Britain doesn’t owe £52 trillion in reparations – India deserves even more than that
In 1969, when I came from India to study, I showed a professor a book I had detailing the harm the British had caused to India. Between 1757 and 1947, British per-capita income grew by 347 per cent; India’s by 14 per cent. In 1750, seven years before British rule began, India accounted for almost a quarter of the world’s manufacturing output, and was second only to China; Britain’s was just 1.9 per cent. If the British Crown did bring democracy to India, it took a painfully long time – and ultimately was not of a kind we would recognise, one in which only 14 per cent of the electorate could vote. Rather than a demand for monies, India would do better to suggest the British be made to learn about its role in the country’s past – the real history of their empire.
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