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The British East India Company’s trademark lethal weapon to Pauperize the colonies

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To Shake the Pagoda Tree

Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeran (1760-1842) says: “India has been celebrated even in the earliest times for her riches.”  

The wealth, splendor 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. 

Chamber’s Encyclopedia says” “India has been celebrated during many ages for its wealth.” The writer of the article “Hindustan” in the Encyclopedia Britannica remarks that India “was naturally reputed to be the seat of immense riches.” 

John Milton (1608 - 1674) English poet most famous for his epic Paradise Lost, voiced the popular belief when he sang of the wealth of India: 

“High on a throne of royal state which far
Outshone the wealth of Ormuz and of Ind (India)
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand
Showers on her kings barbaric, pearl and gold.”   

(source: Hindu Superiority – By Har Bilas Sarda  p 427 - 430).

William Finch ( ?  ) who came to India in 1608-11, first described Hindu temples as "pagods, which are stone images of monstrous men feareful to behold. He mentioned the temples in Ajmer, "three faire Pagodes richly wrought with inlayd works, adorned richly with jewels. Domingo Paes has left a valuable account of the great Hindu kingdom of Vijayanagar. He saw outside the city very beautiful pagodas, the chief among them was the temple of Vitthalasvamin which was begun by Krsnadeva Raya. Edward Terry, the chaplain to Sir Thomas Roe, King James's emissary described the temple of Nagarkot as 'most richly set forth, both scaled and paved with plate of pure gold." 

The wealth of the temples stirred Jean Thevenot (1633 - 1667) a French traveller, imagination and he wrote about the temples of Benares and Puri that 'nothing can be more magnificent than these Pagodes...by reason of the quantity of gold and many jewels, wherewith they are adorned."

Most foreigners came to India in search of her fabulous wealth. No traveler found India poor until the nineteenth century, but foreign merchants and adventurers sought her shores for the almost fabulous wealth, which they could there obtain. 

'To shake the pagoda tree' became a phrase, somewhat similar to our modern expression 'to strike oil' or to get rich quick.

(source: Much Maligned Monsters: A History of European Reactions to Indian Art - By Partha Mitter  p. 1 - 45). For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

American Historian Will Durant (1885-1981) would like the West to learn from India, tolerance and gentleness and love for all living things. He has observed:

"It was the wealth of 18^th century India which attracted the commercial pirates of England and France . This wealth was created by the Hindus’ vast and varied industries and trade. It was to reach India of fabulous wealth that Columbus sailed the seas."

(source: The Case for India - By Will Durant Simon and Schuster, New York. 1930 p.1 - 17).  Refer to Loot: in search of the East India Company - By Nick Robins and How India became poor - indiarealist.com

Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784) in his Lives of The English Poet, describes 1498, the year of Vasco da Gama’s voyage to India and Columbus’s arrival on the American mainland as 

“a year hitherto disastrous to mankind.” 

“The Europeans,” Johnson says resoundingly, “have scarcely visited any coast but gratify avarice and extend corruption: to arrogate dominion without right and practice cruelty without incentive.” 

(source: Under Western Eyes  - By Balachandra Rajan  p. 83). Refer to Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress - By Howard Zinn .

Henrich Heine (1797-1856), a late German Romantic lyric poet, whose influence was enormous not only in Germany but in most countries of the Western world. He remarked: 

“The Portuguese, Dutch and English have been for a long time year after year, shipping home the treasures of India in their big vessels. We Germans have been all along been left to watch it. Germany would do likewise, but hers would be treasures of spiritual knowledge.”

(source: India and World Civilization By D. P. Singhal - Pan Macmillan Limited. 1993 part II p. 234).

Unlike Great Britain’s Empire of colonizing greed Chancellor Count Otto von Bismarck (1815 - 1898) had vowed that Germany would not carry any colonial policy’ in 1881. 

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Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975) British historian, has stated: "India is one great non-western society that has been, not merely attacked and hit, but overrun and conquered by Western arms, but ruled, after that, by Western administration. India's experience of the West has thus been more painful and more humiliating than China's..." 

(source: Civilization on Trail and the World and the West - By Arnold Toynbee - Meridian Books. p. 257).

