The Daily Worker Newspaper, October 3, 1925, Page 10

(Con of the Government, and is should call themselves selves fully with educatio d from page 1) eir claim, that the people in India citizens, having equipped them- historical facts, and having re- ceived fully the ideas of t ogress of the world, and yet put up with an out of date for™of government? Day by day they see that the Chinese people, the Persian people, the Turkish people, and other Oriental nations are asserting their rights, the right of the people before the ruling classes. Do you seriously propose that India should put up with a form of Crown. government which was possible 100 years ago, but which today not eyen the people of the smallest Balkan States;would put up with? I put it to my Indian friends that no sensible persons expect them to submit to such an unnatural state of mind and to such hypocritical expregsions in theif speeches.’ They are fully entitled to strain every tierve to catry on what is called seditious propaganda, what is called a.revolu- tionary movement, and to fight with. all their. might-and.main such iniquities and unjust and. brutal privileges as are claimed by the Crown, through their Agents, in India. It is perfeetly right. You will all do it. No one doing it in this country would be condemned for doing it. That is the position which has to be viewed in the first place. The Noble Lord was very angry with my Hon. Friend the Member for Dundee (Mr. Johnston) because ‘he tried to scratch the surface. I dO not say that he was angry from any personal motive, but.through the habit of mind that, believes that certain human be must .be slaves. Mr. Friend from Bombay who took part in. the debate spoke of weekly wages in Bombay, and said that in Bombay there had been monthly wages from time immemorial. The Hon. Member forgot that hand loom weaving was the only institution known in Bombay from time immem- orial; and that does not prevent him and his partners and his fellow: investors from starting factories there. They forgot all about time immemorial then but when it. comes to applying to their men the principles of modern rights and privileges, then they speak of time immemorial. ‘ ; A School-Boyish Theory. “ The Noble Lord, if he will forgive me for saying so, stood up in a school-boyish fashion, and referred us to the lessons of his- tory for the last 700 years. As I read English history for the last 700 years, it is a more ignominous record than ours. He says, “‘you have always had a foreign monarch, always an in- vader, coming:from outside to rule you.” .Sinee;my childhood day, when I was studying English history I have known that England so’'far never has had an English monarch: She has always had'd foréign invader. Never has her monarchy been a home-grown product. Monarchy is a sort of family privilege. A few families supply monarchs to Europe just as a few biscuit factories supply biscuits all over Europe. We sent an English Prince to Norway to be called King Haakon. * The Chairman: We are dealing with the affairs of India and not with those of Europe or Norway. The Noble Lord, the Under-Secretary of State for India cannot be held responsible for the Government of Norway. Mr. Saklatvala: No; but the Under-Secretary trotted out a theory which is a school-boyish theory, and I am simply show- ing the want. of logic of the position which he: took up in re- proaching India as a country which was. always governed by.a foreign monarch, and thereby trying to establish the right of. himself and his family and future generations to go on govern- ing India, May I point. out that monarchs may be foreign? We do no guarie. vith an Englishman who went to India and settled there, and became a king. We shall become reconcil with him, but a foreign monarch never meant a foreign ruler. An Arab, a. Turk, a Mongol or a Chinese invader, or anybody may have come in India and may have himself become an In- dianized monarch, and lived in the country and become a ruler of the country, But never did the people of China, Turkey, Cen- tral Asia, Persia, or Greece, remaining in their own homes, call themselves the rulers of India, and. continue to send out their advisers to rule. years your education, sanitation, and internal arrangements: with bishops burning people, and with perseeution and religious terrorism, you had ‘nothing much to be proud of?‘You'had ‘your struggles, and we have ours, and shall still have: them: -I put it to the Noble Lord as well as to his own party, not to take the narrow-minded school-boyish view of life when talking of the biggest affairs of mankind. What is the good of entering into such recriminations which lead nowhere. We want to put it to you that you are talking in contradictory terms. Sometimes one thing is right and at another moment it is wrong. If you decide to go to India and revolutionize the lives of the Eastern people you do not talk of castes, you do not talk of Hindu and Moham- medan ideas, or of the suppressed classes. When it is your inten- tion to start cotton factories, jute factories, steel works, engin- eering works, post offices, railways and telegraphs, you do not say, “We cannot do it because India is cut up by caste, or be- cause of Hindu and Mohammedan hatreds, or because there are suppressed classes.” With just the same case, comfort and con- fidence here, you start factories, mines, railroads and dock- yards there. Nothing stands in your. way then. But when we tell you, “See here, you pay so much a head here”—not that you pay willingly, for it was extorted by the workers fighting inch by inch against’ you—-and we say to you that if you apply these modern instruments of treating human life, you must also Sn LA’S CRIME-- apply other conditions, you say, “We must never try such ex- periments.” : A Cowardly Game. One Hon. Member interjected the Indian ‘workers never work more than four or five hours. We are ready to compel them and to compel you to work eight hours a day. But the position is that when we ask you to apply to these workers the modern conditions of life, then you begin to talk to castes and of Hindus and Mohammedans and the suppressed classes, and you say, “Oh, no, let the Indians educate themselves;” which for the last 150 years you have never permitted, and “let them or- ganize themselves,” which for the last 150 years you have not been anxious to permit. “Let them sit at their roll-top desks with their monthly circulars, and then in the next 150-years they will have the same rights as the workers of Lancashire.” 