Britain should give India back its artefacts in lieu of £52trn in colonialism reparations, says historian
Share:
Oxfam report says wealth extracted from India between 1765 and 1900 would be a sum large enough to ‘carpet the surface area of London in £50 notes almost four times over’. A historian has suggested Britain return looted artefacts to its former colonies instead of vast sums in reparations, after an Oxfam report suggested India was owed over £52 trillion.
The report suggested that Western nations commit to providing former colonies with at least £4 trillion annually in reparations and “climate debt” – a sum reflecting the costs developed economies owe poorer nations for climate change. The report, titled Takers not Makers: The Unjust Poverty and Unearned Wealth of Colonialism, said: “Oxfam calculates that between 1765 and 1900, the richest 10 per cent in the UK extracted wealth from India alone worth US$33.8 trillion (£27.38 trillion) in today’s money.”.
It added that “this would be enough to carpet the surface area of London in £50 notes almost four times over”. The figure of $64.82 trillion (£52.58 trillion) was not calculated by the report’s authors but was attributed to two Delhi-based Indian economists, Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik.
“Reparations must be made to those who were brutally enslaved and colonised,” the report read. “Our modern-day colonial economic system must be made radically more equal to end poverty. The cost should be borne by the richest people who benefit the most.”.
Rana Safvi, a leading Indian historian and author, questioned the practicality and implications of such large sums in monetary reparations. She told The Independent that there were concerns about the complexity of addressing historical wrongs and the risk of opening a Pandora’s box, considering the vast scale of past injustices worldwide.
