did i sleep through a lecture back wien i was in school, or something? because i don't remenber about a loud outcry in favor of capitulation during the blitz. and where defeating nazi germany is concerned, the soviets deserve at least 50% of the credit, maybe even two thirds.
On 10/17/07, Mike Weaver <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Good: > Early in his political career he worked hard to implement a minimum wage > in England. > But probably the one thing he's rightly remembered well for is his > refusal to capitualte to Hitler, although I think David Lloyd George > probably got that ball rolling. His speeches rallied Britain during WWII. > He, along with FDR, played in instumental role in defeating Nazi Germany. > Despite his myriad flaws, he was a great source of quotes. > > Bad: > Rotten policy on India. > At least up until 1937, didn't seem to have much problem w/ Hitler OR > Mussolini. > Saw no problem with the concept of an Empire. > Miseable views on race. > Had a hand in any number of bad policies...the list goes on. > > > > > Keith Addison wrote: > > >>I think Winnie was a pretty mixed bag myself. > >> > >> > > > >First you said good and bad, now you say mixed. If you can't remind > >me of something good about him, how about something that's not > >outright bad? > > > > > > > >>A better question might be why the British were so anxious to go *back* > >>into Iraq? I think it was Stanley Maude <?> who went stomping into > >>Mesopotamia around 1916 and I don't think the Brits were out until '56 > >>or so. No guarantee on those dates. > >> > >> > > > >Try Geoff Simons' "Iraq: From Sumer to Saddam". Anyway, the League of > >Nations awarded Britain the new mandate of Iraq as part of "secret > >deals" made during World War I. Ho-hum. Lots of horse-trading with > >the French, and there was this stray king who needed a kingdom > >somewhere or other. Anyway, heavy application of Churchill's usual > >hamfist, with Bomber Harris delivering prototype terror bombing raids > >on tribal villages and so on. So what's new. > > > >Keith > > > > > > > > > >>Keith Addison wrote: > >> > >> > >> > >>>Hello Mike > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>>>One can find Churchill's fingerprints on just about every Western > >>>>historical artifact, both good and bad, for the roughly the past 120 > years. > >>>> > >>>> > >>>> > >>>> > >>>Maybe, but that doesn't explain it away. Mishra makes some good points. > >>> > >>>Ugly racism aside, what excuse is there for sheer ignorance? > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>>>According to his own Secretary of State for India, Leopold Amery, > >>>>Churchill knew "as much of the Indian problem as George III did of > >>>>the American colonies." > >>>> > >>>> > >>>> > >>>> > >>>Or as much as George W. Bush knew of Iraq? Iraq was also Churchill's > >>>doing, chucked together out of incompatible parts, despite warnings > >>> > >>> > >>>from people who knew better that it couldn't work. Famous Churchill > >> > >> > >>>quote: "I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against > >>>uncivilised tribes" (Iraqis). (Lawrence of Arabia agreed.) > >>> > >>>Good and bad? Maybe you can remind me of something good about > >>>Churchill, I forget. > >>> > >>>I wrote something similar to what you say about him about 25 years > >>>ago, not about Churchill though, it was about the British Empire - > >>>take just about any trouble-spot in the world and dig a little and > >>>you'll find something nasty the British Empire swept under the carpet > >>>long ago. > >>> > >>>Divide and conquer, force folks to compete for what's theirs, turn > >>>peaceful differences into vicious enmities that'll fester away > >>>forever. > >>> > >>>I guess one empire's much the same as another. > >>> > >>>Best > >>> > >>>Keith > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>>>Keith Addison wrote: > >>>> > >>>> > >>>> > >>>> > >>>> > >>>>>"Meeting Mountbatten a few months after partition, Churchill assailed > >>>>>him for helping Britain's "enemies," "Hindustan," against "Britain's > >>>>>friends," the Muslims. Little did Churchill know that his expedient > >>>>>boosting of political Islam would eventually unleash a global jihad > >>>>>engulfing even distant New York and London. The rival nationalisms > >>>>>and politicized religions the British Empire brought into being now > >>>>>clash in an enlarged geopolitical arena; and the human costs of > >>>>>imperial overreaching seem unlikely to attain a final tally for many > >>>>>more decades." > >>>>> > >>>>>----- > >>>>> > >>>>>http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/08/13/070813crbo_book > >>>>>s_mishra?printable=true > >>>>>Exit Wounds: Books: The New Yorker > >>>>> > >>>>>Books > >>>>> > >>>>>Exit Wounds > >>>>> > >>>>>The legacy of Indian partition. > >>>>> > >>>>>by Pankaj Mishra August 13, 2007 > >>>>> > >>>>>Sixty years ago, on the evening of August 14, 1947, a few hours > >>>>>before Britain's Indian Empire was formally divided into the > >>>>>nation-states of India and Pakistan, Lord Louis Mountbatten and his > >>>>>wife, Edwina, sat down in the viceregal mansion in New Delhi to watch > >>>>>the latest Bob Hope movie, "My Favorite Brunette." Large parts of the > >>>>>subcontinent were descending into chaos, as the implications of > >>>>>partitioning the Indian Empire along religious lines became clear to > >>>>>the millions of Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs caught on the wrong side > >>>>>of the border. In the next few months, some twelve million people > >>>>>would be uprooted and as many as a million murdered. But on that > >>>>>night in mid-August the bloodbath-and the fuller consequences of > >>>>>hasty imperial retreat-still lay in the future, and the Mountbattens > >>>>>probably felt they had earned their evening's entertainment. > >>>>> > >>>>>Mountbatten, the last viceroy of India, had arrived in New Delhi in > >>>>>March, 1947, charged with an almost impossible task. Irrevocably > >>>>>enfeebled by the Second World War, the British belatedly realized > >>>>>that they had to leave the subcontinent, which had spiralled out of > >>>>>their control through the nineteen-forties. But plans for brisk > >>>>>disengagement ignored messy realities on the ground. Mountbatten had > >>>>>a clear remit to transfer power to the Indians within fifteen months. > >>>>>Leaving India to God, or anarchy, as Mohandas Gandhi, the foremost > >>>>>Indian leader, exhorted, wasn't a political option, however tempting. > >>>>>Mountbatten had to work hard to figure out how and to whom power was > >>>>>to be transferred. > >>>>> > >>>>>The dominant political party, the Congress Party, took inspiration > >>>>> > >>>>> > >>>>> > >>>>> > >>>>>from Gandhi in claiming to be a secular organization, representing > >>>> > >>>> > >>>> > >>>> > >>>>>all four hundred million Indians. But many Muslim politicians saw it > >>>>>as a party of upper-caste Hindus and demanded a separate homeland for > >>>>>their hundred million co-religionists, who were intermingled with > >>>>>non-Muslim populations across the subcontinent's villages, towns, and > >>>>>cities. Eventually, as in Palestine, the British saw partition along > >>>>>religious lines as the quickest way to the exit. > >>>>> > >>>>>But sectarian riots in Punjab and Bengal dimmed hopes for a quick and > >>>>>dignified British withdrawal, and boded ill for India's assumption of > >>>>>power. Not surprisingly, there were some notable absences at the > >>>>>Independence Day celebrations in New Delhi on August 15th. Gandhi, > >>>>>denouncing freedom from imperial rule as a "wooden loaf," had > >>>>>remained in Calcutta, trying, with the force of his moral authority, > >>>>>to stop Hindus and Muslims from killing each other. His great rival > >>>>>Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who had fought bitterly for a separate homeland > >>>>>for Indian Muslims, was in Karachi, trying to hold together the > >>>>>precarious nation-state of Pakistan. > >>>>> > >>>>>Nevertheless, the significance of the occasion was not lost on many. > >>>>>While the Mountbattens were sitting down to their Bob Hope movie, > >>>>>India's constituent assembly was convening in New Delhi. The moment > >>>>>demanded grandiloquence, and Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhi's closest > >>>>>disciple and soon to be India's first Prime Minister, provided