Banyan Tree Adventures

by Keith Forrester

  For almost 200 years there had been a systematic transfer of wealth from India to Europe and mainly to Britain. Central to this imperial looting was this East India Company. The booty from India and later other colonial adventures in Africa coincided with or perhaps provided an essential basis for the world’s first industrial capitalist state – Britain. British banks used the Indian capital to fund industry in the US and elsewhere. The Industrial Revolution and development of modern capitalism was based on the Empire and principally India.

  It was not only an unrelenting need for remittances from India by the British state that was needed. It was also a range of products and, in particular, food. It was food that underpinned a more notorious episode in the history of Bengal – the Famine of 1943. Madhusree Mukherjee’s recent study (2010) entitled “Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II” painstakingly outlines the gruesome details of this episode which today continues to provoke acrimonious debate and rancour. Japan had invaded neighbouring Burma – the War was not going well for Churchill. As Burma was important in supplying rice to India, Churchill stockpiled food for soldiers and workers, prices increased, distribution channels were blocked and transport vehicles (boats, bullock carts) destroyed in Bengal to prevent them from falling into the hands of a possible Japanese invasion of India. Rice was scarce and worsening hunger was spreading throughout the villages. As the Times of India wrote, “Emaciated masses drifted into Calcutta, where eyewitnesses described men fighting over foul scraps and skeletal mothers dying in the streets… The ‘man-made’ famine has long been one of the darkest chapters of the British Raj.” About 3 million people died of starvation in Bengal. The causes of this devastation have always been disputed but after a seven-year study of original documents and Cabinet Papers, Mukherjee concluded that in the main Churchill was responsible for the great famine, often overruling close advisors, Viceroy Linlithgow in India and his own War Cabinet. Most of the official reasons for the famine are discredited in the book, such as the absence of requisite shipping to bring in food supplies and the absence of sufficient grain (despite a surplus of grain in Australia). Appointed as Viceroy of India in 1943, Archibald Wavell informed London that the famine “was one of the greatest disasters that has befallen any people under British rule.” Incredibly, the famine occurred at a time when, in 1943, 2.5 million Indians were fighting alongside the Allies. As two Cambridge University historians pointed out, “It was Indian soldiers, civilian labourers and businessmen who made possible the victory in 1945.” Their price was to be the independence of their country, despite the desires and efforts of Churchill. As an editorial in the Indian online site Tehelka mentions, “The Bengal Famine of 1943–44 must rank as the greatest disaster in the subcontinent in the 20th century. Nearly 4 million Indians died because of an artificial famine created by the British government, and yet it gets little more than passing mention in Indian history books.” In Britain, perhaps unsurprisingly, it doesn’t even merit a ‘passing mention’. Similarly, the earlier Bengal famines of the 1760s – the ‘paradise of earth’ according to the Mughals and “an inexhaustible fund of riches” by Clive – receives little historical attention in Britain today although it remains a raw issue in India. Ravaged by war, disease and famine, a third of the population died of hunger. Historical narratives are, it seems, a very selective process.

  However, there was another issue that was not only forgotten but never appeared in the reckonings today of the Raj and India. Poppies. It was Governor-General Warren Hastings that came up with the idea, in 1780, of exporting opium to China in order to resolve the huge balance of payment problems with China. In an interview with Amitav Ghosh on the BBC News Channel, the celebrated Indian novelist was discussing his historical novel, Sea of Poppies. “I had no idea,” he said, “that India was the largest opium exporter (to China) for centuries. I had no idea that opium was essentially the commodity which financed the British Raj in India… Opium steadily accounted for about 17–20% of Indian revenues… Opium was the fundamental undergirding of our economy for centuries. It is strange that even for someone like me who studied history and knew a fair amount about Indian history, I was completely unaware of it.” Today, the ‘Opium Wars’ figure vaguely in the British collective memory. Most people have heard of it but are not sure of the details or context.

  Has India always been poor? The economic debate

  Opium then was a fundamental characteristic of the Indian economy under the British. At a more general level and of news to me and probably most tourists is that, historically, India has not always been associated with poverty and hunger. In order to unravel this story, we have to step back into a little more history and, inevitably when discussing India, into more controversies.

