Top 5 changes if Britishers never came to India
Colonization isn’t good for any country, if agreed with the people who have suffered in those times, it’s actually more than just taking away your freedom. From the economic losses to the change in cultural habitat, from the division of political parties to the division of nations. It all makes colonization of one country on another, for whatever reasons, almost always a bad choice. Keeping this in mind here is the list of TOP 5 things which would have been different if Britishers never colonized India.
- India as a unified nation wouldn’t have existed.
Once India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan were a part of the great Maurya Empire. After that, it was the Mughal kings Akbar and Aurangzeb who were able to rule the whole over India. Yes, this is absolutely true and till today remains an oft-overlooked fact. India is much similar to Europe than it is to any proper nation-state.
Though we could have said that India, could have been a singular nation. As elites and educated people in almost all parts of India, from Kashmir to Kerala, learned and used Sanskrit. But the same was the condition of Europe with Latin. And after that due geographical and cultural differences slowly and steadily they started adapting regional languages like English, French, or German. The same could have happened with India as well. Where Rajputs in the west, Bengal in the east, Mysore and Maratha in the south. India would have been 10 to 16 separate countries, mostly small and few large.
Also, the British didn’t unify India out of benevolence to help the poor natives. They did it out of personal economic-interest, but in the process, they managed to create the first Indian state that called itself India.
2. A deep-rooted Caste system would have been more prominent.
Though India was not the only country with the caste system. But by the time Britishers reached India, it was the last of most profound one. Koregaon landmarks a very important battle in the British war against the Marathas under Peshwa Baji Rao II. In this battle, the 25,000-strong army of the Marathas was defeated by 800 East India Company troops.
It may come as a surprise to many, but this landmark and the event it commemorates are celebrated even today — not by the British but by Indians. Why? Company troops most being Indian soldiers were the untouchables Dalits and Mahars. It was the first time in the modern history of India that the ‘untouchables’ had defeated an army of their oppressors. The Mahars — the untouchable caste to which Ambedkar belonged — were entirely, utterly subjugated by Peshwa rule: buried alive to protect secrets, trampled to death by elephants for protesting their condition, denied an education.
Bhimrao Ambedkar — in my opinion, the greatest Indian of the last 200 years second only to Mahatma Gandhi — was a Mahar. For at least 3 generations before him, Mahars served in the British army; Ambedkar’s father was a ranked army officer in the Mhow cantonment.
The empowerment of Ambedkar, and of his entire caste, are certainly due in a large part to the ‘benevolence’ of the British towards his community. But what positive they did for the Hindu caste system, they emphasized religious differences to compensate the same.
3. India would have been the most prosperous country in the world.
Tavernier, a French businessman who visited India in the mid-seventeenth century narrating an anecdote from his memoir said -
A Persian Ambassador on returning to his country from India, gifted a coconut to his emperor. The courtiers were undoubtedly surprised at his uncanny selection of a gift for an emperor. However, they were completely taken aback, when they found that a 230-yard long Muslin cloth was neatly packed inside that very coconut.
Niall Ferguson has elaborated on this in his book, Empire. At the time, India exported textiles, indigo, salt, sugar, spices, beads, sealing wax, and much more. Indian traders usually demanded gold and silver as payment, instead of goods. This was also the era when Europeans were extracting huge amounts of gold and silver from the Americans. A large part of this European bullion was ending up in India.
But during the British rule, and India was practically commercialized. A new phenomenon occurred known as the de-industrialization of India. India’s most profitable industries slumped to their lowest level due to heavy taxation, high tariffs, and mostly corruption. Especially the destruction of the textile industry will be remembered as the first significant deindustrialization in the modern era.
If it wasn’t this India would have had it’s own inventions and would have been one of the world leaders in the manufacturing sector. In the year 1700, India’s share of the global economy was around 25 percent, according to economic historian Angus Maddison. But by 1950, our share of the global economy was 5 percent.
4. There would have been no Hindu-Muslim Wars:-
Indian history has been a classical case where minorities have ruled the majority for thousands of years, yet the nation continued to be separated from any kind of polarization and peace prevailed. The Indian subcontinent is a historical case of toleration, mutual respect for religion, and co-existence.
Apart from the politicians and the corrupt leaders of our country, Hindu-Muslim wars hadn’t been profitable to anyone. Before the British rule, Mughals were ruling India in the north and Shivaji, an upcoming Hindu leader was trying to repel the same from the south. Clearly, there were some dissimilarities between the Hindus, who used to look up to Guptas and Maurayas rule as the golden period of India and the Muslims, who considered themselves better in Mughal age. But till the eighteenth and half of the nineteenth century, people were not aware of strong communism either on the Hindu side or on the Muslim side. Most Muslim elites in South Asia were strongly aware of their unique cultural identity — with significant influence from the Middle East — separate from the more subcontinent-centric Hindus, got along well with Hindus.
In his famous Chicago speech of 1893, Swami Vivekananda, who did much to popularise Hinduism in the west, proclaimed: “I am proud to belong to a religion that has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance.”
Enter the British: Communalism got into the nerves of India during the 1850s, as the British used communalism as a policy to divide and rule people. British ensured that they do not remain the common enemy of the Indians. British have not only divided people on the lines of caste, or religion, but also on the basis of region. Since then, India is gripped under religious polarisation and as a result, the social fabric of the country continues to be affected deeply.
5. We would have been more gratified of our culture:-
Once there used to live a peacock and an eagle in the woods. The peacock assembled his home on the ground and used to perch on the lower parts of trees, while the eagle had constructed his home on the highest parts of the trees. The peacock used to feel awful that while eagle could fly high in the sky, he could just fly as high as to go just up to the branches. He took a look at his plumage and figured, just on the off chance that I didn’t have this train of quills behind me, I would have the option to take off as high in the sky like the eagle. So he chops down his tail and put in full exertion to fly as high as possible, however regardless of how hard he attempted, he despite everything couldn’t fly as high as the hawk. Seeing this tailless peacock battling to fly up in the sky was an incredible diversion for all the creatures in the woodland.
Till now we are more pulled in to remote merchandise and items. Rather than making something of our own, we intensely depend on imported items from nations like China, the USA, Israel, Russia, and so forth… Most of the Indians act like that peacock, we have a feeling of inadequacy instilled in us. A considerable lot of us think anything Indian is sub-par compared to at all western items, even our organization names are kept like they are from outside. Why so?
British designed the modern Indian education system and as expected it was great in instilling western values in the Indian youth but it downplayed the importance of Indian culture and values. It is obviously not their shortcoming, actually, we ought to be grateful to the British for the brilliant endowment of the advanced training framework, it has served us truly well. Be that as it may, after freedom, our educational program ought to have adjusted Indian qualities likewise, which we didn’t do quite well. Without British standard, we would invest wholeheartedly in our way of life and our qualities may most likely have stricter principles on introducing ourselves to the worldwide economy.
If you like this article share and clap 👏 👏. Thanks!
Also Read:
