Associate Dean

Ravikiran asks, Was the British Raj good for India?.

Was the British Raj good for India?

I don’t know the answer and you don’t, either.

Some people have argued in their comments that British united India politically. I don’t understand why that is supposed to be a good thing for Indian people. Europe is divided into small nations continuously

fighting against each other. Various empires came and went unleashing huge destruction in their wake. European went through Napoleanic wars, various uprisings, invasions, World I, World II, communist rule and so on. And in spite

of all that on an average European nations are in much better situation compared to India in terms of economy. Most of the European nations have maintained their own language and not taken to English.

So, why do we think that integration of India and introduction of English is supposed to be good for India?

Maybe India would not have been united (politically) as much as it is today without the British Raj. Maybe the industrial revolution would have reached us later. But even if that would have been true, it does not automatically show that we would have been poorer today. Even if we had politically united slowly or started on industrial revolution late we might have progressed faster after that. That is because, without the power of British-given bureaucracy

socialism could not have spread its tentacles in India. One of the reason why so many African colonies got screwed by socialism was because socialist elites were left in charge of a huge Govt. machinary after British were gone. That has caused so much poverty that the political disunity and late start at industrialization would have been much better by comparison.

See also Gaurav's post on this. Also, see interesting discussion at

Asymmetrical Information on whether colonialism caused poverty in the colonies. There in comments I mention the reason why British rule caused poverty in India.

One of commentator there had this to say:

"Like that never happened under the native rulers.

Basically, what colonialism does is replace on set of exploitive elites with another.