1757- East of the Cape of Good Hope

by Narendra Mehra

  Coal

  Coalfields of India were vast and estimated to hold well over fifty billion tons. Most of the deposits were in Bihar and Orissa and some deposits were found in other states such as Assam, Central Provinces and Hyderabad State. The Bihar deposits were mostly held in private hands and the Raniganj coalfields were the property of the Maharajdhiraj of Burdwan. People in the region knew some coal mining and they used to bring coal by boat for sale in Calcutta. The British East India Company invited one of its engineers, Mr. Jones, from England, to explore and develop the coalfields in the Raniganj region. This mine was successfully developed, which bears his name, Jones Mine, until this day. The British did not overlook anything where they had a chance to make money.

  East India Company exported coal to Singapore, Ceylon, and Penang for its steam ships. In the middle of the nineteenth century, Raniganj coalfields produced only about a hundred thousand tons of coal which took off meteorically after the British Managing Agencies took over the industry. Like other Plantation industries, the operators of coalmines acquired the land and the rights to mine it. In other mines, the land still belonged to the Indian landlords, who leased the mining rights against payment of royalty.

  During the middle of the century, with the introduction of rail transport in India, the coal production got a sudden boost and there were close to fifty collieries in operation and during the short span of about twenty years, coal production reached to about a million tons per year. The European mining concerns got hold of the coalmining industry as well like everything else and they were highly successful. Profits were spectacular, as the investment in the mines was negligible. The workers were provided only a pick and a shovel. All the coal production was principally for export, because India had no industry where they could use any coal. The exports propelled the production and by 1920 Ranigunge coal fields produced about twenty million tons. With the exception of Japan, India was the largest producer of coal in Asia. The Raniganj coalfields covered an area of five hundred square miles. The coal seams were thick, may be twenty feet and mining was easy. The adjacent Jharia coalfields were equally vast at a short distance from Ranigunge. Within about a distance of one hundred miles there were probably twenty seams varying in thickness up to a hundred feet. Only a few miles away, there was the Bokhara field of high grade cocking coal, which covered an area of about two hundred square miles. For the British coal exporters, it was a real bonanza. The mining conditions were exceptional; water flowed out of the mine by gravity, most seams were close to the surface and moderately inclined. Large amounts of coal were mined by just stripping the surface over burden.

  By looking at the coal consumption in other countries, it was obvious that during the early part of the twentieth century, India was using negligible amount of coal. Per capita consumption of coal in the developed world ranged in tons whereas in India, it was a pittance. India ranked ridiculously low, because India was a pauper state, with no industry, The British Europeans had a field day exporting Indian coal. Small quantities of coal was used in the Bombay region for cotton and jute mills and some for railways to haul cotton to the British ships, but this coal was imported from Cardiff at a much higher price instead of using Indian coal. The British ships needed ballast in their ships, so the ballast coal was sold in India after their ships reached Bombay. On the return journey, the ships used to take saltpeter as ballast. The coal export lobby of Europeans was able to get rail fare concessions. The Europeans (the British) Managing Agencies owned and operated the largest and most profitable mines and well over eighty to eighty five percent of the total production was British owned mines. Most of the British Managing Agencies had the sole interest in making money and little money was invested to mechanize the mines or to provide the safety equipment. With the result mining accidents were frequent resulting in fatalities.

  It was hard to know the profits the British Managing Agencies made by exporting Indian coal but an estimate can be made from the price of coal at the pit mouth, which was estimated at about four Rupees a ton. The price of coal in Bombay varied depending on the origin of coal. Cardiff ballast coal was set higher at about twenty five Rupees a ton and the Jharia coal at about twenty Rupees. There was a spread of about fifteen rupees a ton for the Jharia coal and the British Managing Agencies exported about twenty million tons of coal per year. On a conservative basis, the British exporters of Indian coal easily made a profit of £ twenty million per year.

  The coal business and the coalmines were owned by the British Managing Agencies for a period of about one hundred years, until the time they left India. That produced a revenue stream of about two billion pounds to England. The Indian involvement in the coal mining was restricted by the British administration and is best illustrated by the experience of an Indian entrepreneur, Dwarkanath Tagore, who purchased the Ranigunge Colliery for about seventy five thousand Rupees from the estate of Alexander & Co. after it went into liquidation. The Bengal Coal Company which was dominated by the British merchants in partnership with the British government resented encroachment on its monopoly and plundered and looted the coal shipment of Carr- Tagore & Co. as it reached the Damodar River. Tagore had to hire a large body of men to protect its boats carrying coal. The British were intent on making the most money unopposed in a monopolistic environment and any encroachment in their way was wiped out by the British administration. From the very beginning of their presence in India, they continued to operate as freebooter’s intent on making the most money, fair or foul, holy or profane, good or bad and in the process they were able to become one of the richest nations on Earth.

