A Classic

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And for all you Gandhi fans out there I point out that, for all his blindly over-celebrated "humanism," Gandhi never uttered so much as a single condemnatory syllable against India's most repellent and grossest injustice which continues almost completely intact into the third millenium, and which the Raj and Europeans did nothing to create or perpetuate: the wretched caste system that condemns millions upon millions to living every day of their lives in abject poverty and squalor and soul-crushing hopelessness.

are you actually basing your opinion of the "beneficient Raj" from a few lines you read in history class?

the Thuggees never really terrorized the British, as they seldom travelled alone on the roads that the Thugges frequented. yes there was bloody violence at Partition, and the reason that Europeans are blamed, is well because, for two hundred years, the British played one group against another (I'll credit them with a shrewd ability to govern), and then when they arbitrarily drew borders between India and Pakistan and left, violence was not unexpected. Of course, you fail to mention that the worst bloodletting happened in Punjab in 1946, when the British were still in full control of India.

European justice was administered fairly? are you referring to the immunity Europeans had in India, where natives could be spat upon while Europeans exacted terrible revenge for any slight grievance? don't forget it was only international pressure that forced the British to chastise General Dyer after he massacred innocents at Amritsar. or perhaps you chose to ignore that, feeling that he just "hunting some terrorists and adminstering European justice"? i hate to shatter your illusion, but there are courts in India and Pakistan. even though they're based on the British justice system, (and yes they're prone to corruption) they still function. much of the poverty was created by the British zamindar system, in which farmers were squeezed out of every cent they earned; the British didnt care as long as they got their tribute. anyone who failed to pay could be jailed or evicted. much of the capital India had in gold and jewelry was stolen, and the greatest jewels now sit in the Tower of London, yet you will not mention that.

finally, Gandhi did speak out repeatedly against the caste system. he was the among the first to advocate equal rights and called them Harijans, or "Children of God". he did more than you could ever do to end inter-caste and inter-ethnic violence in India, and it's a shame he was killed. so it's fine for you to sit there and glorify the Raj, but you have no idea of how bad overall it was for the subcontinent; above all, wouldn't you want to rule yourself instead of having foreigners run your country?

in conclusion, i do agree that this was a good movie, and no more biased than any of its contemporary films, but i had to say this to counter your baseless allegations of the benefits of the Raj. i'm proud to be an American, but if you're going to talk sh*t about India and praise the exploiters, at least get your facts right, please.

The Raj and the famines of good governance

Between 24 million and 29 million Indians died in famines in the era of British good governance.

NO OTHER country in the world was quite as fortunate as ours, a Times of India editorial gushed in 1841. Talk of luck. Not only were we ruled by White Gentleman, the Times pointed out, we were ruled by White English Gentlemen. (It could have been the Dutch, you know.)

So committed were these Gentlemen to the governance of this heathen land, they "would do the utmost to protect our independence... " And this was not "superhuman or romantic.' After all, our rulers merely "act[ed] like English gentlemen of good common sense."

For the enslaved to choose between colonialisms is for the chicken to choose the sauce it prefers to be cooked in. Yet, some still cling to the notion that British colonialism was more benign than others.

When the Times (then called the Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce) ran that edit in 1841, it was, after all, owned by other White English gents.

That governance was certainly good for the British. Tax collections rose even as millions died of man-made famines. Like Bengal of 1770-72. The East India Company's own report put it simply. The famine in that province "exceeds all description." Close to ten million people had died, as Rajni Palme-Dutt pointed out in his remarkable book, India Today. The Company noted that more than a third of the populace had perished in the province of Purnea. "And in other parts the misery is equal."

Yet, Warren Hastings wrote to the directors of the East India Company in 1772: "Notwithstanding the loss of at least one-third of the inhabitants of this province, and the consequent decrease in cultivation, the net collections of the year 1771 exceeded even those of [pre-famine] 1768." Hastings was clear on why and how this was achieved. It was "owing to [tax collection] being violently kept up to its former standard."

The Company itself, as Palme Dutt observed, was smug about this. It noted that despite "the severity of the late famine and the great reduction of people thereby, some increase has been made" in the collections.

Between 24 million and 29 million Indians, maybe more, died in famines in the era of British good governance. Many of these famines were policy-driven. Millions died of callous and wilful neglect. The victims of Malthusian rulers. Over 6 million humans perished in just 1876 — when Madras was a hell. Many others had their lives shortened by ruthless exploitation and plunder.

Well before the Great Bengal Famine, the report of that province's Director for Health for 1927-28 made grisly reading. It noted that "the present peasantry of Bengal are in a very large proportion taking to a dietary on which even rats could not live for more than five weeks." By 1931, life expectancy in India was sharply down. It was now 23.2 and 22.8 years for men and women. Less than half that of those living in England and Wales. (Palme-Dutt.)

Mike Davis' stunning book, Late Victorian Holocausts, also ought to be required reading in every school. Davis gives us a scathing account, for instance, of the Viceroy Lord Lytton. Lytton was Queen Victoria's favourite poet. He "vehemently opposed efforts ... to stockpile grain or otherwise interfere. . . All through the autumn of 1876, while the kharif crop was withering in the fields of southern India, Lytton had been absorbed in organising the immense Imperial Assemblage in Delhi to proclaim Victoria Empress of India." The weeklong feast for 68,000 guests, points out Davis, was an orgy of excess. It proved to be "the most colossal and expensive meal in world history." Through the same week as this spectacular durbar, "100,000 of the Queen Empress' subjects starved to death in Madras and Mysore" alone.

Ditto, well said!

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