| How Britain Stole $45 Trillion from India |
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UNITED KINGDOM, December 19, 2018 (Al Jazeera by Jason Hickel): There is a story that is commonly told in Britain that the colonization of India – as horrible as it may have been – was not of any major economic benefit to Britain itself. If anything, the administration of India was a cost to Britain. So the fact that the empire was sustained for so long – the story goes – was a gesture of Britain’s benevolence. New research by the renowned economist Utsa Patnaik – just published by Columbia University Press – deals a crushing blow to this narrative. Drawing on nearly two centuries of detailed data on tax and trade, Patnaik calculated that Britain drained a total of nearly $45 trillion from India during the period 1765 to 1938. It’s a staggering sum. For perspective, $45 trillion is 17 times more than the total annual gross domestic product of the United Kingdom today.
It happened through the trade system. Prior to the colonial period, Britain bought goods like textiles and rice from Indian producers and paid for them in the normal way – mostly with silver – as they did with any other country. But something changed in 1765, shortly after the East India Company took control of the subcontinent and established a monopoly over Indian trade. The East India Company began collecting taxes in India, and then cleverly used a portion of those revenues (about a third) to fund the purchase of Indian goods for British use. In other words, instead of paying for Indian goods out of their own pocket, British traders acquired them for free, ”buying” from peasants and weavers using money that had just been taken from them. On top of this, the British were able to sell the stolen goods to other countries for much more than they ”bought” them for in the first place, pocketing not only 100 percent of the original value of the goods but also the markup. After the British Raj took over in 1858, colonizers added a special new twist to the tax-and-buy system. As the East India Company’s monopoly broke down, Indian producers were allowed to export their goods directly to other countries. But Britain made sure that the payments for those goods nonetheless ended up in London.
Much more at ”source” above.
| Kentucky Hindu Temple Vandalized with Crosses, Christian Phrases |
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LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY, February 1, 2019 (Huffington Post): A Hindu temple in Kentucky was vandalized this week with hateful messages, including some promoting Christianity, in an incident local police are calling a hate crime. Sometime between Sunday and Tuesday morning, a vandal or vandals broke through a window at Louisville’s Swaminarayan Temple, the Courier Journal reports, leaving glass shattered on the floor. Black paint was sprayed onto a poster depicting a religious figure, and the temple’s walls were covered with black crosses and phrases such as ”Jesus Is The Only Lord” and ”Jesus Is All Mighty.” A knife was reportedly plunged into a chair in the temple.
A message spray-painted onto a bulletin board at the temple read had the word ”foreign” followed by an expletive, Fox affiliate WDRB reports. Temple spokesperson Raj Patel told the news station that this last message indicates that the vandalism was ”not about just a god.” ”It’s about a race or someone’s skin color,” he said. Patel said his community, consisting of 60 to 100 Sunday worshippers, is deeply saddened by the incident. The community has been meeting in the building, a former church, for about five years. Louisville Metro Police Chief Steve Conrad described the vandalism as a ”hate crime” during a press conference on Wednesday. He said investigators have not yet identified any suspects. Police will be at the temple on Sunday to ensure that worshippers are safe, he said.
More at ”source” including a short local news video.
| Daily Inspiration |
God’s omnipresent consciousness exists within each individual. Imagine a japa mala: every person is a bead, but the string that goes through the center of each bead–God’s consciousness–permeates us all. By looking deeply inside ourselves, we can experience our oneness with God.
— Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami, publisher of Hinduism Toda
