British looted India, should India demand reparations?

By - Maria Wirth

Madhu Kishwar had invited me to her channel to talk about the above topic after I had mentioned that 2 tribes in Namibia filed years ago a class action suit against Germany for atrocities during its colonial rule there from 1885 -to 1918. Germany got a summons from the court for pre-trial negotiations. After several rounds, Germany apologized and agreed to pay compensation.

This article is based on material that I collected for the talk. It’s a bit lengthy, as it has three parts and includes screenshots and links. It is meant as input for further research on what can be done to get tangible justice:

Everyone knows about the horrendous Holocaust of Jews by the Nazis.The Jews were considered sub-human, as “Untermenschen”, and systematically killed – deliberately and consciously.

In contrast, most people in the West and even many in India consider British colonialism in India as “good for the natives”. The British looked after the natives, didn’t they? They built the railways and gave them English education, and laws, isn’t it?

I want to show here, that British colonialism was comparable to the crimes the Nazis did, and that this false narrative about the benevolent British rule in India needs to change and those responsible be held accountable. (I will here concentrate only on the British colonialism, but the French and especially the Portuguese colonialism in India was equally inhuman, and before this, the Muslim invasions and Moghul rule).

The truth needs to come out and justice needs to be done for all those million Indians who were treated as subhuman, impoverished, humiliated and with no pangs of conscience, killed, or left to die.

Testimonies about how bad the situation was in India

Just to give you a taste of how bad the situation in India was, I will quote here from Will Durant’s “A case for India”. He landed in India in 1930 at the age of 45. He had been studying the civilizations of the world, had read a lot about India’s great ancient civilization, and wanted to get a direct feel of it, so he came for a visit. And he was shocked. He was so shocked that he felt, he needed to put his project about civilizations on hold and let the world know what was happening in India. He never thought a nation can let its subjects sink into such misery.

After going back to America he wrote a small book that can be downloaded from the net: “A case for India”.

Here is part of the introduction:

“I was filled with astonishment and indignation at the conscious and deliberate bleeding by England throughout 150 yrs. I began to feel that I came upon the greatest crime in all history…

I know how weak words are in the face of guns and blood, how irrelevant mere truth and decency appear beside the might of empires and gold. But if even one Hindu, fighting for freedom far off there on the other side of the globe, shall hear this call of mine and be a trifle comforted, then these months of work on this little book will seem sweet to me.

For I know of nothing in the world that I would rather do today than be of help to India.” (Oct.1 1930)

Shashi Tharoor, in his book ‘Inglorious Empire” gives a similar account:

“Burke, in his opening speech at the impeachment of Hastings, also accused the East India Company of ‘cruelties unheard of and devastations almost without name…crimes which have their rise in the wicked dispositions of men in avarice, rapacity, pride, cruelty, malignity, haughtiness, insolence’. He described in colourfully painful detail the violation of Bengali women by the British-assigned tax collectors”.

Tharoor writes further:

In an extraordinary confession, a British administrator in Bengal, F. J. Shore, testified before the House of Commons in 1857: ‘The fundamental principle of the English has been to make the whole Indian nation subservient, in every possible way, to the interests and benefits of themselves. They have been taxed to the utmost limit; every successive province, as it has fallen into our possession, has been made a field for higher exaction; and it has always been our boast how greatly we have raised the revenue above that which the native rulers were able to extort.’

The salary of the Secretary of State for India in 1901, paid for by Indian taxes, was equivalent to the average annual income of 90,000 Indians.

Yet at the end his speech in Oxford in 2015, in spite of having made a convincing case for reparations by detailing, how brutal the British were in India, Tharoor ‘generously’ said https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7CW7S0zxv4 min 14.20 – 15.15 ), that he is not in favour of financial reparations but just saying ‘sorry’ would go a far far far longer way, and he personally would be content with 1 British Pound a year as reparations for the next 200 years.

Why would he say this?

Rajiv Malhotra, who undoubtedly did great work for the Hindu cause, inexplicably also does not want to give the British even a little financial pain. In his speech in the British Parliament, he called those Indians who want reparations “rabble rousing, overemotional and bombastic people, just looking for instant populism”. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDvNGAQhSYs min 30.40 – 32.36)

Basically, Malhotra conceded defeat before fighting, since he felt that Britain will anyway never admit guilt and pay compensation. He said this in front of British parliamentarians, whose facial expressions are interesting to watch, “Let me tell you, Britain will never give even a small amount of money as a symbolic thing and come up with “we are guilty, we are ashamed’ and all that. It’s not going to happen.”

Why would he do that?

Doesn’t he feel that integrity demands that Britain owns her crimes and that his countrymen deserve justice? For example those millions who were starved to death due to forced cultivation of opium, indigo and massive food export to Britain or those shipped out as indentured labour to plantations around the world, replacing the slaves after the abolition of slavery in 1833?

Doesn’t he feel that it should be rubbed into the British that India is ‘poor’ and not number 1 economy only because of them?

Testimonies how rich India was

Let me quote Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeran, a German historian (1760-1842):

“India has been celebrated even in the earliest times for her riches.” The wealth, splendour and prosperity of India had made a strong impression on the mind of Alexander the Great, and that when he left Persia for India, he told his army that they were starting for that “Golden India” where there was endless wealth, and that what they had seen in Persia was as nothing compared to the riches of India.

The writer of the article “Hindustan” in the Encyclopedia Britannica also remarks that India “was naturally reputed to be the seat of immense riches.”

Even in 1700 AD, after the colossal, painful loot by Muslim invaders, India was still rich, Aurangzeb was as wealthy as all the European kings together. The common Hindus had suffered greatly. They were highly taxed, their temples destroyed, their knowledge burned, humiliated and beheaded in millions.

For these crimes also acknowledgement and reclamation is needed and it seems to come now slowly in the form of reclaiming ancient temples – sadly, against a lot of resistance by Indian converts to Islam, whose forefathers in all likelihood converted under great duress and who are now fully brainwashed into their new belief (also fostered by the British), which includes seeing Hindus as “the worst of creatures”(Q98.6) …

Now first to the question:

How exactly did the British manage to drain India’s enormous wealth?

Utsa Patnaik, JNU Prof, studied this question for decades. She came to the figure of 45 trillion $ by using the commodity export surplus as measure and applying an interest rate of 5%.

What the East India Company did, was brutal, criminal extortion. She explained it in an op-ed article

India was producing many goods. Now, in normal practice, when you export something, you get gold, forex, or goods back into your country in return for your export. India was since ancient times a surplus exporter, and therefore had a lot of gold and riches. This inflow, however, stopped, when the Company got from the Moghul in 1765 the right to collect taxes in the areas which it controlled. Not only did the British extract 80 to 90 percent taxes, but from these Indian taxes, the British importer, the Company, paid the imported goods. This was truly sinister.

Prof Utsa Patnaik writes that the East India Company from 1765 onwards, allocated every year up to one-third of Indian budgetary revenues to buy a large volume of goods for direct import into Britain, far more than this country’s own needs. These goods were highly-priced in cold countries and for Britain, they were free, paid for by Indian taxes… they represented international purchasing power, as Britain re-exported to Europe and America what they did not need and got in return food grain, iron, and other items for free.

When the EIC merged with the Crown in 1861, it got even worse. Now basically ALL export from India was paid for by Indian taxes, not only the export to Britain. The government in London asked those who wanted to import from India and who earlier had dealt with India directly, to deposit gold or sterling with the Bank of England and instead issued ‘Council Bills’ with the equivalent rupee value which were sent to India. The Indian export houses and producers got paid from the Indian tax collection which was budgeted as “expenditures abroad”. The gold and forex payments disappeared in the Bank of England, which was founded and owned by Nathan M Rothschild.

Prof Patnaik writes, that even as recently as from 1900 till 1928, India had after America, the second-largest merchandise export surplus.

Further, she says, ‘Indians were deprived of every bit of the enormous purchasing power they had earned over 175 years. Not even the colonial government was credited with any part of India’s huge gold and forex earnings against which it could have issued rupees. This sleight of hand, namely, paying producers out of their taxes, made India’s export surplus unrequited and constituted a tax-financed drain to London.’

Mass consumption was squeezed for export. This export included opium to China and Indigo, which caused terrible famines, in which it is estimated, that some 25 million Indians perished. Each one dying a slow death.

In 1904, food grain consumption was 210 kg, by 1946, it was down to 137 kg.

“Indian masses suffered a severe nutritional decline and India inherited a festering problem of unemployment and poverty,” Patnaik says.

