The Tragedy of India By Ed Gammons Gopal Singh Santokh Singh Bhagwan Singh To the People of the United States of America: « We know you love fair play. The people of the other continents have looked on America for the past century and a half as the refuge of the oppressed—a haven where the fighter of right against might could claim sanctuary from the wrath of tyrants. We claim that sanctuary today! for we, the sons of oppressed and bleeding Mother India, have fled here from the vengeance of an empire, builded on the corpses of defenseless nations and peoples. Today the United States Government proposes to send us manacled back to India. How joyous our hearts would be, if we were going back to a free and unfettered India. But the India we are being returned to is an op- pressed and desolate one. Famine and plague are killing our people by the millions. Death, raining from British aeroplanes armed with bombs and machine guns, daily decimates those who dare protest against alien rule. OUR DEPORTATION MEANS DEATH AT THE HANDS OF A BRITISH FIRING SQUAD! Will you countenance this outrage? “I ama, friend of every dauntless rebel,’ sung Walt Whitman, your glorious poet. ‘And America has been! Kossuth was welcomed here. The gallant Irish rebels from ’47 and ’67, down to the herovc Eamonn De Valera, have been welcomed to your generous shores. All—all have lived here in peace and security. Read this pamphlet thoroughly! Try to realize the supreme justice of our cause. And then ask yourselves this question: ‘‘TIs it justice to these men to hand them over to the clutches of an alien conqueror who has cruelly misgoverned their country, and is now ready to claim their lives because they have demanded the rights of free men?” BHAGWAN SINGH, D. K. SARKAR, GOPAL SINGH, SANTOKH SINGH, TARAKNATH DAS, S. N. GHOSE. Famine and plague, deportations and firing squads, martial law with its machine gunned aeroplanes, buckshot and soft-nosed bullets—that is India of today! ‘Bengal is a country of inexhaustible riches, capable of making its masters the richest corporation in the world,’”’? That is how Lord Clive, one of the administrators of the famous East India Company, described the great Indian province of the seventeenth century. Why this vast change between the independent India of two centuries ago and the subject India of today? The most malevolent misgovernment of history! India has been robbed morally, financially and physically. Great Britain has violated every right of the Indian people. She has killed any and every Indian industry which competed with her own. She has kept the people of India illiterate so that they might never aspire to be free men. She has fed her enemies’ cannon with Indian armies in the interest of Britain. She has taxed India without real representation. She has shot, deported and imprisoned Indian protestants. She holds India today by the bayonet. These facts are indisputable and most of them are admitted by Englishmen themselves and by all impartial observers. HOW AND WHY INDIA’S INDUSTRIES WERE KILLED “The Coast of Coromandel produces the finest and most beautiful cottons to be found in any part of the world,’’ wrote Marco Polo, famous explorer of the thirteenth century. “The birthplace of cotton manufacture is India, where it probably flourished long before the dawn of authentic history,’’ writes Baine in his History of Cotton Manufacture. “The Indians have in all ages maintained an unapproached and almost incredible perfection in their fab- ries of cotton—some of their muslins might be thought the work of fairies or insects, rather than men,’’ said the same writer. The cotton products of India were to be found every- where. They are found mentioned in the lists of duti- able goods in the Justinian Code of the fourth century. Every part of Asia and Africa bought them down to the eighteenth century. Then the manufacturers of Europe became apprehen- sive, ‘As early as 1678,’’ says Lajpat Rai in his England’s Debt to India, ‘‘a loud outery was raised in England against the admission of Indian fabries, which ‘are ruin- ing our ancient woolen manufacturers’.”’ ‘Indian silks and muslins are becoming the general wear in England,’’ complained a writer in 1696. THE COTTON INDUSTRY OF, SINDIA® WAS KILLED! The importation of Indian dyed goods into Great Britain was absolutely prohibited. An import duty of 10 per cent was imposed on manufactured cotton and 14 per cent on manufactured silk. The merchants of Bengal protested to His Majesty’s Privy Council for Trade. ‘‘ Your petitioners have found of late years that their business is nearly superseded by the introduction of the fabric of Great Britain into Bengal, the importation of which augments every year to the great prejudice of native manufacturers. * * * They feel confident that no disposition exists in England to shut the door against the industry of any part of the in- habitants of this great empire. They pray to be admit- ted to the privilege of British subjects and entreat your lerdships to allow the cotton and silk fabrics of Bengal to be used in Great Britain free of duty or at the same rate which may be charged on British fabrics sold here.’’ This protest was made in 1831. In 1840 a Select Committee of the British House of -Commons examined Indian complaints and found that ‘‘the displacement of Indian manufactures by British is such that India is now dependent upon British manu- facturers for its supply of those articles.’’ This committee published these eloquent figures: _ Cotton Piece Goods Imported into Great Britain from the East Indies. 10 140 es a ee eS 1,266,608 pieces VES B Ls ae cp es MENON: re Dye SP ERE 306,086 pieces British Cotton Manufactures Exported to India. 