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Malcolm Darling and Developmentalism in Colonial Punjab*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 January 2018

ATIYAB SULTAN
ATIYAB SULTAN*
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge, UK Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article studies the career and writings of Sir Malcolm Darling to make three main claims. First, an intellectual genealogy of development studies is presented through the examination of close parallels between colonial efforts at rural welfare and post-colonial prescriptions for the same. Darling was central in the British efforts in Punjab to formulate ideas of reform from below or thrift among the peasantry, both of which remain popular in contemporary theories of community development and microfinance respectively. The similarities between colonial and post-colonial reforms are striking because the colonial experience remains largely forgotten. This intellectual amnesia serves a political end by blaming the peasant for his poverty and redemption from the same. Simultaneously, any structural or revolutionary social change is avoided. Secondly, the article probes the exaggerated focus on indebtedness and the political interests this served. Indebtedness gave the Unionists in Punjab political legitimacy, and the colonial state formulated solutions for the problem that did not tax its resources, for example the cooperative movement was designed to be self-financing. Finally, the article speaks to the themes of this issue by challenging the assumption that ‘institutions’ alone are a legacy of colonial rule and developmentalist reform is a post-colonial preoccupation of independent states. By presenting a case study of attempted economic and institutional reform during colonial rule, it allows one to appreciate the close, contemporaneous connections between colonial modes of governance and current modes of development.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 51 , Special Issue 6: Institutions and Economic Development in South Asia , November 2017 , pp. 1891 - 1921
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank my doctoral supervisors, the late Professor Sir Christopher Bayly and Professor David Washbrook for their encouragement and their critical engagement with the arguments contained in this article. I am also grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions.

References

1 Text of speech, February 1940, Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge, Malcolm Darling Papers (hereafter Malcolm Darling Papers), Box 1.

2 Farewell address to M. L. Darling, The Tukojirao Club, 14 May 1908, Malcolm Darling Papers, Box 1.

3 Papers relating to Darling's obituary, Malcolm Darling Papers, Box 12.

4 The complete titles are: Some aspects of co-operation in Germany, Italy and Ireland (Lahore: Government of Punjab, 1922), The Punjab peasant in prosperity and debt (Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1925), Rusticus Loquitur or The old light and the new in the Punjab village (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1930), Wisdom and waste in the Punjab village (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1934), At freedom's door (London: Oxford University Press, 1949), and Apprentice to power (London: Hogarth Press, 1966). Some other speeches, articles and publications by Darling include ‘The Zeiss works, or what a factory should be’, The Irish Economist Quarterly Journal of Cooperative Thought and Progress, 8, 3 (1923); ‘Luigi Luzzatti’, The Bombay Cooperative Quarterly, 5, 3 (1921); ‘The Cattedre Ambulanti of Italy and the training of the peasant’, The Agricultural Journal of India, 22, 4 (1927); ‘The economic holding or the family farm’, The Agricultural Journal on India, 22, 6 (1927); ‘Presidential address’, Indian Journal of Economics, 8, 30 (1928) pp. 477–96; ‘Planner and peasant in India’, Yearbook of Agricultural Cooperation (1958); ‘Cooperation and India's second five year plan’, Review of International Cooperation, 52, 1 (1959); Report on certain aspects of the cooperative movement in India, Government of India Planning Commission (New Delhi, 1957); ‘Cooperation and the village community’, Review of International Cooperation, 8, 9 (1952); ‘The Indian peasant in the modern world’, The Asiatic Review, 38, 133 (1942); ‘All India rural credit survey’, International Cooperative Alliance Review, June (1955); Presidential address of Mr M. L. Darling, Financial Commissioner Punjab, delivered at the 21st Session of the UP Cooperative Conference held at Lucknow on 30–31 January 1937; ‘The Indian village and democracy’, Journal of the Royal Society of the Arts, 91, 4645 (1943); ‘Cooperative farming in Italy’, Yearbook of Agricultural Cooperation (1953); Presidential address by Sir Malcolm Darling: Proceedings of the First Conference of the Indian Society of Agricultural Economics, Delhi, Feb. 24th and 25th 1940.

5 See relevant paperwork for these assignments in Malcolm Darling Papers, Boxes 3:6, 6:1 and 6:2.

6 Presidential Address of Mr M.L. Darling Financial Commissioner Punjab, delivered at the 21st session of the UP Cooperative Conference held at Lucknow, 30–31 January 1937, Malcolm Darling Papers, Box 1, p. 23.

7 Ibid., p. 19.

8 Darling, Malcolm, ‘The Indian peasant and the modern world’, The Asiatic Review, XXXVIII, 133 (1942), p. 48 Google Scholar.