  As mentioned in Chapter 3, India under the Mughals – especially Akbar – was one of the world’s great powers. From the late 16th century through to the mid-18th century India together with China dominated world trade. As Mihir Bose wrote, “Even in 1750, 167 years after Elizabeth’s begging letter, India had 24.5% of the world’s manufacturing output – with China leading the field with 32.8% while the United Kingdom was barely visible with 1.9%.” 1750 is not that long ago! Bose also points out that it was another seven years before Clive’s victory over the Nawab of Bengal at Plassey in 1757 that “converted the British from traders to rulers and changed everything.” Numerous very famous Western commentators on India such as Adam Smith, Montesquieu, James Mill, Karl Marx and Max Weber depicted India at the time of the British contact with the country as stagnant, without any known history, autocratic darkness, unchanged for a thousand years etc, etc. Most of course had never visited the country. The appalling condition of India in the 19th century was simply extended back in time. Recent scholarship largely from Indian scholars have contested such easy and erroneous but influential generalisations. Economic historians such as Prasannan Parthasarathi and Amiya Kumar Bagchi for example have demonstrated an India legendary for its immense wealth and wisdom prior to the arrival of the British. Vibrant production of cotton textiles for export resulted in a sizeable inflow of gold and silver which fuelled other commercial production. From 1600 through to 1800 Mughal India boasted a trading sector with well-functioning institutions, effective and integrated markets and pockets of highly skilled and internationally competitive artisans and workers. Agricultural production was efficient and characterised by investment and innovation. In the run-up to the Industrial Revolution in Britain and Europe, India it is argued was not profoundly different in its economic institutions.

  What went wrong? Why did India not ‘take off’? Why today is poverty such a strong image associated with India? So what made India poor, “indeed, one of the poorest countries in the world?” ask Jean Dréze and Amartya Sen in their recent book, An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions. In common with the other commentators mentioned above, Dréze and Sen argue that before the arrival of the British via the East India Company in the mid-eighteenth century, the economy was seen generally as a trade-based, comparatively thriving economy with a number of towns and cities trading with other countries. Commentators from the Greeks and Romans through to the British economist Adam Smith identified a variety of factors that accounted for the success of the economy. Industrial exports, especially textiles from Bengal, were valued by Europeans and others. Merchants from Portugal, the Netherlands, France, Denmark, Prussia and other European countries were busy establishing trade links, write Dréze and Sen. Despite the weakness of available data, they suggest that wages of Indian labour were similar or higher when compared with other European workers. And as they say, “Just as it is unnecessary to invent some imaginary golden age to acknowledge the relative prosperity of pre-colonial India, one does not have to be an aggressive nationalist to recount the rapid decline of the relative position of the Indian economy during the British Raj.” Economic decline appeared to be continuing throughout the nineteenth century. For long periods und
er British rule, per capita actually declined. The economy was largely stagnant; around the time of Independence, living conditions were appalling. Dréze and Sen quote Angus Deaton who argued that the deprivation facing Indian children born in the mid-twentieth century: “was (possibly) as severe as any large group in history, all the way back to the Neolithic Revolution and the hunter-gathers that preceded them. Life expectancy in India in 1931 was 27.” This damning indictment of British rule makes even more remarkable the progress achieved since Independence. Not mentioned then by the triumphalist British press was this systematic impoverishment of India by British rule. So huge, purposeful, continuous and brutal was this decline that surely it must rank up there as one of the most barbaric episodes of modern times.

  This question of India’s comparative prosperity and then subsequent decline with the arrival of the British is, as I have discovered, a central part of a wider scholarly debate known as the ‘Great Divergence between the West and the Rest’. There has long been a background rumble to these issues in the past but they seem to have gathered momentum in the last decade or so. Given the context of the disputes – millions dying of starvation, military domination and violence and distorted societal development – an anger and passion and, sometimes, crude partisanship often underpins the disagreements. Academic contributions from a variety of disciplines have enriched the often-dense discussions and reams of statistical data. There is no easy summary of these debates even for those steeped in the literature and history, but the drift of the consensus seems clear; namely, that the aim of colonial rule was to deliver a financial surplus to the ruling country. Most other activities – socially, politically or administratively – were geared towards this overriding objective or else were of secondary importance. Bagchi’s figures in his recent book Colonialism and Indian Economy are persuasive. For example, he illustrates how the financial drain from India was critical in the rise and construction of Britain’s Empire. It helped pay for British military expenditures in their century-long war against the French. Victory paved the way for British hegemony in Europe and elsewhere in the crucial period 1765–1812. Later, the financial drain from India during 1870–1915 was so large it could have financed anywhere between 75%–95% of British foreign investment worldwide. As Servaas Storm writes in his review, “Colonial rule over India was therefore an integral element of British capitalist accumulation, both as a source of funds and a sink for cheap Lancashire cottons.” It was an export-led exploitation rather than export-led growth. This surplus was possible as a result of a variety of ‘economic reforms’, such as dispossession of lands and the deindustrialisation of manufacturing, especially in the textile sector. The cotton-weaving and spinning industries were wiped out and this was in a country that accounted for nearly a quarter of the world’s manufactured output around 1750.

  Without doubt, the ‘Divergence Debate’ will continue. Although difficult and complex to grasp, it is an important endeavour. India and Britain today are what they are because of their interrelated past and for both countries their historical involvement with each other are seminal, defining experiences.

