He states the debt of India to be "enormous," amounting to 220,000,000l. sterling, principally accumulated in the last few years. The railways have been constructed at ruinous cost, for which the "unfortunate ryot has had to borrow an additional five or ten or twenty rupees of the native money-lender at 24, 40, 60 per cent., in order to pay extra taxation." Irrigation works "tell nearly the same sad tale. Here again millions have been squandered—squandered needlessly." Moreover, the land is fast becoming deteriorated or is being worse cultivated. In short, through a long indictment of twenty-three pages, of which I omit many counts, he cannot find a single act of British administration that meets his approval. All is naught. It is true that the Civil Service of India is composed of men who have gained their posts by means of the best education that England can supply, and who from an early period of manhood have devoted their lives to the practical solution of the many difficult problems which Indian administration presents. But Mr. Hyndman finds fault with them all.
The article itself is couched in such an evident spirit of philanthropy that one feels unwilling to notice pointedly the blunders, the exaggerations, and the inaccuracies into which the writer has fallen. But Mr. Hyndman has entered the lists so gallantly with a challenge to all the Anglo-Indian world, that he of course expects to encounter some hard knocks, writing, as he does, on a subject with which he has no practical acquaintance. He has already received "a swashing blow" respecting the agricultural statistics on which he bases the whole of his argument. On data supplied to him by an able native writer, whom I know intimately and for whom I have the highest respect, he has drawn conclusions which are so manifestly absurd, that all practically acquainted with the subject are tempted to throw aside his article as mere rubbish. But Mr. Dádobhai, like himself, has no knowledge of the rural life of India, or of agriculture generally, or of the practical business of administration. He is a man who has passed his whole life in cities, an excellent mathematician, of unwearied industry, and distinguished, even among his countrymen, for his patriotic endeavours to improve their condition. But the mere study of books and of figures—especially of the imperfect ones which hitherto have characterised the agricultural statistics of India—is not sufficient to constitute a great administrator; and when Mr. Dádobhai, after making himself prominent by useful work in the municipality of Bombay, was selected to fill the high office of Prime Minister to the Gaekwar of Baroda, he was not deemed by his countrymen to have displayed any great aptitude in statesmanship.[13]
The alarming picture drawn by Mr. Hyndman on data thus supplied attracted the attention of the greatest authority in England on agricultural matters; for intrinsic evidence clearly shows that the letters signed "C.," which appeared in the Times of the 5th of October and the 9th of October, can proceed from no other than Mr. Caird. His refutation of Mr. Hyndman's pessimist views is so short, that I give the pith of it here:—
The conclusions arrived at are so startling that though, like Mr. Hyndman, I have never been in India, I, as an alarmed Englishman, have tried to test the strength of the basis upon which they rest. The only data I have at hand are taken from the figures in the last year's report of the Punjab. The number of cultivated acres there agrees with those quoted by Mr. Hyndman—say 21,000,000 acres—and I adopt his average value of 1l. 14s. per acre.
The Government assessment is 1,905,000l., to pay which one-sixth of the wheat crop [the produce of 1,120,000] would have to be sold and exported. There would remain for consumption in the country the produce of 5,500,000 acres of wheat and of 12,000,000 acres of other grain, the two sufficing to yield for a year 2 lb. per head per day for the population of 17,000,000, which is more than double the weight of corn eaten by the people of this country. Besides this, they would have for consumption their garden vegetables and milk; and beyond it the money value of 845,000 acres of oil-seed, 720,000 acres of cotton and hemp, 391,000 acres of sugar-cane, 120,000 acres of indigo, 69,000 acres of tobacco, 88,000 acres of spices, drugs, and dyes, 19,000 acres of poppy, and 8,800 acres of tea; the aggregate value of which, without touching the corn, would leave nearly twice the Government assessment.
Mr. Hyndman has committed the error of arguing from an English money value at the place of production upon articles of consumption, the true value of which is their food-sustaining power to the people who consume them.
When an argument is thus found so completely pecher par sa base, it is needless to pursue it further. But I conceive that Mr. Hyndman, when studying this overwhelming refutation, must feel somewhat conscience-stricken when he reperuses such sentences of his own as the following:—"In India at this time, millions of the ryots are growing wheat, cotton, seeds, and other exhausting crops, and send them away because these alone will enable them to pay their way at all. They are themselves, nevertheless, eating less and less of worse food each year, in spite, or rather by reason, of the increasing exports." Thus a farmer is damaged by finding new markets for his produce! And he sells his wheat, which is the main produce of his arable land in those parts of India where it flourishes, to buy some cheaper grain which his land does not grow! The youngest assistant in a collector's establishment could inform Mr. Hyndman that the food of the agricultural population of India consists of the staple most suitable to the soil of the district: in the Punjab wheat, in Bengal and all well-watered lowlands rice, on the tablelands of the Deccan jowári (holcus sorghum) and bájri (panicum spicatum), on the more sterile plateau of Southern India the inferior grain rági (eiuesyne coracauna).
It must have been under the dominion of the idea produced by Mr. Dádobhai's statistics as to the thoroughly wretched state of the agricultural population of India that Mr. Hyndman has been led into exaggerated statements which his own article shows he knew to be inaccurate. A dreadful case of misgovernment existed in India, and, thoroughly to arouse his countrymen to the fact, it was necessary to pile up the agony. Thus, in one part of his article he states that the "enormous debt" of India amounts to 220,000,000l., but in a later portion he admits that it is only 127,000,000l., and he knows full well that the amount of 100,000,000l. of guaranteed railway debt is not only not a present debt due from Government, but is a very valuable property, which will probably bring in some millions of revenue when they exercise their right of buying up the interests of the several guaranteed companies.
Again, he speaks throughout his article of the excessive taxation imposed on the poor, half-starved cultivators; and he gives the following table as showing the amount "taken absolutely out of the pockets of the people:"—