Its an interesting discussion which has pros and cons
Pros: the entity of India is a british creation....We excisted for 4000 years but as small states yes every now and then you had a big empire which guzzled smaller ones...at a cost The number of lives lost...widows ...rape victims after Asokhas empire Smudragupta and chandraGupta Kaniska.... Harsha...Pulikesi.....Narasimaha....RRC RJC.....Sundarapandiyan....Moghuls to name a few...
Come to Tamilnadu were they harmoniuous as a single state having a common language heritge and landscape????
One rule brought them undr one umbrella and are we still united??? We still want Bodoland Kashmir khalisthan....
Without the British we may have become an islamic state like pakistan...With the islamic empire from Middleesat to Malaysia
We might be all be speaking Hindi!!!!
Or the rest of India might be speaking Tamil from Ganaga to malaysia...
Cons
Divide and rule
Would we have cricket english railways??? We may have Ghilli World cups!!!!
Railways printing all these would have reached with or without the british because the Indians have travelled far to china nad rome in the 2-3rd century
Would we be a Austalia or Newzealand or canada if the British didnt succumb to Ghandhi???
The answer is may be yes on the same note ask yourselves
what happened to the Maoris ,Kiwis,Aborigines and Redindians...the sons of soil They are almost extinct living in reservations....
We would be doing the same with India a White country like Canada or Australia or living as slaves like Southa Africa and Zimbabwe till recently
Venakat is absolutely right...Read Freedom at midnight particularly the chapter on Rajahs... one example in one of the Jat states Virgins wear a Mukuthi which is removed once they loose their virginity(ie marraige)
Two princes had a bet as to who will deflower most and the rajah who won made a crown out of all these girls mukuthis....
I think Mr Sridhar is right is saying that there were both pro's and cons to the British rule. Ghilli World Cup?!, Mr Sridhar, before this cricket mania we were champions in Hockey, have won Olympic medals in football, we invented chess for god's sake. This is exactly my point, the British united us under a single government, thank you. But to say that we would have been primitive,Islamic without them is a bit too much. We would have had our infighting,yes but i still think for a nation which has produced Gandhi,Raja Raja, Akbar there would have been a solution. Of course there would have been traumatic experiences like Mr Sridhar said but i am sure there would have been a solution. When we adopted Democracy after independence there was a crowd which said we were too chaotic,young for a system like democracy which requires a lot of maturity. But look at us 60 years from then we are on the threshold of being a country which determines world economy. There were huge problems after adopting democracy, we were on the side of USSR during its cold war with the US. Between the 1970s and the early 1990's we were a democracy which was behaving like a Communist country. But we have crossed all that and have become a vibrant young country. So, surely we would have had our problems without the British but we would have found our own solutions.
Anyways, i am happy we chased those guys. Who would want a 100 year old woman (i am not a male chauvanist) ruling our country. They may have taken our Kohinoor but we have our freedom.
but did you know it was "gifted willingly" to the british (by a king who had converted to christianity) hey we are coming across too many of these guys.
and anyway I think kohinoor exited india before british times and was broguht back by the sardars( and you joke about them)
hi all once again I am right and wrong on the kohinoor and take it upon myself to state the actual circumstances
I had always assumed it was a gift which is still one accepted version the british use in not returning it.but dalhousies personal papers suggest it was a "manipulated gift"
"Dalhousie arranged that the diamond should be presented by Ranjit Singh's successor, Duleep Singh, to Queen Victoria in 1851. Duleep travelled to Britain to do this. The presentation of the Koh-i-Noor to Victoria was the latest in the long history of transfers of the stone as a spoil of war."
so dalhousie treated it as a spoil of war( and not a gift)
the previous history of the kohinoor the invasion of Nadir Shah in 1739 and the sacking of Agra and Delhi. Along with the Peacock Throne, he also carried off the Koh-i- noor to Persia in 1739. It was allegedly Nadir Shah who exclaimed Koh-i-Noor! when he finally managed to obtain the famous stone, and this is how the stone gained its present name. Certainly there is no reference to this name before 1739. The valuation of the Koh-i-noor is given in the legend that one of Nadir Shah's consorts supposedly said, 'If a strong man should take five stones, and throw one north, one south, one east, and one west, and the last straight up into the air, and the space between filled with gold and gems, that would equal the value of the Koh-i-noor' After the assassination of Nadir Shah in 1747 it came into the hands of Ahmad Shah of Afghanistan. It was passed down to his descendants until it was taken by the Sikh Maharaja (King) of Punjab Ranjit Singh, during a campaign in Afghanistan in 1813.
Again, let us try to compare the two conquerors and see under which one India was better off.. I would think that we did WAY better under the Brits than under the Muslims.. (Of course that isn't saying much.. we all know about the Bengal famine and how almost 3 million people died...).. But at least we our hands on technology and the English language which is serving us well now ;) . Rahul talks about how we had been in contact with China for a long time and hence would have found the technology even if we were under Islamic rule.. I don't dispute that.. but somehow I think it would have been too late. I am not Anglophile, but to villify them unnecessarily while glorifying the Baburs, Akbars etc seems to me a tad thick really.
Dear all The discuuants were stating that Brits were better than mughals agreed but the brits gave us The entity called India before that we were countless kingdoms
The british Roads Rails and telegraphs were for their own good.. Climbing mountaind and surveying land and so one????Pass times
rules to abolish sati etc?? education ??
I agree we had a great culture and heritage but that wasnt across the board was it?? Lord macaulay mmmm agreed but the british didnt derogorate us we were doing that too fellow men before that werent we???
We couldnt even have tamil nadu as an entity we lost kerala becuse the travancore kings wanted to be separate