By this time, Allan Octavian Hume (1829-1912), the HEICS-man who founded the Indian National Congress in 1885 - coming out of retirement in Simla in order to do so - along "classical liberal" lines was long dead, and he was one of the last of the "Haileybury men" trained at the Honourable East India Company's college to serve in India, the college itself being closed down when the Crown-in-Parliament took over India in 1858. Haileybury men were all trained in classical liberal political economy (from 1800 to 1857) - a subject then not taught in either Oxford or Cambridge - and the following reveals how such "covenanted civil servants" THOUGHT about their own role in India:
At Haileybury, everyone had learnt that political economy was a matter of laws, that money and goods would move by themselves in ways beneficial to mankind. The less any government interfered with natural movements, the better.
But by 1934 Haileybury men were an EXTINCT species. The ICS that replaced the HEICS had political economy only as an "optional subject" - and one wonders what that contained, really, considering the fact that even the term "political economy" was EXTINCT in the England of 1934, Marshallian "Economics" as well as Keynes' stuff were issuing from Cambridge, and the LSE was "training" as well as "exporting" SOCIALISTS all over the globe, including especially India. Indeed, by 1934 even Hayek was in the LSE - and as this article makes clear:
Hayek carried the "Walrasian contagion" with him to the London School of Economics (LSE), and there introduced it to the English-speaking world. As Salerno writes, "It was under Hayek's influence that economists at LSE, especially John Hicks, began to introduce Walrasian general-equilibrium theory … to Anglo-American economists." Hayek and Hicks swayed Lionel Robbins, the head of LSE, away from Mengerian causal-realism and toward Walrasian general-equilibrium theory. This had the effect of moving LSE itself in that same direction.
The "Fabian Socialism" of the LSE, Keynesianism, all this "false economics" - together enabled the British Labour Party to establish the HORRIBLE British Welfare "Nanny" State. It killed the "great" in Great Britain - and as for India... words fail me.
But I wanted to write about ENVY - one of the Seven Deadly Sins, on which I have this previous post. Socialists are driven by ENVY - nothing else - as the following extract from the earlier post makes pellucidly clear:
Satan said he would "rather rule over Hell than serve in Paradise."And in this lies the difference between Envy - which is one of the Seven Deadly Sins - and Jealousy, which is just another human failing, and which hurts the one who feels it, and no one else.Envy is something truly Satanic: The desire to possess SOMETHING GOOD that cannot be acquired legitimately - by destroying it. Thus Air India was nationalised - and destroyed.Ditto for all the banks, insurance companies, coal mines, et. al.All destroyed - by Envy.Socialism is driven by Envy - nothing else.
The Honourable East India Company was the focus of ENVY back home - and hence taken over; that too, on a flimsy excuse, not long after Peel's Banking Act of 1844 had FAILED!
This ENVY was nothing new - for all the "nabobs" were much hated. Clive committed suicide. And as for the Great Warren Hastings, he was tried by Parliament for 20 long years - after which he was honourably acquitted, of course, but totally worn out by the ordeal. And as for his Great Judge, Sir Elijah Impey - he is still libeled in the textbooks of Indian legal history, of "judicial murder" (at Hasting's behest). Funny how India today is all about "extra-judicial murders" - all the "encounter killings" we have stopped counting.
This was the BRITISH ENVY that took over India from the Company - only to DESTROY it, with all the EVIL IDEAS listed above, all of which continue to this day, both there as well as here.
When the Crown-in-Parliament took India over from the Company, it POLITICISED the Indian administration. The following is from S Ambirajan's Classical Political Economy and British policy in India:
The [Indian] administration was managed by a Court of Directors elected by the shareholders of the East India Company… The Court of Directors was itself responsible to the Board of Control, the body set up by the government in 1784 to supervise the Indian administration. The Court of Directors conducted Indian administration by replying to queries from India and communicating the policies to be implemented [which took almost a year from the time the query was sent to the time the response was received]. The Board of Control could only examine and review the orders of the Court of Directors , but not initiate them; on the other hand, the Court had no certainty that its orders would be approved by the Board of Control… When in 1858 the Crown took over the Indian territories from the Company, both the Court and the Board were abolished; and a secretary of state with an advisory council was installed to advise and supervise the Indian government.However, with the Secretary of State becoming the supreme master of the Government of India, English politics began more and more to influence Indian administration. While the East India Company was interested primarily in the Indian territories as such, the Secretary of State was interested in India as a political weapon in the armoury of his party and his policy had to trim its sails according to the shifting breezes in Parliament. Thus the periodical adjustments in the balance of power between the various parliamentary groups introduced an unstable element in Indian policies too. This was in marked contrast with the state of affairs during the East India Company’s regime. The Court of Directors was usually able to resist the play of British politics in Indian affairs, and sometimes even went against the wishes of the government – in the words of a former member of the [EIC’s] Indian civil service, acting as an effective barrier between ‘the interests of the people of India and the powerful classes in England’.
