Good Colonialism?

[BobbyO]

History would be unimaginable without colonialism. Roman colonialism is responsible for the major languages of the world, Bavarian colonialism for Austria, British colonialism for the United States.

[lsbskins1]

Bobby-O
Let me help. I can't read it for you, so you'll have to work with me some...

All these are from my previous link:

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.)

The British made the situation worse by trying to keep the masses uneducated. This made them less informed participants and limited their ability to effectively govern themselves after the British left. And propping up those petty despots, made each think they were entitled to retain that power after the British were gone and made the situation worse.

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.

Those you divide to rule, develop petty hatreds that tend to boil out of control once the "controlling hand of the master" is removed. This makes the situation worse once you leave. Then it becomes a power struggle to see who gets to be the new "master" of the remaining "slaves".

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.)

More of the same, except now we see how our own stupid cold war short sightedness helped make the world even LESS safe.


You really need to learn how to connect dots.

[BobbyO]

The British made the situation worse by trying to keep the masses uneducated. This made them less informed participants and limited their ability to effectively govern themselves after the British left. And propping up those petty despots, made each think they were entitled to retain that power after the British were gone and made the situation worse.



Those you divide to rule, develop petty hatreds that tend to boil out of control once the "controlling hand of the master" is removed. This makes the situation worse once you leave. Then it becomes a power struggle to see who gets to be the new "master" of the remaining "slaves".



More of the same, except now we see how our own stupid cold war short sightedness helped make the world even LESS safe.


You really need to learn how to connect dots.[/quote]

Let's think about this a bit. First of all, you approach the issue as if the UK, when they arrived in India, found a single political entity which they proceeded to divide. They did not. It was already divided politically. The UK responded and organised accordingly.

You then wish to say these political entities resided in harmony. Again, they did not. There had always been conflicts between Islam and Hinduism. Islam spread into India in its typical manner- via the sword.

You then wish to say the English wished to keep the Indians uneducated- as if India a deeply caste society, was otherwise interested in educating all its people, absent the british empire.

You further say the pre-war elections exacerbated the problem. And you are right. India was not ready for independence. yet they were pushed out by people who argue that colonialism is "bad."

The problem that the Islamic world faced in the mid and near east after WW II, is that they adopted the socialist style governence that they saw arising out of the UK and France. That was the key to prosperity. Not surprising, there was bitter dissapointment. So the Islamic world has been swinging toward fundamentalism as the answer to their problem. And they will find that also dissapointing.

[lsbskins1]

Well, if you think that the British "responded and organized accordingly", there is no amount of reason that will touch your attitude. You apparently need to feel part of a superior breed in order to not feel worthless. Most people would look at the practices of British colonialism and say, "Man, it sure would suck to be governed like that." You look at the practices and apparently think, "What do you expect, they were trying to control savage wogs!"

As to your contentions about pre-colonial education, you miss the point entirely. In pre-colonial times, education was not what it is today. Very few people were educated beyond minimum necessity. The issue is that once we moved towards the modern, industrial world, the benefits of an educated public were known. But it was also known that educated people expected more from their lives and were less easily exploited. The British denied to the masses in India what they knew would make them harder to control. It is not about comparing pre-colonial education levels to colonial era education levels. It is about acknowledging the fact that the British deliberately kept the relative education levels of the Indians in the toilet in comparison to what was possible.

If India was "not ready", it was not because of lack of ability, it was because of colonial policy. You are hoist with your own petard on that one.

And India is not an Islamic country. Pakistan is, but India is not. And the Islamic nations did not turn to socialistic policies because of the UK and France. Study some geopolitics. They gravitated that way because the Western, capitalist world did little but exploit them and they turned to the enemy of their enemy, the Soviet Union.

[xyzer]

Yep Ibskins..

They divided after the British left because of resentments fostered by the British during their rule. How could they divide DURING British rule? The British were ruling then. Errrr! Duh!

They divided because of the Muslim influence. The division between Islamics and Hindus was held in check by the British. When the country became free of colonial control it split for religious reasons. Pakistan was a product of that split!

Another example of Islams divisive influence whereever it exists.

[grandpa]

Quote by: xyzer Yep Ibskins.. They divided because of the Muslim influence.

Oh, sure...Hindus (and the conquering British) had nothing to do with the division. Actually, conquered people rarely behave sociably.

Grandpa h.

[lsbskins1]

Quote by: xyzer Yep Ibskins.. They divided because of the Muslim influence. The division between Islamics and Hindus was held in check by the British. When the country became free of colonial control it split for religious reasons. Pakistan was a product of that split! Another example of Islams divisive influence wherever it exists.

Yet, according to this (Mughal Empire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), the longest and most advantageous period for all Indians was under Islamic rule. And this puts the lie to the idea that Islam is not capable of living a peaceful coexistence with other religions. Granted, the decline of the Moghul Empire began when Islam tried to assert itself over others. But the simple fact is, had the colonial powers chosen to emphasize the many, many years of peaceful and prosperous coexistence between Hindu and Muslim, rather than try to inflame the differences during their rule and especially towards the end when they were frantically attempting to retain that control, perhaps we would live in a different world. It could hardly be worse.