On 9th July, 1925., under the Chairmanship of Mr James Hope, the House of Commons debated the estimates for expenditure on the India Office which gave Saklatvala the opportunity to express in the House his views on the Government of India by Great Britain and on imperialism in general. His speech that night sums up much of his thinking on this subject which was central to all his political thought. I therefore quote most of his speech here.
Mr SAKLATVALA: I am thankful to the Noble Lord that towards the close of his speech he told the Committee that I am bound to take a different view from both Front Benches, who are more or less alike in their policy and their outlook on Indian affairs. ... What I say here is not in any mood of anger or hatred, but positively with a view to speaking the truth, when sometimes truth, though unpleasant, is ultimately better than diplomatic statesmanship and political thought. I pay homage to the British spirit of hypocritical statesmanship. It is a wonderful sight today. We are talking of the Indian Empire just in the same strain of common agreement, with that very placid attitude of mind and phraseology of speech as if we were discussing some matters relating to the renewal of furniture in the library or cooking utensils in the kitchen of the House of Commons."
At this point, notice was taken that there were less than 40 members present - thereby proving Father's point that little importance was attached to Indian affairs in the minds of the British Members of Parliament who were responsible for the Government of the country. More members were brought in to enable the Debate to continue. ( When members of the public are critical of M.P.s for poor attendances in the House, it is often put forward that many of them are busy in Committee Rooms; but it is not surprising if the electorate sometimes form the opinion that the bar is more popular than the debating chamber.)
"I am thankful to the hon. Member for getting me a bigger audience. I assure the Committee that my whole object in taking the line I do is to place before the Committee, as well as before the country, not only the Communist Party point of view, but the general international point of view, the overlooking of which in the near future is going to bring serious calamity to many European countries, and especially to Great Britain. We are debating here as if the Bengal Ordinances were never promulgated, as if the shooting of Bombay operatives during the cotton strike had never taken place, as if a great strike of thousands of railway workers is not even now going on in the Punjab, with men starving and the Government, the controller of those railways, taking up a hard-faced attitude, as if all these things had not happened, as if a great controversy is not raging, not only with the people of India but with the people all over the world, whether British Imperialism, whatever its past history, is at all permissable to exist now for the benefit of the citizens of Great Britain herself. There are great problems pertaining to India and Britain which ought to have been discussed on an afternoon like this. I agree that the commonness of parties and the commonness of policy between the last Governmment and the present Government has tabooed all these important questions from being uttered in the House. The main question with which we are confronted is the entire question of Imperialism in its present form.
"It is rather unfortunate that from the earliest time you have called this agglomeration of different people and different races the British Empire. I wish you had from the first designated it as the Indo-British Empire, so that what we may say about the Indian subjects in the Empire may not be taken as a reflection by our Colonial friends in Canada, Australia and elsewhere. The conditions are entirely different. Rules and regulations, formulae, political remedies and experiences which apply to that part of the British Empire which is composed of Great Britain and her white Colonies are not at all applicable to the other portions of the Empire, such as India and certain portions of China and Africa. ... I do not take the view that there are progressive ways of self Government, of Dominion Home Rule, of Indianisation of the Army and all those things just as there are certain progressive measures for cultivating apples in Canada , cattle markets in Australia and bringing the fruit and meat to this country from the distant parts of the Empire.
"I take the view of the reality of life, that if genuine self-rule is in the hands of the Indians and if there exists a genuine Indianisation of the Indian Army, no Indian will be so despicable, as to say that they would hold that country and that army for the benefit of some people other than their own.....
"Take the problem as a human problem. India is a large country with a population of over 300,000,000. You talk of 10% of the people being educated today. That 10% in that large country represents 30,000,000 people, and you admit that these 30,000,000 people - which means a much larger population than many other smaller European countries - are educated and as fit as other similarly educated persons in several parts of Europe. Then you style yourselves the trustees of the whole of India, and as trustees you take jolly good care to see that the other 280,000,000 remain ignorant, illiterate, uneducated with no freedom to call their souls their own. .... because Great Britain, to suit her own purpose, treats those 280,000,000 persons as so many animals or beasts of burden. ..... Is there a single British man or woman today, is there a person anywhere in any country in Europe, in any of the backward countries in the Balkan States, in any of the small nations which are not yet so fully developed as Great Britain, who would tolerate for one day a power so despotic and arbitary as the Crown, under the Imperial system, is insisting upon enjoying in India? There would not be a man or woman who tomorrow would not rise and fight to the bitter end to claim their rights if the monarchy claimed one tenth of the privileges which in the name of the Crown are exercised over the people of India. Because you keep the other 280,000,000 people back, you are asking the 30 or 40 million of educated people there also to swallow such an indignity and such an impossibility in public life.
