In this essay we will discuss about the Growth of Middle Class in India:- 1. Meaning of Middle Class 2. Pre-British Indian Society 3. Growth of Middle Class in Britain 4. Middle Class in India 5. Emergence of Commercial Middle Class 6. Emergence of Agents, Brokers and Middlemen 7. Commercial Class as a Pressure Group 8. Industrial Middle Class 9. Company Servants and Industrialization and Other Details.
Contents:
- Meaning of Middle Class
- Pre-British Indian Society
- Growth of Middle Class in Britain
- Middle Class in India
- Emergence of Commercial Middle Class
- Emergence of Agents, Brokers and Middlemen
- Commercial Class as a Pressure Group
- Industrial Middle Class
- Company Servants and Industrialization
- Indian Investment
- Management Agency and the Middle Class
1. Meaning of Middle Class:
The term “middle class” as interpreted in relation to the materialistic approach of the society, emerged under the aegeis of the Pax-Britannica. In the western society, especially after the industrial revolution, the classes were divided into upper, middle and lower classes in accordance with their economic strength.
According to Prof. Misra in a materialistic society “It is briefly the economic inequality of man that influences, if it does not wholly determine, social differentiation”. Therefore, the class definition of modern times “arises from the difference of relationship which a person or groups bears to property or the means of production and distribution.” In such a society, it is the ownership of the means of production which raises the social status of an individual rather than the birth which decided the place of human beings in the Sanskritized society.
An individual naturally enjoys a low status in comparison to the owner in whose employment he earns his livelihood. A modern society is, therefore, divided into classes or groups of people joined together from motives of common economic interests, common ways of behaviour, and common traits of character. Each such class forms a hierarchy of status according to the varying quality of social prestige and power expressed through the standard of living, nature of occupation, and wealth.”
Thus modern thinking of the society was different from that of ancient or medieval times. Then it was political and religious power which earned a higher social status. But the emergence of commercial and professional and colonisers in the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries started questioning the dominance of feudal and ecclesiastical leaders.
Philosophers like Rousseau echoed “equality, liberty and fraternity”. Inspired by the new thought the subjected people, but strengthened with the wealth, earned without land and out of the commercial adventures, started fighting for equality of opportunity on the basis of qualification and ability.
They broke the hold of feudal chiefs. Their struggle led to recognition to wealth, education and power attained by one’s own individual skill. It was this group people fighting against the old social order which emerged as middle class or “bourgeoisie” in the western societies.
2. Pre-British Indian Society:
Taking into consideration, the class character of the military aristocracy of the medieval times, the society can be divided into the following categories: The Brahman and the warriors (Kashatriyas), the business community or the Baniyas, the artisans and craftsmen and the working classes. All of them were strictly confined to their castes and professions and did not have the courage to give up their calling and accept a new one.
They did not get any special education or training and were deprived of scientific education and research and were restrained from the advancement of their skills. Training to the professions was more or less hereditary and descended from father to son. This segmentation of the social orders was not at all conducive to the development of a new system.
“Because they remained divided into watertight status groups according to the caste to which they belonged”, observes Misra, “they could not form themselves into a unitary middle class social order, comparable to the western countries, cases of caste schism did arise from time to time against the hereditary privileges, but they were rare.”
The medieval Indian set-up was entrenched with feudalistic character. Therefore, it was always involved in infighting for their selfish ambitions and ego. In the capitalistic system, political and social unity was possible side by side with the growth of patriotic spirit.
“This is the reason why not a single British Officer betrayed his country during the phase of Indian conquest while on the other, several Indian Rajas, merchants and soldiers proved disloyal to the country and acted as traitors”. It was because of the social behaviour towards its members.
In the medieval system, the kshatriya of the Sanskritized society consisted of the king, his courtiers, governor of the province and other nobles controlled army and administered the territories and owned the lands. The priestly class, i.e., Brahamana, was relegated to second place in the medieval power structure.
The Brahmana was still engaged in scholarly and professional occupations, but he was now entirely dependent upon the pleasures of the military aristocracy. The vaishya was constituted both by the merchant and the agriculturist.
The shudra was reduced to the sub-human status and he had not been given” any status in the Indian society. The shudra of medieval times consisted of not only the Harijan of the present age but also the artisans who were at the most touchable shudras.
The industrial growth, for a longer time, drew the needed manpower from the medieval shudra—it was this class which constituted the labour force of modern times. (It may be remembered here that though from 1920s onward, the pecuniary-considerations also attracted people from higher social strata in the industrial sector, but in majority of the cases they filled supervisory posts.
In other words we can say that the upper classes created here also an upper layer in the industrial labour force pushing down the shudra to lower scale of the industrial labour force. It was the merchant, professional, priestly and administrative class which wore the shoes of English bourgeoisie in the British Indian society.
Therefore Professor Misra has divided the Indian middle classes in the following categories:
(i) Merchants, agents, proprietors of trading firms;
(ii) Managers, executives, supervisors;
(iii) Higher salaried officers of institutions and societies, trade associations, trade unions, educational bodies etc.,
(iv) Civil servants serving in the different departments of the Government;
(v) Lawyers, doctors, professors, writers, artists and priests;
(vi) Class of renters, revenue collectors;
(vii) Wealthy shopkeepers, hoteliers, accountants;
(viii) Salaried hands and supervisory personnel of landed estates;
(ix) Main body of students engaged in higher education;
(x) Secondary school teachers and officers of local bodies and social political workers.
The emergence of these middle classes can be understood properly only in the context of the emergence and the character of the British bourgeoisie.
3. Growth of Middle Class in Britain:
Since middle class had emerged in India as a result of British contact, it is relevant to know its emergence in Britain. In the pre-commercial era, the British society was a simple society. There, the production and commerce was owned by the same individual.
“He was a producer trader because his industrial and commercial function were indistinguishably mixed up. The master craftsman was of course there, but he worked with his men under the same roof without any secular or functional differentiation. Their relationship was personal, and together they formed a single category of brother-labourers.”
But the discovery of sea trade routes with the East in the fifteenth century brought a marked change in whole of the European continent. The trade with India and other eastern countries was thriving. Out of this trade spoil, there emerged a powerful commercial class in Portugal and Holland. Their steps were followed by the British and French.
Small group of insignificant traders in England emerged into a giant East India Company who attained sovereignty in India. In juxtaposition with their political power, the wealth started pouring from India into the coffers of traders and servants of the Company.
As a result, the trader and servants emerged as “a separate social and functional category in the British society. He was not only independent of the landlord and the State, rather he had accumulated economic power to influence both the groups who have been placed, since then, very high in the social hierarchy.
So much so the landlord and royal aristocracy had also become “sleeping partners” of this trader class. The wealth earned out of this trade, helped facilitate industrial growth. This moved the wheel of prosperity; and thus emerged the entrepreneurs, the professional and the scholar, who strengthened the middle class.
It will be no exaggerating to say that it was this middle class which finally obtained hold over the political parties and provided strength to outwit the landed aristocracy in retaining the political power in Britain. It is not necessary to go into details, it is suffice to say that it was this middle class which became the virtual ruler of Britain and British empire. This middle class of Britain is also categorized as the “bourgeoisie” in the Marxian terminology.
4. Middle Class in India:
The situation in India was quite contrary to the British situation. It has now been authentically established that Indian economy and industry were highly developed from the standards of those times. Rather India was the then ‘ workshop” of the world. Its industry had given her an edge over other countries.
Edward Terry (1605-1627) was dismayed to see the wealth pouring into the country. To him “as the all Rivers run into the Sea, so many Silver Streams run into this (Mughal) Monarchy and there stay.” Bernier also noted that the wealth “after circulating in every other quarter of the globe, came at length to be swallowed up, lost in some measure, in Hindustan.”
This wealth had enriched urban life all-round. The aristocracy—both military and landed—constituted the upper class of the society; the merchants competing with them. As a result of this prosperity, there existed other professions of recreation, meditation and materialism.
There were avenues to earn the livelihood respectfully; and their voice had been heard in the government as well as peoples’ circles. If that be the criterion then there actually existed a middle class in India when the British were struggling to obtain “equality, liberty and fraternity” in their country.
The Indian society was, however, superimposed by the Mughal autocracy. The Mughal nobility did not enjoy economic stability and psychological security like their counterparts enjoyed in Britain. In fact, the mobility, in all circumstances, could enjoy with their wealth only within their life-time.
They did not enjoy the right to bequeath their titles as well as wealth to their descendants. The wealth belonged to the Emperor, and the descendants had to start from scratch.
Writing about the nobility’s right to bequeath their property to their descendants, F. Pelsaart, an English traveller:
“Immediately on the death of a lord (noble) who has enjoyed the king’s jagire, be he great or small, without an exception—sometimes even before the breath is out of his body—the King’s officers are ready on the spot, and make an inventory of the entire estate, recording everything down to the value of a single piece, even to the dresses and jewels of the ladies, provided they have not concealed them.
The King takes back the whole estate absolutely for himself, except in a case where the deceased has done good service in his life-time, when the women and children are given enough to live on, but no more …
And so you may see a man whom you knew with his turban cocked on one side, and newly as inapproachable as his master, now running about with a torn coat and pinched force; for it is rarely that such men obtain similar employment from other masters, and they go about like pictures of death in life, I have known many of them to do.”
Though this practice strangled the growth of middle class in India, still they had not been ordinary mass. Their status could have a grave danger only from the foreigners, who had been a respectable guests to all the highest posts in the government after the rise of Muhammadan power in India. The descendants of the nobility can be equated with the civil servants in the Westminsterial model.
