Divide and Rule by the British
The year 1857, therefore, marked the beginning of a new
British policy of exploiting the
existing caste and communal divisions in the country for their imperial ends. Reorganizing
of the British Indian army on caste and communal lines and the initiation of a
policy to win over Muslim upper classes was the result. This policy was clearly
set out by Sir John Stratchey,
the Finance Member of the Government of India in 1874, in the following
words:
“The existence side by side of these (Hindu and Muslim)
hostile creeds is one of the strong points in our political position in India. The
better classes of Mohammedans are a source of strength and not weakness. They
constitute a comparatively small but an energetic minority of the population
whose political interests are identical with ours.”
It was in pursuit of this policy that Anglo-Muslim
alliance was forged through the M.A.O College which later became the Aligarh Muslim
University. The command
performance of Aga Khan in 1906 which according to the diary of Lady Minto “cut off sixty million
Muslims from the seditious ranks of the Hindus” and the formation of All-India
Muslim League in the same year were important steps towards reactivization of
Muslim separatism and reversal of the process of Indianization of Islam and
Muslims.
(source: Indianization?
- By Balraj Madhok).
It is a historical fact that the imperial British have
been very faithful to their colonial policy of 'divide and rule' and then
divide forever. The "serious mistakes", as a part of their country's
colonial past and as recently admitted by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw,
were not mistakes but deliberate
policies towards this end. The most prominent victims of their policy
are India and Pakistan (including Kashmir), Palestine
and Israel, Greece and Turkey
(Cyprus) and the skeleton in
their own cupboard, Ireland and
Northern Ireland.
Immediately after the War of Independence of 1857, jointly fought by Hindus and Muslims, when a commission of inquiry on the uprising was formed, Lord Elphinstone, the then governor of Bombay, sent to the commission a note that said: "Divide et impera was the old Roman motto, and it should be ours."
The secretary of state, Sir Charles Wood, in a letter of March 3, 1862, to Viceroy Lord Elgin, said: "We have maintained our power by playing off one part against the other, and we must continue to do so. Do what you can, therefore, to prevent all having a common feeling."
(source: dawn.com).
Immediately after the War of Independence of 1857, jointly fought by Hindus and Muslims, when a commission of inquiry on the uprising was formed, Lord Elphinstone, the then governor of Bombay, sent to the commission a note that said: "Divide et impera was the old Roman motto, and it should be ours."
The secretary of state, Sir Charles Wood, in a letter of March 3, 1862, to Viceroy Lord Elgin, said: "We have maintained our power by playing off one part against the other, and we must continue to do so. Do what you can, therefore, to prevent all having a common feeling."
(source: dawn.com).
***
Thirst for revenge (for the Mutiny) ensured that all
successes were thoroughly followed up, and retreating 'niggers', as they were habitually called, given no respite.
Energetic pursuit was a hallmark of European colonial practice, Sir Colin
Callwell was to emphasize. 'Asiatics do not understand such vigor and are cowed
by it.' An Indian historian writes of Colonel James Neill at Allahabad letting his men loose to perpetrate
all the 'cruelties and barbarities
which human ingenuity could conceive.'
(source: Colonial Empires and Armies 1815-1960 - By V.G. Kiernan p. 49-50).
Please refer to chapter on Glimpses on Kala Pani: The Andaman Cellular Jail is a historic monument that symbolizes British tyranny.
(source: Colonial Empires and Armies 1815-1960 - By V.G. Kiernan p. 49-50).
Please refer to chapter on Glimpses on Kala Pani: The Andaman Cellular Jail is a historic monument that symbolizes British tyranny.
Why The British Hated the Brahmins
According to Meenakshi
Jain:
"The British were not wrong in their distrust of
educated Brahmins in whom they saw a potential threat to their supremacy in India. For
instance, in 1879 the Collector of Tanjore in a communication to Sir James Caird, member of the Famine Commission, stated that "there was no class (except Brahmins )
which was so hostile to the English." The predominance of the
Brahmins in the freedom movement confirmed the worst British suspicions of the
community. Innumerable CID reports of the period commented on Brahmin
participation at all levels of the nationalist movement. In the words of an
observer, "If any community could
claim credit for driving the British out of the country, it was the Brahmin community.
Seventy per cent of those who were felled by British bullets were
Brahmins".
Watch video - Brahmins in India
have become a minority
For more on Anti-Brahminism and Anti-Hinduism refer to The Indian Jews - By Jakob De Roover
- Outlookindia.com June 20, 2008.
To counter what they perceived, a Brahminical challenge,
the British launched on the one hand a
major ideological attack on the Brahmins and, on the other incited
non-Brahmin caste Hindus to press for preferential treatment, a ploy that was
to prove equally successful vis-à-vis the Muslims.
In the attempt to rewrite Indian history, Brahmins began to be portrayed as oppressors and tyrants who willfully kept down the rest of the populace. Their role in the development of Indian society was deliberately slighted. In ancient times, for example, Brahmins played a major part in the spread of new methods of cultivation (especially the use of the plough and manure) in backward and aboriginal areas. The Krsi-parasara, compiled during this period, is testimony to their contribution in this field. Apart from misrepresenting the Indian past, the British actively encouraged anti-Brahmin sentiments. Apart from misrepresenting the Indian past, the British actively encouraged anti-Brahmin sentiments. A number of scholars have commented on their involvement in the anti-Brahmin movement in South India. As a result of their machinations non-Brahmins turned on the Brahmins with a ferocity that has few parallels in Indian history. This was all the more surprising in that for centuries Brahmins and non-Brahmins had been active partners and collaborators in the task of political and social management.
In the attempt to rewrite Indian history, Brahmins began to be portrayed as oppressors and tyrants who willfully kept down the rest of the populace. Their role in the development of Indian society was deliberately slighted. In ancient times, for example, Brahmins played a major part in the spread of new methods of cultivation (especially the use of the plough and manure) in backward and aboriginal areas. The Krsi-parasara, compiled during this period, is testimony to their contribution in this field. Apart from misrepresenting the Indian past, the British actively encouraged anti-Brahmin sentiments. Apart from misrepresenting the Indian past, the British actively encouraged anti-Brahmin sentiments. A number of scholars have commented on their involvement in the anti-Brahmin movement in South India. As a result of their machinations non-Brahmins turned on the Brahmins with a ferocity that has few parallels in Indian history. This was all the more surprising in that for centuries Brahmins and non-Brahmins had been active partners and collaborators in the task of political and social management.
(source: The
Plight of Brahmins - By Meenakshi Jain - The Indian Express, Tuesday,
September 18, 1990). For more refer to chapter on First Indologists).
Refer to The Myth of Saint Thomas and the Mylapore Shiva Temple. Refer
to Jesus Christ:
Artifice for Aggression - By Sita Ram Goel. Watch Scientific verification of Vedic knowledge
The Brahmins were identified as the ‘clergy’ or the
priests of Hinduism. An explicit
hostility towards the heathen priesthood was not helped by the inability of the
messengers of God’s word to convert Brahmins to Christianity. In
Brahmins, they came across a literate group, which was able to read, write, do
arithmetic, conduct ‘theological’ discussions, etc. During the first hundred
years or so, this group was the only source of information about India as far as
the missionaries were concerned. Schooled to perform many administrative tasks,
the Brahmins were mostly the only ones well-versed in the European languages –
enough to communicate with the Europeans. In short, they appeared both to be
the intellectual group and the most influential social layer in the Indian
social organization. Conversion of the
heathens of India,
as the missions painfully discovered, did not depend so much on winning the
allegiance of the prince or the king as it did on converting the
Brahmins.
As Francis Xavier
saw the Brahmins: "If there
were no Brahmans in the area, all the Hindus would accept conversion to our
faith."
The Brahmins, by and
large, were unimpressed by the theological sophistication of the Christian
critique of paganism. This attack was born out of the inability of Christianity
to gain a serious foothold in the Indian society. The ‘red race’ was
primitive – it could be decimated; the ‘blacks’ were backward – they could be
enslaved; the ‘yellow’ and the ‘brown’ were inferior – they could be colonized.
But how to convert them? One would persecute resistance and opposition. How to
respond to indifference? The attitude of these heathens towards Christianity,
it is this: indifference.
(source: The Heathen in His Blindness...: Asia, the West and the Dynamic of
Religion - By S. Balagangadhara p. 82 -149). For more
refer to chapter on First Indologists).
For more refer to The War against
Hinduism - By Stephen Knapp). Refer to Jesus Christ: Artifice for Aggression - By Sita Ram Goel
Anti-Brahminism have
deep roots in Christian theology
To be against "Brahminism" is part and parcel of
the political correctness of progressive scholars in twenty-first-century India. This
indicates that something is very wrong with the Indian academic debate.
Promotion of animosity towards a religious tradition or its followers is not
acceptable today, but it becomes truly perverse when the intelligentsia
endorses it. In Europe , it took
horrendous events to put an end to the propaganda of anti-Semitism, which had
penetrated the media and intelligentsia. It required decades of incessant
campaigning before anti-Semitism was relegated to the realm of intellectual and
political bankruptcy. In India
, anti-Brahminism is still the proud slogan of many political parties and the
credential of the radical intellectual.
Both anti-Semitism and anti-Brahminism have deep roots in
Christian theology. The contemporary
stereotypes about Brahmins and the story about Brahminism also originate in
Christian theology. They reproduce Protestant images of the priests of false
religion. When European missionaries and merchants began to travel to India in
great numbers, they held two certainties that came from Christian theology:
false religion would exist in India ; and false religion revolved around evil
priests who had fabricated all kinds of laws, doctrines and rites in order to
bully the innocent believers into submission. In this way, the priests of the
devil abused religion for worldly goals. The European story about Brahminism
and the caste system simply reproduced this Protestant image of false religion.
The colonials identified the Brahmins as the priests and Brahminism as the
foundation of false religion in India
. This is how the dominant image of "the Hindu religion" came into
being. The theological criticism became part of common sense and was reproduced
as scientific truth. In India
, this continues unto this day. Social scientists still talk about
"Brahminism" as the worst thing that ever happened to humanity.
