Vol. 6 · pages 56–60

41ADMINISTRATION AND FINANCE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY view, altered the conditions of their trust from time to time, and finally relieved the trustees of its exercise altogether. When the subject is carefully examined, it will be found that the Government of India, so far from being the Government of a distinct state, has been, from the first, simply a department of the British Government. The British ministry, acting through the President of the Board of Control, formed the real motive power which decided the policy of successive Indian administrations, and the East India Company was simply a convenient screen...... If the facts be so, then, and they cannot be gainsaid, we seem to be shut up to the conclusion that the acts of the Government of India, from first to last, have been the acts of the British nation. India has never had even the shadow of a constitution, or of a national government, but has been ruled as a conquered country, according to the views of successive British Parliaments and the British administrations. The Indian debt has really been incurred by the Government of this country : and how, then, can we possibly shake ourselves free of Indian liabilities ?” Mr. Wingate also appealed to the humane part of the British public by dwelling upon the advantages to England and the injuries to India : “In proceeding to consider these advantages, there is one most important fact, which should ever be present to the mind of the reader, and that is, that those advantages, be they great or small, have cost the nation nothing to acquire. This may sound as a startling assertion in the ears of Englishmen of this generation, who have not yet forgotten the heavy bills which they have had to pay for Canada rebellions, Caffre wars, Ceylon insurrections, and many manumissions of West Indian Slaves; and who are annually reminded of the cost of governing, or protecting our colonies and dependencies, by the financial estimates submitted to Parliament; but the assertion, nevertheless, is strictly and liberally correct. “Strange,” may we wonderingly exclaim, “that we, who have spent so much on our colonial possessions, and have waged so many costly wars for thankless foreigners, should have laid out no money in the

42 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES acquisition or improvement of our great Indian Empire. The thing cannot be : it is too astounding for belief.” Astounding indeed it is : but there is something still more astonishing behind; for not only is it a fact that India has been acquired without the expenditure of a single shilling on the part of this country, but it is equally a fact that, so far from involving outlay, India has regularly paid to Great Britain a heavy tribute, which there is reason for thinking has not fallen far short of the almost incredible sum of a hundred millions sterling in the course of the present century.”...... “ The Indian tribute, whether weighed in the scales of justice, or viewed in the light of our own true interest, will be found to be at variance with humanity, with common sense, and with the received maxims of economical science.” Touching the grievances of India, Mr. Wingate asked the English public : “Has our policy in India been determined out of pure, unselfish, and benevolent regard for the welfare of the people of that country, and without the smallest regard for the manner in which it may affect our own away ? Was this the principle which guided us in imposing prohibitive duties upon Indian manufactures imported into this country, and merely nominal duties upon British manufactures imported into India ? Was it out of pure regard for India that cotton exported to Great Britain from India, is exempt from duty, while it is taxed on exportation to all parts of the world besides ? Was it Indian interest which dictated the fixing of import duties upon goods brought to India in British ships, at one-half of the amount levied upon similar goods brought in ships to any other country ? Were native interests solely concerned in the exemption of Europeans in India from the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts of criminal justice, by which native redress for British wrong-doing, has been made a practical impossibility in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred ? Was it out of consideration for the tax paying Hindoo and Mohamedan, that the official European in India was provided with a costly ecclesiastical establishment before anything else was done for their education or enlightment ?

