tax and india

[DaZahroJaam.]

can anyone verify whether indians paid tax to their government prior to their colonization by the brits?? quickly, please..

[ComradePashtun]

Of course they did, djz. Taxation is not a European or for that a colonial phenomenon and I would assume some form revenue collection existed in India perhaps as far back as Mauray Empire, let alone the Afghans and Mughals who had proper exchequers. How do you think the empires there thrived. Im sure in addition to agricultural based taxing some form(s) of levies on trade also existed.

[DaZahroJaam.]

i am writing on the consequences of British colonization which led to the collapse of their economy and the multiple famines. I know high levels of tax was the main cause behind people falling behind and losing their properties to government but I am not sure if taxation existed prior to that in the Indian society at all or if it was introduced by the British. I can't find anything on it in google. Something tells me it didn't exist..

[ComradePashtun]

Of course taxation existed prior to the British rule.

"By the late 17th century, the Mughal Empire was as its peak and had expanded to include almost 90 per cent of South Asia, and enforced a uniform customs and tax-administration system. In 1700 the exchequer of the Emperor Aurangzeb reported an annual revenue of more than £100 million"

"An estimate of India's pre-colonial economy puts the annual revenue of Emperor Akbar's treasury in 1600 at £17.5 million (in contrast to the entire treasury of Great Britain two hundred years later in 1800, which totaled £16 million). The gross domestic product of Mughal India in 1600 was estimated at about 21.3% the world economy, the second largest in the world.[17]"

An exploitative trading system:

"After gaining the right to collect revenue in Bengal in 1765, the East India Company largely ceased importing gold and silver, which it had hitherto used to pay for goods shipped back to Britain.[20] In addition, as under Mughal rule, land revenue collected in the Bengal Presidency helped finance the Company's wars in other part of India.[20] Consequently, in the period 1760–1800, Bengal's money supply was greatly diminished; furthermore, the closing of some local mints and close supervision of the rest, the fixing of exchange rates, and the standardization of coinage, paradoxically, added to the economic downturn.[20] During the period, 1780–1860, India changed from being an exporter of processed goods for which it received payment in bullion, to being an exporter of raw materials and a buyer of manufactured goods.[20] More specifically, in the 1750s, mostly fine cotton and silk was exported from India to markets in Europe, Asia, and Africa; by the second quarter of the 19th century, raw materials, which chiefly consisted of raw cotton, opium, and indigo, accounted for most of India's exports.[21] Also, from the late 18th century British cotton mill industry began to lobby the government to both tax Indian imports and allow them access to markets in India.[21] Starting in the 1830s, British textiles began to appear in—and soon to inundate—the Indian markets, with the value of the textile imports growing from £5.2 million 1850 to £18.4 million in 1896.[22]"

India's decline from the worlds largest (or second largest when it fell under British rule):

"British economist, Angus Maddison argues that India's share of the world income went from 27% in 1700 (compared to Europe's share of 23%) to 3% in 1950.[17] Modern economic historians have blamed the colonial rule for the dismal state of India's economy, investment in Indian industries was limited since it was a colony"

Imperial and unfair monetary regime:

"After its victory in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71), Germany extracted a huge indemnity from France of £200,000,000, and then moved to join Britain on a gold standard for currency. France, the US and other industrialising countries followed Germany in adopting a gold standard throughout the 1870s. At the same time, countries, such as Japan, which did not have the necessary access to gold or those, such as India, which were subject to imperial policies that determined that they did not move to a gold standard, remained mostly on a silver standard. A huge divide between silver-based and gold-based economies resulted. The worst affected were economies with a silver standard that traded mainly with economies with a gold standard. With discovery of more and more silver reserves, those currencies based on gold continued to rise in value and those based on silver were declining due to demonetisation of silver. For India which carried out most of its trade with gold based countries, especially Britain, the impact of this shift was profound. As the price of silver continued to fall, so too did the exchange value of the rupee, when measured against sterling."

So it wasn't just the taxation that smothered and progressively led to the decline of the Indian economy, but multiplicity of factors owing to an imposed exploitative/extractive colonial economic structure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_India

[ComradePashtun]

Are you writing from an economic or from history/political perspective?

I am sure there are tons of academic sources on the subject. The Bengal famine was the worse which was due to British policy for which Churchill was directly responsible.

[DaZahroJaam.]

i am writing from an economic perspective since i have the option to choose and i figured it will be easier to write on. i guess i have to know what i am searching for in order to find it on google. i wanted to pass it as general knowledge but i guess now i have to find a different angle to approach it from.

[ComradePashtun]

Good luck.