Few days back, India became the 5th largest economy in the world. But the talking point was another incidental point in the process.
Bloomberg News reported: “On an adjusted basis and using the dollar exchange rate on the last day of the relevant quarter, the size of the Indian economy in nominal cash terms in the quarter through March was $854.7 billion. On the same basis, UK was $816 billion”. Calculations were done using the International Monetary Fund (IMF) database and historic exchange rates on its terminal.
Overtaking Britain A Laudable Feat
As per a report prepared by State Bank of India (SBI), India had surpassed the UK to become the fifth-largest economy in the world as early as December 2021. But the news of September 2022 sounded more pleasant to the ears because it was not only about taking over Britain but also that it happened in the 75th year of India’s Independence from Britain.
Those who have still not understood the impact of this incidental point should look at the headline in the Chinese mouthpiece Global Times, which said: “GT Voice: India’s leap over UK economy a bitter lesson for London” (September 4, 2022). The report said: “For a long time, there have been no short of Indian media reports accusing the UK of pointing a finger at India’s foreign policy and domestic issues with a kind of colonial arrogance. Now as a former British colony, India’s leap over the UK in economic size could be seen as a development of historical significance, as well as a blow to those who are still addicted to the memories and colonial dreams of past glory.”
Being the fifth biggest economy was also not an objective. It is just an indicator that the path of the journey started in 2014 is correct. We Indians need to keep pushing on the path with more and more nationalist fervour. This is the only panacea to overcome all kinds of resistance to India’s success in economics and other fields
Apart from Chinese delight in the Indian economy taking over the British, the other significant point is the understanding of Chinese about Brown Sepoys in India, ‘who are still addicted to the memories and colonial dreams of the past glory’. Some of the Brown Sepoys compared India and Britain’s population to undermine this achievement. They argued that India’s population of 1.4 billion is almost 20 times of the UK’s population of 0.068 billion. By this logic, when Britain fields one cricket team in ICC matches, India should field at least twenty cricket teams!!!
Plundering Bharatiya Economy
Brown Sepoys, while doing the comparison, also forget that the foundation of Britain’s economy is based on the loot of India. As per a study, the British took away $45 trillion in today’s value from India. It is not only the loot; it is also about the mass murder of Indians across India and outside India by British during their occupation of India. Winston Churchill alone with just one Bengal famine killed 3 million Indians. Eighty seven thousand Indians died fighting for the British in World War 2.
As if this was not enough, during World War 2, the British uprooted railway tracks from India and took them to Africa where they were fighting wars. These were the same railway tracks which were laid using Indian labourers, but without paying a single penny to them for their labour. Not to forget, these railway tracks were laid to drain India of its wealth.
The following example about railways from a 2017 article in the Guardian.com by Shashi Tharoor, sums up the journey of the Indian economy’s current takeover of the British economy in terms of size. ‘The railway workshops in Jamalpur in Bengal and Ajmer in Rajputana were established in 1862 to maintain the trains, but their Indian mechanics became so adept that in 1878 they started designing and building their own locomotives. Their success increasingly alarmed the British, since the Indian locomotives were just as good, and a great deal cheaper, than the British-made ones. In 1912, therefore, the British passed an act of Parliament explicitly making it impossible for Indian workshops to design and manufacture locomotives. Between 1854 and 1947, India imported around 14,400 locomotives from England, and another 3,000 from Canada, the US and Germany, but made none in India after 1912. After independence, 35 years later, the old technical knowledge was so completely lost to India that the Indian Railways had to go cap-in-hand to the British to guide them on setting up a locomotive factory in India again. There was, however, a fitting postscript to this saga. The principal technology consultants for Britain’s railways, the London-based Rendel, today rely extensively on Indian technical expertise, provided to them by RITES, a subsidiary of the Indian Railways.’
Getting back is not limited to only railways. The British destroyed Indian agriculture as well as all other industries operating in India, at that time. Some of the prominent industries that were destroyed by the British were defence, shipbuilding, steel, and textile.
