(National Magazine, May 1903)

INDIA has now been under the domination and tutelage of one of the most highly civilised nations of the West for over a century. Yet, the fact is striking, that she should have so signally failed to imbibe the essential spirit of Western Civilisation and should present such a deplorable dearth of indigenous enterprise, whether engineering, manufacturing, agricultural or mining. All her railways, with but few insignificant exceptions, have been constructed with British material and British capital, and are under British management. All the more important mills and factories, with the exception of a few cotton mills in the Bombay Presidency and the Central Provinces, are in British hands, and the mineral resources of the country may be said to be almost exclusively exploited by foreigners.

It cannot be said that the Indians are wanting in assimilative faculty. Like the Chinese, they have inheri

ted an ancient civilisation; but unlike their celestial brethren, they are not so blindly infatuated with it as to be insensible to the good or the useful side of any other. The absence of industrial enterprise is probably more marked in Bengal than in any other part of India; yet English education has made the greatest progress in that province, and all the more important reforms on Western lines which have been introduced into India within the last half century have been initiated and developed there. The foundation of the Theistic Church was laid in Bengal; the widow-remarriage movement began there; and the crusade against the caste-system, which has lain like an incubus on the Hindu social structure for so many centuries, has been carried out more vigorously and more effectively there than in any other province. Bengal boasts of orators who would by no means be unworthy of winning laurels on British platforms, of authors of no mean repute, and of legal luminaries who have adorned the highest tribunals in India, but she cannot point to a single individual who has made his mark in the industrial world, or to a single company which has successfully carried on any industrial enterprise, mining, manufacturing, or even agricultural, on a scale comparable to the operations of a third rate company in the West.

3

Nor can apathy be reasonably urged as an explanation of the lack of such enterprise, though the people are often taunted with it. It is true, that inheriting a civilization, which, like all other ancient civilizations, is essentially non-industrial, looks down upon all moneymaking occupations, and leaves the pursuit of trades and industries to the lower castes, the educated community of India for a long time, while assimilating Western culture, did not take at all kindly to Western industrialism. But, the pressure of the, annually increasing struggle for existence has left them no option; and during the last two decades, they have exhibited unmistakeable symptoms of a keen desire for the industrial development of their country on Western lines, not only by establishing associations and holding conferences and exhibitions, but also by attempting a good many industries on the joint-stock principle. In Bengal, for instance, the last decade of the last century, witnessed the rise and collapse of an indigenous cotton mill, two match factories, one glass factory, and of a mining company, not to speak of several less important concerns. The condition of the educated community is, indeed, pitiable. The great majority of them earn their livelihood as clerks, teachers, &c.; and keen competition has kept down their pittances to the figures

which ohtained a quarter of a century, or even half a century ago. But within that time not only have the prices of nearly all the articles of the simple food on which they manage to subsist doubled or quadrupled, but by an irony of fate, Western Civilisation has insinuated itself into their ranks, and they have developed tastes which they have not the means to gratify. Even if their wants had not increased, their situation would have been embarrassing enough; but, with increased wants, it becomes quite insupportable. No wonder, then, that they should be eagerly casting about for, more promising avenues of employment than the wellbeaten tracks of barren clerkdom; and what could be more promising than those that have led the Western nations to the pinnacle of material greatness?

The Government of India, whatever their policy in bye-gone times may have been, appear now to be not unfavourable to indigenous industrial development. They are confronted with a serious and rather entangled problem-How to prevent, or at least mitigate the rigour of Famine which has of late been recurring with such frequency that it may almost be said to have become chronic, and which may spell ruin to increasingly expensive Western administration carried on with the diminishing means of an indigent Eastern

an

population. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Government should have of late shown some desire to bring the agricultural methods of the country more in harmony with those pursued in the West in order that the yield from the land might be increased, and also to relieve the excessive pressure upon agriculture due primarily to the extinction of the indigenous industries, by fitting the people for modern industrial pursuits. Nor has the Governmental desire in these directions altogether evaporated in the exuberant verbiage of portly reports, but has sometimes even crystallised into solid action. We have the provincial departments of agriculture and the experimental farms; and the Government of Bengal for several years sent some of the most promising graduates of the Calcutta University to go through a course of agricultural education at Cirencester. The position of the Government is a difficult one. On the one hand, the industrial development of India by the Indians on Western methods and on Western scale would deal a blow to the manufacturing prosperity of Great Britain ; on the other hand, it is only by such development that the impoverishment of the people could be prevented, and the danger of the Government becoming bankrupt could be averted. No wonder then that they-on the