The British plundered India of its riches and oppressed the inhabitants mercilessly. It used India's wealth to get rid of the debt that it had accumulated from the French Wars in 1780 and its previous military excesses. Today every pound that a Britisher spends has the spit, sweat and blood of some colonial coolie that they employed and ruined. The total amount plundered could run into hundreds of trillions in current economic terms.
While some plunder was due to clever policies like the ' protection money' ( officially called doctrine of lapse)they demanded from princely states , making it the hafta vasooli of the 1800s. The other potent weapons in the plunder was the rights to collect taxes after the battle of Buxar in 1764. This was in addition to the heavy duties on Indian goods that made it possible for them to make India into a mere producer of goods and a way to earn high profits. The taxes imposed on the land they owned was back breaking. In Hindi it was known as Lagaan.
Lagaan the movie pulled off something that Indians would believe was a true tit for tat, a tale of Indian gumption where every Indians would want to spit back at the British and give them the taste of their own medicine. That happened because the wager that was set with the British by a small town in this movie, was to defeat them in a cricket match and escape from the exorbitant taxation. This whole concept could have been cinematic magic or disaster since it combined two strong passionate sentiments - anti British rule and cricket. The director Ashutosh Gowariker and the producer Aamir Khan were treading on such thin ice that the screenplay, cast and the emotional surges that a movie like this needs had to be spot on.
The movie also highlighted reasons for India to unite - to go beyond the caste barriers and truly fight as one especially where the inclusion of Kachra a low caste into the team creates rifts and how Bhuvan handles that is very good. In fact Bhuvan follows all the principles of successful management as this video highlights - backing up his team and being super determined throughout.
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