ON July 22 2015, the BBC published ‘Viewpoint: Britain must pay reparations to India’.
This followed a debate that had been carried out by the Oxford University Union, in May, entitled: ‘This house believes Britain owes reparations to her former colonies’.
The debate had speakers such as Sir Richard Ottaway (former Conservative MP), a British Historian John Mackenzie, and an Indian politician and writer Shashi Tharoor.
However, the BBC article was what an Indian writer and politician, Shashi Tharoor, had written about how Britain owed reparations to India.
A few days ago I watched a similar discussion on BBC, which centred on whether Britain owed her former colonies, payments in the form of reparations. The debate raised very interesting points.
First, a reporter asked ordinary Britons what they think about the Empire, whether Britain benefitted from the Empire, or the Empire benefitted from the British, and lastly, if Britain owed the Empire.
Many people acknowledged the wrongs of the past, but said it was time to move on.
Others felt the British had brought development (infrastructure) to her colonies hence she owed them nothing.
One Scottish person stated that it was particularly the English people who messed up the world, not British people; because British would include the Scottish, Welsh and Irish (Northern) who were also subjects to the English.
It is interesting to note the number of such debates emerging, especially from former colonies.
Others argue that the current wave of migration (illegal immigrants) from former colonies and war-torn countries is one of the unforeseen consequences created by the British Empire, and also a direct result of Britain’s foreign policy.
Just a few days ago, the United Nations (UN) reported that about 3 000 migrants from Afghanistan and Syria, are crossing into Macedonia from Greece everyday, fleeing from war-torn countries.
Some of the migrants said they wanted to get to England.
The UN says it is one of the serious wave of migration post-Second World War. In early summer, there was another wave of migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa, crossing the Mediterranean Sea in boats, to get to Europe (with the ultimate destination Britain).
Many people believe this unprecedented wave of migration is caused by economic inequalities created by colonialism.
I will now go back to writer and politician Shashi Tharoor, who believes that Britain should pay reparations to India because of colonial injustices.
He writes: “At the beginning of the 18th century, India’s share of the world economy was 23 percent, as large as all of Europe put together.
“By the time the British departed India, it had dropped to less than four percent. “The reason was simple: India was governed for the benefit of Britain.
“Britain’s rise for 200 years was financed by its depredations in India.
“By the end of the 19th century, India was Britain’s biggest cash-cow, the world’s biggest purchaser of British exports and the source of highly paid employment for British civil servants – all at India’s own expense.
“We literally paid for our own oppression.”
He also argues that India was de-industrialised when Britain destroyed Indian textile industry by moving the manufacturing of textiles to England and then exporting the finished products back to India.
“The handloom weavers of Bengal had produced and exported some of the world’s most desirable fabrics, especially cheap but fine muslins, some light as ‘woven air’,” he writes.
“Britain’s response was to cut off the thumbs of Bengali weavers, break their looms and impose duties and tariffs on Indian cloth, while flooding India and the world with cheaper fabric from the new satanic steam mills of Britain.
“Weavers became beggars, manufacturing collapsed; the population of Dhaka, which was once the great centre of muslin production, fell by 90 percent.”
But during the debate I listened to, one British woman, a clergy, denied that Britain had committed some wrongs to her colonies, especially India.
“What about the Bengal famine?” she was asked.
In his article, available on the BBC website, writer Shashi Tharoor cites how “Some four million Bengalis died in the Great Bengal Famine of 1943 after Winston Churchill deliberately ordered the diversion of food from starving Indian civilians to well-supplied British soldiers and European stockpiles.”
Interestingly, he finishes his article by asking Britain to return the diamond looted from India.
“What’s important is not the quantum of reparations that Britain should pay, but the principle of atonement.
“Two hundred years of injustice cannot be compensated for with any specific amount.
“And maybe Britain could kindly return the Koh-i-Noor diamond to the country it was taken from!”
However, many British people feel that they owe India or any former colonies nothing.
They argue that it was part of history; that they, too, were conquered by the Romans for 400 years, and they did not demand reparations from Italy or the Germans, Danish and Dutch (Anglo-Saxons) who also invaded Britain.
However, I found the comments posted by people on the BBC Oxford University Union post, very intriguing.
You could almost tell the ethnicity (race) of the people who posted them.
Will there ever be harmony in the world?
It seems most of it is just superficial and tolerance.
Junius87: “Wonder if Kate Middleton will have to return that accursed Ceylon sapphire hand-me-down ring to Sri Lanka.”
Margaret Howard: “How about Germany to the UK?
“After all, because of them our economy was wiped out twice and led to us having a massive loan from the USA!
“That’s because we declared war on them twice.”
Chemical-Mix: “What a load of utter rubbish.
“I’m not empire apologist, and there’s no doubt atrocities have been caused by many regimes and nations throughout millennia of imperialism.
“But Britain also brought railway, road networks, medicine, standardisation, mechanisation, sanitation, advanced trade networks and the ideas of centralised government to what is now a united, powerful India.”
Dano22 : “The racist British Empire murdered, raped, mutilated, enslaved and starved hundreds of millions of men, women and children all over the world for hundreds of years and was still using government-sanctioned hit squads in Ireland into the 1980s.
“Britain shows so little remorse for these crimes that she still awards her highest civic award in its bloody name.”
Gileselpom: “I feel so guilty about the atrocities that the British Empire inflicted on the world, not just India, but genocide in the Americas, hunting the original Australians for sport, 800 years plus of enslaving the Irish, and the list goes on.
“Why don’t any of the rest of you even have the slightest sense of remorse?
“I just don’t understand my fellow Britons, which is why I don’t live there.”