England’s Prosperity—India’s Poverty
Viscount Rothermere has contributed a couple of articles to the “Evening News” (the first of which appeared on April 15th) under the heading “If we lose India——”
The first article concludes as follows :
“Nowhere in the world, therefore, is it brought home to one more vividly than in Portugal what India means to Britain.
Here is a country that was once, like ours, the proud Mistress of the Seas. She has now sunk to the third rank among the nations of Europe. What raised her to the first place was her connection with India. What brought about her downfall was its loss.
Yet at this very moment there are ignorant and weak-kneed politicians in England deliberately working to lose our grip on that historic key to National Greatness.”
There is something to be said for the position put forward by Rothermere though not perhaps in the way he intended. A good deal of the early accumulation of wealth in England that was converted into capital and helped to speed on the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th Centuries was obtained by the wholesale plundering of India.
It had been the practice in India for all, from the highest lo the lowest, to lay by the means to help tide over periods of famine. For this purpose what silver they came by was buried to be later dug up and used. When the Portuguese, French and English adventurers entered India, like Columbus in the New World, they found an Eldorado which they plundered to the best of their abilities ; the last and most .successful plunderers were the British. Brook Adams in “The Law of Civilization and Decay,” writes: “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” (page 263). The way the booty was obtained is explained in some detail by Adams, from whom the following extracts are taken :
“Upon the plundering of India there can be no better authority than Macaulay, who held high office at Calcutta when the administration of Hastings was still remembered; and who wrote more as a minister than as a historian. He has told how after Plassey “the shower of wealth” began to fall, and he has described Clive’s own gains : “We may safely affirm, that no Englishman who started with nothing has ever, in any line of life, created such a fortune at the early age of thirty-four.” But the takngs of Clive, either for himself or for the Government, were trifling compared to the wholesale robbery and spoliation which followed his departure, when Bengal was surrendered a helpless prey to a myriad of greedy officials. These officials were absolute, irresponsible, and rapacious, and they emptied the private hoards. Their only thought was to wring some hundreds of thousands of pounds out of the natives as quickly as possible, and hurry home to display their wealth.
“Enormous fortunes were thus rapidly accumulated at Calcutta, while thirty millions of human beings were reduced to the extremity of wretchedness
Thus treasure in oceans flowed into England through private hands, but in India the affairs of the Company (the East India Company) went from bad to worse. Misgovernment impoverished the people, the savings of long years of toil were exhausted, and when, in 1770, a drought brought famine, the resources of the people failed, and they perished by millions : “the very streets of Calcutta were blocked up by the dying and the dead.” Then came an outbreak of wrath from disappointed stockholders ; the landed interest seized its opportunity to attack Clive in Parliament; and the merchants chose Hastings to develop the resources of Hindustan.
Hastings was, indeed, a man fitted for the emergency, a statesman worthy to organise India on an economic basis. Able, bold, cool, and relentless, he grasped the situation at a glance, and never faltered in his purpose. If more treasure was to be wrung from the natives, force had to be used systematically. Though Bengal might be ruined, the hoards of neighbouring potentates remained safe, and these Hastings deliberately set himself to drain. Macaulay has explained his policy and the motives which actuated him.
How he (Hastings) obtained his money, the pledges he violated, and the blood he spilt, is known as few passages of history are known, for the story has been told by both Burke and Macauiay. How he robbed the Nabob of Bengal of half the income the Company had solemnly promised to pay, how he repudiated the revenue which the Government had covenanted to yield to the Mogul as a tribute for provinces ceded them, and how, in consideration of four hundred thousand pounds, he sent a brigade to slaughter the Rohillas, and placidly saw “their villages burned, their children butchered, and their women violated,” has been described in one of the most popular essays in the language. At his impeachment, the heaviest charge against him was that based on his conduct towards the princesses of Oude, whom his creature, Asaph-al-Dowlah, imprisoned and starved, whose servants he tormented, and from whom he wrung at last twelve hundred thousand pounds as the price of blood. By these acts, and acts such as these, the treasure which had flowed to Europe through the extermination of the Peruvians was returned again to England from the hoards of the conquered Hindoos.” (Pages 255-258.)
In 1901 a book by W. Digby was published entitled, “Prosperous British India.” In this book, which runs to 650 pages, Digby presented a detailed record of the terrible story of India’s connection with Britain, and the woe it has brought to the Indian population. He points out that millions of pounds have been drained from India with no return whatever, and gives what he contends is a conservative estimate, that there were, at the beginning of the twentieth century, 70 million continually hungry people in British India (page 85). He points out “that the Pioneer, the ever-ready apologist for British rule in India . . put the Indian people who are living ‘in extreme poverty’ at ‘one hundred millions.’ ”
On page 7 the same writer states :
“230,000,000 out of 231,085,132 people in British India have an income, before any taxation is imposed, of only about 12s. per head per annum, or less than one halfpenny per head per day.
