The great India. Ruled by the Pal, Sen, Muslim and British. A land of
beauty, where thousands of cultures unite. Other than British all rulers had to merge with the Indian culture and be a part of them. On the other hand British landed here on the plea of doing business but shattered its social structure with continuous attacks on peasants,
communal harmony and rules of the home business.
The East India Company originated on 31 December 1600 through royal charter with monopoly on all trade with the East Indies. The Company's ships first arrived at Surat in 1608. Sir Thomas Roe gained permission to establish a factory at Surat from Mughal Emperor, Jahangir, in 1615. Gradually the British set up numerous trading posts along the east and west coasts of India. As early as in 1669 Gerald Ungier, chief of Bombay factory had written to his directors: "The time now requires you to manage your general commerce with the sword in your hands". So from then, they were looking for establishing their root here in India even at the cost of bitter fights. With the continuation, in 1717, the Company achieved the most critical success when it received a Dastak or royal edict from the Mughal Emperor exempting the Company from the payment of custom duties in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. Taking this advantage, company employees carried on personal business without paying duty to Nawab Siraj Ud Daulah. In this way the East India Company strengthened their root in the soil of India. This was one of their major successes. But conspiracy did not bring to a halt.
In 1752, Robert Orme, in a letter to Clive, noted that the company would have to remove Alivardi Khan in order to prosper. Instructions on October 13, 1756 from Fort St. George, Madras instructed Robert Clive, "to effect a junction with any powers in the province of Bengal that might be dissatisfied with the violence of the Nawab's government or
that might have pretensions to the Nawabship". Accordingly, Clive
deputized William Watts to negotiate with two potential contenders. One
of them was Nabab's generals, Yar Latif Khan and other was his relative
and Army Chief, Mir Jafar Ali Khan. On April 23, 1757 the Board of
Directors of the Company approved Coup d'état as its policy in Bengal.
British succeeded infiltrating the Nawab’s highest ranks, his own
family, his Army Chief and his financers. ‘Nimak Haramer Deuri’ or the
‘Traitor’s Gate’ still stand today as witness to the secret meeting
where Watts met Mir Jafar in disguise of a Borkha clad women in a
Palanquin. Finally, on June 5, 1757 a written agreement was signed
between the Company, represented by Clive, and Mir Jafar which ensured
that Mir Jafar would be appointed Nawab of Bengal once Siraj Ud Daulah
was deposed.
The Bengal Nawab became engaged in war of existence as Clive made some
cunning steps. The war of Palashi against Clive was the war to save
Indian glory and also to resist British aggressors. But Siraj lost.
Treachery was the reason. Enemies were set among their own. At the
beginning of the war Nawab forces conquered. But Clive was emboldened by
reinforcement from Madras. Moreover, the Nawab was also preoccupied
with the invasion from the west by Ahmed Shah Abdali of Afghanistan.
More than anything else, chief Army officer of Nawab, Mir Jafar Ali Khan
was a betrayer in spite of having advantage of more soldiers. Thus the
British business company started a heinous way of betrayal and
treachery. That laid its shadow through the whole period of Indian
colony.
British colonies spread through the world by adopting three ways.
In Settlement colonies the colonizing country migrated to and eventually
took complete control of every resource. Natives were annihilated
through killing or by exposure to disease. Colonies of settlement were
located in temperate zones, with climates similar to Europe’s. Examples
of settlement colonies include English colonies in parts of the United
States, Canada, and Australia.
Secondly, `Colonies of Exploitation’. Those were the tropical
dependencies where British went primarily as planters, administrators,
merchants, or military officers. Foreign colonizers established
political control, if necessary using force against colonial resistance.
But natives were not displaced or killed. Colonies of exploitation
included Indonesia and Malaya in Southeast Asia, and Nigeria and Ghana
in West Africa.
Third one is of contested type. A significant number of European
settlers took up permanent residence. They tended to develop their own
government parallel to the parent country and politically dominated
native peoples. Examples of contested settlement colonies include
Algeria and Southern Rhodesia, both in Africa.
There are several other types of colonialism and imperialism, including
preexisting empires. Preexisting empires were or had been powerful
states that possessed a large population, strong political structures,
and a sophisticated economy. India under English rule is an example.
British started an unfair journey in India.
Now a brief narration of boundless British lootings and silent murders will be presented.
