Recently, renowned New York tattoo artist ‘Jema Ferrer’ arrived in Jaipur, the cultural capital of Rajasthan, during her visit to India. Here, she closely observed its architecture, art, history and everyday life. This experience changed her perspective on India and sparked a new debate on social media. Her views also raised questions about the old discourse in the Western world, in which India has long been portrayed through images of poverty, backwardness, crowds and disorder.
Jema Ferrer said unequivocally, “India was never poor; rather, it was deliberately made poor.” According to her, the image of India presented in Western films and popular culture does not represent its full reality. India’s thousands-of-years-old civilisation, knowledge traditions, art, textiles and philosophy of life have not been presented to the world with the breadth and depth they deserve.
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She believes that to understand India, you must present its entire historical journey rather than focusing on its present circumstances. Referring to the historical nature of the Indian economy, she said that the country had strong traditional industries, handicrafts and trading traditions. Using the Indian textile industry as an example, she said that at one time Indian cotton fabrics, muslin, and silk textiles were in demand worldwide, and textiles were among India’s major economic strengths.
According to Jema, the colonial trade policies implemented during British rule caused serious damage to these industries. She says that policies promoting British economic interests had a direct impact on Indian weavers and artisans, pushing large numbers of people into economic crisis. In her view, weakening India’s traditional industrial strength was an important part of the colonial economic system.
Commenting on the cultural relationship between India and the West, she mentioned yoga, Ayurveda and meditation. She says that Western society adopted these Indian traditions and developed large global markets around them. Still, the sources of these traditions and the Indian society that developed them did not receive the credit they deserved. For her, this is not merely a question of cultural exchange, but also one of identity, ownership and respect.
She also linked the global identity of Indian textiles to this context. According to her, the historical contribution associated with the Indian textile tradition, which once enjoyed worldwide prestige, also needs to be understood in a broader context. Her question is why the world that has benefited from India’s heritage should not give due respect and credit to the country and society from which that heritage originated.
Regarding her experience of travelling to India, Jema said that understanding a country from a distance and going into its midst and experiencing it are two completely different experiences. Influenced by Indian civilisation, culture and history, she also said that she regretted taking so long to understand India. She now wants to introduce the world, through her art, to the stories of India that she understood afresh during this journey.
In essence, Jema Ferrer’s statements suggest that India’s identity cannot be confined to limited images of poverty or backwardness. Its civilisation, knowledge, art, industry, textile traditions and philosophy of life are integral parts of its global identity. Although the perspective expressed in her words has emerged today as the experience of a foreign artist, behind it lies a long historical discourse connected with India’s colonial past and economic exploitation.
That is why Jema Ferrer’s statement, “India was never poor; rather, it was deliberately made poor”, once again points towards that history of India in which a society with a prosperous traditional economy, extensive handicrafts and a global trading identity underwent profound economic transformation and exploitation during the period of colonial rule.
Exposing western propaganda and historical misconceptions
For a long time, Western historians and colonial thinkers attempted to establish the discourse that the British Raj was a ‘blessing’ for India. They argued that the British gave India railways, a modern judicial system, and the English language, and worked to civilise an uncivilised society. This discourse was justified under the theory of the ‘White Man’s Burden’, but when modern thinkers and global historians such as Jema Ferrer studied India’s art, crafts and architecture objectively, they realised that a country capable of producing such refined and rich forms of art could never have been intellectually or economically impoverished. The reality was entirely the opposite.
A detailed study of India also makes it clear that, because of its geographical and cultural heritage, India had always been self-reliant and extremely prosperous. Its poverty was not the result of a natural disaster or the idleness of Indians; rather, it was the result of the British Empire’s deliberate economic policies and plunder.
India’s Dominance in global GDP
If we test Jema Ferrer’s statement against research, we must look at the figures of renowned economic historian Professor Angus Maddison. In his extensive research conducted for the ‘Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’ (OECD), Maddison established that from the birth of Christ (1 AD) until the year 1700, that is, for nearly seventeen centuries, India alone accounted for between 25 per cent and 33 per cent of the world’s total economy (global GDP).
The direct meaning of this is that during that period, every third or fourth rupee in the world was generated in India. As an agrarian country, India was also the world’s largest industrial and trading centre. Indian cotton textiles, silk, spices, shipbuilding, and handicrafts were in demand throughout Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. While people in Britain were learning basic civic ways of life, merchants in Dhaka, Muslin, and Surat in India controlled global trade.
