Pakistan Studies by Nisar Ahmad
Year 9
Warren Hastings (December 6, 1732- August 22, 1818)
British Governor General of India (1772-1785)
Early life
In 1750 British contact with India was still the monopoly of the East India Company, which was engaged in buying and
selling goods at small settlements in Indian ports. As one of the company’s servants, for the early part of his career
Hastings was employed in the company’s commercial business. But after 1756 the outlook for both the company and its
servants was radically altered. The company became involved in hostilities in India both with the French and with Indian
rulers, and under Robert Clive its army was able to depose the nawab, or Indian governor, of Bengal at the Battle of
Plassey in 1757. Although the company did not at this stage intend to set itself up as the actual ruler of the province, it
was now so powerful that the new nawabs became its satellites. Thus, the servants, including Hastings, began to be drawn
more and more into Indian politics. Hastings served as the company’s representative at the court of the nawabs of Bengal
from 1758 to 1761 and then on the company’s Council, the controlling body for its affairs in Bengal, from 1761 to 1764.
His career was cut short, however, by bitter disputes within the Council. Finding himself in a minority, Hastings resigned
from the company’s service and returned to England in 1765.
Governorship of Bengal
In 1769 he was appointed second in Council in Madras. Two years later he received his great opportunity when he was
sent back to Bengal as governor in charge of the company’s affairs there. In practical terms Bengal was in the power of
the British, who were also virtually its legal rulers after being granted in 1765 the powers called the dewanee (related to
land property) by the Mughal emperor. But the business of government was still conducted by Indian officials, with very
limited European participation. Hastings recognized that this situation could not go on and that the British must
accept full responsibility, make their power effective, and involve themselves more closely in the work of
government.
Reforms of Hastings
His view of the role of the British in India was later to be regarded as a very conservative one. He saw no “civilizing” or
modernizing mission for them. Bengal was to be governed in strictly traditional ways, and the life of its people was not to
be disturbed by innovation. To ensure good government, however, he felt that the British must actively intervene. In what
was to be the most constructive period of his administration, from 1772 to 1774, Hastings detached the machinery of the
central government from the Nawab’s court and brought it to the British settlement in Calcutta under direct British
control, remodelled the administration of justice throughout Bengal, and began a series of experiments aimed at bringing
the collection of taxation under effective supervision.
Political rivalries
Hastings’s period of undisputed power in Bengal came to an end in 1774 with changes in the company’s
government. He acquired the new title of governor-general and new responsibilities for supervising other
British settlements in India, but these powers had now to be shared with a Supreme Council.
War in India
As full participants in the unstable world created in India by the fall of the Mughal Empire, the company now found it
difficult not to be drawn into the rivalries of the powers that had set themselves up in the ruins of the empire. Hastings’s
policy was to avoid further conquest and war but to maintain peaceful relations with neighbouring states by a series of
alliances. He had, however, already taken part in one war in 1774, when he helped the company’s ally on the north-
western boundary of Bengal, the vizier of Oudh, to take over territory occupied by a people called the Rohillas; and in
1778 he became involved in war with the Marathas, a loose federation of Hindu peoples in western and central India.
Pakistan Studies by Nisar Ahmad
Year 9
Rightly or wrongly, Hastings came to believe that it was necessary for the safety of the British in India to ensure that the
Maratha leaders were friendly to the company and that he would be justified in applying military pressure to achieve this
end.
Confrontation with the French
After the entry of France into the American Revolution in 1778, he was also confronted with French expeditionary forces
in the Indian Ocean.
Confrontation with Hyder Ali
Finally, in 1780, Hyder (Haidar) Ali, the ruler of the south Indian state of Mysore, attacked the British at Madras. War on
several fronts brought out the best in Hastings, and his achievement in organizing the company’s military and financial
resources to counter every threat was a remarkable one.
Assessment
As the first governor-general of Bengal, Hastings was responsible for consolidating British control over the first major
Indian province to be conquered. In his term of office he initiated solutions to such problems as how vast Indian
populations were to be administered by a handful of foreigners and how the British, now themselves a major Indian
power, were to fit into the state system of 18th-century India. These solutions were to have a profound influence on
Britain’s future role in India. Hastings’s career is also of importance in raising for the British public at home other
problems created by their new Indian empire—problems of the degree of control to be exercised over Englishmen in India
and of the standards of integrity and fair dealing to be expected from them—and the solutions to these problems were also
important for the future.
Hastings's administrative ethos and legacy
During the final quarter of the 18th century, many of the Company's senior administrators realised that, in order to govern
Indian society, it was essential that they learn its various religious, social, and legal customs and precedents.
Under Hastings's term as governor-general, a great deal of administrative precedent was set which profoundly shaped later
attitudes towards the government of British India. Hastings had a great respect for the ancient scripture of Hinduism and
set the British position on governance as one of looking back to the earliest examples possible. This allowed Brahmin
advisors to mould the law, which no English person thoroughly understood Sanskrit until Sir William Jones. Thus, British
influence on the social structure of India can in large part be characterised as a solidification of the privileges of the
Hindu caste system through the influence of the exclusively high-caste scholars by whom the British were advised in the
formation of their laws.
In 1781, Hastings founded Madrasa 'Aliya; at Calcutta. In 1784, Hastings supported the foundation of the Bengal Asiatic
Society, now the Asiatic Society of Bengal, by the oriental scholar Sir William Jones; it became a store for information
and data on the subcontinent and has existed in various institutional appearances up to the present day. Hastings' legacy
has been somewhat dualistic (having two aspects) as an Indian administrator: he undoubtedly was able to institute reforms
during the time he spent as governor there that would change the path that India would follow over the next several years.
