The Hindu : Opinion / Editorials : Decoding Dr. Singh's Oxford reflections

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Wednesday, Jul 13, 2005

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Decoding Dr. Singh's Oxford reflections

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's July 8 address at Oxford University in acceptance of an honorary D.Phil. degree has been attacked, reflexively, by both the ultra-Left and the communal Right, as a prettification of the historical record of British imperialism in India. In principle, there is nothing wrong in critiquing and challenging, as Professor Irfan Habib, the great historian of Moghul and pre-British India has done in a letter published on this page, the content and merits of that scholarly — nuanced and ironic but selective and perhaps over-kindly phrased — essay on the British-Indian historical encounter. That chapter in world history began with exploration and trade; developed into one of the most oppressive, draining, and destructive of conquests; and graduated from the status of carpet-bagging colonialism into full-fledged imperialism. It brought on, in the late 19th century and again in 1943, great famines that claimed millions of Indian lives. From start to finish, British rule was tethered to the principles of racism and intolerable discrimination. But the encounter also brought new institutions, ideas, and modernising impulses from the west to an ancient civilisation. Over a period of two centuries, the impact it had on India's economy, society, politics, and institutions was very different from the effects of all previous invasions and conquests. Above all, it laid the basis for a protracted and inspiring freedom struggle that, in good measure, succeeded in uniting a fragmented and highly divided society. The encounter has now evolved into a mature `partnership' that has many-sided and productive facets but is not without its basic contradictions and tensions.

This is, broadly speaking, the historical material that Dr. Singh, in the presence of an estimable collection of scholars, including his octogenarian teacher and doctoral thesis supervisor, Professor Ian Little, chose to make sense of, primarily as a soft-spoken intellectual, and only secondarily as Prime Minister. The text of the address, accessible on this newspaper's website (www.thehindu.com) and elsewhere, needs to be read carefully if there is to be a serious discussion on the critical issues addressed. By way of intellectual defence, in addition to Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Rabindranath Tagore whose ideas and approach he has drawn inspiration from, Dr. Singh may hark back to the radicalism of his Oxbridge days and cite Karl Marx, who in a remarkable series of journalistic articles published between 1853 and 1858 in The New-York Daily Tribune, analysed and theorised about British colonial rule in India and the Indo-British historical encounter. Marx poured scorn on the barbarities and savage effects of a rapacious colonialism on an ancient civilisation and the intense, unprecedented misery it inflicted on a great people through the "blowing up" of the indigenous economy. But, crucially and influentially, he spoke about Britain having to fulfil "a double mission in India: one destructive, the other regenerating, the annihilation of old Asiatic society, and the laying the material foundations of Western society in Asia." In discussing the `regenerative' role emerging out of a "heap of ruins," he cited a new political unity, the electric telegraph, the Indian army, the "free press," an emerging class of educated Indians "endowed with the requirements for government and imbued with European science," railways, and steam vessels as positive factors that augured well for India's future — once it succeeded in emancipating itself from the prison-house that was British rule. Modern Marxist historians, most importantly Professor Habib, have moved away from Marx's assessment, which they regard as insufficiently grounded in historical data and insights. Dr. Singh's address does cite a stunning statistical finding by a Cambridge historian on the effects of British rule: "India's share of world income collapsed from 22.6 per cent in 1700, almost equal to Europe's share of 23.3 per cent at that time, to as low as 3.9 per cent in 1952." But the central issues raised by Professor Habib need to be addressed. The Oxford reflections provide the platform for a serious debate on historical questions that have a great contemporary relevance. However, if it is to be productive, the debate must be civil and avoid instant branding, not to mention name-calling.

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