PROEM National Incomes-A Comparison. Alleged Lightness of Taxation in India (Sir J. Strachey's English and Indian Taxation Compared. England's Beneficent Work in India: a Notable Instance. Unwillingness in England and in India to discern Ill. A Famine Comparison between the Beginning and End of Some personal considerations, chiefly affecting the Author THERE HERE is no country possessing a civilised administration where taxation is so light' as in India. 'Mr. J. S. Mill declared his belief that the British Government in India was “not only one of the purest in intention, but one of the most beneficent in act, ever known among mankind." 'I do not doubt that this is still truer now.' Thus writes Sir John Strachey, G.C.S.I., who, towards the close of a long official career in India, was Finance Minister. The passages are to be found on page 395 of 'India,' new and revised edition. * Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, and Company, Limited, London, 1894. When one reads Sir John Strachey's book in the light of the facts recorded in these pages, the wonder arises whether anything more misleading than that book has appeared since William Caxton first made movable type by which to record Anglo-Saxon utterances of voice and pen, and printed his first pages at Westminster. Sir John Strachey possesses a very acute intellect; If they were true in form and essence I should have been spared the writing of this book. The Census Commissioner for India, in 1881 (App. p. lxv) before 'India' was written, had put on record an opinion concerning the Panjabis which gave no warrant for Sir John Strachey's remark. 'There can be little doubt,' it was said, 'that the Panjab population is less long-lived than that of England. It would indeed be strange if it were not so. The peasant of our villages leads a life of unceasing labour, even if that labour be not so severe as that of the English workman. He inhabits a mud hovel in the middle of a crowded village surrounded by festering dunghills and stagnant pools, the water of it is harder to believe that he could not see the other side (of the shield which he has adorned so skilfully) than that he deliberately shut his eyes to the widespread poverty and growing destitution of which the drain' from India to England is alike the sign and the cause. There is the dilemma, and there is no way out of that dilemma which can be complimentary to the intelligence of the veteran civilian. Only on the ground of the Divine Right of British Civilisation is praise of the results of the British rule in India possible without the qualifications the present work attempts to supply. In reading such books as that by Sir John Strachey it should never be forgotten that they necessarily partake of the nature of Newman's Apologia pro vita sua. The writers are face to face with the work of their own hands, and, unless they are to write themselves down as having failed in promoting the happiness and ensuring the prosperity of the Indian people, they must either drop the pen or indulge in glowing eulogy. Nevertheless,' he remarks, I cannot say that our Government is loved; it is too good for that.' Lord Lawrence's dictum, in 1867, when he was Viceroy, is quoted : The masses of the people are incontestably more prosperous and—sua si bona nôrint-far more happy in British territory than they are under native rulers.' A few years later, and instructed India, led by British civilians, was crying out against the rack-renting which especially marked that part of Northern India which John Lawrence had settled.' The state of things which, in the Panjab, has led to the necessity for passing the Act to stop land alienation in that Province, is the direct offspring of the Laurentian overassessment of newly-acquired territories. If an absolutely impartial judge, with a full knowledge of all the circumstances in each instance, were to place side by side the wrong and human suffering caused by Timour the Tartar, or Genghis Khan, with the mental, moral, and physical, misery endured in India during the past fifty years, the ill consequences properly debitable against Christian Englishmen, who have a high place in the national Valhalla, would be as great as those for which the ruthless brutes of ancient days have had to answer to history, and maybe to God. Our power of self-deception as to the consequences which follow from British acts is truly marvellous. INDIAN TAXATION-LIGHTEST IN THE WORLD' 5 which latter is not seldom his only drink. His food is poor, and he has to make up by quantity what he lacks in quality. His life is monotonous almost beyond conception. He is born, sickens, and dies, almost like a beast of the field, with only such rude care as his neighbour's ignorance can afford.' 'Almost like a beast of the field.' The reader will judge whether, tested by the results recorded in the present volume, however pure the intention of the rulers may have been and may still be, their rule has not been one of the least beneficent, if not, actually, the least, ever known among mankind. Meanwhile, be it remarked here: Taxation in India, declares Sir John Strachey, is the lightest in the world. By what principle is the lightness or heaviness of taxation to be reckoned? Sir John Strachey does not condescend to particulars. The lightness, or otherwise, of national burdens, is not to be reckoned by the sum total obtained from each person taxed, irrespective of the means or income of such person. Yet, apparently, this is Sir John Strachey's contention. There is the less excuse for the remark seeing that Sir William Hunter, several years before 'India' was published, had put the facts clearly forward in the following passage:: 'It may seem a contradiction in terms to say that the English who pay at the rate of forty shillings per head to the Imperial Exchequer, besides many local burdens, are more lightly taxed than the Indians who pay only at the rate of three shillings and eightpence to the Imperial Exchequer, with scarcely any local burdens. But the sum of forty shillings per head bears a much smaller proportion to the margin between the national earnings and the national requirements for subsistence in England than the sum of three shillings and eightpence bears to that margin in India. In estimating the revenueyielding powers of India, we must get rid of the delusive influence which hundreds of millions of taxpayers exercise upon the imagination. We must think less of the numbers and more of the poverty of the Indian people.' As to the pressure of taxation, Mr. Samuel Smith, M.P., in a speech in the House of Commons in August, 1894, remarked: 'Only one man in seven hundred in India comes within the category of £50 a year. I will make a further statement. The right hon. gentleman is well aware that in this country one penny in the income-tax yields £2,000,000 sterling. In India it yields considerably less than £200,000. India contains 220,000,000 of people under British rule. These people yield on the income-tax less than one-tenth of what 38,000,000 yield in the United Kingdom. The meaning of that is that every million of the people in India yield just one-sixtieth of what a similar number yield in this country. If this is not conclusive of the poverty of the people, nothing will satisfy the most exacting mind. It is indeed difficult to realise the small amount of wealth that there is in India.' Not only is the small sum assessed a matter for indignation, but the Government, the most beneficent in act ever known among mankind,' is responsible for such incidents in the collection of this tax as the following: and sold. Then the 'One Damodar Kohli was informed last year that he would have to pay Rs.28 (37s.) income-tax. He was thunderstruck; the amount was absolutely beyond his means to raise. He informed the authorities accordingly, but the only result of his appeal was that a fine of Rs.7 (9s. 4d.) was imposed on him for delaying to pay the tax. He was unable to pay the impost as well as the penalty, so his dwelling was searched. But nothing worth taking away was found in it. Next his shop was ransacked, and everything found in it attached The sum of about Rs.2 (2s. 8d.) was realised by the sale. "house" of the man was attached and put to auction. It fetched the sum of Rs.65 (£4 6s. Sd.). Out of this the Sirkar's dues-Rs.28 (£1 17s. 4d.) tax and Rs.7 (8s. 8d.) for delay-were realised. The balance is under attachment for the present year's demand! Imagine a man whose stock-in-trade was worth only a couple of rupees, and the hovel in which he lived was sold for not more than Rs.65, required to pay Rs.28, or nearly half the value of his whole worldly possessions, as income-tax! Damodar Kohli is a native of Donlat Nagar in Gujrat Tahsil, Panjab.' 1 The Tribune newspaper, Lahore, July 23, 1901. The Tribune, in a later part of the same article, says : The final income-tax demand in the year before Captain Elliott |