(a) How did English utilitarian thinking impact India in the British era? (20 marks) (b) The same Gandhiji who withdrew the…

The three questions trace a common problem: how ideas, moral discipline and political organisation decide whether a society reforms, resists or fragments.

Utilitarian thinking in British India. Benthamite and Millite utilitarianism gave the British a rational language for rule. Bentham’s calculus of pain and pleasure, and Mill’s concern with liberty, representation and public opinion, shaped codification: Macaulay’s draft of the Indian Penal Code in 1837, enacted in 1860, replaced fragmented customary laws with a uniform code meant to make law predictable and administrable. It shaped education through Wood’s Dispatch of 1854, which expanded English education and carried forward Macaulay’s 1835 aim to create a class “Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, opinions, morals and intellect,” and to supply clerks and professionals. It also rationalised revenue administration through Ryotwari and Mahalwari settlements, which fixed land relations and made extraction more efficient. The result was a modern administrative state—courts, prisons, police and a trained bureaucracy—justified by utility. Yet the same “greatest good” logic could mask colonial exploitation: reforms were justified as benefiting Indians while serving imperial order. At the same time, utilitarian reform impulse produced genuine changes, such as the abolition of sati in 1829 and the suppression of thuggee, where calculated social benefit and humanitarian argument combined. Thus utilitarianism was both a tool of colonial governance and a source of legal, educational and social modernisation.

Gandhi and the limits of non-violence. Gandhi’s withdrawal of the Non-Cooperation Movement after Chauri Chaura in February 1922 was not a sign of weakness. The movement was then at its peak, after about eighteen months of mass mobilisation, and he stopped it because violence had broken the discipline of satyagraha. For him, non-violence was not a passive method but a moral test: the satyagrahi must remain brave, truthful and self-controlled. In 1942, however, the context was different. The British had used repression, detention and emergency powers to close ordinary channels of satyagraha, and the Quit India call of “Do or Die” acknowledged that the people might be driven beyond passive resistance. Gandhi did not abandon non-violence; he made a tactical distinction. In correspondence with Rajagopalachari and Vinoba Bhave, he explained that he was not condoning violence, but recognising that under extreme oppression the people’s anger might erupt. He distinguished the “violence of the brave,” which arises from dignity and resistance to humiliation, from the “violence of the coward,” which is driven by fear, revenge or self-interest. He still urged restraint, but he did not make non-violence a condition for participation when repression had already made passive resistance impossible. His refusal to condemn popular violence in 1942 was therefore conditional realism within a moral framework, not loss of faith in non-violence.

Maratha fragmentation. The Marathas were individually clever and brave, but their confederacy lacked the corporate spirit needed for national independence. The Peshwa at Pune, Gaekwad at Baroda, Holkar at Indore, Scindia at Gwalior and Bhonsle at Nagpur functioned as autonomous power centres, each pursuing separate jagirs, titles and rivalries rather than a common political vision. No single Maratha house could command the others, and no council bound their decisions. The Third Battle of Panipat in 1761 exposed this weakness: the Marathas could field large armies but could not coordinate command, logistics or strategy. Later internecine conflicts, including Pune-Nagpur rivalries and Peshwa-Gaekwad tensions, further divided them. This absence of corporate political identity allowed the British to use subsidiary alliances and divide-and-rule diplomacy, turning Maratha leaders into isolated clients rather than a united national force.

In conclusion, utilitarianism modernised British India but also exposed the limits of rule based on calculated benefit; Gandhi’s 1942 position shows that non-violence can be tested without being abandoned; and the Marathas’ failure shows that courage without collective organisation cannot secure independence.