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Looting India

Still in progress.

It is ironic that the British even looted the word ‘loot’ from us!

The British conquest of India was the invasion and destruction of a high civilization by a trading company utterly without scruple or principle, careless of art and greedy of gain, over-running with fire and sword a country temporarily disordered and helpless, bribing and murdering, annexing and stealing, and beginning that career of illegal and ‘legal’ plunder which has now gone on ruthlessly for one hundred and seventy-three years. -William Durant

After the fall of the Mughal empire, the British managed to gain control over vast regions of land, through artillery and their cynistic and amoral behaviour. They outright bought nawabs and maharajas for a price, emptied their treasuries, annexed land from farmers, and imposed laws like the ‘doctrine of lapse’.

The little court disappears—trade languishes—the capital decays the people are impoverished—the Englishman flourishes, and acts like a sponge, drawing up riches from the banks of the Ganges, and squeezing them down upon the banks of the Thames. - John Sullivan

In the 18th century, India contributed 23% to the world’s economy (27% in the 1700s). This number dropped to 3% by the time the Britishers left India.

This all began in the 1600s when the British East India Company started trading silk and spices with India. They began building outposts along the Indian coast in places like Bombay, Calcutta and Madras. They further started having military personnel to protect these outposts. At that time, the Mughal Empire stretched from Kabul to Bengal, and from Kashmir to Karnataka.

About 150 years later, the Mughal Empire collapsed. The Persian ruler Nadir Shah, looted and burned the Mughal capital, Delhi. The capital burned for 8 weeks, and they took away so much wealth; for the next 3 years, all taxes were removed in Persia.

In 1757, Robert Clive helped the Company win the famous battle of Plassey, to over-rule Siraj-ud-Daula of Bengal, using superior artillery and betrayal by the Nawab close noble, Mir Jafar, who was placed on the throne in exchange for control of Bengal. Clive managed to transfer nearly all the contents of the Nawab’s wealth to England.

By 1857, when the first open revolt against them took place, the East India Company controlled the lives of more than 200 million people(nearly all of the population of India at that time). They determined their economic, social and political life. Shaped their education, made railways and set up industries for them.

The Company ran India, and like all companies, it had one principal concern shared by its capitalist overlords in London. The British industrial revolution was assisted by destroying existing and flourishing Indian industries.

Destroying the Indian Textile

The Indian handloom was much superior in quality and highly sought after in Britain. For centuries, the weavers of Bengal produced some of the world’s most desirable fabrics, especially the fine muslins, light as ‘woven air’.

Textile exports for Bengal alone were about 16 million rupees annually in the 1750s, of which 5-6 million were exported to European traders alone. (This was when a rich man earned 8 rupees a week).

Everything changed after the 1750s when the Britishers were no longer traders but also rulers. They stopped paying in pounds and instead used revenues extracted from Bengal itself!

They established a monopoly and didn’t allow any other foreign entity from India to trade and import textiles.

Indian textile was also very cheap. The Britishers could not compete, so they decided to smash the looms of some Bengal weavers and break the thumbs of others.

The weavers, which survived this destructive wrath, were hit by duties and tariffs of over 80%, making export to Britain unviable. Much cheaper fabric from the mills of Britain flooded the Indian market.

the bones of the cotton weavers were bleaching the plains of India -Lord William Bentinck

India still grew cotton, but most of it was exported to Britain. This monopoly turned weavers into beggars, and many were forced into agriculture beyond the levels the land could support. Mostly the men tilled the fields, and the women spun the cotton. Now this was no longer the case and no backup source of income in case of drought.

Many make the argument that the Indian textile would have anyways been wiped out by the machines of the Industrial Revolution. While the mass-spun fabric would have taken over these traditional looms, this change would have been much more gradual had the Britishers not interfered. It could have been delayed by introducing taxes and tariffs on importing this fabric. Further, due to the relatively lower wages, many manufacturers would have imported this technology and produced cloth much cheaper than in Europe.

Still, some modern mills started to pop up in the 1850s. The American Civil War gave a brief bloom to Indian cotton production, although it soon died in 1865 when the war ended. Till the late 1900s, only 8 per cent of the cloth consumed in India was produced by Indian mills. By 1913, this grew to 20 per cent. In 1936 this number rose to 63 per cent, and by Independence, 76 per cent of the cloth we consumed was produced by Indian mills.

Taxes!

Taxing the people was the easiest way to extract revenue out of the country. India became a cash cow for the British.

There are few kings in Europe richer than the Directors of the English East India Company - Comte de Châtelet, French ambassador to London

The tax was usually more than 50% of their income, and as a result, most people just gave away their land.

Defaulters were confined in cages, and exposed to the burning sun; fathers sold their children to meet the rising rates -William Durant

Previously other large empires that ruled over the country earned by using the extensive trade network, and not by exploiting the cultivators.

An opulent city lay at my mercy; its richest bankers bid against each other for my smiles; I walked through vaults which were thrown open to me alone, piled on either hand with gold and jewels… When I think of the marvellous riches of that country, and the comparatively small part which I took away, I am astonished at my own moderation. - Robert Clive

The British praised themselves for showing self-restraint and not looting more. History is filled with such instances where the British claimed India was a sure shot and an easy way to prosperity. Millions of Indians were starved to death for their opulence. The poor Indians could not even purchase bread.