Since 1600, the British trading company used to buy delicate fineries
from India and paid in gold and silver. The issue created vast uproar of
protest among the British people, resenting the draining of the
precious metals from England to India. In those days, Europe had nothing
to export that had demand in India. But as soon as the company seized
control of Bengal Taxation after Palashi war, Indian commodities were
bought with the Indian currency. Besides while vying for all of India
and even for war waged in foreign location, the British Indian army was
financed by the Indian money. So exploitation and aggression got more
acute.
Right after Plassey, the looting and exploitation by the company started
unabated. As per agreement with Mir Jafar, Clive collected £ 2.5
million for the company and £ 234,000 for himself from the Nawab's
treasury. In addition, Watts collected £ 114,000 for his efforts. The
annual rent of £ 30,000 payable to the Nawab for use of the land around
Fort William was also transferred to Clive for life. To put this wealth
in context, an average British nobleman could live a life of luxury on
an annual income of £ 800.
During Warren Hastings, the first Governor General of India, expansion
of British rule was pursued vigorously. In 1784 Hastings was succeeded
by Cornwallis, who initiated the Permanent Settlement. Whereby an
agreement in perpetuity was reached with Zamindars or landlords for
revenue collection. British started a kind of genocide with the law.
Blueprints were made with the law to paralyze the peasants of India
politically and economically. Peasants had to be more dependants.
British initiated slavery. Peasants drowned under loan and were not able
to collect courage to resist the British. A numerous number of
peasants lost their lives, sons and even their wives’ respects due to
atrocities of the Jamindars. This British imposed mute genocide made
the Indian social structure collapse.
During Wellesley, total British territorial expansion was achieved. Major victories against Tipu Sultan of Mysore and the Marathas, and finally the subjugation and conquest of the
Sikhs in a series of Anglo- Sikh Wars led to British occupation all
over India. In some places, the British practiced indirect rule placing
a Resident at the native ruler’s court. By Lord Dalhousie's notorious
doctrine of lapse, native states became part of British India if there
was no male heir at the death of the ruler. Often annexation was
justified on misrule. Thus annexation and harsh revenue policies
exhausted all the potentialities of Indian agriculture.
Thus exploitation and being indifferent to the distress of local people
led to many terrible famines in India. Due to plundering of resources
and sheer indifference to the dire straits of the victims, Indian people
started suffering from full scale famines. The Great Bengal Famine of
1769-70, caused deaths to 10 million Indians in Bihar and Bengal.
During 1782-84, 11 million died for famine in Madras, Mysore, Delhi and
Punjub. During 1791-92, another 11 million died in Hyderabad,
Southern Maratha country, Deccan, Gujarat, and Marwar. The Agra famine
of 1837–38 caused 800,000 deaths. Orissa famine of 1866 killed 1
million. Rajputana famine of 1869 killed 1.5 million. The Great Famine
of 1876–78 killed 5.25 million in British territories of Madras and
Bombay alone. Bengal famine of 1943 killed 3 million in Bengal. All
through the 190 years of British rule, economic exploitation continued,
reflecting the fate of a Preexisting Colony of Exploitation. How should
we label this? Isn’t this genocide? Of course it is. Indirect
genocide; done by the British. What they wanted was to kill Indians on
any ground.
Thus for almost 200 years, wealth from India was systematically
transferred to Britain. British Banks used Indian capital to fund
industry in the US, Germany and elsewhere in Europe. Industrial
revolution and modern capitalism in the west were based on the
colonization of India. It was the forced pauperization of vast Indian
population that allowed nations like Britain and US to industrialize and
"modernize". This capital was collected through various means
including uneven trades, forced use of land and labor, great remittance
of Indian income and excessive extraction from the common Indians.
British used arms with no considerations breaching all the boundaries of
humanity. The western civilization raised on the base of the blood of
Indian peasants.
Atrocities by the British against upsurges
Atrocities committed by the British started long before the 1757 Plassey
conquest. With their usual cunning and calculative conspiracy, the
British company successfully used the internal Indian conflicts to bring
down many rulers. These were done coldly with unrestrained use of
weapons and widespread atrocities. The started fortifying their trade
posts with an imperial greed. The way the British supervised the cruelty
done to Siraj and his family.
