03-04-2005, 03:42 AM
From the Book - Business, Race, and Politics in British India c.1850-1960
MARIA MISRA
<b>Race and Indianization </b>
It was certainly common for British businessmen throughout this period to defend their resistance to indianization using the language of character and well-established notions about the differing characteristics of various communities in India. According to these views, very few, if any Indians, had the character required for business, with the possible exception of the Parsis. So, for instance, Frank Russell, a Calcutta businessman, wrote:
Indians were generally regarded as untrustworthy and lacking in leadership qualities. The head of one firm, for example, claimed in 1942 that he had attempted to promote Indians, but the experiment had been unsuccessful because Indians were unsuited, in his opinion, to supervisory posts. Indians who had been well educated were generally considered particularly poor leaders because they were too clever, effete, and refined; as one managing agency partner explained:
Owain Jenkins also expressed the businessman's mistrust of the educated Indian, and the educated Bengali in particular:
Albert Gladstone similarly emphasized the untrustworthiness of Bengalis:
Given these attitudes, it is not surprising that the managing agents for the most part resisted indianization of their firms until the 1940s. Indians occupied either menial clerical posts or the lowest of the junior executive positions, for example in the claims departments of inland shipping. 14 Where the partners had more liberal attitudes there were early experiments in indianization, and in the early 1930s Yule
established a scheme for recruiting and training Indian senior assistants. However, even when indianization was pursued Indians were not promoted to senior positions. The Imperial Bank, for instance, claimed to have begun its indianization policy in 1922, but by 1941 the highest position an Indian had reached was agent in Lyallpur; it was argued that Indians were best suited to positions in small branches owing to their willingness and ability to go personally to the bazaars and canvas Indian business.
Real efforts were only made to indianize staff in the 1940s when circumstances forced the partners to do so. The shortage of European assistants caused by the enlistment of many young British assistants during the war, the realization after 1942 that independence was imminent, and the recognition that business would not be protected by the British government in an independence settlement, led many managing agents to accelerate indianization. However, even at this late stage the partners were reluctant to appoint Indian staff to senior positions. In 1945 Yule and Co. envisaged that Indians would fill only half of its senior grade positions and, as late as 1948, Bird reported that indianization was being rapidly accomplished, but only at the lower levels of the firm.
As pressures for indianization increased, a divergence between the attitude of the partners in London and those in Calcutta became evident in some firms. Albert Gladstone, the senior London partner of Gillanders, had been impressed by the quality of Indians recruited into the ICS and was aware of the difficulty and expense of recruiting British staff, particularly managers of jute mills. He also seems to have believed that it was now possible to recruit Indians who were of better character than the kind of European technicians who could now be attracted to India. He wrote:
Thomas Gladstone, however, writing from Calcutta, protested that the ICS was not a good model as 'the ICS Indians are a very mixed lot, there are some good ones certainly, but whether they would be suitable for high positions in a firm like ours is doubtful'. In general, Indians of the right character for senior positions could not be found:
He went on to argue that Indians were particularly unsuitable for positions which involved supervision of other staff, such as the jute mills; it was much safer to employ Indians in jobs such as accounting, which did not require managerial skills:
When the managing agencies did recruit Indians, they emphasized the importance of character, interest in sport, and social background, rather than the more academic criteria stressed by the ICS. An education at a public school was particularly prized. Prakash Tandon was an accountant with a degree from Manchester University who had applied for positions at Bird, Gillanders, and Yule in 1939. He failed to secure a position partly, he believed, because 'in none had indianisation yet become accepted policy', and partly because he was a
specialist accountant rather than a 'generalist', but also because he did not have the right social and educational background:
On the whole, therefore, the managing agency houses tried to recruit Indians of a comparable social and educational background to their British recruits or 'young men of good family and university degrees', as one former Indian employee described them. Similarly, Tandon quoted one of his friends, Roshan, who had a position in an agency house in the early 1940s
Look at me, a pass degree, always barely scraped through; but of course, Oxford and a Blue make you almost pukka.
It was clear to Roshan that the managing agencies applied a very different set of criteria to the ICS. Mimicking his employer, he said:
Tandon remarked sardonically that 'Indians might be ready to govern, but not to keep the books'.
Prakash Tandon was eventually given a position in a multinational company, Lever Brothers. As will be seen, multinationals generally had a more liberal approach to recruitment of Indians in this period, but even they seem to
use of these non-professional criteria of recruitment led to poor appointments:
The very small group of Indians with public school educations and 'character' who were deemed suitable for a career in a British business house helps to explain why the indianization of these firms was so slow. The treatment of Indians once they had been appointed also helps to account for their poor representation in the managing agencies. Until the middle of the war, racial and social barriers were enforced rigidly, in both clubs and businesses. Even businesses which were outside the agency house system, such as Price Waterhouse, provided segregated dining and washing facilities for executives, and one British assistant who had married an AngloIndian woman was forced to take all his meals separately. Indians also received lower salaries than British employees at a similar level, and it was common to pay a 'local rate' which was lower than the standard rate. When Sen joined Price Waterhouse in 1940 the company was quite open about its discriminatory policies and when he threatened to resign his senior replied, 'where will you go? There will be discrimination in every European office'.
