Ranjit Singh and Jai
Singh
It seems clear that India became a
prey to foreign conquest because of the inadequacy of her own people and
because the British represented a higher and advancing social order. The contrast
between the leaders on both sides is marked; the Indians,for all their ability,
functioned in a narrow, limited sphere of thought and action, unaware of what
was happening elsewhere and therefore unable to adapt themselves to changing
conditions. Even if the curiosity of individuals was roused they could not
break the shell which held them and their people
prisoners. The Englishmen, on the other hand, were much more worldly wise,
shaken up and forced to think by events in their own country and in France and
America. Two great revolutions had taken place. The campaigns of the French revolutionary
armies and of Napoleon had changed the whole science of war. Even the most
ignorant Englishman who came to India saw different parts of the world in the
course of his journey. In England itself great discoveries were being made, heralding the
industrial revolution, though perhaps few realised their far-reaching
significance at the time. But the leaven of change was working powerfully and
influencing the people. Behind it all was the expansive energy which sent the British to distant lands.Those who had recorded the history of
India are so full of wars and tumults and the political and military leaders of
the day, that they tell us very little of what was happening in the mind of India
and how social and economic processes were at work. Only occasional and accidental glimpses
emerge from this sordid record. It appears that during this period of terror
the people generally were crushed and exhausted, passively submitting to the
decrees of a malevolent fate, dazed and devoid of curiosity. There must have
been many individuals, however, who were curious and who tried to understand
the new forces at play, but they were overwhelmed by the tide of events and
could not influence them. One of the individuals who was full of curiosity was
Maharaja Ranjit Singh, a Jat Sikh, who had
built up a kingdom in the Punjab, which subsequently spread to Kashmir and the
Frontier Province. He had failings and vices; nevertheless he was a remarkable man.
The Frenchman, Jacquemont, calls him 'extremely brave' and 'almost the first
inquisitive Indian I have seen, but his curiosity makes up for the apathy of
the whole nation.' 'His conversation is like a nightmare [Quoted by Edward
Thompson in ' The Making of Indian Princes' (1943), p. 158]. It must be
remembered that Indians as a rule, are a reserved
people, and more so the intellectuals amongst them. Very few of these would
have cared to associate then with the foreign military leaders and adventurers in
India, many of whose actions filled them with horror. So these intellectuals
tried to preserve their dignity by keeping as far as possible from the foreign
elements and met them only on formal occasions when circumstances compelled
them to do so. The Indians whom Englishmen and other foreigners usually met
were of the opportunist and servile class that surrounded them or the ministers,
frequently corrupt and intriguing, of the Indian courts. Ranjit Singh was not
only intellectually curious and inquisitive, he was remarkably humane at a time
when India and the world seethed with callousness and inhumanity. He built up a
kingdom and a powerful army and yet he disliked bloodshed. 'Never was so large an
empire founded by one man with so little criminality,' says Prinsep. He
abolished the death sentence for every crime, however heinous it might
be, when in England even petty pilferers had to face death. 'Except in actual
warfare,' writes Osborne, who visited him, 'he has never been known to take
life, though his own has been attempted more than once, and his reign will be found freer from
any striking acts of cruelty and oppression than those of many more civilized
monarches [Quotations taken from Edward Thompson: 'The Making of Indian
Princes' (1943),pp. 157, 158.].
Another but a different type of Indian
statesman was Sawai Jai Singh, of Jaipur in Rajputana. He belongs to a somewhat
earlier period and he died in 1743. He lived during the period of disruption
following Aurungzeb's death. He was clever and opportunist enough to survive
the .many shocks and changes that followed each other in quick succession. He
acknowledged the suzerainty of the Delhi Emperor. When he found that the advancing
Marathas were too strong to be checked, he came to terms with them on behalf of
the emperor. But it is not his political or military career that interests me.
