Money-Lender
This ever-increasing burden of tortuous taxes in cash on land, by the government or by its darling child-the zamin- dar-created very serious problems. The government insisted, at the risk of attaching the property, land, house- hold goods etc. on a regular money payment fixed in ad- vance irrespective of the condition of crops or the prices prevailing in the market. In case of bad harvest or drought or drop in the prices of agricultural produce, the poor culti- vators had no alternative except to borrow from the money- lender since there was almost no other moncy-lending agency available to the peasants. Sooner or later the great majority of the cultivators were thus forced by the government to go to the money-lender-another bane of Indian economy and another prop and pillar of the British imperialism in India.
British imperialists argue that the poor cultivators borrowed because they spent extravagantly on marriages of their children, as if the marriages were daily affairs of the cultivators and they had no right to any social privileges and enjoyments in their entire lives. The official Deccan Riots Commission, appointed after the poor cultivators of Deccan rose in sheer desperation against the money-lenders and other oppressors, stated "The results of the Commission's enquiries show that undue prominence has been given to the expenditure on marrigae and other festivals as a cause of the ryots' indebtedness. The expenditure on such occasions may undoubtedly be called extravagant when compared with ryots' means, but the occasions occur seldom, and probably in a course of years the total sum spent this way by any ryot is not larger than a man in his position is justified in spend- ing on social and domestic pleasure. And what is the amount the poor ryot spends on the marriage of his son! Rs. 50 to Rs. 75 (£5 to £7-10s.), say the Commissioners.
S. S. Thorburn, Revenue Commissioner of the Punjab Province in 1891, after house-to-house inquiry in four tracts or circles supporting an agricultural population of 300,000 souls and 535 villages, placed "borrowing to pay land revenue' as the primary cause of the farmers seeking the aid of money-lenders whom 'our system is making the masters of the village community" The second cause of borrowing assigned by Thorburn was to obtain the means to buy seed grain-the result of the land-tax that left the tenantry without capital to carry on farming. Thorburn also found that "quite half the old agriculturists are already ruined beyond redemption in 126 villages' their farms having passed into the hands of money-lenders."
The Indian Famine Commission of 1901 also confirms the opinion that the British revenue system mainly forced the Indian peasants to borrow money. It pointed out that 'the cultivators sank deeper into debt, and their property began to pass out of their hands. It must be admitted that the conditions on which, under the revenue system, the cultivators held their lands, helped to bring this result about. The rigidity of the revenue system forced them into debt, while the valuable property (land) which they held made easy to borrow.
Sir Henry Cotton' and the Report of the Deccan Agri- culturists' Relief Act also affirm that the exacting land revenue demands were responsible for leading the villagers into the clutches of the money-lender.
The peasants did borrow from the money-lenders in the pre-British days. But then a peasant could borrow only on his personal security, and not on the security of the land. Hence, lending money was a very risky business. So the volume of debt was much less when compared to the British days. Whereas the money-lender was merely a humble servant of the peasant and occupied a subordinate position in the rural economy in pre-British days, during the British regime he was master of the peasant and occu- pied a paramount position, alongwith the zamindar. Both of these parasites-zamindar and money-lender-were created, maintained and nourished by the bigger master parasites, the British.
The money-lender in the village was usually a small trader as well. The cultivator had to sell his crops at the harvest time, or sometimes even when the crops were still standing, to pay the interest and debt to the money-lender, rent to the landlord and tax to the government. Selling at harvest time meant selling very cheap and quite often the cultivator had to buy the grain after a few months, even for his seed, from the same money-lender at a higher price. For this purpose he had to borrow money from the money-lender. Since he was almost the only money-lending agency, he naturally charged exorbitant rates of interest which were "like a sentence of economic death" upon the cultivator. In this way, the cultivator was in the vicious circle of debt and payment. He must sell to pay all the vultures and harpies; and he must borrow, so that he could produce to live below subsistence level to be able to pay these vultures and harpies. Ultimately this circle was broken when the peasant was forced to sell his land or his land was acquired by the money-lender in default of his payments. In this way, the harshly excessive land revenue ultimately led to the transfer of land, thereby converting the owner of the land into a mere labourer.
