Colonial History of India

05-04-2005, 11:06 PM

India in Bondage by Jabez T. Sunderland; Lewis Copeland Company, 1932 

QUOTECHAPTER VI
IS BRITAIN RULING INDIA "FOR INDIA'S GOOD"? 

Are the British in India primarily for India's benefit, or for their own? This question is one which occupies so prominent a place in nearly all books and discussions about British rule in India that it deserves a careful and somewhat full answer.

Wrote John Morley: "The usual excuse of those who do evil to others is, that their object is to 'do them good.'" 

This has been especially true of military conquerors and rulers of subject peoples. It is interesting to see from the newly discovered records of ancient Egypt, Babylonia and Assyria how unselfish were the founders of those early empires and kingdoms--how careful they all were to send proclamations ahead of their invading armies to inform the nations which they were proposing to conquer and reduce to slavery, that they were coming as their "friends" to rule them "for their good." Alexander the Great carried on his conquests always for the "good" of the nations that he subdued. Rome did the same. The Spaniards made loud professions that their conquests of Mexico, Peru and other parts of the New World, were for the benefit of the peoples of those lands; the particular benefit they wished to confer on them being the highest possible, namely, that of bringing to them the Christian religion, so that their souls might be saved even if their cities and homes were devastated and they themselves were killed. Napoleon's conquests were always preceded by eloquent announcements to the nations about to be invaded, that he was coming to liberate them and give them better governments. Thus for a score of years half the countries of Europe ran red with blood "for their good."

I regret to say that the United States has engaged to a degree in the same kind of "beneficence." We have invaded (really invaded, though there has been no declaration of war) the island of Haiti, overturned its government, forced upon its people an alien constitution, taken possession of its customs and shot without warrant some hundreds of its citizens; but we have claimed that it has all been done for Haiti's good. We have also trampled upon the rights of Salvador, Nicaragua and Panama in various ways, but always with the profession of benevolence.

The most conspicuous illustration of our unselfish imperialism in recent time has been our conquest of the Philippines. Many of us remember in connection with that conquest how widespread was the talk of our military men, our imperialists, many of our politicians and even some of our religious leaders, about the "white man's burden" which we were so nobly taking up, about our "sacred responsibility" to "inferior peoples," and what a high and important place "benevolent despotism" fills in the world. Thus we eased our conscience by persuading, or half persuading, ourselves that we were doing it all "for their good" when we waged a war of conquest against a people who had never harmed us, killed thousands of them, burned hundreds of their villages, overturned the Republic which they had had set up and compelled them to submit to our rule.

Great Britain has extended her conquests more widely over the earth than any other nation, her soldiers fighting and dying everywhere, until all lands and shores, as Kipling puts it, are "blue with their bones." Why? Always professedly for the "good" of the peoples thus conquered and compelled to submit to British rule,-India being the most conspicuous of the lands thus brought under the yoke.

About the year 1900, when our own American Government was waging its unselfish war in the Philippines; when the Powers of the West were carrying on their Christian punitive movements in China for China's good, and doing it with armies most of which (I believe the Japanese and American armies were exceptions) widely pillaged and looted the Chinese people; when Great Britain was fighting the Boers in South Africa, for their good, and shutting them up, men, women and children, in pens and stockades where they died by the hundred; and when Great Britain was also holding down by military force the uneasy people of India for their good,-at that time Mr. Bertrand Shadwell wrote a very striking poem (widely read and famous for several years) which made perfectly clear how justifiable and even how noble are all wars of conquest waged against weaker peoples, and all cases of ruling them without their consent, and all exploiting them and all robbing them, if only done as part of the "white man's burden," with "benevolent intentions" "for the good" of the peoples conquered and despoiled. When Mark Twain read Mr. Shadwell's lines, he wrote him, saying: "I thank you for your poem. It is what I would have written myself, but for lack of poetical faculty." Many will remember the poem.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE"If you see an island shore
Which has not been grabbed before,
Lying in the track of trade, as islands should,
With the simple native quite
Unprepared to make a fight,
Oh, you just drop in and take it for his good.
Not for love of money, be it understood,
But you row yourself to land,
With a Bible in your hand,
And you pray for him and rob him, for his good:
If he hollers, then you shoot him--for his good.

