How utterly ignorant of history does an Indian historian need to be? Judging by the case of Irfan Habib- very fucking ignorant indeed. In particular, the Indian historian needs to be incapable of understanding any and every economic phenomena or commercial process. This is why they are attracted to Marxism. The fact is for productivity to rise, classes have to cooperate. Class struggle is a recipe for stagnation if not conquest and subjugation.
Habib writes-
FOR all students of modern Indian history, the colonialization of the Indian economy under British rule must remain a theme of overriding importance.
Territory is colonized. The economy is not. Habib is saying that what is of overriding importance to his ilk is something which simply can't happen. On the other hand, merchants based in City States were financing colonial projects three thousand years ago. Habib may have heard of the Phoenicians. However, it was the Venetians who pioneered modern capitalism and its Stato da Mar.
Some places- e.g. sugar growing Caribbean islands to which slaves were brought- may be said to have a colonial or extractive economy. However, India, by and large, does not fit that picture though one might point to tea plantations in Assam or indigo grown in Bihar. But these developments occurred after paramountcy was established. It did not motivate it.
Here was the first,
not the first. The cash strapped Portuguese Crown had started selling its monopoly on the India trade to private parties on an annual basis from 1578 onward. Previously, free trade had been attempted but Portuguese investors were not enthuse. Later, the Portuguese tried to set up a East India Company on the model of that of the English and the Dutch. This too failed. My point is that what was happening had to do with English people being English, not Portuguese. The outcome would have been the same if the India trade had remained a Crown monopoly.
the classic capitalist power
A classic capitalist power depends entirely on capital markets not on the whims of the Crown.
creating, and transforming, the largest colony in the world.
Because the English were English, not because they were Capitalist. Holland was ahead in that respect. England prevailed because the English were less horny and prone to drunkenness.
Marx was greatly interested in this phenomenon, and called attention to the roles of India as a source of primary accumulation of capital and as a market for the industries of the colonizing power.
Marx had shit for brains. He didn't get that the reason he and Engels were living in England was because the English were just better people than the Germans. Still, it is a fact that people whose profession it is to hate Capitalism prefer to do their hating in Capitalist countries.
He studied, too, the destructive and the regenerative effects of British rule upon the Indian economy.
He read about it. To study it, he'd have had to go to India. Also he would have needed to understand how making money works.
Since then, and especially since R C Dutt's splendid two volumes of Economic Hisfory at the beginning of the century, much has been written on the subject.
Rubbish has been written. Economics is about productivity. English administrators, judges, merchants, soldiers but most particularly their sailors, were highly productive. Indian princes couldn't be very productive because their brothers or nephews kept trying to stab them and also harems don't fuck themselves.
Still, it must be said, the Indians did a great job making England's rule in India far less mutually profitable than was possible.
Monographs on the various regions and on individual aspects of economy and administration during the period have naturally multiplied.
Because stupid people need to produce stupid shite to teach yet more stupid people.
There is, indeed, now a danger that the major strands may be overshadowed by the minutiae that detailed research always turns up.
The major strand involves looking at why the Brits were more productive than their Indian counterparts. This meant that a district administered by a Brit yielded far less profit to him than an equally well administered district under native rule. This is because other Brits (and natives) weren't trying to kill the ICS officer or to steal the gold he had hoarded through all manners of extortion. Less risk and better cooperation and esprit de corps translates into higher productivity.
A recent debate did much to focus interest back on some of the important issues of the main theme; and this paper is written with the same intention. An attempt is here made to offer (or, mostly, restate) a number of propositions about the process of colonialization of the Indian economy from 1757 to about 1900.
There was a process of establishing rule over the sub-continent. There was no 'colonization of the economy' or the bodies and minds of Indian people. On the other hand, it is true that Viceroy Sahib was personally involved in the incessant sodomization of the Indian peasants and workers.
The primary method of' surplus-extraction throughout India had
come to be the levy of land revenue on behalf of or, in. the name of, the
Sovereign Ruler.
