Peace, Poverty and Betrayal

Title: Peace, Poverty and Betrayal – A New History of British India

Author: Roderick Matthews
Publisher: HarperCollins, 2021 (First)
ISBN: 9789354227325
Pages: 433
 
Thomas Babington Macaulay, a British politician tasked to formulate an education policy for India in the 1830s, once disdainfully remarked that ‘the entire native literature of India is so meager as to occupy just one bookshelf in a contemporary European library’. Macaulay’s gaff suited the tastes of a conquering society who had just earned the ‘jewel in the empire’s crown’. After a century, the British left India and handed power back to Indians. India’s colonization and her struggle had been the subject of numerous books that they would now need not just a shelf, but an entire library – such was the prodigious output of creative energy! This book claims to be a new history of British India. It indeed is, in one aspect. Earlier, popular British authors simply imitated the official Indian perspective and criticized the colonial masters whenever they had a chance. This book is different in the sense that it does not uphold all Indian claims of victimhood and calls the Congress bluff that it represented the entire Indian society in the struggle for freedom. Roderick Matthews is a freelance writer specializing in Indian history and politics. He claims connection to India in that his great-grandfather tutored the young Nehru and one of his great-grandmothers cared for Gandhi when he fell ill in London in 1914.
 
Even though Britain is hailed as the mother of democracy, the reign of the East India Company and the rule of the Crown failed to develop any democratic institutions worth its name. The rulers kept the concept of electoral representation at arm’s length. This book makes a post-factual estimate of what had actually happened. British administrators used liberal principles to govern India without accepting liberal consultative mechanisms and deemed it good as long as the intentions of the government were good. The justification for delaying popular sovereign government was that good men were trying to do good things. Matthews accepts this paternalistic claim as an honest assessment of the situation.
 
The author argues that the real losing side in the 1857 Rebellion was the Indian reformers who had found some traditional Indian customs galling in the face of the little modernity ushered in as a result of interactions with British mores. Rammohan Roy’s reforms were revolutionary which did not suit the conservative palate. But still Roy found acceptance, even if grudgingly, from the traditionalists. Reformers thought that the English language, English social norms and even Christianity were the best ways forward for India. The reformers threw aside the caution of the respecters of Indian tradition. The English company came under increased pressure from the evangelical lobby after 1834 but it resisted adopting conversion as a policy. We read about many administrators who found the missionaries’ work a hindrance in the company’s path, especially the estrangement it produced among soldiers in its payroll.
 
1857 is the year which marks a distinct milestone of colonial rule in India. The rebellion against the British was eventually crushed at great cost, but it shook the empire to its core. Company rule was disbanded and the Crown took direct responsibility of India. Along with this, the priorities changed. Matthews finds that the lasting tragedy of 1857 was that Indians collectively lost the chance to make a modern India of their own design. With the Crown’s resolve not to intervene in religious matters of the native subjects, the reformers lost patronage which was never restored. What was then seen in its wake are revivalist movements or campaigns to go back to the roots. Here, the author fails to notice the advocated element of social change in these movements. What they strived for was not a blind imitation of the customs practiced a great many centuries ago. The British then halted modernization in the post-rebellion years. They had drafted the Widow Remarriage Act of 1856 which needed only a few formalities to have effective penal force in the country. And then the rebellion broke out and the bill was kept in abeyance till the British left India for good. The bill for restriction of polygamy remained suspended until 1955. The government backed the landlords and tenants but not to the disadvantage of the other. Traditional social arrangements remained in place, but investments in public works increased.
 
This book contends that the colonial masters were always aware of the tenuousness of the rationale for ruling an alien land and its people. It sought legitimacy for the reign in the benevolent work they were performing on behalf of Indian people. Establishment of internal peace was one such point as the British had secured paramountcy over the native states and effectively disarmed local militias. However, they betrayed the newly educated, aspiring middle classes who could not find adequate reward for their skills or sufficient inclusion in the political life of the emerging India. It is hence not a coincidence that the freedom movement found its largest constituency in this group. The author also notes that before the electoral reforms in 1867 and 1884 in England that expanded voting rights to nearly half the adult male population, the two countries were run on a roughly similar pattern that in spite of no universal voting rights, the system accommodated diverse political interests indirectly.
 
Matthews lists out the events that led to the rise of a militant communal feeling that ended in the country’s partition into two states. Lord Ripon, then viceroy, introduced a package of reforming measures in local governments, which was designed to educate Indians in Western-style self-government. Municipal bodies had been appearing in Indian towns since the 1850s, but a system of elections was now introduced for membership which included separate electorates based on religious identity to ensure diversity of participation. This was then extended to rural boards outside the towns. Numbers now began to matter, especially for any self-identifying minority that perceived its own weakness (p.269-70). Gandhi exacerbated the issue with mass participation in protest movements. Until that time, political activity was limited to the elite or educated middle class, most of them lawyers. However, the book refrains from criticizing the Mahatma on this count. On other issues too, it even accepts his obviously make-believe excuses such as the one calling off non-cooperation upon the occurrence of the Chauri Chaura incident. The author meekly observes that ‘the Mahatma was distraught over the loss of life, and a combination of guilt and political instinct led him to call off the campaign’ (p.318).
 
The author produces a balance sheet of assets and liabilities of India on account of imperial rule that lasted nearly two centuries. Dadabhai Naoroji was the first to claim that Britain was robbing Indian financial wealth. This book refutes such claims with the argument that Indian anger against British loot of the nation is misdirected and inflated, being focused on trivialities like the Kohinoor. India’s wealth was primarily agricultural and it remained here for domestic consumption. There are speculative statistics with tall claims that India had 23 per cent of the world’s GDP in 1700, but this only proves that India was big. The country received internal disarmament and civil peace in return. The modern Indian state’s ideal of rule of law, religious liberty, legal equality, freedom of expression and protection of minorities were inherited from the British. Mass democracy was another legacy from the colonial stables, but ironically, it brought about partition. Matthews rebuts the claim that India funded the Industrial Revolution, which he remarks as a pleasing fantasy. Wealth transferred to Britain in the three decades after 1757 was spent on county houses and playing politics, rather than for funding power looms. After 1800, the profits in trade with India carried out by the East India Company were modest and the surplus came from its dealings with China. Positive balances in trade only grew substantially in the 1830s. Here the author forgets to mention that the largest export commodity to China was opium, which was produced in India. Direct drain of wealth from India was the Home charges, which are estimated at around 0.5 per cent of the GDP. Anyhow, India’s wealth was used in the imperial system for purposes that did not benefit India, such as military expenditure, preferential tariffs and the manipulation of foreign trade balances. He concludes that Naoroji was right about the concept, but wrong in estimating the numbers.
 
The book outlines the transition of the colonial government that was stern, kind and just in the initial stages to one that availed the first opportunity after the Second World War to cut losses and go back home.  It catalogues the British viewpoint of the Indian colonial venture. The narrative is not very focused, but examines the career of high British Indian officials threadbare who ruled before the advent of Gandhi. After that, it goes in fast forward mode with only a superficial analysis of the flow of events.
 
The book is highly recommended.
 
Rating: 4 Star