And from then on, the world knew about India only that it was “a very, very poor country”…

What mindset does it need to do this to a people?

It is the same mindset with which German Nazis mercilessly herded Jews and Gypsies into the gas chambers.

When will humanity realize that we all come from the same source?

Let me again drive home the inhuman mindset of those who consider themselves superior, which applies to all Abrahamic religions.

Here are excerpts of an eyewitness account, a Dutch Merchant by name of Jacob Haafner, who was in Madras during the famine of 1871, translated by Jacob de Roover of the University of Ghent, Belgium.

https://witness-to-our-times.org/2022/01/26/the-british-and-the-nazis-denying-the-experience-of-the-colonized/

He describes at first, how those starving people looked. I instead give a photo of the famine in Madras in 1876

He writes:

….One saw thousands of such human beings walk around, young and old, man and woman. With their last strength, they had come to the square for alms from the rich, but the doors remained shut so that one after the other collapsed. Dead bodies and those dying lay on top of each other as on a battlefield, from all sides one could hear the crying of the suffering; begging they raised their hands to the inhumane Englishmen on their balconies, who stood there reveling with their whores, and who made the hunger on the square even more unbearable because of the food they held in their hands.

Dying is nothing. But to see your wife, your children, and your parents waste away from starvation, and see them die in terrible convulsions, is more than dying. Oh! If only I think of the ghastly images that I saw in Madras, chills run down my spine. Never will I be able to forget them…

But, one may ask, was it completely impossible to support these poor, innocent Indians? Were there no provisions in the city?

Oh yes! For those who had the money to pay the extortionate prices of the English and their agents, there was food enough! The warehouses of the English Company and some English merchants were amply provided with all kinds of grains, sufficient to feed double the number of people who were then in the city and this for a longer period. The rich bought what they needed, but for the penniless Indians, who had left everything they possessed behind when they fled to Madras, there was no other fate but dying from hunger. No one cared. Their disastrous condition did not in the least impress the petrified hearts of the English, who made no attempt whatsoever to prevent the death of these masses of people and showed no compassion at all.

These Christians, who pride themselves on their humanitarian religion … alas, talking, singing, or whistling walked through the dead and the dying, with that rude and hurtful arrogance so characteristic of them. From their carriages and palanquins, they looked down on the perishing natives with a look of contempt, while the latter was lying in the dust, struggling with death, or convulsively breathing their last.

I paid close attention; sometimes I stood still for half an hour to observe the English passing by, and I cannot but declare openly that I saw no trace of compassion on the face of any of them, for the innumerable wailing beings lying on the ground before them. Even worse: I saw their ladies, those sentimental, tender-hearted creatures sit in their palanquins with the same cool indifference when they were carried right through this battlefield. Perhaps some among them would faint at the sight of a spider or a mouse! Yes, I saw these European ladies strolling dauntlessly through this field of death, laughing, talking, and frolicking with their company or lovers – shocking!

The attitude of today’s British Politicians toward India

After knowing about all these crimes, how does it feel, when British Parliamentarians criticize India for its ‘far-right government’ as Nadia Whittome did after the recent India visit by Boris Johnson? If anything, the Modi government is more left than right, if left means to look after the poor foremost. (Those categories right and left doesn’t apply to India, as Hinduism is not blind belief and ‘conservative’ but scientific).

Another Parliamentarian made the outrageous insinuation that India plans a genocide of its Muslims

Can the British get away with this? They seem to be sure that Indians either don’t know what they did to the country or they are “polite” and won’t mention it.

Meanwhile, the British play the role of ‘guardians of human rights and keep especially a close watch on India… placing in its Open Doors watch list, India among the top 10 countries with the greatest persecution of Christians. It’s shameless. Indeed, a spokesperson for the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office told the ABC, when asked about reparations for Aboriginals, “We are doing our utmost to address modern-day discrimination and intolerance (underlined by me). It’s quoted here https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-26/netherlands-pay-reparations-indonesia-colonial-violence-1940s/12114892?nw=0&r=Image.

Since the British took over education in India in 1835, they could push their narrative very successfully. It’s truly unfortunate, that many Indians even today are more Anglophile than Indophile, which means they love England over India, and in the process do great harm to India. They don’t realize that the Westerners will use them, but won’t consider them equal.

