What Imperialism has Done for India.
(From the Letter of a Native Hindu.) “God help the people of India!” said Donald Smeaton, a member of Lord Curzon’s council, to Reuter’s agent at Bombay the other day; “Great Britain and Ireland owe a debt to the Indian peasant, a debt of millions upon millions.” We know that India annually remits to England a sum estimated between £20,000 and £30,000 for home charges, pensions, interest and the like. We know that the people of India are virtually debarred from the highest posts in India, except a very small percentage, and that £15,000,000 are annually paid to European officials employed in India and sending all their savings to Europe. We know that our ancient industries, like weaving and spinning and dyeing, have been killed by European competition, and that the land is so heavily taxed in many provinces that the peasant cannot save in good years for years of bad harvest. We know that an army is kept in India, and paid for by India sufficient for England’s imperial requirements over the best part of Asia and Africa. We know that our finances are adjusted by executive councils in India and in England, in which the people of India have no seat, and that in the taxation of India we have no voice. These are some of the burdens we bear in India, and these are some of the causes of the famines from which we periodically suffer. Will Englishmen add to them the burden of paying for British forts and armies, British establishments, and wars in various parts of Africa and Asia—from the Suez Canal to Mozambique, from the Tigris to the Malay peninsula? Will the English conscience reconcile itself to thus proceeding in a year when 90,000,000 of people are affected by the worst famine that India has ever known, and 5,000,000 are actually attending relief centers? After the famine of 1770 and the desolating wars of Warren Hastings, the great Minister Pitt brought in his Indian bill in 1784 to give us a better government. Is there no statesman in England at the present day who will give us a new India bill, moderating land tax, reducing expenditure, opening up the higher services to the people of India, and giving them some control over their finances? Is there no Englishman of this generation who will stand up for justice to India?