The Round Table Conference
The Economic Myth : Fact and Fancy
BY EDWARD THOMPSON
[Following this general survey, Dr. Thompson will discuss the proceedings of the Round Table Conference on this page each aveck.—ED. Spectator.]
Is there another controversy so far out of touch with reality as the Indian one ? In the New York Herald Tribune (" Books," October 10th) Professor Norman Brown, of Pennsylvania University, remarks that trade is one reason why "Britain will not willingly loose her grasp" on India. This, and the importance of holding India to guarantee communica- tions with the Federated Malay States, Australia and New Zealand, and to protect commerce with China . . . are elementary facts, and no appreciation of British action is at all possible without understanding that these considera- tions are in the forefront for determining policy." These arguments, as I can testify, hold the platform outside our own country ; . it is asserted that British " navalism " and economic interests make it certain that the Round Table Conference will prove mere eyewash. There is no need to waste time on the former argument, in reasoning with our own people. They know that their communications with the Far East, long before they reach India, pass through a land-locked sea in which the powerful fleets of France and Italy operate. No one suggests that we ought to occupy Europe (and India is the size of Europe, less Russia) to safe- guard them. The one good harbour in Indian waters is Trincomalee, in Ceylon ; India's own coastline goes "cranking" in, in two huge concaves, far off our direct route.
But Professor Brown's other argument has got to be faced sooner or later. One thing making against a settlement is this : outside England no considerable body of opinion accepts our good faith. Especially is it held that our material stake in India will make us fight to the last ditch against a genuine handing over of power. Many in our own midst, who are anxious to see the whole shabby quarrel closed, hesitate from the knowledge of our own economic enbarrassments and the dread of precipitating a large part of our prosperity into chaos. I believe that the Indians now in London have success in their hands, if they can help us here. Their first speakers spoke out like statesmen when they assured this country that they dissociated themselves from the debts repudiation talk and intended to be fair to British business. The Princes'. adherence to the federation proposal, in this as in other matters, has brought a sense of security. I do not exaggerate the Princes' wealth. But, taken together, they have large interests in enterprise that carries British names ; and they hold a good deal of Government of India Stock, and have of recent years taken up the railway loans.
Can we not drag the whole Indian controversy on to the plane of open examination? This is what the outside world, Indians, and some of our people believe : India is a country of vast resources, from which we draw big revenues ; she provides employment for many British officials and a tre- mendous market for our trade. Nothing in the whole discus- sion so amazes me, secondhand as I know all Indian discussion to be, as the way we have let this economic question go unexamined, decade after decade. In the long shiftless story nothing more vividly shows up the casual and desultory nature of our interest in India. As for the alleged natural wealth of India, I own myself a complete sceptic. It is assumed, so far as I can discover, mainly from a few ecstatic ejaculations of early travellers. These ejaculations can be matched (but rarely are) by the appalled and pitying surprise of others. And no one seems to have seen that these early travellers came, not from the • brick-built solid Europe of to-day, but from a civilization of huts is well as mansions, detail by detail as squalid as ever India has been. Where display and wealth were coneerned, they had a low standard ; astonishment had a low ignition-point. To-day, it is the East that is surprised. When Vivekananda carried the Aryan-wisdom to America, he was at first oppressed by what seemed a magnificence beyond anything he had imagined. As for Indic, if Burma is taken away, it is hard to see that
her mineral resources are out of the ordinary. She has grand forests ; and large denuded tracts also. Iler fisheries
'cannot be adequately exploited, for raglans reasons. The same is true of agriculture ; she can have no adequate fanning while the cow is worshipped. All this is her own business ; and she is just as entitled to keep her reverence for the cow as we are to keep our hedges, if she cares (as we do) to pay the economic price. I should like to see an im- partial Commission, preferably American. go into this whole question of India's resources. No people understand the work of scientific exploration of economic facts better than the Americans. An essential part of the reconstruction of India is the raising of the wretched standard of life ! Will the Round Table Conference face the economic position ? Mr. Gandhi is consistent when he assails the Land Tax, th? Salt Tax, Excise, which together bring in not far short of half of the grotesquely tiny total revenue of all India, Centre and Provinces combined, £160,000,000 ; for lie is prepared
to see India lapse to a pr' live social basis. But th? Nationalists who claim that India is "entitled" to as good a system of education as England or America, and yet have shaken the flimsy revenue structure to its bottom, are not consistent. Worse trouble than even the present is ahead of us if the Conference, after passing resolutions for universal education, better roads and social services, disperses without the least notion of where the money is to be found.
A noble lord distinguished in the newspaper world is being quoted as having said that of every five shillings of the British income one shilling comes from India. "Think, Abili ! (dost thou think ?)." On January 1st, 1029, India gave direct enmloyment to 8,000 British : 3,529 in all the superior services (I.C.S. 894), 3,500 Indian Army officers, 800 ex-soldiers acting as instructors in the police. Seven thousand four hundred and ninety-nine British were drawing pensions, a number abnormally swollen by premature retirement, and in any case bound to shrink very greatly and increasingly. Our trade has fallen steadily through ninny years ; this year it will hardly be 5 per cent, of our world trade. But there is British capital invested in India. Well, how It ? Financiers throw millions of pounds about, as astronomers throw millions of miles. A few years ago it used to be estimated at four hundred million pounds. It suddenly jumped to eight hundred ; now it is being called a thousand million pounds. What is it really ? How much is merely on paper ? How much, though nominally British, is Indian ? We know that the greater part of the money in jute, for example, is Indian. And what will British capital be worth after another six years like the past half-dozen ? Is anyone in these islands foolish enough to think we can force our trade on a hostile market, and must " hold " India for com- mercial reasons ?
No greater service to both countries and to peace could be done than by an authoritative analysis, in as public a place as we can find, of the Indian debt, of our trade, of our capital in India. Find out why Indians are so sore about the coastal trade. And are we so sure that India has not a case for reconsideration of her debt ? Anyway, get rid of this long- continuing sullenness against a Britain believed to use her power ruthlessly to pillage a wealthy but helpless India. Can we not, both British and Indians, settle down to the rebuilding of Indian happiness--on the basis of facts? And also, remove this belief -rampant outside Britain, lingering among ourselves—that to " hold " India is essential to our material prosperity. Is there any reason why Indians should wish to stay in the Empire, except for solid, practical gain in a score of ways ? Or why Britain should not "walk out of India "—except self-respect and the feeling that India is entitled to a better deal than abandonment to disaster ? Unless the present hatred can be allayed, both our capital and our enterprise are immobilized. And we continue to stand before the world in a false position— to gain what? Is not the nation entitled to be told ?
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