"...Human feeling, the human heart and the human mind are just the same in India as here or elsewhere. You call the Indians seditious when they protest against these things, but when you rise in revolt in this country against the ruling classes, it is called the spirit of democracy. In India, it is sedition, conspiracy, subversive propaganda..... I put it to my Indian friends that no sensible persons expect them to submit to such an unnatural state of mind and to such hypocritical expressions in their speeches. They are fully entitled to strain every nerve to carry on what is called seditious propaganda, what is called a revolutionary movement, and to fight with all their might and main such iniquitous and unjust and brutal privileges as are claimed by the Crown, through their Agents, in India. It is perfectly right. You would all do it. No one doing it in this country would be condemned for doing it. ....
"...The Noble Lord, if he will forgive me for saying so, stood up in a school-boyish fashion, and referred us to the lessons of history for the last 700 years. As I read English history for the last 700 years, it is a more ignominious record than ours. He says, 'You have always had a foreign monarch, always an invader coming in from outside to rule you.' Since my childhood days, when I was studying English history, I have known that England so far never has had an English monarch. She has always had a foreign invader. Never has her monarchy been a home-grown product. Monarchy is a sort of family privilege. A few families supply monarchs to Europe just as a few biscuit factories supply biscuits all over Europe. ... I am simply showing the want of logic in the position he (Lord Winterton) took up in reproaching India as a country which was always governed by a foreign monarch, and thereby trying to establish the right of himself and his family and future generations, to go on governing India. .... It was entirely a futile argument, and if you go back 200 years, your education, your sanitation, and internal arrangements, with Bishops burning people, and the persecution and religious terrorism, you have nothing much to be proud of. You had your struggles and we have ours, and shall still have them. I put it to the Noble Lord as well as to his own Party, not to take the narrow-minded, schoolboyish view of life when talking of the biggest affairs of mankind.
"...we want to put it to you that you are talking in contradictory terms. Sometimes one thing is right and at another moment it is wrong. If you decide to go to India and revolutionise the lives of the Eastern people, you do not talk of castes, you do not talk of Hindoo and Mohammedan ideas, or of depressed classes. When it is your intention to start cotton factories, jute factories, railways and telegraphs, you do not say, 'We cannot do it, because India is cut up by caste or because of Hindoo and Mohammedan hatreds, or because there are depressed classes.' With just the same ease, comfort and confidence with which you start these machines for grinding human life and freedom here, you start factories, mines, railroads and dockyards there. Nothing stands in your way then. But when we tell you, 'See here, you pay so much a head here - (not that you pay willingly for it - it was extorted by the workers fighting inch by inch against you -) and we say to you that if you apply these modern instruments of production...you must also apply other conditions, ...... then you begin to talk of castes, of Hindoos and Mohammedans and the depressed classses.... I put it to you that it is a very cowardly game. I do not impeach your intention, but I do impeach your habit of mind. It is a very crooked habit of mind. If you were setting the Indian worker the same equal race with his employer that you have in this country, your argument might be at least logical, even if it were not humanitarian. But here you have a fully developed master class, who with their struggle for a hundred years with the working classes in Europe are experienced, well-informed and well equipped with all the methods of enslaving and grinding down human life. That ready-made master .... goes to India, to Bengal, Bombay or somewhere else, and pitches his camp there, and applies his up-to-date knowledge and his full blast methods of controlling labour and grinding down human beings. His informed mind, well equipped with experience, devises schemes.