He was a brave warrior and an accomplished diplomat, but he was something much
more than this. He was a mathematician and an astronomer, a scientist and a
town-planner, and he was interested in the study of history. Jai Singh built
big observatories at Jaipur, Delhi, Ujjain, Benares, and Mathura. Learning
through Portuguese missionaries of the progress of astronomy in Portugal, he
sent his own men, with one of the missionaries, to the court of the Portuguese King
Emmanuel. Emmanuel sent his envoy, Xavier de Silva, with De la Hire's tables to
Jai Singh. On comparing these with his own tables, Jai Singh came to the conclusion
that the Portuguese tables were less exact and had several errors. He
attributed these to the 'inferior diameters' of the instruments used. Jai Singh was of course fully
acquainted with Indian mathematics; he had studied the old Greek treatises and
also knew of recent European developments in mathematics. He had some of the
Greek books (Euclid, etc.) as well as European works on plane and spherical
trigonometry and the construction and use of logarithms translated into
Sanskrit. He also had Arabic books on astronomy translated. He founded the city
of Jaipur. Interested in town planning, he collected the plans of many European
cities of the time and then drew up his own plan. Many of these plans of the
old European cities of the time are preserved in
the Jaipur museum. The city of Jaipur was so well and wisely planned that it is
still considered a model of town-planning. Jai Singh did all this and much more
in the course of a comparatively brief life and in the midst of perpetual wars
and court intrigues, on which he was himself often involved. Nadir Shah's invasion
took place just four years before Jai Singh's death. Jai Singh would have been
a remarkable man anywhere and at any time. The fact that he rose and functioned
as a scientist in the typically feudal milieu of Rajputana and during
one of the darkest periods of Indian history, when disruption and war and
tumults filled the scene, is very significant. It shows that the spirit of scientific
inquiry was not dead in India and that there was some ferment at work which
might have yielded rich results if only an opportunity had been given to it to
fructify. Jai Singh was no anachronism or solitary thinker in an unfriendly and
uncomprehending environment. He was a product of his age and he collected a number
of scientific workers to work with him. Out of these he sent some in the
embassy to Portugal, and social custom or taboo did not deter him from doing
so. It seems probable that there was plenty of good material for scientific
work in the country, both theoretical and technical, if only it was given a
chance to function. That opportunity did not
come for a long time. Even when the troubles and disorders were over, there was
no encouragement of scientific work by those in authority.
The Economic Background
of India: the two Englands
What was the economic background of
India when all these far-reaching political changes were taking place? V.
Anstey has written that right up to the eighteenth century, 'Indian methods of
production and of industrial and commercial organization could stand comparison with those in
vogue in any other part of the world.' India was a highly developed
manufacturing country exporting her manufactured products to Europe and other
countries. Her banking system was efficient and well organized throughout the
country, and the hundis or bills of exchange issued by the great business
or financial houses were honored everywhere in India, as well as in Iran, and
Kabul and Herat and Tashkent and other places in central Asia. Merchant capital
had emerged and there was an elaborate network of agents, jobbers, brokers, and
middlemen. The ship building industry was flourishing and one of the flagships
of an English admiral during the Napoleonic wars had been
built by an Indian firm in India. India was, in fact, as advanced industrially,
commercially, and financially as any country prior to the industrial
revolution. No such development could have taken place unless the country had
enjoyed long periods of stable and peaceful government and the highways were
safe for traffic and trade. Foreign adventurers originally came to
India because of the excellence of her manufacturers which had a big market in Europe.
The chief business of the British East India Company in its early days was to trade with Indian goods in Europe,
and very profitable trading it was,
yielding enormous dividends. So efficient
and highly organized were Indian methods of production, and such was the skill of India's artisans and
craftsmen, that they
could compete successfully even with the higher techniques of production which
were being established in England. When the big machine age began in England,
Indian goods continued to pour in and had to be stopped by very heavy duties and,
in some cases, by outright prohibitions.
Clive described Murshidabad, in
Bengal, in 1757, the very year of Plassey, as a city 'as extensive, populous,
and rich as the city of London, with the difference that there are individuals in
the first possessing infinitely greater property than in the last.' The city of
Dacca, in eastern Bengal, was famous for its fine muslins. These two cities,
important as they were, were near the periphery of Hindustan. All over the vast
land there were greater cities and large numbers of big manufacturing and
trading centres, and a very rapid and ingenious system of communicating news and
market prices had been evolved. The great business houses often received news,
even of the wars that were going on, long before despatches reached the
officials of the East India Company.
The economy of India had thus advanced
to as high a stage as it could reach prior to the industrial revolution.
Whether it had the seeds of further progress in it or was too much bound up
with the rigid social structure, it is difficult to say. It seems quite
possible, however, that under normal conditions it would have undergone that change and begun to adapt itself,
in its own way, to th new industrial conditions. And yet, though it was ripe
for a change, that change itself required a revolution within its own framework.