Rampant and coercive exploitation by the British incited many rebellions
aimed to throw away the yolk of colonial subjugation. After Plassey
and during the imperial expansion throughout India, the peasants in
many areas flared many local peasant revolts and all of these uprising
were quelled through extreme atrocities by the British. Especially
after the Great Bengal Famine of 1770, both Hindu and Muslim peasants
of north and central Bengal revolted against the British and their
collective agents. Fakirs like Majnu Shah and Sanyasis like Bhabani
Pathak led the uprising that lasted for three decades. It took the
British at least a decade of burning villages and slaughtering Indians
to quell the revolt. Wasn’t it genocide? British had no right here.
They did not belong here. Even they could not be a part of the country
like others. Instead they transferred properties of the country to
theirs. Killed people. Obliterated vast areas.
Against their unruly, another peasant uprising in Rangpur district of
north Bengal in 1783-4, the Chuar uprising in Bankura and Midnapur that
lasted till 1799. These revolts killed many British and the reprisals
from them were brutal. Warren Hastings failed to suppress the Chuar
uprising and finally in 1799, Governor General Wellesly crushed the
uprising through a pincer attack. Many of the rebels were hung from
trees near Salboni in Midnapor, a place still known as the ‘heath of the
hanging upland’ or ‘Fanshi Dangar Math’. The question is who killed
whom coming from thousands miles apart? What right the British had to
hang natives from trees? Wasn’t this genocide?
Among later peasant and working class revolts, more vital ones include Bheel uprising from 1817 to 1846 in Bundelhkand of Uttar Pradesh,
Jat revolt of Rohtak and Hissar in Haryana, The Koli revolt of 1839 to
1845 all over Gujarat, aboriginal uprising during 1830 to1833 in
Chotanagar among the Mundas. The most important revolt was by the major
uprising by the Santals for attaining independence. These entire
grassroots level survival struggle against the wanton exploitation by
the British gained much ground and at those primary years of
colonization they posed major threats to British presence and their
mercantile exploitation that oppressed the grassroots poor. This threat
of annihilation to budding British rule was smashed by insensitive and
all-out atrocities and bloodshed resulting in defeat of the isolated
but well-determined liberation struggles by the poorest of the poor
under East India Company. Later on, the Muslim led Wahabi and Faraizi
uprising, though inspired by Islamic principles, was in fact a direct
struggle to uproot British rule from the subcontinent.
One salient point in British ascendancy in India was their cunning
strategy to use the feuds among local rulers to pit one of them against
the other by taking side with those inclined to them. Even in deposing
Siraj they manipulated the local conflicts. Later on conflicts between
various Indian rulers was also successfully utilized by the British in
spreading their domination all over India. This basic strategy of
‘Divide and Rule’ was persistent all through the British domination and
lingered into the ending decades of the British rule inciting communal
conflicts. They intentionally backed the two-nation theory to make sure
that the British India gets divided into warring states and becomes
weak in pursuing a real secular and united development approach
facilitating neo-colonialism.
Exploitation
India provided capital to the nascent industrial revolution in England
by providing cheap raw materials, capital and a large captive market
for British industry. In certain areas, farmers were forced to switch
from subsistence farming to commercial crops such as opium, indigo,
jute, tea and coffee. This resulted in famines and uprisings on a large
scale. In all these plundering exploits, the British company
successfully used the local people to extract revenue from their own
fellow citizens at the grassroots level. Weapons was used
indiscriminately and often at inhuman scale to clear the way to
exploitation and destitution.
Later on, as soon as the company secured Diwani or Tax collection rights
for Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, they fueled their exploitation of India
by Indian resources. Excessive and atrocious taxing policy loosened
widespread devastation in the agrarian sector with a height of
inhumanity that killed millions of toiling Indians through frequent
famines and perpetual pauperization.
Atrocities
Drawing inspiration from these localized revolts, the Sepoy Mutiny of
1857 was fought by Hindu and Muslim sepoys together to oust the British,
an incident cited by many historians as the ‘First Struggle of
Independence’ in India. The exterminating violence resorted by the
British in all revolts proved them to be a bloodthirsty rulers prepared
to perpetrate any level of inhuman atrocities, violence and conspiracy
to safeguard their colonial possession.
