British
Policies and Indian Culture |
Our politicians
historians, sociologists, universities and the sacred media seem
to have been convinced that the biggest obstruction in our progress
is our past and religion and unless we divorce with those, we cannot
become logical, rational and scientific, which is the key to progress
and success in the modern world!
We are continuously fed on misinformation and there is deliberate
attempt to distort our social history by ideologically motivated
media, politicians and sociologists turned reformists.
The canvas of history covers thousands of years.
Achievements of any civilisation are judged by culture, literature,
arts and sciences they have created and ecological and environmental
conditions effectively they have produced. Strangely enough, the
thinkers of the world have now realized the disastrous ecological
condition of the world in which we live today. Scientists are also
of the opinion that this disastrous condition is due to the same
science, which is thought to have brought progress to mankind. India,
which, according to our sociologists, politicians and the media,
had an ugly past, and an inhuman religion, certainly could not and
has not contributed anything worthwhile to modern progress and could
have doubtfully achieved anything in the past.
But then what was the reason - from Max Muller to Schrodinger, who
felt like taking inspiration from the cultural achievements and
scriptures of India of the past ? Who was Panini ? How the writings
of Kalidas were created ? How Bharata could write his Natyasastra
and the country could reach the pinnacle of performing art ?
What about Indian achievements in mathematics and astronomy ? What
about paintings of Ajanta and Ellora and intricately carved temple
architecture throughought the length and breadth of the country
? What about Yoga and spiritual achievements of the Hindus and the
fully developed. medical science - Ayurveda ? What about the writings
of Kautilya and Vatsyayana ? What about the achievements in textile,
chemistry and metallurgy ? If, according to our media and great
Marxist historians, our people in the past had no business other
than indulging in exploitation of all kinds, how these achievements
were possible ? One cannot forget, society needs optimum social,
economic and cultural stability for any kind of creativity to take
form and shape.
When are we
going to realize that our past history is being distorted and our
past has fallen a prey to the false propaganda of socialist ideology
? Modem sciences like anthropology, sociology, history etc., have
been used as tools to mutilate our history and culture. This has
successfully made us hate our own past, culture and religion.
It will be worthwhile
to investigate how this was and is achieved and also the role played
by the British in their different capacities - as missionaries,
administrators, politicians, traders, reformers, sympathizers etc.,
and the effect and the deep impact it has left on Indian mind and
culture.
We begin our
investigation with missionaries and British administrative machinery
and their contribution in this process.
The missionaries
an the British administrators, who studied our past, had some interest
in distorting our history. Missionaries were bent upon exploiting
the shortcomings that had crept in our religious practices due to
lack of adequate guidance and also due to factors like foreign invasions,
wars and alien tyrranical rule, coupled with conversions. The British
administrators, in order to justify their presence in India wanted
to show that Indians were not fit for self-rule. To achieve this
end, they wanted to implant a totally alien western system of governance
by uprooting the then existing age-old indigenous systems, which
practically included the total life of the governed. Those included
the systems of law, education, medicine, revenue and land-tenure
etc. To appreciate these two factors viz., the role of missionaries
and the British administrators in mutilating our history, and uprooting
all our systems in order to align them with their own social, cultural,
economic and spiritual thinking and the way of life, one has to
read history afresh and between the lines.
|
British
Policies and Education Missionaries |
|
In 1813, the
Charter of the East India Company was renewed. The British Parliament
insisted, in spite of opposition from the Directors of the Company
on inserting a clause in the Charter, giving missionaries full freedom
to settle and work in India. J. N. Farquhar notes this event and
has commented that `soon afterwards there was a great influx of
missionaries into the country.' (J. N. Farquhar, Modern Religious
Movements in India, first published in England in 1914. First Indian
edition pub. by Munshiram Manoharlal, Delhi 1967)
The missionaries
opened schools and hospitals, orphanages etc. Education was not
used by missionaries out of any humanitarian motive but they used
education as a vehicle to westernize the indigenous people in every
aspect of human life.
The tragedy is the systems of education, law, revenue, land-tenure
etc., introduced by the Britishers and reforms initiated by the
missionaries in our religion, have truly helped them to shape an
Indian exactly dreamt of by Macaulay, the father of English system
of education in India. His dream was -
"We
must do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between
us and the millions whom we govern, a class of persons Indian in
blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, words and intellect."
- B.D. Basu, History
of Education in India under the Rule of the East India Company, pp.
91-92.
J.N. Farquhar,
while writing about Christian missionaries in the last and early
decades of the l8th and l9th centuries respectively says :
"Then
it was not long before the wiser men both in Missions and in the
Government began to see that, for the immeasurable task to be accomplished,
it was most necessary that missions should take advantage of the
advancing policy of the government and that government should use
missions as civilizing ally. For the sake of progress of India,
co-operation was indispensable."
-J.N. Farquhar,
op.cit,p.7
It throws light on how both the agencies - the missionaries and
administrators worked in close coordination to each. other's advantage.
These events and dates have a cardinal importance in Indian history.
Because it is from 1820 to 1840 A.D. that all arms of Government
which needed to control Indian society firmly as per their designs,
were instituted. Farquhar has classically described the result of
the new educational policy in the following words :
"The new educational
policy of the Government created during these years the modem educated
class of India. These are men who think and speak in English habitually,
who are proud of their citizenship in the British Empire, who are
devoted to English literature, and whose intellectual life has been
almost entirely formed by the thought of the West, large numbers
of them enter government services, while the rest practise law,
medicine or teaching, or take to journalism or business. We must
also note that the powerful excitement which has sufficed to create
the religious movements we have to deal with is almost entirely
confined to those who have had an English education." (J.N. Farquhar,
op.cit p.21)
These observations
of Farquhar were made while delivering a series of lectures in 1912,
practically after a century of the event of manipulating and introducing
English system of Education in India. He talked of English educated
Indians around 1850.
