Glimpses of World History

by Jawaharlal Nehru

  Yes, there can be few sights that are sadder than the sunken eyes of our kisans with the hunted, hopeless look in them. What a burden our peasantry have carried these many years! And let us not forget that we, who have prospered a little, have been part of that burden. All of us, foreigner and Indian, have sought to exploit that long-suffering kisan and have mounted on his back. Is it surprising that his back breaks?

  But, at long last, there came a glimmering of hope for him, a whisper of better times and lighter burdens. A little man came who looked straight into his eyes, and deep down into his shrunken heart, and sensed his long agony. And there was magic in that look, and a fire in his touch, and in his voice there was understanding and a yearning and abounding love and faithfulness unto death. And when the peasant and the worker and all who were down-trodden saw him and heard him, their dead hearts woke to life and thrilled, and a strange hope rose in them, and they shouted with joy: “Mahatma Gandhi ki jai,” and they prepared to march out of their valley of suffering. But the old machine that had crushed them for so long would not let them go easily. It moved again and produced new weapons, new laws and ordinances, to crush them, new chains to bind them. And then?—that is no part of my tale or history. That is still part of tomorrow, and when tomorrow becomes today, we shall know. But who doubts?

  112

  How Britain Ruled India

  December 5, 1932

  I have already written you three long letters on India in the nineteenth century. It is a long story and a long agony, and if I compress it too much, I fear that I shall make it still more difficult to understand. I am perhaps paying more attention to this period of India’s story than I have paid to other countries or other periods. That is not unnatural. Being an Indian, I am more interested in it, and knowing more about it, I can write more fully. Besides, this period has something much more than a historical interest for us. Modern India, such as we find her today, was formed and took shape in this travail of the nineteenth century. If we are to understand India as she is, we must know something of the forces that went to make her or mar her. Only so can we serve her intelligently, and know what we should do and what path we should take.

  I have not done with this period of India’s history. I have still much to tell you. In these letters I take one or more aspect and tell you something about it. I deal with each aspect separately, so that it may be easier to understand. But you will know, of course, that all these activities and changes that I have told you about, and all those that I shall describe in this letter and afterwards, took place more or less simultaneously, one influencing the other, and between them they produced the India of the nineteenth century.

  Reading of these deeds and misdeeds of the British in India, you will sometimes feel angry at the policy they have pursued and the widespread misery that has resulted from it. But whose fault was it that this happened? Was it not due to our own weakness and ignorance? Weakness and folly are always invitations to despotism. If the British can profit by our mutual dissensions, the fault is ours that we quarrel amongst ourselves. If they can divide us and so weaken us, playing on the selfishness of separate groups, our permitting this is itself a sign of the superiority of the British. Therefore if you would be angry, be angry with weakness and ignorance and mutual strife, for it is these things that are responsible for our troubles.

  The tyranny of the British, we say. Whose tyranny is it, after all? Who profits by it? Not the whole British race, for millions of them are themselves unhappy and oppressed. And undoubtedly there are small groups and classes of Indians who have profited a little by the British exploitation of India. Where are we to draw the line, then? It is not a question of individuals, but that of a system. We have been living under a huge machine that has exploited and crushed India’s millions. This machine is the machine of the new imperialism, the outcome of industrial capitalism. The profits of this exploitation go largely to England, but in England they go almost entirely to certain classes. Some part of the profits of exploitation remain in India also, and certain classes benefit by them. It is therefore foolish for us to get angry with individuals, or even with the British as a whole. If a system is wrong and injures us, it has to be changed. It makes little difference who runs it, and even good people are helpless in a bad system. With the best will in the world, you cannot convert stones and earth into good food, however much you may cook them. So it is, I think, with imperialism and capitalism. They cannot be improved; the only real improvement is to do away with them altogether. But that is my opinion. Some people differ from this. You need not take anything for granted, and, when the time comes, you can draw your conclusions. But about one thing most people do agree: that what is wrong is the system, and it is useless getting annoyed with individuals. If we want a change, let us attack and change the system. We have seen some of the evil effects of the system in India. When we consider China and Egypt and many other countries we shall see the same system, the same machine of capitalist-imperialism, at work exploiting other peoples.

  We shall go back to our story. I have told you of the advanced stage of Indian cottage-industries when the British came. With natural progress in the methods of production, and without any intervention from outside, it is probable that some time or other machine-industry would have come to India. There was iron and coal in the country and, as we saw in England, these helped the new industrialism greatly, and indeed partly brought it about. Ultimately this would have happened in India also. There might have been some delay in this, owing to the chaotic political conditions. The British, however, intervened. They represented a country and a community which had already changed over to the new big machine production. One might think, therefore, that they would favour such a change in India also, and encourage that class in India which was most likely to bring it about. They did no such thing. Indeed, they did the very opposite of this. Treating India as a possible rival, they broke up her industries, and actually discouraged the growth of machine-industry.

