230 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
share of the burden of the State without their being sensible of the fact. But there is a limiting principle which forbids the imposition of certain kinds of indirect taxes. It may be said to be agreed by students of public finance that indirect taxes be such that the poor on whom they impinge rather heavily relatively speaking, must be able to adjust the burden of such taxes to their means. When such indirect taxes fall on luxuries it is possible for them to apportion for themselves the burden they need must bear by regulating their purchases. But in those cases where they fall on necessaries of life this elasticity is not possible. The pernicious character of the salt tax in India was urged as a sufficient ground for its elimination from the revenue system of India. But not only did the Executive refuse to accept the demand, it actually increased the salt tax whenever a deficit has occurred instead of tapping some other source of revenue, which it could have done with equal ease and greater justice. In 1886, to cite one example, it was admitted [1] that
“ There can, after all is said and done, be no manner of doubt, but that one great fact remains established, one great blot not only unremoved but aggravated by the course of events in recent years ..… It is that ..... the classes in (India) which derive the greatest security and benefit from the British Government are those who contribute the least towards it.”
But in the Budget of 1887-8 the Executive eschewed its own conviction and inceased the salt duty to make up for the deficit caused not by any extraordinary measure of internal improvement but by an enormous act of external aggression, namely the conquest of Burma, as though the income tax of
1886 which left untouched the incomes of the Bengal zamindars, the Assam Tea planters and the Talukdars of Oudh, in making the richer classes pay, made them pay, at the very moderate rates it levied, all they could be made to pay.
But the salt tax is not the only instance of inequity under which the masses paid for the classes. The land revenue as it has been levied in India may be cited as another example of inequity in the Indian Tax System. The sources of inequity are various. There is first of all the glaring fact that in some cases the amount of the tax
1 Cf. the speech by Sir A. Colvin on the License Tax Amendment Bill in the Supreme Legislative Council on January 4, 1886.