A son of a Secretary in the Westminsterial administrative machinery had to compete with others to join the “elite service” and he might not be able to come in the selected list, but rarely he would be joining at the lowest of the uncovenanted jobs of this system.
It was only during the British rule which created circumstances for the emergence of middle class as a counterpart of the “bourgeoisie” in Britain. The middle class first of all emerged in commercial sector, and was followed in administration and industry at the last stage.
5. Emergence of Commercial Middle Class:
After the Mughal Emperor, Shah Alam granted exemption of duties on the goods traded by the English, through his Firman of 1713, it went against the interests of the existing commercial people in India. With the systematic policy enjoined with political authority of the East India Company (after 1757), the Indian commercial class were reduced to the status of agents.
They could not gain their power till 1833. But in 1833, the monopoly of the East India Company was terminated by the British Crown and it was left with the task of administration only. The country was thrown open to all, especially English, trade interests.
By that time India had reached a stage, as Professor Misra observes, where “the mild and constitutional character of Government and the rule of law, the security of private property and the defined rights of agricultural classes, a national system of education and a period of continued peace, an economy of laissez faire and a liberal policy of employment and social reform” had been inaugurated.
6. Emergence of Agents, Brokers and Middlemen:
The Company trade monopoly over trade in India had already created a class having potentialities of becoming commercial middle class, dive’s report to the Directors of the Company is self-explanatory.
He reported that “the sudden, and, among many, the unwarrantable Acquisition of Riches, had introduced luxury in every shape, and in its most pernicious excess….Every inferior seemed to have grasped at wealth, that he might be enabled to assume the spirit of profusion which was now the only distinction between him and his superior.
In a country where money is plenty, where fear is the principle of Government, and where your arms are ever victorious…it is no wonder that corruption should find its way to spot so well prepared to receive it.
It is no wonder that the lust of riches should readily embrace the preferred means of its gratification, or that the instruments of your power should avail themselves of their authority, and proceed even to extortional in those cases where simple corruption could not keep pace with their rapacity.”
This tendency increased the lust for wealth and subverted the social norms. Accumulation of wealth by fair and foul means justified the ends. The wealth had been obtaining respect to the people in the society.
Clive himself further reported that the wealth “were so publicly known and vindicated, that every-one thought he had a right to enrich himself, at all events, with as much expedition as possible; the monopoly of salt, beetle, tobacco, etc., was another fund of immense profits to the Company’s Servants, and likewise to such others as they permitted to enjoy a share, while not a rupee of advantage accrued to the Government, and very little to the Company, from that trade.”
The behaviour of the corrupt officials of the Company was not only imitated but also got encouragement for rampant corruption among the Indian agents. But the British did not punish a person for accumulating wealth by foul means as well.
This tendency encouraged others also to accumulate wealth by underhand deals. It was the “rule of law operated in the field of free enterprise, (which) contributed considerable to the growth of the commercial middle class. It was this fortune which made it possible for them to build large landed estates. These were thus able to supplant the old aristocracy and commercial monopolists.
7. Commercial Class as a Pressure Group:
As their economic power increased, the commercial people grabbed all the available jobs as well. In 1835, for example, the total number of Indians on the petit jury list of the Supreme Court of Judicature at Calcutta was 99. Of these, 96 were Bengali Hindus consisting of 54 banyans or sarkars, 28 writers, 10 zamindars, 4 clerks, and 3 bankers.
The Parsis constituted the dominant parallel interest an Bombay and the Brahmans in Madras. In this way these people had supplanted the power of political patronage earlier, almost exclusively, exercised by the military aristocracy.
They organised themselves as a pressure group “not only to safeguard their commercial rights, but also to influence the policy of Government in the enactment of measures calculated to encourage free enterprise”. Trade Associations, Chambers of Commerce and Indigo Planters’ Association had emerged on the political scene of India on these counts.
They imitated the role their counterparts were playing in Britain. In India also, however, the lead was provided by the British themselves.
The Indigo Plantation, for example, was the exclusive pressure of the British. The Indigo Planters’ Association had formed “to collect formation on ‘the state and wants of the various districts’ in regard to public works, including roads, canals navigation, irrigation and bridges; to receive representations on the ‘state of the revenue laws’ on the ‘administration of justice’, on the state of police and its bearing on ‘the security of person, capital, and industry’; to receive suggestions for reform on all these subjects; ‘to watch the progress of legislation, and to communicate with the higher authorities in India and at home, whenever the interests for the advancement (were threatened by any governmental measure.)”
Their activities inculcated that spirit of furthering their own interests which could be congenial for the advancement of their material interest among the indigenous commercial class. It was their continued pressure that the transport and communication system was improved in India.
