Bengal Was Ancient India’s Silicon Valley
Long before the industrial revolutions of Europe, India was the beating heart of global wealth producing nearly 40% of the world’s GDP. In his conversation with Vikram Chandra on The India Story Podcast, historian William Dalrymple paints a striking picture of this forgotten prosperity, the subject of his new book The Golden Road.
Nowhere was that prosperity clearer than in 18th-century Bengal, which Dalrymple calls “the Silicon Valley of its time”. The region’s looms produced cottons and silks so fine that Mexico, Persia, and even Britain couldn’t compete. “The muslin of Dhaka,” he says, “was so sheer it could pass through a ring.”
But Bengal’s success also made it a coveted prize. When the East India Company seized the region in 1765, it didn’t just take land - it took control of the richest provinces of the Mughal Empire. The result was a financial revolution built on extraction. “The word loot itself,” Dalrymple notes, “comes from the Urdu Loot: to plunder. That’s what the Company did systematically for a century.
The tragedy, he adds, is that India financed much of this conquest itself. The Jagat Seth bankers paid Robert Clive to overthrow the Nawab of Bengal. Jain and Marwari financiers funded Company campaigns in exchange for tax privileges. “The British brought the system,” Dalrymple says, “but Indians brought the capital.”
The wealth that once flowed out of Calcutta’s ports now flowed to London. And with it went India’s independence, its industries, and its intellectual edge. “When you see what Bengal once was,” Dalrymple reflects, “you realize the scale of the loss wasn’t just material but also civilisational."
Yet even here, Dalrymple sees a lesson. India’s rise was built not just on riches, but on ideas, innovation, openness and argument. “Ancient India produced the concept of zero, the place-value system, and world-changing philosophies because it was curious,” he says. “That’s what made it Bengal before Bengal, a creative economy before capital.”
The danger, Dalrymple warns, is repeating history in another form. “If India becomes a sort of Trumpland,” he cautions, “where dissent is punished and everyone praises authority, we’ll lose the very diversity and intellectual freedom that made us great.”
Bengal’s story is more than a cautionary tale. It's a reminder of what India can be again. To rebuild that road, Dalrymple insists, India must rediscover its oldest strength: the freedom to think differently.