May 21, 2020
“Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India, history will look upon the Act which deprived a whole nation of arms as the blackest.” – Mahatma Gandhi
When many people think of India, they think of a 3rd world country, a former British colony, and primitive when compared to the rest of the world. However, that was not always the case. What many people do not know and what many Westerners refuse to believe, for most of human history, India and China were half the global economy. The Roman Empire at her very peak was barely a quarter the size of China.
When the British first landed on Indian shores in the 1700s, India was the richest country in the world. They were 27% of the global economy while England was barely 2%, according to famed British economist, Angus Maddison and over 100 other economists around the world. By the time England left in 1947, India was under 4% of the global economy. During the official British occupation of India, there were over 31 famines directly caused by British taxation, policies, and food re-distribution to England during famines; compared to 17 famines in India’s 2,000 years of recorded history during self-rule. Over 35 million Indians starved to death under British tyranny. That’s counting the 4 million Indians who starved to death during the Bengal Famine of 1943, which according to recently released British records, was caused by Winston Churchill.
It was no secret Winston Churchill and many more in England hated the Indians. The Indians were not Christian, they were not Anglo-Saxon and therefore they deserved to be treated like animals because they were animals in the eyes of Churchill, and they “breed like rabbits.” Logically speaking, it was a Christian nation of England occupying India, a country that has never wronged or invaded outside their sphere of influence.
If anyone should be hating anyone, the Indians had every right to hate England without any kind of judgment from anyone else. During the peak of the Bengal Famine, some British officials did feel guilty and begged Churchill to allow American and Australian food shipments to dock, however, Churchill famously replied: “Why hasn’t Gandhi died yet?”
Churchill ordered all available food to be shipped out of Bengal for “emergency reserves” for British and Greek soldiers. Their lives were worth more than Indian lives, even though India sent 2 million men to fight and help free Europeans from tyranny while still under the yolk of British tyranny.
The British were not tyrannical some of you may think? I guess the American War for Independence and the Bill of Rights slipped your mind? The right to bear arms, free speech, protection from illegal search and seizure; all rights England denied India.
The word “loot” is a Hindi word and originated from India. The reason why the word “loot” is now in the English dictionary is that there was no word for what England did to India at the time. According to famed economist Utsa Patnaik, using British tax records, she calculated England stole about $45 trillion from India in 173 years. She published her findings through Columbia University Press. Patnaik stated: “Between 1765 and 1938, the drain amounted to 9.2 trillion pounds ($45 trillion), taking India’s export surplus earnings as the measure, and compounding it at a 5 percent rate of interest.”
Westerners Love to Bring Up:
“We gave you democracy!” Well, occupying a country for 200 years, murdering 35 million people, stealing $45 trillion, and then bragging you gave that country ‘democracy’ isn’t much of an argument.
“We gave you railroads!” All railroads were paid for by Indian taxpayers and were built to extract natural resources from central India to ports on the coast. Also, many countries built railroads without being colonized. The United States paid a substantial amount of money to British engineers during the beginning of the Industrial Revolution to build their own railroads and locomotives. The Japanese did the same thing. They paid a substantial amount of money to Dutch, German, Swiss, British, and American engineers.
“We educated you, people!” The last thing England wanted was educated Indians and Gandhi is a fine example. An educated Indian lead to the independence of India. During British occupation, over 85% of Indians were illiterate with a life expectancy of 27-years-old. American historians who visited India during the early 1930s reported British expenses on Indian education from pre-school to college was less than half the high school education budget of the state of New York.
“It’s not our fault. The Industrial Revolution happened to us! You missed the train!” Also false, like earlier mentioned, the Industrial Revolution happened in Europe, but many countries outside of Europe like the United States and Japan paid huge sums of money to European engineers to teach their scientists and engineers the latest methods. Thus, former British colony America and newly modernized Japan both excelled rapidly without being colonized.
Also, India was still the world’s leader in textiles when the British with their Industrial Revolution first arrived. Indian workmanship and quality were still unsurpassed by British innovation. In fact, in 77 CE, Roman senators, including Pliny the Elder, bitterly stated India is “the sink of the world’s gold!” According to East India Company records, the British chopped off the thumbs of all Indian weavers and destroyed all the machinery in the Indian textile industry. They forced all Indians to purchase British goods by imposing high tariffs on Indian exports and lifted all tariffs on British imports.
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