WHY IS INDIA POOR?
Only two hundred years ago India was the richest country in the world.
Today it is the poorest. The gorgeous palaces of its kings with their
enormous treasures were the objects of admiration and wonder for the
other nations of the world. Its flourishing industries and its highly
lucrative trade excited the greed and envy of the merchant classes
everywhere. Its merchant ships laden with cargoes of valuable spices,
silken and cotton manufactures, and precious jewels sailed into the
harbors of England and other countries of Europe. How the maritime
nations of the world vied with each other to possess the trade of the
East Indies and fought over concessions in the Empire of the mighty
Moghuls is a matter of common knowledge to all students of history. It
was the fame of India that excited the imagination of Columbus when he
set out westward on his historic voyage; it was only by accident that
he discovered America. He had undertaken his voyage in search for a new
route to the fabulous riches of India, so that America really owes her
discovery to the fame of that ancient land. Pick up any standard work
on mediæval history or classical literature and you will find that the
riches of India and the splendor of the courts of its kings had become
proverbial among the nations of Europe.
That fame of East Indian wealth which had inspired the careers of many
a European explorer, military commander, and financial genius had
totally disappeared long before the end of the nineteenth century; with
the disappearing of the Indian kings the splendor of their courts had
also vanished; with the extinction of the Indian fabric industries her
flourishing trade had ceased; and simultaneously with the loss of its
handicrafts and independence the prestige and prosperity of the nation
had come to an end. As early as the year 1900 A.D. India had begun to
be regarded by the historians as the poorest country in the world.
Her daily per capita income was fixed at three quarters of a penny
(equivalent to one and nine-sixteenths cents), and it was estimated
that the dawn of the twentieth century found among the inhabitants of
India one hundred and sixty million people who did not know what it
was to have one square meal a day. The percentage of literacy, which
included a knowledge of reading, writing, and arithmetic, had dropped
from thirty-three per cent in 1757 to less than four per cent in 1900.
What is the cause of this astounding change in the condition of an
ancient people like the East Indians? How did it happen that the same
period which witnessed a sudden rise in the prosperity of most other
nations of the world found in the Hindu nation an equal or even more
sudden fall? What was the cause of the ruin of India’s famous silk
and cotton industries and of the loss of its political and economic
independence? How did India drop from the highest rank to the lowest,
from the proudest position to the humblest?
For this state of things in India writers have offered different
explanations, several of which are so weak in nature that they would
not stand even a superficial examination. The downfall of the country
has been variously attributed to the low, immoral character of its
populace and the selfishness and cowardice of their leaders, to a large
increase in its population, to the inertia and extravagance of its
agricultural class, to the rigorous caste system, and to the hatred and
animosity which separates the different classes of its people. Some of
these evils were responsible in some measure for the political downfall
of India, but the reason for India’s economic ruin must be sought for
elsewhere. I maintain that the political subjugation of the country by
England, and the pursuance by the latter of a fiscal policy dictated
exclusively by the interests of British industries at the expense
of the native claims, forms the basis of India’s poverty and of its
consequent “ills and woes.”
We shall first examine, in order, the various reasons for the country’s
poverty which have been given by others, and which I believe to be
unsatisfactory. Later I shall attempt to prove the truth of my thesis,
that the cupidity of English financial and industrial lords has been
the direct cause of India’s ruin.
In the preceding pages much has been said concerning the moral
character of the people of India. Those who have lived among them and
have studied their habits and ideals at first hand know what heights
of moral and spiritual purity the inhabitants of that ancient land
once attained. Even in their present condition after generations
of political subjection and economic poverty, both of which have a
tendency to degrade the character of a people, it can be confidently
said that the people of India, when measured by any moral, ethical,
or cultural standard, will equal if not surpass any other people
throughout the entire world. In order to judge the moral condition of
this race at the time when their prosperity began to disappear, we
shall let those speak who knew them at first hand.