Or this lesson I can shape
To campaigning at the Cape,
Where the Boer is being hunted for his good;

He would welcome British rule
If he weren't a blooming fool;

Thus you see it's only for his good.
So they're burning houses for his good,
Making helpless women homeless for their good,
Leaving little children orphans for their good.
In India there are bloody sights
Blotting out the Hindu's rights
Where we've slaughtered many millions for their good,
And, with bullet and with brand,
Desolated all the land,
But you know we did it only for their good.
Yes, and still more far away,
Down in China, let us say,
Where the "Christian" robs the "heathen" for his good,
You may burn and you may shoot,
You may fill your sack with loot,
But be sure you do it only for his good. 

MORAL 

QUOTEIf you dare commit a wrong
On the weak because you're strong,
You may do it if you do it for his good!
You may rob him if you do it for his good;
You may kill him if you do it for his good." 

There is nothing that we hear oftener, or that is more constantly declared to the whole world, than the claim of Great Britain that she is in India for purely unselfish reasons, for "India's good"; that she regards herself as a "trustee" of the Indian people, "responsible" for them (but not to them!); that "providence" has placed them "in her care" and "under her protection," and therefore it is her "duty" to hold them and rule them, even without their consent and against their protest; that she is trying conscientiously to bear the "white man's burden"; that she sincerely approves their aspiration to be free and rule themselves; but they are inferior people, ignorant, only partly civilized, children as it were, who do not know what is good for them, as their superior British masters do, and therefore who have to be dealt with as children; in fact, because of her sympathy with them and unselfish desire for their freedom she is actually educating them for self-government, but, of course, she has to do it very slowly and with great caution; for if she allowed them to rule themselves too soon, the results would be terrible.

I say such things as these we are hearing and the world is hearing all the while.

But are they anything else under heaven except either self-delusion or pretense? Is there anywhere, from any source or in any form, any real evidence that Great Britain is ruling India primarily for India's good, or that any person with intelligence on the subject really believes she is?

Of course, there are many individual Englishmen in India who personally are large-minded, unselfish men, who feel sympathetic toward the Indian people, and are trying, so long as they remain in the country, to be kind to them and to benefit them in any way they can. But this is not the question. Do these very men themselves believe that Britain conquered India, and is holding her in subjection by means of a large army, and is ruling her against her constant protest, wholly or primarily from benevolent motives, and not from political motives such as desire for imperial prestige and power, and commercial and financial motives such as markets, trade, cheap raw material, fine positions with fat salaries for young Englishmen, and so on?

A no less impartial student of world affairs than the American scholar and historian, Dr. Herbert Adams Gibbons, gives his judgment of the motive of British rule in India as follows: "The reading of books like Captain Trotter "History of India' and Lovat Fraser 'India Under Curzon and After' causes one to realize the perverted or rather unawakened moral sense of intelligent and high-minded Englishmen, when it is a question of India. Some of the finest men I have known have served Great Britain in India in a civil or military capacity. It never occurred to them to question their right to draw large salaries from a starving people against their will, to raid and shoot frontier tribes, to flog and condemn to death Indians for acting precisely as they themselves would have acted under similar circumstances. Inability to see any wrong in Great Britain's actions toward India is an inherited quirk of the Britisher. The Britisher is sincere in his patriotism. He believes he is serving his country, if not humanity. But if he will analyze the motives behind British rule in India, and his presence there, he could not escape the conclusion that 'bearing the white men's burden' means (1) selling goods in a market where others do not enjoy an equal opportunity; (2) preference in investment and concession privileges; and (3) getting on the payroll. If it be objected that orderly government is sufficient compensation to India for commercial exploitation, the ready reply is forthcoming that the administration is paid for inordinately in hard Indian cash; and far from being a philanthropic service, it provides congenial and remunerative employment for a large number of Englishmen who could not have found the same opportunity elsewhere." 1

But we do not need to rely upon the judgments of Americans; we have sufficient testimonies from Englishmen themselves to make it entirely clear whether or not
the British are in India for unselfish reasons--for "India's good."

As long ago as 1864 Sir G. O. Trevelyan, in his at the time famous book, "Letters from a Competition Wallah", said: "There is not a single person in India who would not consider the sentiment that we hold India for the benefit of the inhabitants of India a loathsome unEnglish piece of cant."

In 1899, Mr. J. A. Hobson published an article in "The Ethical World" ( February 18), in which, while praising the British Civil Service officials in India, he declares that to affirm that these men are impelled to spend twenty years in governing India from the philanthropic desire to take up the "white man's burden," or that any such desire is any substantial part of their inducement to service, "would be too gross a piece of bunkum for the platform of a Primrose League."

