Quoted on page 300, Report of the Indian
Industrial Commission, 1916-1918.
Economic bondage is the worst of all bondages. Economic dependence, or
the lack of economic independence, is the source of all misery,
individual or national. A person economically dependent upon another is
a virtual slave, despite appearances. He who supplies food and raiment
and the necessities of life is the real master.
The desire for gain dominates the world and all its activities. Even
religion, as ordinarily understood, interpreted and administered, is a
game of pounds and shillings, say what one may to the contrary. There
are exceptions to this statement, but they are few and far between. The
world does not subsist by bread alone, but without bread it cannot exist
even for a minute. The generality of the world cares more for bread than
for anything else, though there are individuals and groups of
individuals who would not stoop to obtain bread by dishonorable means
and those also who would die rather than obtain bread by the violation
of their soul.
There are numerous ways in which a subject nation feels the humiliation
and helplessness of her position, but none is so telling and so
effective as the subordination of her economic interests to those of the
dominant power. This is especially true in these days of free and easy
transportation, of quick journeys, and of scientific warfare. In any
struggle between nations, the victory eventually must rest with the one
in possession of the largest number of "silver bullets." It is true that
silver bullets alone will not do unless there are brains and bodies to
use them, but the latter without the former are helpless.
A nation may be the greatest producer of food; yet she may die of hunger
from lack of ability to keep her own produce for herself. Food obeys the
behest of the silver bullets. The law of self-preservation, therefore,
requires only that nations be free to regulate their own household,
subject to the condition that thereby they do not violate the rules of
humanity or trample upon the rights of any human being.
Mr. Montagu and Lord Chelmsford have, in parts of their Report, been
extremely candid. The value of their joint production lies in this
candidness. In no other part, perhaps, have they been so candid as in
the one dealing with "Industries and Tariff." In Paragraph 331 they
frankly admit the truth of the following observation of the late Mr.
Ranade on the economic effects of British rule in India:
"The political domination of one country by another attracts far
more attention than the more formidable, though more unfelt,
domination which the capital, enterprise and skill of one country
exercise over the trade and manufactures of another. This latter
domination has an insidious influence which paralyses the springs
of all the various activities which together make up the life of a
nation."
In the course of a letter addressed to the _Westminster Gazette_ in
1917, Lord Curzon said that "the fiscal policy of India during the last
thirty or forty years has been shaped far more in Manchester than in
Calcutta." This candid admission about "the subordination of Indian
fiscal policy to the Secretary of State and a House of Commons
powerfully affected by Lancashire influence," is the keynote of the
Indian demand for Home Rule. The authors of the Montagu-Chelmsford
Report say so quite frankly and fairly in Paragraphs 332 to 336 of their
report, from which we make the following extracts:
"The people are poor; and their poverty raises the question
whether the general level of well-being could not be materially
raised by the development of industries. It is also clear that the
lack of outlet for educated youth is a serious misfortune which
has contributed not a little in the past to political unrest in
Bengal. But perhaps an even greater mischief is the discontent
aroused in the minds of those who are jealous for India by seeing
that she is so largely dependent on foreign countries for
manufactured goods. They noted that her foreign trade was always
growing, but they also saw that its leading feature continued to
be the barter of raw materials valued at relatively low prices for
imported manufactures, which obviously afforded profits and
prosperity to other countries industrially more advanced.
Patriotic Indians might well ask themselves why these profits
should not accrue to their country: and also why so large a
portion of the industries which flourished in the country was
financed by European capital and managed by European skill."
"The fact that India's foreign trade was largely with the United
Kingdom gave rise to a suspicion that her industrial backwardness
was positively encouraged in the interests of British
manufactures, and the maintenance of the excise duty on locally
manufactured cotton goods in the alleged interests of Lancashire
is very widely accepted as a conclusive proof of such a purpose.
On a smaller scale, the maintenance of a Stores Department at the
India Office is looked upon as an encouragement to the Government
to patronize British at the expense of local manufacturers."
There can thus be no autonomy without fiscal autonomy. In fact, the
latter alone is the determining characteristic of an autonomous
existence.
