Quotes from Philip

• “A good company offers excellent products and services.
• A great company also offers excellent products and services but also strives to make the world a better place.” 
• “All customers are important but some are more important than others.”
• “Be a cause, not just a business.  Have a higher mission.”
• “Business, investor, and consumer confidence is shaken and the contraction phase begins.” 

• “Calling a market “mature” is evidence of incompetence.”
• “Commodities are simply products waiting for a redefinition.”
• “Companies need fewer bosses and more self-managers.”
• “Companies pay too much attention to the cost of doing something.  They should worry more about the cost of not doing it.”
• “Competitive advantage is a company’s ability to perform in one or more ways that competitors cannot or will not match.”
• “Cost is of no importance in setting the price.  It only helps you to know whether you should be making the product.”
• “Don’t buy market share.  Figure out how to earn it.”
• “Every business is a service business.  You are not a chemical company.  You are a chemical services business.”
• “Every company needs two marketing departments, one that has mastered the tactics of getting rid of today’s products and the other that has mastered the strategy of imagining tomorrow’s products.”  
• “Every company should work hard to obsolete its product line…before competitors do.”
• “Good quality is cheap; cheap goods are costly.”
• “Hard sell marketing is a contradiction.”
• “I don’t care what happened to your profits.  Have you improved your share of the customer’s mind and heart this year?”
• “I felt strongly that marketing managers, in order to make better marketing decisions, needed to analyze markets and competition in systems terms, explicating the forces at work and their various interdependencies.” 
• “I think it is harder to be a market leader than a market challenger.”
• “I would rather improve my business every day than depend on a breakthrough every year.”
• “If every department only does its own job well, the company will fail.”
• “If it takes three years to develop the product, it won’t be the right product.”
• “If markets are to be segmented and cultivated, they must meet certain requirements. Segments must be Measurable, Substantial, Accessible, Differentiable, and Actionable.”
• “If the marketer does a good job of identifying consumer needs, developing appropriate products, and pricing, distributing, and promoting them effectively, these goods will sell very easily.”
• “If you aim for the average, you will lose.”
• “If you can differentiate a dead chicken, you can differentiate anything.”
• “If you spend too little on advertising, you are spending too much.”
• “If we do not change our direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed.” 
• “Integrated marketing communications are a way to examine the entire marketing process from the point of view of the receiver.”
• “It has become increasingly important for marketing professionals to speak the language of the CFO. A financial background allows marketers to better quantify the anticipated impact of any campaign, which in turn aids in greater buy-in.”
• “It is easier to make money in a mature industry than a high-tech industry.”
• “It is more important to do what is strategically right than what is immediately profitable.”
• “It is no longer enough to satisfy your customers.  You must delight them.”
• “Low paid salesmen are expensive.  High paid salesmen are cheap.”
• “Marketing is a race without a finishing line.” 

• “Marketing is not the art of finding clever ways to dispose of what you make.” 
• “Marketing is the ability to hit the mark.”
• “Marketing is the art of creating genuine customer value. It is the art of helping your customer become better off. The marketer’s watchwords are quality, service, and value.”
• “Marketing is the creative use of truth.”
• “Marketing is the homework that we do before we have a product.”
• “Marketing management is the art and science of choosing target markets and getting, keeping and growing customers through creating, delivering, and communicating superior customer value.”
• “Marketers influence demand by making the product appropriate, attractive, affordable, and easily available to target consumers.”
• “Marketing thinking is shifting from trying to maximize the company’s profit from each transaction to maximize the long-run profit from each relationship.”
• “Marketing’s future lies in database marketing where we know enough about each customer to make relevant and customized offers to each.”
• “Markets always change faster than marketing.”
• “Most companies cannot resist throwing good money after bad.”
• “No company in its right mind tries to sell to everyone.”
• “The aim of marketing is to reduce the need for selling.”
• “The aim of selling is to satisfy a customer need; the aim of marketing is to figure out his need.”
• “The art of marketing is the art of brand building. If you are not a brand, you are a commodity. Then price is everything and the low-cost producer is the only winner.”
• “The future isn’t ahead of us.  It has already happened.”
• “The good news is that Marketing takes an hour to learn.  The bad news is that it takes a lifetime to master.”
• “The hardest job is to tell a customer that your competitor has the better product.”
• “The key to branding, especially for smaller firms, is to focus on a limited number of issue areas and develop superb expertise in those areas.”
• “The major cause of company failure is company success.”
• “The only way to serve your company’s interest is to serve your customer’s interest.”
• “The Research and Development department — not the sales department- – should be held accountable for a product’s success.”
• “The sales department isn’t the whole company, but the whole company better b e the sales department.”
• “The three F’s of service marketing – be fast, flexible, and friendly.”
• “There is an immutable conflict at work in life and in business, a constant battle between peace and chaos. Neither can be mastered, but both can be influenced.”
• “There is no such thing as a commodity.  It is simply a product waiting to be differentiated.”
• “Today marketing needs to be reengineered from A to Z.”
• “Today you have to run faster to stay in the same place.”
• “Today’s economic landscape is being shaped by two powerful forces—technology and globalization.” 