Warren Hastings, whose name has been immortalized through his
impeachment by Edmund Burke, had spent the best part of his life in
India. Starting his career as a low-paid assistant of the East India
Company, he had risen to the position of Governor-General of India. No
one knew the people of that country better than did Warren Hastings,
because of all foreigners he had the best opportunity to come in close
contact with them. Yet he was no unqualified friend of India, as was
fully disclosed during his impeachment by the House of Commons in
England. Twenty-eight years after his retirement from India, Warren
Hastings gave the following testimony before the British Parliament:
“I affirm by the oath I have taken that this description of them
[that the people of India were in a state of moral turpitude] is
untrue and wholly unfounded.... They are gentle, benevolent, more
susceptible of gratitude for kindness shown them than prompted
to vengeance for wrongs inflicted, and as exempt from the worst
properties of human passion as any people on the face of the
earth.”[35]
It has been affirmed that overpopulation is the great cause of India’s
backwardness. But is India really over-populated? Has its population
increased very largely during the last two hundred years? When we
compare the census reports of the various countries of Europe, we find
that several of them, England included, are more densely populated than
India. If we compare England and India, we shall find that the increase
in population in the latter has been no greater than that in the former
since their political connection. In fact, since the beginning of the
twentieth century the population of India has actually decreased, while
that of England and several other countries of Europe has increased.
That the agricultural class of India is a race of thrifty,
hard-working, abstemious, and experienced farmers who understand
thoroughly the art of tilling the soil, has been attested by many
foreigners, who had the opportunity to study their habits at close
range. The quality of their knowledge of the farming profession and
the extent of their initiative and perseverance may be judged from
the achievements of Hindu farmers in California. Here was a class of
agricultural people who had found it hard to make a decent living in
the “land of five rivers,” the Punjab. The Punjab is famous for its
fertile soil and has an irrigation system which is regarded as the
best in the world. Yet its agricultural population is in a state of
semi-starvation because of top-heavy taxation and other unprogressive
features of the country’s administration. The moment these farmers from
the Punjab were settled in the favorable environment of California they
made a success of farming which is acknowledged by friends and foes
alike. At the present time the anti-Asiatic laws of California prohibit
Hindus from farming, but it is a matter of common knowledge that Hindu
farm labor is paid higher wages in most sections than is American
labor, because the Hindus are “steady,” “hardworking,” “informed,” and
“dependable.”
Ignorance and sluggishness do not keep the Hindu farmer in a worse
condition than is his own class in other countries; the small area of
his holdings, excessive taxation, and lack of capital are continually
dragging him backward. Eighty per cent of the people of India depend
upon agriculture for their sole support. They live on the soil and
by the soil. In former times India was also the home of flourishing
cottage industries, that helped to increase the income of its enormous
rural population. The invasion by English manufactures, caused by the
selfish English fiscal policy for India, has completely uprooted the
fabric industries of the Indian villages, a change which in turn has
driven the entire people to the land for their livelihood, thereby
bringing the total ruin of their economic prosperity.
Lack of moral stamina in the people, overpopulation, ignorance or
sluggishness of the agricultural class are thus not the real causes of
India’s poverty. The economist who wishes to determine the cause of any
country’s poverty will have to ask himself the same questions which
the Hindu historian, R. C. Dutt, asked in regard to India a quarter
of century ago. “Does agriculture flourish? Are the finances properly
administered, so as to bring back to the people an adequate return for
the taxes paid by them? Are the sources of national wealth widened by a
Government anxious for the welfare of the people?”
If it is true that in the same ratio as English power advanced in India
economic prosperity of the country began to decline, we might as well
inquire into the nature of British rule in India. We shall restrict
our inquiry to the answers of the following two questions: “Why
England acquired India?” and “Why England holds India?” It is a fact
that England first came in contact with India through the medium of a
trading company, whose object in establishing its trade stations in
the Eastern country was profit-making. It is asserted that the British
rulers of India have been guided in their work of governing the country
by altruistic and humanitarian motives of a high quality. To what
extent this claim of the English nation is founded on facts we shall
examine presently. In any case such humanitarian principles as may
have inspired the English rule in India, were of a much later origin.
The primary reason for which England established its connections with
its Eastern dependency was one of pure commercial greed. At the time
when the East India Company was organized in England the people of
Europe had not been trained in the use of such terms as “altruism” and
“civilizing the backward peoples.” These high-sounding epithets are
products of much later times. The minds of the Directors of the East
India Company were ruled by thoughts of large dividends and big profits.
