LONDON – The British Raj did more harm than good in the Indian subcontinent, this was the conclusion of a historic debate that put the mighty empire on a mock trial at the Supreme Court here.
The Indo-British Heritage Trust organised the debate as the inaugural event to mark the 400th anniversary of formal relations between India and Britain back in 1614. The motion before the house was, “The Indian sub-continent benefited more than it lost from the experience of British Colonialism”. The team against the motion, eloquently led by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor and including fellow authors William Dalrymple and Nick Robins, clinched a decisive victory.
“No wonder the sun never set on the British Empire, even God couldn’t trust the English in the dark,” said Tharoor as part of his arguments which focused on the economic ruin of India at the hands of the East India Company. “The might of Britain was built in the 18th and 19th centuries on the ruination of India ,” he said.
Dalrymple, author of “White Mughals’ and “The Last Mughal”, echoed the sentiment from the perspective of a prospering Mughal Empire which “haemorrhaged” under the British. “It is impossible even to consider the motion seriously without noting how far behind the West was for 90% of our history…the British went to India to get a bit of action in the Mughal Empire which was then richer than anything London, Paris, Madrid, Rome, Milan put together…Britain, with its mastery of cannon and artillery, drained India and the money came to Europe,” he said.