During the Sepoy Mutiny, rebel sepoys were blown by cannon fires and in Delhi,
the Mughal princes were massacred en masse. Force was also used in
compelling the local farmers to cultivate cash crops. Under the crown as
well, atrocities were perpetrated to quell the armed revolts in
various Indian sections. The cruel Jallianwalla Bagh massacre due to
protests against the Rowlatt Act in 1919 is another example of such
atrocities. In the two World Wars, the British entangled India and used
Indian soldiers and money to fight the wars opposing Indian popular
descent. During the nationalistic movements, police atrocities and
hateful conspiracy by the British caused deaths to hundreds of
patriotic Indians. The British are even indirectly responsible for the
communal genocide during partition of India, as they are the one who
deliberately incited communal hatred and pressed for the partition of
India. Communal division of Punjab and Bengal and the Kashmir issue
still remain as a problem today.
Atrocities by the British went unabated even after the Sepoy revolt as
retribution to stop such occurrence in future. But little was the
success of such moves. Driven by the paramount urge to extract as much
of Indian resources for repatriating to England, their level of
exploitation never was downsized and as local Indians got exposed to
western education and comparatively human citizen rights prevailing in
native lands of the colonial power, a steady sense of independence from
the yolk of Foreign subjugation started taking organized forms leading
India into nationalistic freedom movement. Starting from the armed
resistance to oust British from India up to lawful movement for peaceful
settlement of the colonial question, the British, though subdued
enough not to be as brutal as before, left no stone unturned to quell
such movement by armed might in addition to treachery, conspiracy and
hateful collaboration of local cronies.
As awareness and fighting spirit of the Indian mass escalated, the
British realized the ineffectiveness and risk of all out suppression of
the Indian demand for their legitimate rights. Nevertheless, they
utilized every opportunity to split the solidarity of Indians to weaken
their demand. Engineering communal divide between Hindu and Muslim communities was one such manipulation that has enduringly negative impact on the
oppressed Indian mass and caused indescribable communal conflict and
colossus bloodshed both before and after the partition of India. Not
much earlier than 1919, the Jalinwalabagh massacre represents such an
atrocity on unarmed public to quell the newly emerged nationalistic
movement for self rule that was ultimately demanding ousting of the
British rule.
Cultural Annihilation
The British looked down at the Indian people. Ironically, Indian
civilization was far superior to the colonizing England. It only lacked
the modern weaponry. From the very beginning, the British negated
Indian culture. They introduced alien education to cut off the Indians
from their traditional heritage and cultural pride. Zamindar and rich
middle class went to England to be educated in ‘civilized’ values by a
country which gained economic power through enslaving others and
through insensate violence against colonized people.
For running the Indian Empire, owing to limited number of Britons, the
service of Indian people was imperative. So, a class of clerically
competent Indian people was educated in British system to create a
specific class in India who, according to Macaulay, would be individuals
‘Indian in Body but British in Mind’. As many of the Indians,
especially the Hindu community was admiring and supporting the British,
they vigorously set themselves to learning the clerical version of
British Education with a distinctive plot– serving as English speaking
loyal subjects as well as to glorify the superficial English education
as the pinnacle of wisdom. This alienated them from the persistent
plights from British exploitation and made them an accomplice in
annihilating the heritage of Indian culture and education that used to
be far more superior then the British. At one point these middle class
Indians were ashamed of their Indian ancestry and most of these so
called English educated people turned into die hard supporters of
British colonialism. As leading Indians started abhorring everything
Indian, excessively obsessed to destroy the centuries old and racially
harmonious Indian wisdom, they failed to appreciate both Indian and
British education from the right perspective. In all forms of arts and
literature practiced among these privileged collaborators of British
exploitation, the indigenous culture appeared obsolete and crude.
Through superior technology, huge resources plundered from the colonies
and their supreme status as colonizers, they were able to impose their
culture on the subjugated populace, a phenomenon that Rudyard Kipling
ironically described as ‘white men’s burden’ to emancipate barbarian
colonized people, whereas most had a superior culture.
Thus the older and intrinsically richer Indian civilization was pushed
to the backstage. What ensued was an almost irreversible decay in the
sense of self-identification for the Indian Mass. The greatest blow to
the Indian culture was the inciting of communal tension by the British
which disrupted the century-old coexistence of various religions. The
‘divide and rule’ policy of the British had led to the demise of
communal and racial harmony and assimilatory culture that once earned
respect world over. Totally disoriented by the British plots, the
Indians became foreigner in their own land and acted as puppets of the
British in all the ill designs against the local people, economy and
culture.