"The Government from time to time say, 'We are the trustees of the people, protectors of the undefended.' Where are you when it comes to defending the people against the robbers of your own country?..... two years ago, when our Indian friends wanted to hold a Trade Union Congress in the mining area, to draw the attention of the whole country to the most hideous and the most brutal conditions prevailing in the Bengal mines, the Merchants' Association, the European Mine Owners' Association, asked the Government to stop the Congress. They demanded the presence of a Ghurka Regiment. Machine guns and soldiers, with bayonets ready, were in the mining areas. That is the part they played in granting the rights of the workers. When these tactics did not succeed, and when the Indians who devoted themselves to work on behalf of the miners, showed their determination and were backed up by 50 or 60 thousand miners laying down their tools and attending the Congress, the Chairman of the Miners' Association wrote a letter of apology and presented himself and said he would now agree. I appeal to my British friends that if they are so proud of being Britishers, let them remain Britishers when they go abroad. If they want to take credit for everything that somebody else does and refuse to take discredit for everything they neglect to do, the least I can say is that they are a very funny people......
"The Noble Lord, the Under-Secretary has entirely evaded the issue of the Bengal Ordinances, seditious movements, suppression of the Communists, and so forth. I plead guilty that I am at the bottom of many of thr Communist manifestoes and Communist propaganda in India. I am not ashamed of it, and I say that my work is a hundred times more humanitarian than the work of all your missionaries and merchants taken together.** Why are you taking this bigoted, narrow-minded view of life? You talk about agriculture. What do you discuss? 'Shall Lancashire have more cotton from India than in the past?' 'Shall England have more wheat from India than in the past?' That is said to be studying agriculture. I appeal to you to study agriculturists and not agricultural profits. It is alleged that whatever is said in this House travels abroad and creates misunderstanding. Why be afraid of the truth being known abroad? I, as a Communist, as a true believer in Internationalism, do not speak with the intention of offending, but with the intention of giving a shock to your mentality, so that you can think in terms of humanity instead of in terms of banking accounts and profits. You say you are the trustees of the people. You have had 150 years and today you say you cannot give the franchise to the agricultural population; you tell hon. and rt. hon. Members of this House that they do not know the conditions in India, that the education of the villager in India is impossible and that they are not to think that the population of India is like the population of Great Britain.
"It may be that you are honest incompetents, and that you say this in your impotence and incapacity, but why not learn from others? Our Russian Bolshevist friends have, in five years time, been able to give the political franchise to the agriculturists of Russia, who are a class parallel with the agriculturist population of India. They are also people of diverse religions, including Mohammedans, Jews, Greeks, Church people and others. The Bolshevists have been able to give them education in 5 years, yet in the Tsar's days, these people were treated with the same callousness and brutal cruelty as that with which you have been treating the Indian peasant for 150 years. In 5 years after the Communist international revolution in Russia, 65% of the agricultural population have received education, and you have, today, the testimony of half-a-dozen British men and women that, in spite of blood-curdling articles in your newspapers, the Russians have done their job well. Why play a dog-in-the-manger part? I appeal to this Committee to allow a commission of Indians to go to Russia to study and to find what the British have failed to discover - the way of granting to the people political franchise and education, scientific laboratories, institutions, health-homes, compensation and allowances for industrial workers. If Russia, a country of agriculturists, could find the way out, how is it that you, with your world-proclaimed cleverness as administrators, have failed to find it? .....
"The Noble Lord delivered himself on a previous occasion of his views on Russian propaganda. Today we have to review his actions during the last 12 months with regard to the Cawnpore trials. Why does he consider himself entitled to suppress Communist propaganda? He says other propaganda may be allowed, but not seditious propaganda or subversive propaganda. That is another contradiction. Every propaganda must be subversive. If it is not subversive then there is no need for propaganda. The hon. Member for Dundee (Mr Scrymgeour) is carrying on prohibitionist propaganda. That is propaganda to subvert the drinking system,and if his propaganda were not subversive it would not be worth anything. Every propaganda, if it is effective and sincere, means something new, and if those who carry it on have the courage of their convictions and want to put what they feel to be right in the place of the old system, the propaganda must be subversive. You are talking to the 20th century in the terms of 18th century lawyers when you refer to subversive propaganda, sedition and revolution. They are the birthrights of modern nations, and the birthrights of the Indians just as much as they were your birthrights. I, for one, will not yield to terrorism. I am going to carry on subversive propaganda, revolutionary propaganda, Communist propaganda, international propaganda, with the assistance of the Russians, and the Chinese and the Germans and the British. I am not alone in that.
