Orders of the Day — India (Labour Conditions).

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am ar 14 Mai 1924.

Danfonwch hysbysiad imi am ddadleuon fel hyn

Photo of Viscount  Turnour Viscount Turnour , Horsham and Worthing

Hundreds of Socialists have done so, and they are standing at the street corners to-night. You have only to go to these street corners to hear the statement made. I was very glad to hear the Under-Secretary say that one of the great difficulties connected with the position of the workers in India is the lack of capital in agriculture and in the agricultural machine generally in India The result of that is to be found in a matter to which reference was made either by the Under-Secretary or by an hon. Friend behind me. I believe it was made by an hon. Friend behind me, who made a very able speech on a subject which so often obtains very little recognition in the Press, inasmuch as there is always a tendency to regard deliberations on Indian affairs as tedious. It was a speech which showed that there are Members in this House who really are competent to speak on Indian affairs, with a life-long experience of India behind them. The hon. Gentleman said that one of the features of agriculture in India was that a vast number of people working on the land, farmers and others, were in debt from the day of their birth to the day of their death. That is true, and it explains why in the East the moneylender, and particularly certain races which provide the majority of money-lenders, are so feared and hated because of the immense power which they have over the land. There, again, in justice to what this nation has done in India, and in every other Asiatic country with which we have had any connection, it should be stated that we have done more in 100 years to help the cultivator, and especially the small cultivator, the peasant, to free Himself from the clutches of the money-lender, than India, when under its own rule, did in 1,000 years. That is true of Egypt also, but particularly so is it true of India, I hope that the system of helping the cultivator by means of land banks and co-operation and in other ways will be continued.

All of us are agreed that much still remains to be done to raise the status of the ordinary peasant and labourer in India. What, after all, is the real bar and hindrance to the improvement of the great mass of the people in India? It is undoubtedly the existence of a system which produces 50,000,000 people out of something like 320,000,000 in British India who belong to the out-caste and depressed classes. I doubt if the House as a whole realises the position of these people. A statement was made the other day by a member of the Madras Council and a representative of one of the depressed classes. He gave evidence before the Royal Commission presided over by Lord Lee to show how out-caste children are excluded from schools and have to sit outside the schools and learn what they car of what is going on inside in that way. He gave examples of the quashing of sentences by Brahmin Judges on men whose only offence was that they had used the same public roads as those used by the higher castes. It is a fact that in parts of India to-day, especially in Madras, a large number of these out-castes are not only debarred access to all temples, but are actually liable to physical attack if they make use in certain towns of some of the principal streets, or if they draw water from a well from which the higher castes draw water.

It has always been the policy, not only of successive British Governments but of every Englishman who has held office in India, from the days of John Company onwards—it has always been our national determination—to have the utmost regard for the religious scruples of the various peoples of India. We have carried out that policy probably to a degree that no other country coming in touch with Oriental peoples has ever carried it out—a deliberate policy of having the most scrupulous regard for religious customs widely differing from our own. I may say at the same time, that when these religious scruples go directly against the ideals of equality, which are at any rate aimed at in every democratic country to-day, it is very hard to see how, if they are persisted in, India can ever enjoy self-government on an equitable basis. I do not see how the problem is to be solved. It was, I think, the hon. Member for Merthyr (Mr. Wallhead) who in an interruption to my hon. Friend the Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Milne) said that the caste system was not now as rigid as it had been, but I can assure him, from my personal knowledge and from my experience in an official position as Under-Secretary, that the amount of improvement is infinitesimal compared with the disabilities from which the out-castes suffer. Mr. Gandhi, who has a disarming way frequently of saying things which go against his own political faith, admitted with a frankness and fairness to which I, at any rate, pay tribute that they would not begin to get on to the road towards the universal brotherhood which he preached until the highest castes were prepared to embrace the lowest. What advance has he made in that direction, since Mr. Gandhi made that statement a couple of years ago, on the part of the Indians themselves, who are the only people who can effect a change? The British Government cannot do it, and no Government in India could for a moment insist on the Indians doing it of their own accord.

I wish to mention an incident which occurred to me personally. A very distinguished Indian friend of mine came to see me when I was at the India Office about a certain matter connected with the disabilities of Indians in Africa. I said, "You talk to me of these disabilities in Africa. It is an unpleasant and painful reminder, but I have to give it, and I have to tell you that public opinion in this country, irrespective of politics, feels you would be in a stronger position to talk of these disabilities were it not for the existence of the disabilities from which, as a result of the religious system in India, 50,000,000 people suffer in that country." My Indian friend turned to me and said—and this part of the story appears to be against myself, but I will give the answer to it—"You talk about disabilities. Are there none in this country?" He pointed dramatically towards the street and said, "Are you prepared, as a blue-blooded Tory, to treat as a brother one of the unemployed or one of the newspaper sellers out there?" The answer I gave was this: Whether I am prepared to do so or not is a matter of individual taste; but there is nothing in this country, and there are no disabilities in this country which prevent a man who starts as one of the unemployed in the street, from attaining to the highest offices in the State. My words would have had even greater point to-day when we see—and it is a credit to the Government, to this House, and to individuals in this House that it should be so—the rapidity of the journey from the footplate of an engine to a Court suit. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Dumbarton Burghs (Mr. Kirkwood) makes a remark, but it is almost as difficult for me to understand his vernacular as it is to understand Indian dialect. I assure the hon. Member that what I said was intended to be quite complimentary. [Laughter.] I am rather surprised at that laughter. Is there anything that is not in the highest degree creditable to a man who can rise from the lowest position and attain to the position of a Minister of the Crown?