THE British Empire has reportedly drained India of $64.82 trillion and significantly stifled the country’s industrial growth leading to poverty, a recent report has found.
The report by Oxfam International stated that between 1765 and 1900 $64.82 trillion worth of wealth was taken from India to the UK with more than half of it going to the richest 10%.
Oxfam International released the report to coincide with the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Monday.
“This would be enough to carpet the surface area of London in British £50 notes almost four times over,” the report said, commenting on the amount of wealth taken to the UK.
The British Empire was also attributed to the decline of India’s industrial growth and for leaving the country impoverished.
“In 1750, the Indian subcontinent accounted for approximately 25 per cent of global industrial output,” it said.
“However, by 1900 this figure had precipitously declined to a mere 2 per cent. This dramatic reduction can be attributed to Britain’s implementation of stringent protectionist policies against Asian textiles which systematically undermined India’s industrial growth potential.”
According to Oxfam Britain's colonial past is still a driving force of inequality today as it has created a “deeply unequal world”.
It added that a significant number of the richest people in the UK can trace their family wealth back to slavery and colonialism, specifically the compensation paid to rich enslavers when slavery was abolished.
“This must be reversed. Reparations must be made to those who were brutally enslaved and colonised. Our modern-day colonial economic system must be made radically more equal to end poverty. The cost should be borne by the richest people who benefit the most,” it said.
The $64.82 trillion figure was not calculated by the report’s authors and was in fact attributed to two Indian economists based in Delhi, Utsa Patnaik and her husband, Prabhat, who referred to themselves as Marxists.
The pair in 2018 had estimated that Britain had drained India of approximately $45 trillion based on the period from 1765 to 1938.
According to Oxfam, the higher $64.82 trillion figure is an update to an analysis published in 2021.
The report follows Coldplay’s Chris Martin (above) comments as he thanked fans in Mumbai on Saturday for “forgiving” Britain's colonial past.
The band are in India for their Asia leg of their tour as frontman Martin expressed his gratitude for receiving a warm welcome from fans, despite the British colonial rule in India in the past.
“This is our fourth visit to India, and the second time to play. First time we played a long show and we could not have asked for a better audience. Thank you for coming today everybody!” he said.
“Thank you for welcoming us even though we are from Great Britain,” he said. “Thanks for forgiving us for everything Great Britain did.”
