Last century can be marked as the century of change.
Unlike the previous centuries which were dominated by monarchs, last century
observed the emergence of new ideas. The world shifted to a paradigm that was
never observed before. New social, cultural and economic ideas and prospects
floated up, some of them only to be submerged again. Colonialism and European
supremacy ended, giving rise to third world.
In spite of so much change around, the human nature of
blaming his failure/fault to someone else stuck to its original form, only to
be adopted by certain ideologies for patronizing its audience. Hence,
communists (who observed a rise and major fall in the last century itself)
blamed poverty on bourgeois businessmen, feminists blamed their failure on men,
blacks blamed their misery on whites, dalit groups blamed everything on
brahmins. We see how ideologies started making their ideological antagonists,
who were based on color, gender, income etc, their scapegoat. This was kind of
analogous to the situation on medieval Europe wherein everything-from poverty
to plague, was blamed to Jews because they followed uncommon religion.
And this kind of blame game, as can be commonly
inferred, has recently, started in India in political spectrum, this time
against British. I mean British had done a lot of wrongs on India, but blaming
our failures on them is seriously ill. The politician belongs to Indian
national congress and seems obsessed with British. His obsession can be proved
from the fact that even when the debate was going around Khilji, he brought
British there. This politician is Shashi Tharoor who can see wrongdoings
committed by British only, but not by emperors preceding them or succeeding
them.
This happened in a debate with Sadhguru. He defended
the Mughals saying that Mughals became Indian, as if they did any favor to
India. He ignored all accounts of their cruelty on Indian soil. I mean, should
we take proud in someone who remained in India but exposed Indians to eternal
black period? Were Mughals not looters simply because they lived and spent in
India? By that logic even a bank robber is not wrong. See, he spends all his
money in here. Let’s acquit them as well.
Also, Shashi is a big fan of the Indian government
succeeding the Brits. He again ignores the wrongdoings of Nehru and Congress,
and always justifies their wrongdoings by hook or crook. In a debate with
Sanjeev Sanyal, he justified what we are taught in Indian schools that Congress
had played major part, ignoring the contribution of revolutionaries like
Netaji, Indian Armed Forces etc.
Another blame stamped by him is poverty of India is
because of British. He says that when British landed in India, it was richest
country in the world with 27% share of world’s GDP and they reduced it to less
than 4%. This argument somehow boils down to the fact that British made India
poorer on absolute scale. However, this may be true in many cases, but this
argument is too lame to consider.
We are made to believe how colonialists were bad and
we are suffering many problems because of them. Let’s analyze the case of
poverty, which, of all the things is blamed on the colonialists, in India and
many parts of the world.
Yes, India was a very rich country before British
came. It contributed to 27% of world’s GDP, which made it 2nd
richest after China, if not the richest. The argument, as stated is that when
British left, it was one of the poorer countries in the world. The argument
tries to state that it was rapacious exploitation that made colonies poor. This
may be true in many cases, whereas this fact ignores many other factors.
India’s standard of living might have gone up on an absolute scale, but its
contribution as a share of worlds GDP declined because other nations literally
upshot their product.
Industrial revolution of Europe made way for them to
increase their GDP multifold. The same happened in the United States, a newly
founded state which functioned on the principles of liberty and freedom in
personal and economic spheres. These principles made USA to promote
entrepreneurship, emergence of new ideas and hence their economy multifold.
Okay, let’s assume, for their sake, that share of
world’s GDP is an example of exploitation. Can Tharoor answer me why it reduced
even after independence? India’s share of world’s GDP in 1947, as he states was
less than 4%. In 1952, it was exactly 3.8%. In 1973, India’s GDP reduced to
just 3.1% of world’s economy. Would you blame Nehruvian policies for this
decline, and hence exploitation?
In 1947, Independent India could go either way-
socialist and capitalist. Indian government went for the way which was very
much trending but didn’t have any solidity. It was an experiment- a failed one-
of the last century. It never worked in past, nor it would work in future because
of its inherent flaws which makes it go against the universal laws of
economics. Socialist countries like Venezuela are resource rich but cash poor
countries. Imagine a country with rich oil reserves but yet it ran out of a
basic commodity like toilet paper in 2013. Imagine an oil rich country that
doesn’t have electricity for its govt offices, leave alone the people.
India adopted socialism because it was a fad back
then. That was the time when people weren’t allowed to do business freely. Even
if they started business, they could not expand it. Many companies listed in
monopoly act like Birla had to invest in other countries like Indonesia,
because they weren’t allowed to invest their capital in India because of
government’s policies. India was deliberately stopped from becoming a
manufacturing hub, the case in which even Pakistan outperformed us. In the
initial years after independence, Pakistan under Ayub Khan assured growth rate
of 5.82 percent, India less than 3.5%. Sad but true.
Then came the era of Indira Gandhi who nationalized
all the banks. This was again a failure on many parts, and apparently she too
never learned from history. A brief history of nationalized industries of USSR
should have made her known that government planning in economy doesn’t work.
Economy is like nature- it flows on its own when millions of people interact in
the marketplace. 500 bureaucrats sitting over us can neither determine nor
dictate what we want and what we don’t. Again her nationalizing of banks using
taxpayer’s money is the reason they have combined losses of Rs 12869 crores,
which will again be recovered from tax payer’s money.
The amount of failures on the part of the government
of Independent India was so much that in 1960, India and South Korea were on
similar economic level, but in late 1980s, South Korea’s per capita income was
10 times of that of India! And mind it, this stagnation was not due to British!
However, blaming colonialists for every wrong in the
country is not peculiar to India, whereas the reality is completely different
somewhat. People believe that colonialists became rich because they looted
colonies, again this argument is more of an emotional than factual. Colonialists,
on average, had spent more on maintaining the colonies than they could get back
from them in terms of money. We may see people like Cecil Rhodes becoming rich,
but we still ignore the cost that tax payers of Britain paid for it.
There were colonialists like Spain which looted gold
and silver, and the inflow of these precious metals caused inflation in Europe.
But after colonial era ended, Spain emerged as one of the poorest economies of
Europe. This fact can conclude that Spain’s economy was based too much on its
colonies- in terms of natural resources and human capital, but Britain, on the
other hand was one of the richest countries in Europe. Hence, we can conclude
that Britain had a good economic backing- and London emerged as the financial
capital of the world.
Not all colonies were totally devastated by the
colonialists in all aspects. Say for example Britain. What we call Great
Britain was once a Roman colony. When Romans came to Britain, there were literally
no buildings, ofcourse unless the Romans built it. Even British patriot Winston
Churchill acclaimed, ‘We owe London to Rome.’ Even in the modern context, we
find there were many colonies in Americas that didn’t even have wheels. Leave
alone wheels, there were no animals to be used for transport- like horse or oxen
unless the Europeans fetched them there. The innovation done by Americans owe
much to the British and French when we see the context, as they were primitive and
isolated people once, but now they could travel long distances and maintain a vast
area under the United States.
There were colonies that literally flourished under
the colonial rule. 2 great examples would be Hong Kong and Singapore, whose
concepts of free markets and economic freedom were deployed by the Britishers. Even
the colony like South Africa, that became independent after India, has 5 times
per capita income than India. So, when we say we are poor, we are because out
post-independence government made us so, not because we were ruled someday by
Britishers. Blaming it on British would be like blacks blaming their poverty on
slavery (which they do anyways, but that’s completely illogical.) If after 70
years we are still poor, it’s your fault, not somebody else’s.
