Urgent warning to India

Charles Savoie
This is addressed to all residents of the great country of India, and to those living elsewhere whose roots are in India. It is directed towards all Indians, but especially to those having influence, whether as business or government leaders or rank and file middle class. It is your duty to help yourselves, to help one another, and to help India, including the numberless poor who have no influence. Insofar as the subject matter is of interest and concern to anyone else, it is also for their consideration. This will be a brief review of the historical exploitation of India by other powers, notably by Great Britain and later by its chief partner, the United States. To those of you who are aware of all the following facts and many more not mentioned, I suggest you consider passing this on to others who aren’t as well informed. After a review of some Indian history dating back many generations, it is intended that this information may serve as a background against which to consider how you wish the government of India to respond to desperate requests from British and American interests---or even demands, which will take place beginning in 2003.

You see, India will be under diplomatic, political and economic siege from the West to dump hundreds of millions of ounces of silver scrap (jewelry, table ware, coins and other objects) at low offering prices to relieve a shortage apparently caused by bullion banks and a commodity users association. My purpose is not to detract from America procuring silver, but to urge that it do so by fair dealing---by allowing a free market in silver to balance supply with demand. This is only possible with higher prices. As the derivative conspiracy burns itself out, we need no Federal confiscation, no Executive Order price capping silver, and no nationalization of silver deposits---just let the free market work! However, need for silver will be overwhelming, and if India caves in to bullying, browbeating, and threats of sanctions, it will find itself paying far higher prices to replace the silver. If you allow India to be made a charred ruin in this manner, the diseased ghosts of past injustices will have their way again.

LONDON---DECEMBER 31, 1600
Thousands of miles from India, on this date, action was undertaken in London which would cause undreamed of misery, suffering, hardship, and poverty to the people of the Indian subcontinent. This curse was to last for almost 350 years! On that date in the city the old Roman conquerors called Londinium, Queen Elizabeth I granted a royal charter to a globally minded band of businessmen who formed the British East India Company, which from that date through the year 1873 ransacked India and looted its people of many priceless objects. It would take another 74 years after that for India to become independent. The Indian Ocean and Far East trade was also called the armed trade, for when the looters failed to get what they sought after by cooperation, plundered it by force. Some earlier historical references are in order to place what was happening in perspective. Spain, who had been a fierce rival of Britain, sent its great naval armada to invade Britain in 1588. However, the British unexpectedly defeated the Spanish, because the large ships lacked the mobility of smaller English vessels, which were able to spread fire to the invading ships. This one event changed the face of global geopolitics for centuries to come. After this catastrophe for Spain, the British could truly say, “Britannia Rules the Waves.” Spain, Portugal, England and France wished to colonize and conquer other regions of the world, but the British were far and away the most successful with the British Empire, later called the British Commonwealth of nations.

India was to remain under British domination until 1947---for India, a nightmare slumber of centuries! The Portuguese, deeply involved in the new world (Brazil) and the south Atlantic coast of Africa (Angola), were already in India before the British arrived. In due time the Portuguese were ousted because the British wanted no competition. With the British the most imperialistic people of all history, one wonders if the Romans and Vikings left warring, exploiting and raiding genes in England. The Spanish also got to China before the British. In 1571 the Ming dynasty took China onto a silver standard for money, such silver having come from their spice and silk trade with the Spanish and the Conquistadors silver mines in Bolivia and Mexico. This was at the same time that Sir Francis Drake (1540-1596) was raiding Spanish treasure galleons on the high Atlantic seas on behalf of the British royal family. Maybe Drake’s privateering wasn’t so wrong, inasmuch as the Spanish mines were being worked with forced native labor. The competition with England for colonization of the world was the reason the Spanish sent their fleet to invade Britain in 1588.

BRITISH EXPLOITATION OF INDIA BEGINS
“There is nothing so bad that you will not find Englishmen doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles.”---George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), English dramatist. Predating the similarly exploitative Bank of England by almost a full 94 years, the British East India Company launched an exploitative invasion of India and other regions, which was on a larger scale than all the pillaging of the Roman Empire. It was also highly active in China and what we now call Myanmar (British Burma, from which they plundered great rubies and colored gems after 1830), Pakistan and the Persian Gulf in the west to China in the east and Indonesia to the south---a territory of millions of square miles! The company’s ships first arrived in 1608 at the port of Surat.