Perhaps some catalytic agent was necessary to bring about that change. It is
clear that however highly organized and developed its pre-industrial economy
was, it could not compete for long with the products of industrialized
countries. It had to industrialize itself or submit to foreign economic
penetration which would have led to political interference. As it happened, foreign
political domination came first and this led to a rapid destruction of the
economy India had built up, without anything positive or constructive taking its
place. The East India Company represented both British political power and
British vested interests and economic power. It was supreme and, being a
company of merchants, it was intent on making money. Just when it was making money
with amazing rapidity and in fantastic quantities, Adam Smith wrote about it in
'The Wealth of Nations' in 1776: 'The government of an exclusive company of merchants
is perhaps the worst of all governments for any country whatever’. Though the
Indian merchant and manufacturing classes were rich and spread out all over the
country, and even controlled the economic structure, they had no political
power. Government was despotic and still largely feudal. In fact, it was
probably more feudal than it had been at some
previous stages of Indian history. Hence there was no middle class strong
enough, or even consciously thinking of seizing power, as in some western
countries. The people generally had grown apathetic and servile. There was thus a gap which had to be filled
before any revolutionary change could take place. Perhaps this gap had been
produced by the static nature of Indian society which refused to change in a
changing world, for every civilization which resists change declines. That society, as constituted, had no
more creative part to play.A change was overdue.
The British, at that time, were
politically much more advanced. They had had their political revolution and had
established the power of Parliament over that of the King. Their middle
classes, conscious of their new power, were full of the impulse to expand. That vitality and energy, proof of a
growing and progressive society, were indeed very evident in England. They
showed themselves in many ways and most of all in the inventions and
discoveries which heralded the industrial revolution.And yet, what was the
British ruling class then? Charles and Mary Beard, the eminent American
historians, tell us how the success of the American revolution removed suddenly
from the royal provinces in America the
'British ruling class—a class accustomed to a barbarous criminal code, a narrow
and intolerant university system, a government conceived as a huge aggregation of
jobs and privileges, a contempt of men and women who toiled in field and shop, a denial of
education to the masses, an established religion forced alike on Dissenters and
Catholics, a dominion of squire and parson in counties and villages, callous
brutality in army and navy, a scheme
of primogeniture buttressing the rule of the landed gentry, a swarm of hungry
placemen offering sycophancy to the king in exchange for offices, sinecures,
and pensions, and a constitution of church and state so ordered as to fasten
upon the masses this immense pile of pride and plunder. From the weight of this
mountain the American revolutionists delivered the colonial subjects of the
British Crown. Within a decade or two after that emancipation they accomplished
reforms in law and policy which required 100 years or more of persistent
agitation to effect in the mother
country—reforms which gave to the statesmen who led in the agitation their title
to immortality in English history' ['The Rise of American Civilization'
(1928), Volume I, p. 292].
The American Declaration of
Independence, that landmark in freedom's history, was signed in 1776, and six
years later the colonies separated from England and began their real
intellectual, economic, and social revolution. The land system,that had grown up under British inspiration and after
the model of England, was completely transformed. Many privileges were
abolished and the large estates confiscated and then distributed in small lots.
A stirring period of awakening and intellectual and economic activity followed.
Free America, rid of feudal relics and foreign control, marched ahead with
giant strides.
In France, the great revolution
smashed the Bastille, symbol of the old order, and swept away the king and
feudalism and declared the rights of man to the world. And in England then?
Frightened by these revolutionary changes in America and France, England became
even more reactionary, and her fierce and barbarous penal code became even more
savage. When George III came to the English throne in 1760 there were about 160
offences for which men, women, and children were put to death. By the time his
long reign ended in 1820, nearly a hundred new offences, carrying the death
penalty, were added to this terrible list. The ordinary soldier in the British army
was treated worse than a beast of the field, with a brutality and inhumanity
that horrify. Death sentences were common and commoner still was flogging,
inflicted in public, flogging up to several hundred lashes, till death
sometimes intervened or the mangled body of the sufferer, just surviving, told
the story to his dying day. In this matter as in many others involving humanity
and respect for the individual and the group, India was far more
advanced and had a higher
civilization. There was more literacy in India then than in England or the rest
of Europe, though the education was strictly traditional. Probably there were
more civic amenities also. The general condition of the masses in Europe was very backward and deplorable and
compared unfavourably with the conditions prevailing in India. But there was
this vital difference: new forces and living currents were working invisibly in
western Europe, bringing changes in their train; in India, conditions were far more static. England
came to India. When Queen Elizabeth gave a charter to the East India Company in
1600, Shakespeare was alive and writing. In 1611 the Authorized English edition
of the Bible was issued; in 1608 Milton was born. There followed Hampden and Cromwell
and the political revolution. In 1660 the Royal Society of England, which was
to advance the cause of science so much, was organized. A hundred years later,
in 1760, the flying shuttle was invented, and there followed in quick
succession the spinning jenny, the steam engine, and the power loom.