The simple facts of the case are that the British went over to India as
traders in order to make profit out of India. They found the people
of that vast and prosperous country divided among themselves, and
scenting the favorable opportunity, they set out cleverly to capitalize
the weakness of the natives for their own gain. Yet according to the
standards of the times nothing in their behavior was unusual or wrong.
The world had never actually been ruled by altruism. The East India
Company set the greedy, but innocent and confiding princes and peoples
of India one against the other, and using the natives as their tools,
became masters of the land. They have ever since held them under the
lash as chattels and slaves, “hewers of wood and drawers of water” for
Mother England. “Divide and rule” has been their constant motto. “Teach
and liberate” has never crossed their minds. Such phrases have been
invented by shrewd politicians merely to amuse and satisfy a class of
idealistic people in England and abroad who fall innocent victims to
artfully told lies. Such slogans were never intended as rules of state
policy. Study carefully the tragic result of this long and laborious
process of “liberating” a traditionally cultured and civilized people,
and you will be convinced of the truth. The motto of “Divide and rule,”
on the other hand, they used mercilessly to emasculate a nation of
helpless people, whom they made the innocent victims of their lust and
greed. For the details of this early exploitation and “treading under
foot” of the people of India read Edmund Burke’s impeachment of Warren
Hastings. Thus he closed his immortal condemnation of the barbarities
of his own people on the soil of India:
“I impeach Warren Hastings to high crimes and misdemeanors. I
impeach him in the name of the Commons’ House of Parliament,
whose trust he has betrayed. I impeach him in the name of the
English nation, whose ancient honor he has sullied. I impeach
him in the name of the people of India, whose rights he has
trodden underfoot, and whose country he has turned into a desert.
Lastly, in the name of every rank, I impeach the common enemy and
oppressor of all!”
Mr. Wm. Digby, another Englishman, who lived in India for over
twenty years as a member of the Indian Civil Service, gives valuable
historical and economic data on the subject of English Imperialism in
India, in his book ironically entitled _Prosperous British India_. The
book is a scholarly work on history and economics and deserves the
perusal of all thoughtful students. Mr. Digby shows that
1. Since the beginning of the English rule in the country the per
capita income of the people of India has been gradually diminishing.
The daily per capita income was
in 1850 2 pence
in 1880 1½ pence
in 1900 ¾ pence.
2. That in 1900, proportionately to income, the Indian subject of
the British Crown was taxed more than four times higher than was his
Scottish fellow-subject, and three times higher than his English
compeer. He quotes the following figures from the _Statesman’s
Yearbook_, 1900-1:
Proportion of Taxation to Income
Scotland with £45 India (outside 1,000,000
per head as average, well-to-do people) with
one-seventeenth. 12s. per head as average,
nearly one-fourth.
3. In 1900 thirty-four and one-fifth days’ income of every inhabitant
of India was carried to England in the form of home charges. “Was ever
such a crushing tribute exacted by any conqueror at any period of
history?”
4. Since the British have been in the country famines have been more
frequent, more widespread, and more deadly. “In the first quarter of
the nineteenth century there were reported only four famines in the
country, all of which were local. In the last quarter of the same
century there occurred twenty-two famines which were general and spread
all over the land.”
A great nation was held a slave, was looted and routed, and yet the
world never heard of such a thing as British injustice in India.
But, let us ask, how was this great injustice perpetrated, this huge
exploitation continued? This question is eminently sane and pertinent,
and should be truthfully answered.
The English people were too intelligent not to profit by the experience
of past conquerors and rulers over foreign races. As a result, they
did not evidently hold India down, but they kept her down. First, they
disarmed the natives totally. This procedure prevented armed rebellion,
and the world was saved the news of consequent repressions. In other
words, the English did not kill the people of India; they killed their
spirit. They robbed them of their land and of their daily meals,
and made them submissive and weak. The English novelist, Thackeray,
described as follows the early stages of English rule in India:
“It is very proper that, in England, a great share of the produce
of the earth should be appropriated to support certain families in
affluence, to produce senators, sages, and heroes for the service
and the defense of the State, or, in other words, that great
part of the rent should go to an opulent nobility and gentry,
who are to serve their country in Parliament, in the army and
navy, in the departments of science and liberal professions. The
leisure, independence, and high ideas, which the enjoyment of this
rent affords has enabled them to raise Britain to the pinnacle
of glory. Long may they enjoy it;--but in India, that haughty
spirit, independence, and deep thought, which the possession of
great wealth sometimes gives, ought to be suppressed. They are
directly adverse to our power and interest. The nature of things,
the past experience of all governments, renders it unnecessary to
enlarge on this subject We do not want generals, statesmen, and
legislators; we want industrious husbandmen....