It is in this context that the immediate establishment of an Indian Police (1861) and the enactment of an Indian Penal Code (1863) must be viewed - for no such "criminal justice system" existed prior to that. The consequent litigation that naturally ensued - in which many Europeans must have also been charged of "crimes" - is what led to a proposed "racial" legislation in 1883, the WIDESPREAD UPROAR against which is surely what prompted the authorities to pull AO Hume out of retirement in order to POLITICISE the Indian youth! Soon, everything got out of hand, of course, what with the disastrous tenure of Curzon - and Hume's passing, by which time the CONgress had turned "national socialist" and a PUBLIC REVOLT was brewing.
Note that the SEPOY MUTINY of 1857 was NOT a public revolt! The East India Company's Indian Army was a "mercenary army" - and sections mutinied because of gross insensitivity to "religious sentiments" on the part of those in-charge of supplying them with ammunition.
The "civil government" of the Honourable East India Company was NOT SUPPORTED by any mercenary soldiers - unlike conditions today!
Anyway, in 1935, with all the "funny money" at the disposal of New Delhi, the provincial CONgress governments began implementing two policies that would be absolutely FATAL for the Indian people, and whose effects are to be felt right to the day: the first, "education" was one of the subjects transferred to these provincial governments; and second, the NONSENSE they call RURAL DEVELOPMENT.
First, education: This business of State Education - completely against all classical liberal principles and contrary to practice in England then - was accepted in India by the Englishmen in authority as well as the educated elite among Indians for the basic reason that whatever was "Indian Knowledge" then was deemed "irrational" and it was felt that education in the English language, about English "sciences" and so on would lead to the "moral and intellectual improvement" of the Indian people. We see this attitude best expressed in Raja Ram Mohun Roy - the "maker of modern India," as he was known. We see this in Lord Bentinck's educational programme; and we also see this in whatever Mountstuart Elphinstone accomplished on the educational front in Bombay.
But now, after 1935, it suddenly became CONgress "native education" - and it was the flag of this "political party" that began to fly atop all government schools and colleges. The MISEDUCATION of Indians began.
Second, rural development: The following is an extract from my online publication, and the long quote is from Philip Mason's The Men Who Ruled India:
By 1935-36 there was full blown democracy in the provinces. Mason quips that these assemblies were ‘much like undergraduate debating societies’, ‘criticism was ill-informed’ while, from the government benches, ‘speeches tended to consist of facts and figures, perfunctorily repeated’. But all this changed the life and work of the district officer in a most profound way:
India was a poor country which could not afford luxuries and a district officer had concentrated on essentials – public order, the swift administration of justice, the prompt payment of taxes moderately assessed, the maintenance of accurate land records which would prevent disputes. Those had been the four first things. But by 1939, the emphasis had changed and rural development, co-operative banks and village committees were inclined to come first…. The district officer must add to his innumerable duties the maddening and infructuous business of answering parliamentary questions, the host of subjects included under the head of Rural Development….That was why to some at least of the service it seemed that it was time to go. Rule of the old kind was running down; districts were being administered in a new way, which might be better, but was not the British way. A district officer might find, perhaps, when he had time to look, that a peasant had been brought into headquarters a dozen times before his case reached even the first formal hearing, or that someone had been forced to spend all he had to defend his holding against some fabricated claim, simply because the land records were not up to date. As to Rural Development, most British officers would have agreed that a great deal of what was proposed was admirable if the villagers would do it themselves, but they were skeptical about trying to change habits from above – and much of the effort put into the attempt seemed to them wasteful and incompetent.#
But then came the war, Gandhi declared ‘open rebellion’ and the rest is the history of ‘free India’.
Thus, by applying the correct praxeological theories to recent Indian History, it becomes evident that the rule of the Honourable Company was infinitely superior to that of the Crown-in-Parliament; that the HEICS were infinitely superior, intellectually as well as morally, to the ICS; and that the deterioration of Indian administration to the "knowledge-proof" pits into which it has fallen today was only inevitable, given the MISEDUCATION.
The condition of the "elite" Indian mind today is best described by the Sanskrit word tamas - which is sometimes translated as "ignorance," but which surely means something far blacker. Both socialism as well as Gandhianism are essentially forces that make for DE-CIVILISATION - and since they have Keynesianism and Welfarism as partners, things are far, far worse.
The classic example of this tamasic mind is that of Mr. Dharma Vira, ICS, who headed a National Police Commission in the 1970s, whose 12-volume report was NOT allowed to be tabled in the Indian Parliament. But the ICS, as a body, "served" both Nehru as well as Jinnah - and none even knew how things were far better before 1861. Of course, they taught all the History, too. And all this History is pro-CONgress.
Mr. Dharma Vira, ICS, had retired long before he headed the National Police Commission - and was earlier Governor of the SOCIALIST province of West Bengal, then in a completely RUINED condition.
As for the utterly tamasic mind of today, do read this excellent column by Salil Tripathi on India's current LAW MINISTER - and his self-professed "lawlesness."
Why do we need any law minister anyway? What does the dud do - but attend to the promotions and transfers of all his socialist "bureaucrat-judges"? Perhaps he helps draft legislation. We don't need either.
During the centuries of the Honourable Company's Raj there were no parliaments, no legislation, no police, no politics, even; but there was PROPERTY, based on the Lockean Principle, of which ownership records were maintained up-to-date, and hence there was PERFECT ORDER, with Private Property, Liberty, and Private Capital Accumulation - by which a NEW CIVILISATION was established all across this vast sub-continent. Hence, I have argued in favour of a PRIVATE LAW SOCIETY. Further, in an older column, I have shown how this defunct "criminal justice system" can be done away with completely - and replaced by TORTS.
The "rightly understood interests" of ALL - it is this that classical liberal political economy emphasised: rich or poor, villager or city-dweller, capitalist or worker, ruler or ruled.
All was lost because of socialism, gandhianism, keynesianism, welfarism, planning - and the consequent OVEREXPANSION of the State.
When governments exceed their rightly understood limits, they invariably become PREDATORY - beginning with taxation itself.
Do read my brief article titled "Gandhian Violence" - for it shows you where exactly the ROOTS of STATE PREDATION lie.
As for the GROCER OF DESPAIR - this is all their de-motivating talk about the "helplessness of the poor." Contrast this with Samuel Smiles' Self-Help - which motivated Victorians (and the Japs as well). The Victorian Age saw the Great Exhibition of 1851 - the world's first "international trade fair," with Albert as its driving force. He died in 1861 - and this vital force was lost to the monarchy all through the rest of this century.
But then, behind the scenes, the undercurrents of socialist ideas were spreading - and being CORRUPTED DELIBERATELY only in order to WIN ELECTIONS, for the franchise was being widened all the time.
And it is precisely the same that occurred in India - between 1934 and 1935.
The Labour Party under Clement Attlee sent Mountbatten to India - and he was instrumental not only in the unviable and utterly evil Partition, he also broke hundreds of solemn treaties signed between the Princely States and the British Crown in the days of the Honourable Company pledging "perpetual friendship" on both sides:
ENVY! Once again. For each and every one of these princely states has been DESTROYED.
And Mountbatten is one of the very few English "royals" who ended up assassinated!
So, what are we all left with now - but a no-longer-great Britain and an impoverished India whose ELITES, all these Patron Saints of ENVY and Grocers of DESPAIR, all "working for the paper Yankee dollar."
The Webbs and the LSE HATED the Olde City of London precisely for its Capitalism - but, even here, the ancient TRADITION of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, their Annual Testing of the Coinage, does take place, yet the Lord Mayor no longer attends. What is not mentioned is the YEAR from which this traditional attendance has ben stopped. That is, the year in which the Olde City of London officially adopted CORRUPT MONEY.
PURE CAPITALISM - it's all about MORALITY and JUSTICE.
And SELF-HELP.
Not this crap of today - both there as well as here.
