SAMAJ WEEKLY UK
Bal Ram Sampla
Geopolitics
Suella Braverman’s claim that former colonies owe Britain a debt of gratitude, and cash , is a masterclass in historical illiteracy. For a politician who speaks on education and equality, Braverman displays an aggressive refusal to engage with basic facts. Suggesting that plundered nations should reimburse their colonizers is a grotesque joke. If she wants to understand how the British Empire actually worked, she needs to stop reading imperial fan-fiction and open Shashi Tharoor’s Inglorious Empire.
Theft is Not an “Investment”
The core absurdity of Braverman’s argument is the word “investment.” The British Empire was not a charity; it was a state-sponsored corporate heist.
As Tharoor documents, when Britain arrived, India controlled roughly 23% of the global economy. By the time Britain left in 1947, that share was bled dry down to just over 3%.
Britain did not develop India; it deliberately destroyed its economy. India’s world-class textile and shipbuilding industries were systematically crushed through punitive tariffs to eliminate competition for British factories. India was forced to become a captive market, exporting raw materials and buying back British manufactured goods. Calling this predatory plunder an “investment” is like a burglar demanding a service fee for the effort it took to rob your house.
The Railway Myth
Whenever apologists defend the Empire, they point to the railways. Tharoor completely dismantles this myth. The Indian railway system was never a gift to the Indian people; it was the “plumbing of an extraction machine”.
The tracks were built for two reasons:
(1) To pull raw materials out of the interior to ports for shipment to London.
(2)To move British troops quickly to crush local rebellions.
Worse, this system was funded entirely by the Indian taxpayer. British investors were guaranteed a risk-free 5% return on their money, paid for out of taxes wrung from impoverished peasants. As Tharoor notes, it was “a private enterprise at public risk.” The tracks did not connect communities; they connected fields to cargo ships.
Wealth Paid for in Blood
The most offensive part of Braverman’s historical amnesia is the total erasure of the human cost. The wealth of modern Britain was subsidized by artificial, policy driven catastrophes.
Nowhere is this clearer than the 1943 Bengal Famine, which killed approximately 3 million people. This was a man-made slaughter. Under Winston Churchill, the British administration actively hoarded grain, cleared out regional food supplies, and exported wheat out of starving Bengal to stockpile it for European soldiers.
When British officials in India begged London for food shipments to save millions of dying citizens, Churchill blamed the victims, stating they were “breeding like rabbits,” and dismissively asked why Mahatma Gandhi hadn’t died yet. To ignore these millions of deaths is a total moral and intellectual failure.
The Bottom Line
Braverman’s claim that the Empire left behind stability ignores the brutal “divide and rule” strategies that intentionally weaponized ethnic and religious factions to keep the Crown in power, scars these nations are still trying to heal.
The bill for the British Empire was settled long ago, paid upfront in blood, stolen resources, and crushed industries. The profits still sit in the foundations of modern Britain. Before Suella Braverman demands that former colonies open their checkbooks, she needs to open a history book.