  Thus we find a somewhat remarkable state of affairs in India. We find that the British, the most advanced people in Europe at the time, ally themselves in India with the most backward and conservative classes. They bolster up a dying feudal class; they create landlords; they support the hundreds of dependent Indian rulers in their semi-feudal states. They actually strengthen feudalism in India. Yet these British had been the pioneers in Europe of the middle-class or bourgeois revolution which had given their Parliament power; they had also been the pioneers in the Industrial Revolution which had resulted in introducing industrial capitalism to the world. It was because of their lead in these matters that they went far ahead of their rivals and established a vast empire.

  It is not difficult to understand why the British acted in this way in India. The whole basis of capitalism is cut-throat competition and exploitation, and imperialism is an advanced stage of this. So the British, having the power, killed their actual rivals and deliberately prevented the growth of other rivals. They could not possibly make friends with the masses, for the whole object of their presence in India was to exploit them. The interests of the exploiters and the exploited could never be the same. So they, the British, fell back on the relics of feudalism which India still possessed. These had little real strength left even when the British came; but they were propped up and given a small share in the exploitation of the country. This propping up could only give temporary relief to a class which had outlived its utility; when the props were removed they were sure to fall or adapt themselves to the new conditions. There were as many as 700 Indian States, big and small, depending on the goodwill of the British. You know some of these big States: Hyderabad, Kashmir, Mysore, Baroda, Gwalior, etc. But, curiously, most of the Indian rulers of these States are not descended from the old feudal nobility, just as most of the big zamindars have no very ancient traditions. There is one chief, however—the Maharana of Udaipur, the head of the Surya Vanshi, Rajputs of the race of the Sun, who can trace his lineage back to dim pr
ehistoric days. Probably the only living person who can compete with him in this respect is the Mikado of Japan.

  British rule also helped religious conservatism. This sounds strange, for the British claimed to profess Christianity, and yet their coming made Hinduism and Islam in India more rigid. To some extent this reaction was natural, as foreign invasion tends to make the religions and culture of the country protect themselves by rigidity. It was in this way that Hinduism had become rigid and caste had developed after the Muslim invasions. Now, both Hinduism and Islam reacted after this fashion. But, apart from this, the British Government in India actually— both deliberately and unconsciously—helped the conservative elements in the two religions. The British were not interested in religion or in conversions; they were out to make money. They were afraid of interfering in any way in religious matters lest the people, in their anger, rose against them. So to avoid even the suspicion of interference, they went so far as actually to protect and help the country’s religions, or rather the external forms of religion. The result often was that the outer form remained, but there was little inside it.

  This fear of irritating the orthodox people made the government side with them in matters of reform. Thus the cause of reform was held up. An alien government can seldom introduce social reform, because every change it seeks to introduce is resented by the people. Hinduism and Hindu law were in many respects changing and progressive, though the progress had been remarkably slow in recent centuries. Hindu law itself is largely custom, and customs change and grow. This elasticity of the Hindu law disappeared under the British and gave place to rigid legal codes drawn up after consultation with the most orthodox people. Thus the growth of Hindu society, slow as it was, was stopped. The Muslims resented the new conditions even more, and retired into their shells.

  A great deal of credit is taken by the British for the abolition of what is (rather incorrectly) called sati, the practice of a Hindu widow burning herself on the funeral pyre of her husband. They deserve some credit for this, but as a matter of fact the government only took action after many years of agitation by Indian reformers headed by Raja Ram Mohan Roy. Previous to them other rulers, and especially the Marathas, had forbidden it; the Portuguese Albuquerque had abolished the practice in Goa. It was put down by the British as a result of Indian agitation and Christian missionary endeavours. So far as I can remember, this was the only reform of religious significance which was brought about by the British Government.

  So the British allied themselves with all the backward and conservative elements in the country. And they tried to make India a purely agricultural country producing raw materials for their industries. To prevent factories growing up in India they actually put a duty on machinery entering India. Other countries encouraged their own industries. Japan, as we shall see, simply galloped ahead with industrialization. But in India the British Government put its foot down. Owing to the duty on machinery, which was not taken off till 1860, the cost of building a factory in India was four times that of building it in England, although labour was far cheaper in India. This policy of obstruction could only delay matters; it could not stop the inevitable march of events. About the middle of the century machine-industry began to grow in India. The jute industry began in Bengal with British capital. The coming of the railways helped the growth of industry, and after 1880 cotton-mills, largely with Indian capital, grew up in Bombay and Ahmedabad. Then came mining. Except for the cotton-mills, this slow industrialization was very largely done with British capital. And all this was almost in spite of the government. The government talked of the laissez-faire policy, of allowing matters to take their own course, of not interfering with private initiative. The British Government had interfered with Indian trade in England and crushed it with duties and prohibitions when this was a rival in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Having got on top, they could afford to talk of laissez-faire. As a matter of fact, however, they were not merely indifferent. They actually discouraged certain Indian industries, especially the growing cotton industry of Bombay and Ahmedabad. A tax or duty was put on the products of these Indian mills; it was called the excise duty on cotton. The object of this was to help British cotton goods from Lancashire to compete with Indian textiles. Almost every country puts duties on some foreign goods, either to protect its own industries or to raise money. But the British in India did a very unusual and remarkable thing. They put the duty on Indian goods themselves! This cotton excise duty was continued, in spite of a great deal of agitation, till recent years.