During 1615-1619 Sir Thomas Roe negotiated with Jahangir the Mughal Emperor for trade relations. Jahangir owned some 1.5 million carats of rubies, diamonds and emeralds---much of which was to be siphoned by the British Empire. Some of his titles, “Mirror of the Glories of God” and “Possessor of the Planets” seem to have been expropriated by ostentatious British Royalty. The British had already routed the Portuguese there in battle in 1612, and the East Indian spice trade, once the domain of Spain and Portugal, fell to the British, as the Portuguese were gradually eliminated from trade. The British gained trade concessions from the Mughal Empire over the years, and in 1717 the Company received exemption from duties paid in Bengal. In regions where the Company operated the condition of the people was worse than it had been under pure Mughal rule. One of many famines attributed to the greed of the Company took place in 1769-1770, during which one third of the population died of starvation. As Spanish soldier and author Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) said, “All sorrows are bearable if there is bread,” in the famines the Indians had none. The extreme greed and exploitation of the British East India Company sounds like the comments of Gustavus Myers (“History of the Great American Fortunes,” 1936, pages 196 and 201), in his comments on Marshall Field of Chicago, who exploited child labor in 11 countries---

“Boys and girls of tenderest age were mercilessly ground into dollars; their young life’s blood dyed deep the fabrics which brought Field riches. He owned stocks and bonds in about 150 corporations, and he was a director of many. The history of many of them reeked with thefts of public and private money; corruption of common councils, of legislatures, Congress and of administrative officials; land grabbing, fraud, illegal transactions, violence and oppression not only of their immediate workers, but of the entire population. He owned tens of millions of the stock of eighteen railroads. The affairs of these trusts have been shown in court as overflowing with fraud, the most glaring oppressions, and violations of law. That the company’s profits were great at the very time the workers were curtailed to a starvation basis, there can be no doubt.” The British East India Company had the unique distinction of eventually ruling an entire country, and a very large one at that. The Indian Ocean was sometimes called the “British lake.” Significantly, the Dutch East India Company was founded in 1602 to compete with the British, but the Dutch mainly sought out what we know as Indonesia where British activity wasn’t as strong as in India. However, conflicts occurred.

HOW MUCH TERRITORY DOES BRITAIN WANT?
In 1652 the Dutch took South Africa from the Portuguese, only to have the British win the Boer War, 1899-1902, because Cecil Rhodes and Lord Alfred Milner (agents for Lord Rothschild in gaining the area’s mineral wealth) and Field Marshall Earl Roberts wanted the gold and diamond mines in Transvaal and Orange Free State---actually Rhodes and Milner intended to seize Africa from Capetown to Cairo! Not to get too far afield from India, but to add breadth to the British passion for world domination, Lord Milner is said to have contributed 21 million rubles to the success of the Bolshevik Revolution which ended Czarist control of Russia (“Czarism and Revolution,” 1962, Arsene de Goulevitch, former Russian general who moved to France where he founded the Union of Oppressed Peoples).

Support also came from Milner’s friends in New York. In 1928 Albert Wiggin of Chase National Bank (director of over 60 corporations including Newmont Mining) teamed with Alvin Krech (37 directorships and member of Royal Thames Yacht Club, London) head of Equitable Trust in selling Bolshevik Bonds to their network, and made the difference of keeping the Bolsheviks in power! All these colonial powers were intent on elbowing the others out of the way because they all wanted an exclusive on the spoils and plunder. Centuries later the British and Dutch, including the Royal House of Nassau, would collaborate in huge scale business ventures including Royal Dutch Shell Petroleum, from a 1907 merger which allowed the resulting company to hold its own against Rockefeller and Mellon competition.

In 1661 military conflicts with Portugal were submerged because King Charles II married the Princess of Portugal, Catherine of Braganza. Charles gave the British East India Company authority to issue currency, erect forts and make war. In 1667 the British and Dutch signed a treaty to exchange Manhattan Island in the new world for Run Island in the Banda islands of Indonesia on the other side of the world, where upwards of 300,000 pounds of nutmeg was produced annually. To place things in perspective, nutmeg, as a key item in the centuries long spice trade, yielded profits of up to 60,000% (not a typo, that’s sixty thousand percent---see “Nathaniel’s Nutmeg” by Giles Milton, Penguin Books, 2000). So New Amsterdam became New York, after York, England. It’s interesting to read about the wealthy Dutch and English families in New York and the facts as to how they collaborated as Robber Barons would make for far more interesting reading than you would imagine.

BEATING, BRIBING AND TRICKING INDIANS
Having settled matters with the Dutch on the high seas and in the Eastern hemisphere, the British East India Company went into high gear exporting Indian wealth back to merry old England---to the detriment of most Indians. India wasn’t fully encompassed by the Mughal Empire; there were territories of independent and semi-independent principalities, and about 15 languages and hundreds of dialects. As British influence strengthened, the Mughal Empire faded. At the Battle of Plassey, June 23, 1757, Sir Robert Clive and his East India Company troops defeated the forces of Siraj, the Nawab of Bengal, who had been collaborating with the French. Mir Jafar, a political competitor of Siraj, assisted Clive in bribing many of Siraj’s troops to surrender prematurely and, in some cases, to turn arms on their fellows. Sounds like the diabolically clever English king from “Braveheart,” doesn’t it? Apparently such tactics were part of British armamentarium for long centuries and they may have learned it from the Romans. At this battle in 1757 the British East India Company is reckoned as having secured what became ultimate control of India and domination over its inhabitants. Native princes gradually came under British “supervision”.

