An Open Letter to the Right Honorable David Lloyd George: Prime Minister of Great BritainLajpat Rai, Lala
History
An Open Letter to the Right Honorable David Lloyd George: Prime Minister of Great Britain
Lajpat Rai, Lala
India -- History -- British occupation, 1765-1947
Your publicists circulate another lie, viz., that India pays no tribute,
while they know that from 20 to 40 millions sterling are remitted to
England every year, out of which only a portion represents interest on
loans made to India for the building of railways which your countrymen
have used in developing their trade, and the remainder is the profit you
make out of India. Then you cite the figures of trade in support of your
theory that India is prosperous under British rule, but you forget that
that trade benefits your country more than it benefits India, if at all.
We send you food and raw materials at cheapest prices, making ourselves
liable to "famines." You pay us in articles of luxury, of flimsy value,
at the highest prices. The balance of trade is always in your favor. We
toil and sweat, and your countrymen enjoy the profit. All the paying
industries, railways, tea, jute, half of the cotton industry, etc., are
in the hands of your countrymen. Theirs are the insurance companies,
banks, railways and ships that profit by their trade. The railway rates
discriminate against native industries and internal trade. Your
countrymen get the plum-pudding, while our people cannot have even two
meals of the coarsest food every day. When there is famine, millions
die. Of late, your "scientific" methods of famine relief have succeeded
in controlling mortality figures in famine days. The method by which you
do this is genuinely scientific. Most of the deaths are charged to
epidemics and disease; no one notices, however, that the havoc caused by
disease is due to lack of nourishment and consequent low vitality.
God-fearing Englishmen have cried themselves hoarse over the situation.
The misery of the Indian masses has been pictured by their powerful pens
in pathetic and soul-stirring words, but you and your colleagues still
continue to ignore what they have said. New methods are every day being
invented to exploit us. New departments with fat salaries for Englishmen
are being multiplied. The public debt is being piled up. While hundreds
of millions are spent on railways, nothing has been done to develop
local industries. The country is suffering from lack of capital (cash
and credit). (See Sir D. M. Hamilton's article in the _Calcutta Review_
for July, 1916.) Every honest inquirer who makes inquiries on the spot
and does not depend on the reports of your officials, finds and reports
that the condition of the masses is the most pitiable (see the article
by Mr. Manohar Lal in the _Allahabad Economic Journal_ for April, 1916,
and also the paper by Mr. Patro, of Madras, read in a meeting presided
over by the Governor of Madras). For the latest British testimony on the
point, see an article on Indian Industrial Development by Mr. Moreland,
C.S.I., C.I.E., in the _Quarterly Review_ for April, 1917, in the course
of which he remarks: "It is a matter of common knowledge that the
standard of life in India is undesirably low; that while the masses of
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