A graphic image
of English education initiated Indian of the early 20th century
is given by Anand K. Coomarswamy in 1908. He writes :
"Speak to the
ordinary graduate of an Indian University, or a student from Ceylon,
of the ideals of the Mahabharata - he will hasten to display his
knowledge of Shakespeare : talk to him of religious philosophy -
you find that he is an athiest of the crude type common in Europe
a generation ago, and that not only has he no religion, but is lacking
in philosophy as the average Englishman : talk to him of Indian
music he will produce a gramophone or a harmonium, and inflict upon
you one or both; talk to him of Indian dress or jewellery - he will
tell you that they are uncivilized and barbaric; talk to him of
Indian art- it is news to him that such a thing exists; ask him
to translate for you a letter written in his own mothertongue -
he does not know it. He is indeed a stranger in his own land.''
(Modern Review, Calcutta, Vol.4, Oct. 1908, p.338)
These remarkable
results were not achieved by fair means but by dubious and fraudulent
tactics. We will see next how some of the prominent missionaries
in Calcutta, Benares and Serampore manipulated the syllabus of the
new educational institutions started by them for this purpose. Hundreds
of Indians poured out of these institutions.
William Carey (1767-1837) William Hodge Mill (1792r1853) and John
Muir (1810-1882) are some of the pioneers in this field and have
played remarkable role in constructing the psychology of the Indians
(of course as per the vision of Macaulay) coming out of the Institutions
of English education. All these three Oriental scholars were acclaimed
Sanskrit scholars, who have done some original work in translating
Christian scriptures and theology into Sanskrit and vice versa.
Richard Fox Young in his book has given some important information
in this regard.
Richard Fox
Young writes about William Carey :
"In
order to understand what he [Carey] wanted to do with India's sacred
language, one must note that Carey had two reasons for being interested
in its utilization for evangelism. First, he saw that Sanskrit acted
as a stabilizing force upon the unsettled dialects amidst which
he worked. Second, he has intransigently opposed Brahminical privileges,
one of which was hegemony over Sanskrit."
Richard Fox Young,
Resistant Hinduism : Sanskrit sources on anti-christian alopologetics
in early nineteenth-centuty India p.33 published by The De Nobili
Research Library, Vienna (1981)
Carey, who was
an English Baptist Missionary, founded the famous Serampore College
in 1818. It was his ambition to turn Serampore into "Christian Benares'.
The syllabus of the course in Serampore College was framed with
the above object in view. Writes Young further :
"His
intentions were also avowedly aggressive, a direct result of conflicts
with Brahmins. According to his plans, Hindu literature could be
placed in disadvantageous juxtaposition with the Gospel, a task
which would be done effectively only by evangelists acquainted with
the original sources of both religions."
- Richard Fox
Young, op.cit, p.35.
Young quotes Carey himself to make clear the intentions Carey's
exercises :
"To
gain the ear of those who are thus deceived it is necessary for
them to believe that the speaker has a superior knowledge of the
subject. In these circumstances a knowledge of Sanskrit is valuable.
As the person thus misled, perhaps a Brahman, deems this a most
important part of knowledge, if the advocate of truth be deficient
therein, he labors against the hill; presumption is altogether against
him."
- William Carey,
On encouraging the cultivation of Sanskrit among the natives of
India, 1822 F.I. Quarterly 2-131-37)
William H. Mill was appointed as Principal of Bishop's College,
Calcutta, which was founded in 1820 by the Society for the Propagation
of Gospel (London). Mills and H.H. Wilson have composed evangelical
tracts in Sanskrit. According to Mill's view point, Hinduism consisted
of `Sublime precepts of spiritual abstractions' overlaid with `monstrous
and demoralizing legends'. Raja Ram Mohan Roy and other Indian critics
of traditional Hinduism shared these very views.
John Muir came to Calcutta somewhere in 1827-28, He was a firm believer
in Christianity and its propagation and was an outstanding scholar
in Sanskrit. He served the East lndia Company in various administrative
departments in North-West Frontier Province. His knowledge gave
him an opportunity to work in the Sanskrit Department of the famous
Benares College (1844-45) Writes Young
"Muir's
manipulation of the philosophy curriculum aimed at depriving the
dersanas of all vestiges of revelation. This he attempted to do
by forcing pandits to abandon their way of teaching, which he thought
was tantamount to indoctrination, and to adopt free debate instead."
- Richard Fox
Young, op.cit, p,53.
Similarly, Sanskrit scholars in Bombay and Madras presidencies and
other parts of the country were venturing into education activity
with a firm belief, overtly and covertly, for propagation of Christianity
in India.
(B) Administrators
After seeing the vital role played by missionaries in the
field of education, we can now turn our attention to the chief architects
of this policy - British administrators.
We have already
seen that these achievements of English education were the results
of a calculated, well-conceived, deliberate, well-planned, well-engineered
and a foresighted policy. The framers of this policy were sagacious
statesmen, thorough patriots and shrewd visionaries. The strong
commonsense which they possessed was of an extraordinary high caliber.
Macaulay, no
doubt, surpasses all others. However, Macaulay's brother-in-law,
Sir Charles E. Trevelyan and Lord William Bentinck are also Equal
architects of this policy. These officers had a strong English superiority
complex and utter disregard and disrespect, nay, hatred towards
Indians and Indian culture. They knew nothing about Indian culture
or education, customs, arts, sciences and what they knew were either
the drawbacks or misinformation gathered from unauthoritative sources
and hearsay.
However, occasional
sympathies and reformism shown by the British should never camouflage
their real and secret intentions. Macaulay was the chief architect
of educational policy and it was Lord William Bentinck who introduced
English as the Court language in India. He was very clear in his
intentions of introducting English as Court language as seen in
the letter of Court of Directors dated 29th July 1830 to Bengal
:
"....
