Forget the piece, isn't that photograph, by Margaret Bourke-White, just stunning?
On 8/11/07, Dave Kumar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I hesitate to start this discussion with some of the opinionated folks out > there (oh, who am I kidding?), but I found this to be very > interesting. It > is a "book review" in the New Yorker, although it is really just a column > that doesn't really review the book. The original article is quite long, > but > I thought worth the read. > > > http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/08/13/070813crbo_books_mishra > > [snip] > > 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. > [snip] > -- Amit Varma http://www.indiauncut.com
