An Era of Darkness (The British Empire in India)
Shashi Tharoor, 2016.
We all have listened to Shashi Tharoor's fiery debate at the Oxford Union on the necessity of Britain to pay reparatory damages to India. It was easily the most verbose and well-argued rebuttal on the merits of colonisation of the East by the West by any scholar. The bombastic choice of words and poetic structure of sentences would make even an authority on the English language scurrying to the thesaurus. This book is a continuation and elaboration of his articulations in his argumentation.
India was doing quite alright even before the first white man reached its shores. At the beginning of the 18th century, India's was apparently the wealthiest nation in the world, controlling 23% of the world GDP. After the pillage of the country by Western powers, mainly the British, in 1947, it became a poster child of poverty, misery and backwardness with 3% of the world GDP.
The British India Company was primarily a business entity out to make a kill. Its responsibility was to garner profits to its shareholders, later, the Government and Parliament. They would, in turn, decide and enact laws which are best for Britain. Not for India. It was primarily, as it is now, a rule of, by and for a multinational company.
The British Revolution in India is built on the destruction of India's thriving business, of their self-serving social arrangement and their language. They not only extracted and taxed its citizens, but they also instigated them to fight each other. They made the differences among the country's inhabitants, which had been invisible all the while, pronounced and problematic to the changing world order. The invaders not only looted the word 'loot' from India but made a habit out of it, the famous one of which is the Kohinoor diamond which sits nicely on the British Crown reminding every one of the Empire's not so glorious past.
Historians are baffled on how the number equivalent to 0.05% of the country's population could control the remaining 99.95%. Is it the devotion of the few or the passivity of many that did the trick? Whatever happened to the might of the fierce Sikh warriors, the brave Marathi sorcerers, the fearless Moghul henchmen and the enterprising South Indians?
Nevertheless, the Indians did fight back through many of their leaders starting with what can be labelled as the 'First Indian War of Independence' in the form of 1857 Sepoy Mutiny. Somehow, being the master manipulators as they were, the British managed to 'divide and rule' (divide et impera). Indians were pitted against each other based religion, caste and origin. Fictitious 'Aryan Migration Theory' was created by their scholars to create division and animosity. British also imposed their assumptions and stereotyping of their subjects. In fact, Partition is one of their devious plans for the same.
For the Britons, they justified their entry to India as a service to humankind. They perceive themselves as bringing light to the dark; bringing civilisation to the ignorant subhuman natives.
As mentioned earlier, the Indians had been sustaining healthy industries which helped to spur development to the region adjacent to it. They had an advance shipping and ship-building industries. The local handloom fabric was of very high quality. The Indian even had an advanced steel industry. Their knowledge of metallurgy was exceptional. It seems, for the longest time, the Indians were the only ones in the world who could smelt zinc from ore. The British argue that these type of enterprises were heading for doom anyway as the world economy was changing and India would not be able to compete with the ever-changing world scenario. To this assertion, the author refers to the example of Japan. Left to its own devices, unconquered by any foreign powers, at the same era, was able to keep up with the change. Like Tharoor sarcastically sneers, "We missed the Industrial Revolution Bus because the British pushed us under its wheels!"
Scotland in the 19th century was almost a failed state. But thanks to their entrepreneurial interventions in India, they prospered as a nation. Many employees of the British East India Company and later of the Crown, built a fortune after their call of duty in India to retire in luxury and to climb the social class with their loot from India. One such prominent figure is Robert Clive, who was an ordinary clerk who was pulled into the aristocratic circles with his ill-gotten gains.
The Brits assert that they were instrumental in unifying India as a nation. The author denies this fact. The precedent was already set in medieval times under Asoka, Gupta Dynasty, Adi Sankara and even in the famous tale of Mahabharata where India was already unified as a single entity. It was not a Western invention.
They say they brought law and order to a lawless country. The truth is far from it. The British not only left the country impoverished and disunited, but they were also the reason (some say from their instigation of the Muslim League) for the birth of an Islamic State called Pakistan and the mother of all civil Wars, Partition.
