Thread by @IndiaArtHistory

The Wealth of India (A Thread)

"While we hold onto India, we are a first rate power. If we lose India, we will decline to a third rate power. This is the value of India."

- Lord Curzon in 1901, one of 11 viceroys of British India.

The British conquest of India was the invasion and destruction of a high civilization by a trading company utterly without principle and greedy of gain, overrunning with fire and sword a country temporarily disordered and helpless, bribing and murdering, annexing and stealing.

For 3,500 years before the British came on the scene and robbed her of her freedom, India was self-ruling and one of the most influential, illustrious and richest nations of the world. It was the wealth of 18th century India which attracted the commercial pirates of England.

Buckminster Fuller (1895-1893) philosopher, thinker, inventor of the geodesic dome, once said:

"The British were perhaps the most successful pirates in history. They came to India, pillaged the country in the name of trade and then enslaved it in the name of civilization."

The British did not manage India. They colonized India and did what it took to extract and exploit India ’s resources. Colonizers do that and when they have extracted and exploited as much as they can, they leave. The British left.

Whatever “development” the British did was to ensure that they could effectively exploit the country. They “built” railroads so that they could move stuff (cotton to the British mills, for example) and for administering the large population they built a telecommunications system.

They “built” an education system that was just about adequate to churn out clerks that were needed for office work. They needed mid-level management (there were only so many Englishmen for the job) and so they created the Indian Civil Services.

Britain was by far the leading slave trader out of Africa and transporter of indentured labour out of Asia. It has killed with famine, sword and fire more people than Genghis Khan, Atilla the Hun, Hitler or Stalin.

(Pic - Indian Famine 1896)

In the defense of its imperial interests it has precipitated two World Wars and is now presiding over an empire of crime that drains the poorest countries of their hard earned wealth.