“Considered politically, therefore, the general distribution of
land, among a number of small proprietors, who cannot easily
combine against Government, is an object of importance.”
This policy was followed in India with unwavering resolution and fatal
success.
It is an unfortunate fact of recorded history which no well-informed
person may ignore, that under British rule the sources of national
wealth in India have been narrowed in many ways. In the eighteenth
century India was a great manufacturing as well as a great
agricultural country. How its greatness disappeared totally, and it was
left as a very poor agricultural country only, has been explained by
many English and Indian writers. The decline of Indian industries has
been attributed to the pursuance of a policy of commercial greed on the
part of the British manufacturers. The English historian, H. H. Wilson,
remarks:
“The British manufacturer employed the arm of political injustice
to keep down and ultimately strangle a competitor with whom he
could not have contended on equal terms.”[36]
We shall not tax the patience of our readers with irritating details of
the ways in which this arm of political power was actually employed.
But as a specimen we shall relate some of the incidents which helped to
build the cotton fabric industry of England at the expense of India.
It was the time of the home and cottage industries, when individuals
or small groups of hand weavers owned their establishments and worked
their business on a coöperative plan. The English merchants found
they could not compete with the highly skilled and efficient Indian
weavers; so they resolved to eliminate them altogether. This is what
they did. The agents of the East India Company went to the village with
the county magistrate (himself an employee of the Company, because the
Company was then the Government), and called together all the weavers
of the village. The agent offered loans and advances to those weavers
who would work for the Company. When the weavers refused to accept
their offers, the agents of the Company forcibly tied the money in the
napkins of the weavers, as a sign of their acceptance. The agents then
drove the workers back to their homes until such time as the Company
should demand their services. Thus they were forced to leave their own
looms and to work in the Company’s factories. There they were paid such
low wages that many of them fled from their homes, and hundreds and
thousands of others cut their thumbs and forefingers in order to render
themselves immune from this forced labor.
By such means and others equally unfair “the prosperous class of Indian
weavers was made tradeless and homeless, and many were driven into
the jungle to starve and die.” At the same time England completed the
process of ruining the trade of India by charging an excise duty of
65% to 75% on Indian manufactures imported into England and admitting
English-made goods into British India free of duty. These statements
are not exaggerated. This procedure actually happened, and data
gathered by the English themselves is freely available. But should the
account be doubted when such and worse things happen in our own day
everywhere?
All the high offices of governmental control, civil and military, were
given over to Englishmen, and Indians were employed as menials and
clerks. To be explicit: during the first one hundred and twenty-five
years of British rule in India not one Indian sat on the provincial or
national executive councils of the country. Until after the World War
no Indian held the commission of a lieutenant colonel in the British
army of India. If during this period India was not governed for the
good of the Indians, it is no wonder. How full of meaning are the words
of John Stuart Mill:
“The government of a people by itself has a meaning and a reality;
but such a thing as government of one people by another does not,
and cannot exist. One people may keep another for its own use, a
place to make money in, a human cattle-farm to be worked for the
profits of its own inhabitants.
“It is an inherent condition of human affairs that no intention,
however sincere, of protecting the interests of others, can make
it safe or salutary to tie up their hands. By their own hands only
can any positive and durable improvement of their circumstances in
life be worked out.”[37]
Mr. Wm. Digby remarks on this account:
“Thus England’s unbounded prosperity owes its origin to
her connection with India, whilst it has, largely, been
maintained--disguisedly--from the same source, from the middle of
the eighteenth century to the present time. ‘Possibly, since the
world began, no investment has ever yielded the profits reaped
from the Indian plunder’ (Brooks Adams).