it. > >>>>>"Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny," he said. "At the > >>>>>stroke of the midnight hour, while the world sleeps, India will > >>>>>awaken to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in > >>>>>history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, > >>>>>and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance." > >>>>> > >>>>>Posterity has enshrined this speech, as Nehru clearly intended. But > >>>>>today his quaint phrase "tryst with destiny" resonates ominously, so > >>>>>enduring have been the political and psychological scars of > >>>>>partition. The souls of the two new nation-states immediately found > >>>>>utterance in brutal enmity. In Punjab, armed vigilante groups, > >>>>>organized along religious lines and incited by local politicians, > >>>>>murdered countless people, abducting and raping thousands of women. > >>>>>Soon, India and Pakistan were fighting a war-the first of three-over > >>>>>the disputed territory of Kashmir. Gandhi, reduced to despair by the > >>>>>seemingly endless cycle of retaliatory mass murders and displacement, > >>>>>was shot dead in January, 1948, by a Hindu extremist who believed > >>>>>that the father of the Indian nation was too soft on Muslims. Jinnah, > >>>>>racked with tuberculosis and overwork, died a few months later, his > >>>>>dream of a secular Pakistan apparently buried with him. > >>>>> > >>>>>Many of the seeds of postcolonial disorder in South Asia were sown > >>>>>much earlier, in two centuries of direct and indirect British rule, > >>>>>but, as book after book has demonstrated, nothing in the complex > >>>>>tragedy of partition was inevitable. In "Indian Summer" (Henry Holt; > >>>>>$30), Alex von Tunzelmann pays particular attention to how > >>>>>negotiations were shaped by an interplay of personalities. Von > >>>>>Tunzelmann goes on a bit too much about the Mountbattens' open > >>>>>marriage and their connections to various British royals, toffs, and > >>>>>fops, but her account, unlike those of some of her fellow British > >>>>>historians, isn't filtered by nostalgia. She summarizes bluntly the > >>>>>economic record of the British overlords, who, though never as > >>>>>rapacious and destructive as the Belgians in the Congo, damaged > >>>>>agriculture and retarded industrial growth in India through a blind > >>>>>faith in the "invisible hand" that supposedly regulated markets. Von > >>>>>Tunzelmann echoes Edmund Burke's denunciation of the East India > >>>>>Company when she terms the empire's corporate forerunner a "beast" > >>>>>whose "only object was money"; and she reminds readers that, in 1877, > >>>>>the year that Queen Victoria officially became Empress of India, a > >>>>>famine in the south killed five million people even as the Queen's > >>>>>viceroy remained adamant that famine relief was a misguided policy. > >>>>> > >>>>>Politically, too, British rule in India was deeply conservative, > >>>>>limiting Indian access to higher education, industry, and the civil > >>>>>service. Writing in the New York Tribune in the mid-nineteenth > >>>>>century, Karl Marx predicted that British colonials would prove to be > >>>>>the "unconscious tool" of a "social revolution" in a subcontinent > >>>>>stagnating under "Oriental despotism." As it turned out, the British, > >>>>>while restricting an educated middle class, empowered a multitude of > >>>>>petty Oriental despots. (In 1947, there were five hundred and > >>>>>sixty-five of these feudatories, often called maharajas, running > >>>>>states as large as Belgium and as small as Central Park.) > >>>>> > >>>>>Though blessed with many able administrators, the British found India > >>>>>just too large and diverse to handle. Many of their decisions stoked > >>>>>Hindu-Muslim tensions, imposing sharp new religious-political > >>>>>identities on Indians. As the recent experience of Iraq proves, > >>>>>elections in a country where the rights and responsibilities of > >>>>>secular and democratic citizenship are largely unknown do little more > >>>>>than crudely assert the majority's right to rule. British-supervised > >>>>>elections in 1937 and 1946, which the Hindu-dominated Congress won > >>>>>easily, only hardened Muslim identity, and made partition