Some Jews began to believe that they were to blame for
what happened during the Holocaust; many educated Brahmins now feel that they
are guilty of historical atrocities against other groups. In some cases, this
has led to a kind of identity crisis in which they vilify
"Brahminism" in English-language academic debate, but continue their
traditions. In twentieth-century Europe , we
have seen how dangerous anti-Semitism was and what consequences it could have
in society. Tragically, unimaginable suffering was needed before it was
relegated to the realm of unacceptable positions. In India , anti-Brahminism was adopted
from Protestant missionaries by colonial scholars who then passed it on to the
secularists and Dalit intellectuals. The question that India has to
raise in the twenty-first century is this: Do we need bloodshed, before we will
realise that the reproduction of anti-Brahminism?
(source: The Indian Jews - By Jakob De Roover
- Outlookindia.com June 20, 2008).
According to Guy Sorman,
visiting scholar at Hoover Institution at
Stanford and the leader of new liberalism in France:
"The British supported Ambedkar, though for wrong
reasons, they felt that having three electoral colleges - Hindu, untouchable
and Muslim - would work in their favor
and allow them to rule longer."
"If comparisons have to be made, it may be said that the endurance of the Brahmins in India has kept her elite intact; whereas in neighboring China the anti-intellectualism of communist peasants has completely wiped out the intelligentsia of that country."
"If comparisons have to be made, it may be said that the endurance of the Brahmins in India has kept her elite intact; whereas in neighboring China the anti-intellectualism of communist peasants has completely wiped out the intelligentsia of that country."
(source: The Genius of India - By Guy Sorman ('Le Genie de l'Inde') p. 72). Refer
to The Myth of Saint Thomas and the Mylapore Shiva Temple
Karl Marx and Western
Bias
Karl Marx (1818-1883), German social philosopher, the chief
theorist of modern Communism, and author of Das Kapital, was not a sympathizer of imperialism
or capitalism. But he could not conceal
his western bias and prejudices
against Indian culture, which is evident from his writings of 1853
and about his expectations of the role the British had to play in India. He
writes :"England has to fulfill a double mission in India; one destructive, the other regenerating - the annihilation of the old Asiatic society, and the laying of the material foundation of western society in Asia."
According to Marx, Indian life had always been
undignified, stagnatory, vegetative, passive, given to worshipping nature
instead of putting the man on the pedestal as the sovereign of
`Nature'. Karl Marx writes :
"Whatever may have been the crimes of England" in India, "she was the unconscious tool of history" for the desired changes."
(source: First published in New York Daily Tribune, August 8, 1853. OrientalThane.com).
"Whatever may have been the crimes of England" in India, "she was the unconscious tool of history" for the desired changes."
(source: First published in New York Daily Tribune, August 8, 1853. OrientalThane.com).
Marx wrote that life in India was: "stagnant,
vegetative and passive."
(source: The Genius of India - By Guy Sorman ('Le Genie de l'Inde') p. 9).
(source: The Genius of India - By Guy Sorman ('Le Genie de l'Inde') p. 9).
Great Britain judged
how “civilized” a colony was by how nearly it conformed to British politics, religion,
and economic system. South Africa was full of “white perverts” (the Dutch Boers) and “black
savages” Africa was not the only continent or
colony judged “uncivilized." Clearly, although dark skin indicated a lack
of civilization, the English held similar views about other races which were
light-skinned, particularly the Irish.
The farther away from London, the farther away
from the center of civilization.
(source: They Cut
Themselves with Cruel Kimes).
Taking his cues from die-hard imperialist writers, Marx
tells us that India
is no nation and it has no history. She is "the predestined prey of
conquest", he says. "Indian society has no history, is but the history
of successive intruders." To Marx,
the British conquest of India
was a blessing. The question, as he puts it, "is not whether we are
to prefer India conquered by
the Turk, by the Persian, by the Russian, to India conquered by the
British."
Here we find a
complete convergence of Imperialism and Marxism.
(source: On Hinduism Reviews and Reflections - By Ram Swarup p.
42-43).
To Marx, Hinduism "was the ideology of an oppressive
and outworn society, and he shared the distaste of most Europeans for its more
lurid features...he was as skeptical as his Hindu followers were to be of any
notion of a Hindu 'golden age' of the past.
(source: Dictionary of Marxist Thought - By Tom Bottomore p.
203-206).
Marx upheld the colonial view that India was not a
country properly speaking, merely a stretch of land with a meek conglomerate of
peoples passively waiting for the next conqueror. For him, the question was not
whether it was right to colonize India,
merely whether colonization by Britain
was preferable (and in his view, it was) to colonization by the Turks or the
Czar.
(source: Decolonising The Hindu Mind - Ideological Development of Hindu Revivalism - By Koenraad Elst p. 40).
(source: Decolonising The Hindu Mind - Ideological Development of Hindu Revivalism - By Koenraad Elst p. 40).
In West
Bengal, textbooks show Lenin as the inspiration of the Freedom
Struggle.
(source: India Today
- September 13' 2002).
Karl Marx, "With Hindus, whom their religion has made
virtuosi in the art of self-torturing, these tortures inflicted on the enemies
of their race and creed appear quite natural, and must appear still more so to
the English, who, only some years since, still used to draw revenues from the
Juggernaut festivals, protecting and assisting the bloody rites of a religion
of cruelty."
Setting
the East Ablaze: Lenin's Dream of an Empire in AsiaPeter Hopkirk tells how Lenin and his revolutionary comrades tried, in the period between the world wars, to set the East ablaze with their heady new gospel of Marxism. Their "dream" was to liberate the whole of Asia, and their starting point was British India, the richest of all imperial possessions. The struggle that ensured, marked a dramatic twist in the Great Game. Among the players were British Intelligence officers, the armed revolutionaries of the Communists International, Muslim visionaries, Chinese war lords......
(source: Setting the East Ablaze: Lenin's Dream of an Empire in Asia -
Peter Hopkirk).
"It never
occurred to the English that they should follow the example of so many
immigrants and conquerors before them and become Indians. The possibility was never even considered that the
King-emperor might take up residence in Calcutta or Delhi; he remained a
foreign ruler, which meant that there was always something provisional about
the Anglo-Indian empire: despite all New Delhi's proud monuments, the shrewd
English knew in their hearts that they could only play a limited part in this
great subcontinent."
(source: India - By Martin Hurlimann p. 24).
Jawaharlal Nehru has remarked:
"In India
every European, be he German, or Pole or Rumanian, is automatically a member of
the ruling race. Railway carriages, station retiring rooms, benches in parks,
etc. are marked 'For Europeans Only.' This is bad enough in South Africa or
elsewhere, but to have to put up with it in one's own country is a humiliating
and exasperating reminder of one's enslaved condition."
(source: The Discovery of India - By Jawaharlal Nehru. p.295).
(source: The Discovery of India - By Jawaharlal Nehru. p.295).
Dogs and Indians?
"...dogs and Indians"
were, by notification in that precise language, excluded from some of
"Europeans only" clubs. Indians were not allowed to travel by railway
carriages, or use railway waiting rooms, reserved for Europeans. Not only that,
Indian judges were not allowed to try Europeans in the districts and the Ilbert Bill,
introduced in 1883 during Lord Ripon's viceroyalty, to remedy the situation,
had to be withdrawn in the face of vicious opposition by Europeans and
Anglo-Indians.
(source: Colonialism
and animals - By Hiranmay Karlekar - dailypioneer.com - March 5 2004).
In 1930 the Pahartali
European Club, which bore the notorious sign 'Dogs and Indians not allowed'.
According to Zareer
Masani, "Whites only places like the Delhi Club remained a symbolic reminder of
the alien and humiliating side of foreign rule. The last of them, like the Breach Candy Swimming Pool in Bombay (Mumbai),
excluded Indians till the 1960s and continues to operate discriminatory entry
rules for visitors. The vast majority of Indians, of course, had no desire to
enter European society. And the notion of segregation was by no means new in a
caste-ridden society. What made Anglo-Indian racism unacceptable was that it
was practiced by foreign rulers and affected precisely those Indians who were
most westernized and had the strongest aspirations to equality. There was
something particularly galling about a system which allowed in the most humble
white, but excluded the most aristocratic Indian.
The racial exclusiveness and prejudice of Anglo-Indian
society was not confined to social contact with Indians. Culturally, it took
the form of an overwhelming rejection of and contempt for India's
traditional learning and arts, with a corresponding emphasis on the superiority
of Western values and education. Incidents of racial humiliation were an
everyday occurrence for most Indians who encountered the British. The most
visible symbols of white supremacy were the 'Europeans Only' or Indians and
Dogs not allowed' in first-class railway carriages.
This memory still
rankles with Indian scholars like Sankara Menon, who is President of the Madras theosophists' educational center
at Kalakshetra. "The British were a very blind people...except in the case
of a very few people who were deep students, they did not make any attempt
during their 250 years here in this country to contact Indian thinking. They wouldn't know what the Bhagavad Gita'
contained, what the Upanishads contained....." The new
imperialism brought with it the proselytizing work of Christian missionaries;
and neglect of Indian art became a virtue in the campaign to win Indian
converts.
(source: Indian Tales of the Raj - By Zareer Masani p. 52-73).
Dr. Ananda Kentish
Coomaraswamy (1877-1947) the late
curator of Indian art at the Boston
Museum of Fine Arts, and
author of The Dance of Shiva: Essays on Indian Art and Culture, has observed:
"The beauty and logic of Indian life belongs to a
dying past, and the 19th century has degraded much and created nothing. It is an
ungrateful and unromantic task to govern a subject race. England could not in
any case have inspired a new life; the best she could have done would have been
to understand and conserve through patronage and education the surviving
categories of Indian civilization - architecture, music, handicrafts, popular
and classic literature, and schools of philosophy - and that she failed here is to have been found wanting
in imagination and sympathy. It should not have been regarded as the highest
ideal of Empire "to give to all men an English mind."
(source: The
Wisdom of Ananda Coomaraswamy - presented by S. Durai Raja Singam 1979
p. 32).
