May 3, 1999
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CONDITION
OF INDIA Empire's State The Raj could be tyrannical. Is today's India any better? By P Anantha Krishnan CONDITION OF INDIA
The book opens with an unexpected bonus. Its preface is written by Bertrand Russell, who, as always, is succinct. He makes mincemeat of the claim of the Raj that there was no tyranny in India. He asks the question as to whether a system of government is considered good which puts almost all the best people in prison while offering good careers to cowards and informers. The delegation spent about three months visiting every province of British India but the greater part of their time was spent in rural India. The rural India they depict is one of appalling poverty but one seething with the spirit of rebellion. That was the year of Poona Pact and the delegation saw impressive evidence of the results of Gandhi's stand against untouchability. They could clearly see that Gandhi's methods had caused a democratic awakening among the rural masses and it would indeed be difficult to send them back into slumber. Even after so many years the horrors of tyranny make a shocking reading but the reaction of officialdom to the probing questions of the team is amusing. The viceroy, when informed by the delegation of a state of famine in the Allahabad division, says, "There is no famine anywhere in India. When famine exists it has to be reported to me and a state of famine is required by law to be proclaimed." The team observes in another context, "Police and officials in India, even in the lowest ranks, know that they are a law unto themselves, and, while they administer or maintain law, they are themselves above it." The laws of police and bureaucracy, it appears, are immutable. That the writers were pro-Congress and were enchanted by the Gandhi magic is little in doubt. In fact The Times commented that a delegation of the India Defence League (an organisation upholding imperialism) would have produced a report exactly contrary to this document. This might well have been true but then if the British had nothing to hide there was no need to proscribe the book. Nevertheless we do get the impression that the writers had tried to paper over the various differences and inequalities of Indian society and to present a picture of an India united against the British. It has taken 65 years for this jewel of a book to reappear. This is a testimony to the callousness of our establishment historians. Professor Suhash Chakravarty, who has brought out this edition with a splendid introduction, deserves our gratitude. NEW RELEASES » Atlas and Survey of
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V.K. Krishna Menon is a much-maligned man. His
disastrous tenure as defence minister has obscured his unselfish service to the nation
during the India League days, prior to Independence. Condition of India is a book he
co-authored with three British members of the India League who toured India in 1932 -- one
of the many locust years of the Raj when Lord Willingdon, the then viceroy, chose to rule
India through a series of ordinances after imprisoning the national leaders. The British
tried all the tricks at their command to stop this book from being published in England.
When it was eventually published in 1934, it was promptly proscribed in India. 
