I am used to hearing people of my earlier generation and many from my generation as well, speak highly of the British Rule in India, about,
The British Killed More than a Billion Indians
British Honesty and Fair play,
Their contribution to uniting India,
Bringing in the Industrial Revolution to India and
Introducing English in India.
Each of these statements need rebuttals for the impressions are not correct and the motives behind these acts are criminal in Nature.
They have invaded all countries that are found in the Map today, excepting 22!
Before I start rebutting these points one by one, let me furnish some information about the Genocide of Indians by the British.
We are aware of one Jallianwala Bagh .
We do not know about more serious Genocide by the British in India,
Now Britain claims it is a Champion of Freedom and a friend of the downtrodden and we respect them!
The news was obviously blacked out by the Anglo Media.
The Genocide oh Indians.
Educated Indians are aware of the ghastly 2-century imposition of British colonialism on India. However, because history is generally written by non-scientists, most Indians are utterly unaware of the horrendous human cost (1.8 billion violent and non-violent avoidable deaths in the period 1757-1947).
Under British rule, Indian cultivators were forced to produce for export, and heavily taxed while denied necessary infrastructure, like roads, to move their products to market. As one observer noted, “In this predicament, the cargo of cotton lies sometimes for weeks on the ground, and the merchant is ruined.” Shown: Indian and European merchants trade at the Bombay cotton market, ca. 1870.
Th British deliberately caused famines in India, in order to force the indigenous population into relief works, such as road-building. The tenant-laborer, writes Carey, “is mercilessly turned from his land and his mud hut, and left to die on the highway.” Here, Indians on their way to the relief works, published in the LondonNews, 1874…
Queen Victoria, Empress of India, ruled over a people broken by poverty, inhumane treatment, famines, and despair. As one British author wrote: “And this occured in British India—in the reign of Victoria the First. Nor was the event extraordinary and unforeseen. Far from it: 1835-36 witnessed a famine in the northern provinces; 1833 beheld one to the eastward; 1822-23 saw one in the Deccan. They have continued to increase in frequency and extent under our
sway for more than half a century.”
During the terrible famine of 1838, according to one reporter, millions of pounds of rice and other edible grains were exported from Calcutta, to feed the kidnapped Indian Coolies, who had been sent to the Mauritius, to work in the fields.
These are just the figures of the British-man-made famines, it does not include the Epidemics induced by Famines, Anglo-Indian Wars, Indians killed fighting for the British, Freedom Fighters martyred by the British.
If all these are included the figures reaches over 1.8 Billion mark (ignored by Anglo Media)
Citations and References.
1. Dutt, Romesh Chunder (1908). The economic history of India under early British rule, Pg. 52
2. Grove, Richard H. (2007), “The Great El Nino of 1789–93 and its Global Consequences: Reconstructing an Extreme Climate Event in World Environmental History”, The Medieval History Journal 10 (1&2): Pg. 75–98
4. Reference 1: Digby, William. Prosperous British India, Pg.127.
Reference 2 : Dutt, RC. Famines and Land Assessments in India, Pg.3
7. Digby, William. Prosperous British India, Pg.127
8. Reference 1: Digby, William. Prosperous British India, Pg.127.
Reference 2 : Dutt, RC. Famines and Land Assessments in India, Pg.5
13. Fieldhouse, David (1996), “For Richer, for Poorer?”, in Marshall, P. J., The Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 400, pp. 132
14. Reference 1: Digby, William. Prosperous British India, Pg.127.
Reference 2 : Dutt, RC. Famines and Land Assessments in India, Pg.9
17. A Maharatna, The Demography of Famine, quoted by Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts, El Nino Famines and Making of the Third World, pg 7,table P1.
18. Digby, William. Prosperous British India, Pg.128
22. The Lancet 16 may 1901, quoted in Mike Davis. Late Victorian Holocausts, El Nino Famines and Making of the Third World, pg 7, table P1
23. Maharatna quoted by Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts, El Nino Famines and Making of the Third World, pg 174
24. Bengal Tiger and British Lion: An Account of the Bengal Famine of 1943, Richard Stevenson, Pg.139
Famines in Bengal: 1770-1943, K C Ghosh, pg.111
Famine Inquiry Commission Report, 1943. Pg.110
Churchill’s Crimes From Indian Holocaust To Palestinian Genocide
How many Indians died in the genocides committed by the British Raj?
Bengal Famine Man-Made
News Article – The Sydney Morning Herald Tuesday 16 November 1943
Anglo Holocaust Denial – BBC’s “The Story of India” IGNORES Bengal Famines & British Indian Holocaust
INDIAN HOLOCAUST under British Raj: 1.8 BILLION excess deaths
British in India : Slavery and Famine
Doubts have been raised about the Figure 1.8 Billion
1.As I have mentioned in the Post the period and between 1757 and 1947.
2.The table shows only Famine deaths.
3.More research papers.
“The “avoidable deaths” (from violence, deprivation and deprivation-exacerbated disease) in British India totalled 1.5 billion (or 1.8 billion if you include the so-called Native States).
Major British-imposed genocidal events in India included the Great Bengal Famine (10 million dead, 1769-1770), successive famines that killed scores of millions of Indians up to the World War 2 Bengal Famine (6-7 million dead in Bengal and surrounding provinces; see the recent BBC broadcast involving me, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open2.net/thingsweforgot/bengalfamine_programme.html ), the estimated 10 million Indians murdered by the British in reprisals for the so-called Indian Mutiny (in which 2,000 British were killed) and the underlying British-imposed condition of “living on the edge” that was responsible for most of the “avoidable deaths” (see my book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability”, G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 1998, 2008: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ).