Post-Scriptum

POST-SCRIPTUM

India’s “Gift” of One Hundred Million Pounds to England.

Since the above was put in type our worst fears have come to be true. The British Government of India has decided, with the sanction of the Secretary of State for India, to float a war loan in India of an unlimited amount. The idea is to make a “gift” of £100,000,000 (or $500,000,000) to the British Exchequer. The amount of the loan, or as much as is raised, will be made over to the Government of Great Britain and liability for the rest will be accepted by the Government of India. The British Cabinet have, with the sanction of the House of Commons, accepted this “gift” and in lieu thereof allowed the Indian Government to raise their customs duty on the imports of cotton goods by four per cent. ad valorem. This transaction involves an additional burden of £6,000,000 a year (or $30,000,000) on the Indian tax payer. It is expected that out of this some £1,000,000 will be recovered by the additional duty on cotton imports and the rest will be raised by additional taxation.

The British statesmen have called it “a free gift of the people of India” and have thanked the latter for their “generosity.” The fact is that the people of India or their representatives in the Legislative Council were never consulted about it. The transaction was settled between the Government of India and the Secretary of State for India, at Whitehall and then announced to the Indian Legislature as a decision. The Manchester Guardian and the London Nation have exposed it in its true colours. The former says, in its issue of March 15th:

“The great services which Indian manhood and Indian production have rendered in this war we all gratefully acknowledge. But their very magnitude is an argument against the wisdom and justice of adding to them a contribution in money and in financing that contribution mainly at the expense of the poor who have already made the greatest sacrifices. Mr. Chamberlain [the Secretary of State for India] says that the assumption of the £100,000,000 loan was a free will offering coupled with the condition that the Indian cotton trade should be given protection. Mr. Chamberlain obscures one not unimportant circumstance. It is we who govern India and not the Indian people. The initiative in all financial proposals necessarily comes from the government we appoint in India and cannot reach the light of public discussion in the Legislative Council or elsewhere until they have received the sanction of the Secretary of State here. For Mr. Chamberlain to throw upon the people of India the responsibility for originating and devising the £100,000,000 contribution and the protective duties which have been coupled with it, is as unconvincing a rhetorical exercise as the House of Commons has witnessed for many a long day. The responsibility for the whole scheme from the first to the last is his and that of the Indian Government. We have said more than once and we repeat it, that in our opinion a wise statesmanship would both find better use in India for India’s millions and employ India more advantageously for the common cause by using more of her manhood and less of her money.”

In a previous issue of the same paper it was observed:

“Why was the matter of a financial contribution from India raised now? For our own part we have the gravest doubts as to the wisdom or justice of taking any financial contribution from India. We believe that this is not the best way for India and the Empire, in which India can serve the common cause and the loss it represents to an extremely poor population like that of India is very much greater than the gain it represents to England. If we really are seriously concerned that India should develop in every way the vast potentialities of her indigenous industries it would be better to spend that £100,000,000 on developing her resources than to take that money from India and in exchange give Bombay a tariff.”

The London Nation in its issue of March 17th says: “The people of India have no voice in this or any other act of Government, and, if they had, they would be forced to think twice before contributing out of their dire poverty [the italics are ours] this huge sum of a hundred millions to the resources of their wealthy rulers. Nor ought a poor subject people already burdened with large increases of war taxation to be compelled by its Government to make this gift.” Further on, the Nation characterises the whole transaction as one of “sheer dishonesty” and adds: “India is not self-governing and this particular action is not the action of a body justly claiming to represent the will or interests of the Indian people. It is the arbitrary action of a little group of officials conniving with a little group of prosperous business men and playing on the mistaken economic nationalism of a somewhat larger number of educated natives. It is a bad and a foolish game.”

The writer of “a London Diary” column in the Nation described it as “merely a case of one official in India signalling to another in England.”

The Viceroy of India, making his final speech on the Budget, remarked that the Budget will involve “a sacrifice in a large measure of the necessities of ordered Government” and that “one result must be the arrested progress in education, in sanitation, in public works and kindred subjects which are in other countries the touchstone of civilised life.” What this means in the case of India, will be made clear in the following pages.

As to how much India has done for England during this war we beg to refer the reader to an article written by Mr. Yusaf Ali, a retired Indian civil servant in the Nineteenth Century and After for February 8, 1917, from which we give a few extracts in an appendix. Discussing the economic effect of the war on India Mr. Ali remarks: “In 1915, the prices broke famine records.” And again:

“In India, unfortunately, on account of the war, the isolation of the country, and the local crop having been short by 17 1/2%, the price was very high. . . . The question of high food prices in India affects very materially her further capacity for taxation or for having further financial burdens. The small average individual income of India is mainly spent on the barest necessities of life. When the necessities rise over 100%, it does not mean an inconvenience; it means loss of vitality and efficiency.”

According to this writer, “The services of India are estimated at a value of $240,000,000 for the two and a half years that the war will have lasted at the close of the present financial year.” Calculating the pre-war insurance, afforded by India’s expenditure on the army of £14,000,000 (or $70,000,000) a year, at fifteen years’ purchase he fixes its value to the Empire at £210,000,000, or $1,050,000,000. He also explains how India has helped the Imperial authorities by various other financial measures and by a war loan of £4,500,000 and concludes: “The fact is that India, so far from having superfluous capital, was and is urgently in need of capital, and the launching of a more ambitious scheme must hinder, instead of helping, the cause which India is upholding with so much self-sacrifice.”

Evidently the raising of this new loan of $500,000,000 was in the air when he wrote the article and Mr. Yusaf Ali, who is permanently settled in London, with his English wife, thought it was his duty to raise a voice of protest. The fact that the article was published in the Nineteenth Century and After shows the high esteem in which the writer is held in journalistic circles in England. Mr. Yusaf Ali has never identified himself with the Nationalistic party and his views are those of a loyalist whose loyalty does not necessarily mean his supporting everything, just or unjust, which the Government does. His protest, however, proved to be a cry in the wilderness.

In this connection it might be of interest to add the following extract from the Proceedings of the Government of India, in the Legislative Department: “Replying to the Hon. Maharaja Manindra Chandra Nandi’s question regarding contributions to the war by Indian Native States and Indian Provinces the Hon. Sir Reginald Craddock said: ‘Complete or detailed figures of the amounts subscribed in all the Provinces of India towards the war and the charities connected with it, cannot be given. The statement given below gives such information as is immediately available.’ " Then follow the details of sums given, aggregating £2,047,375. “In addition to the figures given in the statement, lavish contributions both in cash and kind have been made by the ruling Princes and Chiefs in India. It is regretted that details of these cannot conveniently be supplied.”

All these “lavish” contributions, however, failed to satisfy the British and the Government did not scruple to load an additional burden of $500,000,000 on the already crushed shoulders of the Indian ryot.

Indian opinion, rather timidly expressed, may be gathered from the following report of a speech made by a Hindu member of the Viceroy’s Legislative Council, on the occasion of the discussion, on the current year’s Budget. Said the Hon. Mr. Rangaswami Iyengar: “My Lord, the provision of a hundred millions sterling together with its interest, which amounts nearly to double the gift towards the war expenditure of the Empire, is undoubtedly the most prominent feature of the budget of this year. Apart from the consideration, as has been pointed out by our esteemed colleague, the Hon. Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, of neglecting to take this Council into confidence before the contribution was made, the burdening to the breaking point of a country, whose poor people are already suffering owing to results of a peculiar economic policy of the Government of India, without leaving a margin for emergencies, should furnish an insoluble problem to the statesman. . . .

“In this connection it has to be pointed out, especially in view of the unmerited complaints brought against India in certain Anglo-Indian organs, that even without this huge contribution India has borne more than her own fair share as compared with other parts of the Empire from the services already rendered by her in her sacrifice of men and money.

“Here is a statement as regards the help in men alone until the end of 1916:

“All these men have been trained in India and not in Salisbury as was the case with the Colonials.

“Again, coming to contributions in money till 1916:

“Whereas the help the Colonies rendered in this direction partook mostly of the nature of loans. I challenge if any Colonies peopled with richer classes have made a similar sacrifice. Is it fair to strain the resources further?”

How these financial exactions are likely to cripple India, where millions have died from famine within the last fifty years; where within the last twenty years, millions have died from plague, where even now thousands die every week from the same fell disease and where the vast bulk of the people are illiterate and so abjectly poor, as to excite pity even from the stone-hearted, may better be imagined than described.

For the latest testimony to this effect we may cite from an article that has appeared in The Quarterly Review (British) for April, 1917, over the signature of Mr. W. H. Moreland, C. S. I., C. I. E.

“It is a matter of common knowledge that the standard of life in India is undesirably low; that while the masses of the people are provided with the necessities of a bare existence they are in far too many cases badly housed and badly clothed, badly doctored and badly taught, often overworked and often underfed; and that the present income of the country, even if it were equitably distributed, would not suffice to provide the population with even the most indispensable elements of a reasonable life.”

Finally it may be noted that the Indian Budget for military expenditure has, in the current year, been raised to £26,000,000 while before the war it was only £20,000,000. Besides troops fighting in the trenches, India has also supplied England with the following medical equipment: 40 Field Ambulances 6 Clearing Hospitals 35 Stationary Hospitals 18 General Hospitals 9 x-ray Sections 8 Sanitary Sections 7 Advanced Depots 1 General Medical Store Depot About 2,327 doctors and nurses, and about 720 nursing orderlies.

