British Rule

Back in 2016, Shashi Tharoor wrote this book, An Era of Darkness, on the impact of British rule of India. He starts off with a few important disclaimers: (1) The fact that successive Indian governments since independence have made their share of mistakes, been corrupt etc does not impact the truth value of the damage done by the British; (2) It is impossible to put a number value of the amount lost/stolen from India, so the intent is not to seek specific reparations from Britain (who’d enforce it anyway?); (3) The point is not about the return of specific items like the famous Kohinoor diamond.

 

He starts by pointing out India’s share of the world economy before and after British rule – it fell from 23% to 3%. The one-line reason?

“India was governed for the benefit of Britain.”

After all:

“Unlike every other foreign overlord who stayed on to rule, the British had no intention of becoming one with the land.”

 

Some argue that the decline was mostly due to the industrialization of Europe, and Britain’s role in the decline of India is exaggerated. Not so:

“Britain’s industrial revolution was built on the destruction of India’s thriving manufacturing industries.”

Take the British textile industry. It couldn’t compete with Indian handmade alternative, so two measures were taken: (1) The East India Company set about destroying the handlooms in India (Whether the thumbs of Indian weavers were cut off is myth or reality is hard to say) (2) Britain imposed high duties and tariffs on Indian textiles, thus making them financially unviable.

(If you thought that #2 doesn’t sound any different than the tariff war started by the US today, think again. Independent countries can react in ways they feel appropriate whereas colonies of the imperialists couldn’t retaliate.)

 

Yes, technological upheavals can be disruptive for independent countries too. The difference is that independent countries can import the new technology or take other measures to mitigate or slow down the impact. Sometimes, they even master the new tech (We didn’t invent the Internet or the smartphone, but we built UPI on top of those). Such options did not exist for colonies like India.

“The playing field was not level.”

 

The destruction of the textile industry had second order consequences. The newly jobless were forced into agriculture, which drove down wages in that sector leading to an increase in poverty.

“The East India Company created, for the first time in Indian history, the landless peasant.”

And even there, the British prioritized what crops suited them. Thus, it was tea at one time, poppy (for opium to be “sold” in China) at another time. What that did to the local landscape, whether that is what the locals would have chosen to cultivate was immaterial.

 

The textile sector isn’t just a game of what-if, says Tharoor. During the World Wars, as Britain’s industrial capacity was directed towards the war efforts, India was allowed to manufacture textiles. The numbers speak for themselves. The percentage of textiles for India that was produced in India rose from 1896 (8%) to 1913 (20%) to 1936 (62%) to 1945 (76%).

 

It wasn’t just textiles, all manufacturing production (e.g. shipping) was hit. While British goods were brought in and sold duty free, Indian industry was strangled from even emerging by British regulations, whims and fancies. India was forced to buy and use British steel, not allowed to buy from cheaper alternatives in Europe, nor allowed to build its own steel industry.

“Deindustrialization was a deliberate British policy, not an accident.”

 

The East India Company openly boasted that it collected far more revenue from India than any of its predecessor rulers. The British admitted that they taxed 2-3 times higher than before, and that no other country was taxed so much.

“The extortion might have been partly excused if the taxes were being returned to the cultivators in the form of goods or services, but the taxes were sent off to the British government in London.”

 

The Company looted India so much that the term “nabob” (distortion of nawab) arose in Britain to describe the company’s employees who returned home enormously rich after their “stint” in India. This group of nabobs inevitably turned to British politics, provoking an angry backlash against the power and wealth of this newly rich “lower class”. When the Revolt of 1857 happened, the transfer of India from the Company to the Crown was not due to any sudden acceptance that the Company was overly exploitative. Rather, the transfer happened because the old guard of Britain, desperately seeking to cutoff their newly wealth rivals, the nabobs, had found a way to do so…

 

As Tharoor sas:

“It is striking that a civilization that had invented the zero, that spawned Aryabhatta and Susruta had so little to show by way of Indian scientific or technological innovation under the supposed benign and stable conditions of Pax Brittanica.”

 

The backwards state in which India was left on scientific and technological matters led to second order consequences. After independence, there was no backdrop or institutional or industrial base against which talented Indians could do well. Which then led to mass exodus, the “brain drain” for the oh-so-many decades after independence.

“Remarkable innovations in space and technology have shown; this owes nothing to the colonial period but is a product of independent India’s own efforts.”