It was this British vested interest which, in fact, initiated the process of modern industrialization, in opposition to the Imperial interest of their home manufactures. This commercial middle class also became one of the major source of strength to the political movements and they were always in the forefront. These middle class people increased at the pace of the growth of foreign trade of India.
8. Industrial Middle Class:
Industrial advancement of the country withered away with the consolidation of British rule in India. With it, the artisans also fell fack upon the agriculture; and those who could not find any other alternative became “domestic servants” of the “saabs”. This state of affair continued for long since the British metropolitan industrial interests held up the industrialization of India on the modern times as well.
It was this policy which made the industrial occupation “not a respectable one. It was low and demanding in social estimation”. Thus by the systematic British policy, both economic and sociological factors precluded the growth of an industrial middle class in India on the European lines. It was again the British who made the industrial occupation a respectable one and gave birth to the industrial middle class.
9. Company Servants and Industrialization:
The Company had permitted its servants to invest their “savings” into such “industries” which could be useful to the British people and industries. The Company servants, therefore, invested their capital in such industries which could not thrive in their own country and had a great demand.
Such an industry was indigo and it was the indigo plantation which became, in the beginning, the most attractive field of investment to the servants. It is therefore rightly said that “root of independent British enterprise in Bengal, (and in other provinces) is to be found in the civil service”. They introduced, to maximize their earnings, power driven industrial plants in India. In this way the process of industrialization had been initiated.
After 1833, the British Government terminated the commercial monopoly of the East India Company. It opened the gates of Indian economy to the private European entrepreneurs. Following the civil servants’ entrepreneurship, they invested capital in plantation industry such as indigo, jute, sugar, tea and coffee. The Crimean War had obstructed the import of jute from Russia.
Disappearance of this source of supply of strategic goods like jute goods, increased the importance of jute and jute industry in India. Besides, the Government encouraged construction of railways through private capital. The railways were the first tangible step towards industrialization.
Though it was the greatest source of draining out the wealth of India, but this enterprise also released considerable capital for circulation, created a variety of new openings for employment, and set into motion a degree of social mobility that the country had never previously experienced. This phenomenal growth of capital investment also opened avenue for the investment of capital by the Indians in industries.
10. Indian Investment:
Though constrained with the fear of risk in the event of anti- industrial and hostile attitude of the Government, a few Bengali and Parsi took courage and invested their capital into industrial enterprises. They initiated the process of developing, first, textile industry. It was this investment which created industrial middle class—bourgeoisie of India.
The future development went on providing opportunities for the diversification and growth of industrial activities in India. With it there emerged the great, though junior to the British industrialists in India as well, industrial magnates. They were also helped by the free-trader bogey which emerged stronger and stronger and the Government had to bow down before them.
In this was the private entrepreneurs, both Europeans and the Indians, emerged as the most powerful middle class in India. It was this middle class which wore the shoes of British bourgeoisie and in juxtaposition of the commercial middle class increased its weight in directing the internal as well as foreign policy of India.
11. Management Agency and the Middle Class:
In the process of increasing commerce of India and industrialization of the country to produce export goods, the Europeans had started investing capital in India. The profit volume and the British policy of building capitalist system, there emerged managing agency system.
“Management contracts between British companies and Anglo-Indian merchants—as resident British traders were then called—first became known in the eighteen-thirties when the East India Company’s monopoly of trade ended. It attracted a flood of British capital for, first, railway constructions.
The merchants had a unique opportunity to branch out from export trading into production for exports if only they could acquire new funds. The London and Liverpool houses readily extended the required capital investment if only they could find reliable management able to cope with alien conditions in India. In these conditions there emerged managing agency system.
It was a very source of strength not only of capitalist system but also of the foreign power. The managing agency provided the money for investment by a joint stock company raised in Britain. It was a lucrative profit earning enterprise. Its popularity and growth can be understood from the fact that on the eve of the Second World War, sixty-one foreign agencies were managing more than 600 rupee companies in addition to number of sterling ones.
Andrew Yule, who had been referred earlier, was one of these magnates. He managed 59 companies in India. The growth of this type of managing agencies helped in the growth of managing executives, joint-stock company raisers, shareholders, directors— i.e., all those professions, which are very pecuniary professions, emerged in India. It was this class which gained greater strength than other professions, to pressurize the governmental policies.
Therefore, in nutshell, the commercial class which emerged wealthier in the years of the decline of Indian economy emerged as agents of the foreign capital and government. Taking advantage of their system they also accumulated wealth and imitated their practice. They raised their own companies, invested in industries and formed their joint stock companies.
All these steps led to the emergence of a powerful business community which became the core of middle class in India. They attained that political respectability which their counterpart had been enjoying in the British Westminsterial system.
Outside this middle class, there were landed middle class and the professionals i.e., intellectuals who took up those professions which were respectable. The latter is called the educated middle class.