In an article in the Empire Review of February, 1919, Mr. Justice Beaman of the Bombay High Court declares: "We did not take India, nor do we keep India, for the Indians. Only those claims can be allowed to be legitimate which can be granted compatibly with maintaining in its full efficiency the supremacy of England in India. . . . If, as I think, we took India solely in the interests of England and hold India in the interests of England, it follows that the interests of England not only in fact are, but ought to be, avowed to be the guiding principle of our Indian policy. Every reform, every large measure, all important administrative changes should be referred to one standard and one standard only, the interests of England."

Sir William Joynson-Hicks, Home Secretary in Mr. Baldwin's Cabinet, has declared exactly the same, and in quite as strong words. He says: "We did not conquer India for the benefit of the Indians. I know it is said at missionary meetings that we conquered India to raise the level of the Indians. That is cant. We conquered India as an outlet for the goods of Great Britain. We conquered India by the sword, and by the sword we should hold it. . . . We hold it as the finest outlet for British goods in general, and for Lancashire cotton goods in particular." 

During the spring and early summer of 1920, an extensive discussion was carried on in the English periodical press on the questions, Why is Britain in India? What is the value of India to the British Empire? Why should India continue to be held? In the many articles brought out by the discussion, there was here and there a reference to England's "responsibility," to her "beneficent purpose," to the claim that she is there and must stay for "India's good." But all these considerations were quickly passed by for others of more importance, the writers giving plain evidence that they had put them forward merely because they were expected to do so, or to ease the British conscience, knowing all the while how hollow they were. The real and all over-shadowing reasons given why England is in India and why she intends to stay there, were that India is of great value to the British Empire; that she is a great asset financially, industrially, commercially, politically and militarily. Some of the writers laid stress upon her great area and vast population, which would render her, if she should be lost to Britain and become hostile, "almost as formidable as China," or "as Russia and Germany combined." Others emphasized her very great and as yet undeveloped material resources, which England could not afford to lose.

The Lord Chancellor of England took a hand, and urged that India is indispensable and must be kept because she contributes so greatly on the one hand to Britain's trade and wealth and on the other to her prestige and power. He declared: " India is an incalculable asset to the Mother Country. [As if England were India's "mother" country in any possible sense.] Great Britain has always drawn from India large quantities of foodstuffs and raw materials essential to her industries. Out of the total exports of India, which before the Great War were roughly worth Â£150,000,000 ($700,000,000), more than 25 per cent were sent to the United Kingdom, and over 40 per cent to the whole Empire. But it is on the other side of the trade account that the value of India to Great Britain is most evident; for India is the greatest outside market for British manufacturers. Before the War no less than 63 per cent of the total imports of India came from Great Britain, and 70 per cent from the British Empire." 

Continues the Lord Chancellor: "In the fabric of the British Empire India is a vital part. Unless, indeed, we are content to abandon the great heritage of the past, and sink into political and commercial insignificance, the surrender of India would be an act not only of folly but of degenerate poltroonery. To make such a surrender would be to remove the keystone of the arch. The loss of India would be the first step in the disintegration of the Empire." 

The discussion spread into Parliament, where the prevailing sentiment expressed was in substantial harmony with that of the Lord Chancellor.

Here we have the whole story,--from the London press and from leading officials of the British Government. The Indian people--one-sixth of the population of the earth--must be held in subjection, (1) because India is the keystone of Britain's power and greatness as a world-wide Empire based on conquest and force; and (2), because from India is drawn a large part of Britain's material wealth.

It all seemed like an echo (only somewhat softened) of what Sir Edward Dicey wrote many years ago in the Nineteenth Century ( September, 1899): "In every part of the world, where British interests are at stake, I am in favor of advancing and upholding these interests, even at the cost of annexation and at the risk of war. The only qualification I admit is that the country we desire to annex, or take under our protection, the claims we choose to assert, and the cause we desire to espouse, should be calculated to confer a tangible advantage upon the British Empire."

In contrast with all these sordid views, it is heartening to cite the brave and honorable words of a writer in the New Statesman ( November 7, 1919): "We went to India to exploit her wealth. We succeeded to the extent of impoverishing her--making her starved, unhappy, uneducated. We have sucked the blood from her veins and scored the flesh from her bones, and having done this, in our comfortable jargon we allude to our ' Indian problem.' The state of India is a crime, and the only problem worth considering is how long we are going to allow this crime to remain on the conscience of Great Britain." 