Civilizational Graveyards? Modus Operandi of Christianity around the Globe

Pitrim Alexandrovitch Sorokin (1889-1968) Russian-American sociologist of Harvard University had said: 

"During the past few centuries the most belligerent, the most aggressive, the most rapacious, the most power-drunk section of humanity has been precisely, the Christian Western world. During these centuries western Christendom had invaded all other continents; its armies followed by priests and merchants have subjugated, robbed or pillaged most of the non-Christians. Native Americans, African, Australian, Asiatic populations have been subjugated to this peculiar brand of Christian "love" which has generally manifested itself in pitiless destruction, enslavement, coercion, destruction of the cultural values, institutions, the way of life of the victims and the spread of alcoholism, venereal disease, commercial cynicism and the like."

(source: History of Hindu-Christian Encounters - By Sita Ram Goel  ISBN 9990049173 p. 370). For more refer to chapter on Conversion. Refer to Jesus Christ: Artifice for Aggression - By Sita Ram Goel and Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth. Refer to World Conquering Creeds - By Dr. Koenraad Elst - chapter on Glimpses XVI.

Refer to Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress - By Howard Zinn  

Charles Wentworth Dilke (1843-1911), a Liberal politician and apologist for colonialism who presented Britons as a benevolant master race, described Indians in Volume 2 of his book Greater Britain: A Record of Travel in English-speaking Countries During 1866 and 1867 thus:

“naked barbarians, plunged in the densest ignorance and superstition, and safe only from extermination because the European cannot dwell permanently in the climate of their land”.

In Volume 1 he described the genocide of indigenous populations:

“The Saxon is the only extirpating race on earth. Up to the commencement of the now inevitable destruction of the Red Indians of Central North America, of the Maories, and of the Australians by the English colonists, no numerous race had ever been blotted out by an invader”.

(source: Greater Britain: A Record of Travel in English-speaking Countries During 1866 and 1867 - By Charles Wentworth Dilke).

Will Durant (1885-1981) American historian, would like the West to learn from India, tolerance and gentleness and love for all living things:

"At Elephanta the Portuguese certified their piety by smashing statuary and bas-reliefs in unrestrained barbarity; and almost everywhere in the north the Moslems brought to the ground those triumphs of Indian architecture, of the fifth and sixth centuries, which tradition ranks as far superior to the later works that arouse our wonder and admiration today. The Moslems decapitated statues, and tore them limb from limb; they appropriated for their mosques, and in great measure imitated, the graceful pillars of the Jain temples; time and fanaticism joined in the destruction, for the Hindus abandoned and neglected temples that had been profaned by the touch of alien hands.” 

"Even in its ruins the Temple of Shiva at Elephanta, with its massive fluted columns, its “mushroom” capitals, its unsurpassed reliefs, and its powerful statuary, suggests to us an age of national vigor and artistic skill of which hardly the memory lives today."   

"No blood has been shed for religion in India except by its invaders. Intolerance came with Islam and Christianity; the Moslems proposed to buy Paradise with the blood of “infidels” and the Portuguese, when they captured Goa, introduced the Inquisition into India.”

(source: Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage - By Will Durant MJF Books. 1935. p. 524 – 600).

Carl Sagan (1934-1996) famous astrophysicist, says:

“In Italy, the Inquisition was condemning people to death until the end of the eighteenth century, and inquisitional torture was not abolished in the Catholic Church until 1816. 

"The last bastion of support for the reality of witchcraft and the necessity of punishment has been the Christian churches.”

(source: The Demon-Haunted World - By Carl Sagan).

Sardar Kavalam Madhava Panikkar (1895-1963) Indian scholar, journalist, historian from Kerala, administrator, diplomat, Minister in Patiala Bikaner and Ambassador to China, Egypt and France. Author of several books, including Asia and Western Dominance, India Through the ages and India and the Indian Ocean. 

He wrote:

"In 1543 Goa was made a Bishopric with authority extending over the entire Far East. Special instructions were issued to the Portuguese Viceroy to root out the infidels. Hindu temples in Goa were destroyed and their property distributed to religious orders (like the Franciscans) in 1540. "

He has further observed:

"The Portuguese, we are told, came to India with a Cross in the one hand and a sword in the other. Their own pretensions in the East were based first on the Bull of Nicholas V, dated January 8^th 1454, by which Affonso V was given, by virtue of the pontifical and apostolic authority of the Pope, exclusive rights to all the countries that might be discovered by the Portuguese in Africa and India . The conversion of the inhabitants of the lands so discovered was to be one of the objects of Portuguese policy. In fact, Don Joao II, who was the real originator of the expedition, had much of this evangelistic spirit in him. To the pious Kings of mediaeval Europe conversion of the heathens seemed to be an imperative duty."

