“His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff: you shall seek all day ere you find them and when you have them, they are not worth the search”.
This is perhaps the most apt description of Mrs Satia’s recent book, Time’s Monster. From the view of anyone remotely familiar with Indian history, she may as well be writing an Indian Nationalist’s mouthpiece, as she speaks and claims as gospel every lie and half truth uttered against the British Empire in India.
We will examine some of the most egregious claims mentioned in her book, particularly those related to economic history of India, that anyone riding the Clapham or BEST omni or double decker bus will label as unworthy of publication.
“There was little pretense that the empire was about anything other than the acquisition of wealth, little need for the justificatory narrative of the civilizing mission and plenty of opportunity for reckless fortune hunters like Robert Clive, who joined the East India Company, the monopoly charter company trading in the Indian Ocean region since the seventeenth century and enabled it to secure its first major territorial foothold, in Bengal, with the Battle of Plassey of 1757. Such companies were the primary instruments of Britain’s mercantile engagement with the world. Mercantilist political economic thinking assumed a zero- sum world in which one nation’s gain was the other’s loss.
The idea that wars of conquest supported the British public good was common and the fate of those the British vanquished in the process was not their moral burden to bear. Invoking systemic or “market” failure, the financial elites controlling these joint- stock companies could also defraud the public of millions with impunity so long as they did not harm one another (though Britons understood bankruptcy— individual financial failure— through the lens of moral failure)”. (pg. 37).
This statement rather curiously assigns the label of Mercantilism to the East India Company (hereafter referred to as the EIC) without any attempt at comparative analysis. In the specific case of Bengal, the EIC was much less mercantilist than the native Prince i.e. the Nawab Nazim (who ruled de jure as provincial governors or Subahdars/Nazims of the Emperor but were de facto independent), as can be seen when one contrasts the commodities actually monopolised by the two entities when they were in charge of administration.
The Nawab Nazims in pre-Plassey (i.e. pre 1757) Bengal used to farm numerous commodities. The following is but an incomplete list:
- Rice (price control, regulation during both periods of scarcity and normal seasons, was started by the first Nawab Nazim Murshid Quli Khan under his reign. The nirkh (price rates) in the bazaars had to be confirmed by the official seal of the daroga-i-bazaar [market supervisor])(Datta, 2000, 200).
- Betel leaf, was farmed out to a few select merchants in Bishnupur (Datta, 2000, 201).
- Rice at Nadia, where the peasants had to pay special monetary gifts (salami) to the zamindars for the ‘exclusive right to sell rice at the haat' (Datta, 2000, 201).
- There were also salamis paid for acquiring such rights over ‘retailing salts’ and one such merchant was an Armenian called Khawaja Wajid, who held a monopoly on the sale of salt throughout Bengal both before and after Plassey and paid about £200,000 a year for that right (Datta, 2000, 201; Marshall, 1976, 109).
- Saltpetre in Bihar was another such monopoly and it was held by a certain Mir Afzal, from 1749 to 1755, ‘when it too passed to Khwaja Wajid’(Marshall, 1976, 109).
- Similar such rights were held over gathering shells for making lime (chunam),
- Over the measuring and weighing of commodities being brought for sale at the haats, which was carried out by kayalis,
- Firewood needed for the cremation of the dead (Datta, 2000, 201).
As shown by Datta, the Nawab Nazims of Bengal very implicitly understood the value of mercantile activity and indeed tried to promote it. The result was a proliferation of zamindari chowkis (outposts) where taxes were levied in a most arbitrary manner, and led to ‘continuous conflict between merchants and zamindars and between zamindars and other landed proprietors, over the rate of tolls and over market jurisdictions and the movement of commodities. These conflicts often assumed violent proportions and could even disrupt marketing networks in the short run.'
In fact, even down at the haat level, as per Datta there exist examples of merchants willing to pay a tax or bribe for acquiring monopolies over commodities (Datta, 2000, 202, emphasis ours). This must necessarily be contrasted with the situation under the EIC. Quoting Datta again:
‘The post-1757 era saw the state and markets interacting along significantly restructured lines...After 1757, state intervention assumed the apparently contradictory forms of rigorous control in the marketing of some commodities and a relatively striking non-interference in the movement of others.
