External Affairs Minister On Humiliation By The West

British looted $45 trillion from India: Jaishankar.

Transcript

00:00India actually had two centuries of humiliation with the West.

00:30Because the West kind of in its predatory form came into India in the mid-18th century

00:36and continued almost exactly for 190 years after that.

00:42And it was interesting to see that the West,

00:47in its predatory form, came into India in the mid-18th century

00:52and continued almost exactly for 190 years after that.

00:57And it was interesting, I think a year ago, there was actually a very serious economic study

01:06which tried to estimate how much the British took out of India in value terms.

01:12And a very calculated math ended up, put a number of 45 trillion dollars at today's value.

01:19So, that should give you a sense of really what happened in those 200 years.

01:25The reality also is that the history of India and the West is also a history of

01:33really a famine, of slavery, of opium trade. So, there is a very dark side to all of this.

01:39India's choices in 1947 and thereafter actually took what were western values and western practices

01:48and made them near universal. If you have today a belief that democracy is an ethically superior model of governance,

01:59in part it is due to the fact that the first big post-colonial polity actually chose that

02:06and then sustained it despite extraordinary odds over the last 70 years.

02:12These last 70 years have really been a very complex history. At one level, I would say the West has actually been

02:20very very supportive of India's growth, India's rise if you would. You can see that in politics,

02:28you can see that in security, in trade, in investment, in services, in education.

02:34And I would say, you know, this that 40s to perhaps the late 90s, I mean, let's say the 20th century in that sense.

02:47This was a period where actually this what I described a cordial non-frictional relationship was largely in play.

02:56And I think it's had a very invaluable role really in building the India that we have today.