East India Company: Not a promoter of civilisation, but a plundering corporation
British historian William Dalrymple wrote very clearly in his book ‘The Anarchy’ that the East India Company was not an organisation that came to India to spread civilisation or democracy. It was one of the most ruthless and greedy corporate houses in world history, with the sole objective of making profits and draining resources. After the Battle of Plassey in 1757 and the Battle of Buxar in 1764, when the British obtained the ‘Diwani’ (the right to collect taxes) of Bengal, Bihar and Odisha, they began a new chapter of India’s economic exploitation. The British destroyed India’s traditional merchants and artisans. Bengal, which was once considered the richest province in the world, was reduced to poverty by the East India Company within a few decades.
Drain of Wealth: How the golden bird was hollowed out
India’s ‘Grand Old Man’, Dadabhai Naoroji, first presented the process of making India poor to the world in 1901 in his book ‘Poverty and Un-British Rule in India’, under the name ‘Drain of Wealth’ (the theory of wealth extraction). Using mathematical figures, Naoroji showed that India’s money flowed one way to Britain, and India received nothing in return.
Several channels drained this wealth. British officials were paid hefty salaries and pensions with Indian taxpayers’ money. Indian revenues also met the costs of wars Britain fought across the world. India also sold raw materials to Britain at extremely low prices, and Britain sent them back as finished goods, which it sold in India at high prices. In this way, India was transformed from a manufacturing country (manufacturing hub) into merely a consumer and supplier of raw materials.
Historical plunder worth 45 trillion dollars
The truth Jema Ferrer points to is supported today by the research of renowned economist Professor Utsa Patnaik. After conducting a detailed analysis of nearly two centuries of tax and trade data, Patnaik concluded that between 1765 and 1938, Britain looted wealth worth approximately 45 trillion dollars from India (more than 3,000 lakh crore rupees in today’s terms). This amount is so enormous that it is several times greater than the total annual economy of the United Kingdom (UK) today.
In essence, British economic anthropologist Jason Hickel, who supports this research, has clearly written that the Industrial Revolution that took place in Western countries and the magnificent buildings, banks and modern infrastructure visible in Europe today were built upon foundations nourished by the blood and sweat of colonial economies such as India. Britain became rich not because it was more advanced in technology, but because it was more ruthless in plundering India.
Systematic Destruction of Indian Industries (De-industrialisation)
R.C. Dutt explained in detail in his book ‘The Economic History of India’ how the British destroyed the Indian textile industry. At one time, Indian cotton cloth ruled the world. To promote British factories, the British Government imposed import duties of up to 70 to 80 per cent on Indian textiles, while taxes on textiles from Britain were reduced to almost zero.
It is therefore natural that millions of Indian weavers, spinners and artisans became unemployed as a result. Cities that had once been centres of trade became deserted. India’s self-reliant rural economy was completely disrupted. People were left with no option other than agriculture, which increased pressure on the land and led to widespread poverty across the country.
Man-made Famines and Cruel Policies
The process of making India poor was carried out not only through economic losses, but also at the cost of the lives of millions of Indians who had to die without reason; at that time, millions of families were thrown into turmoil. American historian Mike Davis described the famines that occurred in India during the British period in his book ‘Late Victorian Holocausts’. From the Bengal famine of 1770 to the infamous Bengal famine of 1943, crores of Indians died of hunger.
Janam Mukherjee has established in his book ‘Hungry Bengal’ that the famine of 1943 was not a natural disaster, but the result of a deliberate and cruel policy of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. When people in Bengal were dying of hunger, India’s grain stocks were reserved for British soldiers fighting in Europe, while grain was rotting in warehouses. When Churchill learned of the situation, he responded, “If there is a shortage of grain, why has Mahatma Gandhi not died yet?” This cruelty shows that Indian lives had no value for the colonial rulers; their sole objective was the economic exploitation of India.
Similarly, some scholars have concluded that when the British came to India, India’s share of the world economy was more than 23 per cent. Still, when they left India in 1947, they left it as an extremely poor and illiterate nation with a share of just 3 per cent. The British also destroyed India’s education system. Before the colonial period, India had a strong network of indigenous schools, but by the time the British left, India’s literacy rate had fallen to just 16 per cent.
Global Implications of Jema Ferrer’s Statement
Overall, if the views of New York artist Jema Ferrer have to be expressed as a conclusion, then in this context it can be said that although Western historians may have presented their plunder in most history books under the ‘cover’ of ‘the development of civilisation’, the truth cannot be suppressed or hidden for long. Today’s aware and independent world is recognising this truth. India was never naturally poor; its poverty was the result of colonial exploitation, cruel taxation policies, the destruction of industries and the open plunder of resources.
It is good that, as India has become the world’s fifth-largest economy and is rapidly moving toward becoming the third-largest economic power, the emergence of this truth from the mouth of foreign citizens such as Jema Ferrer is a sign that the world is now accepting India’s real history and its capabilities. In essence, India’s past was golden, its present has been full of struggle, but its future is once again moving toward regaining the prosperity it lost. Today’s India is once again establishing its identity on the global stage.