The pressures of a world market meant that commodities like textiles and opium (and later indigo) were to be rigorously controlled at all levels including production. After 1772, salt was added to the list of official monopolies, not so much for its overseas value as for its being lucrative in the internal trade of the province’ (Datta, 2000, 202-3, emphasis ours).
It ought to be noted that the monopoly over the textiles by the EIC was very tenuous, as according to data shown in Table 1, private investment formed a greater chunk than EIC investment in the Dacca aurungs in the 1790s. This can also be seen from the phenomenal increase in the number of markets throughout Bengal(Table 2). Thus, in comparison to the Nawab Nazims, the EIC actually liberalised the post Plassey Bengal economy.
After a brief period of disarray, the EIC controlled and consolidated two major monopolies: opium and salt(later indigo). Otherwise trade was made open in Bengal and the number of official monopolies declined as compared to the days of the Nizamat (the rule of the Nawab Nazims).
The supposed “Anarchy” (which has recently been in the news due to the release of a pop history book) mustn’t be exaggerated. This “Anarchy” (Compared to what? Modern India or pre colonial India?) lasted for less than a decade after 1765. Contrast this with the much longer period wherein the EIC took up duties of state properly (by the standards of the 18th century) after 1772. Regrettably Mrs Satia ignores all this and instead tries to sidestep the issue by feigning erudition with the concomitant result being a muddying of the waters. While such a state of affairs isn’t surprising it is still regretted.
“The deadly famine following Clive’s reorganization of Bengal’s government was the result of high taxation and the East India Company’s monopoly of critical commodities like rice coinciding with drought, but Macaulay put it down entirely to nature”. (pg. 76)
This statement flies against sound historical scholarship, (especially of the economic variety) of late 18th century Bengal. It almost maliciously ignores that Europeans were never major players in any shape or form in the rice and paddy trade of Bengal throughout the entirety of British rule and even more so during the 18th century.
PJ Marshall remarks, ‘Trading in grain was very widely diffused indeed, involving thousands of small transactions; so a system of European control comparable to that achieved in the salt trade was quite impracticable. But a fairly high degree of organisation existed for moving grain from surplus areas, such as Rangpur or Dacca, to large centres of population by way of markets, like that at Bakarganj, port for shipping the rice of the south east, or Azimganj in Hugh district, which was able to ‘intercept the carriage of all grain towards Calcutta’.
It was theoretically possible for a European armed with political influence to corner supplies and manipulate prices at such places. That they did so, remains unproven. Such indications of European trading as have been found do not generally seem to have been on a scale to suggest that they were dominating the rice supply’ (Marshall, 1976, 145, emphasis ours).
That is not to say that some Englishmen didn’t profiteer off of the crisis. Hunter mentions that during the 1770 famine, some officials used their gomastahs (native agents) ‘not barely for monopolising grain, but compelling the poor ryots to sell seed requisite for the next harvest’. (Hunter, 1872, 420, emphasis ours). But the amount controlled was miniscule. In fact, for the period 1769-1770, the highest possible quantity of rice and paddy traded on official and private accounts by Europeans in Bengal didn’t exceed 112,479 maunds (Datta, 1994, 96). We also have the specific figures of the quantity brought for trade in certain districts in Bengal in the late 18th century. For Chittagong, the quantity produced was approximately 40,000 tons in 1773 (Datta, 1986, 381). Contrasting the two figures exposes the claim for what it is. A canard.
Brass tacks, the amount hoarded by Europeans was a mere 10% of total production in a single small district in Bengal. Quadruple it and it’s still less than 41% of total production in a single small district in Bengal.
Clearly, any claim of the Company having ‘monopolised’ rice and paddy is a statement (and we’re being charitable) made out of ignorance. This statement alone should discredit the book in its entirety, but let’s continue.
“It is also important to recall that the Bengal famine in 1943, resulting, again, from British grain distribution policies, had decimated that province, killing millions. It dramatically compromised Bengal’s capacity to cope with Partition and all that it entailed”.(pp. 210-211, emphasis ours).
This meaningless assertion alone can take up an entire book to refute comprehensively. We will attempt to summarise it as far as possible. Behind this statement lies the implicit assumption that the Englishmen were, in some manner, still entirely in control of the internal affairs of India and the Provinces, as late as 1943. That is simply not true.