Looting of Indian knowledge

The loot of India was not only materially. India’s profound knowledge was looted, too. First the British cut Indians off from Sanskrit so that they couldn’t read their ancient texts any longer and then told them that half a bookshelf of English literature is worth more than all the Indian texts together. It was an incredible lie, but the Indian students could not find out. They were busy learning Britain’s illogical language.

Meanwhile, Britishers and missionaries shipped out loads of ancient Indian texts. When I googled a few years ago “How many Indian manuscripts are in Oxford university library?” I got ‘around 8000’. On the library website, there were different categories, and under astronomy, which I clicked, Varahamihira’s Brihat Samhita was listed. When recently, I asked Google the same question, I couldn’t get that website and didn’t’ get the number 8000 any longer.

These ancient manuscripts are very valuable and are in many countries, including Russia and China, apart from England. The Russians are said to have built their first Intercontinental Ballistic Missile from ancient Indian texts which they had captured from Germany after the war. Please see this podcast from min 47.40. It’s interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epHrO_c2dsY

I want to show here one tragic example, where the British suppressed a brilliant Indian who had developed a flying machine based on ancient texts. Every Indian should know his and his teacher’s name:

Shivkar Bapuji Talpade and Subbaya Shastri.

The story is in this video by Praveen Mohan, worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNt_Ye51WDk

Talpade was a child prodigy who had a PhD at age 13. At 15, he met Shastri, who had studied Vimanas from ancient texts and written a book on it. They both built a flying machine and demonstrated it on the beach of Bombay in 1895. It was a remote-controlled plane which reached a hight of 1500 feet and flew for 37 seconds before it crashed. 8 years later, the Wright brothers’ plane flew 12 seconds and only 120 feet high before it crashed.

Talpade tried hard to get a grant for improving his project, yet he was ridiculed and never received a grant. Still, he managed to build in his home a mercury ions engine. When the British came to know of it, they accused him of making explosives and arrested him. When he explained in court his mercury powered engine, a team of scientists stated, that a mercury powered device is impossible. They were wrong. Today NASA DOES use mercury ions engines for space travel…

Talpade was thrown into jail and several years later released on the condition, not to build any other thing. But again, he started building, this time the Rukma vimana according to ancient texts. It is rumoured, that German scientists took it secretly to Germany and built the famous Nazi Bell on the basis of it. And indeed, they look similar. Here is a screenshot from the video:

Talpade himself died at the age of 53 a heart broken man.

One certainly could speculate, that his blueprint, which he would have shown to the British for getting a grant, was studied by the British and later used by the Wright brothers. The suppression of such a bright Indian mind was highly immoral. He would have busted the British argument, that India needed them to build railways. On the contrary. Indians would have been first to develop planes and space crafts.

I read a quote by a German (I don’t remember who it was): ‘We Germans have to see the ships from India sailing past to Britain, laden with gold and riches. But we Germans won’t be left behind. We will take their knowledge…’

Several teams of German scientists came in the 1930s to Tibet and India, and Germany had an advantage in the war regarding planes and rockets. Incidentally, the USA took after WW2 about 1000 German scientists in the operation ‘paperclip’ to their country and one of them, Wernher von Braun, developed the space program of NASA. Praveen Mohan says in the video that NASA has publicly announced that mercury ion engines can provide constant acceleration, reducing travel times while increasing the efficiency.

There are several other aspects, where Britain used and exploited India, for example when 3 million Indian soldiers fought in the 2 world wars for the British, 150,000 laid down their lives, and they in all likelihood had a big role in the outcome of the war, but Britain never acknowledged this. On the contrary, it made India pay for their war.

The role of Rothschild and other merchants and aristocrats

Rothschild archive website says:

the East India company “rose to account for half of the world’s trade, particularly in basic commodities… trading mainly with China and the Indian subcontinent….

The Company became a major military and political power in India, gradually increasing the extent of the territories under its control, ruling the whole Indian subcontinent either directly or indirectly via local rulers under the threat of force by its armies.

By 1803, at the height of its rule in India, the British East India Company had a private army of about 260,000 – twice the size of the British Army.’

https://www.rothschildarchive.org/collections/treasure_of_the_month/december_2017_east_india_company_stock_list_1815

It mentions the following episode about Nathan Mayer Rothschild (1777-1836)

“In 1834, Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton wrote to his daughter recalling the dinner where Nathan (Rothschild) told him of an occasion “when I was settled in London, the East India Company had 800,000 lbs of gold to sell. I went to the sale and bought it all. I knew the Duke of Wellington must have it… that was the best business I ever did.”

