Welcome back. Let us dive right into the remaining part of this narrative and look at our story. The contours of colonial attitude towards famine were broadly touched upon in the last part, the country most directly affected by colonialism was India and by logic, it also suffered the most during the famines. I will describe the famines themselves, the specific colonial attitudes that caused the deaths, the colonial policies prior to the famines that made the populations vulnerable and then the global context of the exploitation that left us poor and desiccated.
The Famines:
There were 3 famines in this period – 1876-78, 1888-90 and 1896-1902 that hit us and hurt us.
The first famine hit areas in the Bombay and Madras presidencies – basically peninsular India and the areas around Delhi. Death toll was about 7 million people. While the story around people dying and horrors of malnourished and dead bodies around is repetitive, the prime driver for this famine was the strong belief by the reigning viceroy Lord Lytton that free markets should prevail, there should be no charity and that finances of British India should be “balanced”. There was also an established view amongst the Europeans based on the economist Malthus’s theory that population will ultimately outstrip food growth and there will be chaos – this was thought to apply to the Asian population which everyone said grew exponentially without any reason at all and so the famines were thought to be nature’s cure against it.
Lytton had firm support from the UK Foreign Secretary Lord Salisbury in these policies, in addition, he had to finance armed expeditions into Afghanistan for which he needed money and he simply couldn’t afford to spend money on drought relief. He had full support from his assistants, one of them being Sir Richard Temple who executed these policies to the hilt. There is a famous term called “Temple Wage”, this was basically the wage that Temple had decided for people “working” for food as part of “relief” (the thought was that people should be made to work for food and not given freebies never mind their physical state). This used to be of such low value that people refused to attend these relief camps, they would be forced to and then they died there. To put it in perspective, the Temple wage suggested a caloric value of 1627 for a person in the relief camp while doing heavy labour, the ration in Buchenwald (Nazi concentration camp) was 1750, the minimum war ration in Japan in 1945 was 2165 while the subsistence ration for an Indian adult in 1985 for moderate activity was 2400 (the approved diet on heavy labour is 3900).
The second famine was in 1888-90 which followed a boom of 10 years in the wheat belt of the North. This had relatively less deaths (about 800K) but it was a precursor to the horrific years of 1897-1902.
The third famine was much more widespread, starting from Deccan, it burnt Gujarat for 4 years turning vast areas into deserts, then it hit the United Provinces (UP) and killed many and finally hit the Punjab. Specific mention must be made of Gujarat which was quite a green land before the drought struck (those who have been to Gujarat recently can tell the difference), this was devastated, to quote a missionary “Once green as a park, had become a blasted waste of barren stumps and burned fields...every leaf was torn from the trees long ago for the cattle..”. The death rate in Ahmedabad in 1900 was 17 percent, in the Panchmahals 28 percent. The response of the officials of British India to this was thus “The Gujarati is a soft man, unused to privation, accustomed to earn his good food easily. In the hot weather, he seldom, worked at all and at no time did he form the habit of continuous labour. Large classes are believed by close observation to be constitutionally incapable of it. Very many even among the poorest had never taken a tool in hand in their lives. They live by watching cattle and crops, by sitting in the fields to weed, by picking cotton, grain and fruit, and as Mr. Gibb says, by pilfering”. The total death toll countrywide during this period was about 19 million (source The Lancet).
India was governed by two haughty Viceroys Lord Elgin and Lord Curzon during this time – in a repeat of what Lytton did, they declared that there won’t be any free relief, they set up poor houses where people would be given minimum subsistence, made to work and generally made miserable. A glittering ceremony marking Queen Victoria’s golden jubilee rule was held amidst all this misery and one of the comments Elgin made when he travelled the countryside during the peak of the famine was “the prosperous appearance of the country...”.
Colonial policies that led to vulnerability to famines:
India was a source of revenue for the British and nothing more. That was the guiding principle of the rulers so they only spent as much as they wanted to on the “extraction” process (hence the railways, post etc.) and as less as possible on the welfare of the people. Till the colonial rule, the local structure of the countryside remained constant despite rulers changing – there was a continuity of policies as far as agriculture, irrigation, taxation and drought relief went – the government taxed agriculture but never to break their backs and was flexible during hard times. Irrigation was localized with subsidies and grants given for wells, check dams and ponds. Droughts brought out effective government action with hoarders punished mercilessly, local rich made to open their treasuries and granaries and governments providing relief through distribution of grains. There was also emphasis on growth of crops that suited the area, its soil and food habits best. The common lands like pastures and forests were free for use for anyone, wandering tribes of herdsmen (the same tribes who were branded as bandits by British later on) were allowed to graze their flock and trade in them. This consensus lasted for centuries despite the battles and change of regimes.
With British rule, the peasants were suddenly exposed to the world markets. The unification of the country through roads and rails also brought in capacity to quickly transport grain to ports for export. The exports earned huge profits to the middlemen (essentially the zamindars, collection agents and the new class of local gentry that the British promoted) but it never reached the farmer. The British forced cultivation of cotton, indigo, opium and wheat – all cash crops that would reduce the productivity of the land , they marked each piece of land and handed out to people, in doing so they removed the rights of everyone on the common lands thus creating problems for small farmers in terms of grazing their cattle etc.
