Are British Citizens OK with aid to India?

[IndianHero]

Give us a break down of what the British looted from India. A diamond all you Indians got?

Hmm looks like you too are ignorant of history so please read the above post

I don't know man on how many people I have to educate in this forum..

If british pakistanis have so much self respect in them then please tell ur british govt. to return our items starting from kohinoor to peacock throne !

Give it back !

 

[IndianHero]

Got to hand it to you that is a great analogy you used to make this so much easier to comprehend. Out of curiosity where do the 500 million living in poverty fit into this terrific comparison of yours?

UK economy is $2.7 trillion

Indian economy is $3.2 trillion

India spends much more money on defence infrastructure etc., than UK

So I was damn right with my analogy !

Out of curiosity where do the 500 million living in poverty fit into this terrific comparison of yours?

Pakistan ? Last time I checked they are asking money from IMF and had to rely on KSA, China to barely survive ! Even their foreign minister said 'world is not listening to us on kashmir as india is an economic gaint !'

 

[IndianHero]

Undivided Indian economy before british arrived was 23 % of world's economy and when british left (undivided indian) was 4 % of world's economy !

The funny thing is british even 'looted' the word 'loot' from our hindi language to their 'english' language and still british pakistanis here are asking 'what british looted from india ?' lol.. I really enjoy my time in PP

 

[Ronaldo7]

UK economy is $2.7 trillion

Indian economy is $3.2 trillion

India spends much more money on defence infrastructure etc., than UK

So I was damn right with my analogy !




Pakistan ? Last time I checked they are asking money from IMF and had to rely on KSA, China to barely survive ! Even their foreign minister said 'world is not listening to us on kashmir as india is an economic gaint !'

I’m cringing so hard reading to this.

The Ignorance.

How can you even compare yourself with the UK?

The UK has 80 million people, you have 1.3 BILLION.

So obviously their GDP will be a bit lower.

But their GDP per capita is nearly 40K dollars.
India’s 2K dollars.

China’s 8k dollars

You should be ashamed that your GDP per capita is one of the lowest in the world and you call yourself a supa powa (an emerging one at least)

 

[Knight_Rider]

Undivided Indian economy before british arrived was 23 % of world's economy and when british left (undivided indian) was 4 % of world's economy !

The funny thing is british even 'looted' the word 'loot' from our hindi language to their 'english' language and still british pakistanis here are asking 'what british looted from india ?' lol.. I really enjoy my time in PP

Interesting, what’s your source for this india being 23% of world economy and what exactly did we export to world back then?
I am genuinely interested, as i have heard about china’s trade route to Middle east and europe via silk road but have never seen anything similar in context of India.

Secondly its a bit of daft point about comparing india’s economy (as % of worlds economy) pre and post british rule because it was during the times of colonisation and industrialzation that the new world countries were discovered and it was the British (and other colonial) empire, which establish the global world economy that we see now.

Thirdly the sword of Tipu Sultan is only valuable to Indians as an antique article. Its bot like that its made of Plotonium or has Gold and Diamonds all over it. Even contrary to what you believe, Subcontinent didnt contribute much to world in terms of material and intellectual possessions. Go to any large World museum and in most you wont even find a section dedicated to India (subcontinent). Hence i suggest, its time to get over the victim mentality we have in the subcontinent and accept the reality.

We should despise the colonial rule for the exploitation of people and unfair treatment but that’s about it.

 

[Iqbal'sh]

I don't know man on how many people I have to educate in this forum..

UK economy is $2.7 trillion

Indian economy is $3.2 trillion

India spends much more money on defence infrastructure etc., than UK

So I was damn right with my analogy !

Sir, I am forever grateful for your pearls of wisdom. Are you available for personal tuition? 220 million Pakistanis, not to mention several hundred million worldwide are queuing up for a slice of your erudite understanding and astute logic.
Please ignore posters such as [MENTION=149383]Ronaldo7[/MENTION] who want to taint your thinking through the prism of context. However can you share your views on the estimated 500 million that are living close to poverty in India? Maybe another metaphor that binds the Gates with the most deprived class?

