07-25-2005, 06:41 AM
VIEW: Imperialism and India âV Krishna Ananth
If he found it proper to appreciate the British rule in India, it should warn anyone concerned about human rights. For those who appreciate the colonial regime today are also those who celebrate the system in the US and in the West that seeks to preserve itself through naked aggression
There is nothing unusual, even if it is undesirable, about the media attempting to create a controversy after picking up a remark by a senior political leader. One such storm is being built up around Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singhâs remark in Oxford where he seemed to appreciate the sense of governance guiding those who administered India for several years before August 15, 1947. Let it be stated that Dr Singh did not say anything new. A whole generation of learned men, after all, believed that the British rule in India was going to do some good for the people.
Remember Raja Ram Mohun Roy. Unlike the sepoys who followed the local chieftains and fought a losing battle against the Raj in 1857, Ram Mohun Roy collaborated with Governor General William Bentinck to destroy an obnoxious custom that prevailed in those times. The result was legislation that rendered Sati a criminal offence and provided penal punishment to those who perpetrated it. Ishwar Chandra Vidya Sagar was also convinced that British rule in India would help liberate women from feudal clutches.
And sitting in London and based on some notes he had picked up from here and there, Karl Marx was of the view that the British in India were carrying out a war against the feudal order and that British rule in India was bound to transform the latter into a modern society. Marx was of the view that India was on the path to capitalism and that as had happened in England and other parts of Europe, the passage from feudalism to capitalism would have to be seen as progressive. He also stated that this transition, in its course would give birth to the inevitable: The making of the working class and in due course the revolution!
This is not to say that Ishwar Chandra Vidya Sagar and Ram Mohun Roy were Marxists. It will also be foolish to describe Dr Manmohan Singh as belonging to the Marxist tradition. And let me also stress that Marx himself did not apply his mind further on the Indian scene. From whatever he produced in the couple of decades before his death in 1883, it is clear that Karl Marx shifted from his 1857-58 position. In other words, Marx and Marxist thinkers after him matured significantly to treat the British rule in India or the French occupation in Africa or the Spanish and Portuguese rule in Latin America as colonialism and hence were in the forefront of the battles against such regimes.
In India, Dadabhai Naoroji, described by historians as the grand old man of Indian nationalism, and Romesh Chandra Dutt mustered evidence that the British rulers were preventing Indiaâs transformation into a capitalist society. It was in order to prove a point that Dadabhai Naoroji went about submitting a charge-sheet against the colonial administration. His work, Poverty and the Un-British Rule of the British in India, was a verdict that India could build itself as a nation only after liberation. And, this grand old man of Indian nationalism was not a Marxist by any stretch of the imagination.
Naorojiâs agenda was to see India emerge as a nation on the same lines as the European nations. His agenda was no different from that of Ram Mohun Roy and Ishwar Chandra Vidya Sagar. But unlike them, Naoroji was convinced that Indiaâs transition to modernity was possible only after liberation. The intelligentsia in Naorojiâs time was no longer under the illusion that the British rulers in India stuck to the principles of rule of law and free enterprise as did the governments in England.
Now, Dr Manmohan Singhâs remark in London were no different from those of well meaning progressive men like Ram Mohun Roy and Vidya Sagar more than 100 years ago and exactly 100 years after the concept of swadeshi was expressed through a mass movement. In 1905 the masses were mobilised in such manner that the British rulers began to show their true colours and the mask of liberalism and fair play fell aside. If 1905 was the beginning of naked oppression, in the decade after that, the British promulgated the infamous Rowlatt Act. The rest is history.
Dr Manmohan Singh certainly knows all these. He is, after all, an economist of repute and a scholar in social sciences. He must have read Dadabhai Naroji and Romesh Chandra Dutt, not once but many times over. And he must have also read RC Duttâs works as well as the various theorists who have argued that colonialism perpetrated poverty in India, Africa and Latin America. Manmohan Singh must also have read Andre Gunter Frank, the greatest of the scholars in this genre who passed away in April 2005.
And yet, if he found it proper to appreciate the British rule in India, it should warn anyone concerned about human rights and human freedom. For those who appreciate the colonial regime today are also those who celebrate the system in the US and in the West that seeks to preserve itself through naked aggression. In other words, those who find virtues in the US aggression of Iraq and the second fiddle that the Tony Blair establishment plays to this act of uncivilised behaviour.
The Indian middle classes, the size of which has been estimated to be anywhere between 100 and 150 million who live under the illusion that the US is a democratic society and do not hesitate to surrender all that they have, including their own human dignity, in exchange for a US visa will not be offended by Manmohanâs remarks. But India contains more than one billion people; and the 150 million cannot determine the course of its politics. Dr Manmohan Singh, the man who initiated the Structural Adjustment Programme in July 1991, thinks of India only from the standpoint of this 100 to 150 million people. The same set of people for whom India is Shining.
His remarks in Oxford reflect this. And the response will have to be from this perspective rather than whipping up another wave of synthetic nationalism and emotional outcry.
VK Ananth, a former affiliate of The Hindu, is now a freelance writer. His email is krishna_ananth@hotmail.com
If he found it proper to appreciate the British rule in India, it should warn anyone concerned about human rights. For those who appreciate the colonial regime today are also those who celebrate the system in the US and in the West that seeks to preserve itself through naked aggression
There is nothing unusual, even if it is undesirable, about the media attempting to create a controversy after picking up a remark by a senior political leader. One such storm is being built up around Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singhâs remark in Oxford where he seemed to appreciate the sense of governance guiding those who administered India for several years before August 15, 1947. Let it be stated that Dr Singh did not say anything new. A whole generation of learned men, after all, believed that the British rule in India was going to do some good for the people.
Remember Raja Ram Mohun Roy. Unlike the sepoys who followed the local chieftains and fought a losing battle against the Raj in 1857, Ram Mohun Roy collaborated with Governor General William Bentinck to destroy an obnoxious custom that prevailed in those times. The result was legislation that rendered Sati a criminal offence and provided penal punishment to those who perpetrated it. Ishwar Chandra Vidya Sagar was also convinced that British rule in India would help liberate women from feudal clutches.
And sitting in London and based on some notes he had picked up from here and there, Karl Marx was of the view that the British in India were carrying out a war against the feudal order and that British rule in India was bound to transform the latter into a modern society. Marx was of the view that India was on the path to capitalism and that as had happened in England and other parts of Europe, the passage from feudalism to capitalism would have to be seen as progressive. He also stated that this transition, in its course would give birth to the inevitable: The making of the working class and in due course the revolution!
This is not to say that Ishwar Chandra Vidya Sagar and Ram Mohun Roy were Marxists. It will also be foolish to describe Dr Manmohan Singh as belonging to the Marxist tradition. And let me also stress that Marx himself did not apply his mind further on the Indian scene. From whatever he produced in the couple of decades before his death in 1883, it is clear that Karl Marx shifted from his 1857-58 position. In other words, Marx and Marxist thinkers after him matured significantly to treat the British rule in India or the French occupation in Africa or the Spanish and Portuguese rule in Latin America as colonialism and hence were in the forefront of the battles against such regimes.
In India, Dadabhai Naoroji, described by historians as the grand old man of Indian nationalism, and Romesh Chandra Dutt mustered evidence that the British rulers were preventing Indiaâs transformation into a capitalist society. It was in order to prove a point that Dadabhai Naoroji went about submitting a charge-sheet against the colonial administration. His work, Poverty and the Un-British Rule of the British in India, was a verdict that India could build itself as a nation only after liberation. And, this grand old man of Indian nationalism was not a Marxist by any stretch of the imagination.
Naorojiâs agenda was to see India emerge as a nation on the same lines as the European nations. His agenda was no different from that of Ram Mohun Roy and Ishwar Chandra Vidya Sagar. But unlike them, Naoroji was convinced that Indiaâs transition to modernity was possible only after liberation. The intelligentsia in Naorojiâs time was no longer under the illusion that the British rulers in India stuck to the principles of rule of law and free enterprise as did the governments in England.
Now, Dr Manmohan Singhâs remark in London were no different from those of well meaning progressive men like Ram Mohun Roy and Vidya Sagar more than 100 years ago and exactly 100 years after the concept of swadeshi was expressed through a mass movement. In 1905 the masses were mobilised in such manner that the British rulers began to show their true colours and the mask of liberalism and fair play fell aside. If 1905 was the beginning of naked oppression, in the decade after that, the British promulgated the infamous Rowlatt Act. The rest is history.
Dr Manmohan Singh certainly knows all these. He is, after all, an economist of repute and a scholar in social sciences. He must have read Dadabhai Naroji and Romesh Chandra Dutt, not once but many times over. And he must have also read RC Duttâs works as well as the various theorists who have argued that colonialism perpetrated poverty in India, Africa and Latin America. Manmohan Singh must also have read Andre Gunter Frank, the greatest of the scholars in this genre who passed away in April 2005.
And yet, if he found it proper to appreciate the British rule in India, it should warn anyone concerned about human rights and human freedom. For those who appreciate the colonial regime today are also those who celebrate the system in the US and in the West that seeks to preserve itself through naked aggression. In other words, those who find virtues in the US aggression of Iraq and the second fiddle that the Tony Blair establishment plays to this act of uncivilised behaviour.
The Indian middle classes, the size of which has been estimated to be anywhere between 100 and 150 million who live under the illusion that the US is a democratic society and do not hesitate to surrender all that they have, including their own human dignity, in exchange for a US visa will not be offended by Manmohanâs remarks. But India contains more than one billion people; and the 150 million cannot determine the course of its politics. Dr Manmohan Singh, the man who initiated the Structural Adjustment Programme in July 1991, thinks of India only from the standpoint of this 100 to 150 million people. The same set of people for whom India is Shining.
His remarks in Oxford reflect this. And the response will have to be from this perspective rather than whipping up another wave of synthetic nationalism and emotional outcry.
VK Ananth, a former affiliate of The Hindu, is now a freelance writer. His email is krishna_ananth@hotmail.com