• “Too much of today’s marketing is 1P marketing. Companies mainly concentrate on promotion and sales and disregard product, price and place (distribution). This results in ineffective marketing.”
• “Try creating customer evangelists, the power of cult branding, and creating raving fans.” 

• “Underestimating chaos can lead to strategies that neither defend a company against its vulnerabilities nor allow it to take advantage of the opportunities arising from chaos.”
• “Urging protectionism to save your business is a sure way to lose it.”
• “Within five years, if you’re in the same business you are in now, you’re going to be out of business.”
• “Who should ultimately design the product?  The customer, of course.”
• “You don’t sell through price.  You sell the price.”
• “You don’t sell to distributors.  You sell through them and with them.”
• “You should never go to battle before you’ve won the war on paper.”
• “Your company does not belong in any market where it can’t be the best.”

Did Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi Really get India her Freedom? - ॥ संदीप् बालकृष्णः ॥

After 150 years, the people of India are still groping in the dark to pinpoint the exact legacy of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi thanks to reams of propaganda that has managed to obfuscate several important truths that would provide us a clear picture about the man.

Any honest attempt at this exercise will be rewarding if it proceeds to examine the said legacy based on Mohandas Gandhi the committed freedom fighter, the shrewd mass leader, the crafty politician, and the vacuous, Christian moralist. This exercise necessarily involves studying Gandhi’s life-work: his writing, speeches and deeds. After all, Gandhi himself famously declared, “my life is my message.”

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Manufacturing the Mahatma Myth

One of the most enduring myths that has lasted for nearly a century is that of the appellation, “Mahatma” applied to Gandhi. But for this myth, it is doubtful whether a single dynasty would be able to rule over such a vast nation and the world’s most ancient, non-Abrahamic civilisation as India uninterruptedly for almost forty years. And another fifteen-odd years in spurts.

The fact that entire careers were ruined during that period and then some, for daring to critically scrutinise this myth is in itself proof that like all myths, this one too, stood on shaky foundations and required opacity and obfuscation to keep it in perpetual circulation.

Mohandas Gandhi was definitely a patriot, a tireless freedom fighter and a leader who for the first time, successfully used a unique political technique to mobilise the masses of India, and did lead the freedom struggle from the front. The fact that he joined the freedom movement relatively late in life and persevered till the very end, also speaks of his commitment.

However, what is also indisputable is the fact that it wasn’t Gandhi alone that gave India her freedom. This plot point is both the foundation and the crux of the Mahatma Myth, arguably the most successful and early PR exercises in recent history.

In many ways, Mohandas Gandhi himself seeded this myth.

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Addressing a meeting in Bengal in early 1920, Gandhi thundered , “so long as you choose to keep me as your leader…you must accept my conditions, you must accept dictatorship and the discipline of martial law” to a stunned audience of nationalists and freedom fighters hailing from Bengal and Punjab, the original homes of the freedom struggle. Bipin Chandra Pal wrote an angry letter to Motilal Nehru correctly cautioning that

“Blind reverence for Gandhiji’s leadership would kill people’s freedom of thought and would paralyse by the deadweight of unreasoning reverence their individual conscience.”  

More than ten years later, the iconic journalist, editor, litterateur, philosopher and Gandhi’s junior contemporary, D.V. Gundappa, wrote the following in a deeply insightful essay:

Before Gandhi’s advent, there was an open atmosphere in public discourse….debates, discussions and arguments on various subjects…went on unhindered. Every point of debate had two, three, even four differing perspectives. The public…had accepted this as healthy, and welcomed and examined such differing perspectives without any bias. Thus Gokhale travelled on a specific path. Tilak on another. Lajpat Rai on yet another. Surendranath Banerjee on still another. People would welcome all of them and ponder over the relative merits…of each. This was not limited merely to political matters but extended to economics, social reform and so on. [These] leaders…contemplated on such matters independently and voiced them openly…it was an age of discussing…disagreements in a climate of free exchange.

