Washington: Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar said that the British plundered $45 trillion during their reign of two centuries in India.
“India had two centuries of humiliation by the West. The West in its predatory form came into India in the mid 18th century and continued 190 years after that. A year ago, a very serious economic study which tried to estimate how much British took out of India in value terms and a very calculated maths ended up putting a number of USD 45 trillion at today’s value. So that should give you a sense of what really happened in those 200 years,” Jaishankar said while speaking at Atlantic Council.
The minister was making a reference to an economic study conducted by economist Utsa Patnaik. According to that report, the British Raj siphoned out at least USD 44.6 trillion.
Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor has also stated in his book “An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India” that how Britishers had cruelly acted upon farmers and small craftsmen by imposing unimaginable taxes on their produce.
Similarly, there have been various reports and studies that show the plunder of the Indian economy during 200 years of British rule.