9 Malcolm Darling, ‘The peasant strength of India’, Asia (March 1941), p. 119.

10 Presidential Address Sir Malcolm Darling: Proceedings of the First Conference of the Indian Society of Agricultural Economics held at Delhi, Feb. 24th and 25th 1940, Malcolm Darling Papers, Box 1, p. 8.

11 Malcolm Darling to Alice Darling, 22 February 1933, Malcolm Darling Papers, Box 1:16.

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24 The Punjab Provincial Banking Enquiry Committee report, 1929–30, Chapter IV, Cambridge, Cambridge University Library.

25 All three succeeded Marshall in teaching Economics or Economic History at Cambridge. See a discussion in Dewey, Clive, Anglo-Indian attitudes: The mind of the Indian civil service (London: Hambledon, 1993), p. 140 Google Scholar.

26 See details in Darling, ‘Luigi Luzzatti’.

27 Notes written by Darling, Malcolm Darling Papers, Box 1.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid.

33 Ibid.

34 Darling's Diary 1930–31, Malcolm Darling Papers, Box 2:1, p. 31.

35 Darling, Malcolm, ‘Report on the Commonwealth conference on agricultural cooperation at Oxford—July 23 to 28, 1951’, The Asiatic Review, XXXVIII, 133 (1942), p. 2 Google Scholar.

36 Notes by Darling, Box 1.

37 Ibid.

38 See Chand Lal, Prem, Reconstruction and education in rural India in the light of the programme carried on at Sriniketan, the Institute of rural reconstruction, founded by Rabindranath Tagore (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1932)Google Scholar for a discussion.

39 Evidence of Mr F. L. Brayne, Deputy Commissioner Gurgaon before the Royal Commission on Agriculture, 22 February 1927, London, British Library, Brayne Papers, MSS Eur F152/29.

40 Ibid.

41 ‘Difficulties’, London, British Library, Brayne Papers, MSS Eur F152/41.

42 Punjab Civil Secretariat to Mohd Afzal Khan, PCS, Publicity Officer, Rural Reconstruction dept. Lahore, 29 December 1939, London, British Library, Brayne Papers, MSS Eur F152/41.

43 Darling to Viceroy's office, 1946–47, Cambridge, Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge, Malcolm Darling Papers, Box 2:8.

44 Darling, ‘The Indian peasant in the modern world’, pp. 49–65.

45 Immerwahr, Daniel, Thinking small: The United States and the lure of community development (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015), p. 3.Google Scholar

46 Ibid., p. 13.

47 For a critical appraisal of rural development approaches in general, see Deshpande, S. H., ‘All-Sided Approach to rural development: How valid is it?’, Economic and Political Weekly, 3, 16 (1968), pp. 638–43Google Scholar and Harriss, John (ed.) Rural development, Theories of peasant economy and agrarian change (London: Hutchinson, 1982)Google Scholar.

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52 Immerwahr, Thinking small, p. 78.

53 Sultan Khan, Shoaib, Rural Development in Pakistan (New Delhi: Vikas, 1980), p. 2.Google ScholarPubMed

54 Immerwahr, Thinking small, p. 10.

55 Ibid., p. 82.

56 See a summary of rural development in Pakistan in Amjad Saeed, Khwaja, The Economy of Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 48–51 Google Scholar.

57 Government of Pakistan, First Five Year Plan, National Planning Board (Karachi, 1957), p. 16.

58 Khalid, A. K., The agrarian history of Pakistan (Lahore: Allied Press, 1998), p. 283.Google Scholar

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60 Masih-uz-Zaman, quoted in Mezirow, Jack D., Dynamics of community development (New York: Scarecrow, 1963), p. 149 Google Scholar.

61 Javed Burki, Shahid, ‘West Pakistan's rural works programme: A study in political and administrative Response’, Middle East Journal, 23, 3 (1969), pp. 321–42.Google Scholar

62 For a detailed discussion, see ibid., pp. 321–42.

63 This links back to scholarship on rural elites dominating the economy during the colonial period; see, for instance, Washbrook, D. A., ‘Progress and problems: South Asian economic and social history c. 1720–1860’, Modern Asian Studies, 22, 1 (1988), pp. 57–96 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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65 Immerwahr, Thinking small, p. 11.

66 Sir Dennis Fitzpatrick, governor of Punjab, note dated 23 September 1893, quoted in Dewey, Anglo-Indian Attitudes, p. 199.

67 Diary for November–December 1945, Malcolm Darling Papers, Box 2:7.

68 Brayne to Hubert Calvert, 3 January 1933, quoted in Dewey, Anglo-Indian attitudes, p. 53.

69 Darling to Brayne 3 September 1941, quoted in ibid., p. 80.

70 See for instance Etzioni, Amitai, The spirit of community: Rights, responsibilities and the communitarian agenda (New York: Crown, 1993)Google Scholar.

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