Did British Rule Damage or Help India’s Economy?
Tirthankar Roy discusses his research on British rule in India, Kerala’s economic miracle, and relying on evidence, not ideology, for credible analysis.
(Photo: Tirthankar Roy.)
A Global Indian Times Interview
By Cherian Samuel* and Ignatius Chithelen**
Why is Kerala showing economic growth while most other states in India face stagnancy? This is the focus of Kerala, 1956 to the Present India's Miracle State, by Tirthankar Roy and K. Ravi Raman, published in November by the Cambridge University Press.
Roy, 65-years-old, is a Professor of Economic History at the London School of Economics and Political Science, which he joined in 2006. His research areas include the economic and social history of South Asia, empires and colonialism, environmental history, and the social history of music.
Roy is the author, co-author, or editor of 35 books; he has also written or co-written more than 55 articles for academic journals; and contributed chapters to several books. In his X/Twitter account, which has 8,600 followers, he seeks to counter folklore about the history of colonial empires spread by the media and popular history writers.
Earlier, from 2002, Roy was a professor a the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune, Maharashtra. From 1990 to 2002, he was on the faculty of the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, including as a professor.
Roy earned a PhD from the Center for Development Studies (CDS), Kerala, India, 1989. His thesis was on the economic history of India’s textile industry. Earlier, he earned an MA and BA in Economics from Shantiniketan (Viswa-Bharati University), West Bengal. It was founded in 1921 by Rabindranath Tagore, a Nobel Laurate In literature.
In a chat with Global Indian Times, Roy discusses whether British rule in India was a philanthropic exercise, surprising results from his research on Kerala, conflicts in India over water resources, why he views Kolkata as a provincial backwater, avoiding being brainwashed as a research student in India, and playing the esraj, a musical instrument.
Global Indian Times: Congratulations on your book on Kerala. Education, labor migration to the Persian Gulf and welfare programs are key factors known to contribute to Kerala’s relative prosperity compared to the other Indian states. Did your work uncover data or insights that surprised you?
Tirthankar Roy: Thank you!
The most surprising thing Ravi Raman and I found was that economists missed noticing how well Kerala’s economy has done over the last twenty years. Private investment revived and new businesses were set up - from tourism to hotels, information technology, specialist healthcare and manufacturing industries, such as spice extracts, rubber products, plywood, and marine products. Whereas earlier, the state sent out migrants in large numbers, it now receives migrants from Bihar, West Bengal, and other states in India.
Since 1957, roughly every ten years following state elections, Kerala has been ruled by communist party led governments. The parties also operate powerful labor and service employee unions. So, for decades, the licensing, hiring, regulations, and other policies, along with the wage and working conditions demanded by the unions, meant capitalists avoided the state.
Remittances by Keralites working in the Persian Gulf countries sustained consumption but did not fund economic growth in Kerala.
Since 2016, Kerala has been ruled, yet again, by a coalition led by communist parties. This time around, the communists have been forced to reinvent their ideology and adopt pro-business and pro-investment policies and rein in the unions, to welcome capital investments and create jobs.
Remittances by Keralites are still substantial, but a more significant proportion of it seems to be going into business investment rather than consumption. Whereas earlier, the state sent out migrants in large numbers, it now receives migrants from Bihar, West Bengal, and other states in India.
The book is not exactly a celebration of these positive changes. Kerala faces massive challenges in sustaining economic growth. The communist-led government is focused on welfare and infrastructure. But that is expensive in terms of using taxpayers’ money. Radical land reforms destroyed agriculture, leaving the state dangerously dependent on food imports from other states. Reckless tourism and construction stress the environment. Inequality is high. Sustaining private investment relies heavily on retaining skilled labor. The skill level is neither very high nor has it improved much over the past decades. So, our work also has many warnings to policy makers in Kerala.
GIT: In your book Monsoon Economies (2022, 2024) you explore the relationship between climate and the economy in shaping modern South Asia. Again, is there any data or information that surprised you?
