British Rule in India

Your questions have tapped the very source of pessimism, however. 

British rule in modern India has only one redeeming feature, though unconscious; it has brought India out once more on the stage of the world; it has forced upon it the contact of the outside world. 

If it had been done with an eye to the good of the people concerned, as circumstances favored Japan with, the results could have been more wonderful for India. No good can be done when the main idea is blood-sucking. 

On the whole the old regime was better for the people, as it did not take away everything they had, and there was some justice, some liberty.

A few hundred, modernized, half-educated, and denationalized men are all the show of modern English India -- nothing else. The Hindus were 600 million in number according to Ferishta, the Mohammedan historian, in the 12th century -- now less than 200 million.

In spite of the centuries of anarchy that reigned during the struggles of the English to conquer, the terrible massacre the English perpetrated in 1857 and 1858, and the still more terrible famines that have become the inevitable consequence of British rule (there never is a famine in a native state) and that take off millions, there has been a good increase of population, but not yet what it was when the country was entirely independent -- that is, before the Mohammedan rule. Indian labor and produce can support five times as many people as there are now in India with comfort, if the whole thing is not taken off from them.

This is the state of things -- even education will no more be permitted to spread; freedom of the press stopped already, (of course we have been disarmed long ago), the bit of self-government granted to them for some years is being quickly taken off. We are watching what next! For writing a few words of innocent criticism, men are being hurried to transportation for life, others imprisoned without any trial ; and nobody knows when his head will be off.

There has been a reign of terror in India for some years. English soldiers are killing our men and outraging our women -- only to be sent home with passage and pension at our expense. We are in a terrible gloom -- where is the Lord? Mary, you can afford to be optimistic, can I? Suppose you simply publish this letter -- the law just passed in India will allow the English Government in India to drag me from here to India and kill me without trial. And I know all your Christian governments will only rejoice, because we are heathens. Shall I also go to sleep and become optimistic? Nero was the greatest optimistic person! They don't think it worth while to write these terrible things as news items even! If necessary, the news agent of Reuter gives the exactly opposite news fabricated to order! Heathen-murdering is only a legitimate pastime for the Christians! Your missionaries go to preach God and dare not speak a word of truth for fear of the English, who will kick them out the next day.

All property and lands granted by the previous governments for supporting education have been swallowed up, and the present Government spends even less than Russia in education. And what education?

The least show of originality is throttled. Mary, it is hopeless with us, unless there really is a God who is the father of all, who is not afraid of the strong to protect the weak, and who is not bribed by wealth. Is there such a God? Time will show.

- Swami Vivekananda, 

in a Letter to Mary Hale 

from Ridgely Manor (October 1899)