After Gandhiji took the stage, this culture of free and open disagreement and debates vanished. It was said that the political stand of the entire country should be one, and that Gandhiji’s frontal leadership should be unhindered. It was said that if Gandhiji spoke, the nation spoke. The reasoning offered was as follows: unless the nation adopted this unquestioning mentality, we would not get freedom from the British.

Therefore, from then onwards, no public meeting would begin without the chant of “Gandhiji ki jai!” People were prohibited from taking his name without the mandatory honorific of “Mahatma.” Gandhiji’s thought was the nation’s thought.

Bipin Chandra Pal’s letter to Motilal Nehru had no real impact because shortly thereafter, Lokmanya Tilak died and with it, Mohandas Gandhi’s rise to political superstardom was unstoppable. The slick lawyer Motilal Nehru bided his time and quickly changed tack with the blowing wind: in 1923, his son, Jawaharlal Nehru was elected chairman of the Allahabad Municipality and he himself, the leader of Opposition to the Central Legislative Assembly. The backseat manoeuvring was done by Mohandas Gandhi, a recorded fact that is carefully omitted in popular narrative. Observing this phenomenon, a foreign journalist remarked that “Indian nationalism now had its Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost.”

But it was with the Dandi March that Gandhi truly consolidated his position as the Saint of the Masses. With sainthood also came his unchallenged suzerainty of not just the Congress party but the freedom movement itself. A non-Congress (synonymous with non-Gandhian) freedom fighter had little prestige or voice in this grand monopoly.

The Monopolistic Mahatma

Mohandas Gandhi’s self-righteous disdain for disagreement arising from his unshakeable belief in the infallibility of his own sainthood revealed itself most abysmally in 1945 when the Subash Bose-led INA launched its initially successful offensive against the British Indian Army, which was welcomed with great patriotic fervour by Indians. The Congress attitude both to Bose and the INA was lukewarm to put it mildly. It took great care not to publicise the heroism and sacrifice and victories of the INA. After all, Bose and the INA had actually fought for India’s freedom while the Congress leaders had merely gone to jail…In mid-September of 1945, the AICC resolved that

‘it would be a tragedy if these [INA] officers were punished for the offence of having laboured, however mistakenly for the freedom of India.  

The road to Gandhi’s absolute and unquestionable consolidation of leadership was strewn with his own innovation: the much-lauded Satyagraha and the Ahimsa methods of protesting against the British colonial rule.

This was a true stroke of original genius.

With it, Mohandas Gandhi severed the past of the Indian National Congress, which till then, had been largely a party led by powerful regional freedom fighters, and was in every sense a healthy melting pot of scholars, cultural doyens, artists, businesspeople…in general, there was space for everybody to have their voice heard and respected. As we noted in DVG’s treatise, the culture of open dissent and disagreement underscored by a genuine commitment for India’s freedom was smothered at the altar of a bizarre sainthood, an inexplicable “inner voice,” and a curious “spiritual power” in politics whose sole custodian was Mohandas Gandhi. You could only become a blind follower of Gandhi even if your sense of ethics, integrity, morality, and other laudable qualities were superior to that of the original himself. In nature and tenor, the politics and leadership of Gandhi resembled that of Prophet Mohammed.

What became of the Indian National Congress thereafter is best narrated by R C Majumdar, one of the greatest historians of the world and a freedom fighter himself of rare distinction.

Gandhi combined in himself the dual role of a saint and an active politician…unfortunately, Gandhi’s followers did not make this distinction and gave unto the political leader what was really due to a saint. This confusion pervading all ranks of Congressmen from the highest to the lowest has…distorted public view of Indian politics since 1920 that it has now…become…impossible to make a rational historical survey of the course of events…This is best illustrated by the unquestioning obedience to Gandhi…shown by even very highly eminent persons [who]…belonged to two categories. The first comprised those who willingly surrendered their conscience and judgement to the safekeeping of the political Guru…the second consisted of those who fell a victim to the magic charm of Gandhi even though they fumed at…his irrational dogmas…

The inevitable effect of such sentiments was that great political leaders of the Congress…[regarded] Gandhi as a superman, who was infallible and acted by instinct, not logic or reason, and therefore should not be judged by ordinary standards which we apply to other leaders.

