Number of words: 199

The feudal landlords and their kind who came from England to rule over India had the landlord’s view of the world. To them India was a vast estate belonging to the East India Company, and the landlord was the best and the natural representative of his estate and his tenants. That view continued even after the East India Company handed over its estate of India to the British Crown, being paid very handsome compensation at India’s cost. (Thus began the public debt of India. It war. India’s purchase money, paid by India.) The British Government of India then became the landlords (or landlords’ agents). For all practical purposes they considered themselves ‘India’, just as the Duke of Devonshire might be considered ‘Devonshire’ by his peers. The millions of people who lived and functioned in India were just some kind of landlord’s tenants who had to pay their rents and cesses and to keep their place in the natural feudal order. For them a challenge to that order was an offence against the very moral basis of the universe and a denial of a divine dispensation.

Excerpted from pages 308-310 of ‘Jawaharlal Nehru The Discovery of India, by Jawaharlal Nehru