The Summer of ’47

dost-mittar #88 I understand that at no time were there more than 100,000 Brit civil and military officials/soldiers in the entire sub-continent. They had a good system (delegation of authority to the deputy commissioners who reported once a month to the viceroy or governor) though, and also good people (a friend of mine who was political agent in the tribal areas told me of the careful and detailed descriptions of the various tribes by his brit predecessors that he found relevant long after the authors were dead and gone). And while we need a good education system to produce good people to move society forward, we also need good values that are largely learned at home.

So: I agree with your earlier point (I think) on the importance of systems, as opposed to the simplistic notion that ``our people are no good`` and so we are poor. However, our systems (at home, in schools, in the workplace) should at the same time stress certain values that distinguish a progressive society from a stagnant one: honesty, dedication, hard-work, enterprise, logic.

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dost-mittar: Actually one can make a good case in each direction based on limited data available. Because of my poor knowledge in this area, I would rather like to agree with you than backing my previous post. You, Fuzair, Arun, Syed Ahmad, FerozK, Sigalph,... are much better equipped to continue a good informative intellectual discussion.

From http://archive.nandotimes.com/ourcentury/cnworld/story/body/0,3329,500144820-500173452-500635021-0-nandotimes,00.html

A Marathi-speaking Indian from Bombay will talk to a Bengali-speaking one from Calcutta in English, since neither may know the most common language of northern India, Hindi.

Parliamentary government, cricket, tea time, the judiciary, a civilian-controlled military, a document-loving bureaucracy, laws that allow detention without trial - for better and for worse, they are part of India`s legacy from British colonialism.

``It`s not simply good and it`s not simply bad,`` said Sumit Sarkar, professor of modern history at Delhi University.

The idea that Britain bequeathed India democracy, education and better lifestyles has changed over the decades since British poet Rudyard Kipling wrote ``The White Man`s Burden.``

Sarkar argues that the colonial system strengthened casteism, because the British were used to a class-based system and found the Hindu hierarchy efficient.

When the British left India, 90 percent of the population was illiterate. A small elite, overwhelmingly Brahmins, had received educations that made them useful in the colonial administration.

``The British colonialists were a handful of people ruling over a huge country with a much bigger populace,`` said Sarkar. ``They never exceeded 300. They couldn`t have succeeded without complicated and ever shifting alliances.``

In his autobiography, recently retired South African President Nelson Mandela wrote about his British-based education ``in which British ideas, British culture and British institutions were automatically assumed to be superior.``

He was given an English name on his first day of school. ``At the time, I looked on the white man not as an oppressor, but as a benefactor,`` Mandela said.

Under colonialism, India became poorer, as could be expected in a system meant to benefit the home country at the expense of the colony.

In 1750, India produced 25 percent of the world`s cotton textiles, said Prasenjit Basu, a Calcutta-born economist at Credit Suisse First Boston in Singapore. Then the British banned the exports to protect its own textile industry, and production fell to 1.7 percent of the world market by 1900.

India`s economy grew at an average of just 0.7 percent a year from 1900 to 1950, Basu said. In the first decade after independence it was 4 percent, and reached 6.5 percent during the 1990s. Famines increased during colonial times, he said, and stopped after independence.

``Another myth is that the British gave India democracy,`` said Basu. ``If that was the case then why wasn`t it given to Pakistan, Bangladesh, Tanzania, Nigeria, Singapore, Malaysia and Kenya?``

``The British had democracy - for themselves - and the Indian independence movement copied it,`` said Basu. There was no universal suffrage until India`s first election after independence.

When the British left South Africa, racial separation was entrenched. Military dictatorships, one-party rule and tribal conflicts followed the British departure from some other colonies.

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1871britishrule.html

Modern History Sourcebook:

Dadabhai Naoroji:

The Benefits of British Rule, 1871

The Benefits of British Rule for India:

In the Cause of Humanity: Abolition of suttee and infanticide. Destruction of Dacoits, Thugs, Pindarees, and other such pests of Indian society. Allowing remarriage of Hindu widows, and charitable aid in time of famine. Glorious work all this, of which any nation may well be proud, and such as has not fallen to the lot of any people in the history of mankind.

In the Cause of Civilization: Education, both male and female. Though yet only partial, an inestimable blessing as far as it has gone, and leading gradually to the destruction of superstition, and many moral and social evils. Resuscitation of India`s own noble literature, modified and refined by the enlightenment of the West.

Politically: Peace and order. Freedom of speech and liberty of the press. Higher political knowledge and aspirations. Improvement of government in the native states. Security of life and property. Freedom from oppression caused by the caprice or greed of despotic rulers, and from devastation by war. Equal justice between man and man (sometimes vitiated by partiality to Europeans). Services of highly educated administrators, who have achieved the above-mentioned results.

Materially: Loans for railways and irrigation. Development of a few valuable products, such as indigo, tea, coffee, silk, etc. Increase of exports. Telegraphs.

Generally: A slowly growing desire of late to treat India equitably, and as a country held in trust. Good intentions. No nation on the face of the earth has ever had the opportunity of achieving such a glorious work as this. I hope in the credit side of the account I have done no injustice, and if I have omitted any item which anyone may think of importance, I shall have the greatest pleasure in inserting it. I appreciate, and so do my countrymen, what England has done for India, and I know that it is only in British hands that her regeneration can be accomplished. Now for the debit side.

The Detriments of British Rule:

In the Cause of Humanity: Nothing. Everything, therefore, is in your favor under this heading.

In the Cause of Civilization: As I have said already, there has been a failure to do as much as might have been done, but I put nothing to the debit. Much has been done, though.

Politically: Repeated breach of pledges to give the natives a fair and reasonable share in the higher administration of their own country, which has much shaken confidence in the good faith of the British word. Political aspirations and the legitimate claim to have a reasonable voice in the legislation and the imposition and disbursement of taxes, met to a very slight degree, thus treating the natives of India not as British subjects, in whom representation is a birthright. Consequent on the above, an utter disregard of the feelings and views of the natives. The great moral evil of the drain of wisdom and practical administration, leaving none to guide the rising generation.

Financially: All attention is engrossed in devising new modes of taxation, without any adequate effort to increase the means of the people to pay; and the consequent vexation and oppressiveness of the taxes imposed, imperial and local. Inequitable financial relations between England and India, i.e., the political debt of ,100,000,000 clapped on India`s shoulders, and all home charges also, though the British Exchequer contributes nearly ,3,000,000 to the expense of the colonies.

Materially: The political drain, up to this time, from India to England, of above ,500,000,000, at the lowest computation, in principal alone, which with interest would be some thousands of millions. The further continuation of this drain at the rate, at present, of above ,12,000,000 per annum, with a tendency to increase. The consequent continuous impoverishment and exhaustion of the country, except so far as it has been very partially relieved and replenished by the railway and irrigation loans, and the windfall of the consequences of the American war, since 1850. Even with this relief, the material condition of India is such that the great mass of the poor have hardly tuppence a day and a few rags, or a scanty subsistence. The famines that were in their power to prevent, if they had done their duty, as a good and intelligent government. The policy adopted during the last fifteen years of building railways, irrigation works, etc., is hopeful, has already resulted in much good to your credit, and if persevered in, gratitude and contentment will follow. An increase of exports without adequate compensation; loss of manufacturing industry and skill. Here I end the debit side.

Summary: To sum up the whole, the British rule has been: morally, a great blessing; politically, peace and order on one hand, blunders on the other; materially, impoverishment, relieved as far as the railway and other loans go. The natives call the British system ``Sakar ki Churi,`` the knife of sugar. That is to say, there is no oppression, it is all smooth and sweet, but it is the knife, notwithstanding. I mention this that you should know these feelings. Our great misfortune is that you do not know our wants. When you will know our real wishes, I have not the least doubt that you would do justice. The genius and spirit of the British people is fair play and justice.

