Latest Articles
Destruction is all postmodernism has ever offered. It has no positive agenda. It works only against, not for. Incapable of direction and purpose, finally it is fading
Feb 17 2026
16 mins
One thing to be said in Race Discrimination Commissioner Giridharan Sivaraman's favour: he has mastered all the noxious cliches and racialist battle cries required of a Labor appointee
Feb 17 2026
4 mins
Empiricism insists everything can be explained in terms of sensory data. Not only unachievable, that ambition is just plain wrong-headed
Feb 17 2026
23 mins
British India and the $45-Trillion Lie
Hira Jungkow
Oct 05 2021
8 mins
Since late 2018 there has been a particularly pernicious myth circulating around the internet that Britain, during its reign over India, extracted $45 trillion from the subcontinent. The enormity of the figure is most likely the reason for its popularity: it provides a swift and easy indictment of the British in India for those who know very little history—after all, nothing good they did could hope to measure up against $45 trillion. The figure was “calculated” by Marxist economist Utsa Patnaik but was popularised by Jason Hickel (self-described anti-capitalist) in anAl-Jazeera article. And since then, it has spread: search ‘$45 trillion’ on Google and you get more than three million results ranging from articles published by news outlets likeVICE to videos of India’s Minister of External Affairs referencing it. The figure has gone far beyond Marxist circles and has slowly percolated into Hindu nationalist circles (this synergy between Marxist and nationalist thought…
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