Vol. 12 · pages 76–80

55INDIA ON THE EVE OF CROWN GOVERNMENT This knowledge is absolutely necessary in order to form a correct estimate of the Economic condition of the people of India under the East India Company. We need not wait to dilate upon the Economic prosperity of India in ancient times since we have already dwelt upon it. We have a consensus of opinion both Hindoo and Mohomedan as regards the prosperity of India when the Mohomedan conquest took place. The magnificence of Canouj and the wealth of the Temple of Somnath bear witness to it. It is a mistake to suppose that the Mussalman sovereigns of India were barbarous and despots. On the other hand majority of them were men of extraordinary character. Mohommed of Guzni, “showed so much munificence, to individuals of eminence that his capital exhibited a greater assemblage of literary genius than any other monarch in Asia has ever been able to produce. If rapacious in acquiring wealth, he was unrivalled in the judgement and grandeur with which he knew how to expend it.” Of all his illustrious successors one of whom was a female (Sultana Rezia); Feroz Shah is very well known for his administration. His public works “consisted of 50 dams across rivers to promote irrigation, 40 mosques and 30 colleges, 100 Caravan series, 30 reservoirs, 100 hospitals, 100 public baths, 150 bridges, besides many other edifices for pleasure and ornament; and, above all, the canal from the point in the Jumna where it leaves the mountains of Carnal to Hausi and Hissar, a work which has been partially restored by the British Government. The historian of this monarch expatiates on the happy state of the ryots under his Government, on the goodness of their houses and furniture and the general use of gold and silver ornaments amongst their women... The general state of the country must have been flourishing, for Milo de Conti, an Italian traveller, who visited India about A.D. 1420, speaks highly of what he saw in Guzerat, and found the banks of the Ganges covered with towns amidst beautiful gardens and orchards. He passed four famous cities before he reached Maarazia, which he describes as a powerful city, filled with gold, silver, and precious stones. His accounts are corroborated by those of Barbora and

56 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES Bartema, who travelled in the early part of the sixteenth century. The former in particular describes Cambay as a remarkably well-built city, situated in a beautiful country, filled with merchants of all nations, and with artisans and manufacturers like those of Flanders. Caesar Frederic gives a similar account of Guzerat, and Ibne-Batuta, who travelled during the anarchy and oppression of Mohammed Tagluk’s reign, in the middle of the fifteenth century, when insurrections were reigning in most parts of the country, enumerates many large and populous towns and cities, and gives a high impression of the state in which the country must have been before it fell into disorder.” Baber, the founder of the Moghul dynasty in India found the country in a prosperous condition and was surprised at the immense population and the innumerable artisans everywhere. He was a benevolent ruler and public works marked his statesmanship. Sher Shah who temporarily wrested the throne from the Moghul was excepting Akabar, the greatest of Mohomedan rulers and like Baber executed many public works. Akabar’s benevolent administration is too well known to need any mention. The rule of Shah Jehan who “reigned not so much as a king over his subjects, but rather as a father over his family” was marked by the greatest prosperity; his reign was the most tranquil. Speaking of the condition of the people in the dominions of the Marathas who were contemporaries of the later Moghuls a traveller says, “from Surat, I passed the Ghats, and when I entered the country of the Maharattas, I thought myself in the midst of the simplicity and happiness of the golden age where nature was yet unchanged, and war and misery were unknown. The people were cheerful, vigourous, and in high health, and unbounded hospitality was a universal virtue ; every door was open, and friends, neighbours and strangers, were alike welcome to whatever they found.” With regard to the economic condition of the people in Southern India which was under the rule of Tipoo, a historian