From the Plessey until the Partition, the British conquest and empire
building followed a dark path of vile conspiracy, wanton bribing, breach
of faith, sheer atrocity and indiscriminate exploitation to destroy
the economy, culture and the very fabric of the superior Indian
civilization. People of the subcontinent are still reeling from the
blow. Many of our current dire straits are a direct predicament of
denuding the Indians from their ancient and profoundly richer culture
having a lot to offer to the British colonizers.
The deep rooted exploitation, indiscriminate atrocities and deliberate
cultural annihilation perpetrated by the British in India has
irrevocable ramification for the later history of this subcontinent.
People of this one time British colony still suffer from the pervasive
decay and lingering divide created and nurtured by the British
colonizers. By all standards, the British owe to the colonized Indians
and their present generation a profound, true and far reaching ‘Apology’
for their vile maneuvers in the colonial days. This type of
‘historical’ or ‘official’ apology is not a new phenomenon and it has
many noticeable precedents. Universal human justice demands that this
issue of outrageous siphoning of Indian resources and the permanent harm
inflicted by the British rule on the Indian people should be brought
into account.
Recent years have seen a wave of official apologies for wrongs committed
in the distant past. Most recently in 2008, Italy apologized to Libya
for colonial misdeeds and the Canadian and American government
apologized to the Red Indians as did Australia to its aboriginal people.
Former Japanese Prime Mi Junichiro Koizumi expressed “deep remorse”
for Japanese World War II era conduct in China and Korea. Following the
presidential victory of George W. Bush in November 2004, a website
‘sorryeverybody.com’ suddenly appeared permitting Americans “to offer
apologies to the rest of the world.” Other instances include Tony
Blair’s 1997 regrets for British inaction during the Irish Potato Famine
in the mid-nineteenth century; Danish Prime Minister Poul Nyrup
Rasmussen’s apology for the forced relocation of Inuit people in 1953;
President Bill Clinton’s apology for failure to act during the 1994
genocide in Rwanda; France’s acknowledgement of the massacre of
Algerians at Sétif in May 1945; a Canadian government apology in 2001
for military executions during the First World War; a German government
apology for the colonial-era massacre of ethnic Herero people of
Namibia by German soldiers; and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s
apology for his part in the incitement that led to assassination of
Yitzhak Rabin. The most famous apologizer of recent times was the late
Pope John Paul II, whose apologies reached far back in history, and
included contrition about the Religious Wars, the Inquisition, Jews,
women, Blacks, schisms, Martin Luther, and the Church’s denunciation of
Galileo.
Along with these, there are refusals to apologize for historic wrongs. Thus, despite requests, Soviet and later Russian leaders have never apologized for the massacre of thousands of Polish
officers in the forest of Katyn in 1940; the Israelis refused the
invitation of Egyptian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Riad in 1968 to
apologize for their “aggression” the year before; Australian Prime
Minister John Howard would not apologize for the European settlers’
treatment of the aboriginal population in that country; and President
George Bush, Sr., declined to apologize for the Americans’ use of the
atomic bomb against Japan in 1945.
Despite such cases, the wave has continuing force. Apologies are
scarcely ever rejected for being irrelevant or misplaced, but rather for
being insufficient, inadequate, or insincere. So the British also owe
us a sincere and significant apology, at the soonest possible time. We
should demand all possible reparations to address this history of
Himalayan plunder and inhuman atrocities inflicted for centuries upon
this subcontinent, effect of which still remain as the principle
obstruction in the development of this region.
On 30 August 2008, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi apologized to Libya for damage inflicted by Italy during the colonial era and signed a 5-billion-dollar investment deal
by way of compensation. Similarly, universal justice demands that
Britain should also make a compensating apology for the harm inflicted
on British India. A compensation of 5 million pound for each of the 190
colonizing years would be the minimum for making a plausible apology.
British Rule in India and Nazi rule. What is the difference?
Indian History books teach the pros and cons of British rule
The subject of British rule in India is an emotional one for most
Indians but even those Indians who are aware that Britain plundered
India and treated locals as sub-humans and killed the indigenous industry,
reluctantly admit that Britain did build infrastructure and made
English popular in India. Guess if it wasn’t for British rule all those
years ago I wouldn’t be writing this very piece in English, would I?
And well, Britain did unite all those little kingdoms and gave all of
us a pan Indian identity.
