Blog: India under the British rule- the correct story
A thousand years ago India used to be a land flowing with milk and honey. No one expected at that time that the glorious past would be totally gone in a few centuries. Things can change quickly, especially when you have lots of gold and you are not into fights. This is exactly what India’s curse was. Probably, you may stop here and think: “How is it possible that a country without a proper sanitation system used to be rich?” You are right, you can have your doubts because the world is showing us only the bad sides of India without explaining why this all happened to a country which is so rich with the natural resources. India has changed over a few centuries. So who was responsible for the destruction of this land? The answer will be shocking for many of you.
The British Empire couldn’t stay on its own island. It had to conquer, loot and run away. And they had chosen India for that. India under British rule was devastated. India under British rule had been ruined so badly that this land will probably suffer for many decades. Some English language lovers may already be mad at me as they think that English language has been a blessing in disguise from the colonial rule and thanks to that, India is now a giant in the IT and software. All I want to say to these people is -” hello folks! Wake up! if the British had not come to India, the chances are that the computer programming would have been written in Hindi which could easily have been the international language of today.” But, India under British rule became a land of poverty,pollution,death and fear. So before you turn your thoughts about the so called legacy of rail infrastructure from the British, please continue reading the whole post.
The fact of the matter is that India under the British rule was slowly destroyed by the businessmen in disguise who spoke English (which unfortunately many Indians feel is ”a blessing in disguise” for them)
The Bengal famine hit India during the British rule when Winston Churchill engineered the massacre of 3 million Indians in 1943 , however the actual figure of deaths were even more.
India – a paradise of the past
But slowly, let’s go back to the times when India was not ruled by the British. Until 12th century, India was a highly developed country with the full-fledged infrastructure, economy, social and legal system. India had its own structure which was very solid. This level was achieved thanks to the ancient Vedic knowledge, which unfortunately started to disappear after the Mahabharata battle(soon after that Kali Yuga began,I will talk about it in one of my future posts). But thanks to the millions of spiritual masters, Vedas were still present in people’s lives. Indians were living without problems, some small battles happened, but most of the time they all lived in peace and prosperity. Also the size of India has been much bigger(Maurya Empire for example) in the past than the one we see today. Unfortunately, it all started to be just a vague memory after the 12th century invasion of Mugals who slowly broke the infrastructure, the economy and the law structure .
Mughal Empire
Around 15th and 16th century Mughal Empire slowly started to decline. Brothers were fighting with brothers. Shivaji (a warrior from Maharashtra) was defeating Mughal armies; Sikh people in Punjab started to fight for freedom. Mughal days in India were numbered. And then came the Britons. And what did they tell to the world? That they saved India from the Mughals when the truth was that had the British come or not, India would become a free country again. Of course, they defeated some of them using their modern guns and other equipment, but Indians without any difficulties would do the same.
Shivaji – Marathi warrior who was one of the bravest and smartest warriors of all time.
Why India?
Now, comes a question: “Why England bothered so much to come to India like there was no other country to conquer?” The truth is simple – England desperately needed gold and money. They knew about India from the end of the 15th century, they were also aware that the Portuguese were already there having their influence in today’s Goa and England always had this wish to be the biggest power of the world. You should also remember one thing – even after Mughal invasion the Indian economy made 30% of the whole world economy and the level of people’s lives was still very impressive. Of course, you may have a fair argument that India also had a huge percentage of the world’s population and so there was its huge economy. You may make sense here but also there is even a bigger question: “How did it happen that when the British left in the 20 th century, India with a much bigger population could produce only 2% of the world economy?” That is precisely why I want you to learn why and how it all happened.