Thus, in this new atmosphere of political sainthood, no more Lokmanya Tilaks, Lala Lajpat Rais or Bipin Chandra Pals would be born; or those that still existed were not tolerated. Subhas Bose learned of this bitter reality by personal experience. Gandhi’s determined and petty backroom manipulation to expel Bose as the democratically-elected president of the INC left him with such disgust towards this saint that he quit India itself. Here is how Michael Edwardes characterises this spiteful tactics of the saint:

“For any aspiring rebel, the treatment of Subhas Bose was a lesson in practicalities,” a brutal reminder of the authoritarian, Gandhian truth : “do not fight the Mahatma.”

Essential to Mohandas Gandhi’s Mahatmahood were his homespun tactics of frequent demonstrations, marches, and flooding the jails, all without any apparent purpose—or at any rate, short-term, short-lived objectives with no clear, overarching goal and timeline in sight. There is a definite case to be made for the sheer purposeless nature of Gandhi’s leadership of the Indian freedom struggle.

Apart from the Dandi March, not one best-laid plan or agitation of the Mohandas Gandhi succeeded for the same reason: there was no precise definition of purpose or outcome. And the British had clearly seen through Gandhi’s tactics very early. And so, they devised perhaps the most effective counter: at every turn, they began to merely humour him but in their outward stance, pretended to take him seriously. Gandhi was a nuisance value to be contained. But when this nuisance tested their patience by August 1933, they decided to call his bluff when he announced a 21-day fast from the Yeravada prison heeding a call of his “Inner Voice.” They simply released him unconditionally, something he didn’t expect. With this move, Gandhi’s pretext for going to prison and announcing his fast had failed: in other words, the civil disobedience movement, which is painted as one of his greatest victories against the British. We turn to Michael Edwardes again.

No one was more shocked [by this] than Gandhi. Prison was an almost essential backdrop for his personal drama…the drama now became a farce…the trivialisation of the technique was now complete and even Gandhi was aware of it.

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The Freedom Struggle of a Christian Moralist

From a cultural and historical perspective Gandhi’s aforementioned clean break from the Congress Party’s past is tied to a very fundamental factor: his twin misunderstanding of the precise nature of imperial Britain’s global colonialism as well as the roots of Indian philosophy, spirituality and culture. Both his predecessors and his contemporaries like Balgangadhar Tilak, Bipan Chandra Pal, Sri Aurobindo, et al correctly understood that British colonialism was an unqualified evil at its core and had to be dismantled root and branch. Even a White American like Will Durant who visited India at the height of British colonial exploitation grasped the reality of the diabolism that underpinned this rule: that Englishmen were in India for temporary purposes, for the continuing opportunity that it provided them for round-the-clock loot and exploitation, and once the opportunity dried up, they would pack up and leave. None of the Englishmen who were in India ever intended to make it their home. Like Will Durant and Michael Edwardes, in later years, William F Buckley Jr and Christopher Hitchens working independently, arrived at the same conclusions. Writes Edwardes:

Only British-ruled Hindu India could have produced such a figure as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi…one effect of his western education was…the conviction that the British were a moral people believing in justice. If they could be persuaded to recognise the unrighteousness of their rule in India, they would willingly abdicate power.

This characteristic Gandhian naiveté is actually inexplicable especially when in his pre-Mahatma days, Mohandas Gandhi had experienced the same British colonial horrors during his stay in South Africa where the arch-racist and White supremacist monster Cecil Rhodes was openly applauding the “virtues” of the British despotism that was “so successfully practiced in India.” These were eminences who formed the backbone of and supplied the justification for their racist and colonial plunder across the earth.

On his part, Sri Aurobindo Ghosh had the benefit of a wholly English education and was also a committed Hindu. He had stayed in England and had lived the lifestyle of Englishmen for a brief period and had a penetrating intellect to see through their true nature. Not so Gandhi who was too guilt-stricken to enjoy even the proverbial normal pleasures of life. In fact, in many ways, guilt was the Aadhara Shruti (or base note) of Gandhi’s personal and public life. In a reply to a disciple, Sri Aurobindo writes that

Gandhi is a European – truly, a Russian Christian in an Indian body… When the Europeans say that he is more Christian than many Christians…they are perfectly right. All his preaching is derived from Christianity, and though the garb is Indian the essential spirit is Christian… He is largely influenced by Tolstoy, the Bible…in his teachings; at any rate more than by the Indian scriptures – the Upanishads or the Gita… 

Many educated Indians consider him a spiritual man…because the Europeans call him spiritual. But what he preaches is not Indian spirituality but something derived from Russian Christianity, non-violence, suffering, etc.

