CHAPTER XIV

INDIA IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

WE propose in this concluding chapter to place before our readers some figures relating to India at the commencement of a new century. The figures have been compiled from the last published number of the Statistical Abstract, issued in the present year, 1903.

The Area and Population of India, according to the Census of 1901, are shown in the following tables.

British India.

Revenues and Expenditure.—The gross revenues of British India in 1901-2 amounted to £76,344,526. Deducting Railway and Irrigation Receipts, the nett revenues of British India were £53,580,985, or in round numbers 53½ millions sterling. The population of British India being under 232 millions, the taxation per head of population is very nearly 4s. 8d. per head.

Native States in India.

The income of the people of India, per head, was estimated by Lord Cromer and Sir David Barbour in 1882 to be 27 rupees. Their present income is estimated by Lord Curzon at 30 rupees. Exception has been taken to both these estimates as being too high; but we shall accept them for our present calculation. 30 rupees are equivalent to 40 shillings; and the economic condition of the country can be judged from the fact that the average income of the people of all classes, including the richest, is 40 shillings a year against £42 a year in the United Kingdom. A tax of 4s. 8d. on 40 shillings is a tax of 2s. 4d. on the pound. This is a crushing burden on a nation which earns very little more than its food. In the United Kingdom, with its heavy taxation of £144,000,000 (excluding the cost of the late war), the incidence of the tax per head of a population of 42 millions is less than £3 10s. The proportion of this tax on the earnings of each individual inhabitant (£42) is only 1s. 8d. in the pound. The Indian taxpayer, who earns little more than his food, is taxed 40 per cent. more than the taxpayer of Great Britain and Ireland.

The total expenditure for 1901–2 charged against Revenue was £71,394,282. Deducting Railway and Irrigation expenses, the nett expenditure was £49,650,229. Out of this total the Civil Departments and charges, in India and in England, cost £15,286,181; and the Army services cost £15,763,931.

Home Charges.—Returning once more to the Gross Expenditure of £71,394,282, we find that, out of this total, a sum of £17,368,655 was spent in England as Home Charges—not including the pay of European officers in India, saved and remitted to England. The Home Charges may be conveniently divided into the following heads:—

The largest items are Interest on Debt, Railways, and Civil and Military Charges. How the Indian debt was first created by the East India Company by an unjust demand of Tribute, and how it was increased by charging to India the cost of the Afghan and Chinese Wars, the Mutiny Wars, and the Abyssinian and Soudan Wars, has been shown in previous chapters. To what extent this debt is justly and morally due from India, and how far it is entitled to an Imperial Guarantee which would reduce the Interest, are questions which we do not wish to discuss again in this chapter.

Of Railways, too, we have said enough in previous chapters. For half a century the Indian railways did not pay, but were nevertheless continuously extended. The working expenses, the interest on capital spent, and the profits guaranteed to private companies, exceeded the earnings by over 50 millions sterling—a clear loss to the Indian taxpayer. In recent years the lines have paid; but how long this state of things will continue we do not know. And it is an additional loss to India that the interest on capital and the annuities are withdrawn from the earnings of the lines in India, and paid in England to the extent of 6½ millions a year. The money does not flow back to India, is not spent among the people of India, and cannot in any way fructify the trades and industries of India.

Lastly, the Civil and Military charges include payments to the Imperial Exchequer, salaries of the Secretary of State’s establishment, and also pensions of retired civil and military officers. The people of India can justly call upon their British fellow-subjects to bear a portion of the cost of an empire beneficial alike to England and to India. It is a mean policy to make India alone pay for a concern from which India alone is not the gainer, and a readjustment of the Civil and Military Charges, on the lines indicated by Sir George Wingate more than forty years ago, is urgently needed.

Wages and Prices.—The average monthly wages of able-bodied agricultural labourers in different parts of India during the last half of 1902 are shown below from official figures.