inevitable. > >>>>> > >>>>>This was a deeper tragedy than is commonly realized-and not only > >>>>>because India today has almost as many Muslims as Pakistan. In a land > >>>>>where cultures, traditions, and beliefs cut across religious > >>>>>communities, few people had defined themselves exclusively through > >>>>>their ancestral faith. The Pashto-speaking Muslim in the North-West > >>>>>Frontier province (later the nursery of the Taliban and Al Qaeda) had > >>>>>little in common with the Bangla-speaking Muslim in the eastern > >>>>>province of Bengal. (Even today, a Sunni Muslim from Lahore has less > >>>>>in common with a Sunni Muslim from Dhaka than he has with a Hindu > >>>>>Brahmin from New Delhi, who, in turn, may find alien the language, > >>>>>food, and dress of a low-caste Hindu from Chennai.) The British > >>>>>policy of defining communities based on religious identity radically > >>>>>altered Indian self-perceptions, as von Tunzelmann points out: "Many > >>>>>Indians stopped accepting the diversity of their own thoughts and > >>>>>began to ask themselves in which of the boxes they belonged." > >>>>> > >>>>>Ineptitude and negligence directed British policies in India more > >>>>>than any cynical desire to divide and rule, but the British were not > >>>>>above exploiting rivalries. As late as 1940, Winston Churchill hoped > >>>>>that Hindu-Muslim antagonism would remain "a bulwark of British rule > >>>>>in India." Certainly Churchill, who did not want his views on India > >>>>>to be "disturbed by any bloody Indians," was disinclined to recognize > >>>>>the upsurge of nationalism in India. Imperial authority in India > >>>>>rested on the claim that the British, as representatives of a > >>>>>superior civilization, were essentially benign custodians of a > >>>>>fractious country. But as an Indian middle-class élite trained in > >>>>>Western institutions became politicized-more aware of the nature and > >>>>>scale of Indian political and economic subjugation to > >>>>>Britain-self-serving British rhetoric about benevolent masters and > >>>>>volatile natives was bound to be challenged. And no one undermined > >>>>>British assumptions of moral and legal custodianship better than > >>>>>Gandhi, who was adept both at galvanizing the Indian masses and at > >>>>>alerting the British to the gap between their high claims and the > >>>>>reality of their rule. With a series of imaginative, often carefully > >>>>>choreographed campaigns of civil disobedience throughout the > >>>>>nineteen-twenties, Gandhi shook the confidence of the British, > >>>>>becoming, by 1931, as India's viceroy Lord Willingdon put it in a > >>>>>letter to King George V, a "terribly difficult little person." Once > >>>>>such middle-class nationalists as Gandhi and Nehru acquired a popular > >>>>>following, independence was only a matter of time. If anything, > >>>>>Gandhi's doctrine of nonviolence probably reduced the threat that a > >>>>>nationwide uprising would force an early and bloody exit for the > >>>>>British. > >>>>> > >>>>>Through the nineteen-thirties, Gandhi had a few perceptive and > >>>>>sympathetic British interlocutors, such as the viceroy Lord Irwin, > >>>>>who when asked if he thought Gandhi was tiresome retorted, "Some > >>>>>people thought Our Lord very tiresome." For the most part, though, > >>>>>Gandhi dealt with such hidebound members of Britain's landowning > >>>>>class as Lord Linlithgow, who, as viceroy of India in the crucial > >>>>>period from 1936 to 1943, liked to be accompanied into dinner every > >>>>>evening by a band playing "The Roast Beef of Old England"-a tactless > >>>>>choice of preprandial music in the land of the holy cow. In 1939, > >>>>>without consulting any Indian leaders, Linlithgow declared war on > >>>>>Germany on behalf of India, committing two and a half million Indian > >>>>>soldiers to the Allied cause. Convinced that independence for India > >>>>>was many decades away, he found an equally obdurate ally in London > >>>>>once Churchill came to power, in 1940. > >>>>> > >>>>>In the nineteen-twenties and thirties, Churchill had been loudest > >>>>>among the reactionaries who were determined not to lose India, "the > >>>>>jewel in the crown," and, as Prime