In his expositions on the Bhagavad Gita and Hindu Dharma, it is clear that Mohandas Gandhi was aware of the fundamental Hindu concept of “eternity/eternal” (loosely speaking, “Sanatana,”) but to him the notion of time itself was of no consequence. This is best reflected in his understanding of the conception of Dharma. In the Hindu conception, eternity operates in the realm of Rta (the Cosmic Order), which in human life requires the proper application of Dharma. Dharma is the verb form of Rta. This lack of conceptual clarity is what led Mohandas Gandhi to chase, all his life, one of his pet causes: Hindu-Muslim unity at all costs, and the said naïveté about the reality of the British colonial rule.

History shows us that he miserably failed in both.

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Closing Notes

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi would live to lament the fate of the same Indian National Congress that he had steered and monopolised by the force his saintly spiritual power.

By the mid-1940s, when it became evident that freedom was near in sight, the same Congressmen who had fawned over him and had been subservient all along, simply abandoned him. Here is the indubitable R C Majumdar describing the situation, in an eyewitness-like fashion.

….[prominent Congressmen] under Gandhi’s leadership…made no secret of the fact that they adopted Non-violent Non-cooperation as a political expedient but not like, Gandhi, as a creed…Gandhi himself admitted…late in life…that none of his followers believed in Satyagraha as a creed…and admitted, “even 14 years of trial have failed to yield the anticipated result.” 

[…] 

[Gandhi] placed the cult of non-violence above everything else—even above the independence of India…to him the Congress was a humanitarian association…for the moral and spiritual regeneration of the world…but his followers looked upon the Congress as a purely political body…

[…]

The tragedy of Gandhi’s life was that [the] members of his inner council, who followed him for more than twenty years with unquestioned obedience, took the fatal steps leading to the partition of India without his knowledge, not to speak of his consent. 

In fact, the tragic fate of R C Majumdar’s scholarly career after India attained independence in itself is eminent testimony to the spectacular failure and the logical conclusion of Gandhi’s misunderstood espousal of Satya (Truth), Ahimsa (Non-violence) and Satyagraha (passive resistance of injustice). This towering scholar, respected across the world, was all but banished from the academia by Gandhi’s pet disciple, Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister. Majumdar’s crime: daring to write an objective and unbiased history of the Indian freedom struggle of which he was both a participant and a contributor.

But how else would it turn out? Mohandas Gandhi had after all, shown the way by equating the Congress party with his own personality, and defined Indian nationalism by holding up “his own life and commitment as the only example to be followed.” His disciple, Nehru, merely followed in the Mahatma’s path. 

In the final assessment, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi continues to evoke our admiration for his justifiably numerous traits and accomplishments but singlehandedly getting India her freedom is definitely not one of them.

How the British Systematically Destroyed Indian Food Production

Deprecating the Indian manners

Early European observers and British administrators in India repeatedly came across the Indian habit of offering food and hospitality to all those who happen to come to their door or the village, and they often wrote about it in rather deprecating terms. One of the better known among such observers is Abbe J.A. Dubois, the French missionary who arrived in India in 1792 and spent 31 years enjoying the fabled Indian hospitality in the villages of Mysore, pretending all the while to live as one amongst the villagers. The Abbe is revered as the first sociologist of India for his observations on what he calls the “Hindu manners, customs and ceremonies”. And while documenting the manners of the Indians, he writes extensively about the strict discipline that Indians followed in the matter of eating and sharing their food.

The Abbe writes about the elaborate ceremony associated with the meal of a grhastha [householder]: about the scrupulous attention that the grhastha paid to hygiene and piety in the matter of eating; about the way he took out shares for the gods, the ancestors and the bhutas before beginning to eat; and about the way he desired to have as many guests as possible at mealtimes. He particularly notices the care that was exercised in feeding the dependents. “The remains of food”, says the Abbe, “are never put aside…, nor are they given to the servants. .. .to be a servant is no degradation. A servant generally eats with his master, and what he left could not be offered to the poor, … Rice that is to be given away to the poor… is boiled separately.”