“What was the extent of the wealth thus wrung from the East
Indies? No one has been able to reckon adequately, as no one
has been in a position to make a correct tally of the treasure
exported from India. Estimates have been made which vary from
five hundred million pounds sterling to nearly one billion pounds
sterling. Probably between Plassey (1757) and Waterloo the
last-mentioned sum was transferred from Indian hoards to English
banks.... Modern England has been made great by Indian wealth,
wealth never proffered by its possessor, but always taken by
the might and skill of the stronger. The difference between the
eighteenth and twentieth centuries is simply that the amount
received now is immensely larger and is obtained ‘according to
law’....”[38]
Let me quote Mrs. Sarojini Naidu, the “nightingale of India,” as to
the effect of British rule in India: “Our arts have degenerated, our
literatures are dead, our beautiful industries have perished, our valor
is done, our fires are dim, our soul is sinking.”
All this has actually happened. Yet the world believes that England’s
mission in India is unselfish and holy, that she is there to save
the souls of a demoralized people and to educate an ignorant and
unprogressive nation. The nations have been made to believe that
without her influence there would be social and religious tyranny in
India, and that the weak would be left without a champion. The facts,
however, read differently. The people are poor and weak. They are
to a degree fanatic, and local conflicts occur occasionally between
religious groups. But do the English rulers of India prevent these
divisions or do they foster them? This is the important question.
The English are our masters. They make their laws as stringent as they
please; they hold their grip as tight as they wish. They say to us:
“People of India, you are weak. Weakness is recognized in our system
as a crime. Therefore you are doomed.” So they show the power in their
hands and use it as they will. But when they say to us: “People of
India, cease to quarrel and live in peace,” they are not only cruel but
unjust and hypocritical, for the quarrels are their own creation, and
our divisions they recognize as their main support. Says the Premier of
England, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald:
“As the red patches advanced over the map of India, sections
pulled themselves together to resist, but no power then existing
could develop that Indian cohesion which was necessary if the
new trading invader was to be hurled back. We were not accepted,
but we could not be resisted. India challenged, but could not
make her challenge good.... Moreover, we were not a military
conquering power imposing tribute and hastening hither and thither
in our minds. The invasion was not of hordes of men seeking new
settlements, nor of military captains seeking spoil, but of
capital seeking investment, of merchants seeking profit. It was
necessarily slow; it divided to rule, and enlisted Indians to
subdue India.”[39]
Perhaps the reader will now be ready to concede that England acquired
control over India and has succeeded in holding her mastery over the
country through the policy of “Divide and rule.” He may grant also that
the existing fabric industries of India have been destroyed by the
unfair use of political power in the interest of the growing British
manufactures. Then followed the invasion of the power loom in Europe
which completed the ruin of India’s cotton industry. In the first
place India had been impoverished to such an extent that she could
not find the necessary capital to utilize the latest inventions; and
when at last she did succeed in setting up steam mills their progress
was nipped in the bud through the imposition of an excise duty on all
home manufactures. Here was an evident inversion of the natural order
of things. When machinery began to be introduced into the country,
a protective tariff was required to assist the infant industries.
Instead, the foreign rulers of India imposed an excise duty on cotton
fabrics, while foreign fabrics continued to be admitted free of duty.
A similar mischievous policy was adopted in regard to the agricultural
industries of India. A government which has the welfare of the nation
in mind tries in every way to improve the condition of the governed by
increasing their sources of income. It grants its farmers subsidies,
helps them to improve the quality of their crops, and extends their
markets. What it exacts from them in the form of taxes is expended in
the improvement of their general condition. “It identifies itself with
the nation, and grows richer with it.”
In India from the time when the East India Company became the rulers
of the country, this natural process has been reversed. These foreign
rulers of India regarded their possessions as a “human plantation,” and
their policy was to extract from the people all that was possible in
order to swell the profits of the Company’s stockholders in England.
Taxes on agricultural land were placed at the highest possible point
in the beginning, and were then increased at every successive revenue
settlement. The over-assessment and collection of taxes with the most
callous disregard for the material condition of the farmers, plunged
the country into misery. Soon they began to flee from their houses
into the jungles, leaving the country desolate. India was visited by
the most horrible famines, and while natives died in the streets from
hunger, the Company’s agents had the gratification of reporting an
increased collection from land taxes. It is estimated that the famine
of 1770 carried away with it one-third of the entire population of
Bengal, and yet in the following year the land revenue of Bengal was
raised and actually collected in cash.