This last article is several pages long but a good read on the subject. www.drake.edu/artsci/PolSci/ssjrnl/2001/nunn.html

The British Raj

Zachary Nunn

Re: the population of India debate

Here is one set of figures on the population of undivided India (including Burma) from about 1861 onwards:

1861 135,634,200
1866 148,457,000
1871 191,307,000

(different estimate for 1867/72 time period
203,415,000; apparently for all of S. Asia, not just present day India).

1881 201,888,100


1890 219,454,000
1895 228,565,000
1901 295,215,000

(appartently 1901 data is for area that formed all of South Asia, including Burma, not just current India only).

So between 1861 and 1895, the Indian population grew at roughly 1.5% p.a., a pretty impressive population growth rate given the disgusting public health/sanitation measures of the time. I`ve also heard that Indian population growth was virtually stagnant until well into the 19th century so overpopulation has to be counted among the British raj ki barkateen.

Clearly British rule couldn`t have been THAT bad for the average peasant if population growth continued to increase so steadily. As I said, I doubt very much, although I don`t have the ready data to back up my gut feeling, that public health/sanitation measures improved very markedly for the average Indian in the 1861-95 time period. Therefore, the increased population growth has to be either due to higher birthrate (possible but I doubt its the major factor here since birth rate would have been darn high to begin with) or increased caloric intake reducing the death rate (by increasing the survival rate for infectious diseases perhaps?).

If the latter, I would attribute it to the improved/increased crop yields due to reduced political/military instability, etc, i.e., one more of the blessings of the Raj.

Anyone with alternative hypotheses?

Regards.

Source for population data: http://www.library.uu.nl/wesp/populstat/Asia/indiac.htm

Oops, sorry. The line:
Here is one set of figures on the population of undivided India (including Burma) from about 1861 onwards:

Should read:
Here is one set of figures on the population of present day India.

Apologies for the confusion.

re sammerjb , parts thereof

````The British had democracy - for themselves - and the Indian independence movement copied it,`` said Basu. There was no universal suffrage until India`s first election after independence. ``

Britain itself did not have total universal suffrage until the 1945 general elections. Neither did Australia or New Zealand. This seems to indicate the there was no anti-Indian design here.

``When the British left South Africa, racial separation was entrenched. Military dictatorships, one-party rule and tribal conflicts followed the British departure from some other colonies. ``

That`s spurious logic because the apartheid regime was entrnched in SOuth Africa`s contitution in 1948 by the Afrikaaners (the Dutch colonists) and opposed by the minority British colonists. Between then and 1990 it was always the British-descended whites(of the UP and then DP), a minority amongst the Caucasians, who opposed the Afrikaaner(the NP and later the CP) apartheid system.

Yeah, blame the Brits, dude! It is fashionable amongst intellectuals of the Third World. Still!

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Re: Sigalph235 #94

Don`t forget that SOME blacks (a very, very tiny propotion) had the vote in S. Africa until AFTER the 1948 elections. I believe it was a small group of blacks in Cape Town province. Due to one of those historical twists, the laws setting up the original representative organs there did not differentiate on the basis of race, only economic status. One of the first actions of the Nationalist (Afrikaner) govt was to pass legislation disenfranchising this group of blacks.

While the English rulers were not keen on enfranchising the rest of the S. African blacks, as you point out its not until the 1945 elections that the UK itself has universal franchise, neither were they out deliberately trying to disenfranchise/repress all blacks either.

Reality is much more complex than the Marxists, socialists, post-modernists, conflict theorists, and what-nots of the intelligentsia would have us believe.

Regards.

PS: Still want to debate the virtues of Lincoln? ;-)

Interesting statistics. The area that is Pakistan had, according to a statistic I recall, a population of 17 million at the turn of the 20th century. In 1947, I recall it was around 45 million. In 2001 it is around 135 million. Pakistan is I think today the fastest growing country population-wise in South Asia, although the birth rates are coming down very rapidly in Pakistan (due to urbanization) as they are elsewhere in South Asia. It is expected to stabilize at around 220 million and then will start to decrease. If all this makes you feel bad, let me cheer you up with another statistic I also recall: If you take the entire population of the world and have it stand (presumably on one leg) on a one square foot of land per person, it will cover... (I leave this blank to see if anyone is reading this post, and will provide the answer soon..or if anyone has read so far can make a guess - a guess please, no math, since that will kill my punch line and I`ll never forgive you and next time anything about God or Pakistan-India comes up you will find me opposing you every step).

Tahmed #99

Out with it, buddy! You`ve got me here.... is that enough of a quorum?

Fuzair : if the population increase is to the credit of the British improving things, then so should the population decline that took place between the census 1911 and that of 1921 (famines,

the great influenza epidemic, etc.)

That better health and sanitation is the cause of the population explosion is mythology. There is no reason to believe that things in the past were any=different from today, that more education and greater prosperity have a positive correlation to smaller families; and that increased probability of survival to adulthood leads to people having fewer children.

-Arun Gupta

Re: India`s econimic condition during british rule

Guys,

While the debate is going on in this forum if british rule in India was good or bad, i found this article published in ``The atlantic`` by a British in 1908. The url is: http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/08oct/nationmo.htm. Sorry for the long post. It makes for some interesting reading (my comments within parenthesis).

Here are some passages:

1. Mr. W. S. Lilly, in his India and Its Problems,writes as follows: --

``During the first eighty years of the nineteenth century, 18,000,000 of people perished of famine. In one year alone -- the year when her late Majesty assumed the title of Empress -- 5,000,000 of the people in Southern India were starved to death. In the District of Bellary, with which I am personally acquainted, -- a region twice the size of Wales, -- one-fourth of the population perished in the famine of 1816-77. I shall never forget my own famine experiences: how, as I rode out on horseback, morning after morning, I passed crowds of wandering skeletons, and saw human corpses by the roadside, unburied, uncared for, and half devoured by dogs and vultures; how, sadder sight still, children, `the joy of the world,` as the old Greeks deemed, had become its ineffable sorrow, and were forsaken by the very women who had borne them, wolfish hunger killing even the maternal instinct. Those children, their bright eyes shining from hollow sockets, their nesh utterly wasted away, and only gristle and sinew and cold shivering skin remaining, their heads mere skulls, their puny frames full of loathsome diseases, engendered by the starvation in which they had been conceived and born and nurtured -- they haunt me still.`` Every one who has gone much about India in famine times knows how true to life is this picture.