Leaving out exceptionally rich districts like Backergunj, Delhi, and Ahmedabad, and exceptionally poor districts like Fyzabad, the wages of the able-bodied agricultural labourer range from 4s. 8d. to 6s. 8d. a month. Except in very rich districts, therefore, the agricultural labourer does not get even 3d. a day; his average earnings scarcely come to 2½d. per day. Some deduction should be made from this, as he does not get employment all through the year; and 2d. a day therefore is more than he hopes to get throughout the year. The appalling poverty and joylessness of his life under such conditions can not be easily pictured. His hut is seldom rethatched, and affords little shelter from cold and rain; his wife is clothed in rags; his little children go without clothing. Of furniture he has none; an old blanket is quite a luxury in the cold weather; and if his children can tend cattle, or his wife can do some work to eke out his income, he considers himself happy. It is literally a fact, and not a figure of speech, that agricultural labourers and their families in India generally suffer from insufficient food from year’s end to year’s end. They are brought up from childhood on less nourishment than is required even in the tropics, and grow up to be a nation weak in physique, stunted in growth, easy victims to disease, plague or famine.

Agriculturists who have lands are better off. They are better housed, better clothed, and have more sufficient food. But a severe Land Tax or rent takes away much from their earnings, and falls on the labouring classes also. For where the cultivator is lightly taxed, and has more to spare, he employs more labour, and labour is better paid. In Backergunj, where the land is lightly rented and the cultivator is prosperous, the labourer employed by him gets 10s. 8d. a month. In Salem, where the land is heavily taxed, and the cultivator is poor, the labourer he employs earns 4s. 8d. a month. It is this fact which appeals strongly to the Indian economist familiar with the circumstances of his fellow-villagers; it is this fact which is ignored by the Settlement Officer when he enhances the Land Tax. A moderate Land Tax relieves the landless village labourer as much as the cultivator; a heavy Land Tax presses ultimately on the landless labourer, deprives him of work, reduces his wages, and renders him an easy victim to the first onset of famines. We have in these pages again and again urged a limitation of the Land Tax within moderate and definite limits, because a moderate and definite Land Tax is calculated to improve the condition of the entire village population of British India—all the 200 millions who own lands and who labour on lands. And the Native States of India would soon follow the lead of the British Government in this matter, as they do in other details of administration.

The official compilation from which we have taken the above figures does not furnish us with the wages of unskilled labour in towns. Speaking from our own knowledge, we should say that in large towns like Calcutta and Bombay, an able-bodied unskilled labourer earns 4d. a day, or 10s. a month. A skilled labourer, like a common mason, carpenter, or blacksmith, earns 20s. to 30s. a month in towns.

The price of rice exported from Calcutta in January 1903 was about 4s. 8d. the maund, a maund being 82 lbs. The price of Delhi wheat of good quality was 40s. the candy. But in most Provinces of India, the labourers live on inferior food—Bajra and Jowar, and other coarse grains.

Foreign Trade.—The total imports of merchandise and treasure into India during 1901-2 (excluding Government stores and treasure) was £67,412,798; and the total exports from India during that year was £88,618,297, showing a balance against India of over 21 millions sterling. The United Kingdom sent goods to the value of 43 millions, or two-thirds of India’s total imports. Austria sent 2½ millions, Germany 2 millions, Belgium 2 millions, Russia 2 millions, and Australasia 2½ millions. France imported into India goods worth over £900,000, and the United States nearly £800,000. Of India’s total imports, no less than 22 millions were of cotton yarn and manufactures, largely from Lancashire. The next largest items are, sugar, nearly 4 millions; iron and steel, over 3 millions; machinery and mill work, 2 millions; and mineral oils, 2½ millions.

Of the exports from India, the United Kingdom took 23 millions, or one-fourth of India’s total exports. Germany took 6¾ millions, France 6 millions, Belgium 3 millions, Austria 1½ millions, Italy 2 millions, the United States 5½ millions, Egypt 3½ millions, China 11¾ millions, the Straits Settlements 7 millions, and Japan 4½ millions. The largest exports were, rice and wheat, 11½ millions; raw cotton, 9½ millions; cotton yarn and manufactures, 8 millions; hides, 5½ millions; jute and jute manufactures, 13½ millions; seeds, 11 millions; opium, 5½ millions; and tea, 5½ millions sterling.