43ADMINISTRATION AND FINANCE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY Was it unselfish regard for the natives that dictated the policy of obtaining, upholding and extending British dominion in the East, by means of taxes raised in India, in opposition to the rule obtaining in all other British dependencies, of providing for the costs of their military defence from the British Exchequer ? And lastly, were the arrangements for defraying what is styled “the home charges,” out of the Indian revenues, under which nearly one hundred millions sterling of taxes collected in India, have been transferred to Great Britain in the course of the present century, devised for the purpose of benefiting the people of India alone ? Let the candid reader thoughtfully and conscientiously answer these questions for himself, and then say whether British interest as well as Indian interests have not had a share in determining the course of our Indian policy.” All the arguments legal and humanitarian failed to win the day. The English Parliament flatly refused to share in the Indian Debt which created the acquisition of the Empire. The entire heavy load of the debt of the East India Company amounting to £ 69,473,484—mostly unproductive—was placed on the shoulders of the poverty-stricken natives who had no voice in the doings of the Company. This was not all : the unfortunate mutiny had cost £ 40,000,000, and as a legitimate expenditure for the acquisition of an empire, England in justice ought to have paid the cost of the mutiny. John Bright who often expoused the cause of the Indian tax-payers appealed to the Parliament saying “that the forty millions which the revolt will cost is a grievous burden to place upon the people of India. It has come from the mismanagement of the Parliament and the people of England. If every man had what was just, no doubt that forty millions would have to be paid out of the taxes levied upon the people of this country (England).” The practical outcome of these unjust arrangements was that the people of India purchased the empire at many millions for the debt was only a part of the cost, and made an offering of it to the British Crown : in other words, the Empire was either a gift or a trust.

44 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES The arrangements regarding the stock of the East India Company are in the same iniquitous strain. The stock of the Company was redeemed by a loan which was also added to the already enormous debt consolidated into what is known as the India Government Debt. What the Act really did was to annihilate the Board of Control : the Company though legally extinct continues to live for all practical purposes and enjoys her dividends even to this day in the shape of interest paid out of Indian revenues. The astounding result of this policy was gains to England and costs to India. When every effort at giving justice to India failed in the British Parliament, Lord Derby moved that this enormous debt of India be guaranteed by the Parliament so that on the security of it the interest rate be lowered and the Indian tax-payer be relieved. He said : “I am aware that the uniform policy of the Parliament and the Government of this country has been to decline all responsibility in regard to the debt of India, which has been held to be a charge only on the Indian Exchequer. Dealing with the present state of affairs I may say at once that I am not going to recommend any change in that policy. I know well the alarm which any such proposition would create and I know the refusal which it would inevitably receive. But this is a question which will recur again and again, and which will have to be considered in the future as well as in the present. I would likewise ask the House to bear in mind that if ever the time should come when the established policy in this respect should undergo a change, and when a national guarantee should be given for those liabilities, that guarantee would operate to reduce the interest paid upon the Indian Debt by no less than £ 750,000 or even £ 1,000,000 which, formed into a sinking fund, would go far to pay off the whole.” John Bright who through sheer short-sightedness opposed said : “I object to an Imperial guarantee on this ground—if we left the services of India, after exhausting the resources of India, to put their hands into the pockets of the English people, the

45ADMINISTRATION AND FINANCE OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY people of England having no control over Indian expenditure, it is impossible to say to what lengths of unimagined extravegance they would not go : and in endeavoring to save India, may we not go far towards ruining England ?” Not only was there no warrant for Mr. Bright to magnify this danger so much, but he failed “to see that the people of England would have very soon ceased to neglect the affairs of India, and would have obtained a real control over Indian expenditure, if some share of the liability of the Indian Debt had been thrown on them.” The discussions were all abortive and did not even recompense the breath that was wasted and in no sense did the natives get any relief from “the direful spring of woes unnumbered.” Let us now see what the Act willed for the future. Section 55 said, “excepting for preventing or repelling actual invasion of her Majesty’s Indian possessions, or under other sudden and urgent necessity, the revenues of India shall not, without the consent of both Houses of Parliament, be applicable to defray the expenses of any military operation carried on beyond the external frontiers of such possessions by her Majesty’s forces charged upon such revenues.” With profound respect for the intellect of Mr. R. C. Dutt, one, however, cannot understand on what ground does he characterise this section as “one salutary financial provision”. That it was an improvement over the financial administration of the East India Company no one can doubt. But it is by no means salutary in that the revenues of India have been spent outside India for nonIndian purposes, even after the Act. The fatal error lay in this,—the excepting clause in the above section which sanctions the expenditure of Indian revenue outside of India omits the vital word previous. The clause in order to be salutary in effect ought to run—“the revenues of India shall not, without the previous consent of both Houses of Parliament, be applicable etc......” and not in the way it does. An unknown writer says, “in all probability that essential proviso was comprised in the original draft, but afterwards eliminated by the