Which of these two Englands came to
India? The England of Shakespeare and Milton, of noble speech and writing and
brave deed, of political revolution and the struggle for freedom, of science and
technical progress, or the England of the savage penal code and brutal behavior, of entrenched
feudalism and reaction?. For there were two Englands, just as in every country
there are these two aspects of national character and civilization. 'The discrepancy
in England,' write Edward Thompson, 'between the highest and the ordinary levels of our
civilization, has always been immense; I doubt if there is anything like it in
any country with which we should wish to be compared and it is a discrepancy that lessens so slowly that it
often seems hardly to lessen at all ['Making of Indian Princes' (1903), p.
264].
The two Englands live side by side,
influencing each other, and cannot be separated; nor could one of them come to
India forgetting completely the other. Yet in every major action one plays the
leading role, dominating the other, and it was inevitable that the wrong England should play
that role in India and should come in contact with and encourage the wrong
India in the process. The independence of the United States of America is more
or less contemporaneous with the loss of freedom by India. Surveying the past
century and a half, an Indian looks somewhat wistfully and longingly at the
vast progress made by the United States during this period, and compares it
with what has been done and what has not been done in his own country. It is
true no doubt that the Americans have many virtues
and we have many failings, that America offered a virgin field and an almost
clean slate to write upon while we were cluttered up with ancient memories and
traditions. And yet perhaps it is not inconceivable that if Britain had not undertaken this great
burden in India and, as she tells us, endeavored for so long to teach us the
difficult art of self-government, of which we had been so ignorant, India might
not only have been freer and more prosperous, but also far more advanced in science and art and all
that makes life worth living.
C H A P T E R S E V E
N
T H E L A S T P H A S E (1)
Consolidation of
British Rule and Rise of Nationalist Movement
The Ideology of Empire. The New Caste 'OUR
WRITING OF INDIA'S HISTORY IS PERHAPS RESENTED MORE THAN anything else we
have done'—so writes an Englishman well acquainted with India and her history.
It is difficult to say what Indians have resented most in the
record of British rule in India; the list is long and varied. But it is true
that British accounts of India's history, more especially of what is called the
British period, are bitterly resented. History is almost always written by the victors and conquerors and gives their
viewpoint; or, at any rate, the victors' version is given prominence and holds
the field. Very probably all the early records we have of the Aryans in India, their
epics and traditions, glorify the Aryans and are unfair to the people of the country whom they
subdued. No individual can wholly rid himself of his racial outlook and cultural
limitations, and when there is conflict between races and countries even an attempt
at impartiality is considered a betrayal of one's own people.War, which is an extreme
example of this conflict, results in a deliberate throwing overboard of all fairness
and impartiality so far as the enemy nation is concerned; the mind coarsens and
becomes closed to almost all avenues of approach except one. The overpowering need of the moment is
to justify one's own actions and condemn and blacken those of the enemy. Truth
hides somewhere at the bottom of the deepest well and falsehood, naked and
unashamed, reigns almost supreme Even when actual war is not being waged there
is often potential war and conflicts between rival countries and interests. In
a country dominated by an alien power that conflict is inherent and continuous and
affects and perverts people's thoughts and actions; the war mentality is never
wholly absent. In the old days when war and its consequences, brutality and
conquest and enslavement of a people, were accepted as belonging to the natural
order of events, there was no particular need to cover them or justify them from
some other point of view. With the growth of higher standards the need for
justification has arisen, and this leads to a perversion of facts, sometimes
deliberate, often unconscious. Thus hypocrisy pays its tribute to virtue, and a
false and sickening piety allies itself to evil deeds.
