Young India (1916)/Appendix 2
APPENDICES
II
SOME OPINIONS ABOUT BRITISH INDIA
Industrial Ruin of India. Gokhale. “ When we come to this question of India’s Industrial domination by England, we come to what may be described as the most deplorable result of British rule in this country. In other matters there are things on the credit side and things on the debit side. . . . But when you come to the industrial field, you will find that the results have been disastrous. You find very little here on the credit side and nearly all the entries on the debit side. Now this is a serious statement to make, but I think it can be sub-stantiated.”
India a Mere Possession. Gokhale. “ India formed the largest part of the Empire, but was governed as a mere possession of the British people. Three features showed that it had no part or lot in the Empire. In the first place, the people were kept disarmed; it was thought to be dangerous to allow them to carry arms. Secondly, they had absolutely no voice in the government of their own country; they were expressly disqualified from holding certain high offices, and practically excluded from others. Lastly, they were not allowed a share in the privileges of the Empire in any portion outside British India, except a limited one in the United Kingdom itself.”—Mr. Gokhale.
Masses Starved. Sir C. A. Elliott. “I do not hesitate to say that half our agricultural population never know from year’s end to year’s end what it is to have their hunger fully satisfied.”—Sir C. A. Elliott, onetime Lieut.-Governor of Bengal.
Sir W. W. Hunter. In 1880. “ There remain forty millions of people who go through life on insufficient food.”— Sir W. W. Hunter.
William Digby. In 1893. The Pioneer sums up Mr. Grierson’s facts regarding the various sections of the population in Gaya: “ Briefly, it is that all the persons of the labouring classes, and ten per cent, of the cultivating and artisan classes, or forty-five per cent, of the total population, are insufficiently clothed, or insufficiently fed, or both. In Gaya district this would give about a million persons without sufficient means of support. If we assume that the circumstances of Gaya are not exceptional,— and there is no reason for thinking otherwise — it follows that nearly one hundred millions of people in British India are living in extreme poverty.” In 1901. “ The poverty and suffering of the people are such as to defy description. In fact, for nearly fifteen years there has been a continuous famine in India owing to high prices.”
70,000,000 Continually Hungry People in British India. W. Digby. “ Since Sir William Hunter's remarks were made the population has increased (or is alleged to have increased) by nearly thirty millions. Meanwhile the income of the Empire has greatly decreased during thism period. Wherefore this follows: that is, if with the same income, in 1880 forty millions were insufficiently fed, the additional millions cannot have had, cannot now have, enough to eat; this, again, ensues: —
40,000,000 plus, say, 30,000,000, make 70,000,000; and there are this number of continually hungry people in British India at the beginning of the Twentieth Century.” —William Digby, C. I. E.
Deaths from Famine from 1891 to 1900 alone: 19,000,000.
Total area under cultivation. In the year 1911-12, the total area under food grains was over 195 million acres, plus 7.5, i. e. over 202x/z million acres.
In 1912-13, India exported foodstuffs of the value of over 260 million dollars.
In 1913-14 she exported about 216 million dollars’ worth of foodstuffs.
Famines of Money, not Food. Lord G. Hamilton. “ The recent famines are famines of money, and not of food"— Lord G. Hamilton, former Secretary of State.
Causes of Famines. 1. National industries deliberately crushed by the East India Co. cannot revive under existing conditions.
2. Annual drain of India.
3. Lack of such education as will enable people to develop their resources.
Drain. Montgomery Martin. “ The annual drain of £3,000,000 from British India has mounted in thirty years,at 12 per cent, (the usual Indian rate) compound interest,to the enormous sum of £723,900,000 sterling.”— Montgomery Martin.(In 1830.)
Digby. “ During the last thirty years of the century the average drain cannot have been far short of £30,000,000 per year, or, in the thirty years, £900,000,000, not reckoning interest! ”— Sir William Digby.
Enormous Foreign Tribute. Rev. J. T. Sunderland. Rev. J. T, Sunderland in his work “ The Causes of Famine in India,” like all impartial writers, has conclusively proved that neither “ failure of rains ” nor “ over population ” is the cause of famines in India.