India after 1935 was governed by the Government of India Act( 26 Geo. Ch. 2) and Bengal in 1942-43 was under the Prime Ministership or Fazlul Huq and later Khwaja Nizamuddin (Mansergh, 1971, xxv). Both these Ministries were Native or Indian Ministries elected under the 1935 Act.
Although it is true that the Viceroy and the Governors of the Provinces were certainly British, the extent to which they intervened in the administrative machinery was indeed not very large. This can be observed from this comment, ‘The situation in Darjeeling...Two courses were possible-either to ask the Central Government to over-rule Bihar-a course which would have produced a lengthy controversy on paper…’ (Historical Notes for H.M’.s Reference, n.d., 6, emphasis ours).
This is striking when one considers that, the authority to control supplies was delegated to the Provinces (which in itself was included in the Defence of India Act of 1939).
‘Of the rules made under the Act, Rule 81 for the “general control of industry etc”. provided for (a) regulating production, treatment, keeping, storage, movement, transport, distribution, disposal, acquisition, use, or consumption of articles or things of any description whatsoever; (b) controlling the prices or rates at which articles or things of any description whatsoever may be sold; (c) requiring the keeping of books, records, etc...It was under this very comprehensive rule that most of the regulations were made and the controls were enforced regarding food supplies...The rules were amended from time to time and in particular, by Department of Commerce notification No. 899-SM/41 of November 28, 1941, powers were delegated to provincial governments to make rules' (Knight, n.d., 11, emphasis ours).
This meant that Provincial Governments had the authority to stop exports at any given time and as shown in the Bengal Bihar dispute about rice supplies in 1942, Viceregal interference in such matters was usually not given (Historical Notes for H.M’.s Reference, n.d., 6-7). Numerous such examples exist within the Pinnell Papers itself, including the Correspondence on Wheat.
A statement like this from Mrs Satia, while not being unexpected of her ilk and her (being as they are, not interested in scholarship but politicking) is still jarring if only for the lack of even a veneer of truth.
By also erroneously assigning blame to the British for the sake of politicking, she negates the suffering of the 14,500 people who perished in the Midnapore Cyclone, which was one of the causes of the Aman rice shortage (Woodhead, 1945, 65-7), as well as discounts the effect of the crop rot, which has been researched in depth by scholars (Padmanabhan, 1973, 11-26). This only demonstrates the virulent and dishonest nature of Indian “historians”(especially high caste ones living abroad) who spout off such lies and calumnies to browbeat people into accepting how oppressed they were.
“Indeed, after empire, while the discipline of history was being remade, India fell under the spell of a new, postcolonial notion of time that was insistently forward- looking and called for a rapid shedding of the past, not least because of the traumatic crucible of Partition in which it was forged. If the British looked at the form of independence (dominion status, Commonwealth membership) for a verdict on empire, Indians and Pakistanis felt an urgent need to prove the validity of their assertions that they would be better off without colonial rule. Turn- of- the century intellectuals like Dadabhai Naoroji had challenged the liberal historical narrative with its own methods: using statistics gathered by the British Indian government, they showed that Britain had actually drained wealth from the subcontinent. They argued on intellectual and ethical grounds laid by the British.
And so in 1947, with the shackles off, the burden was to show, swiftly, Indians’ true potential. Five- year plans and big dams were centerpieces of this effort, which entailed a sharp discounting of the long- term effects of imperialism, including deadly episodes of famine and Partition. Britain’s indebtedness to India is roughly $45 trillion, according to recent estimates. And yet, the expectation remains that the historic damage represented by this figure does not have an impact on the region’s post independence potential, that India can simply “move on” and “develop” and “catch up” once and for all” (p. 263).
This paragraph falls prey to the classic fallacy of the concept of drain of wealth, which has recently gained popularity and renewed traction due to languishing academics like Utsa Patnaik floating meaningless figures to stoke nationalist (and implicitly Hindu nationalist) sentiments and maybe to earn some cash. This issue of course, can be very easily handled.
Let us first examine the concept of drain. The concept of “drain” itself is nebulous, its definition has varied from British officials remitting their (allegedly) exorbitant salaries, the subsidised imports of goods to Britain, the cost of pensions paid out to retired British officials, the price of interest on the public debt of India & the cost of maintain a standing army. In fact Moreland mentioned that the salaries of the higher ranks of the Mughal Imperial Service were ‘far more liberal than what now prevails in India’ (Moreland, 1987, 64).