The cultivators also suffered in another way. When- ever any government official went to the villages they must be fed, and fed sumptuously, by the villagers absolutely free of any charge. Any official of the government, especially the police, were not only fed free, but they could also take away the farmers' products like corn or milk. This sheer robbery was a regular feature of the British in India. No wonder the police were described as the 'worst pest of the villages, worse than the wild beasts' Mr. Elwin, the author of "Leaves from the Jungle' sought to encourage the planting of fruit trees by the villagers. The villagers said to him, "What is the use? When the fruit is ripe, the police will take it away from us. He recounts how a whole tribe of Baigas had to abandon their trade of making baskets because so many were taken from them by government offi- cials on the way to market that this subsidiary industry ceased to pay. No more poignant example could be cited, writes R. Reynolds, of the fatalistic despair which replaced the independent spirit of the old village communities.
Forced Commercialization and Landless Peasants
Commercialization of agriculture is a desirable thing in any country, and this process started in pre-British India. Nevertheless under the British, this process got a new impetus; but it was unnatural and forced growth. It proved to be fatal to the people of India. This forced commercial- ization of agriculture, where cultivator had to sell to the trader or the money-lender (in most cases one person was both), was also encouraged by the government since it was in the British interests. Let an American author tell us about this forced commercialization "Commercial agri- culture grew partly because of the recurring need of the peasants for money to meet the mounting demands made on them by the government and the landlords. Another reason was the fact that such a development was welcome to the British authorities British manufacturers clamoured for raw materials and sought good markets in which to dis- pose of their finished products."
To meet the 'mounting demands' of the government and to satisfy the insatiable thirst of the British economy for the products of agriculture-food and raw materials- India had to flow its riches to England through the children of the British government, the money-lender and the rail- ways. India must export to England to meet the heavy drain (discussed later) even when Indians were dying in millions in famines.
A. J. Wilson, after stating that 'a native population of India grovelling in the vice-like grip of the usurer because our 'revenue system drives him there', writes about these forced exports. "In simple truth the land system of India as established by the Supreme Government is threating the entire population with ruin, and our extensive and costly system of 'public works' is hastening that disastrous con- summation. The crops, reared with increasing difficulty, have to be rushed into the market either to meet the Government rent or the usurer's demands, and are mostly taken by the usurers at their own valuation, by whom they are in turn sold cheap to the European merchant or his agent. When that is not the case, the English capitalist himself controls cultivator, crops, and everything—is, in fact, the usurer. Once sold, the crops are hurried out of the country by the railways, and when scarcity arises the people have no stores of food to fall back upon nor money to buy with. .The hard-and-fast money rent of shifting amount, and liable to be increased all over India outside Bengal, every thirty years or oftener, is possibly an excellent stimulus to the foreign trade of the empire, and it is death to the natives."
These forced exports continued even when millions were dying for want of food.