Taking away the diamonds

The Indian diamonds that the ‘nabobs’ took were a sign to Britain that it was now becoming an Imperial power. These diamonds were not hailed as jewels in the late 18th century and early 19th century. Instead, they were envied and attacked, as they threatened to change the power dynamics in Britain.

Traditionally wealth in Britain was measured in terms of land ownership. Since it was held for a long time, it reflected permanence and hierarchy. With diamonds, and jewels flowing in from India, wealth could now be acquired by the colonial enterprise rather than from inheritance.

Many Britishers were so alarmed by this massive flow of wealth into Britain that they summoned Clive before Parliament to explain his actions in India and the fortune he had made there.

The government tried to assert supremacy and control over the company, but since most MPs were also company shareholders, they couldn’t do anything.

Torture and Extraction

Warren Hastings was one of the most sadistic and rapacious government generals. He accepted bribes and then went to war with the bribe givers. He tortured and extracted every last bit of revenue from the people. Under his rule, the propensity of British tax collectors against the Bengal women was described in great detail by Burke, who tried to impeach Hastings for his cruelties.

They[Bengali Women] were dragged out, naked and exposed to the public view, and scourged before all the people…they[Tax Collectors] put the nipples of the women into the sharp edges of split bamboos and tore them from their bodies - Burke

In the end, Hastings was declared not guilty and restored the image of the Empire in the eyes of the British, justifying continuing this rapacity for another 150 years.

The scene of exaction, rapacity, and plunder which India became in our hands, and that upon the whole body of the population, forms one of the most disgraceful portions of human history… There was but one object in going thither, and one interest when there. It was a soil made sacred, or rather, doomed, to the exclusive plunder of a privileged number. The highest officers in the government had the strongest motives to corruption, and therefore could by no possibility attempt to check the same corruption in those below them… Every man, in every department, whether civil, military, or mercantile, was in the certain receipt of splendid presents. - William Howitt, 1839

Even (Lord)Macaulay, who thought very highly of the company and worked for it for many years says

The misgovernment of the English was carried to such a point as seemed incompatible with the existence of society… The servants of the Company forced the natives to buy dear and sell cheap… Enormous fortunes were thus rapidly accumulated at Calcutta, while thirty millions of human beings were reduced to the extremity of wretchedness. They never had to live under tyranny like this… - Macaulay

F. J. Shore, the British administrator in Bengal testifies in the House of Commons in 1857 that

The fundamental principle of the English has been to make the whole Indian nation subservient, in every possible way, to the interests and benefits of themselves. They have been taxed to the utmost limit; every successive province, as it has fallen into our possession, has been made a field for higher exaction; and it has always been our boast how greatly we have raised the revenue above that which the native rulers were able to extort. - F. J. Shore

In places where they did not rule over directly, they installed rulers who paid copious amounts of money in exchange for their thrones. The Nizam of Hyderabad, for example, was charged exorbitant quantities in exchange for protection. The charge was so much he was forced to borrow at a 24% interest rate from a bank established in 1814 by an associate of the Governor General.

A handful of agents were required to collect taxes from the countryside. They were only partially trusted by the British, so increasingly, written code governed the method and quantity of tax collection. While the local leaders collected taxes based on local conditions and considered calamities like drought or family circumstances like weddings and death, the British left no breathing room.

The rules insisted landholders paid a fixed amount of money each month with rigorous punctuality. As a result, it brought dispossession and the collapse of a once-rich region’s wealth.

In 1793, Governor-General Lord Cornwallis introduced The Permanent Settlement of Bengal Act, under which revenue was paid based on the land owned, not the share of crops produced. If the crop failed, you still had to pay the taxes. On some occasions, the tax, which was based on the potential value of the land rather than the actual value, exceeded the revenue the land generated.

The taxes they collected were not even returned in the form of public goods and services but were sent off to the British government.

After the first revolt of Independence in 1857, the King of England took over the administration of the empire. It paid the company for this privilege, which was redeemed (principal and generous interest rates) by taxing the Indians. We literally paid for our own oppression. The salary of the Secretary of State for India in 1901, paid for by Indian taxes, was equivalent to the average annual income of 90,000 Indians.

‘It is impossible to avoid remarking two facts as peculiarly striking, first the richness of the country surveyed, and second, the poverty of its inhabitants… The annual drain of £3,000,000 on British India has amounted in thirty years, at compound interest, to the enormous sum of £723,900,000. So constant and accumulating a drain, even in England, would soon impoverish her. How severe then must be its effects on India when the wage of a labourer is from two pence to three pence a day… - Montgomery Martin, 1835

Taxes spent in the country from which they are raised are totally different in their effect from taxes raised in one country and spent in another. In the former case the taxes collected from the population…are again returned to the industrious classes… But the case is wholly different when the taxes are not spent in the country from which they are raised… They constitute absolute loss and extinction of the whole amount withdrawn from the taxed country… might as well be thrown into the sea. Such is the nature of the tribute we have so long exacted from India. - George Wingate, 1859

Sinking Shipping and Ship Building

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