Vol. 12 · pages 91–95

70 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES the manufactured goods of the country are undersold by the English.. a dismal decay has consequently taken place in the circumstances of the native merchants. “Regarding the decay of Dacca the same authority says, “Its trade is reduced to the sixtieth part of what it was, and all its splendid buildings,… the factories and the Churches of the French, Dutch and Portuguese Nations are all into ruin, and overgrown with jungle.” To ameliorate their misery, natives petitioned Parliament saying, “that every encouragement is held out to the exportation from England to India of the growth and produce of foreign, as well as English industry, while many thousands of the natives of India, who, a short time ago, derived a livelihood from the growth of cotton and the manufacture of cotton goods, are without bread, in consequence of the facilities afforded to the produce of America, and the manufacturing industry of England.” But the appeal was made in vain and the interests of England always remained in the forefront in the eyes of those that were called upon to rule the destinies of India. Though, as Bishop Heber rightly says that the officers of the Company avoid “all gloomy pictures” of the misery of the people, there are others who, marked by independence of opinions, are quite as explicit as they are emphatic on this point. The Court of Directors wrote on May 7th, 1766 : “We have the sense of the deplorable state…….from the corruption and rapacity of our servants, and the universal depravity of manners throughout the settlement……. Think the vast fortunes acquired by a scene of the most tyrannic and oppressive conduct that ever was known in any age or country.” Clive, though criminal himself, was conscious of the oppression for, he wrote to George Dudley on September 8th, 1766 : “But retrospection into actions which have been buried in oblivion for so many years; which if inquired into, may produce discoveries which cannot bear the light……..but may bring disgrace upon the nation, and at the same time blast the reputation of great and good families.” Sir Thomas Munro was so indignant at the misrule of the Company that he said, “It would be more desirable that we should be expelled from the country altogether, than that the result of our

71INDIA ON THE EVE OF CROWN GOVERNMENT system of Government should be such an abasement of a whole people. Mr. Martin in his “Eastern India” 1838 says, “The annual drain of £3,000,000 on British India has amounted in thirty years, at 12 per cent (the usual Indian rate) compound interest, to the enormous sum of £723,900,000 sterling ... So constant and accumulating a drain, even in England, would soon impoverish her. How severe, then, must be its effects on India, where the wage of a labourer is from two pence to three pence a day ! Were the hundred millions of British subjects in India converted into a consumpting population, what a market would be presented for British capital, skill and industry! ” Mr. Frederick John Shore of the Bengal Civil Service very pathetically said: “But the halcyon days of India are over; she has been drained of a large proportion of the wealth she once possessed, and her energies have been cramped by a sordid system of misrule to which the interest of millions have been sacrificed for the benefit of the few. The gradual impoverishment of the people and the country, under the mode of rule established by the English Government has.... the grinding extortions of the English Government have effected the impoverishment of the country and people to an extent almost unparalleled…….. ” “The fundamental principle of the English had been to make the whole Indian Nation subservient in every possible way to the interest and benefit of themselves…….. Had the welfare of the people been our object, a very different course would have been adopted, and a very different result would have followed.” But such was not to be the case. Nay, it would have been unnatural had it been otherwise, for Mill says, “the Government of a people by itself has a meaning and a reality ; but such a thing as Government of one people by another does not, and cannot exist. One people may keep another for its own use, a place to make money in, a human cattle-farm to be worked for the profits of its own inhabitants.” The administration of the East India Company was a prototype of the Roman provincial administration, under the Roman Empire, however, local liberties were conserved. Monesen says, “The Roman provincial constitution, in substance, only concentrated military power in the hands of the Roman Governor,

72 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES while administration and jurisdiction were, or at any rate were intended to be, retained by the communities, so that as much of the old political independence as was at all capable of life might be preserved in the form of communal freedom.” But the British suppressed everything, and just as Mr. Ferrero insists on our abandoning “one of the most widespread misconceptions which teaches that Rome administered her provinces in broad-minded spirit, consulting the general interest, and adopting wide and benefit principles of Government for the good of the subjects,” so must we guard against any complacent view of the administration of the East India Company, so current among historians who labour hard to show that with the interval of 1700 years, human nature had greatly advanced in moral standard. Short may have been our discussion of the situation before the East India Company, it is quite sufficient to show that the supplanter of the Moghuls and the Marathas were persons with-no better moral fiber and that the economic condition of India under the so-called native despots and brigands was better than what was under the rule of those who boasted as being of superior culture. It is with industries ruined, agriculture “overstocked” and over-taxed with productivity too low to bear high taxes, with few avenues for display of native capacities, the people of India passed from the rule of the Company to the rule of the Crown. zz