"It is a common practice in India for food exports to continue while great numbers of people are starving to death. Richard Temple tells us that throughout the famine of 1877, when 4,000,000 people died of hunger, exporta- tion of cereals through the port of Calcutta never stopped for a moment,'
In this whole process of exportation of the food, and converting the peasant's crops in cash to pay the land reve- nue and rent to the government and to the landlord, the money-lender was of invaluable help to the government. His business was quite profitable and secure without any risk. He could use the British made laws, the courts and the police to confiscate the land and property of the cultivator, in case of default of the payment. The result was that the peasant proprietors were losing their land to the money- lender, who in turn rented that land to the tenants; thus becoming the landlord too. In this way, landlords were being created in Ryotwari areas as well. In other areas landlordism was already created by British law. The result was that a separate renter parasitic class who battened them- selves on the fruits of the landless cultivators arose in all the systems of land tenure throughout the country. The landless peasant increased at a fantastic speed, even accord- ing to the official census. These labourers were given hardly subsistence wages. Sir Thomas Munro, the Census Commissioner in 1842 stated that there were no landless peasants in India. In 1852, George Campbell said that in India 'as a rule farming is not carried on by hired labour' In the first census of India in 1871, 18% of the total agricultural population was counted as agricultural labourers. This figure went on increasing and after one hundred seventy-four years of British rule, according to the census of 1931 (table of occupational classification was not prepared in the last British census of India in 1941) approxi- mately 79 million or more than 70% of the agricultural population was agricultural labourers without any right in land. Out of these, a "great bulk" of agricultural labour- ers could at best be called half-free. After the census of 1931, came the depression which fell upon India with the fury of a tropical tornado. As a result, the prices of agri- cultural commodities declined by 55%, agricultural debt increased by 100% within a few years, and the revenue of the government remained the same. In such circumstances, the land going from the peasants to the money-lender-cum- landlord-cum-petty trader was very natural, accelerating the rise of the landless peasants. In 1939 came the Second World War when prices jumped up tremendously, again speeding up the rise of the landless peasants. In other words, by the time the British left India in 1947, the land- less labourers must have increased considerably to more than 70% of the total agricultural population.
In 1842 and before, there were no landless peasants, which meant that all the peasants were owners having the dignity of manhood and prestige of ownership and the incentive of private property to increase production. After about 200 years of British rule, at least 79 million peasants were landless. This was a heinous change in about 200 years when most of her population depended on agriculture, did not own land and worked as semi-slaves. In every free country of the world, just the reverse of this happened during the same period, when more and more people were being employed in occupations other than agriculture; and for those who remained in agriculture, their holding increa- sed alongwith their production. "We took over from the native rulers a yeomanry, who owned the fields they tilled" and now we "govern one of the most inert and famine- stricken population in the world.
The government half-heartedly made some trivial laws, mostly after rebellions by the peasants, to prevent the aliena- tion of land to the absentee money-lender-cum-landlord and to scale down the enormous debts, without scaling down their own demand. But the money-lender could easily evade these laws, since there were many loopholes in them. The money-lender had the money to hire good lawyers, unlike the tenants who were unable to bear the heavy expenses of litigation. Most important was the ques- tion of demand and supply. The peasants must borrow to cultivate in order to live and pay the government. He had to approach the money-lender-virtually the only agency to supply cash for his needs. In such circumstances, even the best legislation would fail to check the growth of indebtedness, alienation of land to the money-lender, and fantastic increases in the number of landless peasants.
Only in the 20th century, were attempts made by the government to start co-operative credit societies and co- operative banks. But the very people who need credit most could not be the members of these societies as they did not have adequate resources for membership requirements. Moreover, these societies and banks were a mere drop in the ocean. Therefore a peasant had to depend on money- lenders.
The basic causes of all these agricultural problems were the heavy land tax and land tenure system. The Bri- tish Government of India was not prepared to impose land revenue according to the humane principles of taxation since the government was to support the most expensive civil and military service in the world and land revenue was almost the only source of income to do so. Nor was the government prepared to change the land tenure system since the zamin- dars and money-lenders were the props and pillars of the British empire in India. Even their huge incomes were not taxed.
After 170 years of exploitation, just 20 years before the British left India, the government decided to appoint a Royal Agricultural Commission in 1927 to enquire into the problems of 'agriculture and rural economy in British India' One of the fundamental problems of agriculture-the land system-was not looked into, however. The factors which led the government to take this step were the world war, rebellions and peaceful agitations of the people.
Although the great majority of the people depended upon agriculture and a major portion of the income of the government was derived from it, there was no department of agriculture, or commerce and industry before the 20th century-a fact which clearly reveals that the British Govern- ment of India was nothing but a police, dictatorial regime. The Imperial Agricultural Research Institute was started only in 1903, not by the grace of the British, but by an American who donated money for improving Indian agri- culture. Up to the end of the British rule, these institutes and departments remained very insignificant and minor affairs. It is shocking, although not surprising, that in the central and provincial budgets in 1935-36 (peace years) less than 1% of the total expenditure was allotted to the development of agriculture on which about 80% of the people directly depended. An American author tells us that in 1938, the total Indian Civil Service personnel (1,107 in number) per year cost approximately 1.25 per cent of the total budget excluding the most magnificent salaries paid to the Viceroy of India-the 'most powerful single human being in the world,' the Secretary of State and the military officers.
