What’s so heart-breaking and rage-inspiring about it?
India wanted independence. India got independence. Pretty sweet deal, if you ask me.
Is this our daily historical reasons why we should be ashamed to be British article from The Guardian? Haven’t even had coffee yet.
I didn’t spot this, but looks interesting. Funnily enough, the last Marvel TV show – Ms Marvel – talked quite a lot (albeit as background) about the partition, and I’d like to know a bit more.
One thing that gets me about the way that the media paints a picture of the Partition and how evil Britain was, is that I don’t think I have ever seen another valid option for the majority of colonial Indian independence put forward.
Colonial India needed to leave the British Empire. It couldn’t do that as a whole due to deep religious divides that became so apparent after the partition, so it was split very roughly down those divides. This was planed and know about for half a year. On the 18 July 1947 the plan reached royal assent and on the 15 August 1947 the Dominions of India and Pakistan were created, with the partition of the provinces of Bengal and Punjab split between the two new countries.
Then all hell breaks lose after independence. 2 million people end up dying and between 10 million to 20 million displaced.
Nobody is going to deny what directly followed independence was a terrible and horrific thing and that as the overseer that split of colonial India and the creation of two new countries, Britain was, and will always be directly responsible for what happened.
The problem is that wherever you draw a line on a map – you are going to get large groups of people hundreds of miles on the wrong side of it, and generally that’s going to work out very badly for them if their neighbours suddenly decide to murder them because they wear the wrong hat or worship the wrong god. I don’t think anyone expected that to happen, least of all the British.
I think given what followed independence, sadly Britain would have always been the scapegoat whatever solution was proffered. The Indian Subcontinent wasn’t a cohesive single country before the “Empire” ran it as ran it as one big colony, so maybe the whole region should have been split back into all the micro Kingdoms that existed in the 1700’s? The problem with that is that even back then no one could decide on where the borers lay and everywhere from Afghanistan to Burma was in a more or less perpetual state of subjugation and war with it’s neighbours.
The more I read about the independence of India and Pakistan, increasingly I become less sure about how else Britain could have mitigated what happened, and how Britain should have organised the split so that the two new countries didn’t immediately go on a religious rampage, especially given that Britain had nothing to do with controlling the new countries or their populations any more.
Imperfect yes but the result was an India which with arguably with the exception of the 1975-77 emergency has been a functioning democracy that has seen incredible improvement in the life of its citizens. So at least some part of it was done rite. The British can be blamed for the displacement of people but not the killing that lies on the people who did it, humans know morality and no one forced them to murder people.
Imagine being a person who is worshipped for being born in right nutsack. I am talking about dumb royal family. Chruchill was a racist POS and whole empire was no 1 at stealing/murder/massacres.
Then make a museum shamelessly potraying their stealing techniques.
Some are even proud of british Empire. Because you master gave us railways.
You must be proud of African slaves too. We, superior british, went to Africa and found jobless Africans. We took and gave them job!!
6 comments
What’s so heart-breaking and rage-inspiring about it?
India wanted independence. India got independence. Pretty sweet deal, if you ask me.
Is this our daily historical reasons why we should be ashamed to be British article from The Guardian? Haven’t even had coffee yet.
I didn’t spot this, but looks interesting. Funnily enough, the last Marvel TV show – Ms Marvel – talked quite a lot (albeit as background) about the partition, and I’d like to know a bit more.
One thing that gets me about the way that the media paints a picture of the Partition and how evil Britain was, is that I don’t think I have ever seen another valid option for the majority of colonial Indian independence put forward.
Colonial India needed to leave the British Empire. It couldn’t do that as a whole due to deep religious divides that became so apparent after the partition, so it was split very roughly down those divides. This was planed and know about for half a year. On the 18 July 1947 the plan reached royal assent and on the 15 August 1947 the Dominions of India and Pakistan were created, with the partition of the provinces of Bengal and Punjab split between the two new countries.
Then all hell breaks lose after independence. 2 million people end up dying and between 10 million to 20 million displaced.
Nobody is going to deny what directly followed independence was a terrible and horrific thing and that as the overseer that split of colonial India and the creation of two new countries, Britain was, and will always be directly responsible for what happened.
The problem is that wherever you draw a line on a map – you are going to get large groups of people hundreds of miles on the wrong side of it, and generally that’s going to work out very badly for them if their neighbours suddenly decide to murder them because they wear the wrong hat or worship the wrong god. I don’t think anyone expected that to happen, least of all the British.
I think given what followed independence, sadly Britain would have always been the scapegoat whatever solution was proffered. The Indian Subcontinent wasn’t a cohesive single country before the “Empire” ran it as ran it as one big colony, so maybe the whole region should have been split back into all the micro Kingdoms that existed in the 1700’s? The problem with that is that even back then no one could decide on where the borers lay and everywhere from Afghanistan to Burma was in a more or less perpetual state of subjugation and war with it’s neighbours.
The more I read about the independence of India and Pakistan, increasingly I become less sure about how else Britain could have mitigated what happened, and how Britain should have organised the split so that the two new countries didn’t immediately go on a religious rampage, especially given that Britain had nothing to do with controlling the new countries or their populations any more.
Imperfect yes but the result was an India which with arguably with the exception of the 1975-77 emergency has been a functioning democracy that has seen incredible improvement in the life of its citizens. So at least some part of it was done rite. The British can be blamed for the displacement of people but not the killing that lies on the people who did it, humans know morality and no one forced them to murder people.
Imagine being a person who is worshipped for being born in right nutsack. I am talking about dumb royal family. Chruchill was a racist POS and whole empire was no 1 at stealing/murder/massacres.
Then make a museum shamelessly potraying their stealing techniques.
Some are even proud of british Empire. Because you master gave us railways.
You must be proud of African slaves too. We, superior british, went to Africa and found jobless Africans. We took and gave them job!!
British are seen as evil as nazis for indians.