The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c6.19

c6.19

With greater rashness I called attention in 1901 to another error in the summary of the District Officer’s knowledge of India, the statement in the then current edition of the “Imperial Gazetteer” that “the greatest industry in India, after agriculture, is the spinning and weaving carried on in power-loom mills.” I showed, by facts and figures taken from the census of India, that this industry was of infinitely less economic importance to India than one which was omitted altogether from official statistics of industry, although carried on under the eyes of every District Officer—the village hand-weaving industry. That brought me into departmental disgrace at once. Only a sentimentalist and idealist would think of mentioning an industry which was moribund and doomed to disappear before the march of Western progress. What did 5,000,000 village hand-weavers matter when 350,000 coolies were working the latest Western machinery in the mills of Bombay and Calcutta? However, as the result of my indiscretion, during the last thirteen years some knowledge of the economics of Indian village life has been slowly trickling on to the official files.