These figures are taken from the speech which the Secretary of State for India made in the House of Commons in March, 1917. He also made mention of the fact that India had supplied about 20,000 camp followers. The Government of India is at the present moment engaged in raising a “labour” army in India for work in England and in other places. Let those, who have been talking so much of how England has protected India, take into consideration these facts as well as those given in the body of the book, and then say honestly, who has been the greater gainer by this connection. India can await patiently and securely the verdict of posterity on this point.

Recent Happenings in England. Rain of Words.

In the meantime things have happened in England which we cannot omit noticing in connection with the main theme of this book. The meetings of the Imperial War Conference in March; the participation in it for the first time of delegates from India; the courtesies extended to the latter and the honours conferred on them by the various public bodies of the British Isles, including the conferring upon the delegates of the freedom of the cities of London, Manchester, Edinburgh and Cardiff, and the honourary degrees of some of the universities, have furnished opportunities for some pleasant talk on both sides which, judged by standards of sweetness, politeness and occasional frankness, is refreshing. For the first time since the British connection with India were the Indian delegates allowed to participate in the deliberations of an Imperial Conference; for the first time they were considered worthy of being honoured with the freedom of British cities. For the first time it was conceded that India might look forward to a day when she may be treated as a partner in the Empire, and not as a hewer of wood or drawer of water for the latter. Reading the speeches and assuming the honesty and sincerity of the speakers, an Indian may take comfort in the hope that a day of real freedom was dawning upon his unfortunate country, and that this time at least, the British meant what they said.

If words of sympathy, promises of a future state of autonomy, compliments and acknowledgments could bring happiness and prosperity to the millions of India, she has had a copious outburst of them within the last two months and a half, nay in fact, from the very beginning of the war. If, however, the value of words is to be judged by deeds, an Indian may still be pessimistic about actual realisations.

“Sweet words are now raining upon India,” remarks the Investor’s Review, London (April 28, 1917), “and we trust foreshadow generous deeds.” Do they? is the question.

India would be content if even half of what has been said were realised in the near future. The actual behaviour of the Government in India and in England, however, is not at all encouraging. The restrictions on the freedom of speech and the freedom of meeting have not been relaxed in the least. In one province, alone, 800 young Indians are rotting in jails without ever having had a chance of being tried for their supposed offences. The inequalities in the public services, civil and military, have not been removed. The appointments to the executive offices both in India and in England are of the most reactionary type. The solicitations of the Indian Nationalists to get larger appropriations for education and sanitation are still unheeded. The only thing actually done is the increase in the cotton duties, of which we have spoken above.

The Speeches of the Maharaja of Bikanir. The Position of Indian Princes.

The speeches of the Maharaja of Bikanir and of Sir S. P. Sinha, the Indian delegates to the Imperial War Conference, have done at least one good. They have cleared the atmosphere somewhat. The Maharaja has made it absolutely clear that the ruling princes of India are in full accord with the people of India in demanding self-government, and fiscal autonomy. In the words of the Investor’s Review, “The Maharaja impressively pointed out that far from being alarmed at the political progress of India, the ruling princes of India rejoice in it. At least 10 per cent. of the more important states already have representative self-government, and every year the constitutional government is being extended. Though ‘autocrats,’ the princes of India are marching with the times. If they are of that mind,” asks the Investor’s Review, “why should we hesitate?”

Those who read the speeches made by the Indian delegates to the Imperial War Conference in London, should bear in mind that neither of them were the spokesmen of the Indian Nationalist Party. One of them, Sir S. P. Sinha, did, no doubt, preside at an annual meeting of the Indian National Congress in 1915, but that was his only connection (first and last) with the movement. Before his election to the office of president of that session, he was a government man, and soon after he again became a government man. He is an official of the Government of India and owes his prosperity, his rank and his wealth to the Government.