An American thinker and writer who visited India in 1931, throws light on the condition of these 80% people "Nearly half the peasant's earnings go to his alien masters in brutally heavy taxes; if these are not paid in time, or his cash, his little estate may be confiscated by the Govern- ment. .An Englishman tells us that 100,000,000 of these peasants live on two cents a day. Looking at their legs, we can believe it. Not a man among them but is under-weight; half of them are visibly weak from lack of nourishment; you can run your closed fingers up around their black shanks from the ankles to the knees. Everybody exploits them, even their own countrymen. The British tax them as much as they dare, make magnificent appropriations for the army and the civil service (in which all the lucrative positions are confined to the British), and spend most of their salaries in England. The Hindu money-lenders cheat them to the bone, for the peasants must have cash when taxation time appears, and the lender's risks are high.'
Irrigation
The fact that 'irrigation is everything in India' clearly recognized by all the previous pre-British govern- ments; and irrigation through wells, canals, tanks, lakes and anicuts or dams was an important activity undertaken by them throughout India from the very ancient times up to the British rule.
With the descendence of British rule, almost complete neglect fell upon irrigation. Canals, tanks and other means of irrigation were allowed to fall into disuse and disrepair. In 1838, after 80 years of the British rule, G. Thompson wrote "The roads and tanks and canals, which Hindu or Musulman Governments constructed for the service of the nation and the good of the country have been suffered to fall into dilapidation; and now the want of the means of irrigation causes famines,"
W. S. Lilly wrote in 1902 "Indeed, it has been said- and there is no exaggeration in the saying-that the works executed by them (pre-British rulers of India), for the stor- age of water 'surpass in immensity what are conventionally esteemed the wonders of the world'. .But it is a patent fact that many (irrigation works of old) have been allowed to go to ruin'
Even after the persistent demand by Sir Arthur Cotton, a distinguished servant of the Company and the pioneer of irrigation works in India during British rule, who showed that irrigation is much more profitable for the government, much more beneficial for the nation to produce food, and more of a necessity to avoid recurring famines than the railways; railways were preferred as they were more profit- able for the British for their investment, for procuring food and raw material for them, and most useful for extending the market for the finished products of their industries. His comments in 1854 sum up the attitude of the British gov- ernment of India towards irrigation after about 100 years of rule "Public works have been almost entirely neglected throughout India. .The motto hitherto has been 'Do nothing, have nothing done, let nobody do anything. Bear any loss, let the people die of famine, let hundreds of lakhs (a lakh one hundred thousand) be lost in revenue for want of water, or roads, rather than do anything.'
In 1858, the British government introduced a bill in the House of Commons to abolish the ruling power of the East India Company after the Great Revolt in 1857. At that time a famous British statesman, John Bright, who was interested in India for growing more cotton for the Man- chester (the riding represented by him in Parliament) cotton mills, in a speech in the House of Commons on June 24, 1858 pretty much summarized the results of 100 years of British rule.
"Throughout those Presidencies most of which have been longest under British rule, the cultivators of the soil, the great body of the population of India, are in a condition of great impoverishment, of great dejection, and of great suffering. the taxes of India are more onerous and oppres- sive than the taxes of any other country in the world. industry is neglected by the Government to a greater extent probably than is the case in any other country in the world which has been for any length of time under what is termed a civilized and Christian government. I should be able to show from the notes and memoranda of eminent men in India, of the Governor of Bengal, Mr. Halliday, for exam- ple-that there is not, and never has in any country pretend- ing to be civilized a condition of things to be compared with that which exists under the police administration of the province of Bengal. With regard to the courts of justice I may say the same thing. . With regard to public works, if I were speaking for the Natives of India, I would state this fact, that in a single English country there are more roads -more travellable roads-than are to be found in the whole of India; and I would say also that the single city of Man- chester, in supply of its inhabitants with the single article of water, has spent a larger sum of money than the East India Company has spent in fourteen years, from 1834 to 1848, in public works of every kind throughout the whole of its vast dominions. I would say that the real activity of the Indian Government has been an activity of conquest and annexation-of conquest and annexation which has enforced on the House an attention to the question of India, which but for that catastrophe I fear the House would not have given it.
