44 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
The arrangements regarding the stock of the East India Company are in the same iniquitous strain. The stock of the Company was redeemed by a loan which was also added to the already enormous debt consolidated into what is known as the India Government Debt.
What the Act really did was to annihilate the Board of Control : the Company though legally extinct continues to live for all practical purposes and enjoys her dividends even to this day in the shape of interest paid out of Indian revenues. The astounding result of this policy was gains to England and costs to India. When every effort at giving justice to India failed in the British Parliament, Lord Derby moved that this enormous debt of India be guaranteed by the Parliament so that on the security of it the interest rate be lowered and the Indian tax-payer be relieved. He said :
“I am aware that the uniform policy of the Parliament and the Government of this country has been to decline all responsibility in regard to the debt of India, which has been held to be a charge only on the Indian Exchequer. Dealing with the present state of affairs I may say at once that I am not going to recommend any change in that policy. I know well the alarm which any such proposition would create and I know the refusal which it would inevitably receive. But this is a question which will recur again and again, and which will have to be considered in the future as well as in the present.
I would likewise ask the House to bear in mind that if ever the time should come when the established policy in this respect should undergo a change, and when a national guarantee should be given for those liabilities, that guarantee would operate to reduce the interest paid upon the Indian Debt by no less than £ 750,000 or even £ 1,000,000 which, formed into a sinking fund, would go far to pay off the whole.”
John Bright who through sheer short-sightedness opposed said :
“I object to an Imperial guarantee on this ground—if we left the services of India, after exhausting the resources of India, to put their hands into the pockets of the English people, the