A reduction of poverty is not the same thing as the elimination of poverty (and the debate re: the British Raj specifically seems to be more about whether it was disastrous or merely more or less a continuation of the Mughal era status quo, hardly an endorsement). India is much, much better off today than they would have been had colonialism continued. One of India's biggest and most successful economic transformations was in ending the Zamindars (landlords that were effectively feudal lords), that almost certainly wouldn't have happened under the Raj. Not to mention the severe down sides to exporting massive amounts of money overseas due to taxation and the innumerable issues related to being a second class citizen in your own homeland.
India is much, much better off today than they would have been had colonialism continued.
How do you know what the condition of India would have been under British rule?
Was there a sharp upward trend in India's gdp/growth rates/etc after Britain left? Or did the 10 post-british years have higher growth rates than the last 10 british years? I'm genuinely curious.
From a Buddhist perspective economic growth is an evil. I suspect that Hindus (Ghandi definitely) would speak similarly. Certainly if it increases meat consumption it would be an evil to many Hindus.
Using our societal mores to judge the benefit of our occupation is precisely the sort of paternalistic jingoism that makes colonialism such an unmistakable evil.
Certainly Brahmins would say that. Who is threatened more by the rise of an independently wealthy merchant/middle class than those who owe their position to an accident of birth?
On the contrary, Ghandi was an advocate of the "varna" system, which was about fewer, even more rigid castes. He strongly believed that one's caste should be determined by birth, and he opposed marriage between members of different castes.
To Western eyes Indians are one race, but what Ghandi stood for was apartheid * 10.
I said he did more. His views are irrelevant. Obviously in principle the British paid lip service to a caste-free society, but in practice they were the authors of apartheid.
Also when you look at his views closely, especially after 1925 or so, he moves into a position very similar to that which you will see of modern Christian theology, where you hear much talk of the importance of personal choice. So people should follow a caste and so on, but that's not the place of the government to enforce. That's a much more moderate and workable position than abolition, and much easier to implement. Absolutes do little good when aiming for radical societal reinvention.
Even Sati was pushed out bit by bit, by various reformers. But again, from a vegetarian Hindu perspective large-scale livestock slaughter is a similar if not worse evil than Sati, and unless you can provide a proof that animals don't have souls, your rationalism has no place in that discussion. You might as well commend the Communist party for bringing about gender equality as a counter argument to someone railing against the gulags. All it shows is that we always have some places where we cannot accept cultural relativism.
