Naoroji and the drain
Bombay
Dadabhai Naoroji's Poverty and Un-British Rule in India argues that Britain drains India of about 30 million pounds a year; the sum is still disputed.
Dadabhai Naoroji first put the case in England's Debt to India in London in 1867 and in lectures in Bombay in 1876, which is why the pin stands there. In 1901 he collected his papers as Poverty and Un-British Rule in India. The drain, he argued, was money India paid out with nothing in return: salaries and pensions of British officials, army costs, interest and profits sent home. He put it at "nearly or above £30,000,000 a year" and reckoned India's imports fell about £500 million short of its exports from 1835 to 1872. The subtitle states the charge: the system was "destructive and despotic to the Indians and un-British and suicidal to Britain".
The book's weight was political. It gave the early Congress an economic case against the Raj, and it turned British rule from a question of bad officials into a question of the system. Romesh Dutt and others built on it.
The number remains an open fight, and the sources below are of very different kinds. Patnaik's estimate is scholarship with a compounding assumption built in. Hickel's piece is an opinion column. Roy's is an essay for a site set up to defend the Empire's record, by an economic historian who says the thing being measured cannot be defined.
- colonial
- political