After 20 years (1878) of this great speech, when India experienced a great famine in Madras and other places, the same great man again spoke in the same great House of Commons on the same great subject of importance (irriga- tion) depicting the same great neglect and folly of the same British government of India.
The government always moved, if at all, at a snail's pace when the British interests were not involved; and if they were involved, they jumped like a ferocious cheetah. -The total outlay on irrigation works in India up to March 1902, scarcely amounted to 24 millions sterling as against 226 millions spent on raliways, This massive neglect was continued in spite of the fact that India experienced many worst famines in the last quarter of the 19th century; and the official Famine Commissions appointed from time to time were recommending that irrigation should be given the first place among the means to eradicate famine. Al- though the railways were incurring heavy losses year after year and irrigation was one of the most profitable enter- prises the former were pushed forward with an amazing speed whereas the latter were fatally neglected. The only reason was that the railways were serving British interests, while irrigation was not.
This fatal neglect of irrigation was not only in the 19th century. It continued in the 20th as well although to a little lesser degree. The author of the "Voiceless Millions' quotes a contemporary opinion of an eniment engineer in 1931 (only 16 years before British left India) about Bengal.
"Sir William Willcocks, the distinguished hydraulic engineer, whose name is associated with gigantic irrigation enterprises in Egypt and Messopotamia, has recently made an investigation of conditions in Bengal. He has discover- ed that innumerable small destructive rivers of the delta region, constantly changing their course, were originally canals which under the English regime were allowed to escape from their channels and run wild. Formerly these canals distributed the flood waters of the Ganges and pro- vided for proper drainage of the land, undoubtedly account- ing for that prosperity of Bengal which lured the rapacious East India merchants there in the early days of the eigh- teenth century. . Not only was nothing done to utilise and improve the original canal system, but railway embankments were subsequently thrown up, entirely destroying it. Some areas, cut off from the supply of loam-bearing Ganges water, have gradually become sterile and non-productive; others, improperly drained, show an advanced degree of water- logging, with the inevitable accompaniment of Malaria. Nor has any attempt been made to construct proper embankments for the Ganges in its low course, to prevent the enormous erosion by which villages and groves and cultivated fields are swallowed up each year. Sir William Willcocks severely criticises the modern administrators and officials, who, with every opportunity to call in expert technical assistance, have hitherto done nothing to remedy this disastrous situation, growing worse from decade to decade.
In the 20th century a few canals, particularly in the Punjab, were constructed for economic and political reasons in the interest of British imperialism. R. Reynolds pointed out in 1938 "In more recent years, it is true, the necessity for encouraging cotton crops and the possibilities of irri. gation as profitable investment have led to the construction of canals in many parts of the country; and Bengal may yet be favoured a new field for the employment of surplus capital. It has also been realised that the control of canal water is a powerful political weapon with which to menace seditious peasants. But until these discoveries were made nothing was done. The East India Company in its early years neither repaired canals itself nor permitted the people to do so . Eventually, when irrigation works were seriously undertaken, the land revenue was augmented so heavily that in many parts of the country the peasant gained nothing from a profit that was shared by the Government, the banks, the British contractors and their employees'
employees"--almost all Britons.