The two letters which were written from the Company’s Government in
India to its directors in England in the years 1771 and 1772 are of
peculiar interest in this matter.
Dated 12th February, 1771: “Notwithstanding the great severity of the
late famine and the great reduction of people thereby, some increase
has been made in the settlements both of the Bengal and the Behar
Provinces for the present year.”[40]
Dated 10th January, 1772: “The collections in each department of
revenue are as successfully carried on for the present year as we could
have wished.”[40]
It is needless to say that in making a collection of an increased
revenue, following a devastating famine, a great deal more ingenuity
was needed. Every sort of advantage was taken of the distress of the
people. Their crops were monopolized, and in most cases the seed for
their next year’s crops was sold to realize the Company’s revenue. The
hereditary owners of the lands were driven away from their holding, and
their properties were transferred to the highest bidders for the land
revenue collection.
A comparison between the land taxes claimed by the previous rulers of
India and by the East India Company may be made from the following
figures:
The total land revenue collected by the last Mohammedan ruler of Bengal
in 1764, the last year of his administration, was £817,533; within
thirty years the British rulers collected an annual land revenue of
£2,680,000 in the same province. During this interval the country
had been visited by two of the most terrible famines of its history.
Colonel Briggs wrote in 1830: “A land tax like that which now exists in
India, professing to absorb the whole of the landlord’s rent, was never
known under any Government in Europe or Asia.”[41]
Aside from the heavy assessment of the Government there were, more
disastrous still, the extortions and premiums of the Company’s
servants. Besides serving in the pay of the Company, each young clerk
or old veteran officer was ambitious to make a sudden fortune to be
carried with him to England. Nearly everyone of the Company’s servants
carried on his private trade. This evil was stopped, however, by Clive
in later years. English traders used all the tools at hand to take
improper advantage of their customers and of rival native traders.
A typical case of this injustice occurred during the controversy over
excise duty in the Province of Bengal between its Nawab, Mir Kasam,
and the Company’s servants. The English victory at Plassey (1757) had
greatly enhanced the prestige of the Company. In exchange for its
protection, the Nawab of Bengal granted to the East India Company the
right to carry on its export and import trade, free of duty, within his
territory. This right the Nawab granted to the trade of the Company
and not to the private trade of the officials of the Company. In spite
of the repeated complaints from the Nawab, however, the Company’s
servants continued to carry on their private business without the
payment of any duties into the treasury of the Nawab. This arrangement,
of course, helped the private traders to rear colossal fortunes in a
very short period, but the Nawab’s treasury soon felt severely the
loss of its revenue. Moreover, the suffering of the native merchants
who had to pay heavy duties on their goods and thus found it difficult
to compete with these law-breaking traders, reached a critical state.
Overwhelmed from all sides, and finding his complaints to the Company’s
agents unheeded, the generous Nawab in a moment of noble and royal
indignation abolished all inland duties. By this act he personally
lost a large income from his revenues, but he placed his subjects on
equal terms with the employees of the East India Company. What followed
will be scarcely believed by our readers. The Executive Council of
the Company at Calcutta protested against this action of the Nawab as
a breach of faith towards the English nation. “The conduct of the
Company’s servants upon this occasion,” says James Mill in his history
of India, “furnishes one of the most remarkable instances upon record
of the power of interest to extinguish all sense of justice, and even
of shame.” “There can be no difference of opinion,” writes another
English historian, H. H. Wilson, “on the proceedings. The narrow-minded
selfishness of commercial cupidity had rendered all members of the
council, with the two honorable exceptions of Vansitart and Hastings,
obstinately inaccessible to the plainest dictates of reason, justice
and policy.”[42] More comment upon this is unnecessary.