For drain definitions in this vein, the amounts transferred were an “insignificant” percentage of exports in the case of Home Charges (Chaudhuri, 1968, 43). If the extreme definition of “unnecessary home charges” as used by T. Mukherjee is used to define “drain”, the amounts involved were 0.04% to 0.07% of the national income over the whole period 1870-1900. Even if all home charges are included, the amounts involved would stand at a measly 0.5% at the maximum of the national income (Charlesworth, 1982, 53-54). All this assumes that “Drain” occurred.
In fact, doubt has been raised as to whether the very concept of “Drain” has any veracity to it (Roy, 2019, 6-7). Mukherjee goes so far as to say ‘it is difficult to make a convincing case for the theory of exploitation’ (Mukherjee, 1969, 255). Now let’s examine what Patnaik has done.
She has taken the entirety of the export surplus of India as a drain and arbitrarily compounded it at the rate of 5% per annum. It is complete and utter juvenile lunacy, even by the standards we use to judge Indian academe.
CJ Dewey being a better man than us, has rather more diplomatically but no less thoroughly pointed out the same (Dewey, 2019, 4). This compounding is highly bizarre and delusional, to say the least, and almost seems to be trolling those of us who’re aware of Indian history. Furthermore, Mrs Patnaik hasn’t published in a reputable journal since 1983. To take her fantasies seriously is the mark of an unsound mind.
“Secondly, the very act of totting up pros and cons rests on the fallacy of counterfactual history, the idea that, absent the British presence, there would be no railroads or dams or any sort of “progress” in India. This sort of thinking merely reproduces the legitimizing narratives of liberal empire— the idea that India would have no history without the British presence, that it would have stood still in time. We already know that precolonial trends in management of food security and water were better suited to the region. Moreover, the British worked hard from the beginning to stifle indigenous manufacturing. Those still skeptical of the possibility of Indian industrial takeoff might at least be persuaded that there is no evidence that Indians would not have been as good at imitating British industry as the Japanese and Germans proved to be. The British ensured that they did not have an opportunity to do so, for they needed India to supply raw materials”.(pg. 277).
The very fact that Mrs Satia stoops so low and relishes scraping the bottom of the barrel by quoting Mike Davis on famine management is malicious disinformation at best and sheer stupidity at worse.
Of course, Davis’ jaw droppingly terrible book should be a subject of another much more comprehensive article. However a succinct explanation will be given as to show why his entire premise is faulty.
Davis’ meaningless conclusions about frequency of famine in pre-colonial India stems from an over dependence on BM Bhatia’s book on Indian famines, which is not without its issues, as pointed out by Roy:
‘Mixing sources can lead to misleading conclusions about the long history of famines. Historians of Indian famines have often fallen in that trap. For example, one of the best-known works on Indian famines, Famines in India by B. M. Bhatia, estimates that ‘in the earlier times a major famine occurred once every 50 years’, whereas ‘between 1860 and 1908, famine or scarcity prevailed in .. twenty out of the total of forty-nine years’. His source was Alexander Loveday, a Cambridge scholar who wrote an essay on Indian famines in 1914. Loveday did not do any original research but prepared an appendix listing known famines since the beginning of the Common Era.
Whereas the post-1800 famines were recorded by the government statistical system, the pre-1800 data came from hagiographies and travelogues. The frequency with which famines occurred in these earlier times depended on the frequency with which hagiographies were written. If this was once in fifty years, we would conclude that famines happened once in fifty years, as Bhatia did. It makes no sense’ (Roy, 2019, 117, emphasis ours).
