The mention of the East India Company (EIC) evokes images of a Leviathan multinational corporation whose ruthless, monopolistic trading practices were conducted without moral scruples…for Indians the name recalls a colonial symbol of oppression and humiliation. The EIC had its origins as a English spices trading company in the East Indies in 1600. Over the following two centuries the EIC transformed itself into more than a gigantic business entity, becoming the de facto imperial ruler of a vast country containing some 20% of the global population. Between 1756 and the turn of the 19th century, the company, its authority and power buttressed by a private army numbering nearly 200,000 troops predominantly made up of Sepoys🄰, “swiftly subdued or directly seized an entire subcontinent” (William Dalrymple, The Anarchy, (2019)). Complementing the EIC’s military muscle used to threaten, destabilise and even depose local princes and moguls, control over the “empire” was aided by an elaborate and omnipresent network of spies. 
Elite drug dealers
The company’s plunder of India in its relentless pursuit of profit extended to a prototype of large scale international drug dealing. Devoid of the slightest ethical misgiving the so-called “Honourable” East India Company created a monopoly over opium cultivation in Bengal…poppy farmers were forced into extremely onerous contractural arrangements to produce the opium which left them entrapped in an inescapable web of debt and impoverishment. The EIC then exported vast quantities of the narcotic to China🄱 in exchange for Chinese tea🄲 as well as porcelain and silks (‘How Britain’s opium trade impoverished Indians’, Soutik Biswas, BBC News, 05-Sep-2019, www.bbc.com).
Fringe benefits, accumulating a private fortune
In the 1850s Karl Marx summed up the EIC’s strategic focus: the company had “conquered India to make money out of it”. The company made a killing in India for its shareholders who had a big say in the company, but it’s overseas (especially executive) employees got in on the act as well, granted “the right to conduct private trade on their own account within Asia“ (in addition to their minimal salary) (Robins, Nick. “This Imperious Company.” The Corporation That Changed the World: How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multinational, Pluto Press, 2012, pp. 19–40. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt183pcr6.9. Accessed 7 Jul. 2022).
EIC excesses
A raft of corporate sins were perpetrated in India under the banner of the EIC—representing the pinnacle of shady mercantilism—–including corruption, bribery, extortion, human rights abuses (torture, slavery, etc), crony capitalism, officially sanctioned looting by British officials, economic exploitation of Indians and the subcontinent’s resources, impost of ruinous taxation. Company exploitation of Indian sepoys resulted in a mutiny of in 1857, the fallout of which was the dissolution of the EIC the following year, necessitating the British government to take over the running of the Indian empire itself (creation of the British Raj). Finally, in 1874 the EIC’s legal identity was terminated.
Reclaiming and rehabilitating the “Honourable” name of the East India Company
In 2010 the long-dormant EIC story took an unexpected and highly ironic twist – the East India Company—a name historically synonymous with colonial anathema for Indians—was relaunched in London by an Indian! Entrepreneur Sanjiv Mehta introduced a range of luxury consumer items (including 100 varieties of tea) onto the market. Mehta’s stated aim is to cast the company name in a new light, to associate it with “compassion, not aggression” as it’s history bears grim witness to. Aside from the business opportunity the Mumbai-born businessman described his move as a redemptive act, giving rise to an “indescribable feeling of owning a company that once owned us” (India), a turning of the tables on the erstwhile coloniser so to speak (‘The East India Company that Ruled Over Us for 100 Years is Now Owned by an Indian, Nishi Jain, MensXP, Upd. 02-Aug-2018, www.mensxp.com
Footnote: Clive of India: From war hero to the most vilified man in India
the 1600 royal charter granted the EIC “the right to wage war”, initially to protect itself and fight rival traders, but by the 1750s it was being used undisguisedly for aggression territorial expansion…in 1757 the company army under Robert Clive seized control of the entire Mughal state of Bengal, a precursor to other takeovers by force in India. Clive who started with the company as a humble writer (ie, clerk) made himself governor of Bengal and enriched himself and the company from stolen Indian treasure (jewels of gold, diamonds, precious textiles). The grotesquely-corrupt nabob Clive returned to Britain with a personal fortune valued at a princely £234,000 (‘The East India Company: the original corporate raiders’, William Dalrymple, The Guardian, 04-Mar-2015, www.amp.theguardian.com).
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🄰 colonial Indian soldiers
🄱 having hooked millions of Chinese on the drug
🄲 which rapidly became the British drink of choice