British people should have more realistic picture of history of British rule in India involving loot & plunder of India, to have better understanding of Indian view

Last updated on 14th April 2019

The Guardian view on the Amritsar massacre centenary: time to see ourselves as others see us - Editorial, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/12/the-guardian-view-on-the-amritsar-massacre-centenary-time-to-see-ourselves-as-others-see-us, 12th April 2019.

I think this Guardian editorial article's views are wise. In her short reference to Jallianwala Bagh massacre (known as Amritsar massacre in UK), British PM Theresa May said in UK Parliament that it was a shameful scar but did not go as far as making an apology. Note that an apology may have legal consequences in terms of reparation claims. PM May also said nice things about India UK relationship today and about the contributions of Indian diaspora to UK. Her short remarks can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWI6SsIXknU, 43 secs.

The Guardian article says, "Some other countries are better at this self-examination. Germany is one. Belgium, which is trying to rethink its own imperial past, is another. Britain can learn from them. Britain lacks a shared or a sufficiently capacious version of its own history. Too many are not taught enough of it to make this possible."

I agree with this view. I think India has come out, or is in the process of coming out, of the Euro centric version of history that India was under during British rule period and till a few decades after Indian independence in 1947. Today in 2019, many mainstream media articles about Indian history usually show an independent of Euro-centric view of Indian history. I am very happy about that. The Euro-centric view of Indian history was propagating a false view which held Europeans as a higher civilization than the Indian one(s), and was not a well informed view of ancient India's glorious past.

Lord Macaulay's well-known contemptuous statement about Indian literature as compared to European literature is a very good example to show the European mindset which would surely have played an influential role in creating the Euro-centric version of Indian history prior to Indian independence in 1947 (and whose after effects would have lasted a few more decades after 1947). The article: A minute to acknowledge the day when India was 'educated' by Macaulay, https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/gk-current-affairs/story/a-minute-to-acknowledge-the-day-when-india-was-educated-by-macaulay-1160140-2018-02-02, 2nd Feb. 2018, provides the infamous Macaulay quote, "A single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia".

So India today is out of, or getting out of, Euro-centric view of Indian history. But Britain itself may be still trapped in the Euro-centric view of Indian history! Many Britishers today may simply not know the brutal reality of British colonial history of India. They may think that British colonization of India was a noble thing that Britain did for India! Ha! Ha!

The brutal reality is that British colonial history of India is one of economic exploitation of India, and conquest of India through very brutal and sometimes very cunning military means. It is this economic exploitation and brutal military dominance of India and its other colonies, that powered the economic rise of Britain in the past centuries. Now there have been some positive effects for India of this colonization by Britain like the teaching of what was then Western science and technology. I myself am a science graduate and a retired software technologist. I studied science (in Bombay, India graduating in 1983) and earned a livelihood as a practitioner of computer software technology from 1984 to 2002 (employed or consulting with Bombay, India software companies and going abroad to Europe, USA and South Korea on assignments). The roots of this (then Western) science & technology education in India was laid by colonial rulers (Britain), with Lord Macaulay laying the foundations of that European style education in India in 1835.

But these are positive side effects in what was largely a story of economic exploitation of India and brutal military dominance over India by Britain during its colonial rule of India.

But then most of humanity's history has been that of dominance of some triumphant military power over less powerful kingdoms/countries. The impression I have is that it was victory in the Third Anglo-Maratha war in 1817-1818 that made Britain the dominant force over all of India. Prior to that it had control over some parts of India but not over the Maratha empire, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maratha_Empire, which covered large parts of India in earlier years. The map from the above wiki page (map pic link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:India1760_1905.jpg) shows that in 1760, the Maratha empire had the largest area of India under their control. Tipu Sultan's Mysore kingdom fell to the British only in 1799.

So Britain started to dominate over most of India from around 1818. It consolidated its administrative hold over the whole of India with the British Raj formation in 1858, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Raj.

Prior to early 1800s military domination of India by Britain, India essentially had a set of kingdoms which would not infrequently be at war with each other. The militarily more powerful kingdom (in India) would seek to dominate the militarily less powerful kingdom.

Therefore, like the rest of the world, Indian history of the past centuries and millennia is that of military dominance of powerful kingdoms over less powerful kingdoms. I am quite sure that tribute would have been extracted by the more powerful kingdoms from less powerful kingdoms, and the less powerful kingdoms would have had to obey important orders of the more powerful kingdoms. That has to be viewed as a form of economic and other exploitation of less militarily powerful kingdoms by the more militarily powerful kingdoms.

However, these kings were living in what is known today as India. So they did not economically exploit and send the money outside of India. One group of Indians may have got exploited economically by another group of Indians. So the wealth may have moved from one group of Indians to another. But the wealth stayed in India.

From the early 1800s till India achieved independence in 1947, Britain had achieved military domination of India and was economically exploiting India. And in this case, Britain sent money and wealth outside India, back to Britain. India got impoverished and Britain got rich. That is the simple and brutal reality of British colonial history of India. The main objective of Britain was loot and plunder of India and any benefits that came to Indians like Western science and technology education were incidental.

If British people want to better understand how Indians of the early 21st century view British rule of India (almost whole, if not whole of India, from early 1800s to 1947), they should understand views like I have given above and come to terms with it. That can then enable a better relationship between Britain and India in this 21st century.