Dismantling traditional governance

Before colonial rule, India had well-organised systems of local self-government. Village councils ran community affairs, settled disputes, and organised public works such as irrigation and roads.

Above them, regional kingdoms had ways of governing that had grown over centuries to fit local needs.

The chapter's evidence for how well this worked comes from a British source. Charles Metcalfe, an acting Governor-General in the 1830s, wrote:

"The village communities are little republics, having nearly everything they want within themselves. They seem to last where nothing else lasts. Dynasty after dynasty tumbles down; revolution succeeds to revolution; but the village community remains the same."

And his conclusion: this union of village communities "has contributed more than any other cause to the preservation of the people of India".

That explains something from the earlier chapters. Empires rose and fell over the centuries while ordinary life went on, because ordinary life was not run from the capital.

The British systematically dismantled these systems, replacing them with a centralised bureaucracy (one big government machine run from the top) designed mainly to collect taxes and keep order, not to improve people's welfare. Centuries-old ways of making community decisions were destroyed.

British codes of law ignored the customary laws that had guided communities for generations. Presented as modernisation, this foreign system cut ordinary Indians off from justice, creating courts that were expensive, slow, and held in a foreign language.