Economic Condition of the People.—There was a pressing and influential demand in England for an inquiry into the economic condition of the people of India after the recent famines; but the Secretary of State resisted the demand and refused the inquiry. The latest inquiry of the nature was made fifteen years ago by Lord Dufferin’s Government in 1888, but the results were never published, and were regarded as confidential. This concealment of facts does not appear to us to be a wise action; the alarming poverty and resourcelessness of the people of India are not a secret, and an evil is not remedied by being hidden from the eye. Large portions of the confidential reports of 1888 have, however, already been placed before the public,¹ and there can be no harm, therefore, in referring to them briefly in the present chapter.

In the Province of Bombay it is denied that the greater portion of the population live on insufficient food. But there are “depressed classes” all over the Province, and some of them live below the poor standard of the Indian workman’s life and earnings. In the Ratnagiri District, with its miserable soil and heavy payments for land, “there was hardly a season in which this population did not endure without a murmur the hardships of a Deccan famine.” Land is less fertile in the Deccan than in Gujrat, and “authorities are unanimous that many cultivators fail to get a year’s supply from their land.” In the Karnatic also, “the reporting authorities agree that there is a large number of cultivators who do not get a full year’s supply from their lands.” Even in the favoured division of Gujrat, the cultivator gets only a six or nine months’ supply from his field, and most of it goes to the money-lender as soon as the harvest is reaped. And “some of the numerous deaths assigned to fever are caused by bad or insufficient clothing, food, and housing.”

In the Punjab the condition of the agriculturists and labourers is no better. In Delhi Division “the diet is of a distinctly inferior class, even judged by the comparatively low standard of the country.” In Gurgaon District the standard of living is perilously low, herbs and berries are consumed for want of better food, and short food is the cause of migration. The extra Assistant Commissioner of Ferozepur reports that men in many villages do not get food for two meals in twenty-four hours. The Assistant Commissioner of Lahore reports that a considerable number of the people are underfed. Two Mahomedan officers of Rawalpindi Division tell us a still sadder story. One of them maintains that 10 per cent. of the Hindu and 20 per cent. of the Mahomedan population are weak and unhealthy from insufficient food; the other says that a great portion of the lower class of agriculturists belong to this category. “The people of Hill Tracts in Hazara,” says Colonel Waterfield, C.S.I., “whether agricultural or grazing, may, I think, generally be called a poor, ill-grown, and underfed-looking race.”

In the Central Provinces, we are told that, in Sagor, Damoh, Narsinghpur, Hoshangabad, Nimar, and Nagpur Districts, “three-quarters of the tenants are reported to be in debt, and from the details which are given, it is evident that the position of a large proportion of them is one of hopeless insolvency.”

Province of Agra and Oudh.—The reports of this Province are more ample and more explicit.

The Collector of Etawa writes: “The landless labourer’s condition must still be regarded as by no means all that could be desired. The united earnings of a man, his wife, and two children, cannot be put at more than 3 rupees (4s.) a month. When prices of food grains are low or moderate, work regular, and the health of the household good, this income will enable the family to have one fairly good meal a day, to keep a thatched roof over their heads, and to buy cheap clothing, and occasionally a thin blanket.”

The Collector of Banda writes: “A very large number of the lower classes of the population clearly demonstrate by the poorness of their physique that they are habitually half-starved, or have been in early years exposed to the severities and trials of a famine. And it will be remembered that if any young creature be starved while growing, no amount of subsequent fattening will make up for the injury to growth.”

The Collector of Ghazipur writes: “As a rule, a very large proportion of the agriculturists in a village are in debt.”