In any country, and especially in a
huge country like India with its complicated history and mixed culture, it is
always possible to find facts and trends to justify a particular thesis, and
then this becomes the accepted basis for a new argument. America, it is said, is a land of contradictions, in
spite of its standardization and uniformity. How much more then must India be
full of contradictions and incongruities. We shall find there, as elsewhere,
what we seek, and on this preconceived basis we can build up a structure of belief and opinion. And yet that
structure will have untrue foundations and will give a false picture of
reality. Recent Indian history, that is the history of the British period, is so connected with present-day
happenings that the passions and prejudices of to-day powerfully influence our
interpretation of it. Englishmen and Indians are both likely to err, though
their errors will lie in opposite directions. Far the greater part of the records
and papers out of which history takes shape and is written comes from British
sources and inevitably represents the British point of view. The very
circumstances of defeat and disruption prevented the Indian side of the story
from being properly recorded, and many of the records that existed suffered
destruction during the great Revolt of 1857. The papers that survived were
hidden away in family archives and could not be published for fear of
consequences. They remained dispersed, little known, and many perished in the manuscript stage from
the incursion of termites and other insects which abound in the country. At a
later stage when some of these papers were discovered they threw a new light on
many historical incidents. Even British-written Indian history had to be
somewhat modified, and the Indian conception, often very different from the
British, took shape. Behind this conception lay also a mass of tradition and
memories, not of the remote past but of a period when our grandfathers and
great-grandfathers were the living witnesses and often the victims of events.
As history this tradition may have little value, but it is important as it enables
us to understand the background of the Indian mind to-day.
The villain of the British in India is
often a hero to Indians, and those whom
the British have delighted to honor and reward are often traitors and quislings
in the eyes of the great majority of the Indian people. That taint clings to
their descendants. The history of the American Revolution has been differently written
by Englishmen and Americans, and even to-day when old passions have subsided
and there is friendship between the two peoples each version is resented
by the other party. In our own day Lenin was a monster and a brigand to many
English statesmen of high repute, yet millions have considered him as a savior
and the greatest man of the age. These comparisons will give us some faint idea of the
resentment felt by Indians at being forced to study in their schools and
colleges so-called histories which disparage India's past in every way, vilify
those whose memory they cherish, and honor and glorify the achievements of
British rule in India.
Gopal Krishna Gokhale once wrote in
his gently ironical way of the inscrutable wisdom of Providence which had
ordained the British connection for India. Whether it was due to this inscrutable
wisdom or to some process of historic destiny or just chance, the coming of the
British to India brought two very different races together; or, at any rate, it
should have brought them together, but as it happened they seldom approached
each other and their contacts were
indirect. English literature and English political thought influenced a tiny
fringe of those who had learned English. But this political thought, though
dynamic in its context, had no reality in India then. The British who came to India were not political or social
revolutionaries; they were conservatives representing the most reactionary
social class in England, and England was in some ways one of the most
conservative countries in Europe.
The impact of western culture on India
was the impact of a dynamic society, of a 'modern' consciousness, on a static
society wedded to medieval habits of thought which, however sophisticated and
advanced in its own way, could not progress because of its inherent
limitations. And, yet, curiously enough the agents of this historic process
were not only wholly unconscious of their mission in India but, as a class,
actually represented no such process. In England their class fought this
historic process but the forces opposed to them were too
strong and could not be held back. In India they had a free field and were
successful in applying the brakes to that very change and progress which, in
the larger context, they represented. They encouraged and consolidated the
position of the socially reactionary groups in India, and opposed all those who worked for political and
social change. If change came it was in spite of them or as an incidental and
unexpected consequence of their activities. The introduction of the steam
engine and the railway was a big step towards a change of the mediaeval structure,
but it was intended to consolidate their rule and facilitate the exploitation for their own benefit
of the interior of the country. This contradiction between the deliberate
policy of the British authorities in India and some of its unintended
consequences produces a certain confusion and masks that policy itself. Change came
to India because of this impact of the west, but it came almost in spite of the
British in India. They succeeded in slowing down the pace of that change to
such an extent that even to-day the transition is very far from complete.
The feudal landlords and their kind
who came from England to rule over India had the landlord's view of the world.