Out of that 12s. at least 2s. 6d. are taken by way of taxation, or twenty per cent. of the total income.”
Digby points to the ruthless exploitation of the peasantry by the Government through taxation which ultimately put many of them deep in the clutches of the moneylender, in iilustration of which he writes :
“In one district in 1800 85 per cent. of the land revenue was directly paid to the Government officials by moneylenders, the cultivators being wholly without means to fulfil their obligations, while the leading medical journal in the world ( The Lancet June, 1901) through its correspondent in Bombay, estimates that nineteen milliins of British Indian subjects have, during the last decennium of the nineteenth century, died of starvation, and one million from plague.” (Page 64.)
As an illustration of how the impoverishment of the people under British rule had lessened the power of resistance to the forces of nature, Digby points to the fact that while between 1800 and 1825 there were, only four famines, between 1875 and 1900 there were twenty-two famines.
Digby supports his case by masses of evidence drawn from official sources.
Another writer, Dadabhai Naoroji, provides evidence of a similar kind in a book entitled, “Poverty and Un-British Rule in India.” In 1928 Sir Stanley Reed writes, in “India: the new Phase,” “The poverty of Ihe Indian peasant still dominates the situation.”
Such has been the nature and result of British exploitation in India. Is it any wonder that part of the population gives ready ear to those who urge (for their own private ends in the main) that India should rid itself of the foreign exploiters ?
To obtain an idea of the forces of work in India at present, and to grasp what lies behind the Nationalist movement it is necessary to understand something of India’s economic development, particularly during the last twenty years or so.
The following is a brief sketch to aid in understanding the present situation.
The economic revolution in India began about the middle of the last century. Until then India was made up of village communities of varying sizes. The artizans were village servants paid in kind by the local community to supply its needs. What trading existed was almost entirely by barter. Money was very little used until the British Government demanded the payment of the Government assessments in cash. The export trade was very small. The chief factor that kept India in the village community stage for such a long period was its comparative isolation from the outside world owing to lack of transport facilities. Roads were few and in such poor condition that they were impassable during rainy periods. Except at a few places along one or two of the larger rivers, navigation offered little help to internal traffic.
In a few years all this was changed.
Indian cultivators produced cotton on a small scale from early times and some of the more refined fabrics were exported to Europe. “With the cheapening of the cotton goods by the introduction of machinery in England, Indian products were unable to compete and the export declined. America was the principal source of England’s new cotton up to the American Civil War in the 1860’s. This event closed the ports of the Southern States to the export of cotton and produced a cotton famine in Lancashire. The eyes of English manufacturers immediately turned to India and feverish efforts were made to turn India into a cotton producing tributary of the Empire. In the ’50’s of the last century Lord Dalhousie was appointed Governor-General of India and at the instigation of the British Government he immediately set about ending India’s economic isolation. Cotton commissioners were appointed and roads and railway construction was pushed forward.
A Public Works Department was formed. Thousands of labourers were recruited from among the agricultural labourers, the poorer cultivators, village artizans and the weavers. The cotton cultivators were enabled to go ahead to meet the sudden tremendous demand for raw cotton as they were assured of security of tenure against the old village communal arrangement by the operation of the Land Settlement Act. Before 1860 a class of general casual labourers were practically unknown in India. After the new development schemes casual labour became a common feature of Indian life and the stagnation of centuries disappeared. Co-operative and forced labour of cultivators was replaced by wage labour.
The Government’s activity in India rapidly bore fruit. The first line of railway was opened to traific in 1854. Bv 1869 over 5,000 miles of railway were opened to traffic. Between 1859 and f806 the price of cotton rose more than threefold and the quantity available for export to England more than doubled. It rose from half a million bales in 1859 to one and a quarter million bales in 1865.
For a few years the effect of the American Civil War, together with the discoveries of precious metals in Australia, California, and Mexico, with the consequent rise in prices made cotton growing a profitable industry to the cultivators of the Indian cotton trade. The end of the Civil War and the resumption of export by America brought about a sharp fall in the demand for Indian cotton and the position of the Indian cultivators suddenly became very bad. Many prominent Bombay merchants, who had risen on the tide of prosperity, failed. At the same time the benevolent Government, who wished to re-imburse itself for its expenditure on development works, taking the period of prosperity as normal, raised the assessments for revenue purposes and helped the ruin of the peasants, who were compelled to resort to borrowing to meet the increased demands.