From the meditated change in the language of public business, including
judicial proceedings, you anticipate several collateral advantages,
the principal of which is, that the judge, or other European officer,
being thoroughly acquainted with the language in which the proceedings
are held, will be, and appear to be, less dependent upon the natives
by whom he is surrounded, and those natives will in consequence,
enjoy fewer opportunities of bribery or other undue emolument."
Thus the interests
of millions of Indians were sacrificed for the convenience and profit
of a few Englishmen. Lord Bentinck was never in favour of educating
the people of India in the real sense but he preferred anglicizing
them, as he apprehended danger in spreading knowledge in this country.
Bentinck's opinion is recorded in his Minutes dated 13th March,
1835. However, Charles Metcalf, Governor General of India, disagreeing
with the views of Bentinck observed in his own Minute dated l6th
May, 1835 :
".....
His Lordship (Bentinck], however, sees further danger in the spread
of knowledge and the operations of the Press. I do not for my own
part, anticipate danger as certain consequences from these causes."
- B.D.Basu, op.cit, p.67.
The third architect,
Sir Charles E. Trevelyan, brother-in-law of Macaulay, is so clear
and explicit in his ideas that even his enemies will have to appreciate
his candidness so explicit in his ideas, foresight, vision and judgment.
In his Evidence given before the Select Committee of the House of
Lords on the Government of Indian Territories on 23rd June, 1853,
he says:
"..... the effect
of training in European learning is to give an entirely new turn
to the native mind. The young men educated in this way cease to
strive after independence according to the original Native model,
and aim at, improving the instabilians of the country according
to the English model, with the ultimate result of establishing constitutional
self-govertunent. They cease to regard us as enemies and usurpers,
and they look upon us as friends and patrons, and powerful beneficent
persons, under whose protection all they have most at heart for
the regeneration of their country will gradually be worked out.
....."
The following
extracts from a paper submitted to the Parliamentary Committee of
1853 on Indian territories titled "The Political Tendency of the
Different Systems of Education in use in India" by Sir Charles E.
Trevelyan, brother-in-law of Macaulay, speak volumes about the intentions
in introducing the English system of education in India. This document
is so important that every student of history of English system
of education in India must know it. He says :
"..... The
spirit of English literature, on the other hand, cannot but be
favorable to the English connection. Familiarly acquainted with
us by means of our literature, the Indian youth almost cease to
regard us as foreigners. They speak of great men with the same
enthusiasm as we do. Educated in the same way, interested in the
same objects engaged in the same pursuits with ourselves, they
become more English than Hindoos, just as the Roman provincial
became more Romans than Gauls or Italians... Every community has
its ideas of securing the universal principal, in some shape or
other, is in a state of constant activity; and if it be not enlisted
on our side, it must be arrayed against us. As long as the natives
are left to brood over their former independence, their sole specific
for improving their condition is, the immediate and total expulsion
of the English.....' It is only by the infusion of European ideas,
that a new direction can be given to the national views. The young
men, brought up at our seminaries, turn with contempt from the
barbarous despotism under which their ancestors groaned, to the
prospect of improving their national institutions on the English
model...... The existing connection between two such distant countries
as England and India, cannot, in the nature of things, be permanent;
no effort of policy can prevent the natives from ultimately regaining
their independence. But there are two ways of arriving at this
point. One of these is, through the medium of revolution; the
other, through that of reform. In one, the forward movement is
sudden and violent, in the other, it is gradual and peaceable.
One must end in a complete alienation of mind and separation of
interest between ourselves and the natives; the other in a permanent
alliance, founded on mutual benefits and goodwill.... The only
means at our disposal for preventing the one and securing the
other class of result is, to set the natives on a process of European
improvement, to which they ate already sufficiently inclined.
They will then cease to desire and aim at independence on the
old Indian footing. A sudden change will then be impossible and
a long continuance of our present connection with India will even
be assured to us.... The natives will not rise against us, because
we shall stoop to raise them; there will be no reaction, because
there will be no pressure; the national activity will be fully
and harmlessly employed in acquiring and diffusing European knowledge,
and naturalizing European institutions. The educated classes,
knowing that the elevation of their country on these principles
can only be worked out under protection, will naturally cling
to us. They even now do so..... and it will then be necessary
to modify the political institutions to suit the increased intelligence
of the people, and their capacity for self-government.... In following
this course we should be buying no new experiment. The Romans
at once civilized the nations of Europe, and attached them to
their rule by Romancing them; or, in other words, by educating
them in the Roman literature and arts and teaching them to emulate
their conquerors instead of opposing them. Acquisitions made by
superiority in war, were consolidated by superiority in the arts
of peace; and the remembrance of the original violence was lost
in that of the benefits which resulted from it. The provincials
of Italy, Spain, Africa and Gaul, having no ambition except to
imitate the Romans, and to share their privileges with them, remained
to the last faithful subjects of the Empire;...... The Indian
will, I hope soon stand in the same position towards us in which
we once stood towards the Romans. Tacitus informs us, that it
was the policy of Julius Agricola to instruct the sons of the
leading men among the Britons in the literature and science of
Rome and to give them a taste for the refinements of Roman civilization.
We all know how well this plan answered. From being obstinate
enemies, the Britons soon became attached and confiding friends;
and they made more strenuous efforts to retain the Romans, than
their ancestors had done to resist their invasion. It will be
a shame to us if, with our greatly superior advantages, we also
do not make our premature departure be dreaded as a calamity......"
Macaulay had
arrived in India in 1834, and he wrote his famous minute in 1835.
No Indian can read Macaulay's Minute without feeling deep humiliation,
as Macaulay not only abused but insulted Indians. Macaulay knew
nothing of Indian history and Indian literature. He was not acquainted
with any branch of Indian thought. Knowing all this, Bentinck
chose him to decide the very important controversy between the
accidentalists and the orientalists. It was the worst selection
that ever could have been made.