  In this way modern industry grew slowly in India, despite the government. The richer classes in India cried out more and more for industrial development. It was only as late, I think, as 1905 that the government created a department of Commerce and Industry, but even so, little was done by it till the World War came. This growth of industrial conditions created a class of industrial workers who worked in the city factories. The pressure on land, of which I have told you, and the semi-

  famine conditions of the rural areas, drove many villagers to these factories, as well as to the great plantations that were rising in Bengal and Assam. This pressure also led many to emigrate to other countries where they were told they would get high wages. Emigration took place especially to South Africa, Fiji, Mauritius and Ceylon. But the change did little good to the workers. The emigrants in some of the countries were treated almost like slaves. In the tea-plantations of Assam they were in no better condition. Discouraged and disheartened, many of them sought, later on, to return to their villages from the plantations. But they were not welcome in their own villages, as there was no land to be had.

  The workers in the factories soon found that the slightly higher wage did not go very far. Everything cost more in the cities; altogether the cost of living was much higher. The places where they had to live were wretched hovels, filthy, damp and dark and insanitary. Their working conditions were also bad. In the village they had often starved, but they had had their fill of the sun and of fresh air. There was no fresh air and little sun for the factory-worker. His wages were not enough to meet the higher cost of living. Even women and children had to work long hours. Mothers with babes in their arms took to drugging their babies so that they might not interfere with work. Such were the miserable conditions under which these industrial workers worked in the factories. They were unhappy, of course, and discontent grew. Sometimes, in very despair, they had a strike—that is, they stopped work. But they were weak and feeble, and could easily be crushed by their wealthy employers, backed often by the government. Very slowly and after bitter experience they learnt the value of joint action. They formed trade unions.

  Do not think that this is a description of past conditions. There has been some improvement in labour conditions in India. Certain laws have been passed giving just a little protection to the poor worker. But even now you have but to go to Cawnpore or Bombay, or a number of other places where factories exist, and you will be horrified to see the houses of the workers.

  I have written to you in this and other letters of the British in India and of the British Government in India. What was this like, and how did it function? There was the East India Company at first, but behind it was the British Parliament. In 1858, after the great Revolt, the British Parliament took direct charge, and later the English King, or rather Queen, for there was a queen then, became Kaiser-i-Hind. In India there was the Governor-General, who became a Viceroy also, at the top, and under him were crowds of officials. India was divided up, more or less as it is now, into large provinces and States. The States under Indian rulers were supposed to be half-independent, but as a matter of fact they were wholly dependent on the British. An English official, called the Resident, lived in each of the larger States, and he exercised general control over the administration. He was not interested in internal reform, and it mattered little to him how bad or old-fashioned the government of the State was. What he was interested in was in strengthening British authority in the
State.

  About a third of India was divided up into these States. The remaining two-thirds were under the direct government of the British. These two-thirds were therefore called British India. All the high officials in British India were British, except towards the end of the century, when a few Indians crept in. Even so all power and authority of course remained, and still remains, with the British. These high officials, apart from the military, were members of what is called the Indian Civil Service. The whole government of India was thus controlled by this service, the I.C.S. Such a government by officials, who appoint each other and are not responsible for what they do to the people, is called a bureaucracy, from the word bureau, an office.

  We hear a great deal about this I.C.S. They have been a curious set of persons. They were efficient in some ways. They organized the government, strengthened British rule, and incidentally, profited greatly by it themselves. All the departments of government which helped in consolidating British rule and in collecting taxes were efficiently organized. Other departments were neglected. Not being appointed by, or responsible to, the people, the I.C.S. paid little attention to these other departments which concerned the people most. As was natural under the circumstances, they became arrogant and overbearing and contemptuous of public opinion. Narrow and limited in outlook, they began to look upon themselves as the wisest people on earth. The good of India meant to them primarily the good of their own service. They formed a kind of mutual admiration society and were continually praising each other. Unchecked power and authority inevitably lead to this, and the Indian Civil Service were practically masters of India. The British Parliament was too far away to interfere and, in any event, it had no occasion to interfere, as they served its interests and the interests of British industry. As for the interests of the people of India, there was no way of influencing them to any marked extent. Even feeble criticism of their actions was resented by them, so intolerant were they.