The Abbe, of course, does not approve of any of this, and much of what he writes reads like an extended spoof on the ways of the Indians. The good Abbe was probably distracted by the usual prejudice of a foreigner against the ways of an alien people. He was also concerned that such adherence to strict discipline in matters of day-to-day living made the Indians look upon others, especially the Europeans, as uncouth barbarians, and rendered them immune to the blandishments of what to the Abbe seemed to be the infinitely superior civilization and religion of Europe. It was probably this strict and elaborate discipline that the Indian grhastha anchored in his civilization followed, that made the Abbe come to the despairing conclusion that Indians would rather be reduced to barbarism than accept the religion of the conquering Europeans. To the great discomfiture of his fellow Christian missionaries, he asserts that, 

“Should the intercourse between individuals of both nations, by becoming more intimate and more friendly, produce a change in the religion and usage of the country, it will not be to turn Christians that they will forsake their own religion, but rather (which in my opinion is a thousand times worse than idolatry) to become mere atheists…

Disrupting the polity

The early British administrators harboured similar civilizational antipathy towards the Indian ways. They, however, also had a more mundane objection to the Indian tradition of offering food and hospitality to all comers. As we have seen in the preceding chapter, in the traditional Indian polity that the British encountered here, the precept of caring for others before eating was not left to the whims of mere individuals, but was enshrined in concrete institutional forms. Most localities, thus, assigned specific and substantial shares of their produce to the maintenance of institutions that provided food, shelter and other hospitality to the seeker. A fairly large proportion of the production was thus committed to such institutions, and similar other functions. This put severe strains on the revenue that the British could extract from the lands that came under their control; and therefore the hospitality of the Indians came to be seen as a serious vice.

This, for the early British administrators, was such a serious problem that Richard Wellesely, the British governor-general at the time of the conquest of Mysore, while instructing the British resident at Mysore about the affairs of the newly conquered state, was compelled to specifically warn him about this aspect of the Indian polity. In the detailed instructions issued in 1799 and conveyed to the resident by the military secretary, the governor-general writes:

“But though Hindoo princes are for the most part sufficiently frugal in their immediate personal expences, and though the same spirit of parsimony usually pervades all departments of their Governments, there is one kind of profusion which they are but too apt to practice to an extent that does not unfrequentiy involve their affairs in general embarrassment, namely the alienation of land in favour of individuals (most commonly Brahmins) and of pagodas. His lordship observes that Purniah has already proposed, and obtained the sanction of the late commissioners in Mysore for every considerable endowment of the latter description. His lordship is aware that these are stated to fall very short of what they amounted to before the usurpation of Hyder Alii Khan, but he is also inclined to think that they are at least as liberal as the circumstances of the country will admit of. You must therefore be extremely careful how far you allow any augmentation of these establishments, or any other alienations of the sircar lands on whatever account. It will be proper that you should come to a very explicit understanding with Purniah on this head; letting him plainly know that no grants of the nature in question must ever be made without your approbation, and that there is no instance of mismanagement which would be more likely to alarm his lordship or to impress him with the necessity of enforcing the stipulations of the 4th article of the treaty of Seringapatam than any departure either open or secret from his lordship’s injunction in this particular.”

The 4th article of the treaty of Srirangapattanam, referred to above, gave the British governor-general the right to issue regulations and ordinances for the internal management of any branch of the government of Mysore, or to bring it, as the terms of the treaty said, “under the direct management of the servants of the said Company Bahadur”. 

Bowing to such undisguised threats, Diwan Purniah—who was re-installed as the chief minister of the newly conquered state of Mysore, and who administered the state in the name of the king but on behalf of the British — brought down the resources assigned to what we have been calling the institutions of hospitality and learning from 2,33,954 to 56,993 controy pagodas, in the very first year of the new administration. 

The amount of 2,33,954 controy pagodas, which was assigned to temples, mathams and muslim institutions during the reign of Hyder Ali Khan was itself, as the British governor-general acknowledges, far below what would have been allowed under more traditional Indian arrangements, that prevailed before Hyder Ali Khan’s accession to power.

To be continued

Notes

1. Abbe J.A. Dubois, Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, 3rd edition, Oxford 1906,p. 184.
2. Cited in the editor’s introduction to the above, p. xxvi.
3. Letter from W. Kirkpatrick, military secretary to the governor-general, to Col. Barry Close, British resident at Mysore, 4.9.1799, in Wellesely Papers, British Museum, Add Ms 13669. Extracts reproduced here are from papers kindly made available by Sri Dharampal.
4. See, Major M. Wilks, Report on the Interior Administration,Resources and Expenditure of the Government of Mysore, Fort William, Calcutta1805; reprint, Bangalore 1864, para 185, p. 34.

Source - https://dharmadispatch.in/how-the-british-systematically-destroyed-indian-food-production/