LETTER: This is apropos a Business Recorder op-ed "BLM and us" carried by the newspaper yesterday. The writer, Rashed Rahman, has thrown ample light on whatever happening in the US and Europe following the killing of George Floyd. The developments that his death has certainly proved one of those historic tipping points no one could have predicted.
The writer has argued, among other things, that "the Mughal Empire that succumbed to British colonialism in the 17th-18th centuries, represented some 33 percent of world GDP at the height of its powers. It goes without saying then that the Subcontinent was arguably the richest country in the world. Within a period of 250-300 years, the British so exhausted the wealth of the Subcontinent as to leave its people poor, starving, subject to famine, etc, a fate from which they have still to extricate themselves, not the least because the post-colonial state and social construct has left them at the mercy of the structures of power erected/created by the colonialists."
Pre-colonial India was not a backward society; it was in fact a wealthy one. In my view, colonialism must not be treated as a moral phenomenon of past; it manifests in a variety of manners even today; Floyd's death only reinforces this argument. Congress MP in India's Lok Sabha Shashi Tharoor seems to have presented the most convincing case to tell the world how Britishers looted and plundered India during their 200-year rule.
Naqi Zafar (Karachi)
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