He has stated that the real cause of famine is the extreme, the abject, the awful poverty of the Indian people caused by “ Enormous Foreign Tribute,” “British Indian Imperialism ” and the destruction of Indian industries.
Government assessment too high. Sir W. Hunter. “ The government assessment does not leave enough food to the cultivator to support himself and his family throughout the year.”— Sir William Hunter, K. C. S. I., in the Viceroy’s Council, 1883.
The Ryot. Herbert Compton. “There is no more pathetic figure in the British Empire than the Indian peasant. His masters have ever been unjust to him. He is ground until everything has been expressed, except the marrow of his bones.”—Mr. Herbert Compton in “ Indian Life,” 1904.
Hindustan is an extensive agricultural country and the average land produces two crops a year, and in Bengal there are lands which produce thrice a year. Bengal alone produces such large crops that they are quite sufficient to provide all the population of Hindustan for two years.
Indian Plunder. Adam Brooks. Adam Brooks says, (“Laws of Civilization and Decay,” page 259-246) “Very soon after the Battle of Plassey (fought in 1757) the Bengal Plunder began to arrive in London and the effect appears to have been almost instantaneous. Probably since the world began, no investment has yielded the profit reaped from the Indian plunder. The amount of treasure wrung from the conquered people and transferred from India to English banks between Plassey and Waterloo (57 years) has been variously estimated at from $2,500,000,000 to $5,000,000,000. The methods of plunder and embezzlement, by which every Briton in India enriched himself during the earlier history of the East India Company, gradually passed away, but the drain did not pass away. The difference between that earlier day and the present is, that India’s tribute to England is obtained by “indirect methods,” under forms of law. It is estimated by Mr. Hyndman that at least $175,000,000 is drained away every year from India, without a cent’s return.”
Swami Abhedananda. “ India pays interest on England’s debt, which in 1900 amounted to 244 millions sterling, and which annually increases. Besides this, she pays for all the officers, civil and military, and a huge standing army, pensions of officers, and even the cost of the India Building in London, as well as the salary of every menial servant of that house. For 1901-2 the total expenditure charged against revenue was $356,971,410.00, out of which $84,795,515.00 was spent in England as Home Charges, not including the pay of European officers in India, saved and remitted to England.—Swami Abhedananda (“India and Her People”).
Alfred Webb (late M.P.): “In charges for the India Office (in London); for recruiting (in Great Britain, for soldiers to serve in India); for civil and military pensions (to men now living in England, who were formerly in the Indian service); for pay and allowances on furloughs (to men on visits to England); for private remittances and consignments (for India to England); for interest on Indian debt (paid to parties in England); and for interest on railways and other works (paid to shareholders in England), there is annually drawn from India and spent in the United Kingdom, a sum calculated at from £25,000,000 to £30,000,000 (Between $125,000,000 and $150,000,000).”
“Narrow and Shortsighted Imperial Policy.” Sir Archibald R. Colquehoun. “The present condition of affairs undoubtedly renders the struggle for existence a hard one, as may be realized when it is considered that a vast population of India not only from the inevitable droughts which so frequently occur, but also from a narrow and shortsighted imperial policy which places every obstacle in the way of Industrial development and imposes heavy taxes on the struggling people. According to various authorities, Russia’s demand upon landowners in her Central Asian possession are not so exacting as ours in India, for the British Government insists on a fifth of the produce, making no allowance for good or bad years; while Russia is said to ask only a tenth and allow for variation of production” (Pages 135-6, “Russia Against India,” by Sir Archibald R. Colquehoun, Gold Medalist, Royal Geographical Society.)
Taxation. Lord Salisbury. The British policy of bleeding Indian people. “The injury is exaggerated in the case of India where so much of the revenue is exported without a direct equivalent. As India must be bled, the lancet should be directed to the parts where the blood is congested or at least sufficient, not to those already feeble for the want of it.”—Lord Salisbury.