Local irrigation was ignored, entire spending focus was on irrigating the lucrative wheat growing fields of Punjab (which was obviously exported) through huge canals. The marking out of lands forced people to cultivate less productive land which would hit them when rains failed.
In addition, the entire world moved to the Gold standard by 1860s, what Britain did was that they marked the pound against gold but the rupee was tied to silver standard (obviously low in value). This meant that British imports from India were of low value while their exports to India were of a higher value. This led to instant impoverishment of millions of people.
When the droughts struck, most of the farmers could not grow crop because of the weakened capacity due to conditions mentioned above and hence could not afford to repay loans and had to sell land, this made them unable to afford the high price of grains (gouged by the middlemen) and thus starve. To add to this, there was no relief from the government and heavy migration and this amounted to complete destruction of country life in India and the substantial poverty that continues to this day.
Larger context of colonialism:
Let me quote some figures, this is the share (%) of the world GDP across the period of colonialism:
Country 1700 1820 1890 1952
China 23.1 32.4 13.2 5.2
India 22.6 15.7 11 3.8
Europe 23.3 26.6 40.3 29.7
This is another set of figures, share of world manufacturing output, 1750-1900
Region 1750 1800 1830 1860 1880 1900
Europe 23.1 28.0 34.1 53.6 62 63
UK 1.9 4.3 9.5 19.9 22.9 18.5
Tropics 76.8 71.2 63.3 39.2 23.3 13.4
China 32.8 33.3 29.8 19.7 12.5 6.2
India 24.5 19.7 17.6 8.6 2.8 1.7
Obviously, lot of people will say that the West had the Industrial revolution during this time and we were complacent and inward looking etc. Even assuming that is true, look at the figures at face value, battle of Plassey 1757, GDP 24.5, by 1900 it is 1.7, all during colonial rule – that can’t just be innocent happenstance. Multiple sources say that this was because the local industries were systematically destroyed to eliminate competition to British goods (we all know this), this created a reverse migration of skilled artisans from the city to villages. They were then hit by the droughts killing them. Local entrepreneurship was specifically curtailed and new technology denied to Indian entrepreneurs who wanted to try (was not their fault they couldn’t innovate, they were being ruled by the British), only British firms were allowed to manufacture, trade and export, not many locals were encouraged. We all know the struggles Tata went through before he could set up Tata Steel. This also puts the “khadi” movement in perspective.
The bigger game was in world trade where India and China literally bankrolled UK’s financial hegemony in the world. US and Germany put up high tariffs to build their industries and this made the UK manufactures uncompetitive during later 19th century. The balance of payments was maintained by the monies raised from India. India exported opium to China at high prices, the Chinese government had to pay for the opium through punitive taxes on their people. This money was used to subsidize British manufactured goods to be sold in India with high import duties. All in all, the British people in UK benefited with higher interest rates on bonds, cheap loans, plentiful jobs, cheap food while inflicting misery on the Indians and Chinese.
In addition, most of the unfair trade agreements were imposed by using gunboats (force was used about 73 times in Asia in China, Japan, Korea from 1850-1900). The world was Britain’s oyster, the pound the pre-eminent currency.
Summary:
Keeping it brief, I hope the point has been made that the so called “benefits” that India has “received” by colonial rule are pure baloney. What are the benefits – railways (these were not created for us, they were created for smooth movement of troops and produce, Indians were stuffed in 3rd and 4th classes in these trains), roads and bridges (again the same argument – they were not for us, they only existed to extract efficiently), post (should I even elaborate), English language and education (the legacy continues till now, it is only good to produce “clerks”, rote learning, no independent thinking, no leadership built, I contrast it with what my son learns here). The only thing which I can qualify as a benefit is that we were formalized into a country (though it was divided in the end). I don’t think these “benefits” weigh much against close to 30 million deaths, complete destruction of the economy, indoctrination of “inferior” status through the education, pauperization and then being showed as if this was done to “liberate” us from darkness.
While we have done well after independence, why are we underdeveloped? The biggest reason is that the governance model, in fact the structure of governance is pretty much the same as created by the British. This was that of a predatory state, the government that “ruled” and beat people into submission, that sucked them dry and did not care about them. What really changed on the ground – the ICS officers became IAS officers, most of the laws still hold, the bureaucracy remained same and only expanded and the society which was mistrustful of itself continued to turn against each other. The heirs of this legacy are the present politicians who were trained under the same system, perfected the same methods of “extraction” (expect now the proceeds go into offshore accounts rather than another country) and essentially taught people that it was ok to loot.
What is the panacea then, simple, realize that this happened to you, realize that you were conquered because you were divided and then you were ruled by dividing you into many parts. The same happens today in a crude yet sophisticated manner, divide the rich vs poor (socialist slogans), the upper caste v/s lower caste (social justice slogans), religions and many more, just enough so that no one pays attention to real issues that affect them because you have been so battered in your collective memory that you accept anything as “providence”. The day we realize that we are all the same and say “enough”, things would have changed. We did that till 1947 and reached halfway, half the journey still remains, let us get there together.
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