This was the primary method of paying for defence, law & order, and other such local public goods in all territory that had a government.
This institution had come about not by "immemorial
usage",
yes it had in every territory which had a government. How else does Habib think magistrates and militias were paid for?
as British administrators were inclined to think, but as the result
of a historical process which can be studied and which would appear
to belie the theory of unchangeableness of pre-colonial societies.
in other words, it belies Marxist stupidity. The plain fact is Governance is costly. It uses up scarce resources. The territory must provide those resources unless it has strategic value or the ruler is stupid.
Whatever its origins, it was now a cardinal principle of the Indian agrarian
system, that land revenue should embrace the bulk of the surplus above
the peasant's needs of subsistence.
No. This 'cardinal principle' exists only in this nutter's head. The plain fact is the peasant's standard of living depended on his productivity. At the margin this was below subsistence which is why there was exit- i.e. some peasants starved or quit being peasants. However, for Malthusian reasons the supply of labour tended to increase if Governance wasn't utterly shit.
Pre-colonial Economy
The way in which the claims to land revenue were assigned, that
is, how this share of the surplus was distributed among members of the
ruling class (by way of jagir as in the Mughal Empire) defined the basic
elements of polity.
No. It was possible to extract revenue from some expanses of land. In others it was impossible. Much depended on who was doing the extraction and what they offered in exchange. Habib lives in a fairy tale word where some feudal bastard adopts a 'cardinal principle' such that the peasants are reduced to bare subsistence because they are too fucking stupid to run away. Then come the Capitalist and the peasants are sodomized incessantly by Viceroy Sahib as they perish miserably of hunger.
Upon the expenditure of this vast surplus by the
ruling class was based the urban economy of pre-colonial India, with its
large craft production, large volume of long-distance trade and a considerable development of commercial capital.
Nope. India exported hand loom textiles. That's what made it worthwhile for Persian poet/administrators and Afghan soldiers of fortune, and then Armenian and European merchants to turn up. Some made their money and returned home. However, for Persians, Uzbegs, Afghans etc. home may not have been worth returning to. For the English, however, it was eminently so.
Subordinate to the land revenue, and nominally forming a part of
it, was a share in the surplus that went to a heterogeneous hereditary or
semi-hereditary class of superior-right-holders over the land, to whom the
Mughal clerks gave the convenient designation, zamindars.
Zamindars existed even where there were no Mughal clerks. If a magnate paid tribute and could be replaced relatively cheaply, he was to a lesser or greater extent a tax-farmer. If not, he was a Sovereign. This had been the case since time immemorial.
Their nominal
share varied from one-tenth of the land revenue in northern India and
Bengal to one-fourth in Gujarat.
Some land was taxed. Some wasn't. Speaking generally, the writ of law ran to a greater extent in the former but not the latter territory. Habib thinks 'cardinal principles' can make a territory homogenous. But economics doesn't work that way.
It might actually have amounted to
more than these shares, but the recorded sale prices of zamindari rights
suggest that the income expected from them was always very small compared to the land revenue paid on the same land.
Tax farmers take a commission. The real money was in the additional cesses (adwabs) they levied. This could lead them to sponsor and protect cottage industries, long distance trade, banking and other activities. But this was the case everywhere in the world. Food surpluses are fed to livestock and artisans who produce high vale to weight products which in turn make long distance trade profitable. Habib has no understanding of economic history. That's why he was a Marxist.
One should remind oneself that cash nexus (payment of land revenue in cash by peasants) was quite general in India;
where there was a class of arbitrageurs- sure. But if they ran away or if trade routes were disrupted, people went back to barter or, in the villages, a traditional division of the harvest. Incidentally, the guys who do the harvesting, even now, get one ninth of the produce. There were similar deductions for other groups who provided essential services. Thus to say 'the Ruler took half the produce' is misleading. Moreover, there were good years and bad years. What was important was that the food surplus was turned into high value to weight commodities or finished goods. Economic decline was associated with falling productivity and innovation in this area. This could create a negative feedback loop whereby the opportunity cost of agricultural labour fell with the result that there was increased involution and thus, on average, stagnant or declining productivity.
and that sales
of zamindari; were quite common.
