“Independence is our right, unity is our strength.”
Blood, sweat, and Swaraj! The tricolor is not just cloth; it’s the legend of our sacrifices. Freedom is rising above, even when the world attempts to bend you. We are the children of freedom; let’s live worthy to our inheritance. Let’s salute the past and craft the future. The flame of revolution blazes hot in each Indian vein by becoming wide awake about how British colonialism slaughtered 100 million Indians over 40 years, from 1880 to 1920. British colonial policies in India took more lives than all the famines in the Soviet Union.
Fifty million deaths is a staggering amount, yet this is a standard estimate. Evidence of actual wages indicates that by 1880, living in India, standards of living could have been “on a par with the developing parts of Western Europe.” We can’t say what India’s pre-colonial death rate was, but if we extrapolate that it was roughly the same as England’s in the 16th and 17th centuries (27.18 deaths per 1,000 individuals), we calculate that 165 million more deaths than expected took place in India between 1881 and 1920.
Though the actual number of deaths is dependent on the assumptions we make regarding baseline mortality, it is certain that somewhere around 100 million individuals prematurely died during the peak of British colonialism. This is one of the largest policy-induced mortality crises in the history of mankind. It is bigger than the total number of deaths during all famines of the Soviet Union, Maoist China, North Korea, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and Mengistu’s Ethiopia combined.
How did British rule lead to this catastrophic loss of life? There were several mechanisms. First, Britain effectively dismantled India’s manufacturing industry. Before colonisation, India was one of the world’s largest industrial producers, exporting high-quality textiles all over the globe. The tawdry cloth from England simply couldn’t compete. This started to change, however, when the British East India Company took over Bengal in 1757.
History cannot be rewritten, and the atrocities of the British Empire cannot be undone. But reparations can go some way to deal with the legacy of poverty and inequality that colonialism brought about. It is a key step towards justice and reconciliation.
ALso read: HOW THE CASTE SYSTEM IMPACTS INDIAN PEOPLE