In 1942 the unofficial colour bar in many firms was informally ended, partly as a result of the Cripps mission and in response to press criticism. Sen describes the manner in which this was done:
Nevertheless, even after this time many Indians found the atmosphere in the firms oppressive. One young Indian recruit to an agency house in the 1940s reported that Indian executives were subjected to a great deal of pressure to conform to what seemed to be a regimented and alien lifestyle:
There were many peculiar British habits, such as drawing the curtains and keeping the windows shut all the time . . . but most Indians who had adopted a western style of living more or less lived like that also . . . still keeping up the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, steak and kidney pie and that sort of thing. The only exception was the Sunday curry lunch, which was always preceded by gallons of beer.
The pressures of this lifestyle were the cause of unhappiness among many young Indian recruits. Tandon recalled an Indian friend who worked for an agency house,
MARIA MISRA
<b>Race and Indianization </b>
It was certainly common for British businessmen throughout this period to defend their resistance to indianization using the language of character and well-established notions about the differing characteristics of various communities in India. According to these views, very few, if any Indians, had the character required for business, with the possible exception of the Parsis. So, for instance, Frank Russell, a Calcutta businessman, wrote:
Quote:. . . ultimately in every activity, commercial, political or any other lack of character--no matter how supple the brain may be-will bring any man down. Although the Hindu has infinitely greater brain than the Muslim, he does not compare with him in either character or physical courage . . . The one essential factor must be that we should send out to India homecountrymen, whether to serve in government or in commerce, possessing the highest traditions of British character.
Indians were generally regarded as untrustworthy and lacking in leadership qualities. The head of one firm, for example, claimed in 1942 that he had attempted to promote Indians, but the experiment had been unsuccessful because Indians were unsuited, in his opinion, to supervisory posts. Indians who had been well educated were generally considered particularly poor leaders because they were too clever, effete, and refined; as one managing agency partner explained:
Quote:People held back [from recruiting Indians to senior posts] in the 1930s in preference for the young Britisher who was prepared to take his coat off and get on with it . . . the feeling persisted that the young Indian was inclined to look around for some menial to do the dirty work.
Owain Jenkins also expressed the businessman's mistrust of the educated Indian, and the educated Bengali in particular:
Quote:I found soldiers easier than clerks, because of their better sense of humour and ease of communication with Europeans; whereas there were always problems with Bengalis, because of shades of meaning . . . the Bengalis have no aptitude for business . . . while the Englishman was cheap and trouble free and if you fired him you didn't get a lawsuit on your hands.
Albert Gladstone similarly emphasized the untrustworthiness of Bengalis:
Quote:There seems to be something lacking in the Bengalee character which makes the race unfitted to have any control of other people's money, whether invested in banks, insurance companies, industrial concerns, or anything of a similar nature.
Given these attitudes, it is not surprising that the managing agents for the most part resisted indianization of their firms until the 1940s. Indians occupied either menial clerical posts or the lowest of the junior executive positions, for example in the claims departments of inland shipping. 14 Where the partners had more liberal attitudes there were early experiments in indianization, and in the early 1930s Yule
established a scheme for recruiting and training Indian senior assistants. However, even when indianization was pursued Indians were not promoted to senior positions. The Imperial Bank, for instance, claimed to have begun its indianization policy in 1922, but by 1941 the highest position an Indian had reached was agent in Lyallpur; it was argued that Indians were best suited to positions in small branches owing to their willingness and ability to go personally to the bazaars and canvas Indian business.
Real efforts were only made to indianize staff in the 1940s when circumstances forced the partners to do so. The shortage of European assistants caused by the enlistment of many young British assistants during the war, the realization after 1942 that independence was imminent, and the recognition that business would not be protected by the British government in an independence settlement, led many managing agents to accelerate indianization. However, even at this late stage the partners were reluctant to appoint Indian staff to senior positions. In 1945 Yule and Co. envisaged that Indians would fill only half of its senior grade positions and, as late as 1948, Bird reported that indianization was being rapidly accomplished, but only at the lower levels of the firm.
As pressures for indianization increased, a divergence between the attitude of the partners in London and those in Calcutta became evident in some firms. Albert Gladstone, the senior London partner of Gillanders, had been impressed by the quality of Indians recruited into the ICS and was aware of the difficulty and expense of recruiting British staff, particularly managers of jute mills. He also seems to have believed that it was now possible to recruit Indians who were of better character than the kind of European technicians who could now be attracted to India. He wrote:
Quote:As regards the Jute Mill industry little or no attempt has been made by European managed concerns to Indianise them. This, I think, is a pity. The
type of man who comes out from Scotland to the Mills, as you know, is very often not a desirable type and he is expensive and difficult to deal with. I feel that a large part of the supervisory staff could be Indianised with success and that this should receive our attention after the War.
