Indigo and the Island - Part Two
The rise and fall of the Indigo industry.
In part one, I wrote about the growth of the Indigo industry in Bihar, India and especially the Skye connection to the industry.
In this second post I will look at just how much profit there was in indigo and the land-owning practices which were implemented in the region of Bihar. Practices which would have made any Highland Laird nod in approval.
I’ll also look at what led to the demise of the indigo industry. That part of the story involves industrial espionage, the outbreak of World War One, and the first political campaign by a young man called Mahatma Gandhi, for the rights of indigo workers.
MORE PROFIT THAN WARREN BUFFETT
That the work was financially successful is in no doubt. One of my informants talked of a letter the family received from a young family member in India who had got a new job as a plantation manager. The job paid £5000 a year, which was the equivalent of “landing a job as a banker in those days”
Money from indigo brought about seismic changes in Scotland’s social hierarchy and landowning landscape. One example – the Duke of Sutherland sold a large part of his estates to a man from Alexandria, near Glasgow, who made his fortune in indigo dyeing.
In the book European indigo factories in Lower Provinces of Bengal, 1831, the profitability of Bengal indigo was “23 percent on total investment”. This is very high indeed. To put that into context, Warren Buffet, the Seer of Omaha, considered the greatest investor who ever lived, managed annualised gains of around 20 percent.
Let’s look at how long it would take an investor to double their money, using the Rule of 72. Dividing 72 by the interest rate gives you 3.1. So an investor would have doubled their money in just three years.
GROWING CONCERNS
With increasing wealth, plantation managers often developed or bought into their own indigo concerns. This diversified into an involvement in sugar production and tea.
One might also bear in mind that many indigo plantations also planted opium, as the growing seasons complemented one another.
This was another lucrative crop, but at an enormous human cost.
LAND USE IN THE INDIGO LANDS OF BIHAR
The arcane and exploitative nature of land use in the indigo lands of Bengal would have made any Highland Chief nod in approval.
“Planters in Bihar organized the cultivation of indigo on land under their direct control on what were called the zirat lands. The ownership of land was usually acquired through the purchase of leases over entire villages from the landlords.
Such leases gave planters access to the traditional power of the landlords in the Bihar countryside. So even if the planters did not “own” the land in any absolute legal sense, they had sufficiently strong rights over the land in their possession. This system of indigo cultivation was different from the prior practice in Bengal, where the indigo was largely grown by giving out contracts to Indian peasants.”(Indigo Plantations and Science, p134)
The Lieutenant- Governor of Bengal J.P. Grant, for the better understanding of the British people, said that:
“One-sixteenth of his whole land is a common portion which, it is insisted, an indigo ryot shall sow in indigo. This is as though a farmer in Great Britain, farming under a long lease of 160 acres of land, at a rent of 21 an acre, were, by some sort of pressure, forced to cultivate 10 acres, say in flax, which he was compelled to sell to a certain neighbouring manufacturer at a dead loss of 140/ a year.
This is worth restating, that the tenant farmers, or ryots (who worked the land but did not own it), made a dead loss working in indigo.
Grant compares this to a new English landlord forcing a loss on several thousand Irish cottars.
“If one remembers that these ryots are not Carolina slaves, but the free yeomanry of this country, and, indeed, strictly speaking, the virtual owners of the greater part of the land in the old cultivated parts of Bengal, so heavy a loss as this will fully account to us for the strength of the opposition to indigo cultivation which we have just experienced. (Bengal Industries and the British Industrial Revolution (1757–1857) by Indrajit Ray (2011)
THE BLUE REBELLION – NIL VIDROHA (1859-60)
The Blue Rebellion (or Nil Vidroha) in1859-60 was the “strength of opposition” to which he referred. This was the beginning of the end for the indigo industry, which became an increasingly widespread campaign against its practices.
It was indeed a violent reflection of people's attitude towards indigo cultivation. Referring to the rebellion, C. Wood, the Secretary of State for India, agreed with the view put forward by the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal:
“… that the cultivation was unprofitable to the ryot, who was required to furnish the plant at a price which, with the extra charges to which he was subjected, did not reimburse him for the cost of production.” (Ray, 2011)
ARGUMENTS AT THE TIME IN FAVOUR OF INDIGO PLANTATIONS
There were, of course, opposing arguments in favour of the economic activity that indigo cultivation brought to certain areas. Although, I think it might be fair enough to point out that improvements would have been rather more considerable had the ryots not been making a financial loss on the work.
One comment put on record by Raja Rammohan Roy:
“As to the indigo planters, I beg to observe, that I have travelled through several districts in Bengal and Bihar, and I found, the natives residing in the neighbourhood of indigo plantations, evidently better clothed and better conditioned than those who lived at a distance from such stations” (Roy, 2011)
Likewise, the Governor General of India, Lord William Bentinck, minuted:
“every factory is in its degree the centre of a circle of improvement, raising the persons employed in it and the inhabitants of the immediate vicinity above the general level.” (Ray, 2011)
Not everyone agreed with this. Especially the indigo workers themselves.
THE DEMISE OF THE INDIGO INDUSTRY
The Indigo industry was one of the key points of conflict between the British Government and the nascent Indian Independence movement.
It was in Bihar, supporting indigo workers, that Mahatma Ghandi launched one of the first major campaigns for Indian Independence, the “Champaran Satyagraha” campaign in 1917.
But in the end, this was just one of the factors which caused the end of the Indigo industry. Because in 1880 a chemist in Germany called Adolf von Baeyer was to bring a new product to market through his new company. A new chemically produced dye.
The company’s name – BASF.
END.
The third part of the story will explore how a range of factors came together to bring an end to the large-scale indigo industry in India. Scientific breakthroughs in synthetic dyes, the disruptions caused by the First World War, and episodes of industrial espionage all played a role—alongside a growing wave of resistance in the Champaran indigo districts.
You can read this post in Scottish Gaelic here.
Thanks for reading.