Minister during the Second World > >>>>>War, he tried every tactic to thwart Indian independence. "I hate > >>>>>Indians," he declared. "They are a beastly people with a beastly > >>>>>religion." He had a special animus for Gandhi, describing him as a > >>>>>"rascal" and a "half-naked" "fakir." (In a letter to Churchill, > >>>>>Gandhi took the latter as a compliment, claiming that he was striving > >>>>>for even greater renunciation.) According to his own Secretary of > >>>>>State for India, Leopold Amery, Churchill knew "as much of the Indian > >>>>>problem as George III did of the American colonies." > >>>>> > >>>>>In 1942, as the Japanese Army advanced on India, the Congress Party > >>>>>was willing to offer war support in return for immediate > >>>>>self-government. But Churchill was in no mood to negotiate. > >>>>>Frustrated by his stonewalling tactics, the Congress Party launched a > >>>>>vigorous "Quit India" campaign in August of 1942. The British > >>>>>suppressed it ruthlessly, imprisoning tens of thousands, including > >>>>>Gandhi and Nehru. Meanwhile, Churchill's indispensable quartermaster > >>>>>Franklin D. Roosevelt was aware of the contradiction in claiming to > >>>>>fight for freedom and democracy while keeping India under foreign > >>>>>occupation. In letters and telegrams, he continually urged Churchill > >>>>>to move India toward self-government, only to receive replies that > >>>>>waffled and prevaricated. Muslims, Churchill once claimed, made up > >>>>>seventy-five per cent of the Indian Army (the actual figure was close > >>>>>to thirty-five), and none of them wanted to be ruled by the "Hindu > >>>>>priesthood." > >>>>> > >>>>>Von Tunzelmann judges that Churchill, hoping to forestall > >>>>>independence by opportunistically supporting Muslim separatism, > >>>>>instead became "instrumental in creating the world's first modern > >>>>>Islamic state." This is a bit unfair-not to Churchill but to Jinnah, > >>>>>the founder of Pakistan. Though always keen to incite Muslim > >>>>>disaffection in his last years, the Anglicized, whiskey-drinking > >>>>>Jinnah was far from being an Islamic theocrat; he wanted a secular > >>>>>Pakistan, in which Muslims, Hindus, and Christians were equal before > >>>>>the law. (In fact, political Islam found only intermittent support > >>>>>within Pakistan until the nineteen-eighties, when the country's > >>>>>military dictator, working with the Saudis and the C.I.A., turned the > >>>>>North-West Frontier province into the base of a global jihad against > >>>>>the Soviet occupation of neighboring Afghanistan.) > >>>>> > >>>>>What Leopold Amery denounced as Churchill's "Hitler-like attitude" to > >>>>>India manifested itself most starkly during a famine, caused by a > >>>>>combination of war and mismanagement, that claimed between one and > >>>>>two million lives in Bengal in 1943. Urgently beseeched by Amery and > >>>>>the Indian viceroy to release food stocks for India, Churchill > >>>>>responded with a telegram asking why Gandhi hadn't died yet. > >>>>> > >>>>>"It is strange," George Orwell wrote in his diary in August, 1942, > >>>>>"but quite truly the way the British government is now behaving in > >>>>>India upsets me more than a military defeat." Orwell, who produced > >>>>>many BBC broadcasts from London to India during the war, feared that > >>>>>"if these repressive measures in India are seemingly successful, the > >>>>>effects in this country will be very bad. All seems set for a big > >>>>>comeback by the reactionaries." But in the British elections at the > >>>>>end of the war, the reactionaries unexpectedly lost to the Labour > >>>>>Party, and a new era in British politics began. > >>>>> > >>>>>As von Tunzelmann writes, "By 1946, the subcontinent was a mess, with > >>>>>British civil and military officers desperate to leave, and a growing > >>>>>hostility to their presence among Indians." In an authoritative > >>>>>recent two-volume account of the end of the British Empire in > >>>>>Asia-"Forgotten Armies" and "Forgotten Wars"-the Cambridge University > >>>>>historians Tim Harper and Christopher Bayly describe how quickly the > >>>>>Japanese had humiliated the British in Malaya and Burma, threatening > >>>>>their hold