The Commissioner of Fyzabad quotes Mr. Bennett’s statement that, “It is not till he has gone into these subjects in detail that a man can fully appreciate how terribly thin the line is which divides large masses of people from absolute nakedness and starvation.” And the Commissioner adds: “I believe this remark is true of every district of Oudh, the difference between them consisting in the greater or smaller extent of the always large proportion which is permanently in this depressed and dangerous condition.”

The same Commissioner wrote in the Pioneer that, “It has been calculated that about 60 per cent. of the entire native population are sunk in such abject poverty that, unless the small earnings of child-labour are added to the small general stock by which the family is kept alive, some members of the family would starve.” As regards the impression that the greater portion of the people of India suffered from a daily insufficiency of food, he writes: “The impression is perfectly true as regards a varying, but always considerable part of the year, in the greater part of India.”

“Hunger,” writes the Deputy Commissioner of Rai Bareili, “as already remarked, is very much a matter of habit; and people who have felt the pinch of famine—as nearly all the poorer households must have felt it—get into the way of eating less than wealthier families.”

“I believe,” writes the Commissioner of Allahabad, “there is very little between the poorer classes of people and semi-starvation; but what is the remedy?”

Is this word of despair the final utterance of British administration in India? There must be a remedy when the land in India is fertile, the people are peaceful, skilful, and industrious, and a civilised Government honestly desires to make them prosperous. It is the form and method of an absolute government—not in touch with the people, and not able to secure their well-being—which is responsible for the failure of the administration in its highest wish and object.

The remedy lies in two words—Retrenchment and Representation.

Retrenchment would permit a reduction in the imposts on land. Agriculture, virtually the only national industry in India, should be relieved. The Cesses on land, in addition to the Land Tax, should be withdrawn. The Land Tax, where it is not permanently fixed, should be limited through the agency of independent tribunals to its theoretical incidence—half the rental or half the economic rent—which is high enough in all conscience. And the Land Tax should not be enhanced except on definite grounds laid down by law.

Other industries also need help. The Government of India should cease to act under mandates from Manchester. The Excise duty on Indian mill industry should be repealed. Moderate import duties, required for the purposes of revenue and not for protection, should be retained. And every possible help and instruction should be given to those humbler home-industries by which tens of millions of people still support themselves in their villages.

Above all, the national expenditure of India should be retrenched. The military expenditure should be limited to India’s requirements; and India should obtain a contribution from the Imperial Exchequer for the additional charges incurred for Imperial purposes. Sir Robert Giffin considers three to four millions sterling a fair contribution. The Indian debt should be steadily reduced, and should obtain an Imperial guarantee. The higher services of India should be opened more freely to qualified Indians, and should not be kept as a preserve for English boys seeking a career in the East. And the Home Charges, the annual expenditure of 17 millions of Indian money in London, should be steadily reduced. It is this annual Economic Drain from the food supply of India which impoverishes the Indian population more than any other cause.

It is neither a just nor a true Imperial policy to charge the Indian taxpayer every shilling spent in London for Great Britain’s Indian Empire. The empire benefits Great Britain as well as India, and it is a mean counting-house practice to debit India with the cost of establishments maintained in London to supervise Indian affairs. The annual remittance of 17 millions for Home Charges, added to the remittances made by European officers employed in India, represent nearly one-half of the nett revenues of India. No subject nation can prosper if nearly one half of its revenues is withdrawn from the country by the ruling power. And no ruling nation ultimately benefits by such an influx of gold, received without a direct commercial return. It is with nations as with individuals; the bread we earn by labour nourishes and invigorates; the food we consume without toil is poison to our system. It was through influx of gold, without commercial return, that luxury, degeneracy, and decline overtook ancient Rome, and a political and commercial atrophy supervened in modern Spain. Future historians will perceive more clearly than we do how the influx of Eastern gold, more than the rivalry of Western nations, enervates England’s manufacturing industry, her commercial fitness, her strong fighting capacity. England as a sturdy, industrial, and commercial power declines under the insidious influence of Eastern gold, as England, as a free country, declines under the contagion of the despotic form of government she has established in the East. Financial justice to India would help British manufacture, firstly and directly by creating a vastly larger market for British goods among a prosperous Indian population, and secondly and indirectly, by arresting that influx of gold without a commercial return which enervates and corrupts her industrial capacity.