One test, and an entirely fair one, of whether England is ruling the Indian people for their "good," is seen in connection with opium and liquor. As shown in other chapters of this book, untold wretchedness is being brought upon millions of men, women and children, and millions of lives are being destroyed in India, both by intoxicating drink and by opium. The best intellectual, moral and religious forces of the country are opposed to them; but the Government favors and promotes the sales of both for the sake of revenue; and imprisons persons who work to stop or even to reduce these sales. Would a government whose aim was the people's benefit do this?

Practically nobody of any intelligence in India, I mean of the Indian people, believes that Britain is ruling India for benevolent ends. In answer to the claim of benefit from British rule, I found many persons in India saying: "If our rulers have wiped away our tears, as they claim, they have torn out our eyes in doing it." 

Says the Modern Review of Calcutta (February, 1924): "The assumption that the British ever were or now are in India on a philanthropic mission is pure selfdeception or hypocrisy. They came to India for money, and at present are here to make money and to gratify their lust of power. That is the general proposition. Individual Englishmen there were and are who are exceptions, but they are few. Such words from British lips or pens as 'Our responsibility for India cannot be abandoned,' stink in our nostrils. They are nothing but hypocrisy."

Says The Democrat of Allahabad: "No British official in India will ever for a moment consent to anything which will injure the interests of the mercantile community in England. Not one will yield an inch where the trade of England is in the least affected." This is universally understood in India.

Mr. Alfred Webb, M. P., who spent many years in India and had a chance to learn all about the "white man's burden" wrote in July, 1908: "The white man's burden is sanctimonious twaddle, to justify the white man in exploiting the colored man for his own advantage."

Probably no living Englishman knows India or the British Government of India or England better, or loves England, the true England, more sincerely than Rev. C. F. Andrews, the eminent Church of England missionary, professor and publicist. Says Mr. Andrews: "Our whole British talk about being 'trustees of India' and coming out to 'serve' her, about bearing the 'white man's burden,' about ruling India 'for her good,' and all the rest, is the biggest hypocrisy on God's earth."

When George I was brought over from Hanover in Germany to be made King of England, he could speak English only very imperfectly. There is a story told that, as the royal procession passed through the streets of London, the King, overjoyed at the shouts of welcome he received and desiring to assure the people of his beneficent intentions, called out to the enthusiastic crowd: "We have come for your goods." Some one in the crowd called back in reply: "Yes, and for our chattels too." England loudly claims that she has come to India for her good. India's bitter answer is: "Alas! Long, long ago we found out that you have come not for our good, but for our goods, and chattels too."

Even if we were to admit that England is in India not for her own advantage, not to gain for herself financial benefit, or increase of political power or prestige in the world, but for purely unselfish ends,--how would that justify England? Are persons or nations justified in committing the greatest of known crimes if only they have a benevolent end in view? What right has England to conquer and rule India "for her good" any more than for any other reason? Does Indiawant to be held and ruled by England for her good? Has she invited England to rule her for her good? Where did England get the right? Does England have a right to rule Japan for her good? Has America a right to rule China for her good? Has France or Germany, or Russia a right to rule England for her good? Is there any more justification for a nation to rob another nation of its freedom and its nationhood and rule it for its good, than for a man to rob another man of his liberty and his manhood and rule him for his good?

Nothing that has been said in the foregoing pages is meant to deny that benefits have come to the Indian people during British rule. But in order to understand what those benefits are and what they are not, whether they have come on account of British rule or in spite of it, and what they are worth, two things need to be borne in mind, namely: (1) Whatever benefits India has received during British rule, or from it, have been paid for wholly by India; Britain has not paid one penny. India paid all the expense even of the wars by which she was conquered; and ever since her conquest she has paid all the expense of maintaining the armies which have held her in subjection, and all the expense of the foreign Government that has ruled her,--a Government far more costly than one of her own equally efficient and far more beneficial to her would have been. So that whatever good India may have received from her British rulers, she has paid fully and dearly for it. (2) Whatever benefits may have come to the Indian people from British rule, if any such there really have been or are, have been far more than counter-balanced by injuries, serious and terrible injuries. The destruction of India's extensive manufactures and commerce, the draining away of its wealth to England, and thus the reduction of its people to their present awful poverty,--this alone is a wrong and an injury which is not compensated for by anything that Britain has done for India.

But these injuries are not the worst. India has been robbed of something more precious than money, or even bread for her children. She has been robbed of freedom and nationhood. This injury outweighs ten-fold all Britain's benefits. For what is there on earth that can compensate any nation for the degradation of subjection to a foreign power? </div>

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