The British Raj #02

So Christopher Columbus was looking for a route to India, why India, because India was so rich, it was so powerful. It was the hub of spices and cloth and all sorts of things. It was the richest land in the world, the Mughals they were weak in one thing and that was they did not have any navy.

So, what changed is the question, how did the British come to power,

the British came to power simply by chance, by chance, it so happened, that there was a vacuum left for them to fill, and they came and filled the vacuum, they could not in their wildest of dreams, imagine to rule parts of India, let alone all of India. I will repeat the British merchants, the British East India, company officers could not imagine ruling parts of India, let alone ruling all of India.

And they managed to rule all of India, no doubt. So how did this happen? Very quickly, I will explain that when Orangevale and Gil are mentally passed away in the year 77. His successors could not hold on to power. This is another topic in itself is a huge topic. You see every single sentence brothers I will utter today in your presence has a book behind it. I'm not saying I read all those books. But I'm trying to explain how vast this topic is. How vast the topic of the British rule in India is how vast the mobile history is, how vast each and every single region. And the history is. So this is why I'm giving you snippets glimpses in to

these vast histories. So what you will have to do is to go and read books so that you can actually learn more about this history and teach your children and it is very important for you to for you to know what happened in India and what you face today in your countries. The reason you're sitting here in Britain, is because you are economic immigrants, you are economic immigrants, most of your parents came here to live better lives, whatever that mean, it came from Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, to live in. And other parts, maybe Egypt and Morocco and Algeria, depending on where you come from. You came here as economic immigrants, unless you are exceptions, right. And the reason why we

why you sit here is because your countries do not offer you what you find here.

Right? Otherwise, you would be in your countries, you will be living with your relatives, your uncle's rechargeables, your daddy and your mama, right? You will be sitting with them and have a bonfire every evening and have you know those charts, you know, in your villages? I don't know if you've experienced that, right? But you're here because obviously you find this place to be better economically. His speech suits your needs better.

Now, you're British citizens, you're part, your part and parcel of the of this country, you are

a very integral part of the social fabric of this country. But how did this all start? How did your countries end up in the state they are in today? Why is there so much corruption?

Why is this so much poverty?

Why are they in the state?

You want to stop?

So, this is a very important point. To understand why you're here today. You need to understand what happened before you were born. Or before your grandparents were born. What happened? What caused the circumstances for your parents and your grandparents to come to these countries and start working in factories, start driving taxis and start delivering pizzas.

And in some cases Alhamdulillah education came you you know mashallah made a good life here. Doctors engineers. Yeah. Allah forbid politicians. God forbid. Okay, because we don't see any good ones, unfortunately. Right? Yeah.

Anything else is better inshallah than anything else. Yeah, it's better to do something useful, and something beneficial for your people then become a source of

a source of embarrassment or embarrassment for your communities. So

that's why it's so important for you to understand the British Raj. So the Mughals declined the Mughals after Orangevale and gear his descent

could not hold on to power. Within 50 years after his death he dies in 1707 1757. He died in 1707. In 1757, exactly 50 years later, a battle takes place in Bengal, between the Mughal governor of Bengal Nawab Siraj $2, a young young man in his early 20s, ruling Bengal, the richest province province in the world, not only in India, by the way, the richest province in the world. Bengal was the richest province, economically agriculturally, Ben Gaul was the richest place in the world full stop period. This is why the British was so interested in it. Ben Gaul was the breadbasket of the Mughal empire.

When Bengal was lost, the Mughal empire crumbled. It collapsed economically financially, when you do not have

agriculture or economics behind you. You cannot pay militaries you cannot pay armies. When you cannot pay armies, soldiers, you cannot run a state. And this is what happened to the Mughals. So the British had established trading posts in the 17th century, having acquired permission from Mughal emperors respectively, one after another. It started with the John D. It started with John D and Mughal emperor Jahangir. So the early British East India Company officers traders got some permissions to trade at the port of Surah In current day Gujarat, so they established a trading post in Zurich. They got permissions to trade. Then came Shah Jehan, and orange Xin. So they established

more trading ports in places like Madras, and Calcutta. So there were three main hubs of British activity as far as trading was concerned. Are you listening to me? You're with me? It's gonna get far more interesting. Inshallah we're coming to the interesting the juicy bits very soon, inshallah. Okay, so that you understand what happened. So these trading posts was spread all over India. Seurat is on the west coast. Madras is in southeast, then Calcutta is basically the east coast or the East Eastern territory of India. This is where the British established their pores. So they were trading initially in cotton. They're taking cloth and spices. Actually cotton came later. The first

incentive for the British traders was spices, Indian spices, there were no refrigerators in Britain at the time to preserve foods, they needed spices, it was a necessity. In fact, it is estimated that clubs you know what clubs are?

Longer. Long. Yeah, let me say it in your language. Long.

Okay, clubs were weighed in against gold. This is how important clubs were as a commodity. This is all valued. You're not today, you can walk into a shop and buy a kilo of clubs and do nothing right. At that time. They were weighed against gold brothers.

Spices are so important for Europeans and they would travel from their lands, putting their lives in danger, go through all those sea storms, and all sorts of difficulties. You know, avoiding pirates and all of that. There was a lot of piracy. The Portuguese pioneered piracy. The Portuguese controlled the sea, right? The Mughals they were weak in one thing, and that was they did not have any Navy. The Ottomans did. The Ottomans completely occupied the Mediterranean Sea. So the Europeans could not do anything in the middle Mediterranean Sea. So they had to find routes around the Ottoman piracy. They had to find routes. The Ottoman Mujahideen In other words, right. So they were you

know, people like Barbarossa, very famous Ottoman Admiral, and as far as they were concerned, they were waging, waging jihad against these European powers, hostile European powers. Okay. And this jihad

of the Ottomans put the Europeans in a really real funny situation.

And what happened in Europe at that time because of the Ottomans is another story. Even Queen Elizabeth the first joined this jihad, right she became an ally of the Ottoman Sultans, those who are ruling at her time. There is a book as well, you should check it out the Queen and the Sultan, check the title of the Queen and the Sultan right how

The British Queen because European establishing the establishment Catholics were against her the church or the gates. She was a Protestant queen, the Catholics. This is why the Spanish King Philip the Second sent and our armada of hundreds of ships to invading led in 1588.

Hence the famous Spanish Armada, the destruction of Spanish Armada 1588. You must have studied this history at school, right? Okay. So the Europeans are looking for alternative routes to trade. And they were looking, you know, Christopher Columbus was looking for India, when he found Indians, or the Red Indians. They were actually not Indians. He thought they were Indians, right? That's why they were called Red Indians. The Native Americans were called Red Indians for a reason why the corporate Indians? Is it an accident? What do you think this is not an accident? Because early explorers like Christopher Columbus and those who came after him, they thought these are Indians.

This is India. We are actually in India. But India was 1000s of miles away. They were in America. It took them a very long time to understand and realize this is actually not India. This is another territory. Right. So Christopher Columbus was looking for a route to India. Why India? Because India was so rich. It was so powerful. It was the hub of spices and cloth and all sorts of things.

It was the richest land in the world.

And when the mobiles took it, the mobile became the most powerful people in the world. And the mobile's did organize India as a powerhouse