Correction: it was in 1936 that the Temple Entry proclamation was passed, and it was not just this temple but all temples that barred low caste Hindus from entry.

Amusingly, the Maharajahs of Travancore were themselves low caste sudras and the only way they could enter this temple was by bribing thousands of nambudri Brahmins with hefty donations, called mahadhanams, of gold, cows and slaves. The pious royal sudras were fooled into believing that this would deceive the deity installed in the temple into thinking they were upper caste Kshatriyas and thus eligible to enter it’s presence for darshan. But after 6 years the god would wise up to the deception and realize they were actually sudras…..so the Brahmins had to be bribed again and again every 6 years!

This extortion racket was finally forced to an end, at least overtly, by the British in the mid-19th century when they learned of this colossal waste of the Kingdom’s revenues and threatened to annex Travancore if the Maharajah did not stop wasting the Kingdom’s tax revenues so foolishly.

Somewhat similarly, Shivaji the low caste founder of the Mahratta Empire had to find a Brahmin from far away Varanasi who was willing (in exchange for how much we don’t know) to concoct a fanciful ancient kshatriya lineage for him and anoint him a legitimate Hindu king, when the local Brahmins refused to do so knowing he was not a kshatriya but a low caste mahratta.

It is so obvious that the hereditary caste system is stupid and farcical and that it belongs in the dustbin of history.

Good question.

The British took much of the loot back to their little island while the native hindu rajahs hoarded the loot in temples, which anti-national practice only served as a honey pot to attract swarms of afghans and turks. The british built schools and colleges, roads and railways; what did the Maharajahs build other than shabby temples and palaces?

It is funny to see the same pseudo-nationalist types who rant against British colonialism and Mughal rule going giddy with pride at the recent discovery of the billions of dollars worth of treasure recently discovered hidden at a temple in Travancore. The Maharajahs of Travancore are being lauded by these RSS types for their piety! Apparently it is a pious act to hoard wealth in temples from which most citizens of the kingdom are barred, instead of using the wealth for their welfare. This same Kingdom of Travancore was called a lunatic asylum of casteism by Swami Vivekananda a century ago and it wasn’t until 1932 that sudras were even allowed to enter this temple in which the treasure was found. Even Tamil Brahmins were considered sudras by the Brahmins of Travancore.

Well, it is a good example of “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade”.

Not to forget the Rajput dynasties many of which continue to this day, especially that one clan of the Sisodias of Mewar. And as for fighting formations the Indian warrior clans are the only ones to continue to this day as intact fighting traditions. Every infantry regiment of the Indian Army upholds a unique warfighting tradition stretching back centuries. The Maravar of yester’century who wielded the sword and shield is the ancestor of the Maravar of today who is a weapons officer on board an Indian Navy submarine. And the oldest ship of the Royal Navy a sailing ship that fought at Trafalgar was wrighted in the docks of Bombay.

I was familiar with this one. It’s very sad and this is pure racism and genocide.

what-if India were not colonized, where would it be?

I personally think that the geographic expression that we call as India would be about a dozen or so kingdoms, kind of like a SE Asia. The states would be split on religious and then linguistic lines.

Who knows. What is easier is pointing out awful colonial policies that concretely and pointedly hampered India sending it into decline. That isn’t a relativist statement. It isn’t saying India would have done better if it were not colonized, and it isn’t saying India would have done worse. –

India has historically contributed to 20%-25% of global GDP. However, I’m unsure if the economists regarded only the modern-day Indian borders or if he included Bangladesh and Pakistan and Nepal and Sri Lanka? All I know is that India was a very rich nation, but the people fought amongst themselves too much, and moreover, they were colonized by many different warlords and they didn’t embrace modernism and industrialization. So, the Europeans came over. They did a lot of bad (in the case of the ’43 famines), but also good (have you ever been to Victoria Terminus?). Oh yes…we’re not communicating in Orissan or Punjabi, but in a different beautiful language.

Chaos theory tells us the what-if game is folly — the world a thousand years from now may be better had Hitler won. The ends do not justify the means. If you’re a time traveler who rapes a woman so that the future is rosy, no one cares; if you rape a woman, you go to jail. Colonialism raped India. Did that make India better or worse? Not a relevant question. One thing is for sure, if India wound up better for it, it was never the intention.

India is just now waking up from the dreariness of colonization. I hope that Pakistan sooner or later wakes up and posts 8% GDP growth. Moreover, I hope that india continues its 8% growth. Something tells me that this won’t last for another 10 years. Brazil also had very fast growth in the past and then stagnation and then growth.

And please, don’t invent reasons for India’s history over the past few centuries if you’ve barely studied it. There has always been intense resistance to invasions in India as Alexander, Huns, Arabs, Turks, Afghans, and Europeans all discovered. There’s a reason why Alex didn’t make it to the Ganga, why the Huns were eventually crushed and exiled, why the Arab Caliph gave up any project of conquering India after numerous attempts, why Ghauri lost the first battle of Tarain, why the Afghans were defeated and driven out by the Sikhs, and why the British had to fight 4 wars with Mysore (they lost 1 of those), 3 with the Marathas, and 2 with the Sikhs (oh and just so my remarks don’t seem too “saffron”–Aurangzeb beat the crap out of the British in Child’s War).

History is always written by the victors, and they will always make it seem like a cakewalk to depress further resistance from the masses. India’s education system still reflects this mental colonialism, which is why every Indian only knows to recite invasions and knows few if any of the numerous victories. Whatever reasons are behind British rule of India (Oxford military history credits British mastery of subcontinental politics not technology, since congreve rockets were developed from Tipu’s own arsenal), fatalism wasn’t one of them. Spare us the pop history.

Yet Mao and Stalin killed more of their own people than did the Japanese or Germans. Strange what civilized, controlled types of people get up to when they go to war. Then when it’s all over they just go back to doing what they were doing. I am leaning toward an “engineered” concept of war. This carnage simply cannot be spontaneous. People who have no personal grievance at each others’ throats? Absurd.

Personally I’d give the Brits a few points for trying to ban suttee, child marriage and infanticide (a friend of mine said they were probably the Celtic element as the Anglo-Saxon element was evil, but she’s Irish and i don’t want to tell her that her religionists could be pretty bad to their own) . I don’t know how much the famines were mismanaged or “engineered” (my irish friend again), but if there were deaths caused by colonialism, there must also be a few Indians now alive that owe their existence to a few Christian do-gooders. India’s weakness has been the fatalism encouraged by the religions. I’m not an atheist, but let’s face it, the secular among us are more progressive. Whatever qualities the British of the past possessed, fatalism was not prominent among them.

British “Colonization” was almost entirely economic and linguistic, product of the East Indian Company,and emanating from the City of London–which is not London. The number of English in India was so miniscule that most villagers never knew they had ever been there, when they left in the 40s. I still don’t understand how they stayed so long, except that a cruicial number of the “natives” benefited directly. Continued resistance such as that of the ’57 Mutiny, would have driven them out.

These “games” are only fun if you are one of the “empires” rather than the colonized.