‘Opium financed British rule in India’

Elephants in the room. (from the Non Sequitur series of cartoons by Wiley Miller). Click for larger image.

Under the British Raj, an enormous amount of opium was being exported out of India until the 1920s.

Before the British came, India was one of the world’s great economies. For 200 years India dwindled and dwindled into almost nothing.

Once I started researching into it, it was kind of inescapable – all the roads led back to opium.

I was looking into it as I began writing the book about five years ago. Like most Indians, I had very little idea about opium.

It is not a coincidence that 20 years after the opium trade stopped, the Raj more or less packed up its bags and left. India was not a paying proposition any longer. (via BBC NEWS | South Asia | ‘Opium financed British rule in India’).

Poor Indy Joe

Amitav Ghosh, a trained anthropologist and historian with a doctorate from Oxford University, did not know about the opium trade by the British Raj. The West has done a great job of hiding elephants in the room.

Does the average Indy Joe have a chance?

Birth of a new religion

But there is any layer to this problem. A new religion. It is called Westernization. ‘Modern’ Indians can be satisfied with perception and propaganda. Easier to digest, I presume.

At this rate, India will become another case of ‘forget-nothing-learn-nothing’. So enamored with the new religion of ‘Westernization’ are we, that no criticism will be accepted or tolerated.

Many ‘educated’ Indians have come to believe that the West is a friend of India – or has answers or solutions for India. Forget about India.

Does West have an answer to their own problems.

Related articles

• Raw Opium: documentary trailer (boingboing.net)

One More Chapter In Anglo Saxon Bloodshed

Amaresh Misra's War Of Civilisations: The Road To Delhi; India AD 1857

In War of Civilisations: India AD 1857, Amaresh Misra, a writer and historian based in Mumbai, argues that there was an “untold holocaust” which caused the deaths of almost 10 million people over 10 years beginning in 1857. Britain was then the world’s superpower but, says Misra, came perilously close to losing its most prized possession: India.

Conventional histories have counted only 100,000 Indian soldiers who were slaughtered in savage reprisals, but none have tallied the number of rebels and civilians killed by British forces desperate to impose order, claims Misra. (via India’s Secret History: ‘a Holocaust, One Where Millions Disappeared…’).

Let’s do the numbers

10 million people is 1 crore people – and India’s population in 1857 was about 12-15 crores. That is equivalent to killing 8 crore people today. Equal to the entire population Britain today. Another sorry chapter in bloody history of wealth built on flesh, bones and corpses. Post colonial Governments in Malaysia, Kenya and India have ignored the cover-up of the millions killed by the colonial rulers – in the Malayan operations, Mau Mau operations in Kenya or the 1857 War in India.

This is one more incident in a long line of ‘scorched earth’ incidents in history. Amaresh Misra – a film critic and journalist, who was moved sufficiently to research for a few years, because, “Since 1957, no Indian has written a comprehensive account of the Revolt. Indian historians have done a limited work”. His work, based on some excellent research and insights, is let down by his referrals, to partisan political interpretations and Western -Marxist political frameworks.

In War of Civilisations: India AD 1857, Amaresh Misra, a writer and historian based in Mumbai, argues that there was an “untold holocaust” which caused the deaths of almost 10 million people over 10 years beginning in 1857. Britain was then the world’s superpower but, says Misra, came perilously close to losing its most prized possession: India.Conventional histories have counted only 100,000 Indian soldiers who were slaughtered in savage reprisals, but none have tallied the number of rebels and civilians killed by British forces desperate to impose order, claims Misra.

via <a href=”http://www.buzzle.com/articles/149948.html”>India’s Secret History: ‘a Holocaust, One Where Millions Disappeared…'</a>.

King Leopold’s Slavery

BBC – History – Slavery and the ‘Scramble for Africa’

King Leopold sold his ‘personal colonies’ to the Belgian state for GBP3.8 million. Finally, this massacre stopped only when the Belgians realised that there might not be people left for ‘forced’ labour.

The Belgian Government should be put up on Nuremberg type trial.

Another form of population control by the West!

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