The second remedy we have proposed is Representation. We do not want a Parliament in India; but administration will not and cannot be successful until the people are admitted to some share in its control. The good work has already been commenced. Legislative Councils in every large Province admit some members elected by the people. The principle is capable of extension, and every district in a Province should be allowed to send its Representative. Madras and Bombay have Executive Councils; other Provinces in India should be provided with such Executive Councils, and Indian Members should find a place in them. The Governor-General’s Executive Council consists of a number of able and experienced Englishmen, nearly all of them heads of spending departments. Some representation of the people, i.e. of the taxpayers, in the Council would strengthen the administration, and make it better informed and better able to promote the welfare of the people. And the Secretary of State in London would benefit by the advice and information which qualified Indians, admitted to his Council, could give him on grave matters of administration. For forty-five years Secretaries of State have ruled India without hearing the voice or the opinion of an Indian member in his Council Chamber at Whitehall. Such exclusive and distrustful administration is unpopular as it is unsuccessful.

The remedies suggested above are not innovations; they are necessary developments of the system which has grown up during nearly half a century. We do not like experiments in Government; we distrust new and ideal Constitutions. We desire to see progress in the lines which have already been laid down; we wish to bring the system of administration, already formed, more into touch with the lives and the interests of the people.

For the present constitution of the Indian Government is not in touch with the lives of the people, does not protect the interests of the people, and has not secured the material well-being of the people. The Democracy of Great Britain, reasonable and fair-minded on the whole, cannot interest itself in the details of Indian administration, and must necessarily look after its own interests. The Parliament of Great Britain cannot give adequate attention to Indian affairs. And the Secretary of State, who is a member of the British Cabinet, with the Councillors selected by himself, does not represent the people, does not know their needs, does not secure their interests. In India, the Governor-General and his Councillors, selected by himself, are under the orders of the Secretary of State, and are not in touch with the people. The entire policy of Indian administration, in all its important details, is shaped and controlled and regulated by the oligarchy at Whitehall and the oligarchy at Simla. There is no place in the administrative machinery where the views of the people are represented, where the interests of the taxpayer are protected. The wit and ingenuity of man could not devise a system of administration for a vast and civilised population, where the people are so absolutely, so completely, so rigorously excluded from all share in the control over the management of their own affairs. Is it any wonder that that administration—the oligarchy at Whitehall and the oligarchy at Simla—should, amidst surrounding Imperial influences, sometimes forget the over-taxed Indian cultivator, the unemployed Indian manufacturer, the starving Indian labourer?

Such was not the past in India. Hindu and Mahomedan rulers were always absolute kings, often despotic, but never exclusive. Their administration was crude and old-fashioned, but was based on the co-operation of the people. The Emperor ruled at Delhi; his Governors ruled provinces; Zemindars, Polygars, and Sardars virtually ruled their estates; villagers ruled their Village Communities. The entire population, from the cultivator upwards, had a share in the administration of the country. It is true that modern administration must necessarily be more centralised, more thorough in the supervision of every detail, more uniformly regulated, than the administration of the Middle Ages. If so, then this modern administration should necessarily contain within itself some popular element, and should be helped and sustained by popular bodies in divisions and districts. To make the present administration more centralised, and at the same same time to exclude from it all popular element, is to preserve the despotism of the Middle Ages without the advantages of self-government which that despotism left to the people.

From whatever point we view this grave question, we arrive at the ultimate truth—a truth which Englishmen know better than any other nation on earth—that it is impossible to make Indian administration successful and the Indian people prosperous without admitting the people to a share in the control of their own affairs. “It is an inherent condition of human affairs,” said John Stuart Mill, “that no intention, however sincere, of protecting the interests of others, can make it safe or salutary to tie up their own hands. By their own hands only can any positive and durable improvement of their circumstances in life be worked out.” Indian hands have been tied up too long, and the result has not been happy. Let Indians to-day stand side by side with British administrators, and work conjointly to help their country and improve their wretched lives.