What does it mean, when Rothschild said “he bought it all”? Did he send money to India? This can be surely ruled out. The common British people may not have known that the company ‘paid’ for imports with taxes by Indians.

Moreover, these 800,000 pound (= 363 tons), a HUGE amount, would have been looted. How would it otherwise make sense that he said, that it was the best business he ever made…

While it is mentioned on the website that global trade was part of the Rothschild businesses from its earliest days, and the most prominent name associated with East India Company even as ‘owner’ is Rothschild, the website also says, “whilst there is no evidence that Nathan held shares”. Incidentally, today, too, Rothschilds are not mentioned in the Forbes list and very secretive about their wealth. Guesses exist from a few billions to 100 or more trillion $.

Nathan Rothschild called the British king ‘a puppet’, and said, the man who controls the empire’s money supply, controls the British empire, and meant his family. When around 1860, the German emperor Wilhelm visited the Rothschild mansion in Paris, he remarked, ‘Kings can’t afford this. It must belong to a Rothschild.’ mentioned in this video “15 things you didn’t know about the Rothschild family” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z02QfS1TFaE

Examples of reparations payments

Let’s come to the point that Britain, and the Company, were not at all opposed to reparations. In fact, they demanded them, for example after China lost the opium war, Hongkong had to be handed over and a sum be paid by China.

Britain and the other Allies also demanded reparations from Germany after WW1. The sum was so high, 33 billion $, that it devastated Germany’s economy. Germany paid reparations for WW1 till 2010.

After WW2, Britain and the other Allies again demanded reparations from Germany and other Axis countries, but this time mainly in kind. They dismantled industries and shipped them out, took coal and other mineral resources, took a share of the industrial production. Britain used the German war prisoners as forced labour for 2 years after the war, and Russia and France got a substantial share of German land.

The most well-known reparations are those paid by Germany to the victims of the Holocaust. Germany paid directly for the survivors and also generally to the state of Israel, so far over 80 billion $. The payments are still ongoing, and have recently been extended to include spouses of holocaust survivors who have already died.

In 2007, even second-generation Holocaust survivors approached an advocate for demanding from Germany the cost for psychotherapeutic treatment. When the German government was asked its stand, a spokesperson said, “Germany take as very seriously all matters related to Holocaust survivors”.

Class action suits have also been filed against German companies who forced Jews to work for them.

The case of the Herero and Nama tribes of Namibia.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/05/28/africa/germany-recognizes-colonial-genocide-namibia-intl/index.html

Germany was the colonial power there between 1895 and 1918, and brutally killed 100,000 persons of those 2 tribes who had rebelled. Their descendants filed a class action suit in US and the court asked Germany to have pre-trial consultations. Germany tried to wriggle out by not accepting the court summons, but finally had to accept them. Negotiations were held between Namibia and Germany, and Germany agreed to calling it genocide, paying 1,3billion $ and apologised. The tribes, however, were not happy. They had demanded over 400 billion.

Individual compensation

In 2020, an 83-year-old man from Indonesia, whose father was shot in 1947 in front of his eyes, was paid by a Dutch court Euro 10,000. Here is a screenshot:

When his lawyer was asked if the Australian Aborigines could also ask for reparations, she said, “absolutely”.

The article further says:

“The right of Indigenous peoples to remedy and reparation for what they have lost and suffered as a result of colonization is enshrined in international law.”

A declaration adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2005 declared the “right to benefit from remedies and reparation” for victims of gross human rights violations. This echoed the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court in 1998, declaring principles “relating to reparations to, or in respect of, victims, including restitution, compensation, and rehabilitation.”

A case where Britain PAID reparations

In 2018, this tweet by the treasury handle of British HM shocked many in Britain and its colonies. It was deleted soon after, but the news was out that not the slaves, but their owners were compensated, among them many of today’s prominent families.

After the abolition of slavery, Britain took a loan from Rothschild to compensate the slave owners. This loan of 15 million pounds was repaid only in 2015. This galvanized several organizations into action to find out the money trail and demand reparations for the descendants of slaves. The Caribbean countries formed CARICOM, which pursues this goal and when recently Price William and Kate went to Jamaica, they were greeted with protests.

