द इण्डियन स्ट्रगल / भारतीय स्वाधीनता संग्राम (नेताजी सुभाष चन्द्र बोस - ऐतिहासिक विश्लेषण)

STORMY 1930 203
must sever the British connection and attain Purna Swaraj
or complete independence.
'India has been ruined economically. The revenue
derived from our people is out of all proportion to our
income. Our average income is seven pice (less than two-
pence) per day, and of the heavy taxes we pay, 20 per cent.
are raised from the land revenue derived from the peasantry,
and 3 per cent. from the Salt Tax which falls most heavily
on the poor.
'Village industries, such as hand-spinning, have been
destroyed, leaving the peasantry idle for at least four
months in the year, and dulling their intellect for want of
handicrafts; and nothing has been substituted, as in other
countries, for the crafts thus destroyed.
'Customs and currency have been so manipulated as to
heap further burdens on the peasantry. The British manu-
factured goods constitute the bulk of our imports. Customs
duties betray clear partiality for British manufactures, and
revenue from them is used not to lessen the burden on the
masses but for sustaining a highly-extravagant adminis-
tration. Still more arbitrary has been the manipulation of
the exchange ratio, which has resulted in millions being
drained away from the country.
'Politically, India's status has never been so reduced as
under the British regime. No reforms have given real
political power to the people. The tallest of us have to
bend before foreign authority. The rights of free expres-
sion of opinion and free association have been denied to
us, and many of our countrymen are compelled to live in
exile abroad and cannot return to their homes. All adminis-
trative talent is killed, and the masses have to be satisfied
with petty village offices and clerkships.
'Culturally, the system of education has torn us from our
moorings and our training has made us hug the very chains
that bind us.
'Spiritually, compulsory disarmament has made us
unmanly, and the presence of an alien army of occupation,
employed with deadly effect to crush in us the spirit of
resistance, has made us think that we cannot look after
ourselves or put up a defence against foreign aggression,
or even defend our homes and families from the attacks of
thieves, robbers and miscreants.