Mr. Lilly estimates the number of deaths in the first eight decades of the last century at 18,000,000. This is nothing less than appalling, -- within a little more than two generations as many persons perishing by starvation in a single country as the whole population of Canada, New England, and the city and state of New York, or nearly half as many as the total population of France! But the most startling aspect of the case appears in the fact that the famines increased in number and severity as the century went on. Suppose we divide the past century into quarters, or periods of twenty-five years each. In the first quarter there were five famines, with an estimated loss of life of 1,000,000. During the second quarter of the century there were two famines, with an estimated mortality of 500,000. During the third quarter there were six famines, with a recorded loss of life of 5,000,000. During the last quarter of the century, what? Eighteen famines, with an estimated mortality reaching the awful totals of from 15,000,000 to 26,000,000. And this does not include the many more millions (over 6,000,000 in a single year) barely kept alive by government doles.``

2. ``And the people are growing poorer and poorer. The late Mr. William Digby, of London, long an Indian resident, in his recent book entitled ``Prosperous`` India,shows from official estimates and Parliamentary and Indian Blue Books, that, whereas the average daily income of the people of India in the year 1850 was estimated as four cents per person (a pittance on which one wonders that any human being can live), in 1882 it had fallen to three cents per person, and in 1900 actually to less than two cents per person. Is it any wonder that people reduced to such extremities as this can lay up nothing? Is it any wonder that when the rains do not come, and the crops of a single season fail, they are lost? And where is this to end? If the impoverishment of the people is to go on, what is there before them but growing hardship, multiplying famines, and increasing loss of life?

3.``One cause of India`s impoverishment is heavy taxation. Taxation in England and Scotland is high, so high that Englishmen and Scotchmen complain bitterly. But the people of India are taxed more than twice as heavily as the people of England and three times as heavily as those of Scotland. According to the latest statistics at hand, those of 1905, the annual average income per person in India is about $6.00, and the annual tax per person about $2.00. Think of taxing the American people to the extent of one-third their total income! Yet such taxation here, unbearable as it would be, would not create a tithe of the suffering that it does in India, because incomes here are so immensely larger than there. Here it would cause great hardship, there it creates starvation.``

4. ``Notice the single item of salt-taxation. Salt is an absolute necessity to the people, to the very poorest; they must have it or die. But the tax upon it which for many years they have been compelled to pay has been much greater than the cost value of the salt. Under this taxation the quantity of salt consumed has been reduced actually to one-half the quantity declared by medical authorities to be absolutely necessary for health. The mere suggestion in England of a tax on wheat sufficient to raise the price of bread by even a half-penny on the loaf, creates such a protest as to threaten the overthrow of ministries. Lately the salt-tax in India has been reduced, but it still remains well-nigh prohibitive to the poorer classes. With such facts as these before us, we do not wonder at Herbert Spencer`s indignant protest against the ``grievous salt-monopoly`` of the Indian Government, and ``the pitiless taxation which wrings from poor ryob nearly half the products of the soil.`` [In this context, Gandhiji`s salt-satyagraha and Dandi march becomes all the more relevant and shows how much in touch with the masses that great man was].

5. ``Another cause of India`s impoverishment is the destruction of her manufactures, as the result of British rule. When the British first appeared on the scene, India was one of the richest countries of the world; indeed it was her great riches that attracted the British to her shores. The source of her wealth was largely her splendid manufactures. Her cotton goods, silk goods, shawls, muslins of Dacca, brocades of Ahmedabad, rugs, pottery of Scind, jewelry, metal work, lapidary work, were famed not only all over Asia but in all the leading markets of Northern Africa and of Europe. What has become of those manufactures? For the most part they are gone, destroyed. Hundreds of villages and towns of India in which they were carried on are now largely or wholly depopulated, and millions of the people who were supported by them have been scattered and driven back on the land, to share the already too scanty living of the poor ryot. What is the explanation? Great Britain wanted India`s markets. She could not find entrance for British manufactures so long as India was supplied with manufactures of her own. So those of India must be sacrificed. England had all power in her hands, and so she proceeded to pass tariff and excise laws that ruined the manufactures of India and secured the market for her own goods. India would have protected herself if she had been able, by enacting tariff laws favorable to Indian interests, but she had no power, she was at the mercy of her conqueror.``

[I had read that India`s trade surplus when East India Company came was to the tune of 30 million pounds or so [which tranlates into billions of dollars today accounting for 20% of world trade. When British left India, India`s share of world trade was less than 2% and Industrial Revolution had completely bypassed us].