In 1875 the Government of India entered on a policy of more and more expenditure in military expeditions and establishments, and as the money had to be found by the Indian population, the burden of taxation pressed more and more heavily on the mass of the people, and the grip of the moneylenders tightened. The resulting distress was greater than had previously been known by the Indian people and was one of the earliest of the “benefits” of British rule in India. Before the coming of the British,, money-lending to cultivators was checked by the restrictions on the transfer of lands and by the refusal of the superior powers to aid money-lenders in recovering debts. But the British had driven a nail into the coffin of the old communal system by permitting the transfer of land and its absolute ownership, which the cultivators had never possessed before. It had also introduced a judicial system which gave the money-lender a great power over the debtor, and a Limitation Act, making the renewal of the debt-bond in short periods compulsory. The debtor was practically reduced to the position of a serf, and the money-lender had a tight grip on his land. Thus commenced the gradual transfer of the lands of the peasants to the money-lenders. In 1879 “the condition of the agriculturist was one bordering on extreme poverty” (see Gadgil—”Industrial Evolution of India”).
In the textile industries generally, as well as in the metal and other industries, the opening up of India by the improved transport facilities brought in the cheap products of the European manufacturers and ruined the finer industry of the village handicraftsman. With the extension of British rule over India, the easy flow of Indian life, interrupted, it is true, by periodical severe famines, was gone forever. India was drawn into the maelstrom of capitalist commerce and industry, and a large portion of its population was rapidly converted from co-operative cultivators and handicraftsmen into a replica of their Western brothers— wage-slaves. The opening up of the country had resulted in the killing of the native industry.
In the nineteenth century, European exploitation of Indian resources began with the introduction of indigo, tea and coffee plantations. These plantations were granted to Europeans and worked by Indian coolies drawn from different parts of India. During their transportation a large proportion of the coolies died, and when the others reached the gardens their miseries were aggravated by the ill-treatment of their employers. The early planting speculations exhibited familiar features of capitalist commercial investment. Land companies were formed, which sold land that existed in places impossible of cultivation. In many cases the surveying had been purely fanciful and the buyer found that the land he had bought in no way resembled the specifications, and was situated in a district occupied by hostile tribes who would have very rapidly claimed his head if he had attempted to claim the land. After 1860, plantations sprang up everywhere.
Factory industry also commenced about this period and represents another of the “benefits” conferred on India by British rule. The cotton boom and the corresponding reckless floating of companies for all purposes was followed by the inevitable crisis and the collapse of credit in 1865. India was now experiencing for the first lime the inevitable accompaniment of capitalist rule. Industry did not recover until 1871. By 1879 there were 56 cotton mills in India, employing 43,000 people, most ol them situated in the Bombay district. In 1882 there were 20 jute mills, employing 20,000 people, nearly all of them in the vicinity of Calcutta.
Coal mining also began to grow alongwith the cotton and jute industries, and in 1880 employed 20,000 people.
The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 was an important factor in the increase in India’s export trade, and between 1880 and 1895 there was a tremendous increase in the export of Indian raw products.
By 1898 the number of cotton mills had risen to 144, and the people employed to 139,578. The export of Indian yarn rose from 26,701,716 Ib. in 1879 to 170,518,804 Ib. in 1890. In the jute industry and in coal mining there was a corresponding growth. The export of coal from India commenced in 1900, and by 1894 had reached nearly 54,000 tons. The tea industry was also rapidly growing, but the system of recruiting labour for it was denounced by a member of the Tea and Coal Labour Commission as a “vile pest to society.”
Along with the growth of the commerce and industry there was also growing up a landless labour class, and in 1891 the first Factory Act was passed, against the opposition of the manufacturers. This Act only provided for the regulation of the working hours of children below the age of twelve. The working hours of children between seven and twelve years of age were limited to nine hours.. There were no sanitary provisions. The Act only applied to factories employing 100 or more hands and using mechanical power. Tea, coffee and indigo establishments were excluded from the operations of the Act.
The “benefits” of British rule, in India were accumulating !
It is interesting to notice the movement in favour of Factory Acts in India was instigated by Lancashire and Dundee, who complained that they were subject to unfair competition of India on account of the lack of a Factory Act. A further Act was passed in 1891, which was a slight improvement and raised the minimum age limit for children to nine years of age. In coal mining there was no regulation at all and women were largely employed in this industry.
As usual, many of the provisions of the Act were ignored, and in some mills men, women and children worked from sunrise till sunset. The following quotation from Gadgil gives a picture of the conditions at the time in the Kandesh industiy :—
“The evidence before the 1884 Factory Commission was of a terrible nature. One witness stated, “In the busy season—that is in March and April—the gins and presses sometimes work both night and day and the same set of hands work both night and day, with half-an-hour’s rest in the evening. The same set continue working day and night for about eight days.” It was all
the worse because the hands were mostly women. Another witness stated : “The women are looked on as part ol the gins, and they belong to the establishment, and two or three hours is longest time they can be absent out of twenty-three without any notice being taken of it.” After working eight days without stopping, they (the gins) are compelled to get another set of hands from Bombay! ” (Page 95.)
In Bombay the employers kept nearly three weeks’ wages in hand and paid monthly.
In the coal mining industry in Bengal, women and children were employed extensively underground.
GILMAC