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Old 05-04-2014, 10:25 PM
 
Location: Gatineau, QC, Canada
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Either indefinitely or if the British became more embedded in Indian society?

I just watched a documentary on the later stages of Raj and partition and it almost made the British leaving sound like a huge detriment. Admittedly, I know very little of the Raj, and I'm not sure what the general opinion seems to be of its effect on the subcontinent.

Here is the documentary if you happen to be interested. It uses colour film footage entirely from that era and a lot of colonial India looks to have a much different vibe than you might expect.


British Occupation Of India In Color - Full Documentary [ Awesome Mind blowing Documentaries] - YouTube
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Old 05-04-2014, 10:49 PM
 
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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Well, the British gradually 'gave up' their colonies during the post war period, or their colonies declared independence. Especially after the war, Britain's economy was still recovering and all money and resources were need to re-built Britain itself, not go into developing and maintaining costly colonies, especially one so large as India. Given also the momentum of the independence movement, and Britain's weakened position, I don't see how it could have even happened, so it's a real hypothetical. If, for some reason, the UK decided to hold onto it, I suspect their influence would have waned anyway and it would just have become independent anyway. In other words I see no plausible scenario where India would be functioning as a crown colony of Britain today in the way Hong Kong did until 1997, or say the Falklands islands are now.
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Old 05-05-2014, 12:50 AM
 
Location: Jakarta, Indonesia
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Probably cleaner place than it is now and probably have less caste system followed as its people are more enlightened, more advanced and less slummy but since the population is huge it is a very unstable colony with a lot of riots and insurgency annd human rights people protesting for it to become independent.

And i would be imagining britain with more indian-pakistani population.
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Old 05-05-2014, 10:44 AM
 
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I should blame the censors and writers who control what they want us to perceive.

If you truly understood Hinduism and Buddhism, cleanliness is a main attribute of those religions. The British starved, massacred and enslaved the local populace with slave like wages. They stopped the scientific advancement of India, pillaged local knowledge, discouraged locals from competing in trade, destroyed their knowledge base, etc.


You really need to look at a timeline to understand what was going on. The Islamic hordes ruined a lot of North India, even the South was not spared. Everyone talks about the Mughals and how great they were but neglect it was built on the backs of Hindus. Constant warfare was a mainstay of the subcontinent. The Brits were a slightly better choice than the Muslims, they did not interfere with religious politics.


Britain after WW2 did not want to give India Independence. In fact, they stalled the process looking for reasons to keep it.

Many of you don't realize Pakistan was a British creation. Jinnah was actively supported and pushed to demand a separate nation for muslims.




India's present day situation is completely due to a weak corrupt govt that has relied on using "dynasty politics" to run a democracy.



People like to compare and say "India should have remained a colony like Hong Kong, it would developed better." Well, there is no proof to support that. Hong Kong is a fraction in size to India. The British policies in place over there were better than in India.
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Old 05-05-2014, 01:16 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mistertee View Post


People like to compare and say "India should have remained a colony like Hong Kong, it would developed better." Well, there is no proof to support that. Hong Kong is a fraction in size to India. The British policies in place over there were better than in India.
That's moronic thinking.

Hong Kong is rich and prosperous because
1) it is at most a mid sized city. India is 200 times the size.
2) HK serves a window to the giant and fast growing Chinese market with a lot of preferential treatment. Without mainland China and such policies, HK is nothing.

People should stop looking at one very unique case and thinking it applies to all. Among London's previous colonies, few of them are developed today.

Comparing to China, India should get its infrastructure built well first. How can a country grows when the transportation network looks like sh**t, and how do people have the sense of pride when there are not enough toilets in the cities ... but wait, it is a proud democracy where everything takes forever to be approved and completed.
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Old 05-05-2014, 01:41 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by botticelli View Post

People should stop looking at one very unique case and thinking it applies to all. Among London's previous colonies, few of them are developed today.
'London's colonies' are doing far better than Madrid's, Paris's, Lisbon's or Amsterdam's.

Any former colonised nation doing better than Singapore? Or the Bahamas?
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Old 05-05-2014, 02:08 PM
 
10,839 posts, read 14,622,884 times
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Originally Posted by bejarano View Post
'London's colonies' are doing far better than Madrid's, Paris's, Lisbon's or Amsterdam's.

Any former colonised nation doing better than Singapore? Or the Bahamas?
Bahamas? With a population of 300K and no industry except for tourism? Since we are using small countries

French: Gabon, per capital GDP (PPP) is not much lower than Greece or Portugal.
Spanish: Equatorial Guinea, per capital GDP comparable to S Korea

In S America, Chile and Uraguay both do pretty well.
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Old 05-05-2014, 02:47 PM
 
252 posts, read 558,391 times
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Botticell - let us go from the IMF list of 2013 for GDP (PPP)

1) Qatar (Independence from UK, 1971)
3) Singapore (Independence from UK, 1965)
5) Brunei (Independence from UK, 1965)
6) Hong Kong and the United States (Independence 1997 and 1783 respectively)
9) Canada (Independence from UK, 1867)
10) Australia (Independence from UK, 1901)
18) Republic of Ireland (Independence from UK, 1922)

And that is in the top 20 only. The only other formerly colonised nations that make it in the top 20
are Norway (no.4) Iceland (no.14) Taiwan (no.16) so it goes without saying London's colonies aren't doing that badly.

Quote:
Since we are using small countries
Don't they all count?
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Old 05-05-2014, 07:22 PM
 
Location: Philadelphia
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^Four of them are extremely small, four of them are resource rich, and four of them were heavily settled by British colonists.

I've always been of the opinion that the most positive thing to come out of the British Raj was a free and democratic India. It's almost impossible to say what India would be like today under continued British rule. It would've required a change of British thought and policy for India to be better of today under continued British rule. For the 200 some odd years that India was under British rule, India was basically socially and economically stagnate(and arguably much worse off socially and economically than before). British policies in India were geared solely to benefit British rule, British landlords were directly responsible for much of the mass poverty in rural north-central India(one of the regions that the British had most direct control of), many British intellectuals attempted to bastardize Indian culture and history down to the granular level and concocted racist theories to justify the "White Man's" rule, and British authorities encouraged social division in an attempt to thwart any threat to their dominion over India.

Asking whether or not India would've benefited from continued British rule is like asking if a slave is better off being the property of their master. Indians are much better off after 60 years of independence than under 200 some odd years of British subjugation. With that said, I'm glad that the leaders of the Indian independence movement took the moral high ground and wanted to send the British off on their way as friends. I'm also glad that many British folk saw the injustice of colonial rule in India, it's also fortunate that that those in power in Britain saw the untenability of their position(morally and politically) and decided to leave with India with some degree of grace.

Last edited by TylerJAX; 05-05-2014 at 07:56 PM..
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Old 05-05-2014, 08:56 PM
 
692 posts, read 951,346 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bejarano View Post
'London's colonies' are doing far better than Madrid's, Paris's, Lisbon's or Amsterdam's.

Any former colonised nation doing better than Singapore? Or the Bahamas?
Most of those former British colonies that are doing well are very small microstates which manage economic activity within a larger and less prosperous region. London's colonies include Singapore, the Bahamas and Hong Kong, but they also include Jamaica, Guyana, Nigeria, Sudan, Pakistan, Zimbabwe and India. India has more poor people than all of Africa. More people have died in Darfur than live in the Bahamas, Cayman Islands and Bermuda put together. Post partition India resulted in the deaths of more than 1 million people, more than the population of Singapore at the time. You can't cherry pick examples of former colonised nations that are doing well and ignore the literally billions more people who are doing extremely poorly.
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