England herself stands to gain and not to lose by a constitutional government in India. Isolation does not strengthen the empire, it is already creating discontent among a numerous population which will necessarily be an increasing source of political danger. A popular form of government will arrest this evil and will strengthen the empire; it will enlist the people of India in the cause of the empire; it will make them proud of the empire as their own. More than this, it will arrest the evils which a despotic form of government creates—in England as much as in India. It will arrest that insidious influence with which England’s eastern despotism infects and poisons her own institutions and her own people year after year.

It is said of Louis XI., King of France, that on one occasion he had decided to hang his soothsayer, but that he changed his mind on being told that the duration of his own life depended on that of the soothsayer. It is certainly true, in a far higher sense, that England’s destiny hangs on the destiny of India. A prosperous India will help England’s trade, and a constitutional India will strengthen England’s Empire. Impoverished India starves England’s trade, and a despotic form of government in India spells England’s decline.

Footnotes

Index

Abbot, Capt., 21, 22 Abdur Rahman, 433 Abyssinia, 231, 247, 248, 375, 386, 555, 562, 565 Acts— Agriculturists’ Relief (Deccan), 333, 335, 490 Better Government of India, 229, 230 Coinage, 579 Cotton Duties (1896), 543 India Councils, 446 —— (Pitt, 1774), 113, 180 —— (1833), 188, 192 Jaigirs Descent, 471 Land Alienation, 471 —— Revenue, 268, 269, 270, 490, 494, 495 Rent, Bengal, 241, 263, 437, 501 —— Oudh, 268, 470, 501 —— Punjab, 501 Revenue Jurisdiction, 490 Tariff, 337, 402-415, 538, 541 Tenancy, 270, 471, 476, 478, 479, 487 Vernacular Press, 433, 434 Aden, 558, 559, 560 Administration (E. I. Co.), 179-209 Afghanistan, 6-12, 84, 218, 231, 248-261, 375, 412, 420-424, 427-432, 433, 441, 445, 555 —— History of War in (Kaye), 9 Afghan War, Second (Hanna), 432 Afridi War, 454 Agra, 33, 37, 41, 46, 189, 199, 273, 470, 471, 485, 610 Agriculture, Report on Indian (Voelcker), 171, 351 Ahmedabad, 605 Aitcheson, Sir Charles, 244, 577 Akbar Khan, 9, 10 Alexander, Nathaniel, 127 Aligarh, 37, 41 Allahabad, 33, 34, 36, 39, 40, 41, 46, 203, 240, 273, 611 Amritsar, 87, 91, 92, 270 Andaman Islands, 257 Arabi Pasha, 441 Arbitration, Court of, 560-561 Arbuthnot, Sir Alex., 414 Arcot, N., 70, 71, 75, 94, 176 —— S., 70, 172, 309, 316 Area, Brit. India, 602; Nat. States, 603 Argentine Republic, 547 Argyll, Duke of, 248, 260, 390, 397, 405, 497, 499, 502 Asia, Central, 105, 249, 420, 445, 456, 558 Assam, 102, 105, 143, 144, 352, 519, 521, 522, 526, 527 Association, British Indian, 155, 186 —— Indian Reform, 27 Atta Muhammad, 422, 423, 428 Auckland, Lord, 3-12, 14, 88, 152, 167, 181, 202, 212, 217 Ava, 24, 443, 444 Avitable, General, 82 Aylwin, D. C., 145 Backergunj, 605, 606 Bagshaw, John, M.P., 125, 126 Balfour, Arthur, M.P., 579 —— General Sir George, 364 —— Lady Betty, 426 Ballantyne, Sergeant, 259 Banda, 610 Bundelkhand, 553 Banerjea, Surendra Nath: Evidence, Expend. Com., 576-577 Baraka Ores, 526 Bareili, 39, 41, 46, 611