Sigmund Freud in his book, Moses and Monotheism, reasoned that a militant and exclusive God Jehovah was

“suited to a people who were starting out to occupy new homeland by forces,“ and who promised them “a land flowing with milk and honey,” while urging them to exterminate its inhabitants “with the edge of the sword.”

In Deut. 7.1-6, Jehovah says: “Thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them..thou shalt destroy their altars, and break down their images, and cut down their grooves…For thou art an holy people unto the Lord.” 

"King Joao III (1557-1578) was particularly anxious about the spread of Christianity and wrote to the Viceroy Joao de Castro demanding that all power of the Portuguese should be directed to this purpose. 

"The great concernment which lies upon Christian princes to look to matters of Faith and to employ their forces for its preservation makes me advise you how sensible I am that not only in many parts of India under our subjection but in our city of Goa, idols are worshipped, places in which our Faith may be more reasonably expected to flourish; and being well informed with how much liberty they celebrated heathenish festivals WE command you to discover by diligent officers all the idols and to demolish and break them up in pieces where they are found, proclaiming severe punishments against anyone who shall dare to work, cast, make in sculpture, engrave, paint or bring to light any figure of an idol in metal, brass, wood, plaster or any other matter, or bring them from other places; and against who publicly or privately celebrated any of their sports, keep by them any heathenish frankincense or assist and hide the Brahmins, the sworn enemies of the Christian profession. It is our pleasure that you punish them with the severity of the Law without admitting any appeal or dispensation in the least."   

"An influential school of history holds that the benefits, that India has received from the direct contact with Europe, are of such a nature that, in spite of all their faults, the Portuguese should be considered as the pioneers of civilization and as the forerunners of the British Empire . It may be permitted however, to question the correctness of the point of view, wrongly called historical, which thus tries to import retrospective values into events of an earlier date. Even accepting that the connection with Europe has been beneficial to India , it is open to doubt whether a century and a half of barbarous outrages, of unscrupulous plunder and of barren aggression, is not too great a price to pay for the doubtful benefits of having the way opened for other European traders. India ’s own direct trade was ruined, and, in its place, there was established a monopoly by alien races, which had the effect of draining the wealth of India into Europe . The Portuguese of the 16^th and the 17^th century had nothing to teach the people of India except improved methods of killing people in war and the narrow feeling of bigotry in religion. The relations between Portugal and India were barren of cultural or political results, and there is in that history nothing which any civilized nation can be proud of. A host of imaginative historians, anxious to sing the glory of their fatherland, have pictured to us the heroic story of a small nation going forth to conquer India and holding it under sway for 150 years, fighting and winning battles against great hordes and conquering heathen worlds for Christ. "

Refer to Why Indians Should Reject St. Thomas And Christianity - By Koenraad Elst

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) Nobel Laureate in Literature. Famous British Author and Playwright, declared that: 

"There is no power in the world more completely imbued of its dominance than the British empire." 

"It is clear that the British ruling classes do not contemplate the ending of the era of imperialism; at the most they think in terms of modernizing their system of colonial rule. For them the possession of colonies is 'a necessity of greatness and wealth.' 

(source: The Discovery of India - By Jawaharlal Nehru  p.538).

"Bear in mind that the Commerce of India is the Commerce of the World, and he who can exclusively stock of precious metals then owned in Europe.  - Article VIII of the Will, of Peter the Great.

Much of the wealth that made possible Britain's Industrial Revolution was earned, fairly or unfairly, within her Indian empire. In seventeenth century India had been far wealthier than England, the relative positions were sharply reversed by the end of the nineteenth century. Then, too, the British policy of free trade tended to prevent the development within India of the mechanized industries then coming into being in the West. Densely populated, with no new land to exploit and with a centuries-long history of invasions, India faced severe economic handicaps at independence. Ironically, India was seen by Western travelers in classical times and in the Middle Ages as a land of fabulous wealth. 

(source: India: A World in Transition - By Beatrice Pitney Lamb  p. 71 & 358). For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

India, said Lord Robert Clive, was a country of inexhaustible riches."