Mr. William Archer, in an article in the July, 1914, Fortnightly Review,
describes the famous Yacht Club of Bombay, the social center of official
European life in the city, and says:
"No one of Indian birth except the servants, not even
the Rajput princes or the Parsee millionaire may set foot across its threshold.
It is the same with the Byculla Club; indeed, every club in India practically follows this model and makes
itself a little England
representing exactly the interests, the comforts and the vulgarities of an
English Club." He further comments:
"Such a drawing of the color line is of course
inexpressibly galling to a proud and sensitive people, who see their rulers,
when the business of 'running the country is over, withdraw into impregnable
caste-strongholds."
The following is declared an actual occurrence: An Indian
Prince, the ruler of a Native State in India,
visits England and by
invitation dines with the King in the Buckingham Palace.
He returns to India and
finds himself not allowed to enter any English Club in Calcutta,
Bombay, or any
other leading city.
Says the editor of an Indian religious weekly: "Aside
from the missionaries and the army the one meeting place of the British in this
country, is the European Club of the neighborhood, the members of which form
the most arrogant and exclusive body to be found. Those who know at first hand
the types of people who constitute the members of these arrogant associations
are tempted to say that with them an unblushing assumption of race-superiority
takes the place of religion, club life is with them a substitute for church
life, and their one aim is exploitation of the country and enrichment of
themselves. The European clubs with this smart set are the most anti-Indian and
reactionary bodies in the whole of India."
(source: India in Bondage: Her Right to Freedom - By Rev. Jabez T.
Sunderland p. 80-82).
(Note:
Please refer to interesting article - Hindi Controversy
At Duke Continues - according to Jay Strader and Berin Szoka of Duke University: "Were it not
for the British, whatever 'ancient traditions and rich culture' existed before
their arrival would be enjoyed only by the very top of India's feudal case system,"
Sophomore Berin Szoka, editor-in-chief of the Duke Review, argued that the values of the West are superior to those of a "primitive,
impoverished country like India".
Perhaps these Duke
students should ponder as to how India became impoverished with the
arrival of the British?
The spirit of Indian nationalism was intensified by the
growing discontent and disaffection with British rule due to the racial
arrogance of the rulers. In this regard, Sir Thomas Munro wrote in 1817, "Foreign conquerors have treated
the natives with violence, but none has treated them with so much scorn as we;
none have stigmatized the whole people as unworthy of trust, as incapable of
honesty, and as fit to be employed only where we cannot do without them. It
seems not only ungenerous, but impolite to debase the character of a people
fallen under our dominion."
The social exclusiveness of the Englishmen, their arrogance and insolent treatment of Indians, particularly the immunity which they practically enjoyed for their criminal acts, including even the murder of Indians, were sources of grave discontent.
To the English-educated Indians who formed the main pillars of support for British rule, virtual exclusion from the higher branches of administration on purely racial grounds was the rudest shock.
http://mama.indstate.edu/users/india/country/ind1.html
The social exclusiveness of the Englishmen, their arrogance and insolent treatment of Indians, particularly the immunity which they practically enjoyed for their criminal acts, including even the murder of Indians, were sources of grave discontent.
To the English-educated Indians who formed the main pillars of support for British rule, virtual exclusion from the higher branches of administration on purely racial grounds was the rudest shock.
http://mama.indstate.edu/users/india/country/ind1.html
Jawaharlal Nehru wrote with sadness:
"Biologists tell us that racialism is a myth and there
is no such thing as a master race. The whole ideology of this rule was that of
the herrenvolk and the master race, and the structure of government was based
upon it; indeed the idea of a master race is inherent in imperialism. More
powerful than words was the practice that accompanied them and, generation
after generation and year after year, India as a nation and Indians as individuals were
subjected to insult, humiliation, and contemptuous treatment. The
English were an imperial race, we were told, with the god-given right to govern
us and keep us in subjection. "
(source: The Discovery of India - By Jawaharlal Nehru p.326).
"The Viceroy sat
at the apex of a colossal pyramid of power, and British rule was founded on an
idea of hierarchy as baffling in its complexity as the caste system of the
Hindus themselves. The Hindus had their
castes while the British had their classes, and in each case very fine
distinctions sometimes separated one social level from the next. The subtleties
of the British class system became elaborately codified in the Warrant of Precedence, which was designed as an
infallible guide to hierarchy in India, indispensable to the proper arrangement
of ceremony, conference or even of a mere dinner party."
(source: India Britannica - By Geoffrey Moorhouse p. 130).
Rabindranath Tagore,
Nobel Prize and Western Critics
After the announcement that the Nobel Prize was to be
awarded to Tagore, Western critics
sought to establish the superiority of the 'Caucasian race' over the 'Indian
race' ; to discover in the poet, a dreamer with a 'narrow Western
outlook' and a dated Western sensibility who had been favored by preferential
treatment that was according to them, often meted out to 'colonials' for
political exigency. They saw the award as something of a humiliation to which
they were supposed to adjust themselves:
"It is the first time that the Nobel Prize has gone to anyone
who is not what we call 'white'. It will
take time, of course, for us to accommodate ourselves to the idea that some one
called Rabindranath Tagore should receive a world prize for literature."
(source: The Raj Syndrome: A Study in Imperial Perceptions - By Suhash
Chakravarty. Penguin Books. 1991 59).
Winston Churchill's scornful view of India and her religion:
"I hate Indians (read Hindus). They are beastly people with a
beastly religion."
(source: The Saffron Swastika - By Koenraad Elst Volume 1. p.
532).
Babu English and Rudyard Kipling Insults
E M Forster (1872 - 1970) was an English novelist, short story writer, and
essayist. He is most famous for his novels, most of which have been filmed. His
most famous novel was A Passage to India
(1924) .
He contemptuously wrote about Indians to Goldworthy Lowes Dickenson on May
31, 1921:
“In fact I was coming round a little to your view of the
Indian or anyhow the Hindu character
– that it is unaesthetic. One is starved by the absence of beauty. The only beautiful object I can see is
something no Indian has made or touched – the constellation of the
Scorpion which now, hangs at night down the sky. I look forward to it as to a
theatre or a picture gallery after the constant imperfections of the day.”
(source: The Raj Syndrome: A Study in Imperial Perceptions - By Suhash
Chakravarty. Penguin Books. 1991 p. 248). Refer to The Bible Unmasked
***
Among the ways in
which it is common for many of the British in India to humiliate and insult the
Indian people, one of the most unwarranted and galling is that of criticizing
their use of English language and laughing at their mistakes. “Babu English” is a phrase of ridicule heard wherever
Englishmen (not all, but certain large classes) speak of India or
Indians. And singularly enough, it is applied oftenest to the Bengalis, who
intellectually, and especially in linguistic attainments and ability, are not
second to any Indian people, if to any people in the world. “Bengali Babu” is
applied as a phrase of peculiar contempt.
The British rulers of the land insist on Indians
everywhere addressing them, conversing and doing business with them, in a
foreign language – the English. Suppose the tables were turned, and those same
rulers were compelled to converse and write and do all their business in Bengali,
the Hindustani, the Tamil or some other languages of India. Would they make
fewer mistakes? Everybody knows they would make far more and worse.
There are no classes of Indians that the English so much
dislike and take so much pains to insult as the educated classes. The
uneducated they despise, neglect and treat almost as slaves; but they do not
take the studied pains to humiliate and insult them as they do those whom they
recognize as their equal in intelligence.
As Sir Henry
Cotton says:
“The very thought of equality rankles in the Englishmen’s
minds; the more intelligent, cultured or intellectual the Indians are the more
they are disliked.”
We have the following remarkable tribute to these despised
and insulted Bengalis from Hon. G. K.
Gokhale of the Viceroy’s Council (himself not a Bengali):
“The Bengalis are in many respects a most remarkable
people. It is easy to speak of their faults; they lie on the surface. But they
have great qualities which are sometimes lost sight of. In almost all walks of
life open to Indians, the Bengalis are the most distinguished. Some of the
greatest social and religious reformers of recent times, have come from their
ranks. Take law, science, literature:
where will you find another scientist in all India to place beside Dr. (now Sir)
J.C. Bose, or Dr (now Sir) P. C. Ray or a jurist like Dr. Ghose, or a poet like
Rabindranath Tagore? These men are not freaks of nature. They are the
highest products of which the race is regularly capable.”
Such is the race and such are the individual men whom the
British take particular pains to ridicule…The Englishman has been the worst
offenders against the Indian people in the ways mentioned above, or at least
the one whose insults have been most galling because his writings have been so
widely read, is Rudyard Kipling.
The fact that Kipling was born in India and spent his earlier years
there, very naturally causes his readers to take for granted that his
representations are true. It is as true as a German or Russian writing about England.
Kipling seems to have cared little for the real India, the
great India of the past and the present, with its history and its
civilization…he seems to take pleasure in heaping ridicule upon the educated
classes and in describing the Indian people generally by the use of such contemptuous expressions as “a lesser breed
without the law.” And “new-caught sullen people half devil and half
child.”
Such of Kipling’s writings as are connected with India have
always stung the Indian people to the quick. Their popularity in England and the
wide acceptance of their misrepresentations as true, have done more than almost
any other cause to exasperate leading Indians…
Professor Gilbert
Murray said: “If ever it were my fate to put
men in prison for the books they write, I should not like it, but I should know
where to begin. I should first of all lock up my old friend, Rudyard Kipling,
because in several stories he has used his great powers to stir up in the minds
of hundreds of thousands of Englishmen a blind and savage contempt for the
Bengali. You cannot cherish a savage contempt for anyone without it being
quickly reciprocated…”
But Kipling is not the only offender. It is hardly
possible to conceive anything more galling to the Indian people than the tone
of condescension with which they are nearly everywhere and always spoken of and
referred to by the British, in their books, about India…It is the same; they
the British, are in India because they are superior (of course, they are
white). They are there on a high and noble mission – the mission to “bear the
white man’s burden.” Of course, the fact does not count, that for more than
3,000 years before they, the British, came, India ruled herself wholly and was
one of the leading nations of the world.