  For the Indian economy today, however, these ‘costs’ of British rule have been high. All countries that have emerged from colonialism exhibit particular characteristics that were shaped and moulded by this occupying experience. These countries today might well be industrialised, capitalist economies but they will demonstrate particular and distinct features that reflect particular and distinct historical experiences. India’s manufacturing industry, for example, illustrates this historical ‘deformation’. Since Independence of course it has crept up as a contribution to the country’s growth in parallel to agriculture’s decline. But so severe was the destruction of Indian manufacturing under the British that the growth has been nothing like it should have been. Instead it is the service sector which has benefited from this history. Largely as a result of British rule, the modern Indian economy has a most unusual, almost unique structure – economic development without a driving, expanding manufacturing sector. Moreover, as Surajit Mazumdar has argued, this comparatively small manufacturing sector until recently exhibited a limited capacity for the self-development of technology. Instead, it depended on its financial muscle to buy international companies to boost its international competitiveness. The country’s trade pattern reflects the historical weak industrial base – namely, low manufacturing exports with significant volumes of imports. Trade balances are rescued by the very high volume of its services or, more particularly, its information technology (IT) and IT enabled services.

  The East India Company together with the subsequent activities of the Raj might have been a long time ago but they continue to shape, direct and influence modern economic development.

  Some good, some bad

  When looking at the issue of the British Empire in India, there seems to be a consensus or a dominant narrative of Britain’s time in the country – there were some good aspects and some aspects that were not so good. The Indian Civil Service, which administered the country as a colony from 1858 until 1947, is often cited as a good aspect, for example. Mostly staffed by Englishmen from private schools back in Britain, the Indian Civil Service was described in 1935 by David Lloyd George, a former Prime Minister, as “the steel frame on which the whole structure of our government and of our administration in India rests.” Nehru on the other hand when writing about the Indian Civil Service saw it famously: “as neither Indian, nor civil, nor a service.” Despite this polite difference of opinion, Prime Minister Nehru retained the organisation which today has around 6.5 million employees. The Civil Service after Independence was seen as an important contributor towards developing national unity and cohesion and today continues to be politically modelled on the British example. Overall then, it was a ‘good legacy’ from the British.

  A similar story surrounds India’s state-owned rail system. Begun in 1853 with the short link between Bombay to Thane (today, a suburb of Bombay), India has one of the world’s largest networks (115,000 kilometres) with some 7,500 stations. The Bombay to Calcutta line across the northern plains of the country was completed in 1864. The rail system usually is identified as another of the ‘good things’ left to India by the British. Situated within the context of the British Raj and earlier, the East India Company, however, might provide a more nuanced appreciation. Economic and military motives dominated the beginnings of this wonderful system, not passenger or tourist travel.

  And then, there is New Delhi. Wandering around Lutyens’ Delhi there remains today a continuing sense of awe and bewilderment. The vast scale of the design, architecture, tree-lined boulevards and grandiose constructions remains breathtaking. Sipping coffee in the commercial centre Connaught Square (and politely fending off the numerous offers of shopping assistance from the locals) begins to reveal the extent of the enterprise but also to raise numerous questions. It was George V, King of England and Emperor of India, who announced at the Delhi Durbar in 1911 that Delhi would replace Calcutta as the new capital of the British Indian Empire; India would be easier to govern from New Delhi rather than the north-east coast of the country. The Raj was on the move. Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker were the architects charged with the design of the new imperial centre. Work started after the First World War and was completed in 1931. The splendour of New Delhi continues today to attract attention from visitors around the world and scholars from a variety of disciplines. Connaught Place, the India Gate war memorial, the royal mall Rajpath lined with trees and fountains, and the Secretariat Building are but a few of the sites which are known to a wider global audience.

  The more one sees of this New Delhi, however, the more questions begin to arise. What sort of country and political class could imagine, never mind complete such a grandiose project? The First World War of inter-imperial rivalry had just finished with millions dead; Britain’s economic and global dominance was on the wane and a restless nationalist movement in India was on the rise. Despite th
is wider context, construction began on the new capital. Not just any old capital, but a capital that was designed and constructed to last a millennium, forever and ever. Irrespective of the elegance of the architecture, Lutyens’ Delhi embodied raw political power reinforcing the divide between the rulers and the ruled. It symbolised, similar to other empires and religions, a sense of impotence, obedience and wonderment. A foretaste of this arrogance and blind faith in the military might and, therefore, the future of the British state was evident in the photographs and numerous video clips available on the Internet of the 1911 Delhi Durbar. The vast pageant resplendent with elephants, jewels and, no doubt, ‘grateful locals and dignitaries’ not only centred on power but also on monarchy, Christianity and ‘whiteness’. An interesting account of the Durbar is provided in January’s edition of The Caravan, the excellent Indian cultural magazine. Some 84,000 Europeans and Indians were brought from different parts of the country to 233 camps covering 40 square kilometres under 16 square kilometres of canvas. 35,000 troops were in attendance. From the spring of 1911 onwards, some 20,000 people had been at work on these camps. Sixty-four kilometres of new roads were constructed, 80 kilometres of water mains and 48 kilometres of water pipes were laid. Farms with herds of cows and dairies, and markets for meat and vegetables were established. It must have been a good day out for everyone.

  Thirty-six years later, Britain left India in a hasty, bloody, murderous and undignified exit.