Thomas Gladstone, however, writing from Calcutta, protested that the ICS was not a good model as 'the ICS Indians are a very mixed lot, there are some good ones certainly, but whether they would be suitable for high positions in a firm like ours is doubtful'. In general, Indians of the right character for senior positions could not be found:
Quote:. . . we have in effect Indianised our senior staff to an appreciable extent, but we have discovered no one of outstanding merit, nor any who can safely be placed in a position of command. They can all do junior European Assistants' jobs and no more.
He went on to argue that Indians were particularly unsuitable for positions which involved supervision of other staff, such as the jute mills; it was much safer to employ Indians in jobs such as accounting, which did not require managerial skills:
Quote:The Jute Mills Department is unsuitable for an Indian Assistant and up until recently, anyway, the Insurance Department has had a full complement of European experts and good Indian insurance men are difficult to obtain . . . The Tea Department is not prima facie a suitable Department for an Indian Assistant owing to the nature of the personnel with whom it has to deal. Banking and Accounts offer a more promising field, but up to date we have not been very successful. Here again, however, there are possibilities.
When the managing agencies did recruit Indians, they emphasized the importance of character, interest in sport, and social background, rather than the more academic criteria stressed by the ICS. An education at a public school was particularly prized. Prakash Tandon was an accountant with a degree from Manchester University who had applied for positions at Bird, Gillanders, and Yule in 1939. He failed to secure a position partly, he believed, because 'in none had indianisation yet become accepted policy', and partly because he was a
specialist accountant rather than a 'generalist', but also because he did not have the right social and educational background:
Quote:I could always tell from the questions they asked whether the emphasis was on the skill I possessed, or who I was and where I came from . . . Some had taken on the occasional Oxford and Cambridge blue, the son of a high court judge or senior ICS officer, but it was more as an adornment or concession to influence.
On the whole, therefore, the managing agency houses tried to recruit Indians of a comparable social and educational background to their British recruits or 'young men of good family and university degrees', as one former Indian employee described them. Similarly, Tandon quoted one of his friends, Roshan, who had a position in an agency house in the early 1940s
Look at me, a pass degree, always barely scraped through; but of course, Oxford and a Blue make you almost pukka.
It was clear to Roshan that the managing agencies applied a very different set of criteria to the ICS. Mimicking his employer, he said:
Quote:I don't think Indians are yet fit to hold responsibility in commerce and industry. I concede that they can help in government, and the start the army has made with them is not unpromising, but industry, you know, is different.
Tandon remarked sardonically that 'Indians might be ready to govern, but not to keep the books'.
Prakash Tandon was eventually given a position in a multinational company, Lever Brothers. As will be seen, multinationals generally had a more liberal approach to recruitment of Indians in this period, but even they seem to
use of these non-professional criteria of recruitment led to poor appointments:
Quote:The new recruits who were apprentices for the covenanted staff were smart young men in their early twenties. Most of them had to pay a drinks bill of nearly Rs. 300 a month and always carried a cigarette in their hand. Many lost their jobs over time. The recruitment policy did irreparable damage to the management of these companies.
The very small group of Indians with public school educations and 'character' who were deemed suitable for a career in a British business house helps to explain why the indianization of these firms was so slow. The treatment of Indians once they had been appointed also helps to account for their poor representation in the managing agencies. Until the middle of the war, racial and social barriers were enforced rigidly, in both clubs and businesses. Even businesses which were outside the agency house system, such as Price Waterhouse, provided segregated dining and washing facilities for executives, and one British assistant who had married an AngloIndian woman was forced to take all his meals separately. Indians also received lower salaries than British employees at a similar level, and it was common to pay a 'local rate' which was lower than the standard rate. When Sen joined Price Waterhouse in 1940 the company was quite open about its discriminatory policies and when he threatened to resign his senior replied, 'where will you go? There will be discrimination in every European office'.
In 1942 the unofficial colour bar in many firms was informally ended, partly as a result of the Cripps mission and in response to press criticism. Sen describes the manner in which this was done:
Quote:The British officers spread themselves out one day to the desks of the Indian officers just before lunch. They then offered to go to lunch together after a wash and almost pulled the Indians into the European toilets.
Nevertheless, even after this time many Indians found the atmosphere in the firms oppressive. One young Indian recruit to an agency house in the 1940s reported that Indian executives were subjected to a great deal of pressure to conform to what seemed to be a regimented and alien lifestyle:
There were many peculiar British habits, such as drawing the curtains and keeping the windows shut all the time . . . but most Indians who had adopted a western style of living more or less lived like that also . . . still keeping up the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, steak and kidney pie and that sort of thing. The only exception was the Sunday curry lunch, which was always preceded by gallons of beer.
The pressures of this lifestyle were the cause of unhappiness among many young Indian recruits. Tandon recalled an Indian friend who worked for an agency house,
Quote:there was a kind of rootlessness about him . . . he found it a strain to play the role of a sahib. The British in his firm were themselves trying to conform to a pattern set by their predecessors in order to gain acceptance among British officials . . . to lift themselves out of the category labelled boxwallah. These commercial British perhaps outdid the official British in their conformity, just as, Roshan told me, some of his Indian colleagues tried to outdo the British.