Why? Precisely because of 'value discrepancy'- i.e. some other guy can get more out of the place by encouraging a particular local industry. That's why the EIC bought zamindaris when they first came to Bengal. Habib, being a Marxist, doesn't understand that in econ, only productivity matters and that productivity depends on working with trustworthy, efficient, people rather than worrying about who is going to stab you before your son or nephew manages to do so.
Habib goes on to describe land tenure in India. He doesn't get that it wasn't that different from what obtained in Europe. There, as in India, the agriculture sector represented a constraint rather than a driver of growth. Manufacturing and Services (e.g. going in a ship to India and administering a District there) were what mattered. But there were economies of scope and scale and 'endogenous' factors to do with technological innovation and 'external economies' or 'network effects' with respect to which e the Indians, by and large, were bound to fall behind. On the other hand, they could get behind any totally crazy economic ideology- Gandhi-giri, Marxism, etc.
This was the kind of economy
i.e. agrarian. Did you know Brits came to India because they wanted to eat mangoes and coconuts? It wasn't the case that having the monopoly on bringing in Indian textiles, spices, etc. into England (a rich country) wasn't highly lucrative.
of which the English became masters in Bengal and southern India during the decade and a half following the middle of the eighteenth century. They stepped into the shoes of the sovereign power by virtue of
beating the fuck out of Indian armies because they tended to be shit.
acquisition of diwani (i.e. right to collect tax) in Bengal
the soon had to take over 'nizami' (administration) because Indians were shit at it.
and jagirs in the Northern Circars and elsewhere. The legal forms which concealed these conquests
did you know that Governor General used to conceal his white skin and red whiskers behind a firman or the Emperor? Still, Habib is making a good point. When bailiffs appear and kick you out of your house they conceal what they are doing under the 'legal form' of a 'repossession order'. That's why a lot of homeless dudes don't know they are sleeping in the street. They think they are sleeping in their beds back in the house they own. I tell you these capitalists are very cunning! They are concealing the fact that they have lots of money by using the legal form of owning lots of property and having plenty of money in the bank.
are not material except in so far as they provided rationalization for the main acquisition, the power to levy and collect land revenue and other taxes.
The Brits saw they could provide a better service for a cheaper price which is why it was worth spending some money acquiring particular territories. But this is what smart peeps do when they buy any type of property. I suppose what Habib means is 'the Brits said they came to rule over India because they wanted to wipe the bum of every Indian and to give them lots of cuddles, kisses and chocolates.' Kali Marx showed this was all a lie! The fuckers wanted to do well economically! Human beings should not have any such desire. They should protest against Scarcity till it takes the hint and fucks off. Then everybody will be rich.
The East India Company, which obtained this power, was controlled by the great merchant-capitalists of the City of London.
When they started off, they weren't so great. There were plenty of richer merchants in India and China. But, they could do even better by working with the Brits though, since the Brits were just better at everything, obviously the fell behind in relative terms.
These merchants had so far conducted a trade, based on the import of Indian piecegoods (muslin, calico, chintz), silk, indigo and spices, that was financed mainly by the export of treasure.
Gained from other types of overseas trade.
Now, suddenly, they found in their conquests the ultimate bliss that every merchant dreams of: to be able to buy without having to pay, and yet be able to sell at the full price.
Indians started giving them stuff for free. It wasn't true that EIC had to provide those Indians with defence, law & order and so forth. Also, when the agent of the Company bought grain or horses or whatever and handed over some cash to an Indian, he hit the Indian dude on the head and stole back that money. My question is, why did John Company not sodomize the Indian while robbing him? Were they homophobic?
Perhaps Habib thought that the Indian peasant handed over half their harvest to John Company who then took it to Engyland and sold it for the full price. Probably because Mughals changed their 'cardinal principle' to 'be utterly shit'. If only the Dalits had made it their cardinal principle to get Europe to send them lots of 'treasure', Dalits would have become very rich.
