History of Ahmedabad - British Rule

British Rule

On 18 February 1780, during the First Anglo-Maratha War, a British force under James Hartley stormed and captured Ahmedabad, but it was handed back to the Marathas at the end of the war.

The British East India Company definitely took over the city in 1818. A military cantonment was established in 1824, a municipal government in 1858, and a railway link between Ahmedabad and Bombay (Mumbai) in 1864. Ahmedabad grew rapidly, becoming an important center of trade and textile manufacturing.

The old mercantile and industrial elite, with their relative sophistication in matters of industry, trade and financing, were well poised to expand under British rule, using their own financing for new technology, represented by British machinery. Instead of just a few merchants introducing new industrial machinery, as elsewhere in India, in Ahmedabad the mercantile class as a whole supported the new techniques, even though hand spinners and handloom weavers, as well as female spinners in the outlying communities had their traditional operations upset as a result. They and others were recruited into the new manufacturing plants. The merchant class tended to support the British, thinking the rule provided more security than under the Marathas, lower taxes (including lower octroi), and more property rights.

Unlike most other areas of India, British rule meant no major upsetting of the community's traditional social system, although the traditional peasant landowning class, the Banias and Patadars, were absorbed into the Jain business community. The British did not have a financing vacuum to fill in the city, so their presence was limited to administrative and military spheres. Unlike other Indian cities, Ahmedabad lacked a comprador class or dominant, Western-educated middle class. Western education was slower to be introduced into the city than in most other Indian cities. There was very little English higher education available in the city and no English-language newspapers there in the 19th century.

Instead of education in English language and culture, technology education was promoted in the late 19th century. Ranchhodlal Chhotalal, the nagar Brahmin who founded a spinning and weaving company in the city in 1859, ordered the city to withdraw its support for a high school in 1886 and instead finance technical education. Starting in 1889, the city financed scholarships for technical students. With no Western-oriented academic center in the city, there was no opposing political reaction to Western influences, and the city. "The entire discourse of tradition versus modernity, thrown up by exposure to Western literature and culture, was almost non-existent in Ahmedabad," according to literary scholar Svati Joshi.

Schools for girls, primarily for those in the upper classes, were founded in the mid-19th century. Maganbhai Karamchand, a Jain businessman, and Harkor Shethani, a Jain widow. One visitor, Mary Carpenter, wrote in 1856 after visiting the city, "I found how very far behind Ahmedabad these other places were in effort to promote female education among the leading hindoos, in emancipation of the ladies from the thraldom imposed by custom; and in self-effort for improvement on their own part."

The struggle for independence from the British soon took roots in the city. In 1915, Mahatma Gandhi came from South Africa and established two ashrams in the city, the Kochrab Ashram near Paldi in 1915 and the Satyagrah Ashram on the banks of Sabarmati in 1917. The latter was later called Harijan Ashram or Sabarmati Ashram. He started the salt satyagraha in 1930. He and many followers marched from his ashram to the coastal village of Dandi, Gujarat, to protest against the British imposing a tax on salt. Before he left the ashram, he vowed not to return to the ashram until India became independent.