Edmund Burke - India and The Impeachment of Warren Hastings

India and The Impeachment of Warren Hastings

Burke pursued for years the impeachment against Warren Hastings, the former Governor General of Bengal, in 1786. His interaction with the British dominion of India began well before the impeachment trial. Prior to the impeachment, Parliament had dealt with the Indian issue for two decades. This trial was the pinnacle of years of unrest and deliberation. In 1781 Burke was first able to delve into the issues surrounding the East India Company when he was appointed Chairman of the Commons' Select Committee on East Indian Affair—from that point until the end of the trial; India was Burke's primary concern. This committee was charged "to investigate alleged injustices in Bengal, the war with Hyder Ali, and other Indian difficulties". While Burke and the committee focused their attention on these matters, a second 'secret' committee was formed to assess the same issues. Both committee reports were written by Burke and led to the reassurance to the Indian princes that Britain would not wage war on them and the demand for the EIC to recall Hastings. This is Burke's first call for real, significant change of the imperial practices. When addressing the whole House of Commons in regards to the committee's report, Burke would describe the Indian issue as one that "began 'in commerce' but 'ended in empire.'"

On 28 February 1785 he made his great speech on The Nabob of Arcot's Debts, where he condemned the damage he believed the East India Company had done to India. In the province of the Carnatic the Indians had constructed a system of reservoirs to make the soil fertile in a naturally dry region, and centred their society on the husbandry of water:

These are the monuments of real kings, who were the fathers of their people; testators to a posterity which they embraced as their own. These are the grand sepulchres built by ambition; but by the ambition of an insatiable benevolence, which, not contented with reigning in the dispensation of happiness during the contracted term of human life, had strained, with all the reachings and graspings of a vivacious mind, to extend the dominion of their bounty beyond the limits of nature, and to perpetuate themselves through generations of generations, the guardians, the protectors, the nourishers of mankind.

Burke held that the advent of British dominion, and in particular the conduct of the East India Company had destroyed much that was good in these traditions and that, as a consequence of this, and the lack of new customs to replace them, the Indians were suffering. He set about establishing a set of British expectations, whose moral foundation would, in his opinion, warrant the empire.

On 4 April 1786 Burke presenting the Commons with the Article of Charge of High Crimes and Misdemeanors against Hastings. The trial, which did not begin until 14 February 1788, would be the "first major public discursive event of its kind in England", bringing the morality and duty of imperialism to the forefront of the public's perception. Burke was already known for his eloquent rhetorical skills and his involvement in the trial only enhanced its popularity and significance. For the members of London's fashionable society, the trial was a spectacle, and was not centered around Hastings' alleged misconduct and crimes as had been Burke's intent. Burke's indictment, fuelled by emotional indignation, called Hastings the 'captain-general of iniquity'; who never dined without 'creating a famine'; his heart was 'gangrened to the core' and he resembled both a 'spider of Hell' and a 'ravenous vulture devouring the carcases of the dead'. The indictment was a philippic and whereas it had previously seemed that Hastings would be found guilty, it actually provoked public sympathy; however, although Hastings was acquitted, the trial served to establish the principle that the Empire ought to be a moral undertaking rather than a wholesale looting by either the East India Company or its servants.