Pakistan ? Last time I checked they are asking money from IMF and had to rely on KSA, China to barely survive ! Even their foreign minister said 'world is not listening to us on kashmir as india is an economic gaint !'

Sir, Pakistan were not mentioned in the original post but surely your opinions will forever rattle the minds of your parosis.

 

[Cpt. Rishwat]

Undivided Indian economy before british arrived was 23 % of world's economy and when british left (undivided indian) was 4 % of world's economy !

The funny thing is british even 'looted' the word 'loot' from our hindi language to their 'english' language and still british pakistanis here are asking 'what british looted from india ?' lol.. I really enjoy my time in PP

That's because we are now integrated British, so we British Pakistanis will defend British interests over India like 99% of other British patriots. You want your money back take it the same way we did.

 

[Technics 1210]

Hmm looks like you too are ignorant of history so please read the above post

I don't know man on how many people I have to educate in this forum..

If british pakistanis have so much self respect in them then please tell ur british govt. to return our items starting from kohinoor to peacock throne !

Give it back !

Tell us what needs giving back because cleary you have no idea.

Anyone else?

 

[Knight_Rider]

Tell us what needs giving back because cleary you have no idea.

Anyone else?

IndianHero must be a Hyderabadi, they are known to be feku.

 

[OldWarHorse]

2) Again the IT export thing. Principally Its the cheap back office labour provided by Tata and Infosys type companies. This has already been discussed to death but i cant recall any major IT brand or Product (or even patent) that originated in India. Surely you will now tell me about all those CEOs and thats indeed very admirable but the majority of the IT indians, i had the privilege to work with were low calibre, IT mules with fake resumes (you’ll probably know very well how that works)!

This was true maybe 5-10 years back about graduates. Nowadays even guys from 2nd tier colleges consider themselves too good for these companies. The current start-up scene in Tech for India is incredible. Hyderabad, Gurgaon, Noida and Bangalore are booming with new tech start ups. Lots of people from the States/abroad are returning to make use of these resources. Likes of Amazon,Microsoft have built there biggest offices outside of the States here. Ofcourse we are not yet at East Asia/Israel levels of tech advancement but that's just because we were a bit late to the process. The new generation is realising the potential of IT/Entrepreneurship over govt jobs which was the be-all for their predecessors. There is enormous potential yet to be untapped.

Here is a VICE documentary on Bangalore as India's Silicon Valley.

https://youtu.be/YHVNWtBuDVk

 

[OldWarHorse]

Interesting, what’s your source for this india being 23% of world economy and what exactly did we export to world back then?
I am genuinely interested, as i have heard about china’s trade route to Middle east and europe via silk road but have never seen anything similar in context of India.

Secondly its a bit of daft point about comparing india’s economy (as % of worlds economy) pre and post british rule because it was during the times of colonisation and industrialzation that the new world countries were discovered and it was the British (and other colonial) empire, which establish the global world economy that we see now.

Thirdly the sword of Tipu Sultan is only valuable to Indians as an antique article. Its bot like that its made of Plotonium or has Gold and Diamonds all over it. Even contrary to what you believe, Subcontinent didnt contribute much to world in terms of material and intellectual possessions. Go to any large World museum and in most you wont even find a section dedicated to India (subcontinent). Hence i suggest, its time to get over the victim mentality we have in the subcontinent and accept the reality.

We should despise the colonial rule for the exploitation of people and unfair treatment but that’s about it.

It's a well known fact that India has that share of the world GDP , close to 22-25% in the period before the Brits arrived. Sources are quite a few, most famous was the work of Angus Maddison,The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective. (You should check that out and other such sources on historical economies.)
However it wasn't that really we were filthy rich but was mostly down to the population which was roughly about the same share of the entire world(16-20)%. However it did decrease substantially to less than 4% when they left while the population remained in more or less the same proportion.