818,208 yards 183 dacen) 2S es eee 51,777,277 yards Here a very relevant question suggests itself. What became of the scores of millions dependent for a liveli- hood on the cotton industry? According to a witness be- fore this Select Committee, Mr. Andrew Sym, they turned to ‘‘agriculture, chiefly.’’ G. G. de H. Larpent, an Englishman, stated: ‘‘We have destroyed the manu- factures of India,’’ and he quoted Lord William Ben- tinck?s minute of a meeting of the Court of Directors, held on May 30th, 1829: ‘‘The sympathy of the Court is deeply excited by the report of the Board of Trade, ex- hibiting the gloomy picture of the effects of a commercial revolution productive of so much present suffering to numerous classes in India, and hardly to be paralleled in the history of commeree.’’ But the cotton industry, despite this sympathetic ref- erence, was killed! SHIPBUILDING AND MINERALS India was once Mistress of the Seas in Asia. With a seaboard of 4000 miles and splendid harbors, she built and maintained a merchant armada, which carried her commerce to historic Babylon and China as early as 3000 B.C. Ships were built on the banks of almost every navi- gable river of any importance. An English naval author- ity stated in 1911 that Indian built ships lasted fifty years or more and that those built in Europe for Indian trade were seldom capable of making more than six voyages with safety! Lord Wellesley, then Governor General of India, de- clared in 1800: ‘‘From the quantity of tonnage now in Calcutta and the perfection which the art of shipbuilding has already attained, it is certain that this port will al- ways be able to furnish tonnage to whatever amount may be required for the conveyance to London of the trade of the British merchants of Bengal.’’ In April, 1863, it was found ‘‘undesirable, inadvis- able and unpatriotic”? to allow India to build and man her merchant marine, In 1857 India built 84,286 ships, tonnage 1,219,958. In 1912 the entire merchant fleet of India consisted of 130 ships, tonnage 10,400. Another Indian industry stabbed to death! We all read in our youth of the fabulous wealth of the Hast Indies in the days of the early explorers and how they set forth to reach this treasure house of the world’s wealth. Yes, India was a land of mystery and wealth then— till the arrival of the East India Company. Then both characteristics disappeared. The famous English trad- ers were made ‘‘the richest corporation in the world,’’ as Lord Clive had anticipated. The East India Company paid 171 per cent per annum on its capital and its stock was so much in demand that.a one hundred pound share sold for five hundred pounds. How the East India Com- pany and its corrupt officials acquired the wealth of India is best described by Lord Clive himself: ‘‘TI shall only say that such a scene of anarchy, confusion, bribery, corruption and extortion was never seen or heard of in any country but Bengal; nor such and so many fortunes acquired in so unjust and rapacious a manner.’’ Every inhabitant of India, even the cheapest day laborer, had a hoard of diamonds and precious stones. The disappearance of this great wealth is described by Brooks Adams in ‘‘The Law of Civilization and De- cay’’: ‘These hoards, the savings of millions of human beings for centuries, the English seized and took to Lon- don, as the Romans had taken the spoils of Greece and Pontus to Italy.’’ ° This enormous wealth was, to a large extent, the capi- tal which insured the success of the British Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century. And in a short while England was able to undersell Hindu labor in Cal- cutta! The minerals of India could not very well be seized and transported to London. They are, however, with the ex- ception of the coal, largely.in the hands of British capi- tal. Copper is largely distributed all over India. Yet, strange to say, $10,000,000 worth of that metal is an- nually imported ! Iron ore is largely distributed all over India. The smelters of Indian olden times turned out the finest steel in the world. As early as 1500 B. C. India was noted for its iron and steel products. Indian steel was highly prized for its fine temper and found a ready sale in the markets of Persia and England. ‘No local industry has suffered more from importa- tion than that of iron smelting,’’ writes J. S. Cotton, author of the ‘‘Oxford Survey of British Empire.”’ The Allahabad Leader gives an eloquent explanation. “The exploitation of Indian mineral resources is pro- gressing quickly, but it has to be remembered that nearly all the metal ores are exported for manufacture and that they are imported back into the country in the form of wrought metallic ware for which we have to pay more than twenty times what we get from the export of the ores. In a recent year India exported $5,000,000 worth of raw minerals, excluding coal, salt, petroleum and salt- petre and imported $88,000,000 worth of metals and metal manufactures. ”’ India with large coal deposits imports cdal, with large copper deposits imports copper, with huge stores of iron ore and but a few smelters! AGRICULTURE HANDICAPPED! RESULT---FAMINE! England having destroyed the industries of India and driven her scores of millions of workers back to an arid soil, should, according to every sense of fair play, see that an industry, on which millions of her subjects were de- pendent for an existence, was fostered and improved. The reverse is the fact! Without irrigation agriculture in India is hopeless. Irrigation is culpably neglected by the government. With burdensome taxation it means debt and famine. The government imposes such