The Rise in Human Violence

The Rise in Human Valuestc "The Rise in Human Values"

Prof. N. G. Ranga, B. Litt, (Oxon)

Cannibalism

There were times in the history of most of the nations of the world when cannibalism   was an accepted system of human existence. To eat one’s own children was considered to be an extreme form of this, although there were certain tribes which did not prohibit such a thing. But cannibalism was quite a popular mode of life as regards the inter-relations of different tribes.¹ In the numerous and frequent wars which took place between different tribes, captives there were in plenty and the fate of such people was a hopeless one, since they were intended to be eaten by the conquerors. The vanquished were considered to be one of the different kinds of game, secured by the more fortunate who lived mostly by hunting. This habit of considering human beings as game became so ingrained that the civilised Europeans of the medieval times found it possible to talk of the people caught in their man-traps as game, although they were free from the reproach of cannibalism.

Slaughter

But as man’s power over nature increased and as he found it more and more easy to capture game, other than human beings, he came to be able to grow out of his habit and need for human flesh. But the constant inter-tribal wars brought the question of the disposal of the captives into prominence and it was solved by the only alternative of wholesale slaughter. For those primitive people believed that the people of other tribes brought with them their evil gods, spirits and associations, and that their very existence was unpleasant to their own gods and deities.² This progressive evolution from cannibalism into slaughter was helped by the messages brought to the tribes by their old men and witch-doctors from their Communion with their spirits, from time to time. In this respect, there were constant changes of policy. The European nations have been guilty of massacring many tribes in Belgian Congo and other parts of Africa, and in Australia, during the nineteenth century as if they were no better than beasts.

Slavery

It is difficult for anyone to fix the century in which these primitive fathers of our civilization stumbled upon the more fruitful and humane idea of slavery. But certain it is that by the time the idea of slavery dawned upon them, they must have passed through their hunting and nomadic stages of life and reached the pastoral and agricultural mode of existence. For, only when the labour of a dependent came to have some value in the economy of the primitive society that a slave working for his master in return for his food and clothing could be considered worth having, in preference to his total destruction. Slavery thus became the condition of life for large masses of people who happened to fall captives to other tribes. As the economic life became more and more complex and as it was found to be more convenient to depend upon the labour of others for one’s existence than upon one’s own labour, and as the inequalities of fortune amongst the members of a tribe became more and more important, slaves came to occupy a very important place in the economic organization of the primitive society. Hencethe unpopularity of the socio-economic habit of marrying numerous wives in order to extract work from them and thegrowing value of the possession of slaves. Hencethe constant raids upon other tribes for winning slaves.

Economic Equivalent of Slaves

With the development of inter-tribal social organisation and a systematic code of customs and conventions, both the society as a whole and the individuals in their own turn came to prize their possessions of slaves. Only after the creation of a democratic state in Ancient Greece, an economic theory of the ownership of slaves came to be developed in a systematic manner. Not only was it found possible to fix a price for the labour of a slave but also a regular exchange of slaves for other commodities came to be popular. Slaves were not only sold in open market as was still the custom in Egypt, but were also leased out for certain periods at certain fixed prices. The next step in advance was to recognise the fact that a slave worked better and more to the advantage of the owner if he was offered a salary in addition to the foodand raiment provided, or a wage higher than what was needed to maintain him. Thus it came about that a few slaves found it possible to accumulate small sums, acquire land and other properties and carry on business on a small scale. The constant depletion of the population of freemen caused by the numerous wars between different peoples made the freemen depend more and more upon the labour of their slaves and so it had become possible forthe latter to attain an economic importance in society which they lacked before. After a while, the masters began to claim all the property of their slaves after their death in addition to claiming a right of property in the lives of their children and they persisted in laying their claims in however subdued a form it might be to both these legacies of their bondsmen for centuries after slavery was practically abolished; for the freed serf had to pay ‘heriot’⁴ to his lord upon all the deceased members of his family and to obtain the sanction of his feudal lord to send his children abroad or to marry them or to allow them to marry⁵ into the families of other Lords’ bondsmen. Yet the slaves continued to make progress and won the right of purchasing their freedom from their masters for the payment of a price.

System of Ransoming Captives

With the growth and popularity of money economy had arisen the system of ransoming the captives. With the development of Central Governments and the establishment of more or less permanent societies of people, it had been found that it was profitable to ransom the captives by the people of different warring societies rather than converting them all into slaves. Even long before ransoming the captives became so popular, it was found more profitable to allow slaves to purchase their freedom, owing to the inter-breeding that had been going on between slaves and masters, among other causes.
Evolution in Different Countries

Different countries reached the stage when slavery as an important system of human relations came to be abolished, at different stages of their economic and social development. Greece and Rome were never able to get on without slaves and in fact the economists of Greece laboured hard to develop a scientific theory of the economics of slave ownership. True it is that the Stoics and others strove their best to conceive the idea that human beings could all be equal and the Roman lawyers successfully argued that all men were equal in nature and so the Jus Naturale should make no distinction between different people. But we must not overlook the fact that both Plato and Aristotle took the system of slavery for granted and that the latter even went to the length of providing a political and philosophical justification for slavery and that the Roman Tribunes as well as Emperors found it a convenient instrument in the then prevailing social and economic organisation of society.⁶ Although most of the nations in Western Europe were able to emerge through the medieval times, after having shed their systems of slavery, they persisted until the time of Wilberforce in converting free human beings of Africa into slaves and carrying on in them a very remunerative trade and peopling the South Indies and South America with large numbers of black slaves. Wilberforce set the seal of a more humane civilisation upon the history of the nineteenth century by persuading the British Government to abolish slavery in its Colonies, and Castlereigh persuaded the International Conference of the second decade of the last century to accept the British policy.⁷ But Russia continued its disastrous policy of converting the free Russian peasants into slaves, a policy inaugurated by Goodnoff Boris, until 1855 when Alexander II took the epoch-making step of abolishing this inhuman institution of slavery. India has not escaped the curse of slavery and her history bristles with instances of more inhuman slave trade than can be found elsewhere. Kautilya only tried to place slavery upon a systematic basis and the instance of Harischandra and his wife being sold in the bazaars of Benares symbolises what was already an accepted human system. That Brahmins could be converted into slaves is indicated by the allegorical story of the Tamil saint Gnana Sambandars⁸ It is only a couple of years ago that the Maharanee ofNepal decided to abolish slavery in her State. There are still people who believe that this nefarious trade is being carried on in Negroes of Africa by some European businessmen. As for India, many Brahmins and Vaisyas of the South sell their daughters to their castemen, and some Brahmins and Non-Brahmins sell their young girls to prostitutes, who hope to perpetuate their degrading  progeny by such incumbents. The cry against ‘white slave traffic’ indicates that through some means or other, some white women are bought and sold, their inherent utility being their sex. Therefore it is wrong on the part of students of Social Science to comfortably conclude that the blot of slavery has at last disappeared from human society. Through some crevice or other, in some garb or other, real slavery persists, though to a less extent than formerly.

Villeinage

Very many causes contributed to the disappearance of slavery and the creation of the system of villeinage; the most important of them being that it was found cheaper for the masters to let the slaves become villeins who had to try their best to maintain themselves upon the small patches of land given to them, after contributing freely as much labour to their lords as was demanded. The villein–the so-called free-man–was superior to slaves, in that he had a right to his life while the slave was completely the property of his master. The villeins enjoyed a wer-gild, ranging from £2 to £4 per head but the slaves did not possess such a privilege. On the other hand, the former had to work freely on his lord’s farm whenever called upon, to the detriment of his own interests, to get his corn grinded into flour, his bread made and his beer brewed by his lord, while the land he was granted was insufficient to provide him with enough food. He was obliged to give presents to his lord whenever the eldest son and daughter of the latter were married, and to purchase his consent to let his sons and daughters marry, and win his permission to leave the estate either temporarily or permanently. His children were considered to be the villeins of his lord, who looked upon them as a piece of property. He could be sold along with the property of the lord to which he was attached. His women were not free from the corrupting influence of his lord’s attentions and his marital relations were strictly regulated by his lord. Thus his freedom was circumscribed to such an extent that his life was on occasions less bearable and enviable than that of his ancestor–the slave. He inherited all the disqualifications of his ancestor without his economic security.⁹ It often happened that more fortunate men i.e., freemen were forcibly degraded into villeins, while the few privileges enjoyed by the latter were gradually abridged. Hence it was that the wer-gild of villeins was considerably decreased and the number of Anglo-Saxon free-men dwindled almost into nothing after the Norman Conquest.

The Sporting Chance

Slowly through the shelter of custom and many non-apparent changes in the economic structure of society, the villein came to improve his condition and to win a few privileges. Owing to the unrest amongst the villeins and the outbreaks of rebellion in the Manors and the Monasteries, both the lords and monks were obliged to lessen their control upon the social and economic life of their villeins. But such privileges as getting fuel freely from the lord’s woods, using the village commons, cultivating a small portion of the lord’s lands for their own use, breeding a few cattle or pigs on their own account, were so much subject to indefinitely understood privileges that there was very little chance for these people to prosper. That the number of these people was not inconsiderable is indicated by the fact that as many as fifty per cent of the population of England in the thirteenth century belonged to this class.

