DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

10.7] RELIGIOUS DISGUISE 395
trade without military adventure, laid down by Thomas Roe (who saw
what had happened to the Portuguese), had been abandoned in favour
of a more profitable one. The Islamic ban on usury prevented Muslims
from making the greatest primitive barter-accumulation. Ultimately, it was
the lowly Pars! go-betweens who first turned into capitalists on the
British model, followed rapidly by Hindu dalals and money-lenders.
Only one further comment need be made : the merchants were not
backed by workers’ guilds, which had vanished centuries earlier. The
money-lender flourished, but had no certainty of being able to collect
from the feudal lord who borrowed. Their own associations lacked
(and by caste deliberately foresook) arms such as the foreigners could
wield. Shiva)! twice sacked the prosperous trade-port of Surat, without
interference by Mughal force, but also without being able to put to
ransom the British ‘factory’ which had a wall and was defended
with rather poor firearms that still sufficed to put off the raiders.
Because it ultimately diminished production, the feudal machinery of
surplus-extraction by force could not support itself; the breakdown was
complete ; political, financial, administrative, and military. It remained
in the Indian character, however, that the reaction during Aurangzeb’s
squeeze^took on a religious guise as did the original repression. Jat, Maratha,
Rajut uprisings progressively emphasized their Hinduism, till then
on good terms with Muslim rulers. The Sikh religion assumed its military
features under the last Guru Govind Singh from this very period, in order
to survive. The Afghan revolt, with the various defections of Aurangzeb’s
own nobles, shows that the root cause was not theological. Decay of
feudalism led only to increased brigandage such as thuggee which,
characteristically enough, contained an element of ritual human sacrifice.
Thus, India was unable to develop a bourgeoisie of its own out of its
particular brand of feudalism in spite of considerable primitive
accumulation. The impetus had to come from outside.
10.7. It was in England, not India, that the bourgeoisie
developed out of Indian gold, the unlimited profits of the Indian trade and
later, Indian wars. This would not have been possible unless sufficient