Willie Sutton that was.Which of the 30's bank robbers was it that replied to an interviewer asking "Why do you rob banks?" by looking at him like he was a total moron and replying "Because that is where the money is"
Willie Sutton that was.Which of the 30's bank robbers was it that replied to an interviewer asking "Why do you rob banks?" by looking at him like he was a total moron and replying "Because that is where the money is"
The British might have a lot to answer for in respect of their governance of India, but they did leave India/Pakistan/Ceylon more or less in working order when they finally departed. And invested quite a bit in its governance and communications during their time in charge.
Not entirely out of the goodness of their hearts I agree but they did build a lot of railways
I read some where that during the war, Churchill guaranteed the British would not ration bread. When push came to shove in 1943, 3 million indie had to starve to death in order to keep this promise. I wonder how much soul search the cabinet made before they came to that decision.
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So, your solution to the Jammu and Kashmir crisis is for all of Jammu and Kashmir, including the Hindu-majority and Buddhist-majority parts, to be annexed by Pakistan? That's a fucking horrible plan. This is the worst post I've ever seen on AH.COM.
In the Indian Army simple feeding is a nightmare unless you group your Hindus, Muslims, Bhuddists etc to provide the appropriate diet, ditto for castes.
I can see that being welcomed by Congress, and the Muslim League etc................
The truth is that Britain at no time ever was in a position to impose it's rule by simple force except locally with extensive local support.
(or via client states, thank you Rome for that lesson)
I'm sorry? Maybe I'm missing something but the Wikipedia page you link to doesn't appear to back up your claims that the British government intentionally instigated 'sectarian strife and mass murder'.As long as the British came out Indian Independence smelling of roses, and the Indians looked like savages, HMG would be pleased.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Legacy
The resulting sectarian strife and mass murder were an acceptable price to pay. London could say to the rest of the world 'this is what decolonisation looks like. Happy now?'
Nehru's reforms, where he destroyed the feudal system as well as laid the groundwork for India's democracy. Without these reforms, I strongly suspect India would be as unstable and as prone to dictatorship as other former British colonies, as well as retaining a massively horrendous feudal system.
Client states? The princely states were just powerless puppets, forced to tow the line of the British, and if they didn't, there was the implicit threat that they would be forcibly dethroned, just as what happened to the Mughal emperors.
I cannot speak for India, not being enough of an expert on the culture but studies of pre-partition Ireland have shown the problems of being either a local majority but national minority (Ulster Protestants) or a local minority but national majority (Ulster Catholics). In such situations at the flashpoint (Ulster and presumably Kashmir) both sides then show the fear and latent paranoia of being a minority that can be subsumed/persecuted/discriminated against and this sense of insecurity is then overcompensated for in a very fervent chauvinistic unionism or nationalism in their identification with their "majority" status.
Probably the least-worst solution would be to allow Jammu and Kashmir to partition itself like what happened with Punjab and Bengal. It would have to be effected differently given that Punjab and Bengal were provinces and not princely states, but perhaps a referendum on partition by district?
read article years ago on previous hard drive , heres what I could find.Perhaps you could add a source if you going to post something that inflammatory?
read article years ago on previous hard drive , heres what I could find.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...ill-blamed-for-1m-deaths-in-India-famine.html
https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/did-churchill-cause-the-bengal-famine/
https://www.dawn.com/news/921888/book-blames-churchill-for-indian-famine-that-killed-millions
https://yourstory.com/2017/08/british-raj-famines/
I dunno, singling out Churchill ignores that incredibly horrific famines were just a part of living under British India since 1770, when a third of Bengal's population starved to death.
To repeat myself, I wasn't intending to present an optimal solution, just to very quickly show the sort of thing that might have been needed to improve Indo-Pakistani relations and why it was practically impossible. My reference to Jammu was because I was talking about the need to invade a sovereign state (Jammu and Kashmir) not because I wanted to talk about the regions within that state. I'll go back and edit it now to try and make my purpose clearer
Indian famines had generally come to an end by about 1920 as commercial agriculture and railways became more widespread, and this is part of what makes the 1943 famine stand out. There is no doubt that British policy (for which Churchill was ultimately responsible) played some part in the famine of 1943. The loss of Burma and the defensive precautions against Japan lead to a shortage of food in Bengal (how much of a shortage is debatable). One obvious way to address this would have been to divert shipping from other purposes to ship food into Bengal. The British were unwilling to do so as they were very short of shipping, it was the major limiting factor on all operations during 1942 and early 1943 at least. How much responsibility Churchill bears for this can be legitimately debated by people more informed than I am, but I don't think it's outrageous to say he bears a large share of the blame (although I'm not saying this is what I think).
The only support Britain had was from useful idiots. Britain was certainly at many times in positions "to impose its rule by simple force". In fact, during the Indian Mutiny, British troops did just that, refusing to listen to the Mughal Emperor and instead invading his palace and turning it into ruin, no doubt resulting in the loss of many treasures. And then they executed the Mughal Emperor's sons, just to show the "brown niggers" what happens to those who defy the British.
Client states? The princely states were just powerless puppets, forced to tow the line of the British, and if they didn't, there was the implicit threat that they would be forcibly dethroned, just as what happened to the Mughal emperors.
I wouldn't disagree with that, I did try to point out briefly why the British were reluctant to supply the shipping. It's certainly possible that providing the shipping would have prolonged the war. However I can't imagine the shipping wouldn't have been provided if it was white people at risk of starving to death.I think it is easy to forget the role of the war in all this. Shipping losses were heavy, the grain may have been available, but the means of transporting and escorting it were not. 1942 was something of high water mark for the Axis powers, later in the war I thing the famine would have manageable. Churchill may have prioritised the war effort, but that reflected a high degree of desperation on his part.
The Indian Mutiny (not sure if that is the correct name anymore) was hardly suppressed by a few moustache-twirling English Bad Men.
Absolute nonsense. Also how do you explain Operation Polo if it's just the British who are the bad ones?
I'm sorry? Maybe I'm missing something but the Wikipedia page you link to doesn't appear to back up your claims that the British government intentionally instigated 'sectarian strife and mass murder'.
That's rather conspiratorial of you.A guiltless, fair dealing country would not burn tons of documents in public, as though an army was marching on New Delhi.
What was on those document that needed conceal from the government(s)
they were handing power to, I wonder.
Something to do with the mass murders the British had already committed,
or allowed to happen, perhaps?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_India#Colonial_India
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noakhali_riots
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1946_Bihar_riots
Did they burn documents when Canada, Australia, New Zealand became Dominions?