Here was a class of officials in India who regarded the country, which
they had been called upon to govern in the name of God Almighty, as
no other than a fishing pool. They declared that the purpose of their
government was to restore order in place of chaos, and justice instead
of corruption. But when one of the native princes, inspired by nobility
of heart, ordered a cancellation of his own revenues in order to
benefit his subjects, the government of the Company flared up in a rage
and called his act of unselfish benevolence a breach of faith against
the English nation. Edmund Burke was after all right when he spoke
about the East India Company’s officials thus:
“ ... The Tartar invasion was mischievous, but it is our
protection that destroys India. It was their enmity, but it is our
friendship. Our conquest there, after twenty years, is as crude as
it was the first day. The natives scarcely know what it is to see
the grey head of an Englishman; young men, boys almost, govern
there without society, and without sympathy with the natives. They
have no more social habits with the people than if they still
resided in England; nor, indeed, any species of intercourse but
that which is necessary to making a sudden fortune, with a view
to a remote settlement. Animated with all the avarice of age, and
all the impetuosity of youth, they roll in one after another,
wave after wave, and there is nothing before the eyes of the
natives but an endless, hopeless prospect of new flights of birds
of prey and passage, with appetites continually renewing for a
food that is continually wasting. Every rupee of profit made by
an Englishman is lost forever to India” (Edmund Burke in a speech
made in the House of Commons in 1783).”
After Plassey (1757) the English control over India began to expand
rapidly, and the East India Company acquired the real nature of
a government instead of a mere trading company. Gradually as the
political power of the Company grew in India and abuses crept in, the
English Parliament undertook to control all Indian affairs through
appointed representatives. This policy was carried out in so far that
on the eve of the Sepoy Mutiny (1857), which led to the transfer of the
Government of India to the British Sovereign, the English Parliament
already supervised the India affair through a cabinet minister and
a council board in England, and a governor-general appointed by the
British cabinet in India.
The resentment of the people of India against the British rule and
its consequent political and economic humiliations found its tragic
expression in the rebellion of 1857, commonly known as the Sepoy
Mutiny. The masses of the country led by the native army burst forth
in mad fury against the yoke of their foreign rulers. The rebellion
started in the United Provinces and at once spread like wildfire
throughout the British territories. Once again the British played the
natives against each other. The rebellion, which at one time threatened
the complete overthrow of the British power in the country, was crushed
with the assistance of Sikh regiments from Punjab. The suppression of
the rebellion involved a terrible loss of life, and some of the deeds
of horror which were committed by the infuriated English soldiery
remain as fresh in the minds of the Indian people to this day as they
were in 1857. The last of the Moghul emperors was deposed and all of
his heirs were fired from the mouths of cannon. Thousands of rebels
were hung, and their dead bodies were left hanging from the branches of
trees in order to excite terror in the minds of the populace. Kaye and
Malleson’s _History of the Mutiny_ gives the most horrible account of
the butchery which the English officers carried on during the bloody
days after the Mutiny in the most indiscriminate and barbarous fashion.
The authors of this memorable account of the Mutiny state: “Already
our military officers were hunting down the criminals of all kinds,
and hanging them up with as little compunction as though they had been
pariah-dogs, or jackals, or vermin of a baser kind.” So ferocious was
the temper of the white soldiers, and so strongly had the fierce hatred
against all “who wore the dusky livery of the East” possessed them,
that on one occasion in the absence of tangible enemies they turned
on their own camp-followers and murdered a large number of their loyal
and unoffending servants. Sir Charles Ball writes: “Every day we had
expeditions to burn and destroy disaffected villages and we had taken
our revenge. We have the power of life in our hands and I assure you,
we spare not.” Innocent old men and helpless women with sucking infants
at their breasts felt the weight of the white man’s vengeance just as
much as the vilest malefactors. It is recorded that in several places
cow’s flesh was forced by spears and bayonets into the mouths of Hindu
prisoners because the English knew that the Hindu so abhors cow’s flesh
that he will rather die than eat it. Kaye and Malleson write:
“Afterwards the thirst for blood grew stronger still. It is on
the records of our British Parliament, in papers sent home by the
Governor-General of India in Council, that the aged, women and
children, are sacrificed, as well as those guilty of rebellion.
They were not deliberately hanged, but burnt to death in their
villages--perhaps now and then accidentally shot. Englishmen did
not hesitate to boast, or to record their boastings in writings,
that they had ‘spared no one’, and that ‘peppering away the
niggers’ was very pleasant pastime, ‘enjoyed amazingly’. It has
been stated in a book patronized by high class authorities,
that ‘for three months eight dead-carts daily went their rounds
from sunrise to sunset to take down the corpses which hung at
crossroads and market-places’, and that ‘six thousand beings’ had
been thus summarily disposed of and launched into eternity.”[43]
Following the Sepoy Mutiny an act was passed in the British Parliament
by virtue of which the government of India was transferred from the
East India Company to the British Crown. The English King thus became
the ruler of India, but the people of India paid the price of purchase.
The shareholders of the Company were recompensed for this change, and
the amount paid to them was added to the national debt of India. The
government of the country changed hands, but virtually no change was
made in the policy. Even in the times of peace that followed the public
debt of India continued to increase. The new rulers were determined
to promote English industries at the expense of Indian manufacturers
just as had been done under the rule of the Company. India remained
henceforth a colony of the Empire for the production of raw materials
at very low prices in the English factories. The manufactured goods
were afterwards re-shipped to India for the native consumption. The
posts of dignity and high emolument in the government service continued
to be regarded by the Englishman as his sole monopoly. No confidence
was placed in the natives; they were given no positions of authority,
and were excluded from offices of responsibility as much as possible.
In other words, the interests of Indians were completely subordinated
to those of the Englishmen. “The roads to wealth and honor were closed
to the natives. The highest among them were considered unworthy of
those places of trust in the state employments which were held by
young English boys fresh from school. The springs of Indian industry
were stopped, and the sources of the country’s wealth were dried up.”
As a result of the direct British rule over India the public debt of
the country rose from £51,000,000 in 1857 to £200,000,000 in 1901.
The agricultural class of India, moreover, the backbone of national
prosperity in a country whose main occupation is agriculture, had
become so poor that in one district in 1900 85% of the land revenue
was directly paid to the Government officials by money-lenders, the
landowners being wholly unable to meet their obligations. It was
estimated by the leading medical journal of the world (_The Lancet_,
June, 1901) that during the last decimum of the nineteenth century
nineteen millions of British Indian subjects had died of starvation,
and one million from plague. And yet at the beginning of the twentieth
century according to the financial arrangements of the country half
of its total revenue was sent out of India to England each year. This
included the upkeep of the India office in London, pensions to retired
officials residing in England, and interest on public debts.[44]
With these facts in mind the reader will not wonder that India is
poor. Place any other country in the world under the same conditions.
Let her government be carried on by a foreign power with the complete
exclusion of the sons of the soil from positions of responsibility;
let her fiscal policy be determined by the parliament of a rival
commercial nation without a single representative of the governed
nation sitting in its councils; let its industry be crippled or
destroyed by a malicious use of political power by its foreign rulers;
let its agriculture be subjected to a heavy and uncertain land tax; let
half its total revenue be carried away annually to a foreign land; and
you will not be surprised if the most prosperous nation in the world
sinks in the course of a few years to the lowest depths of poverty and
degradation.[45]
A nation prospers if its government is wisely administered in the
interest of the people, if the sources of wealth are widened, and if
the proceeds from taxation are spent for the uplift of the people and
among the people. It is impoverished if its government is carried on
by an outside power for the purpose of exploitation; if the sources
of its wealth are narrowed from the crippling of its industries, and
if its revenues are largely remitted out of the country without an
economic return. Americans stand in awe before the single monopoly
of the Standard Oil Company. They are appalled by the magnitude and
tyranny of its power. They should remember that the Standard Oil
monopoly is a pigmy before the British monopoly of India. England has
exercised for nearly two hundred years exclusive and undivided control
over the affairs of India. She has had power to shape the destinies of
three hundred million people according to her will, being responsible
to no one but herself. She has held not only the government of India,
but its commerce, its finances, and its industry. In conclusion let
us repeat the poignant remark quoted earlier, “The national wealth of
India did not sprout wings and fly away. It had to be carried away.”
FOOTNOTES:
[35] Quoted from R. C. Dutt, _Economic History of British India_.
[36] Quoted from R. C. Dutt.
[37] Quoted from R. C. Dutt.
[38] _Prosperous British India._
[39] From _The Government of India_.
[40] Quoted from R. C. Dutt.
[41] Quoted from R. C. Dutt.
[42] Quoted from R. C. Dutt.
[43] Quoted from Lajpat Rai.
[44] Digby.
[45] Digby.