Author: Chandini Jaswal
When the Union Jack came down in August 1947, colonial rule ended on paper; whether it ended in substance is harder to say. That raises deeper questions. Does independence truly free a nation? Can decolonisation ever be complete? Would a former colony even want it? India's past sharpens these questions.
The subcontinent has always drawn outsiders, from seekers of wisdom to plunderers like Nader Shah, so foreign influence was never alien here. So why does the British chapter loom so large? Scale and depth. Around 1913, the empire spanned nearly a quarter of the globe and ruled roughly 410 million people. In India, dominance took almost two centuries to build, replacing the medieval order with a colonial one. A structure raised over two hundred years is unlikely to be dismantled in seventy-five.
A “Tryst with Destiny”
The speech by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, said on the night intervening 14/15 August 1947, resonates for many as the beginning of political decolonisation in India - the celebrations began as streets dazzled with euphoric people flocking to listen to the leaders give speeches. Many stayed away, reeling from the loss of loved ones incurred in the goriest division in history - the partition of the country into two parts, a tragic outcome and a huge price to be paid for throwing off the colonial rule. However, 1947 was not a clean break: the British-designed police, civil service, army and judiciary still run the country.
The Ledger of Empire
Company and Crown rule drained India of revenue, jewels and artefacts on a staggering scale. Asked about returning the Kohinoor, David Cameron warned that agreeing to one request would empty the British Museum. Economist Utsa Patnaik estimates the drain at about $45 trillion, none of it repaid. The damage went beyond plunder. India became a supplier of raw cotton, jute, oilseeds and minerals, and a buyer of British shoes, biscuits, machinery and locomotives. Traditional livelihoods collapsed.
Yet the record since independence is not bleak. Historian Aditya Mukherjee notes that in 1947 India imported nearly all its machine tools; by 1970 the share had fallen to about nine per cent. The zamindari system of 1793, which reduced cultivators to tenants on their own land, was dismantled in the early 1950s. Economic decolonisation has been substantial, if not total.
Where are we today in terms of decolonisation?
Historian Dipesh Chakrabarty called decolonisation "clumsy, complicated and inherently incomplete". Independence was less a rupture than a long, ongoing adaptation. The mind may be the hardest territory to reclaim. After 1857, Lord Elphinstone urged London to adopt the Roman maxim of divide and rule. Sir John Strachey argued that hostile creeds among Indians were essential to British power. Religiously segregated neighbourhoods across India and Pakistan suggest how we are still caught up in colonial segregation.
Marcus Garvey warned that a people ignorant of their history are like a tree without roots. Forgetting colonialism invites repeating its mistakes. The Museum of British Colonialism has petitioned for a National Day of Commemoration for the Victims of Colonialism, honouring those who paid for imperial rule.