A businessman in disguise
The British first entered in India as businessmen. They knew that if they wanted to conquer India they couldn’t do it in an open war. There were so many kings and kingdoms in India that if they all felt danger they would unite and face the invader. That is why their target was to never let them unite against England. That is why the idea was to implement the divide and rule policy( an evil strategy) – make the Indian kings fight against each other. We all know that when the enemy is weaker within itself, the invader gets stronger. British government already sent special agents who traveled around India. They suggested that the only way to rule India is to break the backbone of the country, to kill the spirit of the people. So what was the base of this land? Of course Vedas and Hinduism… That is why they made up the Aryan theory which claims that all the Indians originated from Europe as descendants of Aryans who brought Vedas to the Indian land. They deliberately undermined Indian history and tradition, so they would feel inferior to the English speaking people. They made them believe that more than 2000 years before, the Aryans brought to India everything and all of them are almost like a family since their ancestors came to people this fruitful land. As Aryan theory is a huge topic, I will go back to this in one of the next posts.
Britons – the masters in distorting the facts
British learnt Sanskrit so they would know exactly what this whole Hinduism was all about. They wanted to use this ancient knowledge against Indians. They even went on and tampered the Vedas and other Indian scriptures. For example, they added to Ramayana (which describes the story of Lord Ram) a non-existing chapter in which they falsely claimed that Lord Ram had asked Sita (his wife) to jump into the fire after his own death to verify her purity. Before I wrote this post, my friend from Europe was planning to visit me in India and many of her friends actually warned her that women in India are burnt alive after their husband’s death. I was shocked how people could even think this way, so I started to do my research. And I found out this Ramayana story. Also, when Mughals arrived and as they started to kill men, women were committing suicide so that they would not get raped and be tortured to death or deliver twenty babies from the rape. So smart Britons used it to undermine Vedas. They spread rumors that this is actually what Vedas are saying to people. To prove their statements they added a new text to Ramayana. It was totally in their control. They controlled the newly formed state libraries and all important national data and treasure and they burnt and destroyed the old ancient books and stole a lot of originals and took it back to their country. We should say that they were very clever in breaking this backbone of India – they completed their task perfectly.
Lord Ram and Sita whose real love story will amaze everyone.
Breaking the backbone of India
The British knew that the time when Vedas were written didn’t match their Aryan theory. Especially they had problem with Bhagavata Purana, which was written in a very old style. So they came up with another idea – they claimed that the author of this text purposely used archaic style to make people believe that this was actually much older than it was. It just proves how desperate England was to rule India. Their aim was to make Indian people believe that Vedas are just mythology and only Christian-based values are the one to be followed. That is why they opened convent schools, they built churches, they brought missionaries. Slowly Indian schools were converted into British-owned manufactures of army boys and Jesus Christ followers. In North East India, where people were poor, they started to give salaries for all the people who agreed to convert to Christians. They taught children that Sanskrit had its origin in English and that is why there are some similarities.They used all the sneaky ways to make Indian forget about their traditions and history. Max Mueller, a famous indologist wrote in the letter to the Duke of Argyll, who was the Secretary of State in India: “India has been conquered once, but India must be conquered again and that second should be a conquest by education.” It clearly shows us what the idea of the British people was.
Another important point that has to be raised is archaeology. Before the British invasion there were no archaeological sites or departments in India. They didn’t need it as everything was written in Vedas and the Brahmans were like the Internet of today( a far advanced version actually). Whatever you wanted to know was explained by Brahmans and they were much more reliable than today’s sources of information. The English invaders established the first archaeological department and you can be sure that they didn’t do this to search for the truth. For me, the biggest injustice is that even some Indian people believe that everything that comes from the West is superior to their culture and everything that is written by English speaking people about India is right. It hurts me personally that a country with an extremely rich history was forced to believe that all what is said to be pre-Christian deserves hate and rejection. Many people prefer to speak English than Hindi, I hear girls in shopping malls talking in English and thinking that it makes them look better. And this is just one of the consequences of colonialism in India. The numbers of such consequences are actually uncountable.