The famous
Minute which Macaulay wrote in 1835, remained unpublished till
1864. His nephew Sir George Otto Trevelyan first published them
in Macmillan's Magazine of May, 1864. Macaulay proudly records
:
"We are at present a Board for Printing Books which are of less
value than the paper on which they are printed was when it was
blank, and for giving artificial encouragement's to absurd history,
absurd metaphysics, absurd physics, and absurd theology."
Macaulay's
motives behind his educational policy were not only political
but religious as well as revealed in his letter of 1836 addressed
to his father.
"....
The effect of this education on the Hindus is prodigious. No Hindu
who has received an English education ever remains sincerely attached
to his religion. Some continue to profess it as a matter of policy,
but many profess themselves pure Deists and some embrace Christianity.
It is my firm belief if our plans of education are followed up
there will not be a single idolator among the respectable classes
in Bengal thirty years hence."
The comment on
this letter by The Indian Daily News for March 30, 1909, is very
significant. It says : "Lord
Macaulay's triumph over the Oriental School,.... was really the
triumph of the deliberate intention to undermine the religious and
social life of India.....It is no doubt a hard thing to say that
this was not merely the consequence of his act but that it was also
his deliberate intention, but the.... letter written in 1836, to
his father shows how behind his splendid phrases, there lay quite
a different , view."
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British
Policies and Justice |
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But alas ! the
newly educated Indians, who were coming out of engineered education
system had started believing implicitly in the utter lies of equality,
fraternity and justice, which the missionaries boast about their
religion or the commitment of a British officer to sense of justice
or giving protection to Indian subjects.
Many British
officials did believe that India was a country of barbarous people,
where `law of the jungle" prevailed, where people lacked education
and the people were practically bereft of any culture or literature
! These British officers, who did not agree totally with this view,
also wanted a change and the same system of administration and justice
to which they were used to in their own country, John Dickinson
describes the kind of legal system introduced by the British and
the result it produced:
" We,
the English, ignorantly assumed that the ancient, long-civilized
people of India were a race of barbarians who had never known what
justice was until we came among them, and that the best thing we
could do for them was to upset all their institutions as fast as
we could, and among others their judicial system, and give them
instead a copy of our legal models at home (in England) ..... Even
if the technical system of English law had worked well at home (as
in many respects it did not), it would have been the grossest political
empiricism to force it on a people so different from ourselves as
every Oriental people are; and the reader may conceive the irreparable
mischief it has done in India...., Long before we knew anything
of India, native society there had been characterized by some peculiar
and excellent institutions, prominent among them a municipal organization,
providing a most efficient police for the administration of criminal
law, while the civil law was worked by a simple process of arbitration,
which either prevented litigation, or else insured prompt and substantial
justice to the litigants..... Instead of their own simple and rational
mode of dispensing justice, we have given the Indian people an obscure,
complicated, pedantic system of English law, full of artificial
technicalities, which disable the candidates for justice from any
longer pleading their own cause, and force them to have recourse
to a swarm of attorneys and special pleaders, by means of which
their expenses are greatly increased and the ends of justice are
defeated."- John Dickinvson, Government of India Under a Bureaucracy,
London, 1853, pp. 41-47, Allahabad, 1925.
This statement
of Dickinson and earlier quotations of various British authorities
are adequate to give us an idea of what we had lost by losing our
freedom in all respects. But even then there is no dearth of scholars
in this country who are not losing a single opportunity of eulogizing
the introduction of railway, postal system, medical facilities,
British administration, taw etc., as great benefits of British rule
in India.
During Hitler's regime a tremendous scientific and technological
progress was achieved with amazing speed in Germany. Stalin and
Mao brought in discipline and some escalation in production in their
countries. Even in South Africa during White regime, they have better
material amenities than their brethren in other African countries.
Can these achievements and successes be taken as justification for
losing freedom at the hands of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and the White
regime in South Africa ?
The myth of
justice of the British gets further exploded by the letter of Mr.
S.R. Wagel, an economist, which appears in the New York Times dated
October 30, 1915:
" The
Courts of justice in India are reasonably good so long as the dispute
is between Indian and Indian. But . when it is a political case,
or when it is a dispute between an Indian and an Englishman, there
is no justice at all in nine cases out of ten."
And the following statement of Henry Cotton appearing in his book
`New India gives the most ugly racial intolerance the Britishers
harboured against the Indians. He states:
" There are
innumerable instances in which pedestrians have been abused and
struck because they have not towered their umbrellas at the sight
of an Englishman on the highway. It is a common outrage to assault
respectable residents of the country because when passing on the
road they have not dismounted from their horses in token of inferiority.
There are a few Indian gentlemen, even of the highest rank, who
have not had experiences of gross insult when travelling by railway,
because Englishmen object to sit in the same carriage with a native.
This form of insolence generally takes the shape of a forcible
ejection of the Indian, together with all his goods and chattels.
Here are two actual occurrences which ate typical : (1) A petty
military officer entered a railway carriage where to his disgust
he found a couple of Hindu gentlemen. He quietly waited until
the train was in motion and then `fired them', that is, tumbled
them out of the door. (2) A Rajah going on an official visit of
state to the city of Agra, took his seat, as was his right, in
a first class compartment, with a first class send-off by his
loyal and enthusiastic subjects. 1n the compartment were two Englishmen,
muddy from snipe-shooting, who made him unloose their hunting
boots and shampoo their legs."-Sir Henry Cotton, New India, pp.
69-70.
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British
Policies, Villages Life and Economy |
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We have seen
how the British education system was engineered to create `a class
of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in
opinions, words and intellect.' We have also seen what kind of British
justice was in India and how it affected the Indian society at large.
In the long
history of India during the l6th, l7th and l8th centuries, Indian
society lacked competent leadership in religion and military affairs
in many parts of the country. India was struggling hard to survive
against the onslaughts and ill-effects due to lack of social guidance
and political instability. It was certainly a period of decay compared
to her early history. In spite of this, it has retained its own
social institutions, education systems, law and judiciary institutions,
commerce and trade links and its own culture to suit its indigenous
needs.