This could be achieved by treating the entire revenues of the country as gross profits.
No it couldn't. John Company employed guys who were good at accountancy. They did not employ retarded Marxist nutters. Gross profit means Total Revenue minus total cost. Net profit has to take into account depreciation etc.
From these the expenses necessary for maintaining government and army, and law and order-the costs of maintenance of the existing system of exploitation- had to be deducted in order to yield the net profits.
Which, as a percentage wasn't very much but, overall, this tended to fall relative to what it had been. Why? Risk fell because the Whites weren't constantly knifing each other or fucking vast harems of women. They were more productive. That's why India retained the British system of administration, justice, politics etc. Sadly, they tend to be much worse than what you find in England.
These could, in turn, be invested for the purchase of Indian comnrodities, the so called 'investments'.
The Brits provided services to the Indians and got paid for it. They bought stuff with that money and sent that stuff to some other market where it could be sold more profitably. Rather than return with an empty ship, they would buy stuff from that place and sell it somewhere else. That's how trading companies work. Since the Brits were great sailors, a lot of the trade was carried in British ships. This also meant that British shipping brokers and insurers and merchant banks got a piece of the pie.
The purchase of these
colmmodities in conditions where the buyer had a monopoly and their
sale in markets through-out, the world, further enlarged the profits
before the 'tribute'--a word freely in use for it at the time-was finally
received in England.
India, China, etc. had a system of tribute long before England itself had any such thing. But the Brits didn't have the monopsony (i.e. single buyer) on any commodity produced in India. Even with opium, the Princely States competed with the directly controlled opium growing districts.
The revenues from the conquests dwarfed the
amounts of bullion that had once financed English trade; and, accordingly, the exports of Indian commnodities underwent an enormous increase.
In other words, the Brits didn't loot India. They boosted its economic growth by finding lucrative export markets for its produce. Sadly, most Indians didn't want to become more productive. Some did- e.g. the Parsis or, initially, some of the Bengali bhadralok. They did very well indeed.
British imports originating in 'East India' increased from -f 1.5 million ir
1750-51 to f 5.8 million in 1797-98, fromn 12 per cent of total British
imports to 24 per cent. In contrast, the British exports to East India rose
only from 6.4 per cent to 9 per cent of total British exports.
But its exports of 'invisibles' increased. Providing governance to a foreign country is an 'invisible' export. The question is why Indians were so utterly shitty that a bunch of foreigners from a distant land proved to be superior rulers. The answer has to do with productivity. Worrying your son might knife you or feeling exhausted after fucking a large harem tends to reduce productivity.
Unlike the
later impcrialists, fighting for markets in the colonies,
A Marxist fairy-tale. Who the fuck wants an 'export market' in shithole countries where folk have scarcely a couple of cowrie shells to rub together? The fact is you can export stuff easily enough if you provide easy credit. The problem is collecting the debt.
these pre-industrial
conquerors were hunting for colonial commodities, which had the whole world as their market.
Nope. These guys were traders. They found they could run certain territories profitably. But they also had to hang on to some unprofitable territory for strategic reasons. Don't forget, the first 'World War' was between the English and the French in the eighteenth century. Capturing an island or a port on the Pacific or Indian Ocean could make a difference to the eventual outcome.
Turning to the topic of Habib's own research, we find a fundamental error. Habib does not understand that all land-owners in England, America, etc. have to pay a property tax. Moreover, there may be restrictions on how much they may raise rents though, if they take over cultivation, this may not restrict their ability to raise their profits by investing in their property
Permanent Settlemlent, 1793 The source of the conquerors' profits, however, lay not in commerce, but in land revenue.
There was booty. There was loot. And there was also a profit on tax farming (Diwani) though this necessitated taking over the administration (Nizami) because the Indian administrators were shit. This was a profit on the supply of a service- viz. governance- but the Company did not become Sovereign. It remained a subject of the British King while also pretending to be an agent of the soi disant Mughal Emperor.