To them India was a vast estate belonging to the East India Company, and the
landlord was the best and the natural representative of his estate and his
tenants. That view continued even after the East India Company handed over its
estate of India to the British Crown, being paid very handsome compensation at India's cost. (Thus began the
public debt of India. It war. India's purchase money, paid by India.) The
British Government of India then became the landlords (or landlords' agents). For
all practical purposes they considered themselves 'India', just as the Duke of
Devonshire might be considered 'Devonshire' by his peers. The millions of
people who lived and functioned in India were just some kind of landlord's
tenants who had to pay their rents and cesses and to keep their place in the
natural feudal order. For them a challenge to that order was an offence against
the very moral basis of the universe and a denial of a divine dispensation. This
somewhat metaphysical conception of British rule in India has not changed
fundamentally, though it is expressed differently now. The old method of
obvious rack-renting gave place to more subtle and devious devices. It was
admitted that the landlord should be benevolent towards his tenantry and should seek to advance their
interests. It was even agreed that some of the more loyal and faithful among
the tenants should be promoted to the estate office and share in a subordinate
way in the administration. But no challenge to the system of landlordism could be tolerated. The estate must
continue to function as it used to even when it changed hands. When pressure of
events made some such change inevitable, it was stipulated that all the
faithful employees in the estate office should continue, all the old and new
friends, followers and dependants of the landlord should be provided for, the
old age pensioners should continue to draw their pensions, the old landlord
himself should now function as a benevolent patron and adviser of the estate,
and thus all attempts to bring about essential
changes should be frustrated. This sense of identifying India with their own
interests was strongest in the higher administrative services, which were
entirely British. In later years these developed in that close and well-knit corporation called the Indian Civil
Service—'the world's most tenacious trade union,' as it has been called by an
English writer. They ran India, they were India, and anything that was
harmful to their interests must of necessity be injurious to India. From the
Indian Civil Service and the kind of history and record of current events that
was placed before them, this conception spread in varying degrees to the
different strata of the British people. The ruling class naturally shared it in
full measure, but even the worker and the farmer were influenced by it to some
slight extent, and felt, in spite of their own subordinate position in their
own country, the pride of possession and empire. That same worker or farmer if
he came to India inevitably belonged to the ruling class
here. He was totally ignorant of
India's history and culture and he accepted the prevailing ideology of the
British in India, for he had no other standards to judge by or apply. At the
most a vague benevolence filled him, but that was strictly conditioned within that
framework. For a hundred years this ideology permeated all sections of the
British people, and became, as it were, a national heritage, a fixed and almost
in alterable notion, which governed their outlook on India and imperceptibly
affected even their domestic outlook. In our own day that curious group which
has no fixed standards or principles or much knowledge of the outside world,
the leaders of the British Labour Party, have usually been the staunchest
supporters of the existing order in India.Sometimes a vague sense of uneasiness
fills them at a seeming contradiction between their domestic and colonial
policy, between their professions and practice, but, considering themselves above
all as practical men of commonsense, they sternly repress all these stirrings
of conscience. Practical men must necessarily base themselves on established
and known practice, on existing conditions, and not take a leap into the dark
unknown merely because of some principle or untested theory.
Viceroys who come to India direct from
England have to fit in with and rely upon the Indian Civil Service structure.
Belonging to the possessing and ruling class in England, they have no
difficulty whatever in accepting the prevailing I.C.S. outlook, and their
unique position of absolute authority, unparalleled elsewhere, leads to subtle
changes in their ways and methods of expression. Authority corrupts and
absolute authority corrupts absolutely, and no man in the wide world to-day has
had or has such absolute authority over such large number of people as The
British Viceroy of India. The Viceroy speaks in a manner such as no Prime Minister
of England or President of the United States can adopt. The only possible
parallel would be that of Hitler. And
not the Viceroy only, but the British members of his Council, the Governors,
and even the smaller fry who function as secretaries of departments or
magistrates. They speak from a noble and unattainable height, secure not only
in the conviction that what they say and do is right, but that it will have to
be accepted as right whatever lesser mortals may imagine, for theirs is the
power and the glory. Some members of the Viceroy's Council are appointed direct
from England and do not belong to the Indian Civil Service. There is usually a
marked difference in their ways and utterances from those of the Civil Service.
They function easily enough in that framework, but they cannot quite develop
that superior and self-satisfied air of assured authority. Much less can the
Indian members of the Council (a fairly recent addition), who are obvious
supers, whatever their numbers or intelligence. Indians belonging to the Civil
Service, whatever their rank in the official hierarchy, do not belong to the
charmed circle. A few of them try to ape
the manners of their colleagues without much success; they become rather
pompous and ridiculous.
The new generation of British members
of the Indian Civil Service are, I believe, somewhat different in mind and
texture from their predecessors. They do not easily fit into the old framework,
but all authority and policy flow from the senior members and the newcomers make no difference.
They have either to accept the established order or, as has sometimes happened,
resign and return to their homeland. I remember that when I was a boy the
British-owned newspapers in India were full of official news and utterances; of
service news, transfers and promotions; of the doings of English society, of polo, races, dances, and
amateur theatricals. There was hardly a word about the people of India, about
their political, cultural, social, or economic life. Reading them one would
hardly suspect that they existed. In Bombay there used to be
quadrangular cricket matches between four elevens made up respectively of
Hindus, Moslems, Parsees, and Europeans. The European eleven was called Bombay
Presidency; the others were just Hindus, Moslems, Parsees. Bombay was thus
essentially represented by the Europeans; the others, one would imagine, were
foreign elements who were recognized for this purpose. These quadrangular matches
still take place, though there is much argument about them, and a demand that elevens should
not be chosen on religious lines. I believe that the 'Bombay Presidency' team
is now called 'European.' English clubs in India usually have territorial
names—the Bengal Club, the Allahabad Club, etc. They arc confined to Britishers, or rather to Europeans.
