(a) India had been the world leader in the field of hand spun and hand woven yarn and cloth for many centuries. Many nationalist…

(a) Colonial rule and the decline of Indian handicrafts

India's cotton textiles, such as Dacca muslin, Bengal and Coromandel cloth and Surat silks, supplied world markets till the eighteenth century. Nationalist writers such as Dadabhai Naoroji and R. C. Dutt, and Marxists such as R. P. Dutt, argued that British policy deliberately destroyed them to serve British industry, and the evidence supports a substantial part of this view.

After 1757 the Company used political power to force weavers to supply at low prices and to restrict their dealings, and took over the cloth trade in Bengal. In Britain, Indian cottons were prohibited or taxed at very high duties, while after 1813 British machine-made goods entered India almost duty-free. Indian cloth lost its overseas markets, and then its home market, as cheap Lancashire yarn and cloth arrived and railways carried them inland. The loss of princely courts and their patronage hit luxury crafts. Dacca's population fell sharply, and census data show a shift of artisans to agriculture, the ruralisation of India.

Revisionists such as Morris D. Morris and Tirthankar Roy argue that decline was uneven: handlooms survived using imported mill yarn, and Indian mills grew; changes in demand and technology, not only policy, were involved. The fair judgement is that colonial policy, including unequal tariffs, was a major cause but not the sole one.

(b) Manifestations of nationalism under colonial rule

Nationalism appeared in many forms.

Cultural and social: socio-religious reform movements such as the Brahmo Samaj and Arya Samaj, revival of history and language, the Bengal School of art, and literature such as Bankim's Anandamath.

Economic: the drain theory and swadeshi, a critique of colonial economic policy by Naoroji and Dutt, and boycott and the use of indigenous goods.

Political: associations such as the Indian Association and the Indian National Congress, a growing press, and demands for representation, using constitutional methods in the Moderate phase.

Radical and revolutionary: the Extremists, Home Rule, and groups using violence.

Mass: Gandhian movements: Non-Cooperation, Civil Disobedience and Quit India, drawing in peasants, workers, women and tribals; peasant and tribal movements, states' peoples' movements and trade unions.

Other strands included linguistic regional identities and the assertions of Dalits and others. These showed that Indian nationalism united diverse groups against a common colonial rule while retaining internal differences.

(c) Mir Qasim and the Company

The Company made Mir Qasim nawab of Bengal in 1760, replacing Mir Jafar, in return for the cession of Burdwan, Midnapore and Chittagong and large payments, expecting a pliant ruler. He did not oblige. He reorganised finances, cleared arrears, moved his capital to Monghyr, away from the Company's reach, and modernised his army under the Armenian Gurgin Khan. Above all he resisted the misuse of the dastak, the duty-free pass, by Company servants for private trade, and in 1763 abolished all internal duties, putting Indian merchants on equal footing, which meant that the Company's servants lost their advantage.

Conflict followed at Patna in 1763 and war, in which the Company won at Katwa, Giria and Udhua Nala. Mir Qasim fled and allied with Shuja-ud-Daula of Awadh and Shah Alam II, and was defeated at Buxar in 1764.