Roy: What surprised me was how emotional an issue water was in the politics of South India. This was a discovery for me since I grew up in Kolkata, (West Bengal) and studied in Kerala, both states with an abundance of water.
In the rest of India, for a hundred years or more, groups formed to fight for water access rights. The distribution of water was the primary concern of political, law, social justice, and equality movements.
I found that the battle for water was not just a battle over a scarce resource. In a monsoon region, water is scarce in certain seasons. Governments can deal with seasonal scarcity by building dams and reservoirs, and private parties can drill underground for water. The problem is that these responses generate conflicts and can be very damaging to the environment.
GIT: It has been known that policies and institutions, during the British rule of India (1858-1947), were the basis for improved health, education, and civic life in India. In your 2019 book, How British Rule Changed India’s Economy: The Paradox of the Raj, you go further. You say Britain’s economic exploitation of India is greatly exaggerated; that British rule did not suffocate India’s economy and its manufacturing base.
To put it crudely, were the British and the East India Company motivated by philanthropic goals to rule India for 200 years?
Roy: The British had no philanthropic or altruistic motives when ruling India. In fact, it is unclear whether they had any motives at all.
Many researchers make two common mistakes when discussing the British Empire in India: the British knew what they were doing - exploit a prosperous land and make it poor - and because the goal was to exploit, all Indians were victims of the empire. Both are flawed premises.
The British never issued a statement suggesting their motives in India. Around 1900, for instance, various politicians in Britain justified the existence of colonies in different terms. It is unlikely that economic exploitation was an attractive option. Indians were poor, much poorer than the British before or during colonialism. There was nothing much to gain economically by exploiting India.
Did Indians see themselves as victims of exploitation? The answers may surprise us. Many Dalit (low caste) politicians and Muslim leaders said the British empire was beneficial because the British sought to heal India’s major divisions, especially along caste and religious lines. Many Indian business owners believed that the empire created opportunities for investment, trade, and migration. Farmers in Punjab, a region that British policies transformed from a grassland to a breadbasket, stayed solidly loyal to British rule. Most princely states in India did not want the British to leave in 1947.
So, if exploitation does not correctly define the British Empire, and victimhood does not explain how the average Indian fared, was there any pattern at all in how the regime shaped economic change? There were two patterns: commitment to open markets and a state of small resources and capacities.
GIT: Was there no transfer of wealth from India to Britain?
Roy: The British created an exceptionally open economic system. Openness meant few trade barriers. Tariffs were near zero. Free capital movement and labor migration across its territories. That openness created the substantial Indian diaspora from East Africa to Natal, Aden, Trinidad, Hong Kong, and Singapore.
Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras were the premier business hubs of Asia before (India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal) Nehru’s insular economic policy led them to be replaced by Singapore and Hong Kong. During British rule, in the Indian cities, trading and business profits were reinvested in factories, colleges, banks, schools, and hospitals. Economics Nobel laureate W. Arthur Lewis called British India the most industrialized in the tropical world. By most benchmarks of business growth, India was the nineteenth century’s leading emerging economy.
The thriving import export trade with India enabled the British to purchase skilled and other labor in India. For example, the empire paid British expatriate staff working in government service, factories, and colleges in India. They also paid interest on debt raised in London to fund the setting up of railways as well as for other operations and businesses in India.
Some researchers mistakenly call such payments a “drain” of wealth from India. Buying skills abroad was not a drain or transfer of wealth.
We can ask whether the outcomes justified some of the payments. But that question cannot be answered because the value created by the payments is hard to measure. For instance, let us look at the productivity of service workers: what value does a school teacher or a doctor deliver? These questions cannot be answered with available data.
The British Indian government guaranteed profits to investors funding the setting up of railways in India. Without that guarantee, the railways would not be built. What value did the railways deliver? They probably contributed to trading and business profits, famine relief, and ease of migration. But the railways also helped spread epidemics. We can ask similar questions about payments for other services and institutions set up by the British in India, which were ultimately borne by Indians.
All we know is that many of the fields that were funded under the British contributed to income growth in India.
On the other hand, even though it operated a massive military, the British Indian state was financially weak. The ratio of government revenue to domestic product was as low as around five per cent. Taxes levied per head in India was a fraction of that in Britain. Much of the revenue went to maintaining the military, leaving little for education, famine relief, and other social welfare measures. So, even as the port cities like Bombay forged ahead, most Indians dependent on agriculture were left poor, with minimal or no education, and exposed to repeated financial problems.
To sum up, the correct way to read British rule in India would be to see it as a market success combined with a failure of government. The combination created inequality, not underdevelopment.
GIT: Why did the British government need to sacrifice its troops to conquer and rule India if the motivation was only to expand trade? Also, was there not a pattern since India was not the only colony to be occupied by the British?
Roy: The British Empire expanded not by the outright conquest of other lands but through alliances with local chiefs, kings and lords. The British government did not commit much money to overseas expansion except to make the Royal Navy available for battles, especially with the French forces in Asia.
Most battles fought inland were fought with local forces. The East India Company and the British fought battles with the support of a local coalition, with soldiers who were mainly Indians. They had a lot more military power than the opposing Indian forces because of one strategic difference. The company and the British built a standing army of the state with Indian soldiers hired on a regular salary and the promise of a pension. The opposing local forces comprised of soldiers and part-time soldiers under various regional warlords. The soldiers under British command were more effective since they were better trained and organized, had superior weapons and, more important, were loyal because of the financial incentives.
Not all British colonies started in the same way. But almost all followed this model of building a powerful military force with local resources.
The motivation to build and hold onto an empire has been explained in various ways. Economic motives were often at work because Britain was the biggest foreign investor around the globe in the 19th century. But most of that money did not go to the colonies. Britain’s geopolitical motivations were also significant.
GIT: What motivates your extensive writing? What is your work schedule?
Roy: I have been lucky on two points.
In my early career in India, the big gurus in history studies – all hard-core Marxists – pushed their ideological agenda on young scholars. I did not yield to that pressure. The gurus had power in Delhi or Kolkata, controlling university jobs. I was rejected for teaching jobs by selection panels not once or twice, but several times.
On the brighter side for my career, the brainwashing was so successful that economic history scholarship disappeared from Indian universities. The gurus produced few students who could write an original line and shine internationally. This left a vast field wide open for me.
Second, my move to the London School in 2006 placed me in a stimulating environment—among economic historians of Africa, Europe, the Americas, and China, all eager to hear more about India. That was a great incentive to continue to take up new research projects.
Work schedule? All I can say is I try to write a few lines every day, no matter how tied up I am otherwise.
GIT: Assume you working with other researchers as co-authors helps. How do you choose your co-authors? How do you typically share the work?
Roy: Many co-authorships start from informal conversations on shared interests, with authors often bringing complementary expertise. For example, with the Kerala book, Ravi Raman contributed insights on the state’s political economy while I provided a historian’s perspective. Successful collaborations typically involve dividing chapters, working independently for months, and then reviewing each other’s work.
GIT: You state on your website that you moved to studying history while at the Centre for Development Studies (CDS).
Roy: CDS was created to train research scholars to study India using applied economics. Around the time of its founding (1970), most Indian universities focused on teaching rather than research. Many aspiring economists, who could get the funding, migrated to U.S. and U.K. universities.
CDS aimed to stop this brain drain by highlighting a key advantage of conducting research in India—access to sources of local data. CDS’s mission emphasized finding and analyzing data from reliable sources, including field research. In the 1980s, while I was a student, this was still the mission. I would just walk into the offices or call and chat with the founders—K.N. Raj, T.N. Krishnan, N. Krishnaji, and A. Vaidyanathan. They were also very encouraging and supportive, fostering a vigorous intellectual environment with seminars, visits from eminent scholars, both Indian and foreign, and public debates. I thrived in this setting.
The focus at CDS on finding reliable data sources influenced my early steps in historical research. All four founders took history seriously. A small informal club of historians formed at CDS, consisting of G.N. Rao, D. Rajasekhar, C. Rammanohar Reddy, and Sumit Guha, among others. And since I enjoyed exploring history texts in the libraries, I became part of that club.
GIT: You also say that CDS “taught me that history is telling a new story credibly. That evidence is key, the only key.” Why is this not common practice at other economics and social science research institutes in India?
Roy: Good historical work anywhere, not just at CDS, must delve deep into finding data to support or dismiss a hypothesis. This means finding a reliable dataset and knowing how to read it to extract information and analytical insights, without recycling biases. If I had studied for a PhD at another university in India, I would have learned this lesson the hard way and wasted some time. At CDS, this lesson was taught to us in classrooms and in conversations in the corridors and the dining hall.
GIT: Which economic historians influenced you?
Roy: I have admired the work of Morris David Morris, an American who studied India. I discovered that he anticipated many of my viewpoints. He was a good person. Also, Dharma Kumar and Ashok Desai because of their clear-headed, unbiased view of the past; and, in the case of Desai, the present. Desai, who was another noted scholar at CDS, has a direct and unburdened writing style. My former colleague and co-teacher Patrick O'Brien inspired region experts like me to participate in global debates. And my co-authors make book-writing fun.
In the 1990’s, I became a fan of Krishna Raj, the editor of the Economic and Political Weekly. This was at a time when I was questioning the credibility and value of the research conducted by Marxist and other left leaning economic researchers in India. Raj was a highly respected editor of what was viewed as a leading leftist journal. Yet, my status as a young, aspiring scholar, with an opposing ideological view, did not stop him from giving me a platform to publish my articles and to review books. Indeed, he encouraged me to write frequently. I miss his quiet dignity and warmhearted personality. India does not make people like him anymore.
GIT: You finished high school and college at Santiniketan, which was set up by Rabindranath Tagore. You say the experience made you human. Why?
Roy: When I was growing up in Santiniketan, it had, like CDS, an intellectually lively ethos. Education did not just mean learning useful skills but also being creative. To learn how to be creative, we were exposed to music, art, nature, and Bengali literature.
During the late stages of British rule (early 1900s onwards), Santiniketan was the center of the classical revival in Bengal. Bengali artists and writers, like those in other states, created new work inspired and influenced by the classics of India. I got a good exposure to the continuing legacy of the creative side of that movement. I still carry that baggage. I find it a great resource when I feel bored.
GIT: Your father Satyendranath Roy, a professor at Santiniketan, was a leading Bengali literary critic and student of Tagore’s work. Did he influence you?
Roy: Besides being a top-order scholar, my father was infinitely curious about people. He loved conversations and had a sharp sense of humor. Until his last days, he was surrounded by friends. The youngest was, like his granddaughter, three years old, and the oldest above eighty. With everyone, he spoke in the same respectful tone, asked countless questions, and quickly became a part of their lives. He represented humanity for me. I wish to be as full of life as he was in his eighties. But that is unlikely to happen.
GIT: You say Kolkata (Calcutta) shaped your outlook. Do you have ties there?
Roy: Santiniketan was a small town. Kolkata offered access to libraries, universities, and a community of some very bright students. In the 1980’s, I did my doctoral research at the National Library in the city. Sat on the lawns, sipping chai and having heated discussions. At that time, Kolkata’s intellectual life had two sides: radical left debates and deep dives into archives and libraries, a legacy of British scholarship. I was not a part of the first but admired the second.
Maybe to relive those times, but also because, like all Bengalis, we have countless connections, my family did buy an apartment Kolkata. I love going there.
GIT: You add that Kolkata has become a provincial backwater. Why?
Roy: Calcutta was once a great business town that built its wealth thanks to export houses set up mostly by British expatriates. Soon after independence (from British rule in1947), Nehru’s xenophobic economic policy hurt these businesses. Also, they were taken over by dishonest Marwari and Bengali upstarts, using political support. The upstarts destroyed the businesses while pocketing much of the capital.
Then, in 1977, the communists were elected to power in West Bengal. With their predatory trade unions, they damaged industry and urban culture because the communists believed destroying the city helped the villagers, their vote bank. Communist intellectuals ruled the universities in Calcutta and other parts of the state. They only hired faculty who shared their ideologies, causing lasting damage to original thinking and independent research. Not surprisingly, there are very few scholars of international repute left in Calcutta.
GIT: You study the social history of music. Are you a musician?
Roy: In my teenage years, I took up playing the esraj. It is a bowed, fretted, string instrument played both as an accompaniment for voice and for solo performances. The choice was accidental. I found the esraj in my home, though my father never played it. The music school at Santiniketan, which valued the esraj as an accompaniment for Tagore’s songs, hired masters to teach it. Some of them were family friends. I started learning under one of them, who was the husband of my father’s favorite student. In London, I often perform as an accompanist; at home, I play as a soloist.
GIT: Your other interests?
Roy: Reading, and reading again, Jim Corbett and detective books, the favorite being Georges Simenon.
GIT: Your Kerala book is the first of a series on the economic histories of Indian states. What are you hoping to achieve?
Roy: The book series arose from a hunch. Explaining economic change in India’s big states requires attention to three things: a state’s unique history and geography, decisions made by the central government in New Delhi, and global influences like migration and investment. Most writings, about India’s economic path after independence, focus on the second and third factors and overlook the first. Since the population in some Indian states are large - larger than those in any Western European country for instance - ignoring their local history and geography leaves a major gap in understanding India’s development.
GIT: Your X/Twitter account seeks to counter folklore about the history of colonial empires spread by the media and popular history writers. Why do you do this amidst all your other work?
Roy: Studying the legacy of European rule in Asia and Africa is an exciting new frontier in economic history. A great deal of new evidence is being dug up, leading to new questions. Above all, a big question drives everyone: Can we tell one story about this episode in world history?
Colonial rules and their impact varied based on geography, culture, and local conditions, making it difficult to study empires as unified systems with a single purpose, method, or legacy. Scholars first face the challenge of determining whether to view empires as singular entities or as diverse structures shaped by local influences. A second challenge is understanding whether economic changes were driven more by government policies or local conditions.
The default narrative that goes around in social media is that the British Empire was evil. Maybe it was evil. Maybe it was not. If you say anything at all about the economic history of colonialism, you must first tackle the challenge of writing its history – that is, analyze if economic change followed from the state’s actions and/or local factors. If you do not do this, the story you tell is fiction. It is the duty of historians to point this out.
GIT: How do you see your role as a historian given that alternative histories are constantly being made up in India and elsewhere, mainly tailored for political goals?
Roy: The difference between a historian and a politically motivated storyteller is that the historian knows the evidence while a storyteller does not. If you know the evidence, you also know how to test theories and to say if one story is credible while another is not. The political guy knows only one story and admits no other because she or he has an agenda.
In the 1980s, when I was a student at CDS, the historian Dharma Kumar taught us to be wary of political narratives in researching the past. She said that whenever you hear an odd claim about the past, ask the speaker, “How do you know?” When you hear a politician spout history, ask “how do you know?” You will draw a blank.
*Cherian Samuel, a writer based in Washington DC, retired from the World Bank. He earned a PhD in economics from the University of Maryland.
**Ignatius Chithelen, publisher of Global Indian Times, is author of PASSAGE FROM INDIA TO AMERICA and SIX DEGREES OF EDUCATION. A Chartered Financial Analyst, he is manager of Banyan Tree Capital, New York.
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