Cost of Freedom

While we complain and whine about all things wrong with our country, which is well within our rights to do so, we also need to acknowledge the cost others paid to get us this freedom.

1. As per British Administration records, about 6000 British died in the Indian Mutiny. The casualty count for Indians is at 800,000. This includes figures for those who died during the mutiny and the subsequent uprising as well as in famines and epidemics that followed in its wake.

2. If we estimate excess mortality from 1891 to 1920, with the average death rate of the 1880s as normal mortality, we find some 50 million people lost their lives under the aegis of British capitalism," they write. "But this estimate must be considered conservative. India's 1880s death rate was already very high by international standards. If we measure excess mortality over England's 16th- and 17th-century average death rate, we find 165 million excess deaths in India between 1880 and 1920. This figure is larger than the combined number of deaths from both World Wars, including the Nazi holocaust.

3. The British colonial regime looted nearly $45 trillion from India from 1765 to 1938. The amount is 15 times the annual GDP of the UK today. Even if it wants, it still can't return India the money it looted to not only build itself as a major global power but also fund much of the development in the today's developed world.

4. The Indian peasantry and workers produced the second largest merchandise export surplus in the world for at least four decades from the 1890s," writes Patnaik. "But India was never permitted to show current account balance, leave alone current account surplus. These enormous exchange earnings, appropriated by the then world capitalist leader, Britain, allowed it to export capital to develop Europe and the regions of European settlement, despite its running large and rising current account deficits with these same regions. The rapid diffusion of capitalism was ensured thereby to what constitutes today's advanced countries.

With this amount of human and economic costs paid to attain the freedom that we have, let’s not forget the contributions of those who came before us and let’s not get blinded by party loyalties or religious identities to undermine what we got!