“India was a far greater industrial and manufacturing nation than any in Europe or any other
in Asia. Her textile goods—the fine products of her looms, in cotton, wool, linen, and silk—
were famous over the civilized world; so were her exquisite jewellery and her precious stones
cut in every lovely form; so were her pottery, porcelains, ceramics of every kind, quality,
colour, and beautiful shape; so were her fine works in metal— iron, steel, silver, and gold.”
writes J.T. Sunderland in his book India in Bondage, talking about the state of India at the
beginning of the eighteenth century.

Today’s India sees 800,000,000 people surging in queues every month, desperately awaiting
the Public Distribution System to grant them their rations of sustenance.

According to British economic historian Angus Maddison, at the beginning of the eighteenth
century, the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb’s treasury collected £100 million in tax revenues
alone (which in today’s terms would amount to almost a trillion rupees), accounting for 27
percent of the world economy. Today India ranks fifth in the world in terms of GDP and
accounts for only 7 percent of the global economy.

What changed India from being the golden bird to the impoverished state that it is in today?

The answer is British colonisation, which through its “looting, expropriation and outright
theft…conducted in a spirit of deep racism and a moral cynicism” led to its present state as
pointed out by Shashi Tharoor in his book “Inglorious Empire”

In a post-Brexit world, when Britain is looking at the commonwealth countries with who,
they have had “deep historic ties”, India is at the top of that list, most of the Indians alive
today barely remember what American Historian and philosopher Will Durant documented in
1930, when he wrote about how a Corporation (The East India Company) had “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…ruthlessly for one hundred
and seventy-three years.”

Dadabhai Naoroji is perhaps credited with the first theorisation of the realisation that India
was utterly being ravished by her foreign overlords, through his “Drain of Wealth” theory in
1867, which later found more structure and clarity through the works of M.G. Ranade and
R.P. Dutt.

The British Industrial Revolution was essentially premised upon the de-industrialisation of
India. There was no development of any heavy industries in India for 200 years as the
Britishers never encouraged any native entrepreneurs from creating businesses.

While Britain used India as the supplier of its raw materials which provided the lifeblood of
the industrial revolution in Britain, at the same time, the Indian markets also provided the
outlet for their finished goods. This two-sided assault on the Indian economy completely
devastated India’s indigenous industries and craftsmanship.

The British had created a system of middle-men through the Zamindari, Ryotwari and
Mahalwari systems collect revenue on behalf of the company. These people in turn acted in
the most inhumane way with the peasants to extort more taxes and subjected them to
violence, coercion, and torture. Neither the company nor the middle men showed any interest
in the long-term development of agriculture through investments and as a result, the peasants
were forced to shift their cultivation from food crops to cash crops, in turn becoming market
dependent for their food grains. The worst famines in the recorded history of India happened
during British rule.

The Railways and Ports were one of the only few developmental works undertaken by the
British and this too was in reality treated as an investment, as it could be used for increasing
the rate at which India was being plundered.

Whatever irrigational improvements sponsored by the British were oriented toward the cash
crops and plantations where the Britishers kept their workers in an almost slave-like manner,
deprived of dignity and rights.

As the civil and revenue administration grew in size, the Britishers felt the need for more
manpower which led up to the introduction of English in India as the employees needed to
communicate with their foreign overlords.

The final nail on the coffin for India was the partition, which essentially destabilised India on
both sides forever it may seem, but the silver lining in the Indian story is the resilience of the
Indian populace and their enduring resilience which has stood the test of more than five
millennia. No matter who robs her of her ornaments and jewels, India, “the golden bird” is
the phoenix that has arisen time and again out of her own ashes.