Did you ask a simple question why British came to India and what did they take from India?

Is it simply to make India modern and teach English?

Or they came here to give a religious lesson to these poor countries of Asia like India and China.

Real motive is completely different. Let’s discuss this in the article. Recently I happened to see a statistics of World GDP changes from 0 AD to current date and found a very strange. Data compiled by Angus Madison [*1] on World GDP pointed out that almost 2000 of history India and china were the biggest economics. See below:

Source: ‘The Economist’ magazine

GDP History

It is clear from the above picture that India and china’s GDP used to be very high. In 1000 AD, China and India contributed together 50% of world GDP. By 1600 India contributed 22% of and china 29%. By 1820, India’s share fallen to 16%, by 1870, its 12%, now as per IMF India’s share would be 6% in 2015.

As per Maddision [*1], the movement of GDP is governed by three processes:

Conquest and Settlement/Colonization

International trade and Capital movement

Technological and Institutional innovation

From long unknown history, India is connected to the world. India had trade link with Roman, Greece and Arab. Whole world provided gold in exchange of India’s/China’s textile, spices, luxury goods, medicines. India developed sea routes, navigational systems, indigenous cotton and heavy industries from ages. The economy of India in pre-colonization time was combination of agriculture and Industry. India’s handicraft was well known, her skilled artists, labor, and trade/industries generated huge wealth.

So what happen exactly after 1600AD when British entered in India and after someday established colonization? Whom to blame? Let’s check what is ‘East India Company’ and what it did to India!

What is East India Company?

It is mother of all modern corporations with various names like East India Company [EIC], John Company, Governor And Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies, Honorable East India Company (HEIC).[*6]

Mainly business is international trades. Its head quarters in the city of London. The business or trades widely across Atlantic, Indian subcontinent, gulf, China. The Company changed the whole course of economic history with unique characteristics. To study this company you need enormous amount of patience. It is the root company grown combining financial strength with military muscle to conquer India and break China’s closed economy.

The company was famous for their treacherous deals, complete monopoly, architect of war & slave trades, tremendous amount of loots, international maritime enterprise across globe, private armies.

Timeline of East India Company in India:

1600 The East India Company was granted the Charter to trade with India

1608 Trade point in Surat

1611 – 1612 defeated portogees. The company started trade of cotton and silk piece goods, indigo, and saltpeter, with spices from South India.

1615 Sir Thomas Roe had a commercial treaty with Emperor Nurudin Salim Jahangir. This gave rights to reside and build factories around Surat in exchange for rare commodities from Europe.

1688 The Company had setup factories in Goa, Chittagong, Bombay, Madras and three small villages in the east of India called Sutanati, Gobindapore and Kaikata which was renamed Calcutta in 1690.

1750 The East India Company started cultivating Opium in Bengal and Bihar to finance its own private army of almost 2 lakh soldiers. Result famine with deaths of 10 million people.

1757 The Battle of Plessey establishing company rule in South Asia.

1780 It was Warren Hastings; the first Governor General of India’s started traffic drugs to China.

1790 East India Company established a monopoly on Opium .Thousands of Bengali, Bihari and Malva Indian farmers were forced to grow Opium.

After 1857: company abolished and formal British rule started.

Amount of loot & decline of India’s wealth

With in some years of victory over Nawab of Bengal the India’s history totally changed. Company established trade and control in India formally. The impact of the company rule was so devastating and multi-dimensional that the fate of India completely destroyed. To measure the impact of east India Company’s plunder and loot you need to analysis effect on India’s economy and trade directly. The impact has Social, religious aspect as well. Let first concentrate on economic and trade side. Company has started siphoning wealth of India.

They have completely destroyed traditional schools, institutions, economic and trade establishments. Strength of Indian economy was combination of agriculture and trade and industries that was systematically destroyed by direct control on land, excessive taxes, and tax on exports of cotton, silk and almost free entry of imported goods. They monopolized sea trade, stopped building ships. It created a condition where people are forced to beggar and death ultimately.

British rules of India can be divided two phases; one is east India company rule and other is direct British rule. The first phase is confidently same time as of England’s industry revolution. The excessive tax on indigenous method of agriculture, industry and huge exploitation has provided excessive fund for their home industry. To describe this, it is needed to mention that the condition led almost 10 million deaths of Bengal people dying in famine in 1769. Never before India’s history had same thing happen. At the peak time of company ruled over a fifth of the world and generated revenue more than whole Britain itself and had own military with a million strong.

Noam chomosky told ‘Places like India and Bengal ( Bangladesh ) which were highly advanced industrial societies by the mid-1700’s but all of the industries which were superior to their counterparts in Britain were deliberately undermined or simply forced out of existence by the British colonisers. India and Bangladesh became extremely poor, feudal agricultural countries supplying Britain with raw materials and as a captive market for British goods.”

Will Durant wrote: “…It was the wealth of 18th century India which attracted the commercial pirates of England and France.” “It was this wealth that the East India Company proposed to appropriate. Already in 1686 its Directors declared their intention to ‘establish ….a large, well-grounded, sure English dominion in India for all time to come.”

Rev. J. T. Sunderland, in his work, “The Causes of Famine in India,” like all impartial writers, has told that neither “failure of rains” nor “overpopulation” is the cause of famines in India. It is caused by “ENORMOUS FOREIGN TRIBUTE,” “British Indian Imperialism,” and the destruction of Indian industries.

“Asia played a great role in civilizing Europe”, PROFESSOR OM PRAKASH of the Delhi School of Economics

“WHAT IS ENGLAND NOW? A SINK OF INDIAN WEALTH, FILLED BY NABOBS” (Horace Walpole, 1770s)

The telegraph, steamship and railway were introduced – not to develop India; it is to for looting more wealth and provided huge logistics for British made goods.

Some statistics of loots & destructions

Famine occurred in 1877,1878,1889,1892, 1897, 1900 where almost 15million people died. Population of a fair size European country died in within 25 years.

In England land tax was between 5-10 percent where in Bengal tax was 90% of rental between 1793-1822

Last Bengal Nawab collected land revenue 817553 pounds in 1764 where within 30 years of British ruler in the same province 2680000 pound was collected.

“When Mir Jafar was first made Nawab after the battle of Plassy in 1757,the British officers and troops had received a bonus of£1,238,575”[*b]

“When the East India Company’s trade was abolished in 1835 and the Company was abolished in 1858, but their policy remains. Their capital was paid off by loans which were made into an Indian Debt, on which interest is paid from Indian taxes. The empire was transferred from the Company to the Crown, but the people of India paid the purchase-money The Indian Debt, which was; £5 1,000,000 in 1857, rose to; £97,000,000 in 1862. Within the forty years of peace which have succeeded, the Indian Debt has increased continuously, and now (1901) amounts to £’2 00,000,000” [*2]

Indian Debt: pounds 51,000,000 in 1857

Indian Debt: pounds 97,000,000 in 1862

Indian Debt pounds 200,000,000 in 1901

The share of the Indian workforce in manufacturing, mining, and construction declined from 28.4 to 12.4 percent from 1881 to 1911

India-China region produced around 73 per cent of the industrial manufactures of the world around 1750.

“The drill plough is said to have been first used in Europe by one Joseph Locatelli of Carinthia (Austria) in 1662.3 Its first introduction in England dates to 1730. But it took perhaps another 50 years before itwas used on any scale” [*3]

Manufacturing industry decline rate

Manufacturing output in percent- world is 100% -AD1750 24.5% -AD1830 17.6% , –AD1880 2.8%, –AD1913 1.4%, –AD1938 2.4%

Around 1800 India had 15-20 lakh weavers with mining being major industrial activity. Due to British policies by 1820 Indian industry was on its knees.

There are accounts of the Indian process of making steel which was called ‘wootz’. The British experts who examined samples of ‘wootz’ sent to them by one Dr. Helenus Scott have commented that it is decidedly superior compared in any other steel they have seen. [*c]

In 1763 smallpox was consciously and deliberately introduced to kill large number of people.

India was birth place of cotton industries and India exported large to the world but by 1835, Indian manufacturer were almost displaced from world market.

Conclusion

When British came to India, it was richest country of the world. Will Durant asserts, “It was the wealth of the 18th century India which attracted the commercial pirates of England and France.”

British not only loot in term of economics wealth or money, they have looted India’s self esteem, pride, Religious Ideas, Ethical values systems, destroyed education system, introduced fake social system based on Divide and rule policy. British completely undermined India’s contribution in the field of mathematics, science, astronomy, medicine, metallurgy etc.

Even India’s ideas are stolen and repackaged to India with suspicion and false histories so that generation can not stand on itself. Still we see great divide in societies created and nurtured by them.

Their first duty was to debunk established system, and backbone of integrity and religious Ideas. Arrogantly Ramayana and Mahabharata declared myth, Veda or Vedic system of studies are sidelined.

It is our duty is to look into India glorious past and re-gain our lost civilization. Mind it; Indus valley civilization has given world a precious gift that is Knowledge.

Concluding with Voltaire quotes: “I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganga (Ganges), – astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc.”

” It is very important to note that some 2,500 years ago at the least Pythagoras went from Samos to the Ganga (Ganges) to learn geometry…But he would certainly not have undertaken such a strange journey had the reputation of the Brahmins’ science not been long established in Europe…”

References & books

1. “The World Economy A MILLENNIAL PERSPECTIVE” -ANGUS MADDISON

2. “The Economic History of India- under early British rule” by Romesh Dutt

3. Collected Writings of Historian Dhamapal

4. “Loot: in search of the East India Company, the World’s first transnational corporation” -Nick Robins

5. “India’s Deindustrialization in the 18th and 19th Centuries” by David Clingingsmith & Jeffrey G. Williamson

6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company

7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_economy_of_the_Indian_subcontinent

8. Various internet links and blogs

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