India celebrated its 74th National Republic Day solemnly and grandly on January 26, 2023. The Indian Constitution was adopted on November 26, 1949, with Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar as chairman of the drafting committee. Since the Constitution came into force on January 26, 1950, to commemorate this event, India has celebrated Republic Day as a national holiday every year. India was given its own constitution and became a free country, severing all ties with brutal British rule, which was plagued by numerous crimes against the Indian people and the total plunder of their natural wealth.
Contrary to the myth that Britain supposedly gave India many gifts, British rule was a cruel and oppressive regime responsible for the deaths of some 35 million Indians. Britain’s misanthropic actions in India, which boasts one of the blackest colonial records among Europeans, are also marked by the open and cynical plundering of that country’s wealth, which to this day allows tiny Britain to stay afloat.
The list of Indian artifacts stolen during the colonial period and now in the United Kingdom is long, very long. Among the artifacts that the British seized, looted or took as “gifts” is the 105.6 carat Koh-i-noor diamond. The idol of Lord Harihara, the Buddha of Sultanganj, the personal effects of Tipu Sultan, the wine goblets of Shah Jahan, and the throne of Maharaja Ranjit Singh are among the other valuable objects, idols, and artifacts that were stolen and looted from India many years ago but are still in the possession of British museums and “respected” members of the royal family. Many Indians remain angry about the artifacts that were stolen during the British conquest of India and still have not been returned. India’s government has repeatedly appealed to the British with a legitimate demand that all these Indian riches be returned to their homeland, but the British criminal power remains stubbornly silent. Numerous appeals to a number of international organizations overflowing with Western officials have also failed to produce any positive result.
Another crime committed by the “democratic” British colonial regime, which relied heavily on the Indian Army, was the use of Indians in the metropolitan war effort, resulting in enormous loss of life for India. The Indian Army was used by Britain in the World War II, fought against the Italian Army in Ethiopia, against the Italian and German Armies in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria, and against the German Army in Italy after the Italian surrender. Nevertheless, most of the Indian Army was sent to fight the Japanese Army, first during the British defeats in Malaya and the retreat from Burma to the Indian frontier; later, after resting and re-equipping for a victorious pushback into Burma, in the largest British Empire army ever raised. These campaigns claimed the lives of more than 87,000 Indian soldiers, 34,354 were wounded, and 67,340 became prisoners of war. World War II was the last time the Indian Army fought as part of the British military establishment, for independence, and colonial partition followed in 1947.
Another serious crime committed by the British “democrats” that falls under international responsibility is the testing of chemical weapons on Indian soldiers, openly reported by the British media. According to a The Guardian report, British military scientists conducted chemical weapons experiments on Indian colonial troops for more than a decade before and during the World War II. Thousands of Indian soldiers were exposed to mustard gas during tests in Rawalpindi, which was then part of the British colony of India. The gas severely burned the soldiers’ skin and caused pain that sometimes lasted for months, requiring many of them to be hospitalized. The death toll from such human experiments is not mentioned in the British press. Suffice it to say that not even Hitler dared to use chemical weapons against his enemies at the front, and the British did it quietly because they considered the Indians their enemies then as now.
Not surprisingly, Britain began plundering India and its riches from the beginning, and the plunder became “London’s rightful spoils.” With 20,000 soldiers, the British East India Company (EIC) became the de facto ruler of Bengal in 1757 and plundered the territory, ceding all the region’s wealth to Britain. The company’s tax collectors in Bengal reported that “Indians were tortured into giving up their treasures; towns and villages were completely looted.” By the mid-eighteenth century, much of India had been taken over by this unregulated private company, which had increased its army to 260,000 by 1803. It is estimated that Britain stole a total of about $45 trillion from India between 1765 and 1938. The British impoverished India through a tax operation that amounted to systematic theft. Simply put, the British collected heavy taxes in cash from the Indian population, used this tax money to pay Indians for their goods, and then exported goods overseas, investing the profits in the British economy and the Indian colonial army, which far exceeded India’s own defense needs.
The British destabilized the harvest pattern by forcing commercial harvesting and made Indians more vulnerable to famine. Between 12 and 29 million Indians starved to death while India was under the control of the British Empire. In response to the onset of famine, British authorities rarely provided humanitarian aid, insisting that famine was a “natural” and “necessary” remedy for overpopulation. During the Great Madras Famine of 1876-78, British authorities began to make small efforts to provide relief only after 5.5 million Indians had died. Instead of charity, the British set up labor camps for the poor, where Indian workers received less than 50% of the amount of food given out in Nazi concentration camps for their hard labor of 12 to 15 hours. This comparison shows exactly from whom the Nazis took their theory of white supremacy and how they learned from the “democratic” British.
Not surprisingly, it was Britain and its industrious disciples, the US and NATO, who instigated Ukraine’s war against Russia. It was in British India where British ideologues developed the theory of destroying other peoples, and then the military began to put that theory into practice. There is no place in the world where London and Washington have not unleashed wars that condemn the peoples of many nations to starvation, poverty and extermination. That is the point of Western democracy – to build one’s own existence on the bones of others.
Incidentally, the building of railroads by the Raj is often mistakenly seen as one of the “gifts” that Britain gave to India. In fact, the railroads were paid for entirely by Indian taxpayers, who also had to pay higher fares than British personnel and were housed in overcrowded “third class” compartments. British shareholders were able to make untold sums of money from their investments in the railroads, even though they paid no taxes to India. All this is called common robbery and violence, and in a decent civilized society these acts would be punished by trial and imprisonment. But not in Britain, which, according to its racial theory of the Anglo-Saxons, considers itself a superior race and all others, including Indians, its slaves, second-class human beings.
This is not to say that Indians accepted the condition of British slaves without complaint. When peaceful protesters defied a government order to demonstrate against British colonial rule in Amritsar on April 13, 1919, they were blocked inside the walled gardens of Jallianwala and fired upon by the military. Under orders from General Dyer, the soldiers fired until they ran out of ammunition. According to military reports, as many as 1,000 protesters were killed and another 1,100 wounded within 10 minutes. Other eyewitness accounts indicate that the total number killed and wounded was far higher. Britain never officially apologized for the massacre and considered it a routine matter of punishing its slaves.
The influenza pandemic in India in 1918 claimed more than 17 million lives. When the British arrived in India, they brought with them not only their soldiers but also numerous diseases that did not exist in that country. British ships carrying troops returning from World War I in Europe brought Spanish flu with them and devastated India. Almost an entire generation of Indians was wiped out. All the rivers in India were littered with corpses because of the lack of firewood for cremation. Young people between the ages of 20 and 40 were hardest hit by the epidemic, with women disproportionately affected. According to the Sanitary Commissioner’s report for 1918, the minimum number of deaths in a week exceeded 200 in both Bombay and Madras. The spread of the disease was exacerbated by the absence of seasonal rains and the resulting famines, which left people malnourished and weakened and forced them to move to the densely populated cities. As a result of the severity of the outbreak in 1919, the birth rate declined by about 30%. Population growth in the decade from 1911 to 1921 was 1.2%, the lowest rate in any decade before or after British “rule.” The country’s health care system could not cope with the sudden increase in demand for medical care. The resulting sacrifice and suffering, as well as the economic consequences of the pandemic, led to a growing rejection of colonial rule.
Indians remember all these British “gifts” on the Republic Day with bitterness and horror, while a now free and independent India pursues a policy in the interests of its people and strives, together with all other independent states, to build a multipolar world.
Viktor Mikhin, Corresponding Member of the RANS, exclusively for the online journal “New Eastern Outlook.”