But if most Indians believe that British rule did some good (not
everyone agrees about the high price paid) I think the credit is due to
the way we were taught history. The advantages of British rule were
clearly brought out.
Britain apparently teaches a biased view of the British Raj
What surprised me was a front page report in today’s Times of India
(Mumbai). It said that British school children are not taught the evil
aspects of British rule – in fact there is a controversy going on in
Britain right now about teaching school-children about Jallianwala Bagh,
where hundreds of peacefully protesting Indians were massacred
(including women and children). It’s difficult to understand why Britain
wants to brush this under the carpet..after all if German school
children can be taught about the evils of Nazi rule, why can’t British
school-children be taught about the evils of British rule in India?
Sure, the Nazis did more damage in a short period of time and killed
millions of Jews.
But who has calculated the damage that Britain did? Are there any
records of the number of Indians killed and enslaved by the British
during the British Raj? Are there any records of ill-treatment meted out
on a regular basis to the Indians? Has anyone calculated the economic
damage caused to India because of the East India Company and British
rule? Ofcourse not.
Britain does not want to know
The truth is that the truth is too painful. And neither the Brits nor
the Indians in Britain are trying very hard to do anything about it. On
the other hand, it is because of the power of the Jewish community that
Germany said sorry…and meant it. It is because of the Jewish people
that today German school children know the truth. Surely, history is
important?
Britain’s attempt to change the curriculum is being opposed
Britain is trying to change the curriculum to give British
school-children a ‘valuable insight into shared, if painful and often
controversial aspects of the relationship between Indian and Britain’
but there are groups opposing this because this kind of teaching is
considered anti-British. How can the dissemination of truth be anti
anything?
The root of racism
But then, this is the very root of racism. Children in developed
countries are taught in school itself that they come from a ‘superior’
stock. They are taught to take on the ‘White Man’s Burden’. A burden
which makes it mandatory for the ‘superior’ race to ‘civilize’ the
‘inferior’ races. This was the attitude of the British when they came to
India. They came, they saw and they plundered. They believed it was
their right as ‘rulers’. At the same time they came down heavily on some
of the barbaric practices they saw in India.
Yes, some barbaric things went on in Indian society (and we are not
completely rid of them) but what the British failed to see that what
they were doing was equally barbaric. They robbed and enslaved not just a
few people, but a whole country.
What Britishers did not realise was that India had a far longer history
of ‘civilization’ than war-like Britain. The problem was that India’s
civilization was cloaked in dhotis, saris and turbans and some ancient
practices (not too far removed from equally medieval practices that took
place in Britain). These differences convinced the shirts, skirts and
trousers who came to India that India was uncivilized. Every culture
and every country has it’s dark side…but the developed world can only
see the evils of other countries…not their own.
What chance does truth stand?
What’s amazing is that the developed world today prides itself on
freedom and democracy…so why not own up to the bad things of the past?
True, Britishers were probably not as bad as the Nazis, but they did far
greater harm than the Nazis by the very virtue of their being around
for more than a hundred years. The British East India Company
arrived in India as far back as 1757 (proxy rule by the British) and
then direct British rule started in 1858, lasting until 1947. The Nazis
under Adolph Hitler ruled only from 1933 to 1945 – which is just a
dozen years! One does not need much of an imagination to realise the
damage the British must have done to India.
The sad part is is that millions of young Britishers are growing up
thinking that Britain did India a big favour by ruling her. Why, the
Queen herself wears a diamond stolen from India in her crown. The Wikipedia calls this diamond the ‘spoils of war.’ Funny.
British Atrocities on Indians - Holocaust or Genocide ?
In his book Late
Victorian Holocausts, published in 2001, Mike Davis tells the story of
famines that killed between 12 and 29 million Indians. These people
were, he demonstrates, murdered by British state policy. When an El
Niño drought destituted the farmers of the Deccan plateau in 1876 there
was a net surplus of rice and wheat in India. But the viceroy, Lord
Lytton, insisted that nothing should prevent its export to England. In
1877 and 1878, at the height of the famine, grain merchants exported a
record 6.4m hundredweight of wheat. As the peasants began to starve,
officials were ordered "to discourage relief works in every possible
way". The Anti-Charitable Contributions Act of 1877 prohibited "at the
pain of imprisonment private relief donations that potentially
interfered with the market fixing of grain prices". The only relief
permitted in most districts was hard labour, from which anyone in an
advanced state of starvation was turned away. In the labour camps, the
workers were given less food than inmates of Buchenwald. In 1877,
monthly mortality in the camps equated to an annual death rate of 94%.