Divide and rule policy
As I have already written, the British used divide and rule policy. Orders from England were simple -do whatever it takes, but the end result should be nothing less than a total domination. If someone wanted women, they gave him white women. If someone wanted guns, they sold him lots of guns. If someone wanted to be their friend, they befriended him. If someone didn’t want anything at all, they fought against him. But first they cleverly collected information about all the kings, and this is when they found out how rich Indians actually were. In India there is an ancient tradition –”Guest is God”. Especially when someone from a different country comes, Indians want to show their hospitality. So, when the British came, Indians were having almost a sort of competition who would give more gold coins and other treasures. Indians were kind of taking pride in who among them was more hospitable. The British couldn’t believe that a small king in India had more money than the entire British kingdom. A common person’s wealth was bigger than the whole wealth of an average city in England. In England one gold coin could cause a riot and there they were giving away thousand of coins like it was nothing. So they started to imagine how much money they would still have. But coming back to the point – ”the divide and rule policy”. They befriended Indian kings and then they used different tricks to make them fight against each other. They would sell guns to both of them, but also they would know who was more important for them. After the favored king would win, they would remind him that he had won because of them. Now this favored king who had just won a war against his neighbor had a stronger ego and a swollen pride and therefore he was encouraged by the British to carry on fighting and to continue to expand only to realize later that he was nothing but a puppet in the hands of the British who they were going to eventually get rid off anyway. They also used their caste policy to divide and rule the people of India.
The destroyer of India
The British also destroyed Indian economy as they just wanted to suck out as much as possible from this land. They didn’t care about maintenance, hygiene or the future of this country. They polluted rivers because recycling would be too expensive. The result is visible now – the whole India has to fight with filthy water. They grew opium and then they left infertile soil. They only cared about their profit and loot. Of course, some people (even Indian) will argue with me how I can say this kind of lies when there are so many buildings or railway tracks left by the British,. How about this beautiful railway station in Mumbai? On the one hand, you are right – all these things are here in India. But on the other hand, these invaders built everything for themselves. Railway tracks and station were there to speed up the transfer of looted treasure and gold. They built churches, but they never agreed to build temples for Hindu people. They didn’t build any toilet for Indians so you can’t be surprised that India now is struggling with lack of proper sanitation system. They never cared. And don’t forget that they used Indian money, Indian workers, Indian land, Indian material to build all of it. If they built something that benefited Indians it just meant that it benefited the British one thousand times more. And one more interesting th 44 34608 44 15288 0 0 1041 0 0:00:33 0:00:14 0:00:19 3280 44 34608 44 15288 0 0 972 0 0:00:35 0:00:15 0:00:20 3145ing, after the Britons left , Indians were left with some of the deepest empty gold mines in the world. Before the British invasion India had the biggest number of gold mines in the whole world. So they found it and kept digging until there was no more gold there.
Railway station in Mumbai – built by the British to speed up looting India.
They went to every household and looted everything. People were scared, so they started to swallow gold or some of the extreme ones even tried to hide it in their rectum ( I heard this story during my travels in India), but it didn’t stop the invaders. They killed them and took all the coins out. Of course British officers came with the Indians. It is no surprise, Indian people were jobless, hungry and without any sources to live so they had no other choice but to work for the biggest thief ever. Another thing is that they were born in a colonized country, they thought that this is how it works – white people rule the dark.
The reason of baby-girls abortion
One of the problems that India is facing today is baby-girl abortion or murder. What led to this cruelty? When the British came they stopped giving jobs to the women, girls were not allowed to go to school. Even though five hundred years earlier women were treated like goddesses, during the British Raj, women were nothing. So mothers thought that it is better to kill the female infant than to let it slowly die for years. The boys were financed by the invader as they would join the army or work physically. And in many villages this still happens. But this is a topic for another post, you can be sure that I will give enough details on it.
