The founding father of USA, Thomas Jefferson said of British colonialists: “ Great Britain’s governing principles are conquest, colonisation, commerce, monopoly”. In India they went a step further by drenching the country with human gore. A nation so brutally ambitious & nasty claims credit for whatever was achieved by people of a soil over a period of time while acting innocent on the travesties they clamped to maim millions with Bible in hand . Worst they were many within India who earned a living by praising the British and by passing the back on Indians for the misery they were inflicted with. India was the worst victim of British machinations, hate and cowardice.
We now turn to Agriculture in India before and after the arrival of the British. This is another article in this series of “How British screwed India”.
An impossible but brief history on the fascinating Indian agriculture. Agriculture in India began around 10000 BC. It started with Agro pastrolism that merged rearing of cattle with threshing, planting and storing grains from the ravages of rain, heat and cold weather. There are evidences of cotton cultivation in 5th millennium BCE. Rice cultivation appeared around 5000 BCE too. Denis K Murphy says cultivated rice spread from India to the world. Jared Diamond traces wheat as having entered India around 5500 BCE from Western Asia as it originated from Turkey. Mango, Muskmelon, Jute originated from India. Peas, sesame, dates were also grown. Sugarcane came in from South Asia. In vedic texts there are mentions of cultivation of cereals, fruits and vegetables; use of milk and meat. Practice of animal husbandry was in vogue. Cowdung became fertilizer and irrigation was practiced.
Greek traveller Megasthenes wrote thus on Indian Agriculture his book “Indika”:
India has many huge mountains which abound in fruit trees of every kind and many vast plains of great fertility. The greater part of the soil is moreover under irrigation and consequently bears two crops in the course of the year. In addition to cereals there grows throughout India much millet and much pulses of different sorts and rice also and what is called bosporum ( Indian millet). Since there is double rainfall, in the course of each year, the inhabitants of India harvest almost double harvests annually.
The Tamils of Southern India excelled in agricultural practices and irrigation methods too. Tamil classics speak high on them. Rice, sugarcane, millets, black pepper, sandalwood, tamarind, cloves, coconuts, palm, plaintain, cardamom , pulses were cultivated. A system of agriculture that involved ploughing, weeding, maturing, sowing,manuring, existed BCE. It’s well known that Tamils built the Kallanai , the world’s oldest existing water regulation structure during 100 BCE. Mauryans had mastered the art of dam building in 300 BCE, history says.
India's international spice trade gathered speed when Indian shipping started taking shape. Indians traded spices in the Mediterranean, Greece, China, etc. As crystallized sugar was discovered in India and Chinese sent two missions to India for obtaining technology for sugar refining.
Irrigation technology was practiced. Cholas had officers which saw distribution of water by tank and channel networks to dry areas and areas that needed water. So were in areas of later Mughal occupation Water works and facets of water technology during 1200 CE has been mentioned in Arabic and Persian works. Agricultural zones classified areas for raising crops were enforced. Sugar mills began appearing.
During 16th, 17th centuries, with increase in population, agricultural production increased. Along with rice, wheat,maize and barley, cash crops like opium, indigo, tobacco and cotton were extensively grown. The famed agricultural management of Todarmal took shape and was implemented. Irrigation systems increased agricultural production throughout the land. Indian crops became world famous and spread to Africa, Europe and South Asia.
Indian agriculture was far more advanced than Europe,a century before Brits arrived. Seed drill was used in India. The Cambridge Economic History of India claims that an average Indian peasant then was highly skilled in growing a wide variety of food and non food crops while an average peasant across the world was skilled in growing very few crops. Indian farmers were adaptable and were quick to implement new profitable crops. Indians took to mulberry cultivation and sericulture and India became a major silk producing nation of the world.
How did the British screw up this great Agricultural India? The commercial pirates of England, France and Portuguese arrived in India attracted by her wealth and exercised a plunder that ravaged a nation but nastily blamed the misery of Indians to their beliefs and traditions after exercising hate and plunder. They came down on India's heritage to cut off the connect with roots and traditions calling it superstitious as if going to Lourdes and Jerusalem and Anglican Churches were lofty exercises unconnected to beliefs and superstition. British in an exercise of cannibalism set out to destroy Indian agriculture that was the envy of nations for centuries.
Before the arrival of British, the land was private property. Every village and community was self sustaining. The British became sole owner of the soil and began charging a land tax or rental equivalent to one fifth of the produce. Not always. In many cases, the tax amounted to half the produce and in some cases, the entire produce. Not just poverty, farmers became emaciated by this ruthless heartless barbaric exploitation.
Mayo Katherine in Mother India wrote: "In 1915, the statistical dept of Bengal, the most prosperous of Indian provinces calculated the average wage of the able bodied agricultural labourer to be at
$3.60 per month. His Hut was open on the sides and loosely roofed with a straw. The entire house and furnishings of a family of six including all clothing are worth $10." Half his income went as taxes and if he cannot pay his taxes, his holding which has been in his family for centuries were confiscated by Bible reading Christian British Colonialists.
Because of dwindling food production caused by severity of British rule, famines became commonplace in India. Sunderland says that from 1770 to 1900, 25,000,000 Hindus died of starvation. While details of famine that was inflicted on a great agricultural nation were censored as British banned all such reports, details on the Bengal Famine could not escape as it was deep and widespread and thanks to graphic photographs in The Statesman.