"The Government has kept quiet about the great Indian Railway strike. ...the Government of India forget that they are the largest employers of labour in the world .... and I put it quite definitely that, taking a comparison with any other eastern country, you pay the most miserable wages, and give the most miserable conditions, and deprive the population which works for you and for the prosperity of your great Empire of their rights, and inflict on them political indignity and humiliation worse than can be found in any part of Asia.
....But I think even the Noble Lord knows that the British Government are treating with the most inhuman, callous oppression the railway workers, and imposing on them a negation of their rights ....
"I touch on one more point, and that is the death rate to which the hon. Member for Dundee (Mr Johnston) referred.....I tell you you are there to destroy human life. It may not be your intention, but that is part of the game. I ask hon. Members to analyse the infantile death rate a little more closely. The rate mentioned by my honourable Friend for the City of Bombay was 411 per thousand. That is the normal rate, though it has been 834 in one year. Even this, however, is a mistaken figure- the City of Bombay is a rich city. My own community is one of the richest communities there, and they do not present a death rate of 411 per thousand. Their infantile mortality is very near your own. There is also the European population and the rich Hindu and Mohammedan populations. But if you take the figures of infantile mortality in the municipal records before the final abstract is made, and if you study the rate in those wards where factory women live, the death rate there is not 411 per 1000 but it is from 600 to 700 per 1000. You cannot attribute that to climate or to insanitary conditions, because all over India in the agricultural areas without sanitation or education and with a hot climate, the infantile death rate is about 190. It is in the factory wards of Bombay, Calcutta, Allahabad, Delhi, and so on, wherever there are modern factories, that the infantile death rate comes to between 600 and 700 infants per 1000, and we think that, if nothing else, that one inhuman item, THAT CANNIBALISTIC FEATURE OF YOUR IMPERIALISM, should be quite enough to make you come away. You went there, tou say, to save the people, but you have acted in a contrary direction, and in the name of the people here, in the name of the people there, in the name of the masses, in the name of world civilisation, in the name of the necessity for world disarmement, I appeal to you to Bolshevise your own minds and hearts, and to determine, once and for all, that that Imperialism, with all its good talking points, has got behind it a trail of inhuman murder, brutality, negation of rights and degradation of human life, and must be dissolved. British imperialism must go if humanity is to progress. I do not say that in a spirit of anger again. I say it for your own sakes .... do not despise Communist internationalism, study it from the point of view of the Indians and you will find it of greater value."
**Four days after this speech was delivered, Saklatvala addressed the Speaker thus:- "With your permission, Mr Speaker, I ask the indulgence of the House while I make a brief personal explanation in regard to a sentence in my speech last Thursday night. ...When I said in the course of my speech that I held myself responsible for, and that I am at the bottom of many of the Communist manifestoes, resolutions and Communist propaganda in India, I beg to explain that I unequivocally, unreservedly and without reservation associate myself with, and endorse such manifestoes, resolutions and propagandist literature as are openly and officially propagated by the Communist Party of Great Britain. This does not refer to documents of doubtful origin advocating crime, or whatever is alleged, which has no proven authenticity..... I would not, Mr Speaker, endorse here in this House a propaganda which advocates individual crime through religious or racial animosities, or for personal revenge.
When Arthur Field wrote to my brother after Father's death, he asked the rhetorical question, "Why did he want to get into the gas-works?" Apart from the fact that anyone wanting to enter the world of politics aspires to membership of the House, I think he realised that the House offered him the opportunity of speaking under the protection of privilege; he was able, in the House of Commons, to express his thoughts and opinions much more freely than he would have been allowed to outside. I think that Father regarded the role of the propagandist very much as early christians regarded the role of the apostles whose mission was to spread the word. Such preaching, admonishing people to change their existing ways, can never be popular with those in power who are thriving on the status quo. The martyrs have all suffered for it and Christ died for it. But every society and every generation produces its own preachers, teachers and propagandists and, as drops of water on stone, they have changed the shape of history.