6.``A third cause of India`s impoverishment is the enormous and wholly unnecessary cost of her government. Writers in discussing the financial situation in India have often pointed out the fact that her government is the most expensive in the world. Of course the reason why is plain: it is because it is a government carried on not by the people of the soil, but by men from a distant country. These foreigners, having all power in their own hands, including power to create such offices as they choose and to attach to them such salaries and pensions as they see fit, naturally do not err on the side of making the offices too few or the salaries and pensions too small. Nearly all the higher officials throughout India are British. To be sure, the Civil Service is nominally open to Indians. But it is hedged about with so many restrictions (among others, Indian young men being required to make the journey of seven thousand miles from India to London to take their examinations) that they are able for the most part to secure only the lowest and poorest places. The amount of money which the Indian people are required to pay as salaries to this great army of foreign civil servants and appointed higher officials, and then, later, as pensions for the same, after they have served a given number of years in India, is very large. That in three-fourths if not nine-tenths of the positions quite as good service could be obtained for the government at a fraction of the present cost, by employing educated and competent Indians, who much better understand the wants of the country, is quite true. But that would not serve the purpose of England, who wants these lucrative offices for her sons. Hence poor Indian ryots must sweat and go hungry, and if need be starve, that an ever-growing army of foreign officials may have large salaries and fat pensions.`` [Some people in this forum have been saying that British Civil servants were more efficient than the present day IAS officers (or for that matter Pakistani Civil Servants). May be so but the cost of that efficiency was born by average Indians of that time. Britishers got all the lucrative jobs,after all they were here to rule].

7. ``Another burden upon the people of India which they ought not to be compelled to bear, and which does much to increase their poverty, is the enormously heavy military expenses of the government. I am not complaining of the maintenance of such an army as may be necessary for the defense of the country. But the Indian army is kept at a strength much beyond what the defense of the country requires. India is made a sort of general rendezvous and training camp for the Empire, from which soldiers may at any time be drawn for service in distant lands. If such an imperial training camp and rendezvous is needed, a part at least of the heavy expense of it ought to come out of the Imperial Treasury. But no, India is helpless, she can be compelled to pay it, she is compelled to pay it.`` [Today, India is guily of spending a lot of money on defense. But one can argue that the money is paid to defend hard earned liberty. Also, whenever India purchases defense items, it does insist on technological know-how. Defense industry has its spin-off benefits giving employment to scientists,engineers etc.Still, this expenditure could be kept to a minimum].

This article clearly shows British rule was nothing but evil. The benefits that we see from the British rule were incidental and not intentional. Yes, abolishing Sati and the like. Would free India have not done it anyways? Your comments are welcome.

Sridhar

Here are links to essays about two persons who have accomplished a lot to improve the life of people. Is there a disconnect between the premises underlying their work and the notions of capital, private property, on the one hand, and oriental despotism on the other ? How does their work relate to tradition and how much is totally new ?

(1) Rajendra Singh of Tarun Bharat Sangh, recepient of the 2001 Magsaysay award.

http://rmaf.xorand.com/new/2001html/singh.html

(2) Vilasrao Salunkhe and his ``pani-panchayats``

http://www.goodnewsindia.com/Pages/content/inspirational/paniPanchayat.htm

After answering these questions one can better gauge what it is that the British improved and what it is that they destroyed.

-Arun Gupta

Sameer,Dost-Mittar, Arun Gupta, Fuzair

A good article involving a variation of game theory .It also discusses its application to Indo-Pak conflict on Kashmir. I found this variation of condition interesting.

http://www.indiapolicy.org/lists/india_policy/1999/Nov/msg00053.html

Answer to my post number 99: The entire world`s population would fit into about the area about 8 miles wide between Rawalpindi and Hasanabdal (a distance of about 30 miles). Every single Indian, Chinese, Arab, Latino, European, African, North American, South East Asian, every single one of them.

Math: There being 1760 yards to the mile, 3 feet to the yard, that means a little over 27 million square feet per square mile. 27m. times 8 times 240 = 6.6 billion which is a little under the world population today.

Of course, this assumes that no one moves, you have no where to grow food, all the animals are gone.

Re: macgupta

``That better health and sanitation is the cause of the population explosion is mythology. There is no reason to believe that things in the past were any=different from today, that more education and greater prosperity have a positive correlation to smaller families; and that increased probability of survival to adulthood leads to people having fewer children.``

I`m afraid that I don`t follw you here. Why isn`t better health and sanitation (i.e., decrease in the mortality rate) going to give us higher rates of population growth? While some have argued that the European (Classic) Demographic Transition model is not applicable to non-European societies, surely you are not arguing that there is NO correlation between income and family size or education (esp female education) and family size? Or that reduced infant mortality rate leads people to favor quality over quantity in the number of children?

If you are arguing this, then what is the cause of population growth rate declines? Simply the opportunity cost of having children?

I am not arguing that the British were perfect rulers. I am simply saying that, net, their rule was better than what preceded it in the vast majority of the British Indian Empire.

Regards.

Incidentally, I don`t see a population decline between 1910 and 1920. On what do you base this assertion?