The Company, of course, owned immense tracts of land and Clive took over areas claimed by the French. Clive also won rights to collect taxes in Calcutta and the Bengal region. There was an incident in 1756 which was widely heralded in Britain as totally factual, but which has had major holes poked in it afterwards.

The “Black Hole of Calcutta” item happened after Siraj took over Fort William and Calcutta---a focal point of British activity. 146 British were said to have been captured, then stuffed into a locked dungeon cell, which was way too small to safely contain them. Upon opening the door the following morning 123 were said to have died from suffocation or crushing, based on the account of a survivor, John Holwell. Indian scholars later showed that Siraj wasn’t on hand at the time, and that only 69 prisoners were in the dungeon. The account was probably embellished well beyond what happened, but was widely circulated and used to depict Indians as cowardly, vicious and evil---a people who had to be ruled over. Never mind that the British were trespassing by force! Holwell might have used a line from Star Trek (“A Taste of Armageddon,” February 23, 1967) had it been available to him---

“Millions of people horribly killed; disaster, disease, starvation, horrible, lingering death, pain and anguish!”

Ironically such expressions would have better described what happened to Indians at British hands, especially in an economic sense. But by no means was physical savagery omitted---not surprising since at one time hundreds of petty offences were punished by hanging in Britain, where drawing and quartering was also made a consummate devil’s art. The battle of Wandiwash in 1760 ended French aspirations in India, and the British East India Company increased its spy network. In 1773 the India Bill of Lord North became law and placed India under the rule of a Governor-General (later a Viceroy) and increased the involvement of Parliament in the British East India Company, and in 1784 Pitts India Act made the British East India Company an official arm of the British government. Doubtless no difference before or after was perceptible to the Indians.

CORNWALLIS---FOE OF U.S. AND INDIA
Warren Hastings became the first Governor-General of India, and was succeeded in 1786 by General Cornwallis until 1793. This was the same Cornwallis who fought so hard to keep the American colonies under control of the British Crown, but was cornered by George Washington and his men at Yorktown on October 19, 1781. His plan seemed to be, if you fail to maintain British control of one part of the world, go elsewhere and do so. His administration featured among other activities all intended to solidify British control, the Mysore war. To you Americans reading this---take note, we had an oppressor in common with India! For the next 50 years, the British systematically eliminated Indian rivals. In 1806 the mutiny at Vellore (incited by British interference with Muslim head gear and Hindu caste marks) was brutally put down, in the same style as that of Lord Wellesley, Governor-General after Cornwallis. (The designation Governor-General apparently came from Roman Britain, see for instance the 1966 film “The Viking Queen” in which a Roman Governor-General named Justinian defeats the natives).

Wellesley pursued violent wars against Indians, and relentlessly expanded areas controlled by the Company and the Crown. In fact he doubled the revenue of the Company and later became British Foreign Minister. His younger brother, very significantly was the Duke of Wellington, the British commander who defeated Napoleon in 1815! From 1796-1805 the younger Wellesley campaigned in India, defeating native efforts at self-governance. (As with Dalhousie University, Wellesley College in Boston appears to bear the ancestral name). In 1815 the British East India Company ran the Dutch out of Ceylon, the large island at the southern tip of India---an island with a fabulous history of producing untold millions of carats of colored gems. During the period 1817-1819 the Maratha faction, the most challenging fighters the British faced, was finally put down. During 1813-1822 Nepal was conquered. (Nor was Britain inactive elsewhere. In 1821 Sierra Leone, Gambia and the Gold Coast were amalgamated to form British West Africa, a tremendous source of diamonds and gold).

James Mill, at the helm of the British East India Company from 1819-1835 expressed the view in his “History of British India” that Britain should rule over India. He felt, however, that it should first attempt to do so by obtaining their “cooperation,” and that if the British were attacked, they should then defeat and subjugate the Indians. What a position! If you want to take over a neighbor’s property (upon which you are already encamped by force), ask his cooperation. Then, if he tries to use force to make you depart, beat the hell out of him and take over his property---he’ll be better off for it! As a happy Englishman declared in a letter to the London Examiner, 29 August 1857---

“We owe our foreign dominions to our greatness, not our greatness to our foreign dominions. It is a marvelous tale to tell that in the short period of a century, we should have been able to achieve the conquest of many strange countries six times as populous as our home empire.”

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