over India. With their mystique of power gone, Asia's > >>>>>British masters depended on what Bayly and Harper term the "temporary > >>>>>sufferance of Asians." Although Churchill had rejected the Congress > >>>>>Party's offer of military support in exchange for independence, > >>>>>Bayley and Harper write that, ultimately, "it was Indian soldiers, > >>>>>civilian laborers and businessmen who made possible the victory of > >>>>>1945. Their price was the rapid independence of India." > >>>>> > >>>>>The British could not now rely on brute force without imperilling > >>>>>their own sense of legitimacy. Besides, however much they "preferred > >>>>>the illusion of imperial might to the admission of imperial failure," > >>>>>as von Tunzelmann puts it, the country, deep in wartime debt, simply > >>>>>couldn't afford to hold on to its increasingly unstable empire. > >>>>>Imperial disengagement appeared not just inevitable but urgent. > >>>>> > >>>>>But Churchill's divisive policies had already produced a disastrous > >>>>>effect on the Indian political scene. Congress Party leaders had > >>>>>refused to share power with Jinnah, confident that they did not need > >>>>>Muslim support in order to win a majority vote in elections. These > >>>>>attitudes stoked Muslim fears that the secular nationalism of Gandhi > >>>>>and Nehru was a cover for Hindu dominance. While the Congress leaders > >>>>>were in prison, Jinnah, with Churchill's encouragement, steadily > >>>>>consolidated Muslim opinion behind him. By 1946, this secularist > >>>>>politician had managed to present himself as the best defender of > >>>>>Muslim interests in a Hindu-dominated India. Religion was never so > >>>>>deeply and enduringly politicized in India as it was in the last > >>>>>years of imperial rule. > >>>>> > >>>>>At first, Nehru and other Congress Party leaders dismissed the idea > >>>>>of Pakistan as a joke. Jinnah demonstrated his newfound power by > >>>>>ordering mass strikes across India, many of which degenerated into > >>>>>Hindu-Muslim riots. In just three days in August, 1946, four thousand > >>>>>residents of Calcutta died. Retaliatory killings around the country > >>>>>further envenomed political attitudes. A heartbroken Gandhi found > >>>>>fewer and fewer takers for nonviolence, even among his Congress > >>>>>Party, many of whose leaders spoke openly of civil war. > >>>>> > >>>>>When the improbably handsome Mountbatten arrived, in March of 1947, > >>>>>with his rich and beautiful wife, he did not initially seem up to the > >>>>>task of supervising British withdrawal and giving a viable > >>>>>postcolonial shape to the subcontinent. Not everyone had been > >>>>>impressed by his elevation, in 1943, to the post of the supreme > >>>>>commander of the Allied Forces in South-East Asia. His American > >>>>>deputy, General Joseph Stilwell, concluded, "The Glamour Boy is just > >>>>>that. Enormous staff, endless walla-walla, but damned little > >>>>>fighting." It was probably just as well that Mountbatten did little > >>>>>fighting. Early in the war, he had sailed the destroyer H.M.S. Kelly > >>>>>into a minefield before ramming it into another British ship. After > >>>>>exposing his ship to German torpedo fire ("That's going to kill an > >>>>>awful lot of chaps," he recalled thinking as he saw the metal > >>>>>streaking toward him), Mountbatten finally saw it sunk by German > >>>>>dive-bombers off the coast of Crete. > >>>>> > >>>>>Known in the British Admiralty as the Master of Disaster, Mountbatten > >>>>>nonetheless displayed astonishing political maturity as the war ended > >>>>>in the Asian countries under his command. He realized that prolonged > >>>>>Japanese occupation of Malaya, Burma, Indonesia, and Indochina had > >>>>>unleashed nationalistic aspirations that exhausted European empires > >>>>>would not be able to suppress. He advised the French that war with > >>>>>the Viet Minh, who had declared an independent Vietnam soon after the > >>>>>Japanese surrender, was pointless, and he even supported an ambitious > >>>>>plan by the British Labour politician Tom Driberg to negotiate with > >>>>>Ho Chi Minh. He had little sympathy for the efforts of the Dutch to > >>>>>reassert their authority in