There is enough
evidence to prove that with all the adversities, all sections of
the society in Indian villages cared and worked for mutual interests
and benefits. The village system wonderfully supported its own vocations;
the approach was holistic. To-day's political slogan viz., " Thousands
of years' atrocities on the weaker sections" is not only a highly
exaggerated claim but is a suicidal political game. It is the same
British policies which thoroughly disturbed and upset the homogeneity
and the unbroken continuity of village administration, trade and
commerce. It will be worthwhile seeing how the policies of land,
revenue, commerce, trade etc., were designed and introduced by the
British in India. The same policies ultimately shattered the village
economy and destroyed the vocations, doomed the artisans, reducing
a fairly harmonious and peaceful society into a conflict-ridden,
incompetent and docile society. The village artisans were forced
to give up their traditional occupations and reduced to the status
of laborers in many cases, which fact did not remain without affecting
the village economy.
The observations
of the various British officers in India which were ultimately put
before the House of Parliament by the East India Company for the
year 1812 formed one such consolidated report. The details
of village life given in this report have formed the basis
of various sociological theories on Indian village system
and its economy for the last two centuries. It is on the strength
of this Report that Karl Marx and Maine drew their conclusions
of an Indian village and formulated their theories of ' `oriental
despotism and primitive Indo-Aryan commune' respectively.
Marx certainly knew little about India and her history, and
its value system. Marx was not a sympathizer of imperialism
or capitalism. But he could not conceal his western bias and
prejudices against Indian culture, which is evident from his
writings of 1853 and about his expectations of the role the British
had to play in India. He writes :
"England
has to fulfil a double mission in India; one destructive, the other
regenerating - the annihilation of the old Asiatic society, and
the laying of the material foundation of western society in Asia."-
First published in New York Daily Tribune, August 8, 1853.
This fact explains
why Indian socialists of all hues and Marxists of all denominations
are busily occupied in anti-culture activities - from history to literature.
They are zealously fulfilling the dreams of their master ! Marx was
obsessed thoroughly to westernize India by uprooting all its ancient
systems of governance, of society and culture. According to Marx,
Indian life had always been undignified, stagnatory, vegetative, passive,
given to worshipping nature instead of putting the man on the pedestal
as the sovereign of `Nature'. Karl Marx writes :
"Whatever
may have been the crimes of England", in India, "she was the unconscious
tool of history" for the desired changes. - New York Daily Tribune
dated June 25, 1853.
The views of Marx
on India (in 1853) were actually the reproductions, continuations
and extensions of the views expressed earlier by William Wilberforce
in 1813, by James Mill in his three-volume History of British lndia
(first published in 1817), and by Lord Bentinck and Macaulay in their
Minutes around 1835. I have to remind the readers that this is the
same period when English educated Indians were coming out of colleges
started by the Missionaries and many of them became the leaders of
early reformist movements in lndia. It is essential to understand
who were their mentors and who shaped the outlook of such reformists.
Marx's assertion of Indian village as `oriental despotism and primitive
Indo-Aryan commune' was far from truth. In this background, it will
be worthwhile taking into consideration some of the recorded opinions
of British officers, who lived in India and observed keenly Indian
culture in the villages and the changes wrought by British policies
as well. I quote Sir Henry Cotton, who lived in India for more than
30 years and had keenly observed the Indian society.
"The
people of India possess an instinctive capacity for local self-government.
In the past (before the British came) the inhabitants of Indian
villages under their own leaders formed a sort of petty republic,
the affairs of which were managed by hereditary officers, any unfit
person being set aside by popular judgement in favour of a more
acceptable member of his family. It is by reason of the British
administration only, that the popular authority of the village headman
has been sapped, and the judicial power of the Panchayat, or Committee
of Five, has been subverted. A costly and mechanical centralization
has taken the place of the former system of local self-government
and local arbitration."- Sir Henry Cotton, op.cip.l70
I also quote Mr.
W.M. Torrens,a Member of British Parliament. He writes:
"In
most parts of India the village community, from timeout of mind,
has been the unity of social, industrial and political existence.
The village and its common interests and affairs have been ruled
over by a council of Elders, always representative in character,
who, when any dispute arose, declared what was the customary law.....
In all Indian villages there was a regularly constituted municipality,
by which its affairs, both of revenue and police, were administered,
and which exercised magisterial and judicial authority...... Subordination
to authority, the security of property, the maintenance of local
order, the vindiction of character, the safety of life, all depended
on the action of these nerves and sinews of the judiciary system.
To maim or paralyse such a system, and working silently and effectively
everywhere, as the British have done, may well be deemed a policy
which nothing but the arrogance of conquest could have dictated.
Yet these municipal institutions were rudely disregarded or uprooted
by the new system of a foreign administration. Instead of the native
Panchayat, there was established the foreign arbitrary judge; instead
of men being tried, when accused, by an elective jury of their fellow
citizens, they must go before a stranger, who could not, if he would,
know half what every judge should know of the men and things to
be dealt with. Instead of confidence, there was distrust ; instead
I of calm, popular, unquestioned justice, there was substituted
necessarily imperfect inquiry, hopelessly puzzled intelligence,
the arbitration of foreign officials, guessing at the facts through
interpreters, and stumbling over habits and usage which it must
take a life-time to learn, but which every native juryman or elder
could recall without hesitation. No wise or just historian can note
these things without wonder and condemnation." - W.M. Torrens, Empire
in Asia, pp. 100-03.
