in Bengal. Cloth from Manchester flooded the international market, where goods from Bengal had once dominated. India became a source of cheap raw material for British mills, and a market for its finished goods. Several old urban centres like Dhaka and Murshidabad were destroyed. Dhaka lost about 70% of its population between 1800 and 1839. In Europe, the workers who were made jobless by the Industrial Revolution were absorbed by the many textile mills that came up. However, in India, the British did not put up manufacturing centres. The jobless artisans went back to their villages, and tried to live off the land. The policies of the British also resulted in a series of famines that swept the Indian countryside from the end of the 19th century. Millions died in these famines. ## The Growth of New Urban Centres In the course of time, new urban centres came up in India. Unlike the ancient and medieval towns, these new centres did not evolve over time in response to the socio-economic needs of the region. They were established as a result of policy decisions of the European trading companies and their respective governments. - Urban centres that came up under the British were of three types: - **Ports**: The first urban settlements of the European colonists in India were ports, for example, Madras, Calcutta and Bombay. This was because the colonists were primarily traders and by then almost all the trade with Europe and the rest of Asia took place over the seas. - **Planned cities**: Then there were the planned cities which came up in the interior of India, like New Delhi. They were built to serve a particular function, and were centrally located. For example, New Delhi was built to serve as the new capital of British India because it was central and easily accessible from all parts of the Empire. - **Hill stations**: The British also developed several hill towns like Simla (Shimla) Darjeeling, Ooty, and Dehra Dun. These came to be called 'hill stations'. The British retreated to these hill stations each summer to escape the heat of the plains. Simla served as the summer capital of the British Empire. ### Features of the New Urban Centres - Many of the new urban centres like Calcutta and Madras developed around forts. - The new cities had broad roads and large and imposing public buildings like government offices, public libraries, museums and town halls. They also had parks, markets and clock towers. - Most of the British in India lived outside the old walled town where the Indians lived. The areas where the Indians lived were generally crowded and conditions were often unhygienic, with few civic amenities - The part of the city where the British lived was generally divided into the civil lines and the military cantonment. The British military and their families lived in the cantonment. The rest lived in the civil lines, which had spacious bungalows with lots of open space in between. These areas were well planned and had excellent civic amenities like drainage, electricity and piped water. ## The Creation of Municipalities As the new cities grew in importance, people started migrating once more from rural areas, and from the older urban centres, to these new urban areas. As these cities grew in size, the British felt the need to introduce an effective system of urban administration. They created municipalities for this purpose. A municipality was a body of elected members that was responsible for the maintenance of sanitation and public health, and the provision of civic amenities like roads, electricity and piped drinking water. The first municipality created during British rule was the Municipal Corporation of Madras in 1688, followed by the municipal corporations of Bombay and Calcutta by 1762. One of the main reasons for the creation of the municipalities was the lack of funds faced by the British government in India. By levying taxes on roads, trade, ferries, etc., the municipality was able to finance its various activities, like building roads, drainage systems and sewerage systems. Even today, India follows a system of urban governance that is essentially the same as that created by the British more than 100 years ago. The current structure of municipal bodies is based on Lord Ripon's resolution on local self-government that was adopted in 1882. Ripon is, therefore, seen as the father of local administration in India. Ripon's resolution stressed the need to develop a network of local bodies across the country, and the need to involve local people in the management of their own affairs. The municipality was headed by the mayor. However, the Indian members of the municipalities were often divided along caste and communal lines, with people putting their religion and caste above the wellbeing community. Hence, municipal governance could not take hold for a long time in India. ## Cities as Centres of Transport and Communication Some of the most enduring systems established by the British in India include the railways and the post and telegraph systems. In those days, only the main cities and towns of India were directly linked by rail. Many of the big cities of the time also served as railway junctions, that is, points where railway lines from various places met. Many relatively unknown places grew into towns or cities because they were important railway junctions. Waltair (modern Visakhapatnam), Mughalsarai, Ambala Cantonment, Tundla and Vijayawada were important railway junctions around which cities developed. People travelling to remote areas changed trains at junctions, took connecting trains to the station nearest their destination, and then travelled from there by cart or by foot. Many of the important junctions also had railway colonies beside the station, where railway officials stayed. The cities also served as nerve centres for the post and telegraph services introduced by the British government. Cities and towns had large post and telegraph offices. If a telegram had to be sent from Delhi to a village near Calcutta, it would first be relayed by the post and telegraph office in Delhi to the one in Calcutta. From Calcutta, a postman would take the telegram to the village concerned (either by foot or on bicycle). Thus, colonial cities served functions which were different from those performed by the cities