The one national trait which distinguishes the British from other
nations of the world is their habit of truthfulness and frankness. When
we say that we do not thereby mean that all Britishers are equally
truthful--to the same extent and degree. But we do mean that on the
whole the British nation has a larger percentage of truthful and candid
persons in her family than any other nation on the face of the earth.
Where their interests clash with those of others, they can be as hard,
exacting and cruel as any one else in the world. But repentance
overtakes them sooner than it does the others. They have a queer but
admirable faculty of introspection which few other people possess to the
same extent and in the same numbers. This is what endears them even to
those who are never tired of cursing their snobbishness and masterful
imperialism. The faculty of occasionally seeing themselves with the eyes
of others, makes them the most successful _rulers of men_. They are as a
nation lacking in imagination, but there are individuals amongst them
who can see, if they will, their own faults; who can and do speak out
their minds honestly and truthfully, even though by so doing they may
temporarily earn odium and unpopularity.
The remarks and observations of the eminent authors of the Report
relating to the fiscal relations of India and England reflect the
honesty of their purpose and the sincerity of their mind as no other
part of the Report does. They have entered upon the subject with great
diffidence and, though expressing themselves with marked candor and
fairness, have refrained from making any definite recommendations.
In this respect it will be only fair to acknowledge the equally candid
opinion of Mr. Austin Chamberlain, who, in 1917, made a most significant
confession by stating on an important occasion that "India will not
remain, and ought not to remain content to be a hewer of wood and a
drawer of water for the rest of the Empire."
To our simple minds, not accustomed to the anomalies of official life,
it seems inexplicable how, after these candid admissions, the authors
could have any hesitation in recommending the only remedy by which
India's wrong could be righted and her economic rights secured in the
future--viz., fiscal autonomy.
In Paragraph 335 the authors of the report give the genesis of the
Swadeshi boycott movement of 1905, and very pertinently observe that "in
Japanese progress and efficiency" the educated Indians see "an example
of what could be effected by an Asiatic nation free of foreign control,"
or in other words, of what could be achieved by India, if she had a
national government of her own interested in her industrial advance. Mr.
Montagu and Lord Chelmsford thus rightly observe that "English theories
to the appropriate limits of the State's activity are inapplicable in
India" and that if the resources of the country are to be developed the
Government must take action.
"After the war," add the authors, "the need for industrial development
will be all the greater unless India is to become a mere dumping-ground
for the manufactures of foreign nations which will then be competing all
the more keenly for the markets on which their political strength so
perceptibly depends. India will certainly consider herself entitled to
claim all the help that her Government can give her to enable her to
take her place as a manufacturing country; and unless the claim is
admitted it will surely turn into an insistent request for a tariff
which will penalize imported articles without respect of origin."
Further on the Report states:
"We are agreed therefore that there must be a definite change of
view; and that the Government must admit and shoulder its
responsibility for furthering the industrial development of the
country. The difficulties by this time are well-known. In the
past, and partly as a result of recent _swadeshi_ experiences,
India's capital has not generally been readily available; among
some communities at least there is apparent distaste for practical
training, and a comparative weakness of mutual trust; _skilled
labour is lacking_, and although _labour is plentiful, education
is needed to inculcate a higher standard of living and so to
secure a continuous supply; there is a dearth of technical
institutions; there is also a want of practical information about
the commercial potentialities of India's war products_. Though
these are serious difficulties, they are not insuperable; but they
will be overcome only if the State comes forward boldly as guide
and helper. On the other hand, there are good grounds for hope.
India has great natural resources, mineral and vegetable. She has
furnished supplies of manganese, tungsten, mica, jute, copra, lac,
etc., for use in the war. She has abundant coal, even if its
geographical distribution is uneven; she has also in her large
rivers ample means of creating water-power. There is good reason
for believing that she will greatly increase her output of oil.
Her forest wealth is immense, and much of it only awaits the
introduction of modern means of transportation, a bolder
investment of capital, and the employment of extra staff; while
the patient and laborious work of conservation that has been
steadily proceeding joined with modern scientific methods of
improving supplies and increasing output, will yield a rich
harvest in the future. We have been assured that Indian capital
will be forthcoming once it is realized that it can be invested
with security and profit in India; a purpose that will be
furthered by the provision of increased facilities for banking and
credit. Labor, though abundant, is handicapped by still pursuing
uneconomical methods, and its output would be greatly increased by
the extended use of machinery. We have no doubt that there is an
immense scope for the application of scientific methods.
