The 1.8 billion avoidable Indian deaths from deprivation under the genocidal British over 2 centuries is not that surprising when one considers that despite modern medicine, antibiotics, and the essential absence of famine, avoidable deaths from deprivation in the period 1950-2005 in India totalled 0.35 billion – while annual avoidable deaths as a percentage of population fell from a genocidal 2.4% per year in 1947 under the British to 0.35% per year in 2005, but the population of India increased from 380 million in 1947 to about 1,100 million in 2005. Īvoidable death from deprivation (avoidable mortality, excess death, excess mortality, premature death, untimely death, deaths that should not have happened) is the difference between actual deaths in a country and deaths expected for a decently governed country with the same demographics, and can be even more reliably estimated for the post-1950 era using data from the UN Population Division.
Using Indian census data 1870-1950, assuming an Indian population of about 200 million in the period 1760-1870, and estimating by interpolation from available data an Indian avoidable death rate in (deaths per 1,000 of population) of 37 (1757-1920), 35 (1920-1930), 30 (1930-1940) and 24 (1940-1950), one can estimate Indian excess deaths of 592 million (1757-1837), 497 million (1837-1901) and 418 million (1901-1947), roughly 1.5 billion in total or 1.8 billion including the Native States. “Inglorious Empire” acknowledges that scores of millions of Indians died over 2 centuries of recurrent famine events during British occupation and acknowledges that Indian life expectancy was less than 30 years under the British, but understates the carnage of major man-made famine atrocities and ignores the horrendous, estimated total of 1,800 million avoidable deaths due to British-imposed deprivation over 2 centuries. However Tharoor is iconoclast-lite and massively understates the horrendous mass murder of Indians through imposed deprivation that occurred under the British and continues today in a neoliberal-dominated India. What the British did to India” by writer and celebrated Congress MP Shashi Tharoor is a must-read, powerful, 294-page excoriation of 200 years of rapacious British rule over India that should be in every library, and especially those in British Commonwealth countries.
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