The story of famines in India starts and ends with British rule. The Great Bengal famine of 1770 was the first famine in India in the 18th century. Occurring merely six years after British rule commenced in India, it is estimated to have killed 10 million people in Bengal, nearly a third of the population of the province. Nearly two centuries later, the Bengal famine of 1943 took a toll of about 4 million, even while Indian foodgrain was sent to fuel the British war effort. Between 1770 and 1943, it is estimated that 30 to 35 million Indians perished in famines. No famine has ever taken place in independent India. The British Government's response ranged from the indifferent to the contemptuous. The 'temple wage' offered to famine victims during the Great Famine of 1876-78 provided less sustenance for hard labour than that received by Buchenwald concentration camp victims. On being told about the horrors of the 1943 famine, Churchill caustically remarked 'why hasn't Gandhi died yet?'
I've been reading Shashi Tharoor's latest book, An Era of Darkness, and even though the general contours of British exploitation of India were known to me, the book presents a moving picture of the horrors that this land has seen. He does a great job of taking each argument given in favour of British rule in India, some of which (eg. railways) I also grudgingly acknowledged, and presents evidence to discredit it. Yes, the British laid out an expansive railway network in India. But these lines did not just serve as a medium of British economic exploitation, but were built at a much higher price than elsewhere in the world. British investors, who formed over 99 percent of the funders of the projects, were guaranteed a 5% rate of return, all of it subsidised by taxes in India. This added to a massive drain of wealth already occurring from India to Britain.
Yet, in conversations I've heard abroad, I do not see an acknowledgement of what Indians went through. There is a general acknowledgement of colonial rule and that it was bad. But the details are either unknown or ignored. We are talking about a highly evolved civilisation, an economic powerhouse with the largest economy in 17001 - bigger than China's, more than all of West Europe and 3.5x bigger than all of Africa. The silence on India violated every democratic norm - at 16% of the world population, the issues of this country, past and present, should get more representation in the global discourse. At the other extreme, this is outright contempt towards Indians. For example, a few weeks back, I saw a South African Rhodes Scholar, an activist for black rights, incite hatred against Indians on Facebook.
I've struggled to understand what causes this indifference. Perhaps it is the fact that we as a country have done reasonably well after independence. Perhaps it is the fact that, in keeping with our 'live and let live' philosophy (Indian has not invaded another country in its entire history), we do not create a noise about the past injustices. Perhaps it is the fact that, unlike other non-Asian people of colour, we do not live among our past subjugators in enough numbers to merit their attention. Sometimes, I feel defeated when I think that recent moves against racism are also being run on the whims and fancies of people from former colonising nations, representing their preferences more than anything else. On the other hand, and less flatteringly, it may just be that we've kept ourselves so busy in our raucous democracy and (still) arguing with each other that we haven't formed a unified voice globally.
But what does all of this mean for us as Indians today? It is obviously not about reparations, which in any case our former colonial masters will be unable to pay us. Some may seek an apology, but I am sceptical whether that will ever come. We've been waiting for years for an apology for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, but British PMs come and leave the memorial without an outright apology. What I think we should take away is to resist any move to exploit us in future.
The last book I read before Tharoor was Michael Oren's Ally. Keeping aside my views on the Israel issue, the one thing I took away from the book was the Israel Government's thinking of 'never again' being vulnerable to something like the Holocaust. Similarly, we as Indians must resist the same old colonial arguments being presented in new bottles.
To me, the most obvious example is climate change. At a time when nearly 300 million Indians do not have any electricity access, India cannot afford to and must not accept any climate change agreement that doesn't recognise our right to energy. I was talking to a friend at Rhodes House once, a climate change activist, who put the blame squarely on India's 'population problem.' It was heartbreaking to see this friend repeat what used to be a British excuse for the famine deaths. Churchill, whose bust now sits proudly in the White House, said that famine would do nothing because 'indians breed like rabbits.' The context might have changed, the causes might have changed, but some biases are hard to get rid of. Even in the enlightened atmosphere of our left-liberal echo chambers.
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1 - Sourced from Contours of the World Economy, 1-2030 AD by Angus Maddison