and towns of ancient and medieval India. Let us look at some of the important cities. ## Madras In 1639, Francis Day and Andrew Cogan of the East India Company searched for a suitable place on the Coromandel Coast to set up a trading centre. They leased the village of Madraspatnam from the local ruler, Damarla Venkatapathy Nayak. Here they built a factory and a trading port. The fortified area came to be called Fort St George. The fort became the nucleus around which Madras grew. The settlements around the fort where the British lived was called 'White Town', and the place where the Indians lived was called 'Black Town'. Madras became a naval base and the administrative centre of the British in South India. Madras was one of the three places (along with Bombay and Calcutta) where a university was established (in 1857) to promote higher learning. ## Bombay King Charles II of England leased Bombay to the East India Company, and later transferred it to them. The Company founded the modern city of Bombay, and moved their main holdings from Surat to Bombay. Through the 18th century, British power grew. Skilled workers and traders migrated to Bombay in search of better jobs. Goldsmiths, ironsmiths and weavers were among them. The shipbuilding industry also moved from Surat to Mazgaon in Bombay. (Originally Bombay was a group of seven islands-Colaba, Mazgaon, Old Woman's Island, Wadala, Mahim, Parel and Matunga-Sion). In 1853, the first passenger railway line in India was built between Bombay and Thane. In 1857, the University of Bombay was started. With beginning of the American Civil War in 1861, and the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, export from Bombay, especially of cotton, increased greatly, leading to the accumulation of wealth. This accumulated money was used to build an imperial Bombay by the British Government. ## Calcutta Murshidabad was the capital of Bengal Province till the time of Sirajuddaula. In 1690, Job Charnok, an agent of the East India Company, chose the fishing villages of Kalikata, Sutanuti and Gobindpur to set up a trading settlement. The settlement was soon fortified and called Fort William. As British power grew in India, so did the small port town of Calcutta. It emerged in the late 18th century as the political, economic, social and cultural centre of British power in India. The British made Calcutta the capital of British India in 1772, which it continued to be till 1911, when the capital was shifted to Delhi. Both local and foreign traders, and companies were engaged in trade here, and huge profits were made. As in the case of Bombay, this profit was used to expand the city. Being the capital of British India, Calcutta had some of the finest buildings of that period—the ### Sources of History Being the capital of British India, Calcutta became the centre of the freedom struggle. This was one of the reasons the capital was shifted to Delhi. Calcutta also led the rest of India in social reforms. Calcutta had many firsts to its credit—the first tram car, the first motor car, and the first telegraph line made an appearance in India for the first time here. In 1780, India's first newspaper (Hicky's Bengal Gazette or the Original Calcutta General Advertiser) was published here. In 1784, William Jones established the Asiatic society and, in 1829, Sati was abolished largely due to the efforts of Raja Rammohun Roy ## Case Study: New Delhi Delhi, one of the few cities of the world that has seen continuous occupation for over 1000 years, has always attracted prospective rulers because of its strategic geographic location—it serves as a link between Central Asia, the north-west frontier, and the rest of India. Delhi has seen the rise and fall of countless empires. Indraprastha, the capital of the Pandavas, is believed to have been located here. An Ashokan inscription says that Delhi was on the great national highway of the Mauryas, and linked their capital Pataliputra (near Patna) with Taxila, now in Pakistan. Between the 13th and 17th centuries, successive dynasties of the Delhi Sultans and the Mughals ruled from Delhi. Babur and Humayun retained Delhi as their capital. Though Akbar shifted his capital to Fatehpur Sikri, Shah Jahan shifted it back to Delhi. The Marathas wrested control of Delhi from the Mughals in the late 18th century. In 1803, Delhi passed into the hands of the British from the Marathas. The city is full of the remains of the imposing monuments built here by the Delhi Sultans and the Mughals. In 1911, the British shifted their capital from Calcutta to Delhi. They built an entirely new city here, and called it New Delhi. The earlier cities of Delhi now came to be called Old Delhi. The architecture of New Delhi was the crowning glory of the British Raj. The architects of this new city were Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker. Lutyens was specifically directed by the Viceroy to 'harmonise externally with the traditions of Indian art'. So the buildings of New Delhi were made of red sandstone and included features like domes, chhatris (kiosks), and jalis (trellised windows). They designed a beautifully symmetrical city with the President's Palace (now Rashtrapati Bhavan) atop Raisina Hill at the centre, and the city spreading out on all sides. There were office buildings on either side of the President's Palace, like mirror images. The secretariat building, and buildings that housed different offices, were on either side of the main road, then called King's Way (now Raj Path). At the other end of Raj Path was India Gate, built in memory of the British soldiers who died during World War I. To the left of the Viceroy's House was the Council Chamber (what is now called Parliament House), a circular structure with three semicircular areas. Connaught Place, at the centre of the city, was part of Lutyens' beautiful design. The old, historically important sites of medieval India were beautifully blended with the modern ones to produce a unified effect. The famous Jantar Mantar of Sawai Madho Singh of Jaipur merges with the modern Connaught Place. Humayun's tomb, Purana Qila, Qutb Minar and the Hazrat Nizamuddin were all made to be a part of New Delhi. Broad tree-lined roads, gracious public buildings, fountains and parks characterised British Delhi.