A similar issue has been pointed out by Morrison too, wherein he astutely remarked that Davis had shown absence of famines in pre-colonial India by ‘cheerfully taking absence of evidence as evidence of absence’ (Morrison, 2019, 393). Davis and then Satia (amongst unfortunately many others) make the appalling assumption that non existence of evidence regarding pre colonial Indian famines indicates absence of famine. It’s worth quoting Morrison just to highlight Davis’ ignorance:
Ironically enough, the evidence Davis cites in the three-page section of his work devoted to precolonial systems of famine relief in India consists largely of unsupported assertions of the superiority of Mughal systems by conservative East India Company officials such as Sir John Malcolm and Mountstuart Elphinstone, who in the 1820s and 1830s were engaged in a polemical debate with “westernisers” in Calcutta over whether British rule should take on “European” or “Oriental” forms, a debate Davis is clearly completely unaware of. The extent of his ignorance of Indian history can be gauged by his reference to “traditional Indian elites, like the great Bengali zamindars” (287)… noted not for their paternalism, as Davis argues, but for screwing as much revenue as they possibly could out of the land the colonial state had given them…’(Morrison, 2019, 393, f. 6, emphasis ours).
Now regarding the claim that famines supposedly got exacerbated by the British, that is a fairly easy claim to refute. A relatively recent study has shown that the ability of rainfall to cause famines disappeared almost completely after the arrival of railways (Burgess & Donaldson, 2010). According to McAlpin the Deccan was one of the driest agricultural zones of the world, had never been free of acute scarcities for more than 10–15 years at a stretch in the recorded history of famines in India. But famines disappeared here after 1899, McAlpin observed.
How? The British were still the rulers of India in the 40 odd years after the last of the Deccan famines when the mortality decline happened. Did colonial rule help end peactime famines?
Well according to Roy the state slowly gained that capacity, and that famines disappeared because the regime built the means to deal with them. Weather shocks of similar severity repeated after 1900 in at least four years. ‘Yet the potential dangers were largely dealt with’. The instruments were, a railway system that carried food quickly from low-price to high-price areas (as McAlpin noted); a statistical system to track weather and harvest conditions; knowledge of tropical diseases that killed many weakened by starvation; private charities; and a state-run relief system. The government worked to improve its ability to deal with famines.
This strategy paid off (Roy, 2019, 4). By the 1900s, famine was a thing of the past in Western India due to the efforts of the colonial governments, like railways, state relief during times of scarcity, etc (McAlpin, 1983).
There was a population miracle in 1899–1943, which had it roots in research done on some of the common killer diseases that spread quickly during and after famines, malaria, plague, cholera, and enteric diseases. The research concentrated in 1880–1900, the time span between the first and the last of the great Deccan famines. In the same years, the technology of transporting food developed via the railways. It had a profound impact on ending famines (Roy, 2019, 4).
Dharma Kumar pointed out that ‘Colonial governments may well have been negligent in dealing with famines by modern standards, but they were certainly not so in comparison with their predecessors...public and private resources were limited. Sanjay Sharma has pointed out that active intervention by the Mughal state was constrained by transport bottlenecks and the decentralised nature of Indian society’ (Kumar, 1993). This indicates that famine relief, if not better (again we’re being charitable), was certainly no worse compared to pre colonial India.
“Finally, it is not clear the alleged “pros” were in fact “pros”. British built railroads in India, for instance, served British economic and political needs rather than the needs of Indians. The East India Company guaranteed a 4–5 percent profit plus free land and other facilities to British investors in their construction. Indian taxpayers thus massively subsidized these corporate profits. The railroads also drew on British industrialism in a manner that prevented them from stimulating Indian industry. In 1853, Marx believed railroad construction would fuel industrialism in India; he did not realize that most of the capital raised for their construction was spent in Britain, that workers came from Britain and were paid twice the home rate plus passage and other allowances. Rails, locomotives— everything came from abroad, despite the capacity to make locomotives in India. India became more dependent on British industry, settling into the role of raw material supplier for world markets. In the 1870s, it was clear to those who cared to know that the British- made railroads exacerbated rather than alleviated the effects of famine. They served British rather than Indian security, as did irrigation projects.
All alleged “public works'' projects in the subcontinent were designed to enable the imperial bureaucracy to preserve its power as cheaply as possible. In the 1840s and 1850s, they were supported only when they promised to either mitigate revenue loss caused by famine or strengthen the British military position in war. After the rebellion of 1857, they were part of a new assertion of British authority over the land and space of the subcontinent. John Stuart Mill’s official defense of the East India Company in 1858 propagandized such “improvements”. Although it did not save the company from extinction, it set a trend for annual post- mutiny government reports titled “Moral and Material Progress” in India, assembled without consulting Indians. Thus, too, was the colony the initial site of the “territorial framing of an economy,” as Mitchell tells us.