In 1853, Marx,
who is known as a crusader against imperialism, had no qualms of
any kind in giving imperialist Britain a free hand to rule ruthlessly
in India against the wishes of the Indian people. But there were
some sane people in England in 1853, who had exploded the myth of
`rule of law' by the British in India. One such person was John
Dickinson, who has recorded :
"Since
India has come under British rule her cup of grief has been filled
to the brim, aye, it has been full and running over. The unfortunate
Indian people have had their rights of property confiscated; their
claims on justice and humanity trampled under foot; their manufacturers,
towns and agriculturists beggared; their excellent municipal institutions
broken up; their judicial security taken away ; their morality corrupted;
and even their religious customs violated, by what are conventionally
called the `blessings of British rule'..... Parliament eases its
conscience regarding these tyrannies and wrongs in India by exhorting
those that govern there to govern `paternally', just as Isaac Walton
exhorts his angler, in hooking a worm, to handle him as if `he loved
him'.- John Dickinson, op.cit pp. 41-47.
We have seen how every indigenous system was ruined by the British.
We have seen the education system in the village replaced, and we
have also seen the damage caused by the Britishers to the Indian
villages and the myth of British justice. It is worth noting that
land revenue and tenure systems were also tampered by the new land
policies. The zamindari system introduced in Bengal was the gift
of the Britishers to India. It is the British interference in land-ownership
which made land a mortgagable commodity for the first time and which
literally uprooted the villager from his home and means of subsistence.
I quote below
a very interesting paragraph from a Ph.D. thesis :
"There
seems little doubt however, that the British upset the traditional
pattern of money-lending. Land had rarely been taken as security
for a loan before they arrived, for one thing, only mirasdar occupant
had any `transferable' rights to land. The traditional method of
dunning a recalcitrant debtor was to sit dharna at his door. Even
as late as 1840 the land had little marketable value and few sales
of land were made. But the Settlement of 1835 and the following
years conferred unrestricted rights of transfer of land on occupants
of all classes, and could now be taken in mortgage, and, what was
more, could be recovered through the new British Courts of Law.
The chief architect of `Survey Settlement' - George Wingate saw
this provision as a means of getting rid of uneconomic cultivators
and of substituting for them, traders, pensioners and other parties
having capital."
-From Ph.D.
Thesis, titled "The State and the Co-operative Movement in the Bombay
Presidency: 1880-1930, submitted to the University of London (1960)
by Ian James Catanach of the School of Oriental and African Studies.
The author has quoted as sources -Note on Land Transfer and Agricultural
Indebtedness in India' (Government of India, 1895, p.19) and the
`Joint Report of H.E. Goldsmid and G.Wingate, dated l7th Oct., 1840
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Brirish
Policies and Agriculture |
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The
consequence of the introduction of the new policies in land, revenue,
trade and village administration including justice, ` immensely contributed
to disastrous famines in the second half of the l9th century. Agriculture
was never merely an economic activity in India but a way of life.
It will be difficult for a modern Indian to believe that in
all respects, in technology and yield, India was far superior to Europe
in the l7th, l8th and up to the middle of the l9th century. Drill
plough, rotation of crops, animal husbandry and breeding were virtually
unknown in the l7th and l8th century Europe. 1n the l7th century,
wheat production in U.K. was eight bushels per acre. Drill plough,
rotation of crops and breeding of cattle were introduced to Britain
in the l8th century. As a result of this, wheat yield in Britain rose
to 20 bushels per acre in 1850. As early as 1877, a complete report
on Indian wheat was called for by the Secretary
of State for India..... The result of Forbes Watson's examination
was found most satisfactory. India was capable of growing wheat of
the highest quality. (Vide James MacKenna, Agriculture in India, Calcutta,
1915). The data from Allahabad - Northern India, indicated that the
production of wheat was 96 bushels per acre per crop in 1903. Average
Indian farmer used to take two crops per year. So the total yield
per acre per year was 112 bushels. This picture changed gradually
and reversed in India. Agriculture became uneconomic and less productive.
The farmer became poorer and the village artisians were left without
any economic activity, and thus the villagers started migrating to
newly developing urban industrial centres for earning a living. The
villages became symbols of backwardness and cities became symbols
of progress. |
British
Policies: Textile, Trade, Geology
and Mining |
|
How the Britishers
destroyed textile industry in India is a well-known fact. The cotton
and silk fabrics manufactured in Bengal were levied heavy duties
in U.K., while the British manufactured fabric was levied no duty
in India. Inflow of British-made fabrics virtually ruined the Bengal
cotton industry. It was highly discriminatory to the trade of Indian
merchants and a petition of Indian traders was filed in the Privy
Council in 1831 against this discrimination. There was no area,
one could conceive, that escaped the imagination of the British
rulers and which they did not use for the benefit of England at
the cost of India. Even mining and geology were yoked to this purpose.
I quote Andrew Grout :
"However
by 1799 the Company was forced to change its policy in respect of
copper as production from British mines began to decline and the
home demand for copper increased, leading to the prohibition of
copper exports in 1799. Although exports were later reinstated the
price of copper remained high through the early 1800s, and as a
result exports to India fell from 1,500 tons during the early 1790s
to less than 400 tons by 1803. Thus we find Benjamin Heyne, surgeon
and natural historian on the Madras establishment, reporting in
1801 `.....that times have altered, as the great demand of copper
and probably. the decrease of this product in the mines of Cornwall
have rendered discoveries of this metal (in India) as desirable
as in periods of superfluity they would have been thought detrimental
to the interests of Great Britain."
Andrew Grout in his article `Geology and India: 1775-1805 : An Episode
in Colonial Science', South Asia Research, Vo1.10, No. 1, May, 1990,
p. 5.
Even the most benign public health system was also not spared by
the Britishers. Mark Harrison writes :
" The evangelical
impulse, then, had not died with the Mutiny. Though shaken by
the events of 1857-58, the mission to civilize' Indian society
underwent something of a renaissance in the last decade of the
nineteenth century. The reformers found a new arena in which
to engage the forces of `ignorance' ; public health appeared
to be one of the few remaining channels through which western
values still might be introduced. It seemed possible that, even
if it was not swayed by the humanitarian argument for reform,
the colonial government might be persuaded that more vigorous
public health policy was in its own interest."
