MungoBrush wrote:Lady Murasaki wrote:MungoBrush wrote:Lady Murasaki wrote:India didn’t have the level of poverty it does now before the British Raj and other invaders did their smash n grab.
I think that you will find that extreme poverty in India predates the British Raj by hundreds of years
One of the main causes is the caste system that underpinned India's social structure and goes back to 1000bc
Certainly it doesn't seem that life improved for the average Indian under British rule - and I'm not proud of the British Empire heritage either
But to blame India's historic poverty problem solely on Britain is an exageration I think.
What do you think happens to a country when it’s been invaded and plundered?
Of course life for the average didn’t improve and those who had little ended up with even less.
The British Raj lasted less than 100 years
But it certainly didn't improve under the Mogul Empire which lasted more than 200 years.
Was British rule worse than Muslim rule for Indians?
I don't know the answer to that.
Certainly didn’t help improve things, except for a few fancy buildings and uptight Victorian values.