British's preferential treatment of the own citizens over the subjects of the Empire was instrumental in many of the famines that occurred in India during their occupation. 30 to 35 million farmers starved to death due to their negligence. Forced migration either as indentured labours, convicts or for economic reasons helped spread the diaspora to shores halfway across the globe to places like Straits Settlement, Fiji, Mauritius and even the Caribbean Islands.
Anglophiles often hail their colonial masters for introducing English to India. The status of language as a lingua franca in fields of academia, commerce and internet certainly helped Indians to be marketable in the workforce. Detractors would argue that the use of English in the modern world is due to the advancement of many fields by Americans, not British. Anglophobes would also say that Nalanda is an apt example of how advanced the Indian scholastic studies were, even long before British entry into the Bharat.
The railway system is often hailed as the colonial's success story. The real reason for getting the railway line going is to extract India of its resources, not to connect people from the remotest of the sub-continent. The laying of tracks, coaches and the maintenance all benefitted the British companies. The passenger tickets were not subsided.
The Brits left the Indians the tea-drinking habit. Again, this commodity, tea, was another of the imperialist's proof of entrepreneurship. For centuries, the Chinese traded tea from the southern seaport town of Canton. In the local Cantonese dialect, tea was referred to as 'cha'. Hence the name 'chai' or 'chaya' in most Indian languages except maybe Tamil. In English, however, it is called tea. It seems that the British, in wanting to save on importing Chinese tea, sourced (smuggled) tea shoots from Amoy in China. They intended to grow tea in Assam. The endeavour failed miserably. They soon discovered a variant of tea grew in Assam (black tea). It grew well, and soon it was sold to Europe. In Amoy, the name for tea sounded like 'tea'; that would explain the name.
Another legacy left behind by the colonial masters is cricket. A land divided by caste, creed, colour, culture, cuisine, custom and costume is united (at least) by cricket. What started for the Indians as a means to step up the ladder of social status and the power elites of the Raj, the Indian team has had the pleasure of many victories over their former masters.
Shashi Tharoor, 2016.
We all have listened to Shashi Tharoor's fiery debate at the Oxford Union on the necessity of Britain to pay reparatory damages to India. It was easily the most verbose and well-argued rebuttal on the merits of colonisation of the East by the West by any scholar. The bombastic choice of words and poetic structure of sentences would make even an authority on the English language scurrying to the thesaurus. This book is a continuation and elaboration of his articulations in his argumentation.
India was doing quite alright even before the first white man reached its shores. At the beginning of the 18th century, India's was apparently the wealthiest nation in the world, controlling 23% of the world GDP. After the pillage of the country by Western powers, mainly the British, in 1947, it became a poster child of poverty, misery and backwardness with 3% of the world GDP.
The British India Company was primarily a business entity out to make a kill. Its responsibility was to garner profits to its shareholders, later, the Government and Parliament. They would, in turn, decide and enact laws which are best for Britain. Not for India. It was primarily, as it is now, a rule of, by and for a multinational company.
The British Revolution in India is built on the destruction of India's thriving business, of their self-serving social arrangement and their language. They not only extracted and taxed its citizens, but they also instigated them to fight each other. They made the differences among the country's inhabitants, which had been invisible all the while, pronounced and problematic to the changing world order. The invaders not only looted the word 'loot' from India but made a habit out of it, the famous one of which is the Kohinoor diamond which sits nicely on the British Crown reminding every one of the Empire's not so glorious past.
Historians are baffled on how the number equivalent to 0.05% of the country's population could control the remaining 99.95%. Is it the devotion of the few or the passivity of many that did the trick? Whatever happened to the might of the fierce Sikh warriors, the brave Marathi sorcerers, the fearless Moghul henchmen and the enterprising South Indians?