Mark Harrison in his article `Towards a Sanitary Utopia ? Professional
Visions and Public Health in India, 1880-1914, in South Asia
Research, Vol. 10, No. 1, May, 1990, p. 19.
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Contemporary
England |
|
The educated
Indian was getting convinced that his religion proved an insurmountable
obstacle in his progress; he knew very little of what the condition
in England was at that very time and a few centuries earlier. He
unquestioningly believed in the false propaganda of the missionaries
that Sanskrit was not taught to non-Brahmins by Brahmins in order
to retain their monopoly and privileges by imparting Sanskrit education
to Brahmins alone ! He never realized that imparting knowledge in
India was not necessarily through schools but it was done by hereditary
vocational/occupational system- from father to son in their respective
vocation/occupation at home. What Max Muller could conceive about
Indian education in 1882, is unfortunately not appreciated by many
Indian historians, who are ready to jump to conclusions that Brahmins
prevented lower castes' from getting educated. But few care to read
Max Muller's observations :
"There is
such a thing as social education and education outside of books;
and this education is distinctly higher in India than in any part
of Christendom. Through recitation of ancient stories and legends,
through religious songs and passion plays, shows and pageants,
through ceremonials and sacraments, through fairs and pilgrimages,
the Hindu masses all over India receive a general culture and
education which are in no way lower, but positively higher, than
the general level of culture and education received through schools
and newspapers, or even through the ministration of the Churches
in Western Christian lands. It is an education, not in the so
called three R's, but in humanity."
The English
educated Indian little knew that the village economy did support
and protect all vocations/occupations, and not only Brahmins to
the exclusion of other lower classes. He knew nothing about Henry
VIII and his Statute which had prevented the reading of the English
version of the Bible in Churches in preference to Latin version
and even restricting its listening in English only to nobility
and higher echelons of the society. The Statute (1542-43) ordained
violation with serious consequences:
"..... The
Bible shall not be read in English in any Church. No women or
artificers, prentices, journeymen, servingmen of the degree
of yeomen or under husbandsmen, nor labourers, shall read the
New Testament in English. Nothing shall be taught or maintained
contrary to the King's instructions. And if any spiritual preach,
teach, or maintain any thing contrary to the King's instructions
or determinations, made of 'to be made, and shall be thereof
convict, he shall for his first offence recant, `for his second
abjure and bear a fagot, and for his third shall be adjudged
an heretick, and be burned and lose all his goods and chattels."
. A.E. Dobbs, Education & Social Movement, 1700-1850, London,
1919, p. 105, quoting 34 and 35 Henry VIII.C.I.
During the
same period, the expectations about education for a common man
in England was -.
".....
a ploughman's son will go to the plough, artificer's son to
apply the trade of his parents' vocation; and the gentlemen's
children are meet to have the knowledge of Government and rule
in the commonwealth. For we have as much need of ploughman as
any other state; and all sorts of men may not go to school.
" (Emphasis ours)
- A.E.Dobbs, op.cit, p.. 104, p. 104, £n. 3 quoting Strype,
Cramer, i.127.
Even up
to the end of the l8th century, there were mote Sunday schools
than Day schools in England and expection of education was limited
to 'that every child should be able to read the Bible' as noted
by Dobbs (op.cit, p. 139). The famous "Peel's Act of 1802" gave
momentum to the day school movement. As a result the total number
of schools in England both private and public, which in 1801
were about 3,363, rose to 46,000 in 1851. As against this situation
in England, the reports of (a) Adam, a Christian missionary,
who prepared a report on indigenous education in Bengal and
Bihar (1835-38), (b) Reports prepared by British officers on
indigenous education in Bombay Presidency (Iß20); (c)
Extracts from Reports of British officers on indigenous education
in Madras Presidency (1822-25), and (d) a much later work of
G.W. Leitner on indigenous education in the Punjab (around 1880)
confirm existence of adequate number of indigenous schools to
meet the needs of the locality, in which not only Brahmins but
students of all castes had their education. According to William
Adam, there existed about one lac village schools in Bengal
and Bihar. Thomas Munroe from Madras Presidency writes,"Every
village had a school." Around 1820, G.L. Prendergast from Bombay
wrote "..... there is hardly a village, great or small, throughout
our territory, in which there is not at least one school, and
in largest villages more." None of them talks of atrocities
committed by Brahmins on lower castes ot discrimination on grounds
of caste or of hegemony of Brahmins over education, or denial
of education to lower classes and castes, They accepted the
fact that there was certainly a higher percentage of Brahmins
in schooLs, but not at the cost of denial of education to lower
castes or classes.
The Industrial
Revolution which was taking shape in Europe had absolutely no
connection with Christianity as is made out by some. As a matter
of fact, Christianity opposed science : Copernicus, Galileo
and Bruno had to suffer because they did not accept the `Doctrine
of Papacy' and the `Gospel' but expounded their own theories.
However, the missionaries shrewdly juxtaposed Christianity and
English education with the Industrial Revolution and science
in Europe while educating Indians in India. The English educated
Indians, who were becoming social reformers, not realizing the
reality that Christianity had also equal or many more drawbacks
and which had least contributed to the progress of science and
technology, became gullible victims of the missionary propaganda.
These new Indian reformists started equating drawbacks in the
Hindu religion as obstacles in their scientific and technological
progress. They also did not bother to know the contemporary
status of education in England or in the West and whether the
lower class of the society and weaker sections had easy access
to quality education, which the nobility alone enjoyed as a
special privilege. Refusal of the use of English against Latin
in Church to the common man and burning of women by branding
them as witches was never a part of information made available
to Indians. The Biblical exhortation "Thou shalt not suffer
a witch to live" (Exodus, 22.18) was carried out with the
fullest religious zeal, frenzy and fanaticism and Joan of Arc
was burned as a witch and in 1484, Pope Innocent VIII, the most
pious man (!) in the whole of Christendom, issued a Bull against
witches and in the three centuries following it, i.e., the l6th,
the l7th and the l8th, nearly three to twenty lacs of women
were executed branding them as witches as reported by Encyclopaedia
Americana, Vol. 29 (1984), p. 84. The English educated Indians
cared little to know the inhuman atrocities committed by Christian
missionaries in Goa and Kerala in the name of Inquisition. The
English educated Indian did hardly know about the Crusades in
Europe or about the empire of the Pope and his dabbling into
political affairs of England and other countries of Europe.