Says The Democrat
of Allahabad (June 5, 1921),
“Kipling writes of the
‘White man’s burden." He has numerous
admirers and imitators in England.
But we in India
find the white man full of arrogance and race conceit. With their egoistical
ideas of ‘racial’ superiority the British talk of ‘educating Indians in the art
of self-government,’ as though this
ancient nations of ours, which for millenniums and millenniums has been
self-governing, is to sit like children at the feet of the
self-appointed foreign masters to learn our first lessons!”
(source: India in Bondage: Her Right to Freedom - By Rev. Jabez T.
Sunderland p. 92-104
Mark Twain (1835-1910) a prominent literary opponent of the Philippine-American War and he served
as a vice president of the Anti-Imperialist League from 1901 until his death.
He also wrote the essay "To the
Person Sitting in Darkness".
He had remarked on Kipling's poem: "The White Man's Burden has been sung. Who will sing the Brown
Man's?"
Dr. Ananda Kentish
Coomaraswamy (1877-1947) was India's most
distinguished sons of the present century, art critic and museum curator. He
has observed:
"The English speaking peoples have, indeed labored under
one great handicap, that of their domination by Rudyard Kipling, a skilled performer to the gallery, to be sure,
but one whose irresponsible and un-instructured mentality represented all that
an Englishman’s ought never to have been. He, by giving free expression to his
resentment of his own inability to synthesize the East and West in his own
experience, has probably done more than any other one man to delay the
recognition not alone of their ultimately common heritage, but even of their
common humanity; more than any other Englishman to make it true for Englishmen
that east of Suez “there ain’t no Ten
Commandments.” You
English-speaking peoples listened to him, nevertheless, and gave him a place in
your literary pantheon where, in fact, he held up the mirror to the adolescent
imperialistic mentality and carries its and his “white man’s burden” so
bravely. How can we think of you as grown-up men, as long as you play
only with such toys as Kipling gave you, and only babble of green fields – the
playing fields of Eton? It is high time that the Hollywood picture of India was forgotten."
unga Din is a landmark
movie of racism featuring civilized British soldiers vs. naked Indian savages.
The poster advertising the film Gunga Din outside British cinemas just before
the Second World War. The Americans made no fewer than 35 films between the
Hindoo Fakir in 1902 and Gunga Din in 1939, with a common theme of the British
putting down their rebellious Indian subjects.
In Indonesia , Indo-china
, Burma , Ceylon , men
educated in the West – the ‘Wogs’
(Westernized Oriental gentlemen) as European contemptuously called them.
***
(source: The
Wisdom of Ananda Coomaraswamy - Presented by S. Durai Raja Singam p.
51-52 and India Britannica - By Geoffrey Moorhouse p.
18). .
st feat of the kind…since the Roman
Empire …one of the most admirable achievements of the white race
during the past two centuries…".His feelings would set the tone for collusion between the British and American governments to squelch efforts by Indian students (in the "land of the free" - America ) to support freedom in India .
(source: The Indian Caste System and the British - infinity foundation).
A brilliant piece of
propaganda for the British Empire
Complicity of the
British in Mayo's Work - To Secure American Support for the British
Katherine Mayo's Hatred For Hindus
Katherine Mayo's Hatred For Hindus
The British wanted to
project an image of India and the Indian people as basically not ready for
Independence and the necessity of Britain continuing her good work to lift the
Indian masses out of their self-made morass of debilitating Hindu religion, its
cruel customs, and abominable ritual and social hygienic practices.
Katherine Mayo (1867-1940 ) was ardently Anglophile and believed in Kipling's doctrine of the White
Man's Burden. Behind much
of her advocacy, however, lay her own preoccupations with Anglo-Saxon racial
superiority.
She criticizes Mahatma Gandhi
for whom Mayo had nothing but disdain. She criticizes the Hindu religion, its
gods, its social code, its rituals, its castes and the debilitating ethos...She
remarks that "If only Gandhi and
his agitators are kept away the Indian villagers would live in paradise
indeed." Mayo's book on the Slaves of the Gods deal with the
institution of the Devadasis - or temple dancers. She came out to condemn India and she succeeded marvelously in shaping the image of India in the average American mind. In fact her book is the most negative of all writings by foreigners on India.
Miss Mayo forgot that every civilization has its own
skeletons in its many cupboards and India is no exception. The British were mightily pleased with here
efforts and were delighted with what she had to say. Miss Mayo confirmed and
made explicit Western racism in aspects of thinking about the non-West."
Gandhi was painfully wrote to Mayo: "I am
sorry to have to inform you that the book did not leave on my mind at all a nice
impression." He asked the publishers of Young India to send her a copy of his own
review of the book entitled "A Drain Inspector's Report." To what
wicked length Mayo and her British collaborators went in their hatred for
Hinduism is illustrated by the papers in the Mayo Collection. The motives for publishing of Mother India
were primarily political; to win American support for the British cause in India. To
frighten even British liberals into giving up the constitutional reforms that
they envisaged for India.
The British masters of India
were anxious to win American opinion in their favor and cleverly used American
journalists, writers, publicists and propaganda men to work which would serve
the British interest. And who better to pick than Katherine Mayo who had
written The Isles of Fear?(source: Katherine Mayo's Hatred For Hindus - Glimpses III). Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth.
Despoliation and
Defaming of India: The Early 19th century British Crusade - By Dharmapal
It seems that by the mid-1920s the British created images
of India
as depraved, ignorant, and wretched had got worn out. Hence the need for
similar but newer presentation on India. Therefore, Miss Mayo’s
Mother India, and a large number of similar works were written and published.
In the mid-1920s Miss
Katherine Mayo, hailing from the United States of America had made a
long visit to India, was feted by the British Viceroy, and looked after his
administration in her travels round India, and, sometimes later, she came out
with a book titled Mother India.
The book was felt as an outrage, there was an around
public condemnation of it in India,
and perhaps elsewhere too, and Mahatma
Gandhi called it “Drain
Inspector’s Report.”
The materials, speeches, and writings by the great
Englishmen on India Mr. William Wilberforce (1813), Mr. James Mill (1817), and Mr. Thomas Babington Macaulay (1835,
1843), were far more virulent than Mother India, in their observations on India, and paint India in the darkest possible
hues.
The British could not
generally conceive of coexistence of people of different ethnic backgrounds, or
even of different religious backgrounds, as for instance, with the people of Ireland.
The conquered in their
view, had ultimately to disappear, if not wholly physically, at least as a
culture and civilization. In Australia,
and New Zealand practically
all the local inhabitants were wiped out soon enough; in North America near
complete elimination happened, over 300-400 years, and in Ireland only
partially. The indigenous population of the Americas had been estimated at 112
to 140 millions in 1492.
In India a large
number perished by British brutality and deliberate creation of famines,
violation of persons bodies and dignity; in Palnad in Andhra, half of the
population was said to be have perished every ten years, during several decades
after the subjugation of the areas by Britain.
It seems as if the
intellectuals and leaders of Britain hated India, and felt outraged that in
spite of all their brutalities, smashing of Indian institutions, high
extortions, and tortures, men made famines and expropriation of Indian resources
to the British state, and thus the all round breakdown of Indian society, the
Indians on the whole, could not be wiped out that easily.
Much could be said about the practices of European and
British society during the centuries. Two of these practices are mentioned
here.
Witchburning
One of them, the more known, was witch burning during the
15-16-17 century which led to the burning of several million men and women in
Europe, and around 1,00,000 or more in Britain. Some persons were still burnt as witches in Britain at the end of the 17th
century.
Child Abandonment
The other widespread practice, perhaps beginning around
the start of the Christian era and continuing till the 18th century,
was the abandonment of 20% to 30% of all European children by their parents. A
large proportion of children so abandoned, died soon after in the very places
they were exposed. A proportion were taken to be adopted in families, another
proportion taken by the Christian church to later become monks and nuns, a few
of whom reached high status in the Christian hierarchy, and the rest taken by
other people and turned into slaves, prostitutes and the like.
To illustrate what used to happen we may quote, the 18th
century European philosopher, Jean-Jacques
Rosseau (1712 - 1778) wrote:
“My third child was thus deposited in a foundling home
just like the first two, and I did the same with the two following: I had five
in all. The arrangement seemed to me so good, so sensible, so appropriate, that
if I did not boast of it publicly it was solely out of regard for their
mother….In a word I made no secret of my action…because in fact I saw no wrong
in it. All things considered, I chose what was best for my children, or what I
thought was best…” (Confessions:
Paris, 1964, p. 424).
(source: Despoliation
and Defaming of India
– By Dharampal p. 1 - 17). Refer to QuickTime trailer and
Part One of the film The God Awful Truth.
For more refer to chapters on First Indologists
and Glimpses XVIII.
Civilizing
the Heathens?British aristocracy ‘ate human flesh’
THE highest members of European aristocracy took part in cannibalism to find remedies for ailments up until the end of the 18th century, a new book reveals. European royalty and eminent scholars took pride of place among those who swallowed parts of the human body as medicine, including flesh, blood and bones.
For more than 200
years, even as they denounced cannibals of the New World,
Europeans applied, drank, or wore powdered Egyptian mummy, human fat, flesh,
bone, blood and brains.
The British aristocracy consumed human flesh,
a new book on medicinal cannibalism reveals. The well-off in Britain and Europe
swallowed parts of the human body, including its flesh, blood and bones, as
medicine until the end of the 18th century.Even as they denounced the cannibals of the New World, they applied, drank, or wore powdered Egyptian mummies, human fat, flesh, bone, blood, brains and skin. Dr Richard Sugg, a Durham University academic, writes: “James I refused corpse medicine; Charles II made his own; and Charles I was made into corpse medicine. Users included Francis I, Elizabeth I’s surgeon, John Banister, William III, and Queen Mary.
Refer to Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires - By Dr Richard Sugg
(source: British aristocracy ‘ate human flesh’ - indianrealist.wordpress.com).
