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PAKISTAN : INTRODUCTION 13
destroy the Muslim Empire in India, became a menace to the rest of the Hindus whom they harassed and kept under their yoke for nearly a century. The Hindu Provinces have no common traditions and no interests to bind them. On the other hand, the differences of language, race, and the conflicts of the past have been the most powerful forces tending to divide them. It is true that the Hindus are getting together and the spirit moving them to become one united nation is working on them. But it must not be forgotten that they have not yet become a nation. They are in the process of becoming a nation and before the process is completed, there may be a setback which may destroy the work of a whole century.
In the second place, there is the financial factor. It is not sufficiently known what it costs the people of India to maintain the Central Government and the proportionate burden each Province has to bear.
The total revenue of British India comes to Rs. 194,64,17,926 per annum. Of this sum, the amount raised by the Provincial Governments from provincial sources, comes annually to Rs. 73,57,50,125 and that raised by the Central Government from central sources of revenue comes to Rs. 121,06,67,801. This will show what the Central Government costs the people of India. When one considers that the Central Government is concerned only with maintaining peace and does not discharge any functions which have relation to the progress of the people, it should cause no surprise if people begin to ask whether it is necessary that they should pay annually such an enormous price to purchase peace. In this connection, it must be borne in mind that the people in the provinces are literally starving and there is no source left to the provinces to increase their revenue.
This burden of maintaining the Central Government, which the people of India have to bear, is most unevenly distributed over the different provinces. The sources of central revenues are (1) Customs, (2) Excise, (3) Salt,
(4) Currency, (5) Posts and Telegraphs, (6) Income Tax and (7) Railways. It is not possible from the accounts published by the Government of India to work out the distribution of the three sources of central revenue, namely