Maximization of land revenue was necessary for the maximization of profits.
No. Maximizing land revenue would have cost too much. There are diminishing returns to extorting money out of the peasants and artisans and so forth. This is one reason many Indian ruled states were poorer and more horrible than the British administered areas.
It was this that led to the unrelenting pressure upon the zamindars in Bengal and to the system of temporary revenue-farms auctioned to the highest bidders.
It was the opposite. Profit maximization means not maximizing land revenue. Moreover, profits have to be sustainable to have a capital value. John Company was not a profit or revenue maximiser. It was a satisficer seeking Capital Gains by increasing sustainability of revenue streams. It was by no means perfect but it was better than any rival. But a lot of this had to do with the Brits simply being better and thus more productive than others.
The actual collection of revenue from the 'diwani lands' in Bengal was pushed up from Rs 64.5 lakhs in 1762-3, under the Nizamat, to Rs 147.0 lakhs in 1765-6, the first year of the Company's diwani' .
Diwani was taken in 1765, Tax was raised to squeeze out the less efficient intermediaries. This meant the state would be stronger. People need no longer fear Maratha raids or the depredations of the Sanyassis. Habib does not understand that if the Government has more money it can defend its territory and thus people are more secure. They need only pay the Government not the Government and the Bandit and the Invader. Still, Diwani wasn't enough. The Brits needed to take over the Nizamat (administration) because the Indians were stupid, corrupt, lazy and so utterly shit they slit their own throats repeatedly.
And, according to another set of figures, the revenues of Bengal increased from Rs 2.26 crores, in 1765-6 to Rs 3.7 crores in 1778-9.
Which is why Bengal ceased to be preyed upon. Naturally, Bengalis resented this. They are still very angry with Churchill for refusing to let Japan conquer their province.
Such was the pressure that a famine which in 1769-70 carried off a third, of the cultivators of Bengal, caused no decline in revenue assessments.
Why the fuck would a famine cause revenue to fall? It would only be in subsequent years that real wages would rise and rents and profits would get squeezed.
This tremendous pressure upon revenuepayers, peasants as well as zamindars, could not but create a crisis in Bengal; and it is this crisis that forms the background to the controversy among the English administrators, preceding the Permanent Settlement.
If the Brits had been lazy cunts, they'd have kept the Indian administration and gradually become as corrupt as the people they lived amongst. Indeed, this was the allegation guys like Burke and Sheridan were making back in Blighty.
One group, represented by James Grant. argued that the land revenue could yet be considerably increased.20 The other, of which Cornwallis became the spokesman, saw that the terrifying results of the tribute so far extorted left no alternative, but to offer a compromise to the zamindars, whereby the Company might be protected against ta fall in its revenues, by resigning claims to any increase in land revenue beyond a figure now to be finally settled.
A.O Hume, the guy who set up the INC, understood that the Permanent Settlement had to go and taxes had to increase for Bengal to rise or, indeed, maintain its relative position. He thought English speaking Indians would be smart enough to understand this. Boy, was he wrong! What Indians like is corrupt dynasts with shit for brains.
Still the Permanent Settlement created a class of loyal Hindu landlords. Ram Mohan Roy and Dwarkanath Tagore spent their own money to set up newspapers and to visit England to lobby for unrestricted European migration to India and an expansionary policy. Why? They knew only Whitey could protect them from the dagger of the Muslims. As for the Hindus or Sunnis of Awadh, they weren't too thrilled that the Nawab kept sending vast sums to Kerbala and Najaf. The plain fact is, the Brits wanted to expand the economy not waste money on their harem or getting into Heaven. This meant they had an incentive to provide good governance. Suddenly, India was off limits for invaders from across the Hindu Kush. By and by, the Pindari and the Thug and the endless wars of Princes came to an end. True, Indians still didn't want to do smart things. Still, and increasing number of them enjoyed a previously unexampled freedom of religion and security of person and property. Suddenly, stabbing your daddy or your uncle wasn't the usual method of inheriting property. John Company brought the steam powered mill, the railways, the electric telegraph and new cash crops like jute and indigo to India. Some Indians got very rich through commerce. Others rose in the Sciences and the learned professions. Finally, the Brits introduced representative government. Had the Indians not been stupid and lazy, the country could have become self-administering and self-garrisoning by the time India was admitted to the League of Nations.