There need be no objection to territorial designation, or even to a group of
persons having a club for themselves and not approving of outsiders joining it.
But this designation is derived from the old British habit of considering that they are the real
India that counts, the real Bengal, the real Allahabad. Others are just
excrescences, useful in their own way if they know their places, but otherwise
a nuisance. The exclusion of non-Europeans is far more a racial affair than a
justifiable means for people with cultural affinities to meet together in their
leisure moments for play and social intercourse, without the intrusion of other
elements. For my part I have no objection to exclusive
English or European clubs, and very few Indians would care to join them; but
when this social exclusiveness is clearly based on racialism and on a ruling class
always exhibiting its superiority and un approachability, it bears another
aspect. In Bombay there is a well-known club which did not allow and so far as
I know, does not allow, an Indian (except as a servant) even in its visitors'
room, even though he might be a ruling prince or a captain of industry. Racialism
in India is not so much English versus Indian; it is European as opposed to
Asiatic. In India every European, be he German, or Pole, or Rumanian, is
automatically a member of the ruling race. Railway carriages,
station retiring-rooms, benches in parks, etc., are marked 'For Europeans
Only.' This is bad enough in South Africa or elsewhere, but to have to put up
with it in one's own country is a humiliating and exasperating reminder of
one's enslaved condition. It is true that a gradual change has been taking
place in these external manifestations of racial
superiority and imperial arrogance, but the process is slow and frequent
instances occur to show how superficial it is. Political pressure and the rise
of a militant nationalism enforce change and lead to a deliberate attempt to tone down the former racialism and
aggressiveness; and yet that very political movement, when it reaches a stage
of crisis and is sought to be crushed, leads to a resurgence of all the old
imperialist and racial arrogance in its extremist form.
The English are a sensitive people,
and yet when they go to foreign countries there is a strange lack of awareness
about them. In India, where the relation of ruler and ruled makes mutual
understanding difficult, this lack of awareness is peculiarly evident. Almost one would think that
it is deliberate, so that they may see only what they want to see and be blind
to all else; but facts do not vanish because they are ignored, and when they
compel attention there is a feeling of displeasure and resentment at the
unexpected happening, as of some trick having been played. In this land of
caste the British, and more especially the Indian Civil Service, have built up
a caste which is rigid and exclusive. Even the Indian members of the service do
not really belong to that caste, though they wear the
insignia and conform to its rules. That caste has developed something in the
nature of a religious faith in its own paramount importance, and round that
faith has grown an appropriate mythology which helps to maintain it. A combination of faith and vested
interests is a powerful one, and any challenge to it arouses the deepest
passions and fierce indignation.
The Plunder of Bengal
helps the Industrial Revolution in England
The East India Company had received
permission from the Mughal Emperor to start a factory at Surat early in the
seventeenth century. Some years later they purchased a patch of land in the
south and founded Madras. In 1662 the island of Bombay was presented to Charles II of England
by way of dowry from Portugal, and he transferred it to the company. In 1690
the city of Calcutta was founded. Thus by the end of the seventeenth century
the British had gained a number of footholds in India and established some
bridge-heads on the Indian coastline. They spread inland slowly. The battle of
Plassey in 1757 for the first time
brought a vast area under their control, and within a few years Bengal, Bihar,
Orissa, and the east coast were subject to them. The next big step forward was
taken about forty years later, at the beginning of the nineteenth century. This
brought them to the gates of Delhi. The third major advance took place after the last defeat of
the Marathas in 1818; the fourth in 1849, after the Sikh wars, completed the
picture. Thus the British have been in the city of Madras a little over 300
years; they have ruled Bengal, Bihar, etc., for 187 years; they extended their
domination over the south 145 years ago; they established themselves in the
United Provinces (as they are now called), central and western India about 125
years ago; and they spread to the Punjab ninety-five years ago. (This is being
written in June, 1944.) Leaving out the city of Madras as too small an area,
there is a difference of nearly 100 years between their occupation of Bengal
and that of the Punjab. During this period British policy and administrative methods
changed repeatedly. These changes were dictated by new developments in England as
well as the consolidation of British rule in India. The treatment of each newly
acquired area varied according to these changes, and depended also on the
character of the ruling group which had been defeated by the British. Thus in
Bengal, where the victory had been very easy, the Moslem landed gentry were looked
upon as the ruling classes and a policy was pursued to break their power. In
the Punjab, on the other hand, power was seized from the Sikhs and there was no
initial antagonism between the British and (he Moslems. In the greater part of India the Marathas had been opponents
of the British. A significant fact which stands out is that those parts of
India which have been longest under British rule are the poorest to-day. Indeed
some kind of chart might be drawn up to indicate the close connection between length of
British rule and progressive growth of poverty. A few large cities and some new
industrial areas do not make any essential difference to this survey. What is
noteworthy is the condition of the masses as a whole, and there can be no doubt that the poorest parts
of India are Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, and parts of the Madras presidency; the
mass level and standards of living are highest in the Punjab. Bengal certainly
was a very rich and
prosperous province before the British came.