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Lesson
To Be Learnt |
|
Any study of history without studying the motives of these scholars,
who were at the helm of affairs - be it education, law, administration
or commerce, will be incomplete. Appreciation of their hard work,
sincerity, devotion, conviction etc., should not in any way camouflage
the truth while analysing the end results of their effects on India
and Indian society. Decorating of poison does not qualify it for
its consumption even by the thirstiest or the hungriest person to
quench his thirst or hunger.
Did India need an education totally alien to its needs ? Was there
no system of law existing in the country and the English were forced
to design a new code of law ? Were the Indian land tenure and administrative
systems of village governance inadequate for self support and self
sufficiency ? These question do need an answer.
India is free for the last 45 years. We are in utter shambles. Our
economy is doomed. Our education system has failed to culture the
citizens of this country and it has only one function left- employing
teachers for producing unemployed youths whose sole aim is to hunt
for jobs. Socially we have become unsafe and our common man is facing
loot, murder and dacoity as everyday features and our past two Prime
Ministers fell victims to bullets and bomb blast. Politically we
have been ruled as a democracy by elected representatives, many
of whom may put to shame the anti-social elements. Our State is
secular where every religion feels insecure. We have reduced a civilized
country to a power-hungry, greedy, intolerant, short-sighted, confused,
diffident, docile nation. Can we not change this picture and convert
these very individuals into confident, creative, enthusiastic, foresighted,
tolerant, contented, cultured individuals ? This is possible only
if we possess an honest desire for our self-criticism and introspection
and also have a strong desire to find out the true culprits for
our misery. We got our freedom on August 15, 1947. Did our leaders
at that time bring. in any radical changes i~ education, revenue,
trade, foreign policy, law etc., which were shaped to suit the British
ideals and interests as conquerors ? I am afraid, the leadership
at that time. being a product of British education and admirers.
of the .British, was overawed. by socialism, especially the type
as practised in 'the U.S.S.R., and could hardly think of giving
a turn to several policies in their enthusiasm to occupy ministerial
and other posts in Independent India ! Such a neglect on the part
of our leaders, gave impetus to missionary activities aided by huge
foreign funds and an urge to imitate West - all these factors have
led us to the present-day miserable situation. Moreover, the advocates
of Marxism and socialism - of various denominations, got all kinds
of protection under a very sympathetic umbrella of such leadership.
What the British and the missionaries could not achieve within 150
years of ruthless and tyrannical rule, was achieved in the post-independence
period of five decades by our biased historians, politicians, sociologists
and the ever enthusiastic media. The recent changes in the U.S.S.R.,
and other socialist countries in the West are not only relevant
and educative to us but prove an eye-opener to us. What socialism
did to religion, history and culture of the Russian people, and
after 70 years what they feel about it, is highly significant. What
unscrupulous methods were adopted, practised and advocated by these
socialists as, enunciated by no less a leader than Lenin in achieving
the goal of socialism may surprise many : On this point [ processes
of social reality] Lenin wrote that ....nothing can be done without
the masses. And in this era of printing and parliamentarism it is
impossible to gain the following of the masses without a widely
ramified, systematically managed, well-equipped system of
flattery, lies, fraud, juggling with fashionable and popular
catchwords, and promising all manner of reforms and blessings to
the workers right and left- as long as they renounce the revolutionary
single for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie." - Quoted by
Y. Sogomonov P. Landesman, in ' Nihilism Today' published
by Progress Publishers, Moscow (1977), pp. 18-19. The original
work is translated from Russian into English by David
Skvirsky. It is the same methods the followers of Marx and Lenin
have adopted in India during the last 40 years. Rationalist movement
has truly nothing to do with rationality in life, but is a movement
to spread atheism and anti-religionism. Anti-superstitious drive
has little relationship to exposing pseudo-godman and protecting
a believer from him. Instead it is geared up to uproot faith in
God, branding faith itself as superstition. Women's Lib. movement
has truely nothing to do with development of woman's personality
but has resulted in anti-male, anti-family and self-centred feministic
movement. The so-called scientific temperament and scientific movement
has nothing to do with betterment and improving quality of life
but is a propaganda of consumerism and dogmatic scienticism. All
these movements were nourished and had a luxuriant growth infiltrating
every strata of our thinking. Even the so-called rightists or pro-Hindu
political parties have failed to understand the motives of all such
movements. What else can be the tragedy? Instead of giving an intellectual
fight against these movements, and exposing the fallacies in their
logic, they prefer to jump on to the bandwagon of socialism itself?
I have tried to explain how prior to Independence, from education,
justice, village economy, land, revenue, and for that matter all
aspects of human life were engineered by the British to suit the
needs and aspirations of the British empire. How they created a
system of education which in turn created an English educated Indian,
who headed the reformist movement, we have seen. We have also seen
how the idea of socialism, specially after Independence, continued
to distort Indian history and has ultimately brought us to social,
economic and political disaster.
Lastly, we have to think why Hindu culture and civilization could
survive for thousands of years when other cultures and civilizations
have formed part of history. This is only because Hindu dharma is
not a religion confined to one book and one prophet. It neither
depends for its protection on any individual sect or nation. Neither
it vows to protect any sect or nation. The principles of Hindu dharma
are not different in any way from human experiences. These principles
are eternal.
The problem is that the Hindu dharma can never be effaced. It is
we who may get effaced, if we do not take shelter under these eternal
principles for our own protection and identity. And for the same
identity and protection we have to see that our history and our
values are not distorted
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