Conditions are ripe for the development of new and for the revival
of old industries, and the real enthusiasm for industries which is
not confined to the ambitions of a few individuals but rests on
the general desire to see Indian capital and labour applied
jointly to the good of the country, seem to us the happiest
augury."
The views of educated India about fiscal policy have been very
faithfully reproduced in Paragraphs 341 and 342, which also we reproduce
almost bodily:
"Connected intimately with the matter of industries is the
question of the Indian tariff. This subject was excluded from the
deliberations of the Industrial Commission now sitting because it
was not desirable at that juncture to raise any question of the
modification of India's fiscal policy; but its exclusion was none
the less the object of some legitimate criticism in India. The
changes which we propose in the Government of India will still
leave the settlement of India's tariff in the hands of a
government amenable to Parliament and the Secretary of State; but
inasmuch as the tariff reacts on many matters which will
henceforth come more and more under Indian control, we think it
well that we should put forward for the information of His
Majesty's Government the views of educated Indians upon this
subject. We have no immediate proposals to make; we are anxious
merely that any decisions which may hereafter be taken should be
taken with full appreciation of educated Indian opinion.
"The theoretical free trader, we believe, hardly exists in India
at present. As was shown by the debates in the Indian Legislative
Council in March, 1913, educated Indian opinion ardently desires a
tariff. It rightly wishes to find another substantial basis than
that of the land for Indian revenues, and it turns to a tariff to
provide one. Desiring industries which will give him Indian-made
clothes to wear and Indian-made articles to use, the educated
Indian looks to the example of other countries which have relied
on tariffs, and seizes on the admission of even free traders that
for the nourishment of nascent industries a tariff is permissible.
We do not know whether he pauses to reflect that these industries
will be largely financed by foreign capital attracted by the
tariff, although we have evidence that he has not learned to
appreciate the advantages of foreign capital. But whatever
economic fallacy underlies his reasoning, these are his firm
beliefs; and though he may be willing to concede the possibility
that he is wrong, he will not readily concede that it is our
business to decide the matter for him. He believes that as long as
we continue to decide for him we shall decide in the interests of
England and not according to his wishes; and he points to the
debate in the House of Commons on the differentiation of the
cotton excise in support of his contention. So long as the people
who refuse India protection are interested in manufactures with
which India might compete, Indian opinion cannot bring itself to
believe that the refusal is disinterested or dictated by care for
the best interests of India. This real and keen desire for fiscal
autonomy does not mean that educated opinion in India is unmindful
of Imperial obligations...."
These admissions should put India's claims for fiscal autonomy beyond
the range of doubt and dispute, but so strange are the ways of modern
statesmanship that consistency and logic are not the necessary
accompaniments thereof.
The authors have advanced another very strong argument for the economic
development of India, viz., "military value," which makes the case
conclusive. This argument has been supplied by the Great War and is so
well known that we need not state it in their words.
If India is to prosper and take her legitimate place in the British
Commonwealth, and in the great family of Nations of the World, it is
absolutely necessary that she should be given complete fiscal freedom to
manage her own affairs, develop her own industries and do her own
trading. Considering her size and resources, it wounds her self-respect
and makes her feel exceedingly mean and small to go begging for alms and
charity every time there is a failure of rains and the cry of famine is
raised.
For a nation of 315 millions of human beings living in a country which
nature has endowed with all its choicest blessings, rich and fertile
soil, plenty of water and sun, an abundant supply of metals and coal,
willing labor, artistic skill and a power of manipulating for beauty and
elegance unexcelled in the world--to exist in pitiful economic
dependence is a condition most deplorable and most pathetic. We want no
charity, no concessions, no favors, no preference. What we most
earnestly beg and ask for is an _opportunity_.
For a synopsis of the findings and recommendations of the
Industrial Commission mentioned in this chapter see appendix 1.