Lord Curzon (1859-1925) Marquis of Kedleston, a British statesman, was a Conservative Party politician. He was viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905, and later became chancellor of Oxford University. Curzon re-entered politics during World War I (1914-1918). He became a member of Lloyd George's war cabinet in 1916. In an address delivered at the great Delhi Durbar in 1901:

"Powerful Empires existed and flourished here [in India] while Englishmen were still wandering painted in the woods, and while the British Colonies were a wilderness and a jungle."

"India has left a deeper mark upon the history, the philosophy, and the religion of mankind, than any other terrestrial unit in the universe."

"It is such a land that England has conquered and is holding as a dependency. It is such a people that she is ruling without giving them any voice whatever in the shaping of their own destiny."

(source: India in Bondage: Her Right to Freedom - By Jabez T. Sunderland p. 7 and theatlantic.com). 

For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

E M Forster (1872 - 1970) was an English novelist, short story writer, and essayist. He is most famous for his novels, most of which have been filmed. His most famous novel was A Passage to India (1924) . 

He wrote:

“The Englishman in India has been trained “in the fine tradition of paternal government” and “In India we have done much good and have a right” and “our sudden withdrawal would be disastrous.”  

(source: The Raj Syndrome: A Study in Imperial Perceptions - By Suhash Chakravarty. Penguin Books. 1991 p. 248).

Canon Sydney Smith (1771 - 1845) a clergyman, essayist and social reformer, founded the Whig Edinburgh Review in 1802. For the next twenty-five years he used this periodical as an organ for his liberal views on educational reform, the slave trade and the Irish situation. Although later appointed Canon of St Paul's Cathedral, his hopes for a bishopric were frustrated by his public reputation as an enlightened Whig and a member of the 'Holland House Circle'.

He wrote in the Edinburgh Review (April 1809, p. 45) 

“If the Bible is diffused in Hindustan, what must be the astonishment of the natives, to find that we are forbidden to rob, murder and steal; we, who in fifty years, have extended our Empire over the whole (Indian) peninsula, and exemplified in our public conduct every crime to which human nature is capable. What matchless impudence, to follow up such practice with such precepts.”

(source: Recovery of Faith - By Dr. S. Radhakrishnan p. 25). For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor. Refer to Jesus Christ: Artifice for Aggression - By Sita Ram Goel and Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth.

Note: Anglo-Israelism - is that Great Britain is the geographical home of the Lost tribes of Israel . The immediate implication of this belief is that it identifies the present day Anglo-Saxon people as God's Chosen People. The basic reward, and primary source of appeal, that British-Israelism provides to its Anglo-Saxon advocates, is its affirmation that biblical prophecy be directed to them specifically. For many Anglo-Saxons, it has been supremely desirable to have such a covenant with God. Essentially, Imperial British-Israelism had one goal above all others: the justification of the Empire. The early millennial period found followers within evangelical portions of the Anglican Church, as well as inside American Methodism. The later period of millennialism finds its primary proponents among fringe Pentecostal groups, as well as in the teachings of Herbert W. Armstrong and the White-Supremacist Identity Movement of Richard Girnt Butler. Today it has followers in USA. The Christian Identity movement - The roots of the Identity movement began in England in the late 1800s as Anglo-Israelism.

Nicholas B. Dirks ( ? ) is Franz Boas Professor of Anthropology and Professor of History Columbia University. He is the author of The Scandal of Empire: India and the Creation of Imperial Britain, which is not only a severe indictment of the rise, foundation and total condemnation of the concept of Empire itself, but also shows that Empire-making is essentially exploitation and oppression by using devious means of seizing authority and sovereignty over millions of people, alien in race, nationality, customs and manners.

He has observed that the British Intrusive behavior was recast as a civilizing mission in India.

(source: The British Rule in India: Tale of Loot and plunder – By V. N. Datta - tribuneindia.com).  

George Orwell (1902 – 1985) born in India, was a British author and journalist. 

Noted as a novelist, as a critic and as a political and cultural commentator, Orwell is among the most widely admired English-language essayists of the 20th century.  

He once wrote that imperialism consists of the policeman and soldier holding the “native” down while the businessman goes through his pockets.”