Indonesia, and in Burma he infuriated the > >>>>>old imperialist guard by promoting the nationalist radical Aung San > >>>>>(the father of the long-imprisoned activist Aung San Suu Kyi). > >>>>> > >>>>>The awesome task Mountbatten faced in India may have appealed to his > >>>>>ego. Though he knew little of the intricacies of Indian politics, he > >>>>>deployed a great deal of personal charm; and he had an effective ally > >>>>>in his estranged wife, Edwina. Together, this "power couple" went to > >>>>>work on Indian leaders. Gandhi succumbed, as did the Anglophilic > >>>>>Nehru, who grew particularly close to Edwina. Jinnah, however, > >>>>>remained difficult to please. > >>>>> > >>>>>New problems arose every day. British concessions to Muslim > >>>>>separatism emboldened other religious and ethnic minorities. The > >>>>>fiercely tribalist Pashtuns of the North-West Frontier province, wary > >>>>>of Jinnah, asked for Pathanistan; the Naga tribes in the northeastern > >>>>>hills, who had been armed by the British to fight the Japanese, > >>>>>demanded Nagastan; the Sikhs proposed Sikhistan; the Baluchis went > >>>>>ahead and declared an independent Baluchistan. Mountbatten defused > >>>>>most of these would-be secessionists with a mixture of sweet-talking > >>>>>and bluster. His aristocratic connections came in particularly handy > >>>>>as he placated maharajas who were abruptly forced to choose between > >>>>>India and Pakistan. The trickiest of them, the Hindu ruler of > >>>>>Kashmir, who presided over a Muslim-majority population, was later to > >>>>>accede to India in circumstances that remain controversial and have > >>>>>preserved Pakistan's claims on the state. > >>>>> > >>>>>Eventually, after wrangling and recriminations, Mountbatten got > >>>>>Indian leaders to agree to partition. Then, abruptly, in early June, > >>>>>he announced August 15, 1947, as the date for the transfer of power, > >>>>>bringing forward the British government's original schedule by nine > >>>>>months. The reason for this rush is not known. Mountbatten may have > >>>>>wanted to inject some urgency into the tortuous negotiations about > >>>>>who would get what-even ink pots were to be divided between the new > >>>>>nation-states. He may also have simply wanted to cut and run. In any > >>>>>case, his decision is partly to blame for the disasters that followed. > >>>>> > >>>>>Cyril Radcliffe, a London barrister, was flown to Delhi and given > >>>>>forty days to define precisely the strange political geography of an > >>>>>India flanked by an eastern and a western wing called Pakistan. He > >>>>>did not visit the villages, communities, rivers, or forests divided > >>>>>by the lines he drew on paper. Ill-informed about the relation > >>>>>between agricultural hinterlands and industrial centers, he made a > >>>>>mistake of enormous economic consequence when, dividing Bengal on > >>>>>religious lines, he deprived the Muslim majority in the eastern > >>>>>region of its major city, Calcutta, condemning East Pakistan-and, > >>>>>later, Bangladesh-to decades of rural backwardness. > >>>>> > >>>>>It was in Punjab that Radcliffe's mapmaking sparked the biggest > >>>>>conflagration. As Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs on either side of the > >>>>>new border suddenly found themselves reduced to a religious minority, > >>>>>the tensions of the preceding months exploded into the violence of > >>>>>ethnic cleansing. It seems extraordinary today that so few among the > >>>>>cabal of Indian leaders whom Mountbatten consulted anticipated that > >>>>>the drawing of borders and the crystallizing of national identities > >>>>>along religious lines would plunge millions into bewilderment, panic, > >>>>>and murderous rage. If the British were eager to divide and quit, > >>>>>their successors wanted to savor power. No one had prepared for a > >>>>>massive transfer of population. Even as armed militias roamed the > >>>>>countryside, looking for people to kidnap, rape, and kill, houses to > >>>>>loot, and trains to derail and burn, the only force capable of > >>>>>restoring order, the British Indian Army, was itself being divided > >>>>>along religious lines-Muslim soldiers to Pakistan, Hindus to