The British imperialists unhesitatingly showed their cruel
and ugly face when they imposed martial law on Punjab
in April, 1919. The way summary trials took place with people being punished
with transportation of life and confiscation of property for simply raising
slogans against the British King and the ruler showed the brutal, but also the
frightened face.
(source: How 1919 Punjab
rebellion was suppressed - By Gobind Thukral).
In April, 1919, British
imperialism descended to the depths of criminal barbarism in the Punjab. As a peaceful festival was about to
commence in Amritsar,
it was fired upon with machine guns and rifles. Six hundred unarmed men, women, and children were killed, and the
slaughter finally reached a total of 1800 persons. A reign of terror in
the district followed in which the most sordid and sadistic acts were committed
against the Indian people by British officers, administrators and soldiers.
"One day, during the Martial Law period, Mr. Bosworth Smith gathered together all the
males over eight years at the Dacha Dalla Bungalow..Whilst the men were at the
Bungalow, he rode to our village, taking back with him all the women who met
him on the way carrying food for their men in the Bungalow. Reaching the
village, he went around the lanes and ordered all women to come out of the
houses, himself forcing them with sticks. He beat them with sticks and spat at
them and used the foulest and most unmentionable language. He hit me twice and
spat in my face. He forcibly uncovered the faces of all women, brushing aside their
veils with his stick. He repeatedly called us flies, bitches, swines, and said,
"Why did you not prevent your men folks from going out to do
mischief? Now, your skirts will be looked into by the Police
Constables."
(source: India and British Imperialism - By Gorham D. Sanderson p.
269-270).
On 13 April, 1919 a large unarmed crowd
gathered at the Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar
to peacefully protest against the arrest of their popular leaders, Dr.
Saifuddin Kitchlu and Dr. Satya Pal, both members of the Congress party.
Jallianwala Bagh was a large open space enclosed on three sides by buildings
with only one exit. Brigadier General
Reginald Dyer, the military commander of Amritsar was determined to make an example of
this meeting and wanted to terrorise the people into submission. He surrounded
the Bagh with his troops, closed off the exit and then ordered his soldiers to
shoot into the crowd with their machine-guns and rifles.The massacre was brutal and heartless the trapped crowd had nowhere to run or hide. Men, women and children ran helter-skelter, some jumping into the well to escape the volley of bullets. When their ammunition was exhausted, Dyer ordered his men to leave the area, his ghastly deed done. The wholesale slaughter at Jallianwala Bagh horrified the whole country. The brutality of the so called civilized foreign rulers and the need to fight for freedom were reiterated by this incident. Rabindranath Tagore renounced his knighthood in protest, preferring to stand by the side of his countrymen. Today, the bullet scarred walls of Jallianwala Bagh enclose a memorial symbolizing the eternal flame which is dedicated to those martyred here. Every year on April 13, Baisakhi day, homage is paid to those innocent patriots who died here.
(source: http://w3.gwis.com/~ajmani/jalianwalabagh.html).
The immediate background to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre was the disappointment of Indians with the colonial government’s failure to introduce democratic reforms after World War I as had been expected. India’s contribution to the war effort had been enormous, providing more soldiers than the combined contribution of all other colonies. More than a million Indians served and fought in various theatres of war. Of these, 450,000 were from the Punjab. In spite of chronic poverty, India contributed £100,000,000 to Britain for the war effort. Additionally the princes and peoples of India contributed £2,100,000 to various charities and war funds. India ended up incurring a debt of £127,800,000 because of the war. The prices of essential commodities rose sharply and the soldiers returning from the war were badly treated by the British officials.
When Brigadier General Dyer arrived in Amritsar from Jalandhar at 9 pm the next day, his fellow British residents had convinced themselves that 1857 was about to be repeated. Between 19-24 April, General Reginald Dyer enforced the notorious “crawling order”, forcing all those using the street where Marcella Sherwood was assaulted to pass on all fours, their noses to the ground. In Lahore, college students were ordered to walk up to 20 km in the sun four times a day for roll call before military administrators. At a school in Kasur, the six largest school students were whipped simply for their size. In all 1,229 people, largely urban artisans and youth were convicted of involvement in the uprising. Eighteen people were sentenced to death, 23 were transported for life and 58 were flogged on the orders of the Martial Law Commission.
(source: Let’s not forget Jallianwala Bagh - By Ishtiaq Ahmed - dailytimes.com.pk April 15 ' 2003).
It is worth noting that General Dyer, who ordered the firing at Jallianwallah Bagh at an unarmed and peaceful crowd, was felicitated by the British parliament; he was given an honourable discharge, a purse of 80,000 pounds and a bejewelled sword inscribed 'Saviour of the Punjab'. 1,650 bullets, 1600 casualties -- a day that will truly live in infamy--and they gave him an award!
(source: http://www.rediff.com/news/aug/04rajee1.htm). Refer to Jesus Christ: Artifice for Aggression - By Sita Ram Goel
A Whiff of
Grapeshot:
The last blow was the massacre of Amritsar. Since all news of this event
remained hidden from the world, and even from Parliament, for several months
after its occurrence, and since this slaughter was the proximate cause of the
Revolution of 1921.
10,000 Hindus from outlying districts collected in the
enclosure known as Jalianwalla Bagh, and proceeded to celebrate a religious
festival. The Bagh was an extinct garden, and surrounded with high walls on
every side, and entered by a few narrow passages. Informed of this meeting,
General Dyer proceeded to the spot with a detachment of troops equipped with
Lewis machine-guns and armored cars. Entering the Bagh, he saw the crowd,
and without giving the slightest
warning, or affording the assemblage any opportunity to indicate its pacific
intentions, he ordered his troops to fire upon the imprisoned mass; and though
the crowd made no resistance, but shouted its horror and despair and pressed in
panic against the gates, the General
ordered the firing to continue until all ammunition the soldiers had brought
with them was exhausted. He personally directed the firing towards the exits
where the crowd was most dense; “the targets,” he declared, were “good.”
The massacre lasted for ten minutes. When it was over, 1500 Hindus were left on
the ground 400 of them dead. Dyer forbade his soldiers to give any aid to the
injured, and by ordering all Hindus off the streets, prevented relatives or
friends from bringing even a cup of water to the wounded who were piled up in
the field.
A reign of terror followed. Gen Dyer issued an order….that
Hindus using the street should crawl on their bellies; if they tried to rise to
all fours, they were struck by the butts of soldiers guns. He arrested 500
professors and students and compelled all students to present themselves daily
for roll-calls, though this required that many of them should walk sixteen
miles a day. He had hundreds of citizens, and some school-boys, quite innocent
of any crime, flogged in the public square. He built an open cage, unprotected
from the sun, for the confinement of arrested persons; other prisoners he bound
together with ropes, and kept in open trucks for fifteen hours. He had lime
poured upon the naked bodies of Sadhus
(saints), and them exposed them to the sun’s ray that the lime might
harden and crack their skin. He cut off the electric and water supplies from
Indian houses. Finally he sent airplanes to drop bombs upon men and women
working in the fields.
The news of this barbaric
orgy of military sadism was kept from the world for half a year. A
belated commission of inquiry was appointed by the Government. A committee
appointed by the Indian National Congress made a more through investigation and
reported 1,200 killed, and 3,600 wounded. Gen. Dyer was censured by the House
of Commons, exonerated by the House of Lords, and was retired on a pension. Thinking this was insufficient the
militarists of the Empire raised a fund of $150,000 for him and presented him
with a jeweled sword of honor.
(source: The Case for India - By Will Durant Simon and Schuster, New York. 1930 p. ).
(source: The Case for India - By Will Durant Simon and Schuster, New York. 1930 p. ).
Mahatma Gandhi, who was now the foremost figure in Congress, declared
that:
"cooperation in
any shape or form with this satanic government is sinful."
(source: The Illustrated Library of The World and Its People: India I - Greystone Press/New York p. 157).
Rape of India by the British - Civilizing the Heathens - White Man's Burden?
The Wealth of India
"While we hold
onto India,
we are a first rate power. If we lose India, we will decline to a third
rate power. This is the value of India."
- So spoke Lord
Curzon in 1901, one of 11 viceroys of British India (from 1898 to 1905)
who was educated at Eton College, one of England's top private schools.
(source: India Britannica - By Geoffrey Moorhouse c. prologue). Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth.
American Historian Will Durant
(1885-1981) would like the West to learn from India, tolerance and gentleness and
love for all living things. He has observed:(source: India Britannica - By Geoffrey Moorhouse c. prologue). Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth.
"British rule in India is the most sordid and criminal exploitation of one nation by another in all recorded history. I propose to show that England has year by year been bleeding India to the point of death, and that self-government of India by the Hindus could not within any reasonable probability, have worse results than the present form of alien domination."
"I went to India to help myself visualize a
people whose cultural history I had been studying for The Story of
Civilization. I did not expect to be attracted by the Hindus, or that I should
be swept into a passionate interest in Indian politics. But I saw such things
in India
as made me feel that study and writing were frivolous things in the presence of
a people – one fifth of the human race – suffering poverty and oppression
bitterer than any to be found elsewhere on the earth. I was horrified. I had
not thought it possible that any government could allow its subjects to sink to
such misery.
I came away resolved to study living India as well as the
India with the brilliant past; to learn more of this unique Revolution that
fought with suffering accepted but never returned; to read the Gandhi of today
as well as the Buddha of long ago.
The civilization that was destroyed by British guns has
lasted for more than fifteen centuries has produced saints from Buddha to
Gandhi; philosophy from the Vedas to Schopenhauer and Bergson, Thoreau and
Keyserling, who take their lead and acknowledge their derivation from India . (
India , says Count Keyserling, “has produced the profoundest metaphysics
that we know of”; and he speaks of “the absolute superiority of India over the
West in philosophy”); poetry from the Mahabharata, containing the
Bhagavad-Gita, “perhaps the most beautiful work of the literature of the world.
And how shall we a civilization that created the unique and gigantic temples of
Ellora, Madura and Angkor ?