  In the coal mines, women and children constituted a considerable part of the work force. Women carried the coal basket which weighed about 60 to 80 pounds, it was carried on the head or at the hip if the ceiling was too low after the coal was cut to the tracks. The coal cutter, the man who dug the coal out with a pick and his wife or other female helper, put it in the tub. If the female worker dropped the coal on the ground accidentally, she was not paid on the plea that the coal was damaged and unfit for export. Above ground also, women were employed in sorting, stacking and loading. In 1900, one fifth of the workers were women and children under the age of twelve and the female worker head count continued to go up as the mine owners found the female workers cheaper. Later in the second or third decade of the twentieth century, some coal cutting machines were introduced, but that was an awfully small number compared to the human coal cutters. Mechanical ventilators were also non-existent. In well over four hundred collieries in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, there were only a very small number of mechanical ventilators or safety lamps. No information on wages was found. Labor worked under contract; unless they produced they were not paid. In any case, the total cost of production was only 4 rupees per ton. So the wages were nothing more than bare existence. Like other plantation industries, the British European owners sacrificed the workers in favor of higher profits.

  Other Plantations

  There were other plantations of rubber and coffee and mica mines and there was the steel industry. The British did not spare anything. They did not miss any opportunity to make money. During the various famines, during their long regime of two hundred years, many a cattle and humans perished. They did not spare even the bones and hides of the dead animals. There was a Curlender & Company Who managed business in the carcasses of the dead animals. The skeletons were stacked along the railroad tracks and picked up and taken to ships sailing to England. They processed the bones, graded them and bagged them and took to England. Curlander & Co. and Rallis & Co, the British Managing Agency Houses in Calcutta specialized in that business. Those bones provided the raw material to the gelatin and leather industry in England so that, the plain Jane after a nice meal, could enjoy a cup of Jell-O and whipped crème. What was left of those bones and hides went to provide glue for their woodworking industry, calcium phosphates for their tooth pastes, bone meal for their cattle and leather for their shoes and purses. The Indian
farmer lucked out. The dead animals of India provided quite a profit for the industrialists of Britain. No wonder they did nothing to stop the famines otherwise the leather and gelatin industry would have run out of the raw materials

  The British amassed a huge amount of cash, meaning gold, during the initial seventy years (1757 to 1825) of their presence in India, by looting the Mughal and the princely treasuries. During the remaining period of about one hundred years of their rule, they focussed on the natural wealth of India, the plantations industry, the Anglo- Indian trade, the expenditure on military stationed in India and their salaries and pensions and direct remittances of crop and land tax revenues, the mines and minerals wealth and by conservative estimates, they earned at least £150 million a year, about one hundred fifty billion pounds a year in today’s money, without investment of any kind by the British colonizers in India. Those remittances for over a hundred years had a devastating effect on India. The British invested that cash, at least about half of it, in North America in safe investments, banking, insurance, oil & mineral wealth and the public utilities and they have been able to live lavishly and their public has enjoyed a welfare society without having to earn it.

  The welfare programs emancipated the British Society. It was a feudalistic society dependent on the largess of the feudal lords. Between one to two million women and their children worked as domestic servants who did not know how to read or write, little hygiene and who could only afford to eat coarse bread. The common man had no access to schooling or housing and they lived in shacks and slept on straw beds. The Indian loot helped start the public education free of cost for the first time in England. The Indian money started the many welfare programs and those programs, generally known as the Victorian reforms became a corner stone of the British welfare system.

  Another aspect of their monopolistic rule in India was to suppress growth of local industry, so that there was no competition to their enterprises. It was conscious policy of the British Administration to deny any kind of local enterprise, they put prohibitory import duties so that the natives could not install any industry, but there was one new enterprise which could have had a very significant strategic impact on their rule and they resisted tooth and nail and that was the Indian Railways. The railways not only could generate a lot of revenue as it was essential for the import and export of goods, but most of all, it had military implication for movement of troops.

  Indian Railways:

  “India is at our mercy; we can charge her what we wish”

  _ Sir Charles Trevelyan (1873)

  How do you transport the produce from the plantations in India to the industrial mills in England? Britain needed the railroad in India desperately and it became more urgent after the mutiny in 1857, for the rapid movement of troops. India had no industry what so ever and the Railways were a drain of money from India without return. Railway in India was the Imperial structure of the ‘Raj’.

  Klondike, East of the Cape of Good Hope:

  Britain stripped India of its grandeur, dignity and wealth step be step, like peeling the skins of an onion. Similarly, they built up their own wealth step by step by robbing the Indian nation and one example that stood out was the Indian Railways. Britain realized that it had to have the railways in India to protect the Empire, particularly after the mutiny in 1857. Britain was also dumping its manufactured goods in India, after it had destroyed the local handicraft industries. India had become the depot for British manufactured goods and railways were necessary to transport those goods. Britain needed railways in India for its own strategic reasons and they proceeded to build railways and saddled India with a huge debt. The British government as well the capitalists compounded it further by fraudulent billing because the vanquished do not audit the invaders.

  A local entrepreneur rose up and challenged Britain & decided that it was time for India to take charge of her destiny and build the railways of its own. That proposal came from Dwarkanath Tagore, (1794-1846), the grand father of Nobel Laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore went to England on March 8, 1845 to seek permission of the East India Company to construct the line. Tagore formed a company called Carr Tagore & Co., but there was bitter opposition from Sir George Larpent, Chairman and Mr. R. Macdonald Stephonson, the Managing Director of the E.I.R. (East India Railway). Dwarkanath Tagore had an immense family fortune, a net work of agricultural, mining, trading and banking interests and he controlled it through his company, Carr- Tagore & Company. Tagore even met Queen Victoria during his visit to England but was unable to secure the permission.

