Edmund Burke’s "Speech on the East India Bill" is a critique of the repression and tyranny caused by the British colonial rule over India. The rule of East India Company turned to be a tyrannous one. The treachery and fraudulence of the Company took the country on the verge of destruction. The suffering of the people and attitude of the Company shocked him deeply. He thinks that parliament should intervene and the reforms should be made for the sake of humanity, justice and principles of true policy.
Burke is a great political philosopher and he is impressed with the vastness, size and huge cultural varieties and rich traditions the Indian empire. The vast mass of India is composed of so many orders and classes of men, infinitely diversified by manners, by religion, by hereditary employment, through all their possible combinations.
Burke makes an inquiry regarding the number the quality and description of the inhabitants of India. There have been princes once of great dignity, authority and opulence. There are to be found the chiefs of tribes and nations. There are to be found and ancient and venerable priesthood, the depository of their laws, learning and history, nobility of great antiquity and renown; a multitude of cities merchants and bankers, individual houses of whom have once vied in capital with the Bank of England.
As to emphasize the importance of India, Burke compares India as the nearest parallel with the empire of Germany. He also compares it with the Austrian dominions. He found the Nabob of Oude equal to the King of Prussia. India is an empire of highly complicated nature, of great dignity and importance. Burke wanted to awaken something of sympathy for the unfortunate natives. But the East India Company failed utterly in this regard. They looked at the native Indians as a very remote object through a false and cloudy medium. As a consequence, it becomes difficult and delicate to handle the administration of India.
After describing the vast territory of India, Burke draws the attention of the members of parliament to the attitude, atrocity and oppression of the east India Company towards the Indians. Burke feels shocked to see the natives of India to be ruined by the hypocrisy of the Company.
In his Speech on the East India Bill, he presents the sufferings of the Indians at the hands of those who govern India. As for example, Burke narrated the horrifying misfortunes of the Shah Alam, Shuja al-Daula and so on. Shuja al-Daula’s head was cut off and delivered form money to a barbarian. His wife and children were seen begging handful of rice through the English camp. The whole nation was massacred and the country was damaged by the invasion and turned into a dreary desert and jungles.
In fine, Burke’s attitude to India is based on his deep humanitarian love and sympathy. The monopoly of the East India Company and Hastings’s tyrannous rule not only goes beyond the limit of brutality and political norms but also rises questions about the supremacy of the British Monarchy and Parliament.
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