Coming to trade, Indian textiles and handlooms were the most revered items along with the Chinese silk (Note the Silk road passed through the sub continent as well, so it was not entirely Chinese). Alongside the rich spice trade which brought the Europeans to our shore bypassing the Arabs who had monopolized this trade. Believe it or not the Indian sub continent and China was the centre of the world pre-Industrial revolution.

 

[Knight_Rider]

Kon si textile and kon si spices?

Cotton is not the epitome of fabrics and has never been. Its not comparable to silk. As for Indian spices, no one outside the subcontinent eat all those spices that we do (even today). Silk road passed through fringes of subcontinent but India (and its rulers) back then didn’t export anything. I ve never seen an Indian made item in any museum of history, wheres as china ware and silk was imported by many rich people and Kings of middle east and Europe.

Time to come back to reality.

 

[Knight_Rider]

This was true maybe 5-10 years back about graduates. Nowadays even guys from 2nd tier colleges consider themselves too good for these companies. The current start-up scene in Tech for India is incredible. Hyderabad, Gurgaon, Noida and Bangalore are booming with new tech start ups. Lots of people from the States/abroad are returning to make use of these resources. Likes of Amazon,Microsoft have built there biggest offices outside of the States here. Ofcourse we are not yet at East Asia/Israel levels of tech advancement but that's just because we were a bit late to the process. The new generation is realising the potential of IT/Entrepreneurship over govt jobs which was the be-all for their predecessors. There is enormous potential yet to be untapped.

Here is a VICE documentary on Bangalore as India's Silicon Valley.

https://youtu.be/YHVNWtBuDVk

So which IT products, patents and brands came out of this explosive IT boom? Which major software product for example?

 

[OldWarHorse]

Kon si textile and kon si spices?

Cotton is not the epitome of fabrics and has never been. Its not comparable to silk. As for Indian spices, no one outside the subcontinent eat all those spices that we do (even today). Silk road passed through fringes of subcontinent but India (and its rulers) back then didn’t export anything. I ve never seen an Indian made item in any museum of history, wheres as china ware and silk was imported by many rich people and Kings of middle east and Europe.

Time to come back to reality.

You really have not read up on Indian history isn't it? Let me help you out.

Spices were in demand in world over, always have been. The ability to improve the tastes of meat and preserving food over long periods were a distinct advantage which some societies possessed over others. That's why there was a scramble for them especially in medieval Europe after the Black death and also owing to the fuedatary states there and necessity to sustain populations. Read up on the European history atleast before coming over to these questions.

https://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/spices-how-search-flavors-influenced-our-world

https://www.livescience.com/7495-spice-trade-changed-world.html


Silk was the main source of trade in China but it had also spread out, so no China itself didn't have the monopoly on them, not even on the famous silk route where Iran and Central Asia was also involved in that. Plus Silk was the fabric of choice for the rich, other fabrics like wool, cotton,fibres etc were still highly in demand. Textile are not even just about the material lol. There is the scope of dying, embroidery, finishing etc associated to them and Indian textile was in fine demand for the finished products we were capable of producing. Please read up on this in detail before passing uneducated judgements that Indians didn't trade anything. Just browsing through the internet will aid you. Check out some links below

http://char.txa.cornell.edu/IndianTex.htm
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/intx/hd_intx.htm


Silk road didn't just pass through the fringes of Subcontinent, it was a major part of it. It just wasn't a land system, maritime trade network was very deep as well. Even the land network passed through the heart of Indian subcontinent. The southern Indian ports were deeply involved in it. Read up on the accounts of Marco Polo, the man who coined the term Silk Road on his arrival on the shores of South India.

Plus it's laughable of you to say that Indian rulers didn't export anything. Major goods were meant for consumption as well apart from luxury items which were also part of exports. Seriously you need to build up your knowledge base on world history seeing as you are commenting on it. If you are really interested in the topic go through some very detailed books on them

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/185099.A_People_s_History_of_the_World

https://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Economic-History-India-c-1200-c-1750/dp/0521226929


Adding some further links to read up on Indian trade networks in ancient and medieval times for you to further read up.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Roman_trade_relations

https://journals.openedition.org/afriques/1752

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316786210_Indo-Arab_Trade_Relations

https://www.academia.edu/8592644/Indias_Overseas_Trade_in_the_Early_Medieval_Period

https://qz.com/india/1166083/temple...flourishing-tamil-economy-some-800-years-ago/

Comparision with Chinese artifact's is strange because China has been an independent civilization for its entire history (apart from a brief period in WW2 ) leading to better preservation of its past, while the subcontinent has been ravaged by people from all accross leading to severe discontinuities over the ages. People from various cultures have come in plundered the lands leading to so many losses of valuable reservoirs of knowledge and artifact's over the years. These also stopped the growth of real science and technology from the middle ages onwards, something which didn't hinder the Chinese. This led to our subsequent decline and exploitation by the west.

The reality which you must realise is India is in a state right now it doesn't depend on the British aid, it's peanuts compared to the overall economy. As others have said it's for soft diplomacy/power, to build a relationship with India as a rising global power. We hardly depend on them and really no real change will occur if it's gone.

 

[OldWarHorse]

So which IT products, patents and brands came out of this explosive IT boom? Which major software product for example?

As I said this a recent phenomena (5-10 years) with growing potential. Brands expansion is tougher nowadays obviously as lot of emerging ones get taken over by the bigger existing firms. Likes of Mindtree, Qwikcilver were taken over by L&T, Pine labs, Cisco etc, lots of new E-Commerce companies catering to the domestic markets have come up in the last decade hiring tech graduates in numbers. Ola, OYO, Paytm, Flipkart are the most famous ones with major foreign investors. Some of them have ventured abroad with Byju's, OYO, Zomato making foreign acquisitions as well.
However the major boom is in the AI sector which is seeing a rapid growth in number of employees as well as start ups. In fact in terms of patents India is in the top 10 , ahead of the UK even, top 3 in ML. I don't know about a lot of them but some are pretty famous like gnani.ai, for health care like Coeo labs. Here is something from CES 2020 about some others I found while surfing the net.

https://yourstory.com/2020/01/ces-2020-indian-startups-pavilion-innovations-asha-jadeja-motwani

Its just getting started, we will see a lot more in the future Iam sure of that.

 

[Knight_Rider]

You really have not read up on Indian history isn't it? Let me help you out.

Spices were in demand in world over, always have been. The ability to improve the tastes of meat and preserving food over long periods were a distinct advantage which some societies possessed over others. That's why there was a scramble for them especially in medieval Europe after the Black death and also owing to the fuedatary states there and necessity to sustain populations. Read up on the European history atleast before coming over to these questions.

https://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/spices-how-search-flavors-influenced-our-world

https://www.livescience.com/7495-spice-trade-changed-world.html


Silk was the main source of trade in China but it had also spread out, so no China itself didn't have the monopoly on them, not even on the famous silk route where Iran and Central Asia was also involved in that. Plus Silk was the fabric of choice for the rich, other fabrics like wool, cotton,fibres etc were still highly in demand. Textile are not even just about the material lol. There is the scope of dying, embroidery, finishing etc associated to them and Indian textile was in fine demand for the finished products we were capable of producing. Please read up on this in detail before passing uneducated judgements that Indians didn't trade anything. Just browsing through the internet will aid you. Check out some links below

http://char.txa.cornell.edu/IndianTex.htm
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/intx/hd_intx.htm


Silk road didn't just pass through the fringes of Subcontinent, it was a major part of it. It just wasn't a land system, maritime trade network was very deep as well. Even the land network passed through the heart of Indian subcontinent. The southern Indian ports were deeply involved in it. Read up on the accounts of Marco Polo, the man who coined the term Silk Road on his arrival on the shores of South India.

Plus it's laughable of you to say that Indian rulers didn't export anything. Major goods were meant for consumption as well apart from luxury items which were also part of exports. Seriously you need to build up your knowledge base on world history seeing as you are commenting on it. If you are really interested in the topic go through some very detailed books on them

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/185099.A_People_s_History_of_the_World

https://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Economic-History-India-c-1200-c-1750/dp/0521226929


Adding some further links to read up on Indian trade networks in ancient and medieval times for you to further read up.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Roman_trade_relations

https://journals.openedition.org/afriques/1752

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316786210_Indo-Arab_Trade_Relations

https://www.academia.edu/8592644/Indias_Overseas_Trade_in_the_Early_Medieval_Period

https://qz.com/india/1166083/temple...flourishing-tamil-economy-some-800-years-ago/

Comparision with Chinese artifact's is strange because China has been an independent civilization for its entire history (apart from a brief period in WW2 ) leading to better preservation of its past, while the subcontinent has been ravaged by people from all accross leading to severe discontinuities over the ages. People from various cultures have come in plundered the lands leading to so many losses of valuable reservoirs of knowledge and artifact's over the years. These also stopped the growth of real science and technology from the middle ages onwards, something which didn't hinder the Chinese. This led to our subsequent decline and exploitation by the west.

The reality which you must realise is India is in a state right now it doesn't depend on the British aid, it's peanuts compared to the overall economy. As others have said it's for soft diplomacy/power, to build a relationship with India as a rising global power. We hardly depend on them and really no real change will occur if it's gone.

Thanks for the pointers Bud. Interesting reads but still the conclusion is the same:
- Typical indian spices are/were mostly not consumed outside of the subcontinent. Not now and not 200 - 300 years ago.
- From all the herbs and spices that were sought after in 1700’s, only a handful like Black pepper have their origin in India. Others like Nutmeg, Tea and Saffron etc were grown elsewhere and were also introduced in Indian cuisine by the Foreign influences.
- Cotton is just commodity material and wool is/was not limited to India (by any stretch of imagination).

As for textile dying, embroidary etc these were results of British industrial revolution. In the times of empire only the raw material was produced in India but processed in British mills.

You need to come out of your bubble and realise that India wasnt the center of world. Far from it.

All it provided was cheap and plentiful labour and agricultural land for the colonisers to exploit.

 

[Knight_Rider]

As I said this a recent phenomena (5-10 years) with growing potential. Brands expansion is tougher nowadays obviously as lot of emerging ones get taken over by the bigger existing firms. Likes of Mindtree, Qwikcilver were taken over by L&T, Pine labs, Cisco etc, lots of new E-Commerce companies catering to the domestic markets have come up in the last decade hiring tech graduates in numbers. Ola, OYO, Paytm, Flipkart are the most famous ones with major foreign investors. Some of them have ventured abroad with Byju's, OYO, Zomato making foreign acquisitions as well.
However the major boom is in the AI sector which is seeing a rapid growth in number of employees as well as start ups. In fact in terms of patents India is in the top 10 , ahead of the UK even, top 3 in ML. I don't know about a lot of them but some are pretty famous like gnani.ai, for health care like Coeo labs. Here is something from CES 2020 about some others I found while surfing the net.

https://yourstory.com/2020/01/ces-2020-indian-startups-pavilion-innovations-asha-jadeja-motwani

Its just getting started, we will see a lot more in the future Iam sure of that.

Good to see that its going in the right direction. I hope they’ll prosper.

 

[OldWarHorse]

Thanks for the pointers Bud. Interesting reads but still the conclusion is the same:
- Typical indian spices are/were mostly not consumed outside of the subcontinent. Not now and not 200 - 300 years ago.
- From all the herbs and spices that were sought after in 1700’s, only a handful like Black pepper have their origin in India. Others like Nutmeg, Tea and Saffron etc were grown elsewhere and were also introduced in Indian cuisine by the Foreign influences.
- Cotton is just commodity material and wool is/was not limited to India (by any stretch of imagination).

As for textile dying, embroidary etc these were results of British industrial revolution. In the times of empire only the raw material was produced in India but processed in British mills.

You need to come out of your bubble and realise that India wasnt the center of world. Far from it.

All it provided was cheap and plentiful labour and agricultural land for the colonisers to exploit.

A typical shifting of the goal posts regarding spices; from people outside the SC never having those spices to the last 200-300 years when I specifically mentioned pre Industrial age trade in my original post. It's well understood that once the technology developed for better preservation, then the need for spices to maintain food standards would go away. Note the British East India company was formed primarily for the spice trade on the Indian Ocean on 1600, much earlier than the IR and other advancements in sciences related to food production. It wasn't until then that the demand for spices reduced in Europe but the trade still persisted along with Africa, Arab, Dutch East Indies.

Again saying cotton was just commodity is severely under appreciating it's importance. Just see the impact the development of Cotton mills had in the British Industrial Revolution. It by far eclipsed other clothing materials being produced.
Second, please go through the sources I mentioned on textiles to understand that dying and embroidery were traditional practices which suddenly didn't just come up post the IR. They have been a part of the subcontinent for hundreds of years even before the Mughal arrived. What I will say is that IR led to the mechanisation of the process which reduced the importance of the skilled hand woven textiles from India. They were much cheaper compared to the Indian products due to a variety of reasons. So once they got the control, the British flooded the Indian markets with the cheaper products with favourable trade monopolies or in other words lack of restrictions and duties on them.
All of this was a two fold process: Getting raw materials from SC over to Britain rather than for domestic industries which suffered from lack of quality raw materials and then sell the cheaper finished goods here, over the overly-taxed Indian goods ( You would do well to read on the tax duties imposed on Indian textiles all across Europe at this stage). The process of killing the traditional spinning/weaving industry was basically complete, pushing large hordes of people (traditional weaving/ spinning industrial families) towards agriculture and cheap labour as a result. But instead here we are arguing that the Brits were the be all and end all of textiles across the world. If you get a chance please read up on the British destruction of the cotton industries of Bengal. I have added some links you can check out. There is a book by Dadabhai Naoroji called the "Poverty and British Unrule in India", very informative on this subject. There are others like the "An Era of Darkness" by Shashi Tharoor on this topic as well.

https://www.thefridaytimes.com/weaving-misery/
https://www.freeonlineresearchpapers.com/fall-textile-industry-india

And they weren't even done yet, It was the exorbitant and unfair taxes, land distribution and revenue systems that were imposed on these masses who had moved to agriculture leading to extreme poverty, famines, deaths due to starvation. Lack of enough income for subsistence. The history of the colonial exploitation of not just Indian Subcontinent but Africa, East Asia others is very dark. If you are British, you must respect that and not pass undercooked opinions.

 

[Knight_Rider]

No shifting of any goal posts. You are creating your imaginary goal posts.
Here take a look at how many spices originated in India:
https://www.mccormickscienceinstitute.com/resources/history-of-spices

And how many more did not.

I dont have time to go round in circles to burst your bubble. If you really are that convinced that without Indian cotton and those handful of spices, British empire would ve collapses, then stay afloat on your Cloud#9.

I am not British, i am a Pakistani with family roots in India. So this subject is as personal to me as it is to you. I was also used to think the same way that British are to be blamed for all the misery and injustice in India but I gradually came to realise NO they aren’t. The weakness and inability lied within us due to many reasons that you mentioned above. We need to get rid of this victim mentality.