  Britain had its own political and economic considerations. They had shown contempt for the Indian national or political interests and were not going to be swayed by Tagore’s visit. Commercial considerations were plenty. Cotton was one of the principal motivator. Since the cotton famine, Lancashire lobby was pressing the Parliamentary Committee to provide rail transport. There was plenty of cotton in India, great tracts teeming with produce and cheap too, compared to the American South, which was compromised by its slavery system.

  The political considerations also played in the direction of the railroad. Britain suffered a stunning reverse in Afghanistan in 1840, an army of 15,000 was totally annihilated and Britain was itching for a second round to avenge defeat. The British control over its dominion in India was still tenuous at best; Punjab was eluding it & its mighty Sikh army was a matter of serious concern. The British forces suffered reverses in Punjab and Lord Dalhousie was pressing the home office for railway so that he could move the forces swiftly. Railway was essential to utilizing its army in the vast sub continent efficiently and economically. So, in 1845, a dozen companies proposed to build railroad in India. A lot of interest vied for that gravy train and only two serious proposals got the blessing of the British Government; The East Indian Railway Company and the Great Indian Peninsular Railway for the Bombay region. And the third proposal from Dwarkanath Tagore was a fly in the ointment.

  Dwarkanath was very keen to have the railway line to the collieries and proposed raising one third of the capital. He set up a parallel company named Great West Bengal Railway, which was to serve a commercial line with the principal object of movement of agriculture and mineral products, carriage of coal from Raniganj and Rajmahal coalfields and transportation of passengers. At the same time, Mr. Stephenson formed the East India Railway Company. Dwakanath’s company never took off. Dwarkanath undertook a second journey to England and even contacted the Queen, but his efforts had no effect, he was rebuffed and he suddenly died in England. One more sudden death at a strategic moment, while dealing with the British.

  Dwarkanath Tagore was a nationalist. Earlier in his career, the government in Bengal had appointed him the Dewan, or the head of the salt and opium department. Tagore’s interests were many not all of them commercial; he was involved in the establishment of Hindu College, Calcutta Medical College, the National Library, the Agriculture and Horticulture Society of India, the Hindu Benevolent Institutions and the like. Carr- Tagore & Co. had the backing of Indian masses to start an indigenous rail road system.

  In view of the political considerations, for Britain, it was an explosive situation and they would not let Carr- Tagore to have anything to do with the Indian Railway. The British capitalists and the British political considerations prevented the local enterprise to build anything in India, railways included. Money interests of East India Company and P. & O. prevailed. The British Indian Administration provided the guarantees against loss and guaranteed five- percent returns on the capital. The government also provided the land to the British capitalists to build the railroad. India had no industry what so ever, and there was no way, railway in India was going to pay for itself. In other places, like Russia, France, Germany and the United States, railways accelerated the industrial progress. In India, railways were built to secure the ‘Raj’, provide cotton to Lancashire mills and to build a depot for Britain’s industrial goods. India had no representation in the British governme
nt and Britain was saddling India with debt without its consent. In Bombay region, railway lines were laid to bring cotton from Gujerat and Nagpur regions for export to England. Bombay, Madras and Calcutta presidencies were linked after the mutiny and Calcutta was linked to Delhi. India had no voice in it. Dwarkanath Tagore demanded representation of each Presidency in the British Parliament and lamented that Britain had taken all, which the natives possessed; their lives, their liberty and property and all were held at the mercy of the British Government.

  East India Railway was promoted by Macdonald Stephenson and backed by Cockerill & Co., Fletcher, Alexander & Co., Crawford, Colvin & Co. and several others from the East India Company houses. Macdonald Stephenson was the relative of more famous engineer George Stephenson (1781-1848), who was the first to demonstrate successfully the use of steam locomotive for haulage of goods and passenger traffic. Stephenson’s locomotive continued in regular operation at Killingworth colliery. The first commercial train ran between Stockton and Darlington in 1825 under the supervision of its famous inventor, George Stephenson. Mr. Stephenson carried out a survey himself from Calcutta to Delhi during the winter of 1845-46. The construction of a railway line from Howrah, opposite bank of Hooghly River at Calcutta, to Raniganj was sanctioned as an experimental measure. By the end of 1853, the line was ready up to Pandooah, a distance of 38 miles from Howrah but the railway line could not be completed in a timely manner because of the boundary dispute between the French and British at Chandernagar, as the rail line was passing through the French territory. The European colonial interests had totally paralyzed the Indian nation. The British firm Kittson & Hewitson built the locomotive named ‘Fairy Queen’ in 1854. It is displayed at the Rail transport Museum in Delhi. The railway line was officially opened up to Hooghly, in 1854. The line up to Raniganj, a distance of 120 miles was opened to traffic in 1855 and it was extended to link with Delhi in 1866.