INDIAN STATE, SOCIAL CLASSES AND SECULARISM 55 the nineteenth century and during the twentieth century but the emerging indigenous capitalist class was always involved in contest and struggle against the British colonial state which always protected, promoted and showed preferential treatment to the British capital in India. This contest between the 'protected' British capital and the 'discriminated* Indian capital was revealed many a time. If the British planters founded the Indian Tea Association in 1881 the Indians founded the Indian Tea Planters1 Association. If the British Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry was founded in 1920, the nationalist Indian capitalist class established the Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry in 1927. Walchand Hirachand observed in the 1930s that: It is hardly possible to write with restraint on the treatment which Indian shipping has received from its own government.7 J.R.D. Tata, while addressing an audience in London in May 1945, observed that: There might have been isolated cases of expansion, but on the whole, when armament factories and other specialised industries connected with the war have been exclused, there has been none.8 G.D. Biria writing in 1953 In the Shadow of the Mahatma observes that: When I was sixteen, I started an independent business of mine as a broker, and thus began my contact with Englishmen, who were my patrons and clients. During my association with them, I began to see their superiority in business methods, their organising capacity and their many other virtues. But their racial arrogance could not be concealed. I was not allowed to use the lift to go upto their office, nor their benches while waiting to see them. I smarted under these insults, and this created within me a political interest which, from 1912 until today, I have fully maintained... 9 The process of class formation is historically conditioned and the British colonial rule played a crucial role in determining the levels of class consciousness of the emerging bourgeoisie of India. Further, the British rulers followed complex social, political and administrative policies to rule over India for achieving their basic goal of exploitation of the whole Indian society. The British established a very powerful colonial bureaucracy and a uniform Indian Penal Code, the Criminal Procedure Code and the Indian Evidence Act for the governance of India. Since Indian social relationships were very complex, the British showed an immense cleverness and caution in dealing with established social norms and traditions of the heterogeneous and complex Indian society. Moreover, the Ghost of 1857 War always haunted the British in India and they did not want a