The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-06-10


lowest class, those who go about nearly naked,
have commonly pair of golden earrings and
q gold ornament of some kind hung around
their necks. Rings on the fingers and toes
have also been common. Women as well as
children frequently wear massive bracelets
and anklets of gold or silver and statuettes
Of divinities in gold and silver were met with
in the households 1t was the British intruder
who broke up the Indian hand-loom and de-
stroyed the spinning wheel. England begun
with driving the Indian cottons from the Euro
pean market; it then introduced twist into
Hindostan, and in the end inundated the
very mother country of cotton with cottons.
From 1918 to 1886 the export of twist from
Great Britain to India rose in the proportion
of l to 5000. In 1924 the export of British
musns to India hardly amounted to 100000
yards, while in 1887 it surpassed 64,000,000
yards But at the same time the population
of Dacca decreased from 10000 inhabitants
to 10000 This decline of Indian towns cele-
brated for their fabrics was by no means the
worst consequence. British steam and science
uprooted, over the whole surface of Hindostan,
the union between agricultural and manufac-
turing industry.
These two circumstances-th Hindu on the
one hand. leaving, like all Oriental peoples
great public works, the prime condition of his
agriculture and commerce, dispersed, on the
other hand, over the surface of the country,
and agglomerated in small centers by the
domestic union of agricultural and manufac-
turing pursuits-these two circumstances had
rought about since the remotest times. a So
'ial system of particular features-the So
allied village-system, which gave to each Of
fhese small unions their independent organza-
on and distinct life. The peculiar character
Of this system may be judged from the follow
ing description, contained in an old official
report of the British House of Commons on
Indian affairs:
"a village geographically considered, is
tract of country comprising some hundred or
fhousand acres of arabic and waste lands;
politically viewed it resembles a corporation
~ township. Its proper establishment of Of
'icers and servants consists of the following
descriptions: The potail, or head inhabitant
who has generally the superintendent of the
fairs of the village, settles the disputes of
the inhabitants, attends to the police, and per-
forms the duty of collecting the revenue with
n his village, a duty which his personal in
fluence and minute acquaintance with the
situation and concerns of the people render
him the best qualified for this charge. The
registers everything connected with it. The
teller and the totie the duty of the former of
which consists in gaining information of
crimes and offenses, and in escorting and pro-
tecting persons travelling from one village to
another; the province of the latter appearing
to be more Immediately confined to the vii
lage consisting, among other duties in guard
ing the crops and assisting in measuring them
The bundry man. who preserves the limits of
the village, or gives evidence respecting them
in cases of dispute. Superintendent of Tanks
and Watercourses distributes the water for
the purposes of agriculture. The Brahmn
who performs the village worship The school
master, who is seen teaching the children in
a village to read and write in the sand. The
calendar brahmin, astrologer, etc. These
officers and servants generally constitute the
establishment of village; but in some parts
of the country it is of less extent, some of the
duties and functions above described being
united in the same person.; in others it ex-
ceeds the above-named number of individuals
Under this simple form of municipal govern
ment, the inhabitants of the country have lived
from time mmemorial. The boundaries of the
villages have been but seldom altered; and
though the villages themselves have been
sometimes injured, and even desolated by war,
famine or disease, the same name, the same
limits, the same interests, and even the same
families have continued for ages. The inhabi-
tants gave themselves no trouble about the
breaking up and divisions of kingdoms; while
the village remains entire, they care not to
what power it is transferred or to what SOW
ereign it devolves; its internal economy re-
mains unchanged The potail is still the head
inhabitant, and still acts as the petty-iudge
or magistrate, ard collector or rentor of the
village"
These small stereotype forms of social or
ganism have been to the greater part dissolved
and are disappearing, not so much through the
brutal interference of the British tax-gatherer
and the British soldier, as to the working of
English steam and English free trade. Those
family-communties were based on domestic in
dustry, in that peculiar combination of hand
weaving, hand-spinning and hand-tiling agri-
culture gave them self-supporting power. Eng
fish interference having placed the spinner in
Lancashire and the weaver in Bengal, or
sweeping away both Hindu spinner and weaver,
dissolved these small emi-barbarian, semi
civilized communities, by blowing up their
economical basis, and thus produced the great
est, and to speak the truth, the only social
revolution ever heard of in Asia.
Now, sickenng as it must be to human feel
ing to witness those myriads of industrious
patriarchal and noffensive social organizations
dsorganized and dissolved into their units,
thrown into sea of woes, and their individual
members losing at the same time their ancient
form of civilization, and their hereditary means
of subsistence, we must not forget that these
idyllc village communities, inoffensve rs they