A few figures will illustrate how little was done towards artificial irrigation, the very life blood of Indian agriculture and Indian people. After about 150 years of British rule, the total irrigated area for the average of five years (1896- 1900) was less than 17% of the total cultivated area; and out of this 17%, less than 9% was irrigated by government works. After about 190 years of British rule, the total irrigated area for the average of five years (1941-45) was about 22% of the total cultivated area; and out of this about 15% was irrigated by government works." Thus, one of the primary duties of any government in the climatic conditions of India was fatally ignored. And if a little was done, it was mainly to improve the cultivation of cash crops such as cotton and jute for the British industries, or to keep the peasants away from the freedom movement by controlling the water that controlled their destiny.
Rivalry Between Commercial And Food Crops
During the British rule, another serious agricultural problem arose; this was the rivalry between the commercial crops and the food crops. The British were understandably interested in raw materials like cotton, jute, teas, indigo, sugarcane, peanuts, etc. for their growing industries. As early as 1788, the Directors wrote to the government of India to encourage cotton cultivation in India. The Cotton Committee was appointed in 1848 by the House of Com- mons and its basic purpose was to encourage cotton cultiva- tion in India.
The British government wanted another source of tea, besides China, to satisfy the tastes of Britons in case the Chinese would assert their independence and stop export- ing tea to England, although this never happened. Always ready to serve the interests of Britain, the government of India opened experimental gardens in 1835 and gave every sort of help such as subsidies, protection, land grants, to the mainly European owned plantation (tea, indigo, coffee) companies engaged almost exclusively in export trade. This help was totally denied, excepting somewhat half-heartedly after the First World War, to the Indian owned indus- tries. These plantation companies, earning monstrous profits, were even exempted from income-tax, and almost complete control was given to them over the wretched labourers of these plantations.
Under these laws, legally free but otherwise slave pea- sants, were forced to sow indigo and poppy at the cost of food, even at the time when millions were dying from famines. A famine took place in Bengal and Orissa in 1866. A British official, who enquired into this famine, admitted that 'one of the causes of (scarcity of foodgrains) was the increasing cultivation of indigo which year by year absorbed a large area of land which otherwise would have been, devoted to the cultivation of cereals.
The result, naturally, was a tremendous increase (85%) in output of commercial crops in a period of half a century from 1895-96 to 1945-46 as compared to the output of food crops, which fell by 7% during the same period; although total crop production per capita fell by 20% and food crop production fell by 32% during this 50 years' time. Any government worth their salt, interested in the welfare of the governed, would have resorted to ameliorative measures to improve the food supply of the country. Official reports and official statistics were again and again telling the government that there was something terribly wrong with Indian agriculture.
Instead of taking any measures to improve the food situation of the country, the government forced Indians to export foodgrains and other raw materials to meet the rising tribute or home charges which Indian subjects had to pay to her masters. Even in time of famine when millions of people were dying, and also in normal times when a great majority of the people were semi-starved, India had to export the food which she needed herself. The export of foodgrains showed a remarkable and rapid increase after the middle of the 19th century in spite of the increasing frequency of famines. In 1914, the export of foodgrains amounted to 19.3 million, an increase of more than twenty-two times over that of 1849. Britain took away the food, which the hungry and dying India needed.
Up to 1921, India was the exporter of foodgrains; and after that year, India, where about 80% of the people depended on agriculture, could not feed herself and had to import food. These imports continued to increase steadily until the beginning of the Second World War. During the war, imports were cut off, and to meet the increasing demands of the British war, India even had to export food causing the Bengal famine of 1942-43, proving once again that human life was of no consequence at all to the white- man, if his material interest was in any way adversely affected.
After the war, India again started to import food. At the time the British left the country, India was importing food; whereas at the time they entered, India was "the agricultural mother of Asia"
In such circumstances where India was under the British created full-blooded system of feudalism; where a greater part of the cultivators' income went either to meet the backbreaking, heavy, and uncertain demands of the billeting government, or to meet the demands of the British- created landlords and money lenders; where sources of wealth were narrowed down to only agriculture; and where a large part of its revenue was remitted annually out of the country never to return back to her in any shape or form, there was absolutely no wonder that famines frequently took a more heavy toll of lives under the British rule of 190 years than perhaps known in any other part of the world at any time during a period of the same length.