The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-06-18
BY KARL MARX
Correspondence of the N. Y. Tribune)
London, Friday, July %, 1858.

Servations on India.
how came it that English supremacy was
established in India? The paramount power of
tbs Great Mogul was broken by the Mogul Vice
:eoyg. The power Of the Niceroys was broken
By the Mahrattas. The power of the Mahrat-
tax was broken by the Afghans, and while
all were struggling against all, the Rritton
rushed In and was enabled to subdue them all.
4 country not only divided between Moham-
-nedan and Hindoo, but between tribe and tribe,
netxeen rasta and caste; a society whose frame
xork ~a1 based on sort of equilibrium, re-
sulting from general repulsion and constitu-
:ioua sxclusiveness between all its members.
Such country and such society," were they
aot the prejestined prey Of conquest? If we
xnew nothing Of the past history of Hindostan
would there not be the one great and incon-
sestibls fact that at this moment India is
held m English thraldom by Indian army
maintained at the cost Of India? India, then,
could not escape the fate Of being conquered,
and the whole Of her past history, if it be any
rhing. is the history of the successive conquests
Ake has undergone. Indian society has no his
cory at all. at least no known history What
call IFS history, is but the history of the sue
cessve intruders who founded their empires on
.hs passive basis of that unresistng and I'M
changing society. The question, therefore, is
no. whether the English had right to conquer
india. but whether we are to prefer India con-
qpered by the Turk, by the Persian, by the
Russian, 10 India conquered by the Briton.
England has to fulfil double mission in
India: one destructive the other regenerating
the annihilation of old Asiatic society, and
the having he material foundations of Western
society in Asia.
Arabs, Turks, Tartars, Moguls, who had sue
cessively overrun India soon became Hindoo-
ized, the barbarian conquerers being, by an
eternal law of history, conquered themselves by
the superior civilization of their subjects The
British were the first conQuerors superior, and
therefore, inaccessible to Hindoo civilization.
They destroyed it by breaking up the native
communities, by uprooting the native industry,
and by levelling all that was great and elevated
in the native society. The historic pages of
their rule in India report hardly anything be-
yond that destruction. The work of regeneration
hardly transpres through a heap of ruins.
Nevertheless it has begun.
The political unity of India, more consolid-
eted, and extending farther than it ever did
under the Great Moguls, was the first condition
of its regeneration. That unity, imposed by
the British sword, will now be strengthened
and perpetuated by the electric telegraph The
native army, organized and trained by the Bril-
tish drill-sergeant, was the sine qua non of
Indian self-emancipation, and of India ceasing
l.
The free press, introduced for the first time
into Asiatic society, and managed principally
by the common offspring of Hindoos and Eu-
ropeans, is and powerful agent of re-
construction. The Zemindaree and Ryotwar
themselves, abominable as they are, involve
two distinct forms of private property in land
the great desiratum of Asiatic society From
the Indian natives, reluctantly and sparingly
educated at Calcutta, under English superin-
tendence, fresh class is springing up, endowed
with the requirements for government and i'm
bued with European science. Steam has brought
India into regular and rapid communication
with Europe, has connected its chief ports with
those of the whole southeastern ocean, and has
revindicated it from the isolated position which
was the prime law of it's stagnaton. The day
is not far distant when, by combination of
railways and steam-vessels, the distance be-
tween England and India, measured by time,
will be shortened to eight days, and when that
fabulous country will thus be actually annexed
to the Western world.
The ruling classes of Great Britain have had,
till now, but an accidental, transitory and eX-
ceptional interest in the progress of India. The
aristocracy wanted to conquer it, the money
ocracy to plumber it, and the millocracy to
undersell it. But now the tables are turned.
The miocracy have discovered that the trans
formation of India into reproductive country
has become of vital Importance to them, and
that, to that end, it is necessary, above all, to
gift her with means of irrigation and of inter-
nal communication. They intend now drawing
a net of railroads over India. And they will
do The results must be inappreciable.
1t is notorious that the productive powers of
India are paralyzed by the utter want of means
for conveying and exchanging its various pro-
duce. Nowhere, more than in India, do we meet
with social restitution in the midst of natural
plenty, for want of the means of exchange 1t
was proved before Committee of the British
House of Commons, which sat in 184S, that
when grain was selling from 6 to s quarter
at Kandeish, it was sold at Ga to 70/ at
Poonah, where the people were dying in the
streets Of famine, without the possibility of
gaining supplies from Kandesh, because the
c|ay-roads were impracticable."
The introduction of railroads may be easily
made 10 subserve agricultural purposes by the
formation of tanks where ground is required
for embankment and by the conveyance of
water along the different lines. Thus irriga-
Lion, the sine-qua-ton of farming in the East,
might be greatly extended and the frequently
securing local famines, arising from the want
IT WAFER. void be averted. The general i'm
cortance Of railways, viewed under this head
must become evident, when we remember that
irrigated lands, even in the districts near
Ghauts. pay three times as much in taxes af :
ford .en or twelve times as much employment
ap.: yield twelve fifteen times as much pro-
III ~ the sa:ne area without irrigation
Railways viii afford the means Of diminish