It is important to recognize the political function of such narratives— and the gap between the real and the recorded. These were the claims that figures like Naoroji disputed. And yet they continue to unduly color our own assessments of the purpose and effects of British rule in India”. (pp. 277-8).
The part about railways and famines is total and utter claptrap, as we have shown above. First lies the underlying paradox of the government's supposed maximisation of revenue. If that was indeed the case, why did the government stay perpetually poor? After all, taxes and loans accounted for a measly 3-5% of the national income throughout (Roy, 2019, 101). Contrary to popular nat belief, taxation per head in India was also one of the lowest in the world. It’s worth quoting the late JF Richards here:
‘The Victorian subjects of the British Crown in the Indian subcontinent were among the lowest taxed populations in the world. Davis and Huttenback's calculations show that between 1860-64 and 1910-12, the residents of British India paid on average only £.26 per capita per year in total government revenue consisting of taxes and fees. The residents of the Indian princely states carried a slightly lower burden at an average £.24. By contrast the residents of the United Kingdom, among the highest taxed people in the world, paid £4.76 per capita on average over the same period’ (Richards, 2006, 5).
The claim that all public works weren’t in the interest of the people doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. A much more plausible explanation would be the chronic lack of funds after all necessary expenditure left to the Government to expend on developmental works. This was also exacerbated by the stifling of extensive borrowing in London for more funds by the government due to misinformed nationalist sentiments (Roy, 2019, 104-9). One cannot help but draw parallels between misinformed nationalist sentiments that hurt India in the long run and books of this kind being written by rejected scholars like Mrs Satia.
Regarding the extractive institutions of railways, a new study has addressed it headlong. Its magisterial conclusions are manifold:
- Indian railways offered modest financial results to investors.
- There was no colour bar when the capital was raised.
- It was a low risk low return investment.
- Finally ‘there is no evidence that colonial railway policy led to extraction via investor returns' (Brogart & Chaudhary, 2019, 772).
Mrs Satia also deliberately or erroneously misunderstands the very aim of the reports of the “Moral and Material Progress in India”. A glance at their table of contents will show a very different story than self-aggrandisement by the colonial government. These reports consisted mainly of Administration Reports, Reports on Government Financial Departments and Legislations and reports on other miscellaneous items like Report on the Operations of the Post Office, the Proceedings of the Public Works Department, etc. (Statement exhibiting the Moral and Material Progress and Condition of India, during the year 1860-61, 1862, Contents).
This indicates a sense of benightedness of with the primary source material being authoritatively quoted on the part of the author. One wonders if indeed there was any archival research undertaken.
In conclusion, one can firmly declare that this book is a colossal waste of time, money and space. The author reiterates vacuous clichés, falsehoods, displays a complete lack of familiarity with the current literature and debate about the subjects she makes bold comments about and frequently, makes absurd assertions that are almost criminally easy to disprove. Charitable and naïve idealists we are, we’ll attribute this to carelessness rather than malice.
Apart from these small issues, the book is incredibly banal and monotonous. It is unnecessarily verbose and garrulous. The author seems to be labour under the mistaken impression that circumlocutory and insubstantial paragraphs are an acceptable substitute to genuine scholarship and original analysis. What it lacks in prose, it more than makes up in the lack of veracity in its facts. In a spirit of charity and concern for our fellow man, one can only recommend this book to insomniacs as a last measure.
Table 1: Share of the Company and Private Traders in Production of Cotton Textiles in Dacca, 1790-9 [In Rs. 10 thousand] (Datta, 2000, 304)
Table 2:Number of Market-Places in Selected District (Datta, 2000, 206)
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‘The maund of India may as a genus be divided into four different species:1. That of Bengal, containing 40 seers, and averaging about 80 lbs. avoir.2. That of Central India (Malwa, Ajmeer, &c.) generally equal to 40 lbs. avoir. and containing 20 seers (so that the seer of this large portion of the continent assimilates to that of Bengal.)3. The maund of Guzerat and Bombay, equal to ¼ cwt. or 28 pounds and divided into 40 seers of smaller grade.4. The maund of Southern India, fixed by the Madras government at 25 lbs. avoir.’ (Prinsep, 1834, 77).
Sources:
