Bande Mataram

By the Way - Necessity Is the Mother of Invention

30-October-1906

Archimedes is said to have set his inventive genius to work at the bidding of the Tyrant of Syracuse. When King Henry VIII was in a hurry to marry Anne Boleyne he is said to have addressed the following instructions to Lord Rochford:—"Take this doctor (Thomas Cranmer of Cambridge) to your country-house and there give him a study and no end of books to prove that I can marry your daughter." Such is the history of many an invention.

The London Times and the Pioneer of Allahabad seem to have received a commission from the Government of India to take occasional excursions into the region of History and Political Economy to prove that the foreign despotism in India cannot but make for the good of the people. The other day, we pointed out in these columns that the Allahabad Oracle has stumbled upon some economic and scientific theories to show that our complaint about the drain of wealth is only midsummer madness. He is perhaps still prosecuting his researches vigorously and will perhaps someday take us by surprise with inventions equally startling.

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Now is the turn for the Times of London. The Thunderer from his superior heights has let fall his thunder against our economic fallacies. He has enunciated the great truth that the impoverishment of a people has nothing to do with the cost of Government in their country. A Government may be a veritable leech but that is no reason why the people should be poor. The spirit of Ruskin is perhaps trembling in his place in heaven at this latest discovery of the orthodox school of economists. However close to the skin the shears may be applied, the lamb should not bleat. Heavy taxes need not matter much to the people, it is the manner of spending them that makes all the difference. Now, as it is admitted on all hands that the hard-earned money of the people has got them an efficient white administration, they have got their money's worth; and no sensible man can sympathise with their womanish complaints about impoverishment as the necessary result of a foreign domination.

It is the inherent defects of the industrial organisation of the country to which should be set down the poor output of wealth which is no doubt an indisputable fact. Instead of clamour against the expensive Government and the home charges, let your industries be directed by knowledge and intelligence and there will be plenty in the land.

We are thankful to the Times for such a simple solution of the poverty problem in India. The Times has, however, his misgivings about the capitalist organisation of the European type and have even some good words for those that obtain in our country. It is a strange logical performance, this article of the Times. It starts with one proposition and a few lines down we come across its contradiction. In this labyrinth of novel economic theories and their contradictions the poverty-stricken ryot has to find his way out. But there is some amusement to be had in watching the intellectual gymnastics performed by English publicists in their endeavour to justify the foreign despotism.

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