As millions died, the imperial government launched "a militarised
campaign to collect the tax arrears accumulated during the drought". The
money, which ruined those who might otherwise have survived the
famine, was used by Lytton to fund his war in Afghanistan. Even in
places that had produced a crop surplus, the government's export
policies, like Stalin's in Ukraine, manufactured hunger. In the
north-western provinces, Oud and the Punjab, which had brought in
record harvests in the preceeding three years, at least 1.25m died.
Three recent books - Britain's Gulag by Caroline Elkins, Histories of
the Hanged by David Anderson, and Web of Deceit by Mark Curtis - show
how white settlers and British troops suppressed the Mau Mau revolt in
Kenya in the 1950s. Thrown off their best land and deprived of political
rights, the Kikuyu started to organise - some of them violently -
against colonial rule. The British responded by driving up to 320,000 of
them into concentration camps. Most of the remainder - more than a
million - were held in "enclosed villages". Prisoners were questioned
with the help of "slicing off ears, boring holes in eardrums, flogging
until death, pouring paraffin over suspects who were then set alight,
and burning eardrums with lit cigarettes". British soldiers used a
"metal castrating instrument" to cut off testicles and fingers. "By the
time I cut his balls off," one settler boasted, "he had no ears, and
his eyeball, the right one, I think, was hanging out of its socket."
The soldiers were told they could shoot anyone they liked "provided
they were black". Elkins's evidence suggests that more than 100,000
Kikuyu were either killed or died of disease and starvation in the
camps. David Anderson documents the hanging of 1,090 suspected rebels:
far more than the French executed in Algeria. Thousands more were
summarily executed by soldiers, who claimed they had "failed to halt"
when challenged.
These are just two examples of at least 20 such atrocities overseen and
organised by the British government or British colonial settlers; they
include, for example, the Tasmanian genocide, the use of collective
punishment in Malaya, the bombing of villages in Oman, the dirty war in
North Yemen, the evacuation of Diego Garcia. Some of them might trigger
a vague, brainstem memory in a few thousand readers, but most people
would have no idea what I'm talking about. Max Hastings, on the opposite
page, laments our "relative lack of interest" in Stalin and Mao's
crimes. But at least we are aware that they happened.
In the Express we can read the historian Andrew Roberts arguing that for
"the vast majority of its half-millennium-long history, the British
empire was an exemplary force for good ... the British gave up their
empire largely without bloodshed, after having tried to educate their
successor governments in the ways of democracy and representative
institutions" (presumably by locking up their future leaders). In the
Sunday Telegraph, he insists that "the British empire delivered
astonishing growth rates, at least in those places fortunate enough to
be coloured pink on the globe". (Compare this to Mike Davis's central
finding, that "there was no increase in India's per capita income from
1757 to 1947", or to Prasannan Parthasarathi's demonstration that "South
Indian labourers had higher earnings than their British counterparts
in the 18th century and lived lives of greater financial security.") In
the Daily Telegraph, John Keegan asserts that "the empire became in
its last years highly benevolent and moralistic". The Victorians "set
out to bring civilisation and good government to their colonies and to
leave when they were no longer welcome. In almost every country, once
coloured red on the map, they stuck to their resolve".
There is one, rightly sacred Holocaust in European history. All the
others can be denied, ignored, or belittled. As Mark Curtis points out,
the dominant system of thought in Britain "promotes one key concept
that underpins everything else - the idea of Britain's basic
benevolence ... Criticism of foreign policies is certainly possible,
and normal, but within narrow limits which show 'exceptions' to, or
'mistakes' in, promoting the rule of basic benevolence". This idea, I
fear, is the true "sense of British cultural identity" whose alleged
loss Max laments today. No judge or censor is required to enforce it.
The men who own the papers simply commission the stories they want to
read.
Turkey's accession to the European Union, now jeopardised by the trial
of Orhan Pamuk, requires not that it comes to terms with its atrocities;
only that it permits its writers to rage impotently against them. If
the government wants the genocide of the Armenians to be forgotten, it
should drop its censorship laws and let people say what they want. It
needs only allow Richard Desmond and the Barclay brothers to buy up the
country's newspapers, and the past will never trouble it again.