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she always gets interest, and has, besides, a morgage on all Indian property.

India, on the other hand, has entirely lost her 1uch more than ten thousand millions; this, with interest, and if circuated in the ordinary way among her people, at five per cent. interest value only, would, by this time, have been of the value at least of

FIFTY THOUSAND MILLIONS OF RUPEES.

Further the money lent to India, save in respect to irrigation works, has only partly gone to that country: most of it has been spent in England, England being thus doubly enriched, while India's poverty was thereby doubly deepened.-LONDON CORRESPONDENCE of the Amrita Bazar Patrika (Calcutta) and The Hindu (Madras), March, 1901.

THE REMEDY

IT

Statement of Remedies Postponed until Some Agreement
be Arrived At as to Whether Any Need for Remedy
Exists

The Statement of the Evil, for the Moment, is Enough

T may be asked, 'Assuming your conclusions are indisputable, what is the remedy? Having said so much, you must say more. It is of little use to diagnose the disease unless you can indicate means of cure.' Such a question in ordinary circumstances would receive but one answer. Certainly. Though it is not always the duty of the critic to be prepared with a remedy for that which he criticises, unless indeed the "case" be put in his hands, I will state what, in my opinion, should be done to remedy these evils. The steps to be taken are as follows'

On the present occasion, however, I do not propose to submit any remedies. Not, however, because I have none to submit. Quite the contrary. In respect to every department of effort in India where reform is needed, I have something to say; and, more particularly, have I special proposals to submit and urge concerning the increased productivity of the soil, a reform which the late Sir James Caird strongly urged twenty years ago, and towards the realisation of which practically nothing has been done.

Remedies are of value for discussion only when there

6

is agreement between the parties interested that a condition of things exists for which remedies are needed. We are far from such a desirable situation in India. In words already quoted in these pages, Lord George Hamilton finds nothing whatever in the vast continent he rules to call for remedy. You speak,' he says, ' of the increasing impoverishment of India, and the annual drain upon her, as steadily and continuously exhausting her resources. I assert that you are under a delusion. Except that during the last five years the rainfalls have thrice failed, and created droughts of immense dimensions, there is not a fact to be found in support of your allegations.' With such views propounded by the Secretary of State, it is out of the question to talk of remedies. If there be no wrong, no suffering, no complications, save those caused by the Great Cloud-Compeller of the Universe, there can, assuredly, be no remedy required.

Further with the abnormal and unsatisfactory condition of things now obtaining in India, men who believe in the remedies they suggest, who are fully satisfied that they will remove existing ills, who, because they have thought out thoroughly the difficulties to be overcome, are ready with amendment and adaptation to ensure the success of what they recommend, are refused opportunity of association in the application of the remedies they advise. The inception of the reform ideas comes from one set of brains. The realisation of that inception is entrusted to others who do not believe in its realisation, do not consider anything requires to be reformed. Consequence: Failure of the remedy which, in hands that understood, and worked by minds which believed in it, would prove successful.

Here, at present, there is no need to discuss a remedy. Lord George Hamilton's remark dismisses, with a contempt which commands admiration for its magnificent audacity, the very idea of anything being wrong. The admiration ordinarily due to heroism must, however, be withheld. Every moment that the noble lord's heroic

DENIAL OF THE COMFORTS OF LIFE 643

attitude is maintained there is needless suffering in hut and home, there is continued nakedness for man and woman, there is denial of the comforts of life, there is a continued barring of the door against high official La employment of capable people in their own land. With the Secretary of State on his high horse of absolute satisfaction with things as they are in India, six times as many people as live in the United Kingdom remain doomed to a subjection which is physically and morally destructive. Strange are the destinies of men, marvellous is civilised rule, when one weak hand can thus hold in subjection so many millions of one's fellowsubjects!

If this work should be so far successful as to win attention, and some measure of public opinion in England and in India be aroused by the story which has been told in the preceding pages, then the Remedies which the present writer has carefully considered, will be published.

Till then, such feeling as may be called forth by these studies had better be turned to a thorough realisation of the extent to which the deplorable state of things in India has spread. One thing at a time. The statement of the evil for the moment is enough.

OBITER DICTA FROM THE SPECTATOR,
LONDON

Taxation in India is, no doubt, lighter now than it was under Moghal rule; but we get the money and the Moghals did not, and the system prevents the rise of an agricultural middle class.

There are districts in India where a man with Rs1,000 (£66 13s. 4d.) is a millionaire.

The average European almost denies ordinary mental capacity to every coloured man.

Five people cannot live, and pay a direct tax in money and the interest of old debts at sixteen per cent., upon five acres of overcropped soil, without danger, in bad years, of a catastrophe. That is the position of whole districts in India, and the comparative wealth of other districts is nothing to the purpose.

Let the statesmen say what will meet the economic danger, or face the consequences, which in India will be either recurrent famines or a bewildering, passive, insurrection of men whom the Government cannot blame or shoot down.

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