The more I read the more I was filled with astonishment
and indignation at the apparently conscious and deliberate bleeding of India by England throughout a hundred and
fifty years. I began to feel that I had come upon the greatest crime in all
history. I know how weak words are in the face of guns and blood; how
irrelevant mere truth and decency appear beside the might of empires and gold.
For I know of nothing in the world that I would rather do than to be of help to
India
.
The British conquest
of India was the invasion and destruction of a high civilization by a trading
company utterly without scruples or principle, careless of art and greedy of
gain, overrunning with fire and sword a country temporarily disordered and
helpless, bribing and murdering, annexing and stealing, and beginning that
career of illegal and “legal” plunder which has now gone on ruthlessly for one
hundred and seventy-three years, and goes on at this moment while in our secure
comfort we write and read.
Aurangzeb, the Puritanic Moghul emperor who misgoverned India for fifty
years when he died the realm fell to pieces. It was a simple matter for a group
of English buccaneers, armed with the latest European artillery and morals to
defeat the petty princes. It was the
wealth of 18th century India
which attracted the commercial pirates of England
and France
. This wealth was created by the Hindus’ vast and varied industries and trade.
It was to reach India of
fabulous wealth that Columbus
sailed the seas. It was this wealth that the East India Company proposed to
appropriate. Already in 1686 its Directors declared their intention to
“establish …a large, well grounded, sure English dominion in India for all
time to come.”
(source: The Case
for India
- By Will Durant Simon and Schuster, New York. 1930 p.1 - 17).
Lord Robert Clive was
penniless and in debt when he first set foot in India as a clerk in the East
India Company in 1743, but within 20 years he had become one of the richest men
in England. Part of that wealth was the collection of decorative arts and
jewelled objects he had assembled as an officer of the East India Company army.
Most of the foreigners came to India in search
of her fabulous wealth. Ernest Wood,
in the book "A Foreigner defends
Mother India" states, "In the middle of the eighteenth
century, Phillimore wrote that 'the droppings of her soil fed distant regions'.
No traveler found India poor until the nineteenth century, but foreign
merchants and adventurers sought her shores for the almost fabulous wealth, which they could
there obtain. 'To shake the pagoda
tree' became a phrase, somewhat
similar to our modern expression 'to strike oil'."(source: http://www.bharatvani.org/general_inbox/pramod/indic_education.html).
Sir William Curzon Wyllie as "one of the old unrepentant foes of India who had fattened on the misery of the Indian peasantry."
Yale University and the Wealth from India
Yale University in the United States was founded in 1718 with the help of a cargo of gift raised in India by Elihu Yale, who was a governor of Madras.
For more on Elihu Yale refer to chapter on Glimpses VIII.
Dadabhai Naoroji (1825-1917) a Bombay Parsi who sat in the British House
of Commons, also called the The Grand Old Man of India, presented to the British
people the "Drain Theory",
which put before them the facts and figures illustrating systematic bleeding of
the wealth and resources of India.
His ideas were put into a volume called "Poverty and
UnBritish rule in India".
He wrote in 1901:
"I need only say that the people of India have not
the slightest voice in the expenditure of the revenue, and therefore in the
good government of the country. The
powers of the Government being absolutely arbitrary and despotic, and the
Government being alien and bleeding, the effect is very exhausting and
destructive indeed."
Naoroji said this on the Debate on the Indian famine that
took place at Kennington , UK
:
“When the British
people first obtained territorial power in India , bad seeds were
unfortunately sown. The Company went there solely for the sake of profit, greed
was at the bottom of everything they did, and the result was that corruption,
oppression and rapacity became rampant.
One result was that there was a heavy drain of wealth from
India
, and the Europeans who went there were so anxious to acquire riches that they
did not wait until they had earned or deserved them, but they seized them in defiance
of all economic principles. That was one cause of India ’s trouble.
Everything expended
upon the formation of the British Empire in India had been extracted from the
Indian people, and, in addition to that, the Natives had shed their blood freely
– and to a much greater extent than Englishmen – in order to insure the
maintenance of the British supremacy."
(source: Poverty and Un-British Rule in India - By Dadabhai Naoroji
- p. ix-x and p. 578 – 579).Buckminster Fuller (1895-1893) philosopher, thinker, visionary, inventor, architect, engineer, mathematician, poet, cosmologist, inventor of the geodesic dome, once said:
"The British were perhaps the most successful pirates in history. They came to India, pillaged the country in the name of trade and then enslaved it in the name of civilization."
(source: Indian Express - Flair 8/5/2001) Refer to Jesus Christ: Artifice for Aggression - By Sita Ram Goel
Another Englishman, the late H. M. Hyndman, after detailing the proof that taxation in India was far heavier than in any other country, though its population is poorer, entitled his book The Bankruptcy of India.
(source: The Case for India - By Will Durant Simon and Schuster, New York. 1930 p. 22).
By the 19th century, the distant territory (India) shone as the brightest jewel in the British Crown. When the traders from England's East India Company arrived on the subcontinent of India in the 17th century, they found a fascinating land of pungent spices and luxurious textiles, magnificent art and architecture, and impressive works of literature and science. India was an "El Dorado" for enterprising young men in search of fortune. By the 19th century, the distant territory shone as the brightest jewel in the crown. It remained a prize beyond comparison, valued so highly that, as British viceroy Lord Curzon stated in 1900, "We could lose all our dominions and still survive, but if we lost India, our sun would sink to its setting."
Almost overnight India changed her position from being a jewel in the British crown to her present position as a part of the Third World. The concept of the Third World and the contempt which goes along with this concept was acquired recently.
For more on the Imperial Plunder refer to chapter on Glimpses VIII.
India 's Amazing Contribution to the World Economy Throughout History -- Until the British Came..
Overnight India becomes a 'Third World' Nation...
"Consumers in most major cities of the world can buy Indian jewelry and clothing. This statement is true today, but it would also have been true four thousand years ago. Goods, ideas, and religious concepts "made in India" have been exported to markets around the world since the people of the subcontinent built their first cities in the Indus Valley in the third millennium B.C.E."
"The enormous manufacturing and trade balance advantages that India had enjoyed for some 2,500 years were slowly wiped out as a result of British colonial control of the subcontinent. In 1750, with the start of significant British presence in the north, India at the end of Mughal power was still producing about one-fourth of the world's manufactured goods. It was not until the nineteenth century that British manufacturers could cheaply produce cotton cloth that equaled Indian quality. By using Indian-grown cotton to make cloth by machine at home, they finally ended India 's superiority. With increasing political control, the British were even able to force Indian consumers to buy inferior British fabrics."
"By 1850, with the establishment of British control over political and economic life, India 's share of world manufacturing had sunk to a mere 8.6 percent of world production. At the time of India 's independence from England, India was producing only 1.5 percent of world manufactures. Clearly colonialism had "underdeveloped" India as an economic giant."
(source: India in World History – askasia.org).
***
Age of Enlightenment and Imperialism
"The strongest claim by the West on modernity is derived from ideas and concepts generally grouped under the category of The Enlightenment. It was at the time that the idea of progress gained popular acceptance in the West. It was a time when Europeans emerged from a long twilight, from which the past was considered barbaric and dark. It most serious shortcoming was the assumption that European values derived from European experience were universal truth and that such truth gave license to world dominance: the rest of the world, to escape domination and exploitation, must adopt Western ways of militarism and exploitation. "
"It's one of the great paradoxes of modern history that during the Age of Enlightenment, at the same time that Europeans were becoming conscious of the basic rights of man, they were also capturing, brutalizing..."
(source: The Enlightenment and modernity - asiatimes.com and Blood, sweat and tears - Radio Netherlands).
Lord Mayo (1822 -
1872) declared, "We are all British gentlemen engaged in the magnificent
work of governing an inferior race in India."
(Note: The legacy of Western civilization to the
world - Dark Ages, Crusades, The
Inquisition, Witch Hunt, Slavery, Colonization of Africa, Asia, America and
Australia, Imperialism, World Wars, Holocaust, Bombing of Nagasaki and
Hiroshima, Conversion and destruction of Native cultures to Christianity,
Drugs, School shootings in American schools, Gun violence, Racism, Clergy sex
Abuse, Viagra spamming American Capitalism, quest for
individualism, Iraq war …. ).
For more refer to Aryan Invasion
Theory. Refer to Loot: in search of
the East India Company - By Nick Robins and How India became poor - indiarealist.com Cecil Rhodes and the British Empire
One of
the wealthiest, most influential man, Cecil Rhodes
(1853 - 1902) who wrote in a document called Confession of Faith:
“I contend that we are the finest race in the world and that the more of the
world we inhabit the better it is for the human race..."
“Why should we not form a secret society with
but one object: the furtherance of the British Empire and the bringing of the
whole uncivilized world under British rule, for the recovery of the United
States, and for the making of the Anglo-Saxon race but one Empire? "
“Africa
is still lying ready for us, it is our duty to take it. It is our duty to seize
every opportunity of acquiring more territory and we should keep this one idea
steadily before our eyes: that more
territory simply means more of the Anglo-Saxon
race, more of the best, the most human, most honourable race the world
possesses”
(source: The New Environmentalist Eugenics: Al Gore’s Green Genocide).
Sir William
Joynson-Hicks (1865 – 1932) Home
Secretary in the Baldwin Government, candidly
expressed that:
“I know it is said in
missionary meetings that we conquered India to raise the level of the
Indians. That is cant. We conquered India
as an outlet for the goods of Great
Britain. We conquered India by the
sword, and by the sword we shall hold it.”
(source: The Case
for India
- By Will Durant Simon and Schuster, New York. 1930 p. 163 – 164).
