This map shows India under the Raj British rule around 1850 Britain controlled about two-thirds of the Indian subcontinent at this time Life under the Raj A large network of people working in civil service jobs ran British India Officials from the United Kingdom brought their families to India and enjoyed a privileged lifestyle there These white men called sahibs enjoyed dining in clubs and joining in the occasional tiger hunt 4Their wives called memsahibs ran their households with the aid of numerous servants There was very little social contact between Indians and most whites Indians were barred from European clubs from top civil service jobs and from becoming army officers
The British King George V participated in this tiger hunt in India The white hunters mounted on elephants have killed three tigers The United Kingdom’s interest in India remained mainly commercial related to money The country grew wealthy by exploiting India’s natural resources The British set up tea coffee and cotton plantations and iron and coal mines in India They constructed railroads as well as telegraph and later telephone lines These improvements made it easier to export Indian resources such as minerals and food products India also became a major market for imported British manufactured goods such as glass and textiles This damaged India’s own glass and textile industries The British did not spend money on primary education or help India to industrialize 5 As a result the vast majority of Indians were uneducated and lived in poverty But the princely elite although a minority were well educated and some princes were very wealthy Birth of the independence movement Many Indians had resisted UK rule since the days of the East India Company In 1885 a group of Western-educated Indian lawyers and other professionals founded India’s first political party the Indian National Congress often referred
to as the Congress At the time its members mostly did not challenge the United Kingdom’s right to rule India Instead they debated politics and economics India’s future and how Indians might achieve higher status under the current system From the beginning INC members were mainly Hindu but they also included Muslims Sikhs and people of other faiths It was not until 1906 that Muslim members of the Indian National Congress broke away to form a separate political party for Muslims the All-India Muslim League Birth of Gandhi Around the time when the Indian National Congress was founded a young man was growing up in the northwestern Indian state of Gujarat and he would one day become the party’s most famous leader Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on October 2 1869 in the small port town of Porbandar His father Karamchand was diwan or prime minister of this tiny semi-independent state ruling in the name of the local prince The Gandhis were wealthy Six generations of Gandhis had been diwans there 6 But within India’s caste system see the box the Gandhis were not high ranking They belonged to the class of Vaishyas or merchants and within that the subclass of Banias or grocers The name Gandhi means grocer However by the 1800s the caste system had relaxed a little and members of the caste of Vaishyas were allowed to enter other professions The Hindu caste system Like 70 percent of all Indians Gandhi’s family was Hindu Hindu society is traditionally divided into four main tiers called castes with hundreds of subcastes Everyone had to stay within the caste he or she was born into The highest caste the Brahmins were traditionally priests Next came the Kshatriyas the soldier caste and the Vaishyas who were merchant and craftspeople The fourth tier were the Shudras made up of farmers and workers Outside the caste system and considered lower than the Shudras were the Untouchables who did all the worst and dirtiest jobs such as cleaning toilets 7 Early years
Mohandas Gandhi’s mother Putlibai was his father’s fourth wife Mohandas was her fourth and youngest child While Mohandas respected his father he greatly admired his mother The Gandhis were Hindu but Putlibai belonged to a small sect group that studied Islamic texts as well as Hindu scriptures A devout woman she fasted regularly Mohandas spent his early years in a three-story house that his father shared with his brothers and their families At school Mohandas did not do well at first He was a nervous painfully shy boy He was also very honest and would not lie even when a teacher encouraged him to do so As a boy Mohandas was drawn to Jainism an ancient Indian religion with followers who practiced an extreme form of nonviolence toward all living things This set of beliefs is called ahimsa Marriage In 1883 at the age of just 13 Mohandas Gandhi was married to a girl named Kasturbai who was also 13 Kasturbai was uneducated and could not read or write Their parents arranged the match Gandhi became obsessed with Kasturbai Wildly jealous he tried to restrict her freedom but the strong-willed Kasturbai resisted Gandhi would later speak out against marrying so young Gandhi’s parents hoped that one of their sons would grow up to be diwan like Karamchand Training as a lawyer was thought to be good preparation for this So at 18 Mohandas left India to study law in London England leaving behind his wife and a newborn son Harilal His devout mother feared he might be corrupted by life in London and adopt Western ways such as drinking alcohol and eating meat Gandhi vowed not to do this Studying religions In England several members of the Vegetarian Society were interested in the religions of other cultures Gandhi began to study religious texts such as the Muslim holy book the Koran and the Hindu sacred text the Bhagavad Gita He also studied the Christian New Testament He was particularly impressed by the New Testament’s story of the Sermon on the Mount which describes Jesus Christ preaching a message of nonviolence to a large crowd and urging his followers to turn the other cheek if attacked