But this system of villeinage was not peculiar to Europe alone. It existed in all its rigour and misery in India until very recently. It is only within the memory of most of our old villagers that our rural economy came to be free from this degrading system. Every ryot used to have a right of property in the person and progeny of his villein. It is true that most of our villeins belonged only to the castes of untouchables, but even these people numbered fifteen to twenty per cent of our rural population. The famous example of Nanda, the Pariah saint, slaving for his master, shows how severe and merciless this system was in its incidence even in this spiritualised country. The Nairs of Malabar were scarcely in a better condition till the other day, and what the European landlord claimed hesitatingly was enjoyed freely and profusely by his Indian prototype–i.e., the right of ‘sambandham’¹⁰. Even today, the Chetties of the Nilgiris look upon their Panians as property and they know how to sell or purchase, lease out or rent families of Panians. In fact, a Chetty buys his land with its Janmam Panians who are thus considered to be a portion of the property changing hands.

Revolts

Although the revolts of villeins and peasants of the Continent in the twelfth century did not achieve much good in the way of improving their economic conditions, they paved the way for their more systematic revolt in England against the landlords and monks, in the fourteenth century, after the Black Death. Because of the ravages of plague, the population was halved and the ranks, of workers were thinned to a still greater extent, with the consequence that the villeins were left in a strong strategic position. This, the unhappy workers were quick to realize and they began to demand higher wages, in addition to freedom from the time-honoured contribution of free labour on the estates of the lords and the monks. Many managed to emigrate to the growing towns, which were then coming into prominence and many more were able to force their lords to accept commutation of their services in terms of money. The Great Revolt¹¹ ended disastrously for the workers for the time being, but it sounded the warning that unless the overlords changed their policy, there was nothing to stop the villeins and peasants from freeing themselves completely from all feudal dues, control and serfdom. Many villeins were able to extricate themselves from their untenable position and to become tenants at will and many peasants came to be free from all outside interference and feudal control. The Wars of the Roses and the resulting transformation in the industrial organisation of the country helped this evolution. But on the Continent things moved more slowly because no such natural blessing as the Black Death helped the workers, and the supremacy of the lords and abbots was very much greater than in England, while the masses were more docile than their brethren across the Channel. However the great Protestant Reformation¹² gave an impetus to the movement of freedom among the villeins and the rebellion of the poor in the sixteenth century assumed gigantic proportions. It was typical of the times that so great a Protestant as Luther should dissociate himself from this cause of economic freedom and that all the princes and priests should make common cause to suppress this raising of the banner of revolt, just when they were leading a rebellion against the Pope. The success of the Princes in their revolt against the Roman Church sealed the fate of the peasants and postponed their partial salvation till the French Revolution.

Russia did not even attempt like Germany to take part in the popular peasant revolts. Its serfs were in a very much greater stupor and they had never had a chance of breathing the atmosphere of freedom.¹³ In fact it is doubtful whether the Russian slaves ever passed through the intermediary stage of villenage before they attained complete freedom. As for India, it is not at all an exaggeration to maintain that there were never any risings on the part of her serfs against their lords. Just as in Europe, the priest vied with the lord in exploiting the slave and the villein, so also the Brahmin and the Kshatriya waxed rich upon the labour of the suppressed classes. But whereas in Europe there were frequent risings of peasants and their inferiors against their masters, there were none in India. The caste system with its accompaniment of the theory of the cycle of births had not a little to do with the notorious submissive spirit of Indian villeins. The preachings of Buddha, Ramanuja, Chaitanya, Kabir, Tukaram, and Vemana would have produced widespread risings in any other country, and the fights waged more or less successfully by the many untouchable saints would have stirred to action the working classes of any other country. Unfortunately, India was sunk helplessly in her slavish slumber. The thunderous movements of revolt against her caste system, priest-craft, corrupt idolatry and meaningless ritual and superficiality and materialism went by without enlivening the masses. The Indian untouchable is at the lowest rung of the ladder of civilization in the world and he does not show any effective sign of rising above his station merely because he has not had any tradition of revolt, and he has become a slave mentally and morally to the caste idea, and he has not known that aspect of Hinduism which was taught by Vemana and Brahma Naidu of Andhra country and Nanda and Ramanuja of Tamil Nadu and Chaitanya of Bengal.

¹ It is only two years ago that the Governor of Assam 
persuaded a tribe to give up head hunting.
² Machiavelli and Kautilya talk of slaughter as if it were
nothing extraordinary. Timur, the Tiger, converted the 
streets of Delhi into streams of blood.
³ ‘Economic Imperialism’ by Wolff.
⁴ The Greek Economics, edited by Leistner.
⁵ The Medieval Village by Coulton.
⁶ Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire
by Rostovzeff.
⁷ Russia and Democracy by Wesselitsky.
⁸ Saints of Southern India by S. V. Ramaswamy Iyer.
⁹ The Medieval Village.
¹⁰ The Census of the Madras Presidency, 1870.
¹¹ The Economic History of England by Charlotte M.  
Waters.
¹² Religion and the Rise of Capitalism by R. H. Tawney.
¹³ Cambridge History of Europe.

Reprinted in Vol. II No.1, Jan., 1929, 118-127