The natives of North America also became in recent time more vocal, demanding their land back, starting with Mount Rushmore.

British MP Daniel Kawczynski wants more reparations from Germany

After unification of Germany in 1990, the Allies gave up further claims for reparations for WW2. However, in recent years, the debate is reignited especially in Poland and Greece. British MP Daniel Kawczynski, of Polish origin, said he had been stunned to discover that Britain had waived its rights to any reparations following the reunification of Germany in 1990.

“It was a terrible mistake to forgo this in 1990 and it’s sending out a completely wrong signal. I think the Germans have behaved appallingly here”, he is quoted.

Where could India start?

It would make sense to start with the British Museum and the crown jewel. The mood in Europe, except maybe Britain, is coming round to the view that those treasure in European museums, should go back to where they came from.

David Cameron’s reaction in an interview to NDTV in 2010 is out of touch. However, it seems Indians so far didn’t put pressure, not even for Kohinoor.

When asked, will you give back Kohinoor? Cameron replied, “this is a question I have NEVER been asked before… and adds, that the British Museum would be empty. What an argument. It’s like a thief saying, if I return the stolen things, my own house will look bad.

Another important issue is the ancient manuscripts that were looted, even by missionaries. India needs to know which texts are there in the university libraries and which of those texts are unique and not available in India. These need to be given back.

Another obvious injustice, which easily can be addressed, is that Britain received reparations from Germany for the 2 world wars, but nothing of that went to India. India paid a huge amount and supplied a huge amount of goods, guns, and animals for Britain’s wars, apart from sending 3 million soldiers and 150,000 sacrificing their lives for war, which they had nothing to do with. India not only deserves a memorial for the Indian soldiers in England but its financial share.

Next those tribes, who were incredibly declared criminal at birth, and other groups, like the weavers or the descendants of the Jalanwalia Bagh massacre and of the relatively recent (1943) Bengal famine could file class-action suits, like the 2 tribes from Namibia did.

Yet most important of all, since those bankers and merchants, like Rothschild, including the directors of the company, who had amassed incredible wealth, were mainly responsible for the massive suffering of the Indian masses, should not THEY, respectively their families, pay back what they looted? If they had integrity and a conscience, they would do so. But do they have a conscience?

Or are they scheming with multinational companies, like Big Pharma and Big Tech, how they can again enslave humanity and exploit them, as they did so successfully with the East India Company?

Wikipedia says that the gold reserves of Britain were 1870, 170 tons, and in 1950, 2543 tons, despite sending many tons of gold during WW2 to America to get weapons and 250 tons to Canada.

Incidentally, the Bank of England, owned by Rothschild, dealt with the “Council Bills”, mentioned by Prof Utsa Patnaik. It means it got real gold or forex in exchange for some paper with a Rupee amount written on it, which was redeemed by Indian taxpayers. Imagine the loot. The company NM Rothschild and sons mainly determined the gold price from 1810 till 2004.

Research needs to be done, on how many gold and other valuables went to England. How the big banking families, foremost Rothschild, profited. For example, this one-time shipment of 800,000 pounds of gold ( it equals 363 tons, which surpasses the gold reserves of most countries today) which Nathan Rothschild ’bought’ or rather appropriated in 1814, is worth today over 20 billion $. Just this one shipment.

It seems Karma is catching up with Europe in our times. But will it also catch up with those, who ruthlessly forced Indians into abject poverty and starvation due to their greed and who became insanely rich? So rich, that it is said that those powerful families are behind every recession or currency devaluation and it is in all likelihood they who have “the means”, as Klaus Schwab said recently at WEF, “to build the future”.

Some 15 years ago, an Indian, Sanjeev Metha, bought the East Indian Company. I was surprised that an Indian would want to trade under this name which brings up terrible memories in India and other former colonies, and probably nostalgia in Britain.

However, it may turn out to be a boon that Mehta, who is well aware of the enslavement of India by the Company, has the reprinting rights of all records and library material. A detailed study of what has been looted, who exactly has profited, and where the riches went, is needed.

It will expose those families who, without any pangs of conscience, humiliated, enslaved, tormented, starved, and killed other humans for their greed, many of whom are still insanely rich.

Reparations need to be demanded mainly from them. At the same time, British MPs need to be more humble and as a first step, a preferential trade agreement from Britain would only be logical, after their massive loot.