There is a theory that rich people only became rich by stealing from the poor. Look at Elon Musk. He has stolen money from every person who owns a Tesla. Some foolish people say that Musk gives them a car in exchange for their money. This is foolish. Did Musk create the atoms and molecules from which his cars are composed? No! It was the poor people who did that! As Kali Maa'rks said 'fart of nice proletarian caused Big Bang. Mind it kindly!'
Colonial Base for Industrial Revolution At the cost of a short digression, a word on the role of the Indian tribute in the economy of England would not be out of order.
Why did Indian tribute to the Grand Moghul or the Peshwa or whatever not create the base for an industrial revolution? Was it because fart of the Indian proletarian was not causing nice nice Big Bang? I suppose so. Did you know that prior to British conquest of India, Indians were not having asshole? Viceroy's incessant sodomization of all natives caused assholes to appear on Indian anatomy. Only after that could proletarians demand the right to fart from evil IMF Neo-Liberal Washington Consensus.
Taking the amount of the tribute to be about £4.70 million on the basis of sale prices, we find that it amounted to over 2 per cent of the British national income, estimated at C232 million for 1801."
But Britain had to send a lot of men, and ships and trade goods in order to earn that money. It also had to fight France at different locations across the globe. Meanwhile Indian Princes were fucking their harems or paying crores to get into Heaven while foreigners quietly took over more and more of the country.
We must remember that the total rate of capital formation in Britain was probably no more than 7 per cent of the national income about this time;44 and this means that, at this crucial stage of the Industrial Revolution, India was furnishing an amount that was almost 30 per cent of the total national saving transformed into capital.
But, by this reckoning, the West Indies were supplying 120 percent of Britain's national saving because their trade with UK was about four times as great. What should be borne in mind is that British people invested money in factories instead of getting a larger harem or sending money to Jerusalem so as to buy a place in Heaven.
The neglect of this factor in discussions of capital formation in England during this period is surprising.
Unless one knows- as a lot of Brits do- how that capital formation took place. Britain had a lot of high quality coal and found a way to use coal to provide steam power. Its people worked hard and the productivity gap between them and Indians steadily widened. But the 'great divergence' probably dated back to the thirteenth or fourteenth century.
One would certainly have to assume a complete immobility of capital to suggest that this enormous accession of wealth in the hands of London merchants and nobobs did not directly or indirectly channel or divert capital into industry to any significant degree whatsoever.
Guys who knew about oceanic trade in commodities invested in that. Guys who knew about coal and steam power invested in that. One reason the Brits were doing a lot of investing is that they were kicking the ass of the French. As the Royal Navy's strength grew, the people no longer needed to fear an invasion.
By 1800, England was on the threshold of completing the conquest of the cotton textile industry by the machine. During the next thirty years the extension of the machine to most other sectors was to be similarly accomplished, culminating in the construction of railways, a sector that was to dominate British economy during the 1830s and 1840s.
Indians played zero role in this. However, one reason Britain industrialized first is because of its pre-eminence in maritime matters. Commodities from all over the globe could be brought to the UK and used to produce high value added goods which could then be sent in the same ships to any part of the world.
The need for capital not only continued, but increased.
What was increasing yet faster was the appetite of the British saver for shares in commercial enterprises. This is one reason British capital displaced Indian capital in the financing of the expansion of the Raj. But Indian capital could find a profitable outlet in an interior which Pax Britannica had made more secure.
The annual rate of capital formation as a proportion of national income was maintained at about 7 per cent until 1830, whereafter it accelerated to reach 9 or 10 per cent.
Because of the railway boom. Productivity was rising as never before. As rates of return rise, people save and invest more.