The Maharaja of Bikanir comes from an ancient royal family of India, though the state over which he rules is not a first-class principality. By heredity, instinct, and tradition he is an autocrat. For his elevation to the present position of prominence in Indian political life, he is under obligations to the British Government of India. He comes from a family which has, for the last four hundred years, kept well with the paramount authority, Mughal or British. Personally he is an enlightened and progressive ruler. Under these circumstances, he has rendered signal service to the cause of his country, worthy of the great ancestry from which he has sprung, in making some fairly bold and outspoken utterances about the aspirations of India. At last, in him, the princes of India have found a worthy representative, and the people of India a sincere, though by the limitations of his position, a rather halting champion of their rights. Speaking at the luncheon given by the Empire Parliamentary Association, he said that the unrest that exists in India is of two kinds:

" That which the seditionists attempt to spread, happily with small results, has to be faced and is being faced and suitably tackled by the authorities, and it is our earnest hope that it may be possible gradually to eradicate the evil, which is a cancerous growth, not, however, peculiar to India. The other kind of unrest is what has been happily described by a British statesman as ’legitimate.’ It is in the minds of people who are as loyal as you or I. (Hear, hear.) I decline to believe that British statesmanship will not rise to the occasion, and it depends on whether Indian problems are or are not handled with sympathy, with imagination, with broad-minded perspicacity, that that legitimate unrest will die out or continue. It is the strong opinion of many who have given the subject thought that if the people of India were given a greater voice and power in directions in which they have shown their fitness we should hear much less of the unrest, agitation, and irresponsible criticism which is certainly gaining ground. Desperation would give way to patience, for India has confidence in the word and good faith of England, and the enemies of order and good government would be foiled. The ‘unchanging East’ is changing very rapidly and beyond conception.” (Report in the Daily Telegraph, London.)

The speech has evoked some pertinent comments in the British press. The Daily Telegraph remarks (April 25, 1917): " Every one is aware that at the conclusion of the war not only India expects, but the majority of us at home also look forward to a considerable development along the lines of political reform.”

The Prime Minister’s Pronouncement.

The clearest pronouncement, however, is that of the Prime Minister, who in the speech delivered at the Guildhall on April 27, said with reference to India: " I think I am entitled to ask that these loyal myriads should feel, not as if they were a subject race in the Empire, but partners with us.” “These are heartening words,” says the London organ of the Indian Congress. “It remains to follow them by deeds.” “Unhappily,” remarks the same paper (April 27), “those who monopolise place and power in India have still to be converted. There is copious talk of the ’new angle of vision,’ but precious little indication of any real intention to quicken the rate of progress. It is idle, and also insincere to profess anxiety to help Indians along the road to self-government if the whip hand is perpetually to be held over them.”

Coming to the economic side of the question, we observe that there is a great deal of hazy talk of the future economic development of India. Most of the papers and the Under Secretary of State for India, still think of India as a supplier of raw materials to the Empire. In fact, one paper (The Contract Journal) holds out prospects of exploitation to the British investor; on the other hand, the Stock Exchange Gazette and The Investor’s Review are happy over the prospects of the development of Indian powers of self-government. The most authoritative pronouncements, however, in the matter, are those of Mr. Austen Chamberlain, the Secretary of State for India. Speaking at a luncheon given by the chairman of the East India section of the London Chamber of Commerce, he said that the development of India was not only an economic, but a political necessity of the first consequence. Even more pronounced and significant is the speech which he delivered at the Savoy Hotel on March 29, in which he is reported to have said that India would not remain and ought not to remain content to be a hewer of wood and a drawer of water for the rest of the Empire. It was essential to her sound and healthy development that her own industries should progress! We hope Mr. Chamberlain is sincere and earnest.

It has since been given out that in future an Indian will represent India in the Imperial War Cabinet. An Indian nominated by the British Government, however, could not represent India in the same sense as the premiers of the dominions would represent the latter. The concessions, though important in appearance, are thus shadowy in effect. Similarly, the talk of Trade Preference within the Empire is not likely to benefit India.

Says India, the organ of the Indian Congress in London, “Mr. Bonar Law informed the House of Commons on Friday last that the Imperial War Cabinet had unanimously accepted the principle that each part of the Empire, having due regard to the interest of our Allies, shall give specially favourable treatment and facilities to the produce and manufactures of other parts of the Empire,” that “there is no intention whatever of making any change during the war.” Mr. Lloyd George made a similar announcement in his speech in the city on the same day, after the usual preliminary denunciation of the wickedness and folly of adherence to old party systems and policies.

“Nevertheless, the Prime Minister may rest assured that India intends to have something to say on this matter. If she is to embark upon the career of commercial development which is being so confidently marked out for her, she must have protection for her growing industries: and her most formidable competitor is the British manufacturer. The application of the policy of Imperial Preference, which is now foreshadowed, will simply mean that India must take Lancashire goods at Lancashire’s prices, while shutting out Japan and the United States from her markets. What, then, was the object of the flourish of trumpets with which Mr. Chamberlain heralded the increase in the import duties on cotton goods? Here is a fiscal change made during the war defended on the ground that it is consonant with Indian opinion, and marked already for a place on the political dust heap when the war is over.”

Are not the British past masters in the art of taking away with the left what they give by the right hand? But India is now awake and will not be fooled as she has been in the past.

LAJPAT RAI.

May 25, 1917, New York City.