The impact of british colonisation in India

[Sourav]

[Sourav]

After the cultural disaster, let's speak about the economy now

Last time I spoke about how the then British politicians successfully destroyed our cultural pride, and today we are in a situation where not knowing an English word is shameful to us, and worst, we are more proud speaking in English and ridiculous if try to speak « only » in Hindi without using any « foreign » word.

I was reading an article by François Gautier, one of my most favorite western authors (he is a French, incidentally, and one of his books, Un autre regard sur l’Inde is a must read for every French who wants to understand India to some extent, and where he has revealed those things, that are hidden so preciously otherwise by the western journalists.) where he was speaking about Nostradamus’s prophesies (another French who opined highly about India) where he was analyzing what Nostradamus believed about India, that this phase will change, and we Indians soon will come over this colonial hangover, and will start to be more and more proud of our own culture. That soon Sanskrit will revive as our national language, as Nostradamus’s prophesies go.



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Today, I will speak about how our economy was destroyed by the invaders. I was having a discussion with one highly positioned Indian army officer (the name and identity of whom I will hide here, unless he reads this article and wants me to reveal the same) a few days ago, when he was telling that how government sources have come to know that the present market value of precious materials (only) that the British took from India would be no less than 10 trillon dollars (1 trillion = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 = one million million million; 10¹⁸ in the british standard), and that too, till the end of 19th century (> 1900).

Post 1900, when they did a massive cleansing of India’s richness fearing that they may need to leave soon, and when they probably took more than what they have taken previously, has always remain a preciously kept secret and only the British government knows about the gigantic amount of that sum. Probably that will never be revealed.
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[Sourav]

The Fall of the Rupee

After its victory in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), Germany extracted a huge indemnity from France of £200,000,000, and then moved to join Britain on a gold standard for currency. France, the U.S. and other industrialising countries followed Germany in adopting a gold standard throughout the 1870s.

At the same time, other countries, such as Japan, which did not have the necessary access to gold or those, such as India, which were subject to imperial policies that determined that they did not move to a gold standard, remained mostly on a silver standard. A huge divide between silver-based and gold-based economies resulted.

The worst affected were economies with silver standard that traded mainly with economies with gold standard. With discovery of more and more silver reserves, those currencies based on gold continued to rise in value and those based on silver were declining due to demonetization of silver.

For India which carried out most of its trade with gold based countries, especially Britain, the impact of this shift was profound. As the price of silver continued to fall, so too did the exchange value of the rupee, when measured against pound sterling.

On what our economy could be if we had a gold based economy, and had the colonisation not been there, can be imagined by the fact that not too long ago India's was the largest economy in the world, and sometimes second (economy deteriorated with the Mughal invasion, and dropped from 1st to second), second only to China.

Probably a worth reading book here is The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective, where the economic historian Angus Maddison had reconfirmed the fact that India had the world's largest economy in the 1st century and 11th century.



Another nice read on this is the wiki page on economic history of India.
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[Sandeep Sharma]

Sourav,

"The Fall of the Rupee "

is absolutely nice topic u posted...I always used to think how these currencies were defined and why our currency is so low...Where is the base of all this? ... I got my answer....


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Brgds,
Sandeep

[Sourav]

Yes Sandeep, look at the two interesting paragraphs:

1675 - 1700

During this period, the Mughal empire expanded to almost 1,000 million acres (or 90 per cent of south Asia) and a uniform customs and tax administration system was enforced. Annual revenue reported by the Emperor Aurangzeb's exchequer exceeded £100 million in 1700 (twice that of Europe then). Thus, India emerged as the world's largest economy followed by China and France.

British East India Company Rule

By the end of the colonial rule India inherited an economy that was one of the poorest in the world and totally stagnant, with industrial development stalled, agriculture unable to feed a rapidly accelerating population. They were subject to frequent famines, had one of the world's lowest life expectancies, suffered from pervasive malnutrition and were largely illiterate.

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There are many factors that contributed to the world's largest economy deteriorating to one of the poorest, all linked to the British colonization, and apart from the robbing our riches from India to England and exploiting our people, result of which is seen from the above two paragraphs, it's another fact that they ensured that our economy continued to suffer ever after they left, by denying our right to have a gold based economy.

It seems that this one act of forcing us to have a silver based economy had probably as bad, if not worse, impact on our economy as I found that a rupee which was probably stronger than any money around in as late as the early 17th century, and which was still at around .33 dollars when they left, went to an rather insulting figure by 2002 when a dollar became close to 50 rupees.

