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Is British Rule
in India Efficient
?
The British are accustomed to bestow high praise upon their
Government in India and to urge its continuance on the ground of its great
efficiency.
The Indian people, contend that it is efficient only in
serving British interests, only in carrying on the affairs of India for
Britain’s benefit, and that it is not efficient, but woefully inefficient, in
promoting the interests of India.
Said the Hon. G. K. Gokhale,
“One result is that the true well-being of the people is systematically
subordinated to militarism, and to the service and the interests of the English
mercantile classes.”
 In his recent book, “Modern
India: Its Problems and their Solution” (p. 161 and 77), Dr.
V. H. Rutherford, M. P. examines the character and results of British
efficiency, and pronounces it “one of the chief causes of India’s
poverty.” He declares that the British Government in India is efficient only
on behalf of British interests, only in carrying on the government and managing
the affairs of the country for the benefit of Great Britain. He cites the
Government’s neglect of education of masses; neglect of sanitation and medical
services in the villages; neglect to keep order; neglect of housing of the poor;
neglect to provide agricultural banks; comparative neglect to improve and
develop agriculture; neglect to foster Indian industries; neglect to protect
British profiteers from capturing the tramways, electric lighting and other
public services; and neglect to prevent the manipulation of Indian currency in
the interests of London.” “British rule as it is carried on in India is the
lowest and most immoral system of government in the world – the exploitation
of one nation by another.”
Some years ago, at the time of the Congo atrocities, an Irish
author wrote: “The English people love liberty – for themselves. They hate
all acts of injustices, except those which they themselves commit. They are such
liberty-loving people, that they interfere in the Congo and cry, ‘Shame! To
the Belgians. But they forget that their heels are on the neck of India.”
In his book, “Secret
History of the English Occupation of Egypt” (p. 47), Wilfrid
Scawen Blunt gives some strong and important testimony regarding
British rule in India as seen close at hand and under the most favorable light.
He was an intimate personal friend of Lord Lytton, who at that time was the
Viceroy of India. Mr. Blunt went there to make a study of the condition of
things there. He found that British rule in India, instead of being a blessing,
was working India’s ruin. Of the
British Imperial system in general he writes:
“It is one of the evils of the English Imperial system that
it cannot meddle anywhere among free people, even with quite innocent
intentions, without in the end doing evil. Of India he writes: “I am
disappointed with India, which seems just as ill governed as the rest of Asia,
only with good intentions instead of bad ones or none at all. There is just the
same heavy taxation, government by foreign officials, and waste of money, that
one sees in Turkey. The result is the same, and I
don’t see much difference between making the starving Hindoo pay for a
cathedral at Calcutta and taxing Bulgarians for a palace on the
Bosphorus….In India the ‘natives’ as they call them, are a race of slaves,
frightened, unhappy, terribly thin. Though myself a good Conservative and member
of the London Carlton Club, I own to being shocked at the bondage in which they
are held, and my faith in British institutions and blessings of English rule has
received a severe blow……if we go on developing the
country at the present rate, the inhabitants will have, sooner or later, to
resort to cannibalism, for there will be nothing but each other left to eat.”
Rev. C. F. Andrews in his
recent book, “India’s Claim for Independence,”
says: “The British Empire today, with its Indian appendage – with India held
in subjection by force – is also a monstrosity. It can produce only
bitterness, ever-increasing bitterness, and estrangement, between India and
England, tow people that ought to be friends.”
To conclude: There is not a myth on
the earth more baseless or more cruel than the claim put forth to the world that
England is ruling great distant India well, or that she can by any
possibility rule it well, or without constant blunders and injustices of the
most serious and tragic nature.
(source:
India
in Bondage: Her Right to Freedom - By Rev. Jabez T. Sunderland p. 313-318).
“English
rule,” wrote Sri Aurobindo, “. . .
undermined and deprived of living strength all the pre-existing centres and
instruments of Indian social life and by a sort of unperceived rodent process
left it only a rotting shell without expansive power or any better defensive
force than the force of inertia."
(source: The
Foundations of Indian Culture - By
Sri Aurobindo, 1972, vol. 14, p. 4).
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