When the colonial conquest began the East India Company functioned as a kind of feudal lord. It simply took over the preexisting system of government as it was under the Mughals and also its existing legal system. Its objectives and its methods were not very different from those of its feudal predecessors. It had two main objectives. One was, like any feudal lord, to extract a maximum tribute from the cultivator in the form of land revenue. The other was to foster international trade, notably the export of Indian textiles, which was the monopoly of the East India Company. In its early years the East India Company functioned just as another feudal ruler. Therefore the system of government remained basically the same. Its needs were met by the traditional system of education in madrasas . Persian, the language of the Indian elite, both Hindu and Muslim, was retained by the British as the official language. The few British Officers who were sent to govern India had to learn Persian, The existing system of law also remained, largely unchanged. It was administered by massifs and quiz’s trained in traditional law and custom. But fundamental changes in the pattern of colonialism were soon to follow as it was extended over a larger territory and also, crucially, as the form of colonial exploitation changed and a new type of colonial economy was constructed. The old system could no anger work under the new conditions.
As the nineteenth century progressed, the pattern of the colonial economy began to change , for India was no longer to be an exporter of textiles but rather an importer of British made textiles and other manufactures and an exporter of raw material required by the burgeoning British industry in the wake of the industrial revolution. To facilitate the production and export of the raw materials needed by Britain, the colonial government became far more interventionist. It undertook large scale projects to secure its aims. Canals were built to produce cotton to cater for the insatiable appetite of the mills of Manchester and roads and railways constructed to carry the raw materials cheaply to the new ports cities which were built to meet the needs of colonial trade, such as Karachi, Bombay, Calcutta. With such wide. Ranging changes in its activities b oth the size and the functions of the colonial government were greatly extended. The old system of education and the old judicial system
Government of India was now to be organized in a new way. English replaced Persian as the official language. English speaking British Officers, who did not speak a local language, were now to be assisted by a large number of English educated Indian clerks. They were mostly petty underlings who attended to the paper work. Some upper class Indians, the brown sahibs, were also inducted into the government, as subordinates of British officers. They were, nevertheless, invested with some authority as officers.
Under the elite at the top, the colonial regime created large armies of English educated clerks who were needed to ‘man’ government offices (few women, if any, were employed). They dealt with the bulk of the records and paper work. Side by side with the ‘English Office’ were departments that dealt with government business in the vernacular, especially in the field of land and land revenue records, which were so important for extracting the colonial tribute.
These were to be found in the offices of the tehsildars and district lanugos along with the revenue employees in the field, the pat we rips arid circle lanugos. At provincial and central headquarters the secretariats expanded to a size that was unknown before. Large numbers of new government employees found a place in the expanding network of railways, public works departments, the irrigation departments and the multitude of new offices that were spawned by the expanding colonial regime Armies of clerks multiplied. In a predominantly agrarian economy without much industry the government was the largest provider of jobs. Right from the late nineteenth century Indian politics were geared to the question of quotas in government jobs and promotion. To begin with a demand for, indianisation, and later with the ethnic shares of the available jobs and career opportunities.
As the nineteenth century advanced a new policy of ‘Anglo- Vernacular Education’ began to take shape. It was a policy that got its definitive stamp under the ‘Committee of Public Instruction’
presided over by Thomas Babington .