Swords made in India out of Damascus steel were a prized possession across the world. However, the steel industry was destroyed across India by the British, with one of the objectives being that Indians will not be able to produce swords and cannons to fight back the British. In the financial year 2021-22, India’s export of arms and defence technologies touched a record Rs 13,000 crore. The arms exports in 2021-22 were almost eight times of what they were about five years back in 2016-17 i.e., Rs 1,521 crore.
Despicable Thumb Cutting Act
India is known to have clothed the world. However, the British destroyed the textile industry ruthlessly. Bengal Muslin cloth was exported from India to across the world. On March 17, 1769, in order to destroy the industry, the British Government started cutting the thumb of the weavers, so that they cannot weave muslin products. This is just one example of destruction of the Indian textile industry. India recorded its highest-ever textiles and apparel exports in the financial year 2021-22 at USD 44.4 billion.
India could have surpassed the British economy long back but for Licence Raj. A Raj of Brown Sepoys which believed in looting India on the lines of the British. To humiliate Hindus, the slow growth of the economy was termed ‘Hindu Rate of Growth’ by the Brown Sepoys. These are the Brown Sepoys who are today protesting the renaming of ‘Rajpath’ to ‘Kartvyapath’
It’s time to pause and think, why it is happening in 2022 and not earlier. India could have surpassed the British economy long back but for Licence Raj. A Raj of Brown Sepoys which believed in looting India on the lines of the British. To humiliate Hindus, the slow growth of the economy was termed ‘Hindu Rate of Growth’ by the Brown Sepoys. These are the Brown Sepoys who are today protesting the renaming of ‘Rajpath’ to ‘Kartvyapath’.
India has surpassed the British economy now because of the various initiatives of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. These initiatives have led to exponential improvement in the field of
- Ease of doing business while dealing with government,
- Roadways, railways, waterways and airways infrastructure,
- Availability of energy,
- Skill development,
- Agricultural production
- Start-ups and self-reliance in production
- Institutes of higher learning
These are just some of the many initiatives which directly impact the business. There are other initiatives which indirectly impact the business environment.
Some of them being:
- Security (no random bomb blasts across India since 2014),
- Respect for India and Indians has increased globally (value of Indian passport is increasing every year since 2014, today an Indian passport allows hassle-free entry to 60 countries).
- Healthy workforce for the industry. (In 2014, the country had 387 medical colleges. In the last seven years only, this number has gone up to 596 medical colleges. This is an increase of 54 per cent)
- Dealing with corruption with an iron hand
These initiatives were not aimed at taking over Britain in terms of economy. Takeover is a by-product of the bigger goal towards which Prime Minister Narendra Modi is working relentlessly.
It has not been an easy journey so far. This has been achieved. When the world is reeling under recession, the countries in the neighbourhood, which were once part of Akhand Bharat and later sliced by the British bit by bit, are going bankrupt.
- When The Brown Sepoy Economists and journalists have been predicting economic doomsday since 2014.
- On the back of the Chinese Virus, from which many nations in the world are yet to recover.
- Under the threat of various sanctions for dealing with Russia during the Russia-Ukraine war.
- When the opposition, and a section of media has been undermining every government reform e.g., Farm Reforms Bill
- When foreign funded NGOs have been opposing and stalling every development initiative.
- When Indian industrialists are abused day in and day out for their success by Brown Sepoys.
- When Naxal and Islamic terrorism is working over time to keep India backward.
- While dealing with a hostile neighbourhood.
- When a section within the country does not allow crores of illegal migrants to be deported back.
- When a section keeps adding to the population and the Government aids them financially to do the same.
Being the fifth biggest economy was also not an objective. It is just an indicator that the path of the journey started in 2014 is correct. We Indians need to keep pushing on the path with more and more nationalist fervour. This is the only panacea to overcome all kinds of resistance to India’s success in economics and other fields.
Even being number one is not the goal. India was never known for materialistic goals. India’s place in the world is of Vishwa Guru. Material gains are by product of the same.
Last but not the least, today Babu Genu Said, VO Chidambaram Pillai, Lala Lajpat Rai, and scores of others who gave up their lives for Swadeshi would be smiling from heaven while looking down at the lakhs of British colonist like Winston Churchill, General Dyer etc. lying in their graves spread over Akhand Bharat and Britain.
