Museum of British Colonialism Calls for a National Day of Commemoration for the Victims of Colonialism
New Delhi [India], October 15: The Museum of British Colonialism (MBC) has filed a petition calling for a National Day of Commemoration for the Victims of Colonialism. The day would remember the millions whose lives, land and livelihoods were lost under colonial rule. MBC invites everyone who supports the cause to sign the petition at https://indiascolonialstory.org/.
At its zenith around 1913, the British Empire was the largest empire in the world, covering nearly 25% of the globe and ruling more than 410 million people. Each colony has its own decolonisation story, and for many it ended acrimoniously. In India, colonisation took nearly 200 years, as the British wiped away the old medieval order and replaced it with firmly established colonial rule.
The cost of that rule was felt long before independence and long after it. The British East India Company strategically drained India’s revenue (worth trillions today), jewels (unaccountable) and historic artefacts (priceless) to Britain, depriving posterity of ever witnessing the grandeur of the early Modern India (the Mughal era). Unlike earlier conquests, British rule brought a drastic change in India’s economic structure, robbing people of their livelihoods. Its consequences took many forms, from famine and resource extraction to communal riots, and left a lasting impact on communities across the subcontinent.
Division was also a deliberate policy. After the Revolt of 1857, Lord Elphinstone, then Governor of Bombay, advised London in 1859: “Divide et impera was the old Roman maxim: it should be ours.” That legacy culminated in 1947. As streets filled with euphoric crowds celebrating independence, many stayed away, mourning loved ones lost in the partition of the country, one of the bloodiest divisions in history and a tragic price paid for freedom from colonial rule. Even today, the presence of religious neighbourhoods in both India and Pakistan points to the incomplete decolonisation of people’s minds, still shaped by the British policy of ‘divide and rule’.