Injustice
and Brutality of the Colonial systemThe British tend to get so carried away with Raj nostalgia as to imbue it with a rosy hue. They forget that the Raj was hateful and oppressive to the many millions who had to bear its brunt. It is not just that these millions had to suffer alien rule but also that its self-interested interventions led to the country's economic ruin and cultural degradation. The Raj is but an instance of colonialism that held sway over many parts of the globe till about the middle of the last century. The colonial system had much inbuilt injustice and brutality, largely concealed as victims were often voiceless. In parts of North and South America , it led to a sustained genocide that wiped out entire civilisations over a few centuries. British colonial enterprise in India never got so vicious. This is not because the rulers were benign but because the country had a large population and was civilisationally advanced. The British in India knew well the limits of their power and took care not to exceed the tolerance levels of the people. It was precisely the fear of events like that of 1857 that kept them in check. However, colonialism in India did have its dark side, such as repression, racism and institutionalised exclusion. Indeed, with its stress on racism, the system was anything but admired though it may have been feared or used by those who chose to be co-opted. In any event, colonialism, for all its presumed benefits for those who were colonised, does not merit praise; it is considered a dark chapter of our history.
(source: Relics of the Raj - The Pioneer Edit Desk September 26, 2007 Wednesday). Refer to Oppose Christian Missionaries and Radical Christian Missionaries in Iraq . How do we know that Christians are delusional?
For Cruelty inflicted by Christianity - Watch Constantine's Sword movie - By Oren Jacoby and Stolen Kingdom: An American Conspiracy - By Budnick, Rich (1992). Honolulu : Aloha Press.
Caring Colonialism?
Church of England Head lauds and justifies British Raj
The spiritual head of the Church of England has launched an extraordinary defence of the British Raj, saying it was benign to India compared with cack-handed American neo-imperialism in Iraq.
Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who officially leads nearly 80 million Anglicans worldwide, told a British Muslim lifestyle magazine that the British experiment in India was an example of caring colonialism.
Refer to Islam – Christianity’s angry sibling? - faithfreedom.org and The Jesus Police. Refer to Oppose Christian Missionaries and Radical Christian Missionaries in Iraq .
(Refer to All religions are not same - By Swami Aksharanand - The concept that “All religions are one” as propagated by Gandhi incessantly is the most destructive concept that is affecting us all. It is not only silly but dangerous fallacy to propagate the idea that all religions are one. Hindus, who are under severe attacks every day by the same forces of Allah and Christ. Hinduism and other religions can’t be equated and called same because “religions” of the world have been born in the environment of hostility).
Refer to It's Imperialism, Stupid - By Noam Chomsky. Refer to Iraq: The Hidden Cost.
Watch Why we fight (2005) documentary - Imperial and technological arrogance of world's Super power: describes the rise and maintenance of the United States military-industrial complex and its involvement in the wars led by the United States during the last fifty years, and in particular in the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. The film alleges that in every decade since World War II, the American public has been told a lie to bring it into war to fuel the military-economic machine, which in turn maintains American dominance in the world.
Watch No end in sight documentary (2007) and refer to The Looting of Baghdad museum: US government implicated in planned theft of Iraqi artistic treasures - The pillaging of the Baghdad Museum is a tragedy that has no parallel in world history; it is as if the Uffizi, the Louvre, or all the museums of Washington D.C. had been wiped out in one fell swoop. Some compare the event to the burning of the Alexandria Library. Eight thousand years of human history has been erased in two days. Prince Andrew rebukes US on Iraq - He said the US should have learned lessons from British colonial history and he added that there had been "occasions when people in the UK would wish that those in responsible positions in the US might listen and learn from our experiences".
Also refer to Despoliation and Defaming of India – By Dharampal and The Raj Syndrome: A Study in Imperial Perceptions - By Suhash Chakravarty. Penguin Books. 1991 and Late Victorian Holocausts - By Mike Davis and Year 501: The Conquest Continues - By Naom Chomsky.
On Sunday, the comments were criticised by observers as a patronising justification of imperial Britain 's grip on India. Sources said it was surprising that Williams, a long-term critic of the Anglo-American 2003 invasion of Iraq, was getting into dangerous historical territory such as the British Raj.
(source: Church of England head lauds British Raj - timesofindia.com November 25, 2007.Refer to Iraq: The Hidden Cost and Iraq ’s erasure and Asian racial delusions - By Dr Gautam Sen - The Americans set out to destroy Iraq , which is why they began a calculated genocidal war against it. The mere removal of Saddam Hussein, whom they themselves had put into power decades earlier and nurtured cynically, was clearly inadequate for their goal of dismantling Iraq comprehensively. The moment the Americans destroyed Iraq ’s museums and libraries it was clear that the contemporary descendants of the Mongol scourge, Hulegu (destroyer of Baghdad in 1251AD) had arrived. The killing of Iraqis on a massive scale by Bush and his Leftist British minions has been accompanied by the targeted elimination of professionals. The destruction of Iraqi civilisation is being completed by erasing its historical records and cultural artefacts, the conduits of collective historic memory. The brutal Romans, though more civilised than modern Americans, would have recognised the imperial logic of scorched earth to secure rule).
Refer to Loot: in search of
the East India Company - By Nick Robins and How India became poor - indiarealist.com.
Note:
Ironically, Dinesh D'souza (dubbed the Uncle Tom
- Uncle
Tom is a pejorative for a black
person who is perceived by other blacks as subservient to white authority
figures, or as seeking ingratiation with them by way of unnecessary
accommodation. The term Uncle Tom comes from the title character of Harriet Beecher
Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin), much like
Clarence Thomas who sold their souls for a few bucks or a coveted job) author
of The End of Racism (wrote that in his book: "The American slave was treated like
property, which is to say, pretty well.")Refer to It's Imperialism, Stupid - By Noam Chomsky and Year 501: The Conquest Continues - By Naom Chomsky. For Cruelty inflicted by Christianity - Watch Constantine's Sword movie - By Oren Jacoby
Refer to Iraq: The Hidden Cost and Missionary Diplomacy - Laura Bush’s Burma crusade, driven by a moral and religious calling, has increasingly pushed that strategically located country into China ’s strategic lap while undercutting Indian interests. Also refero Why do Christian missionaries love natural disasters? - in China and Mynmmar.
Dinesh D'souza, an Indian Christian
and the
"The West did not become rich and powerful
through colonial oppression in and that the descendants of
colonialism are better off than they would be if colonialism had never
happened...:, in his article - Two Cheers for
Colonialism). The article is a racist piece of historical
revisionism that regurgitates unoriginal and trite arguments, which are
reminiscent of discussions on the merits of the "white man's
burden" A few pages of Mike Davis's "Late Victorian Holocausts" describing the Indian famines of the early 20th century is enough to puncture any colonialist's puffed up balloon of claim to managerial skill or social responsibility. An analysis of India's GDP and vital statistics 1750-1947 will show you how British rule impoverished India. Please refer to Dharampal's book - Beautiful Tree and you will learn how the primary educational system in India worked when the East India Company began to take over India).
The
sheer scope of their rapine is staggering. Capital removed, societies
destroyed. As a single example of the social cost, historian William Digby - Prosperous British India estimated that the population of
Dhaka dropped from 200,000 to 79,000 between 1787 and 1817; the export of Dacca
muslin to England amounted to 8,000,000 rupees in 1787; in 1817, nil. The fine
textile industry, the livelihoods of thousands, and the self-sufficient village
economy, were systematically destroyed.
A
strong case has been made by William Digby quoting Brooks Adams that the
Industrial Revolution (circa 1760) could not have happened in Britain had it not been for the loot that came
in from India.
It is indeed a curious coincidence: Plassey (1757); the flying shuttle (1760);
the spinning jenny (1764); the power-loom (1765); the steam engine (1768). Look
at some individuals and their 'East Indian Fortunes' (P J Marshall)--all
numbers in pounds: Robert Clive estimated in 1767 that his net worth was
401,102. John Johnston had 300,000. Richard Smith amassed in 1764-1770 a
fortune of 250,000 pounds. Note that these company officers' average salary was
between 1,000 and 5,000 per year. Marshall
estimates a total of 18,000,000 pounds as the *private* fortunes of these
officers in the period 1757-1784. This, of course, in addition to official East
India Company pillage. Digby estimated in 1901 that the total amount of treasure
extracted from India
by the British was 1,000,000,000 pounds--a billion pounds. Considering the
looting from 1901 to 1947 and the effects of inflation, this is probably worth
a trillion dollars in today's money. Serious money, indeed. Shouldn't we ask
for some reparation?
(source: The wealth of the colonies returned to Britain, creating huge fortunes. By 1700, the East India Company accounted for "above half the trade of the nation," one contemporary critic commented. Through the following half-century, Jphn Keay writes, its shares became the "equivalent of a gilt-edged security, much sought after by trustees, charities and foreign investors." The rapid growth of wealth and power set the stage for outright conquest and imperial rule. British officials, merchants, and investors "amassed vast fortunes," gaining "wealth beyond the dreams of avarice."
Two English historians of India, Edward Thompson and G. T.
Garrett, described the early history of British India as: perhaps the
world's high-water mark of graft": "a gold-lust unequalled since the
hysteria that took hold of the Spaniards of Cortes' and Pizzaro's age filled
the English mind. Bengal in particular was not
to know peace again until she has been bled white."
The supremacy
of the British over most of India
was left with little challenge, and they could now embark in right earnest on
their set task: the draining of India's
fabulous wealth. Writing to the future King Charles I in 1616, England's first
ambassador to the court of the Mughal Jahangir expressed his amazement at the "jewellshe sawthere. Hee isthe treasury
of the world," wrote Sir Thomas Roe (1568-1644) the first British
ambassador, stays at the Mughal court, "buyeing
all that comes, and heaping rich stones as if hee would rather build than weare
them." While most eighteenth-century European travelers to India described her as "flourishing," less than a century later she had sunk into depths of dismal misery. One British historian noted in 1901: "Time was, not more distant than a century and a half ago, when Bengal was much more wealthy than was Britain."
The English historians of India, and tell us that
The most famous diamond in the world, the Kohinoor or Padshahnama, was found in the Godawari River in South India
some 4,000 years ago. In 1849 it was taken by the British East India Company as partial indemnity after the Sikh Wars and was presented to Queen Victoria. At the time, its value was estimated at $700,000.