This capital could not yet entirely be generated by 'capitalist circulation', and needed continuing primary accumulation. As against the rate of 9 per cent of national income for total capital formation reached during 1821-31 to 1831-61, net domestic capital formation accounted for only 7.4 per cent of the national income. This meant that the pressure for tribute could not be relaxed.
If rich people want to get richer by saving and investing more this means the pressure on them to rob poor people increases. Did you know, when you put your money into Tesla shares, you will be under pressure to rob me. But, what is to stop you raping me while you rob me? Indeed, if you are evil enough to rob and rape a person just because that person is poor, you are bound to feel pressurised into decapitating me and shitting down my neck. That's just rude. Shame on you!
One might say, Habib was telling stupid lies for a political purpose. But what was that purpose?
To sum up, it was during
the second half of the nineteenth century that the modern Indian landlord
was created and an alliance formed simultaneously between him and
imperialism.
This is nonsense. There was no difference between the earlier and later type of landlord. Moreover, in one third of the territory of India, there were landlords who were indistinguishable from their counterparts in British controlled territory. But, an Indian zamindar who married his daughter to a Nepali landlord would not consider that there was any great difference between them even though the Nepali had no 'allegiance' to 'Imperialism'.
I suppose, Habib is saying 'boo to landlords! boo to kulaks! They are lickspittles of the King Emperor!' But why bother? Habib was 16 when India became independent. If you are going to tell a stupid lie, why not make it a relevant lie? Why not say 'Indian kulak is Zionist agent. Did you know Disraeli make Queen Victoria the Empress of India. Disraeli was Jewish. He secretly made alliance with the ancestors of all the kulaks you see around you today. Let us jihad their sorry asses!'
Empires can protect minorities and keep contiguous territories with different religious majorities together. The Moghuls under Akbar and the Brits almost to the very end of their hegemony managed this. Habib does not understand that the end of Imperialism entailed Partition. Land reform could have happened under the Brits and, to some extent, did happen in Bengal after 1937. But it was no panacea. What was important was that productivity rise.
British Imperialism's 'junior ally' was the Princes and the very big landlords who were not modern at all. Yet Habib writes-
The irreconcilable contradictions that emerged between imperialism and its junior ally, the landlords, on the one hand, and the bulk of the Indian people, including the bourgeoisie, the working class and the peasantry, on the other, laid the seeds of the struggle for national liberation.
The bourgeoisie- e.g. Jamnalal Bajaj or even Motilal Nehru- had sizable land holdings. They had no bone to pick with the zamindars. Nor did the 'industrial proletariat' who no longer had any connection with agriculture. As for 'national liberation', Mangal Pandey wanted it as did various landlords.
The whole epoch that followed, spanning the first half of this century and ending with the withdrawal of British imperialism and the parting of the ways of the Indian bourgeoisie and the proletariat,
Previously, bourgeoisie was constantly sucking off proletariat. Peasants would get in on the action by sodomizing the bourgeoisie and giving it a reach-around. Sadly, once the Brits left, they became distant from each other.. Still, their wives were pleased.
constituted the fourth and final stage of colonialism in India.
rule of Nehru dynasty? Habib could have little guessed it would be helmed, twenty years after he wrote this, by the daughter of an Italian Fascist.
But it would undoubtedly need a revolution in India before the vestiges and survivals of colonialization are altogether removed.
Indira Gandhi showed that the State her dad inherited could slaughter Commies with vim and vigour. It could take a tougher line on Gandhians. When she returned to power, Buta Singh put the boot into the Gandhi Peace Foundation. Habib, who is still alive, learned nothing and forgot nothing. I suppose he is now cheering Chandrachud for restoring the minority status of his beloved Aligarh Muslim University. Nice guy, but maybe he'd have been less useless if he had understood that 'tijarat', commerce, is the foundation of 'imarat', that which it is worth building up. Prophet Muhammad was himself a merchant and Islam promoted commercial activity and economic development. It raised productivity. Marxism didn't. It created famine and lowered the material standard of living of the industrial proletariat. That was the history, this silly man should have learned.