The British rulers in India were superb administrators. Let me tell you some features of their administration in India :
1. In their own country, England, the British had the system of ' His Majesty's Loyal Opposition '. In other words, the Government is mine, and the Opposition is also mine.
In India, the Viceroy, Governors, senior officials, etc were of course Britishers, but the leader of the Congress Party, the principal Opposition to the Government, Gandhi, was also a British agent ( as I have pointed out in my earlier posts ), and the leader of the Opposition to this Opposition, the Muslim League, Jinnah, was also a British agent. Thus this triumvirate was entirely under British control.
2. The British knew that no rule can last long unless it is respected by the people. Hence they created the 2 tier system of administration.
The lower level officials, the police daroga ( sub inspector ), patwari, etc were all Indians. But the officials at the higher level, the Collector, the High Court Judge, etc were usually Britishers.
It was the officials at the lower level who were in direct touch with the people, and who directly oppressed the people. So Indian people thought that their oppressors were Indians, but if they wanted justice they had to go to the British officials who at the higher level, the Collector and the High Court Judge.
3. If some excess was committed by some over zealous British official, e.g. Brigadier Dyer at Jallianwala Bagh, the British Government immediately appointed a Commission, e.g. the Hunter Commission in the case of the Jallianwala incident. This would diffuse the situation.
The truth was that the British in fact looted India. India had over 30%of world trade and was a prosperous country before the British came. By the time they left in 1947 our share in the world trade went down to 2% and we had became a very poor country. However, the British were successful in creating an impression among most Indians that British rule was beneficial to India, and the Britishers were our well wishers, though in reality they were looters and murderers of about 100 million Indians who died of starvation because of the famines created by British rule ( see my blogs ' Dinner at the German Embassy ', 'The Great Bengal Famine', etc on justicekatju.blogspot.in )