In 1851 Victoria decided to recut the Kohinoor. This undertaking required 38 days at a cost of $40,000 and the extraordinary stone was reduced to 108 carats. In 1911 a new crown was made for the coronation of Queen Mary with the KOH-I-NOOR as the center stone. In 1937, it was transferred to the crown of Queen Elizabeth (now Queen Mother) for her coronation.
Today, the Kohinoor is still part of the British crown jewels and is displayed in the Tower of London under heavy security cover.
According
to, the American writer:because for
nearly fifty years Great
Britain stood without a
competition."
The Law of Civilization and Decay - By Brooke Adams .
The British would often think of their conquest in India as
fortuitous. It gratified a cherished conceit about the Englishman's amateurish
innocence and it obviated the need to confront awkward questions - like how
such aggression could be justified.The Law of Civilization and Decay - By Brooke Adams .
(source:
India: A History - By John Keay
According to British history, there was
no freedom movement in India, no man made famines, no transfer of huge
resources from India to Britain , no destruction of Indian industries and
agriculture by the British rule, but only a very benign and benevolent British
rule in India ."
(1694-1774) bitter critic of the Church, "No sooner did India begin to be known to the Occident's barbarians than she was the object of their greed, so when these barbarians became civilized and industrious, and created new needs for themselves..."
(source: Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire Quotes. Refer to and The God Awful Truth.
But unlike the Portuguese, the British were anxious to
clothe their greed in lofty ideals: the "white man's burden" of
civilizing (and, naturally, Christianizing) less enlightened races, the
"divinely ordained mission" of bringing to India
the glory of Europe's commercial and
industrial civilization, and so forth. The ideology of empire: the concept of civilizing mission, material profit, the triumph of civilization over barbarism, was ardently supported by the missionary organizations. Articles, pamphlets, speeches, thick volumes began pouring forth by the hundreds year after year in praise of the "tremendous task of rescuing India" from the darkness into which she had fallen. Understandably, the recognition of India's far more ancient and refined civilization made such noble motives untenable. Thus began a systematic campaign to disparage not only this civilization, its culture and society, but the very roots of Hinduism.
The
excesses of high officials, nicknamed the 'nabobs' provoked outrage. The poet (1731-1800) expressed it with passion in
1781:
"Hast
thou, though suckled at fair freedom's breast,
Exported slav'ry to the conquer'd East
Pull'd down the tyrants India serv'd with dread
And rais'd thyself a greater, in their stead?
It was none the less undeniable that commerce with India had done wonders for England's
comfort and well-being. As with the ownership of slave plantations in the West Indies, the eastern trade was hugely rewarding. It
helped London
become a financial center and funded the building of many stately homes. Exported slav'ry to the conquer'd East
Pull'd down the tyrants India serv'd with dread
And rais'd thyself a greater, in their stead?
(source:Empires of the Monsoon: A
history of the Indian ocean and its invaders -
By Richard Hall
Frenchman Guy Deleury, (source: )
Claude Alvares Decolonizing History: Technology and Culture in India, China and the West
1492 to the Present Day, The
incursions into Asia - Indonesia, India and China - by what it has become
cliché to call "the first transnational " became a story of predatory
and coercive violence, in which places were indeed traded: India forfeited its
vast superiority in handicrafts and manufactures, and was compelled to open its
markets to inferior products from Britain.
By
1620, 50,000 pieces of chintz reached England; in 1720, this reached
600,000 pieces. The muslins, calicoes and chintzes astonished with their
craftsmanship, sophistication and sheer beauty. So much, that there were
complaints against the imports of Indian fabrics from the very beginning. By
1700, Acts were passed which prohibited the introduction of printed calicoes
for domestic use, either as apparel or furniture, under a penalty of £200 on
the wearer or seller. There was no demand in India for Manchester cottons,
though these were forced on India with the ending of the Company's monopoly in
1813, any more than there was "demand" in China for opium: the
destruction of the indigenous weaving industry was described by (1774-1839) as a misery without parallel in
the history of Commerce. "The bones of the cotton weavers are blanching
plains of' India.
Hindusthan was always a
proverbially rich country. Mother Theresa has made it
something of a synonym with poverty. But this poverty cannot be blamed
on Hindu culture. After the Muslims had blindly plundered large parts of the
country and destroyed so much, the British made an even more systematic and
profound attack on India's natural prosperity. They reorganized its economy to
suit their own ends, integrating it in their colonial trade system, again to
the country's detriment. When the British arrived, India was one of the most
industrialized countries in the world, and one of its top exporters. The
British economical policies, coupled with the world-wide impact of modern
industry on the pre-modern economies, destroyed much of India's
prosperity and economical; self-reliance.
(source:
).
This new
imperialism tries to justify itself with a story about Britain's
introduction of free trade, the rule of law, democracy and western civilization
across the globe. "No organization has done more to impose western norms
of law, order and governance around the world." That story is a fable
dreamt up by 19th-century propagandists to sell the benefits of empire to an
uncertain public back home.Instead of enriching the world, the British empire impoverished it. Far from being backward and uncivilized, India exported high quality manufactured goods to Britain's fashionable society. Aristocrats had Indian chintz on their walls and Indian cloth on their tables. British manufacturers often labeled poorer quality British imitations as "Indian" to dupe customers into buying their own shoddy goods. After all, why were the British interested in trading with Asia at all?
(source: - by Jon E Wilson - Guardian
According to British
records, one million Indians died of famine between 1800 and 1825, 4 million
between 1825-1850, 5 million between 1850-1875 and 15 million between
1875-1900. Thus 25 million Indians died in 100 years ! The British must be
proud of their bloody record. It is probably more honorable and straightforward
to kill in the name of Allah, than in the guise of petty commercial interests
and total disregard for the ways of a 5000 year civilization. Thus, by the
beginning of the 20th century, India
was bled dry and there were no resources left.
)
***)
Lord Robert Arthur Salisbury
"As India must be bled the lancet should
be directed to the parts where the blood is congested or at least sufficient,
not to those (the agricultural people) which are already feeble from the want
of it."But the drain is not all. All the wars by which the British Indian Empire is built up have not, only been fought mainly with Indian blood, but every farthing of expenditure incurred in all wars and proceedings within and beyond the frontiers of India by which the Empire has been built up and maintained up to the present day has been erected from the Indian people. Britain has spent nothing.
What would Britain's condition be under a similar fate?
Poverty and Un-British Rule in India - By Dadabhai Naoroji
In
the case of the former foreign conquests, the invaders (Islamic) either retired
with their plunder and booty, or became the rulers of the country. When they
plundered, and went back, they made, no doubt, great wounds; but India, with her
industry, revived and healed the wounds. With the English the case is peculiar.
They are the great wounds of the first wars in the burden of the public debt,
and those wounds are kept perpetually open and widening, by draining the
life-blood in a continuous stream. The
former rulers were like butchers hacking here and there, but the English with
their scientific scalpel cut to the very heart, and yet, lo! there is no wound
to be seen, and soon the plaster of the high talk of civilization, progress,
and what not, covers up the wound! The English rulers stand sentinel at the
front door of India, challenging the whole world, that they do and shall
protect India against all comers, and themselves carry away by a back-door the
very treasure, they stand sentinel to protect.
Poverty and Un-British Rule in India - By
Dadabhai Naoroji
'Prosperous' British India: A Revelation from Official Records -
By William Digby
Sir Henry Cotton (source: India And Her People - By Swami Abhedananda
After
the second Anglo Sikh war, the British exiled the boy Duleep Singh to
Fatehgarh, in the care of a British guardian. Unlike previous British rulers, Lord Dalhousie wished to transform India, towards
which end he promoted and supported the work of: Fatehgarh just happened to be a mission. John Login and his wife, who
had taken on the parental role in the boy's life, just happened to be devout
Christians. Duleep was encouraged to have two English boys as his closest
friends, one of whom just happened to be the son of a missionary. The textbooks
he was given just happened to be full of Christian messages. His servant,
Bhajan Lal, just happened to be a Christian convert. And Bhajan Lal just
happened to read from the Bible to the boy every night. Duleep Singh was, in
fact, totally dependent on the goodwill of his prisoners and limited to living
in the center of Christian missionary activity.
What happened next? Exactly what
can be expected when missionaries shower the weak with their mercies: The last
Sikh ruler of the kingdom of Maharaja Ranjit Singh was surreptitiously
converted to Christianity, Ranjit Singh’s golden chair along with boxes
full of jewels was also dispatched for the Board of Directors of the East India
Company and the Queen. To ensure that young Duleep Singh, the last Sikh ruler
of the kingdom of Ranjit Singh, should not become a rallying point for
the people of Punjab, he was surreptitiously converted to Christianity and
hurriedly sent to England.
To minimise all chances of his return to Punjab and claiming sovereignty after
becoming of age, he was made to marry princess Victoria Gouramma of Coorg, also
an Indian convert to Christianity and settled in Elveden Estate, near Cambridge especially
purchased for him. "A facade of a ceremony was arranged in which the young
prince was made to present the famous Koh-i-Noor to Queen Victoria and 13 most valuable relics
pertaining to Maharaja Ranjit Singh to the Prince of Wales.
The Tribune,
April 8, 2001).
Victoria Albert Museum, Osborne House and
several other museums of Scotland
and Britain.
In fact, the British Government has been under tremendous pressure from several
of the sovereign nations, which were once a part of its Imperial Empire, to
return the artifacts and other valuable items of their historic interest, which
the British had forcibly taken from the
then rulers as a "gift" or otherwise. Besides India and Greece,
even Ethiopia, China and Italy have been pressing the
British Government to return their artifacts. The World Jews Congress has been
demanding 160 artifacts now displayed in various museums in Scotland.
(source: Tribuneindia.com ).
Om Tat Sat
(Continued...)
( My humble Pranam, Honour
and also gratefulness to
Ms. Sushma Londhe ji for her noble, magnanimous and eminent
works on the peerless Wisdom of our Sacred Scriptures)
(My
humble salutations to , H H Swamyjis, Hindu Wisdom, great Universal
Philosophers, Historians, Professors and Devotees for the
discovering collection)
( The Blog is
reverently for all the seekers of truth and lovers of wisdom and also
purely a non-commercial)
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