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Economic exploitation reduced the Indian peasantry to servile poverty. For her industrial advancement, Britain needed capital, raw material and markets for their finished goods. India provided a base for all of this and thus British started looting India. Between 1747 and 1757 England paid over 450,000 Pounds of Gold to India for imports at an exchange rate of 2.8 Pounds per Rupee. When the British left India in 1947, the exchange rate was one Pound to 5 Rupees! India, which was famous for her hand-made cloth, especially muslin was forced to compete with the machine made yarn of Britain. In order to completely destroy this industry they cut the thumbs of thousands of weavers in Bengal. Slowly, they destroyed many age-old traditional indigenous industries. Rage and resentment against the English also grew.
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