The industrialization
I want to raise one more topic – the industrialization. As probably many of you would argue with me, Indian economy deteriorated because of this phenomenon that started in the Great Britain in the 18th century. You have a valid point, but let me share with you mine too. Every economy revolution needs two basic things – money and workers. So it is not hard to guess that Great Britain had it all financed by Indian gold and the cheap labor coming from India and Africa. Then you will argue that the whole industrialization idea was British. But if you start searching you will get to know that all these information are in Sanskrit ancient texts. So yes, England stole also the knowledge. On one hand, they criticized Vedas, but on the other they used all the information that could make them powerful and rich. Sometimes, I wonder why does the world really believe that all the advancement that came to the world just happened so suddenly in the last 300 years? It is not a co-incidence that the so called scientific inventions took place in the West at the very same time when India’s libraries and ancient knowledge was looted. So the British economy grew and at that time Indian’s was falling into decay.
Now let’s even imagine that the British never came to India to rule and let’s even imagine that they came up with the industrialization and the modernization on their own, do you really think that India with all their gold and other natural resources would not be able to buy the technologies from Europe or from anywhere else for that matter if it was not looted of its massive reserve of treasure? A small princely state of India had more wealth than the whole British or other European empires. Well, technologies are made to be sold. Did China invent the bullet trains? Did Dubai invent the technology to build all those skyscrapers? No, they paid and bought it from the others. And anyway, research and development is more likely to happen when you have peace and prosperity around you. So, even though we assume that people in India were stupid, do you really think that with all their potential and natural resources given, from 30% of the world economy they would crash to 2%? Yes, this is exactly what happened to India after the British left. India made 30% of the world economy when the British arrived and 2% when they left. In all fairness, if the British never looted India, India would either be able to buy the technology by money but it’s more likely that they would have been the inventors of the modern science as well themselves just like they were of the ancient science and knowledge.
It would not be a problem for Indians to travel to Europe and pay for all the technologies. Everyone wants to sell and earn money, so I don’t think that Great Britain would resist such an amount of money coming from India. Think about Dubai – they don’t have scientists or great architects, but they have money and now the whole world admires their constructions. The same thing would have happened to India.
Why they gave India its independence back?
During two world wars British finances started slowly to shrink. They stole from India almost everything (including a famous Kohinoor – one of the biggest diamonds – that I will surely write about in the future) so it was no longer profitable for them to have their quarters there. India before independence was almost like a grave – people were starving, dying due to lack of medical treatment. All gold was looted. The Indians started to ask for independence, some of them were fighting. Everything costs. So the British wanted to back away, but they couldn’t show the world that they just looted a country and now they are leaving it in this condition. So they wanted to show that they actually helped Indians. When a problem occurred who should be the leader of independent India, they gave the power to Mahatma Gandhi who was opting for peaceful solutions. But on the other hand, they wanted to show that India can’t sustain without them. They convinced the Muslim leader that he should become the prime minister of the new country and they engineered riots and a civil war. The mission was completed – the whole world got to know that India as an independent country can’t be peaceful. But they didn’t know that it was just a British trick. Finally India got divided and Pakistan was added to the global map.
Mahatma Gandhi’s friendly behavior with the British rewarded him and the British left the keys of the new house (Independent India) to him as the British would never want to hand over the country to the other great Indian freedom fighters who were using force to get the British out of the country.
Thanks to British and Mughal invasion India became a totally different country. From almost a paradise to a country struggling with thousands of problems. Now India is growing and showing the world its potential. Indian businessmen are saving British companies like Jaguar, Rangerover ,Tetley etc. India is becoming a superpower, but without starting any war with anyone. They want to stay in their own territory and protect its people. India under British rule came through horrendous tortures and pain but now it is slowly overcoming the nightmare of a several centuries.
Something about Author : Karolina Goswami
Karolina Goswami is from Poland and living in India with her Indian Husband. She is famous for writing stuff about which you won't easily find on main stream media & continue to pursue her dream of exploring real India.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author.
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