T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan : Beyond the call of taste and duty

LINE & LENGTH

It is hard to comprehend how a system of governance designed to plunder could be called good

There are several ways of assessing people. But the most enduring ones are good taste, good intentions and good judgment.

The best people, like Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, usually exhibit all the three. But in Oxford, on July 8, while accepting the honorary degree, he slipped a bit.

Good taste required him to praise the Brits, which he did in generous measure. Good intentions required him to give a boost to Indo-British relations, which too he did quoting from Gandhiji about the distinction between the Empire and the British people.

Quoting Gandhiji he said, "From the Empire, (we will cut off) entirely; from the British nation not at all if I want India to gain and not to grieve."

But when it came to good judgment, he faltered. This is what he said about the British legacy.

"Our notions of the rule of law, of a Constitutional government, of a free press, of a professional civil service, of modern universities and research laboratories ... are all elements which we still value and cherish. Our judiciary, our legal system, our bureaucracy and our police are all great institutions, derived from British-Indian administration and they have served the country well."

It is not just that there was no need to say this; it is also that the statement is wrong on every count except the research laboratories and a free press (which, by the way, under the British was not all that free).

There is no space here to go into the specifics but the fact is that India had good systems of justice, education, administration and policing.

True, we did not have a written constitution, but nor do the British even now. But the notions that underlie a written constitution, namely, the nature of the relationship between the rulers and the ruled, rights and duties, responsibilities and obligations, etc. were clear as crystal.

A huge amount of research has been done on the subject of pre-colonial modes of governance. All of it shows that the British conquest disrupted things very badly. Indeed, they did so in a manner that showed a remarkable lack of good sense. What they put in place was rarely, if ever, an unequivocal improvement.

But it is testimony to the British conquest of Indian minds, a theme explored marvellously well by Ashis Nandy, that they have left us thinking that they did us a favour. As con tricks go, this one is impossible to beat.

In any case, it is hard to comprehend how a system of governance designed to plunder and pillage could be called good in any normal sense.

Why, as the Prime Minister himself pointed out, "India's share of world income collapsed from 22.6 per cent in 1700, almost equal to Europe's share of 23.3 per cent at that time, to as low as 3.8 per cent in 1952. Indeed, at the beginning of the 20th century, the brightest jewel in the British Crown was the poorest country in the world in terms of per capita income."

Nor was the plundering for just a short while, as is usually the case when one country rules another. It lasted, if you must have end-points, from the Battle of Plassey in 1757 to Independence in 1947. That is 190 years.

From the Roman Empire down, no other empire, except perhaps the Spanish one in South America, visited as much misery and brought such ruin to its subjects. Indeed, the story is hidden right there in the statistic Dr Singh quoted""and it is impossible that he is not aware of it.

Of these 190 years, only a very short period, from about 1880 to 1918, was inspired by good faith""and that too not wholly. For example, it is evident from the way the British induced the Muslims to redirect their sense of grievance against them to the Congress, by painting it as a Hindu party. Good governance was thus always subject to unalterable Imperial objectives.

It is also one of the myths created by the British, and sustained by the so-called nationalist historians, that all Princely states were badly governed. A commonly cited measure of this is the different levels of development in British and Princely India in 1947.

But one important fact is rarely, if ever, cited. This is that the British actively discouraged investment in Princely India. (A little-known fact is that even now the areas under the erstwhile princely states lag behind.)

And in terms of rack-renting, there was no difference at all. If the princes lived off their subjects, so did the British. How many Indians know, for instance, that 48 per cent of the annual Budget went for maintaining the army and 14 per cent towards the civilian government? It was the latter that led Gandhiji to protest to the Viceroy.

Let us conclude with another detail on which the Prime Minister was wrong: Lord Curzon. This is what he said about Curzon:

"Jawaharlal Nehru said, 'After every other Viceroy has been forgotten, Curzon will be remembered because he restored all that was beautiful in India.'"

Bengal, you mean, Sir?