1 put it to you that that is a very cowardly game. I Go not impeach your intention, but do impeach your habit of mind. It is‘a very crooked habit of mind to take in the case of human beings. It ‘is @ Cowardly game. If you were setting the Indian worker the same equal race with his employer as you have in this country, your arguiment’’}: might be at least logical, even if it were not humanitarian. But here you have a fully developed master class; who with their struggles of 100 years with the working classes in Europe are experienced, well informed and well-equipped with all the meth- ods of enslaving and grinding down human life. . That ready- made master does not being slow. He goes to India, to Bengal, Bombay or somewhere else, and pitches his camp there, and ap- plies his up to date knowledge and his full blast methods of controlling labor and grinding down human beings. -His in- formed mind, well-equipped with experience, devises. schemes. You do not hold his hands. You see a group of British mer- chants going to India. Immediately they found a Chamber of Commerce, a Cotton Association and this association or that as- sociation. I do not blame them. aN Eade. Nh The Government from time to time says, “We-are the trustees of the people, the protectors of the undefended:” Where are you when it comes to defending the people against the rob- bers of your own country? Then your custodianship vanishes. I put. this matter to the Government. seriously. They talk of labor legislation.. The Hon. Member of Bundso (Mr.’ Johnston) got a whipping in his absence from the Noble Lord the’ Under- Secretary. At’the same time there were jocular remarks and insulting hints against the Indian Swarajists. There were round- about aspersiors on the fitness of the Indian councillor to ad- minister his own. country. Before the Indian councillors got some nominal power in their councils, these acts, had not been passed 50 years, I could allow the Noble Lord to take credit to himself as an honest man if these things had been done 50 years ago. This plan of life, the Factory Acts, the curtailment of hours and of child labor, were known to the British ruler for 50 years, and though the British rulers in India were acting as trustees for the people they have not made the slightest effort to use them. All the activity took place because of the push that we gave from here and because of the co-operation of the revo- lutionary men in India who demanded a fight on behalf of the workers. 34 o\We are told by the man in the street how well the British merchants who go out to India take care of the poor people and are always anxious to grant them their rights. Yet two years His S “Brii Rul In Indi By | Shap Saklat Delivered in th Commons July | quoted by Kell: reason for barrir the United - ago, when our Indian friends wanted to hold.a Trade Union. Congress in the mining area, to.draw the attention of the whole country to the most hideous and most brutal conditions pre- vailing in the Bengal mines, the Merchants’ Association, the European Mineowners’ Association asked the Government to stop the Congress. They demanded the presence of a Gurka regiment. Machine guns and soldiers, with. bayonets ready, were in the mining areas. That isthe part they played in granting the rights of the workers,. When, these tactics did not succeed, and when the Indians who devoted themselves to work. on be- half of the miners, showed their determination and were, backed up by 50,000 to 60;000. miners Jaying down their tools and at- \ . tending the.Congress, the Chairman. of the Miners’ Association It was entirely a futile argument, and if: you ‘go back) 200° wrotea Jetter, of..apology, and presented himself and said he would.now agree. 1 appeal to my British friends that if they are so proud:of being Britishers, for goodness sake let them remain ‘Britishers when they go abroad. If they want to take credit for | everything that somebody.else does and refuse to take discredit for everything they neglect to do, the least I can say is that they are.a very funny people.. But.remember that all other people in the world are not so funny; they see you through and through. India’s Infantile Mortality. Take another matter—the infantile death rate. My Hon. Friend from Bombay spoke in magniloquent terms of the £10,- 000,000 to be spent upon the homes of the workers. If it were so, I would give credit to the Englishman or Scotsman who did it. But it is not so. It is a case of contracts and contractors. They are handling this £10,000,000 scheme. I remember that over my own signature, four yeras ago, I had to take the place of the Bombay housing scheme. #£10,000,000 are not to be spent on the workers’ housing scheme. The money-is to be spent mainly for contractors’ profits, for the dwelling houses of the rich, for showy shop fronts for increasing the land values of the landlords, and so on. There are to be workers’ dwellings included, but the original scheme was for dwellings of one room, eight by ten feet, with an average calculated family of 8.3 per- sons in each room. - we ote ~~ American | Ir aids British Ir by keeping ou who made tl this brilliant e: Imperialist o