57INDIA ON THE EVE OF CROWN GOVERNMENT says, “When a person, travelling through a strange country, finds it well cultivated, populous with industrious inhabitants, cities newly founded, commerce extending, towns increasing, and everything flourishing, so as to indicate happiness, he will naturally conclude it to be under a form of Government congenial to the minds of the people. This is a picture of Tipoo’s country, and this is our conclusion respecting its Government.” “His country was found everywhere full of inhabitants and apparently cultivated to the utmost extent of which the soil was capable” …. His Government though strict and arbitrary, was the despotism of a strict and able sovereign, who nourishes, not oppresses, the subjects who are to be the means of his future aggrandisement, and his cruelties were, in general, inflicted on those who he considered as his enemies. Clive described Bengal as a country of “inexhaustible riches”. Mecaulay said, “In spite of the Mussalman despot and of the Maratha freebooter, Bengal was known through the East as the Garden of Eden—as the rich kingdom. Its population multiplied exceedingly; distant provinces were nourished from the overflowing of its granaries: and the noble ladies of London and Paris were clothed in the delicate produce of its looms.” But with the advent of the English things began to change. Prosperity bade fair to India and perched itself on the Union Jack. The evil forces were set forth both on the side of the Parliament and the East India Company. The Rule of the Company was anything but wise, it was rigourous, it gave security but destroyed property. The scheme of administration was far from perfect. Adam Smith characterizes the “Company of Merchants” as “incapable of considering themselves as sovereigns, even after they have become such” and says, “Trade or buying in order to sell again, they will consider as their principal business, and by a strange absurdity, regard the character of the sovereign as but an appendix to that of the merchants,.... as sovereigns, their interest is exactly the same with that of the country which they govern. As merchants, their interest is directly opposite to that interest.” 1 Adam Smiths 1. ‘Wealth of Nations’ (Canner’s Ed.) Vol. II, p 136-7.

58 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES criticism of the Courts of Proprietors and Directors described in the last chapter is also very valuable. He posits that the interest of every proprietor of India stock, is by no means the same with that of the country ‘in the Government of which his vote gives him some influence and says, “This would be exactly true if those masters never had any other interest but that which belongs to them as proprietors of India stock. But they frequently have another of much greater importance. Frequently a man of great, sometimes even a man of moderate fortune, is willing to give thirteen or fourteen hundred pounds… merely for the influence which he expects to acquire by a vote in the Court of Proprietors. It gives him a share though not in the plunder, yet in the appointment of the plunderers of India. The Directors, though they make those appointments, being necessarily under the influence of the Court of Proprietors, which not only elects them, but sometimes overrules their appointments. A man of great or even of moderate fortune, provided he can enjoy this influence for a few years, and thereby get a certain number of his friends appointed to Employments in India, frequently cares little about the dividends which he can expect from so small a capital, or even about die improvement or loss of the capital itself upon which his vote is founded. About the prosperity or ruin of the great empire, in the Government of which that vote gives him a share, he seldom cares at all. No other sovereigns ever were, or from the nature of things ever could be, so perfectly indifferent, about the happiness or misery of their subjects, the improvements or waste of their dominions, the glory or disgrace of their administration, as, from irresistible moral causes, the greater part of the proprietors of such a merchantile company are, and necessarily must be.” 1 This is perhaps a sweeping indictment of the administration of the company as a whole. It, however, holds true of the early rule of the company though the corruption was later gradually eliminated. In the local or Supreme Government of India, the native inhabitants had no voice. They were barred from all high paid offices and had no scope beyond the position of a petty clerk. 1. ‘Wealth of Nations’ (Canner’s Ed.) Vol. II, p. 139 f.n.

59INDIA ON THE EVE OF CROWN GOVERNMENT The internal administration was so devised that the Governors and the official staff in their capacity as advisers did or were compelled to do all the thinking for the inhabitants of the country. They enacted, true to a word, the part of Sir John Bowley or the “Poor man’s friend” so ably drawn by Charles Dickens : “Your only business, my good fellow, is with me. You need not trouble yourself to think about anything. I will think for you; I know what is good for you; I am your perpetual parent. Such is the dispensation of all all-wise Providence ... what man can do, I do. I do my duty as the Poor man’s Friend and Father, and I endeavour to educate his mind, by inculcating on all occasions the one great lesson which that class requires, that is entire dependence on myself. They have no business whatever with themselves.” These Bowleys no doubt did the thinking as a Divine mandate but unfortunately, none the less naturally, their thinking and enacting proved decidedly favourable to England and fatal to India. How England prospered while India declined may be well impressed on our minds if we recall the economic condition of England immediately before and after 1600 and also the nature of India’s tribute to England. Sir Josiah Child gives very interesting comparative description of the rising prosperity of England after 1545. According to him, in 1545 “the trade of England then was inconsiderable and the merchants very mean and few”….. “but now”, he says “there are more men to be found upon the exchange with ten thousand pounds estates, than were then of one thousand pounds. And if this be doubted let us ask the aged, whether five hundred pounds portion with a daughter sixty years ago, were not esteemed a larger portion than two thousand pounds is now ; and whether gentle women in those days would not esteem themselves well clothed in a serge gown, which a chambermaid now will be ashamed to be seen in... We have now almost one hundred coaches for one we had formerly. We with ease can pay a greater tax now in one year than our forefathers could in twenty. Our customs are very much improved, I believe above the proportion aforesaid, of six to one ;