India was called 'the jewel in the crown' of the British empire?

Hi,

I saw that you have read the book “An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India” by Shashi Tharoor. I am hoping you might be able to assist. 

Please can you tell me why India was called 'the jewel in the crown' of the British empire? I am hoping to understand how the British empire benefited from ruling over India. Thank you

Look forward to hearing from you

Annie

My reply to Annie,

Hi Annie,

First I want to apologies to late reply; you might have also got your answer. But let me try to answer your question.

was India 'the jewel in the crown' of the British Empire? Why?

for answering the question we first need to understand what was India ? And was it Jewel? Before we go to British episode.

I don’t know what is your image of India in your mind. As we all humans’ makes opinions based upon our information and perception. Most of westerners, world, even some Indians do think India was bunch of tribes before British came to India and they gave everything to India. Which is absolutely misleading. Let me explain how…

We need to look at the facts and data available for it. I can give you the list of achievements Indian civilization in every field. I will enlist few of them. Just for sake of arguments.

1.    First formulated texts and languages with most developed grammar: (Sanskrit and Tamil and most old languages and both have much documented grammar unlike other primitive languages in world)

2.    Mathematics and astronomy.(basic numerical concepts were developed in India only even zero. It’s the only country never said earth was flat but has documented evidences as people here knew earth was round.)

3.    Medicine and life style: (Ayurveda, Siddha are branches of medicine were available, even some surgeries were done. And You might know yoga and meditation.)

4.    Architecture: (Just not Taj mahal there are many temples and buildings are present which were build e.g Kailash temple ellora, Sun temple )

5.    Art and culture:(India has its own music, dance, arts, games(chess is Indian game), rituals,  )

6.    Literature and philosophy: (I would just mention 2 epics(Ramayana and Mahabharata) which are very huge and written 9th centuries BCE)

7.    Economics and politics: (I can quote many ancient books on economics and politics written very early)

8.    Industry and trade India had around 30% of GDP before they arrive and 3% when they left (data from world economic forum)

9.    Education : had around 10 universities before centuries oxford was established, few of them had international scholars but eventually they were destroyed by Muslim invaders

This is just a tip of iceberg. I can go on long list of achievement. But this is just to establish that India was most evolved civilization of that period in every sense.

Next argument is why every European wanted to come to India and not to any other part of world ?

Like we know Columbus discovered America when he was in search of INDIA. And there are many documented evidences that Europeans and Arabs travelled to India for trade, education medicines and spices. But there are no evidences that Indian went to Europe to get something. It’s just like people from poor or developing countries wants to go to USA or Europe and no USA citizen wants to go to Africa.

So India was rich country and British wanted to come here. It was not only the British but India had colony from every European colonizing country. Then argument would come how come so rich country become slave of the British, I would not go into it as separate chapter and many internal conflicts to blame it.

So in nutshell India was the richest country in every aspect which British extracted for their own good. Not only economically but also manpower as military, Indian troops were the largest participant in both world wars larger than any other country.

So you can surely call it as not only the jewel in the crown but survivor of British Empire.

If you need more or specific information in detail please let me know we can discuss further.

Regards,