[kamaal]

>>Or Britain liberated India from a Mughal conqueror and put the Hindus back in charge.

Joke?

Firstly Muslims participated and contributed equally to Indian 'Freedom' Struggle. Notice the word 'Freedom' there! Indians consider it Freedom, being an Indian I've never read anything in our history books, which considers the post mughal period as a the period of 'Freedom'.

Secondly British stole a lot from India, took it back to England to make itself rich. Mughals as far as I know did nothing like that. The conqueror never went back, In fact he united India and contributed to India's rich cultural heritage in music, poetry, science, wealth and in nearly every aspect of life.

After all that India was never a nation ruled by single ideological power. Mainland India has been ruled by Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists(Asoka was a Buddhist), atheists. And there have been no defined borders of Mainland India throughout history. Which has been area from the north starting from southern tips of Russia, the whole of Afghanistan and then extending on the east till Iran.

India has been ruled by people speaking various languages, cultures, skin color and ethnicity for thousands of years.

[rdl]

What did Britain steal from India? Some diamonds, but most of the other stuff was renewable resources (and time/opportunity cost), right?

[Symmetry]

The British banned several industries in India to encourage the development of those industries in Britain. One of Gandhi's famous acts of disobedience was leading people down to the sea to make their own salt, an industry that was forbidden in India at the time.[1] The British did do a few good things for India, but they did some really bad things too.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_March

[movingahead]

What do you mean by 'renewable resources'?

The British rule in India was full of continuous exploitation of the Indian masses, both politically and economically. The value of freedom can't be measured in diamonds.

To learn more, start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_independence_movement

[accountswu]

>What did Britain steal from India? Some diamonds, but most of the other stuff was renewable resources (and time/opportunity cost), right?

That's a sad, sick peace of imperial mentality. Would you rather be butchered by an army of some foreign people who consider people of their skin to be superior to yours, and then say it's only some diamonds?

What did the British steal from Native Americans? Only some gold?

What did the British steal from European colonists of America? Only some tea?

[accountswu]

Put the Hindus back in charge? The British just used divide and conquer to rule (and the people were stupid enough to fall for that). The division of India was because of insecurity of Muslims and due to rigidness of the Hindu leaders who weren't willing to compromise on power, they wanted to be "in charge" and that's why Jinnah insisted on a separate country.

http://arjunpuri.wordpress.com/the-economist-attacks-india-i...

Even 60+ years after independence India and Pakistan are still virtually at red alert because of the lack of trust and because of the Kashmir dispute and both countries spend billions of dollars to arm their military while 75.6% of Indians and some 60% of Pakistanis live under poverty (live under $2 a day according to HDI). It works out well for the weapons manufacturers of the world, the taxpayers of India and Pakistan are helping the economy of US, UK, France, Germany etc by buying billions of dollars worth of killing machines.

http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/indicators/103.html