a huge land tax that the Indians do not get enough to exist upon, There is no surplus left from their crops to tide them over a famine year, and the result is that India is periodically strewn with millions of her dead. Writing of the expenditures in the District of Bankura on railroads and canals, R. C. Dutt, English writer on Indian problems, states: ‘‘The discussion about the com- — parative merits of canals and railroads was carried on - and as might have been expected, preference was given to railroads which facilitated British trade with India and not canals which would have benefited Indian agricul- ture. Two hundred and twenty-five million pounds were spent in railroads, which resulted not in a profit but ina loss of forty million pounds to the Indian taxpayer up to 1900. And so little were the interests of Indian agricul- ture appreciated that only twenty-five million pounds were spent on irrigation up to 1900.” Fhe District of Bankura is chronically ravaged by famine, the population dependent on agriculture is in- creasing and the crop area is decreasing. But irrigation is neglected and preference is given to ‘“‘railroads which facilitate British trade!”’ The government is ever promising that irrigation will be improved, but that this promise is like all promises of the past is evidenced by the figures of the Indian Budget for 1919-20, published last April. The British Army and railroads (‘‘to facilitate British trade’’) consume 75.38 per cent of the estimated revenue; 24.62 per cent is left {o improve education, irrigation, agriculture, industries and the sciences! The land tax of India is the direct source of the appall- ing poverty and consequent famine. It constitutes about 36 per cent of the gross taxation of India. In 1858 on the transference of the administration of India from the East India Company to the Crown the land tax was fixed at half the crop value. In 1909 the government admitted that it had increased 60 per cent in fifty years. The value of the rupee had decreased one-third. The actual increase is therefore 40 per cent. In some dis- tricts the tax has amounted to virtual confiscation of the entire crop. THIRTY-TWO MILLION INDIANS HAVE RE- CENTLY DIED FROM FAMINE AND PLAGUE! These deaths are directly attributable to the culpable neglect of irrigation by the British Government and the confiseatory land taxation levied upon the hundreds of millions of starving Indians. “THE BURNING GHATS AND BURIAL GROUNDS OF INDIA ARE LITERALLY SWAMPED WITH CORPSES,”’’ said a recent official report. There is one health officer to every 170,000 people. There is one hospital to every 70,000 people. There is one physician to every 3,000 people. What a terrible indictment of India’s alien govern- ment! THE SWADESHI MOVEMENT At the end of the century 1800-1900 William Digby, British statistician, estimates the adverse balance of trade against India at $25,000,000,000 ! About 1905 the Swadeshi movement appeared. Its oath ran: ‘‘With God as my witness I solemnly declare that from today I shall confine myself, for my personal requirements, to the use of cloth manufactured in India from Indian cotton, silk or wool, that I shall altogether abstain from using foreign cloth and that I shall destroy all foreign cloth in my possession.’’ The British Government—‘‘the Government of India’’ —get out to crush the movement at its very inception. The Bengalee of June 27th, 1905, states: ‘‘Mr. Lyal, the District Magistrate of Bhagalpur, sent for Sir Mohan Thakur and severely took him to task for accepting the chairmanship of a swadeshi meeting. Babu Surja Prasad, who had accepted the honorary secretaryship, was sub- poenaed and warned not to join the movement under any circumstances. Babu Giridhari Sahai, a magistrate and merchant, was not only rebuked and warned against the consequences, but the despotic magistrate would not let him off until he had extracted from Babu Giridhari a sort of pledge not to allow his son Basant Lal to have anything to do with the swadeshi. Mr. Lyal, not content with this intimidation, preached officially against the swadeshi,’’ ‘The Government of India’’ has not confined 1tsaH- timidation to magisterial third-degreeing. The police system (the most corrupt in the world, as will be geen later) has terrorized merchants who sought to rehabili- tate Indian industries. They have made false charges against merchants refusing to handle British goods and every prominent advocate within the swadeshi move- ment has felt the heavy hand of the magistrate and the police agent. Printers, students, merchants, lecturers and editors were terrorized and imprisoned for this new crime of advocating the use of Indian manufactured goods. Reading down the list of punishments imposed for ad- vocating the swadeshi movement during 1906, we run across these items: April 26—Mohormulla of Rajbarighat fined 50 rupees by Subdivisional Magistrate Holmwood for not selling Liverpool salt. May 2—Madras, 20 students expelled from university for joining a swadeshi meeting. J, Ram Chandra and Hari Sarustham Ram discharged from the educational service for their sympathy with the cause. = April 25—Madras, Harisarothan Rio and 200 students dismissed from Art College for joining a swadeshi meet- ing, October 8—Noakhali, a boy of 14, was flogged (20 stripes) by Magistrate Dunlop for shouting Bande- Mataram (Hail, Motherland), the swadeshi rallying ery. In the face of this official terrorism the renascence of Indian industry has been very slow. The increase of pro- duction in the cotton industry is illustrated by the fol- lowing figures relative to the number of cotton mills and machinery : Year Mills Spindles Looms 1904