Prof Suhash Chakravarty of  University of Delhi and author of the book The Raj Syndrome: A Study in Imperial Perceptions has astutely observed: 

"India has continued to haunt the British sensibility down to the days of Mountbatten, nay till date, as the sought for playing field of the chivalrous knight-errants of the Empire ‘that spread its wings wider than Rome’. It was power, autocracy and social Darwinism. It was glamour, snobbery and the basis of imperial economy. It was a certain indicator of imperial might. It was the principal signpost of Britain ’s sun-lit empire where ‘boxwallah, missionary, clerk, lancer, planter’ carried maxims or gospels to lighten a dark continent.’ The Raj was the cult of Christian military heroes."

(source: The Raj Syndrome: A Study in Imperial Perceptions - By Suhash Chakravarty Penguin Books. 1991  p. 203).

British Colonial tyranny in India - A woman carrying a English Merchant on her back. West Bengal 1903.

(source: Old Pics Archive)

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Anne Sebba author of several books including Mother Teresa: Beyond the Image has noted:

"The great expansion of missionary activity came during the nineteenth century, coinciding with the spread of British colonial rule throughout India and with a variety of efforts by the other governments of Europe to turn India Christian. Bu the end of the century there were at least twenty-two different Protestant Missionary Societies with as many printing establishments to disseminate the vernacular Gospel.  

There is no doubt that, in the fight to deliver Christianity to the heathen, both Protestants and Catholics sent their best brains to India , rather than Africa or China . This implied a recognition of the inherent spirituality of Hinduism, which demanded more than average sophistry and persuasion to win converts. There was a belief that India had a high degree of ancient civilization which by the late eighteenth century, as the Moghul Empire was fading, had allowed decadence to seep in, offering Christianity the chance to fill the gap. Annie Besant, proponent of the philosophy of Theosophy, gave many a lecture in which she aired her views that India was a victim of the mischief wrought by Christian missionaries. A friend of Swami Vivekananda, Mrs. Besant was trying to lead Indians back to their own gods and arouse their sense of self-respect and pride in the greatness of their religions."

(source: Mother Teresa: Beyond the Image - By Anne Sebba   p. 22 - 25).

Shashi Tharoor - The former under-secretary general of the United Nations, distinguished writer and essayist and controversial Member of Parliament, Shashi Tharoor, has in an Oxford University debate argued that the demand for reparations for British colonization of India is not outlandish; it is, in fact, a moral debt. According to Tharoor, after the arrival of the British, India went from having 27 percent of the world trade to less than 2 percent. In his recent book, An Era of Darkness, he has written eloquently:

"Before the British East India Company arrived, Bengal, Masulipatnam, Surat and the Malabar ports of Calicut and Quilon had a thriving shipbuilding industry and Indian ships plied the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. The Marathas even ran a substantial fleet in the 16^th century under the navy of Shivaji who defended the west coast against the Portuguese threat. Indian shipbuilding had long thrived in a land with such a long coastline. Indian workmanship and the country’s long shipbuilding tradition were highly valued by British shipwrights, who found themselves adopting many Indian techniques of naval architecture in constructing their own vessels. As the Victorian commentator William Digby was to observe, the Mistress of the Seas of the Western world had killed the Mistress of the Seas of the East."

(source: An Era of Darkness - By Shashi Tharoor p. 32-36).

Author John Newsinger is Senior Lecturer: History. School of Historical and Cultural Studies at the Bath Spa University, UK. 

He has written in his book, The Blood Never Dried: A People's History of the British Empire:

“Imperialism has two dimensions: firstly, the competition between the great imperial powers, competition that in the 20^th century produced two world wars and the Cold War. This competition is the driving force of modern imperialism, and it has wreaked terrible damage on the world, consuming millions of lives.”  

“Imperial occupation inevitably involves the use of violence and that, far from this being a glorious affair, it involved considerable brutality against people who were often virtually defenseless.” “It is worth remembering that the much trumpeted, “Shock and Awe” that the United States promised to inflict on Iraq in 2003 had been inflicted by the British on city after city throughout the world in the course of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. If it has been British cities shelled by an invader, the story would have been very different.”  

(source: The Blood Never Dried: A People’s History of the British Empire - By John Newsinger  p. 1 - 9). Refer to Oppose Christian Missionaries and Radical Christian Missionaries in Iraq.

Refer to Holy warriors in the US armed forces and Christian embassy and Officers Christian fellowship and Ambassadors for Christian Dominion in Uniform.

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Updated - October 28, 2008