“British government conceded Indian self-rule, they thought this the right thing to do. What would have happened to the Koreans or the Vietnamese if a local Gandhi had tried such tactics against the brutal Japanese kempetai or the French with their mercenaries from Morocco and Senegal? It was not that Gandhi was successful but that the British were forbearing … Gandhi’s tactics only work if the other side lets it …” Christie Davies’ Blog The Social Affairs Unit.
Indians are an ungrateful lot. How can we forget the British and give Gandhi all the credit.
Ever the oriental selfishness. Why can we not sacrifice ourselves for the Great British Empire? Can we even imagine that the greatest empire in history had anything but the milk of human kindness at the time of granting Independence. After WW2, even though Britain was on rationing, they let us browns go independent.
Churchill very much wanted the option of squeezing the brown man a little more. Whatever little there was left of the brown man after the Great Bengal Famine of 1943. After Montagu Norman, Churchill, Lord Willingdon, Neville Chamberlain had finished with the Great Bullion Scam against India from 1925-1945. After the war was over and the brown man was used in Africa and Europe. They let us go - and allowed us to rule ourselves.
How can we ever repay this debt?
First, the great benefit of English language. All other super powers and developed countries (Japan, China, Russia, France, Germany, Italy) use their own respective languages. They could have been very successful (like India) if they had learnt English, talked English, walked English, read English, cooked English, washed English, done everything in English.
But these stupid Germans, Italians, Japanese, Russians, French, Chinese - they dont know what we know!! English is the universal language.
Can we ever forget the Lees-Mody pact which saved the Indian farmer from ruin? The Japanese had stopped purchase of Indian cotton. Never mind the fact that the British raised customs duty for imported Japanese cloth to protect the Lancashire Mills, which were hurting by the Gandhian (that tricky so and so oriental) boycott.
We ungrateful Indians must further appreciate the British sacrifice and the industrial cost of conceding self rule to India. Within 15 years of Indian independence, the British car industry started closing down. British Steel collapsed and had to be nationalised within 20 years (Ratan Tata may revive British Steel finally). British coal mining became unviable withn 25 years - and had to be shut. British Rail similarly collapsed. It is now making hesitant comeback after privatisation. British capital goods industry (electrical, heavy machinery, electronics) went out of business. All due to us Indians.
But they taught Laloo Prasad Yadav how to run Indian Railways profitably.
What could the British do without captive market and raw material sources. The British let all this go - so that Indian industry could survive. British business manager taught Indian businessmen how to run business competitively - and completely ignored their own business. Today, Britain has very few of the colonial era multinationals.
British (The Great Benefactors) said - Go forth, brown man.
Some biased historians claim that the Britishers said to us Indians, “We know that you can do nothing by yourself. You are useless to us now. You are a burden to us. We have anyway sucked you dry. But, since you want to go away from our protective umbrella, go forth and stagnate at the bottom”, under their breadth, at the time of Independence. I dont believe that. Like I dont believe that the sun rises in the East (it is a conspiracy against us).
We also do not appreciate their kindness towards us!
The other British legacy that we should be very grateful is our colonial bureaucracy. This colonial era bureaucracy was permanently established - and it has been growing faster than our population. Its corruption is aided by a myriad laws created by the same bureaucracy - for the benefit of Indians. The British never had any intention to benefit from this entrenched laws and bureaucracy.
Recent archaeology (available with me) evidence shows that the British were repaying our kindness. Indians “marwari” seths had lent Queen Bodicea some money during her struggle against the Romans. The British have never forgotten that. (This secret story is based on documents to which only I have access).
Hence, they did not kill us Indians in the numbers that they killed (more than 10 lakh Kenyans in 10 years) in the Mau Mau uprising. Or they did not torture or kill Indians they way they killed the Malaysians. Due to this reason, they also did not establish apartheid the way they did in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and South Africa. This unblemished record of the British against other people had nothing to do with Gandhiji. Gandhiji’s focus on post-colonial India, had nothing to with the existence of our statehood. It was all the British legacy.
The one British failure was that they did not kill Gandhi. That job was outsourced to an Indian “coolie”. They could have easily done that. This was one thing that they could have done - but didn’t do! In my books, we should be eternally grateful to the British Colonialist for not killing Gandhiji.