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From: debray@sbcs.UUCP (Saumya Debray)
Newsgroups: net.nlang.india
Subject: Re: Plunder by the British
Message-ID: <31@sbcs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 6-Dec-85 09:29:29 EST
Article-I.D.: sbcs.31
Posted: Fri Dec  6 09:29:29 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 18-Dec-85 05:33:29 EST
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Organization: Computer Science Dept, SUNY@Stony Brook
Lines: 22

A number of responses to Uday Reddy's article have pointed out the
tremendous improvements in the Indian quality of life after independence,
compared to that before independence, and have used this to argue that
India was not better off for the British.

Without for a moment denying the rapacity of the British colonists, it seems
to me that this argument has a somewhat confused notion of "better off".
The question to ask is, "better off compared to what?".  The only reasonable
way to speculate on an answer to that, it seems to me, is to consider the
state of affairs on the subcontinent just before the British took over,
somehow extrapolate that to the present day assuming that the British never
had taken over, and compare that to how things actually are.  Any
differences between the two, it might then be argued, would have been due
to British influences, and we could debate whether these influences were
good or bad.
-- 
Saumya Debray
SUNY at Stony Brook

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