If we had a gold based economy, even after all what they did to India, we still probably had a rupee today whose value would stand close to a dollar. Imagine, how rich we would be, today, individually and as a nation, if we were not denied the right to have a gold based economy.

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Next, I'll probably speak about the industrial revolution, how Indian businessmen were denied the right to take advantage of that and how the British started this with our money, our man power, and above all, our knowledge base. But for that, first I need to do some study to get enough arguments to justify my article.


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[Sandeep Sharma]

That's really interesting to know....

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Brgds,
Sandeep

[cinthy]

Hi all,
Hey ! THis topic is great Sourav ! Very interesting !
Thanks a lot ! In fact, next year, if I continue my studies doing a Master in English ... I'd like to do my paper on The British Empire in India ...
Thanks,
Cinthy

[Sourav]

[cinthy]

Hi all,
Yeps, I hope that if I continue doing a master at my univ. (still donno what to do next year :S what a shame ...) I'll be able to do it on this subject ! If I do so, I'll tell you about it ...
see ya,
Cinthy

[Indian]

indian chapati can never be supressed. jitna dabaoge, utna phoolegi.
time will come when we will b on top, all over again. and that time is not far away....

[Sourav]

[lsaraf]

One of the great philophers Bernad Shaw once said
"People in future will refuse to believe that a real Gandhi ever lived in flesh and blood" ...

[tinterdiva]

nice buddy
i like the way u started the first para........
pretty gud hope you have a strong history background
regardz

[murtazabaker]

Excellect !! All the articles and history I;ve read till date makes me beleive in this one.
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[shaun schon]

While your post is extremely interesting and does contain very valid information it is extremely one sided, and to some extent the objective seems more propagandist than academic. The wealth that you speak of in our past was not really ours but concentrated in the hands of the ruling elite. I guess the lower castes did not or do not constitute the population of the nation in the opinion of some, so considering them when examining social welfare would be optional and unnecessary. Secondly, the very concept of India as a nation is flawed. There is absolutely no unity as a nation. It's strange how those tagged with their parents nationality flock together when in a foreign land. At home there is as much rivalry and hatred between the inhabitants of different states as there is between India and Pakistan. India was never a nation but a land of many independent princely kingdoms that were constantly clashing with each other. If not, the British would never have got a foot hold on the sub-continent. If you do remember, we were sold out. That was not a one off incident, but just one of many.
This is certainly not a justification for British barbarity or high handedness, but a critique of misguided nationalism. Looking back to the past to justify the present is vein and unfulfilling pursuit. The British did rip apart the fabric of the many lands they colonized and this was not unique to the British. It is a part of history and part of the evolution of the modern state. Colonialism and imperialism were not creations of the British, but were products of the economical and political structures at the time and it was the natural direction of a state during that period. Expansionism was not unique to Europe, but unlike the European powers, most others were restricted by water bodies. They expanded within the limits of the lands, while some others were forced to expand beyond.
Going by the basis of the arguments against the colonial era offered, I could launch a tirade against modern agriculturalism itself as this itself was the very root of all evil. The foundation of the nation state, the concepts of property ownership, etc. all were born out of agriculture. The beginnings of war and city states and armed conflict or violence can all be traced to the birth of agriculture in the neolithic era. That however was an inevitable consequence of our evolutionary path and there is no point in questioning it or regressing. The same holds true of our past.
There was good an bad. The situation in India is not very different today, with wealth and power concentrated in the hands of few. The situation is in fact more deplorable as Indians have reverted to exploitation of Indians. With foreign rulers the guilt and responsibility for our shame was theirs. In addition, if you do consider the atrocities of the British it would also be fair to point out the atrocities of Indian society such as Sati, bride burning, honor killings, untouchability, etc. etc... One evil was basically replaced with another.
Finally, ideas that we believe in and feel strongly about are sadly the ones that we were brought up to believe in and our minds are largely molded or brain washed from birth with indoctrination. Religion and nationalism are possibly the greatest lies and evils ever and individuals are brainwashed to follow in the identity of their parents tagged with these burdens and indoctrinated from the moment their brains can function. If one were born to a different faith, one would have a different belief and a different world view, and the same holds true for nationality. Both concepts are based on a false and misplaced sense of loyalty and faith. I would rather simply be a human being as opposed to an individual with a tag of a particular religion or nationality. You may as well just put a bar code on me otherwise, for I would just be a product of the society that I happened to be born in.