Bengal was the most prosperous of Indian states but British turned her upside down. Bengal produced 75% of India’s rice produce. Had three seasonal crops per year. But for a famine that killed millions along with much more livestocks, Britis were supremely feeling guiltless. Here are the charges against the British for the man made famine. #1 By uprooting the ownership of lands for the sake of taxes, Indians were made to slog for paying taxes which was 50% of the produce. #2 Construction of thoughtless railways which split natural irrigation and divided Bengal into poorly drained compartments brought about excessive silting, increased flooding, created stagnant water areas, damaged production and created environment for water borne diseases. #3 During Japanese occupation of neighbouring Myanmar, as food crisis became evident, British continued to export rice. #4 Nearly all of India’s output of cloth, wool, leather, silk were sold to the British government on credit on low fixed prices creating huge losses. #5 Military buildup displaced Bengalis from their homes to the streets. Lakhs of these families became famine victims said the British Govt appointed Famine commission later. #5 The scorched earth policy of Brits to deny food supplies to Japanese invaders led to stocks of paddy being removed or destroyed. #6 Army confiscated 46,000 rural boats severely disrupting movement of food supplies, labour and livelihood of fishermen. #7 British were shipping in August 1943 Australian wheat flour to Ceylon, Middle East and Southern Africa..everywhere in the Indian Ocean, except to India including Bengal. Such sadism! #8 There were many predictions for the Bengal Famine, the Famine commission reported but the Bengal government slept on these predictions. #9 Rice was sold at prices in 1943, eight times higher than in 1942 but Govt slept again and didn’t control prices. #10 The British government never declared Famine officially. I accuse the British elitist government of Winston Churchill of abandoning the poor of India especially Bengal who made British rich while waving a Bible at Indians to follow it.
There was and is a conscious attempt to defend British rule in India as a benevolent dictatorship. Many Lutyens especially those studied abroad are guilty of this. Fact remains that India attracted the British for their wealth and now having plundered and ransacked it, Brit admirers pass on all ills of Colonialists as pre existing Structural vulnerability and to shock events like the world war and cyclones. British colonialists tax system was indeed benign as they did not ask for 100% of all produce, just 50% and sometimes 75%. This tax system helped build not just London but the whole of England but instead of gratitude deep hate and contempt marked British rule.
It's a well known fact that British discouraged food production and instead sought out for cash crops which they can trade and earn profits. This was hailed as commercial revolution in agriculture in text books now and even in recommended reference books for UPSC exams. This how India trains her bureaucrats with fake interpretations of history. Obviously this commercial revolution accrued no commercial benefits to Indians but this facts never matter when an agenda to paint British misrule as a glorious chapter is excercised for obvious reasons. There was not a single year when food supply was sufficient for the people wrote Dutt.
A westerner had a different version but equally gory. The then president of the Union Theological Seminary, Dr Charles Hall said : " The obvious fact stares us in the face that there is at no time , in no year, any shortage of food stuffs in India. The trouble is that the taxes imposed by the British government being 50% of the produce, the Indian starves that India's annual revenue may not be diminished by a dollar. 80% of the whole population has been thrown back on the soil because England's discriminating duties have ruined practically every branch of native manufacture. We send ship loads of grains to India but there is plenty of grain in India. The trouble is that the people have been ground down till they are too poor to buy it. Famine is chronic there now, though the same shipments of food stuffs are made annually to England, the same drainage of millions of dollars goes on every year".
Only commercial crops made it to world market during British rule. Agricultural production became dismal in 1900s. Food grain production became stagnant. Crisis became acute in the capital of Indian agriculture, Bengal where food output declined to an annual rate of 0.7% from 1921 to 1946 when population grew at an annual rate of 1%. In other provinces, they remained stagnant.
Canal networks for irrigation were launched in Punjab, Narmada and Andhra Pradesh mainly for crops for trade overseas. But British efforts were all about commercialising Indian agriculture to satisfy foreign markets. It's pathetic to read many Indians hailing these projects as a great in Indian agriculture ignoring the fact that Indians were starving and the Bengal famine was inflicted on Indians by greedy British and agricultural inflation was reaching alarming levels and states had to ban exports to other states. Some like Amartya Sen, the argumentative Indian has often defended the racist British on Bengal Famine.
In brief, British commercialised Indian agriculture in a manner totally harmful to Indians. The British made fundamental changes to the structure of an occupation that gave livelihood as well as life to the people. A new class of land owners were nurtured who rented out land to farmers. Farmers were forced to be victims of their occupation as they were forced into poverty and debt. The landlords who forced farmers to share major share of their produce turned their profits to the British who transferred them to the land of their birth.
The British crippled Indian agriculture. Crop yields plummeted as there was no strength in their bodies nor inspiration in the minds of farmers. It was a hopeless situation slapped by the British but as usual the white skinned blamed everything on the superstitions. As if going to Lordes or to the Anglican Churches were a lesser superstition than going to a temple.
Food production decreased leading to starvation, poverty and famines. What mattered was commercialisation of agriculture and cash crops became the focus of activity. And India was a source of cheap but quality raw materials for British Industries. On the eve of independence, Indian agriculture was found crippled. This was a contribution of centuries of British misrule. Low productivity, maiming tax laws and primitive technology available with poor farmers were facts.
India’s agricultural fall was not due to over population, superstitions, illiteracy or exhaustion. India’s was a beacon of world’s agricultural production and trade when British arrived. England bled indian agriculture to death with some clever cosmetic efforts to masquerade their criminal intents. It’s time to teach Indian children and the world about the rape of India by the British so History is not repeated.
Some batter a civilisation into submission. Then blame their slaves as masters of their fate. This is the modus operandi of Superior Criminals. And the lesser slaves begin to believe that being a criminal is a way to succeed. Time for India to break this shackle of slavishness and embrace her roots again. Time is now. India’s time is around the corner. I believe so.
(To be continued)
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