There may be many reasons for these
contrasts and differences. But it is difficult to get over the fact that
Bengal, once so rich and flourishing, after 187 years of British rule,
accompanied, as we are told, by strenuous attempts on the part of the British
to improve its condition and to teach its people the art of self-government, is
today, a miserable mass of poverty-stricken, starving, and dying people.
Bengal had the first full experience
of British rule in India. That rule began with outright plunder, and a land
revenue system which extracted the uttermost farthing not only from the living
but also from the dead cultivators. The English historians of India, Edward
Thompson and G. T. Garrett, tell us that 'a gold-lust unequalled since the
hysteria that took hold of the Spaniards of Cortes' and Pizarro's age filled
the English mind. Bengal in particular was not to know peace again until she
has been bled white.' 'For the monstrous financial immorality of the English
conduct in India for many a year after this, Clive was largely responsible [
'Rise and Fulfilment of British Rule in India' by Edward Thompson and G. T.
Garrett (London, 1935).']. Clive, the great empire-builder, whose statue faces the India Office in
London to-day. It was pure loot. The 'Pagoda tree' was shaken again and again
till the most terrible famines ravaged Bengal. This process was called trade
later on but that made little difference. Government was this so-called
trade, and trade was plunder. There
are few instances in history of anything like it. And it must be remembered
that this lasted, under various names and under different forms, not for a few
years but for generations. The outright plunder gradually took the shape of legalized exploitation which,
though not so obvious, was in reality worse. The corruption, venality,
nepotism, violence, and greed of money of these early generations of British
rule in India is something which passes comprehension. It is significant that
one of the Hindustani words which has become part of the English language is
'loot.' Says Edward Thompson, and this does not refer to Bengal only, 'one
remembers the early history of British India which is perhaps the world's
high-water mark of graft.' The result of all this, even in its early stages,
was the famine of 1770, which swept away over a third of the population of Bengal
and Bihar. But it was all in the cause of progress, and Bengal can take pride
in the fact that she helped greatly in giving birth to the industrial revolution in
England. The American writer, Brooke Adams, tells us exactly how this happened:
'The influx of Indian treasure, by adding considerably to the nation's cash
capital, not only increased its stock of energy, but added much to its
flexibility and the rapidity of its movement. Very soon after Plassey, the
Bengal plunder began to arrive in London, and the effect appears to have been
instantaneous, for all authorities agree that the "industrial
revolution" began with the year 1770.... Plassey was fought in 1757, and
probably nothing has ever equaled the rapidity of the change that followed. In
1760 the flying shuttle appeared, and coal began to replace wood in smelting.
In 1764.....Hargreaves invented the spinning
jenny, in 1776 Crompton contrived the mule, in 1785 Cartwright patented the
power loom and in 1768 Watt matured the steam engine.... But though these
machines served as outlets for the accelerating movements of the time, they did
not cause the acceleration. In themselves inventions are passive.. . waiting
for a sufficient store of force to have accumulated to set them working. That
store must always take the shape of money, and money not hoarded but in motion.
Before the influx of the Indian treasure, and the expansion of credit which
followed, no force sufficient for this purpose existed....Possibly since the
world began, no investment has ever yielded the profit reaped from the Indian
plunder, because for nearly fifty years Great Britain stood without a
competitor [ Brooke Adams: 'The Law of Civilization and Decay' (1928), pp.
259-60, quoted by Kate Mitchel: 'India' (1943).
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