India. > >>>>>Soon, many of the communalized soldiers would join their > >>>>>co-religionists in killing sprees, giving the violence of partition > >>>>>its genocidal cast. Radcliffe never returned to India. Just before > >>>>>his death, in 1977, he told a journalist, "I suspect they'd shoot me > >>>>>out of hand-both sides." > >>>>> > >>>>>Trains carrying nothing but corpses through a desolate countryside > >>>>>became the totemic image of the savagery of partition. British > >>>>>soldiers confined to their barracks, ordered by Mountbatten to save > >>>>>only British lives, may prove to be the most enduring image of > >>>>>imperial retreat. With this act of moral dereliction, the British > >>>>>Empire finally disowned its noble sense of mission. As Paul Scott put > >>>>>it in "The Raj Quartet," the epic of imperial exhaustion and > >>>>>disillusion, India in 1947 was where the empire's high idea of itself > >>>>>collapsed and "the British came to the end of themselves as they > >>>>>were." > >>>>> > >>>>>The British Empire passed quickly and with less humiliation than its > >>>>>French and Dutch counterparts, but decades later the vicious politics > >>>>>of partition still seems to define India and Pakistan. The millions > >>>>>of Muslims who chose to stay in India never ceased to be hostages to > >>>>>Hindu extremists. As recently as 2002, Hindu nationalists massacred > >>>>>more than two thousand Muslims in the state of Gujarat. The dispute > >>>>>over Kashmir, the biggest unfinished business of partition, committed > >>>>>countries with mostly poor and illiterate populations to a nuclear > >>>>>arms race and nourished extremists in both countries: Islamic > >>>>>fundamentalists in Pakistan, Hindu nationalists in India. It also > >>>>>damaged India's fragile democracy-Indian soldiers and policemen in > >>>>>Kashmir routinely execute and torture Pakistan-backed Muslim > >>>>>insurgents-and helped cement the military's extra-constitutional > >>>>>influence over Pakistan's inherently weaker state. Tens of thousands > >>>>>have died in Kashmir in the past decade and a half, and since 1947 > >>>>>sectarian conflicts in India and Pakistan have killed thousands more. > >>>>> > >>>>>Many ethnic minorities chafed at the postcolonial nationalism of > >>>>>India and Pakistan, and some rebelled. At least one group-Bengali > >>>>>Muslims-succeeded in establishing their own nation-state > >>>>>(Bangladesh), though only after suffering another round of ethnic > >>>>>cleansing, this time by fellow-Muslims. Other minorities demanding > >>>>>political autonomy-Nagas, Sikhs, Kashmiris, Baluchis-were quelled, > >>>>>often with greater brutality than the British had ever used against > >>>>>their subjects. > >>>>> > >>>>>Meeting Mountbatten a few months after partition, Churchill assailed > >>>>>him for helping Britain's "enemies," "Hindustan," against "Britain's > >>>>>friends," the Muslims. Little did Churchill know that his expedient > >>>>>boosting of political Islam would eventually unleash a global jihad > >>>>>engulfing even distant New York and London. The rival nationalisms > >>>>>and politicized religions the British Empire brought into being now > >>>>>clash in an enlarged geopolitical arena; and the human costs of > >>>>>imperial overreaching seem unlikely to attain a final tally for many > >>>>>more decades. (r) > >>>>> > >>>>> > > > > > >_______________________________________________ > >Biofuel mailing list > >Biofuel@sustainablelists.org > >http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel > > > >Biofuel at Journey to Forever: > >http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html > > > >Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 > messages): > >http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/ > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Biofuel mailing list > Biofuel@sustainablelists.org > http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel > > Biofuel at Journey to Forever: > http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html > > Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 > messages): > http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/ > _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