Nevertheless, the Indians did fight back through many of their leaders starting with what can be labelled as the 'First Indian War of Independence' in the form of 1857 Sepoy Mutiny. Somehow, being the master manipulators as they were, the British managed to 'divide and rule' (divide et impera). Indians were pitted against each other based religion, caste and origin. Fictitious 'Aryan Migration Theory' was created by their scholars to create division and animosity. British also imposed their assumptions and stereotyping of their subjects. In fact, Partition is one of their devious plans for the same.
For the Britons, they justified their entry to India as a service to humankind. They perceive themselves as bringing light to the dark; bringing civilisation to the ignorant subhuman natives.
As mentioned earlier, the Indians had been sustaining healthy industries which helped to spur development to the region adjacent to it. They had an advance shipping and ship-building industries. The local handloom fabric was of very high quality. The Indian even had an advanced steel industry. Their knowledge of metallurgy was exceptional. It seems, for the longest time, the Indians were the only ones in the world who could smelt zinc from ore. The British argue that these type of enterprises were heading for doom anyway as the world economy was changing and India would not be able to compete with the ever-changing world scenario. To this assertion, the author refers to the example of Japan. Left to its own devices, unconquered by any foreign powers, at the same era, was able to keep up with the change. Like Tharoor sarcastically sneers, "We missed the Industrial Revolution Bus because the British pushed us under its wheels!"
Scotland in the 19th century was almost a failed state. But thanks to their entrepreneurial interventions in India, they prospered as a nation. Many employees of the British East India Company and later of the Crown, built a fortune after their call of duty in India to retire in luxury and to climb the social class with their loot from India. One such prominent figure is Robert Clive, who was an ordinary clerk who was pulled into the aristocratic circles with his ill-gotten gains.
The Brits assert that they were instrumental in unifying India as a nation. The author denies this fact. The precedent was already set in medieval times under Asoka, Gupta Dynasty, Adi Sankara and even in the famous tale of Mahabharata where India was already unified as a single entity. It was not a Western invention.
They say they brought law and order to a lawless country. The truth is far from it. The British not only left the country impoverished and disunited, but they were also the reason (some say from their instigation of the Muslim League) for the birth of an Islamic State called Pakistan and the mother of all civil Wars, Partition.
British's preferential treatment of the own citizens over the subjects of the Empire was instrumental in many of the famines that occurred in India during their occupation. 30 to 35 million farmers starved to death due to their negligence. Forced migration either as indentured labours, convicts or for economic reasons helped spread the diaspora to shores halfway across the globe to places like Straits Settlement, Fiji, Mauritius and even the Caribbean Islands.
Anglophiles often hail their colonial masters for introducing English to India. The status of language as a lingua franca in fields of academia, commerce and internet certainly helped Indians to be marketable in the workforce. Detractors would argue that the use of English in the modern world is due to the advancement of many fields by Americans, not British. Anglophobes would also say that Nalanda is an apt example of how advanced the Indian scholastic studies were, even long before British entry into the Bharat.
The railway system is often hailed as the colonial's success story. The real reason for getting the railway line going is to extract India of its resources, not to connect people from the remotest of the sub-continent. The laying of tracks, coaches and the maintenance all benefitted the British companies. The passenger tickets were not subsided.
The Brits left the Indians the tea-drinking habit. Again, this commodity, tea, was another of the imperialist's proof of entrepreneurship. For centuries, the Chinese traded tea from the southern seaport town of Canton. In the local Cantonese dialect, tea was referred to as 'cha'. Hence the name 'chai' or 'chaya' in most Indian languages except maybe Tamil. In English, however, it is called tea. It seems that the British, in wanting to save on importing Chinese tea, sourced (smuggled) tea shoots from Amoy in China. They intended to grow tea in Assam. The endeavour failed miserably. They soon discovered a variant of tea grew in Assam (black tea). It grew well, and soon it was sold to Europe. In Amoy, the name for tea sounded like 'tea'; that would explain the name.
Another legacy left behind by the colonial masters is cricket. A land divided by caste, creed, colour, culture, cuisine, custom and costume is united (at least) by cricket. What started for the Indians as a means to step up the ladder of social status and the power elites of the Raj, the Indian team has had the pleasure of many victories over their former masters.
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