While I do agree that there was no genocide carried out by the British in India, because I sincerely believe there was no plan to kill the population, there certainly was the next worse thing and that was a passive attitude toward to giving sufficient relief to the starving.
This is especially clear during the Great Indian Famine of 1876-78. The official Famine Commission Report bluntly states that we spent less than a year's worth of relief money on saving the Indians than we spent on our poor back home in a decade. While the sums look impressive, they aren't. And specific orders were made not to save the Indian at any cost. Lytton was sent out to ensure this order was met and that a war in Afghanistan was paid for, by the impoverished Indian tax payer.
We must not confuse the effort made by the men on the ground with the withdrawn privileged view of Viceroy Lord Lytton nor his mannequin Sir Richard Temple, who was desperate to make an impression among the administrative elite after having saved his presidency in an earlier famine and was subsequently reprimanded for having saved lives.
There is a plethora of information from William Digby, Allan Octavian Hume one of the founding members of the INC, as well as other men on the ground that attest to the fact that far from enough was done and even barbaric measures were enforced. We cannot take pride from our disastrous record in India and how we systematically weakened the rural society of a sub-continent in order to better exploit it for our own economic gain. We have apologised for Ireland; we also need to do the same for India. Until we do we cannot move forward and earn the respect of a global community who often think of us as imperially arrogant and it is in great part to our refusal to accept any wrong doing in Empire. Self-government is always better than good government and we didn't even give them that.
Germany has come to terms with its dual genocides in its African colony of modern day Namibia and that of the Jewish people. We desperately hang on to the notion that our Empire was a munificent influence and better than other European empires. I hold that while I am not suggesting we should be measured alongside the Nazis we certainly did little better than other European powers. To deny such an obvious truth is to lose to over-inflated pride, which doesn't get anyone anywhere.We have more to gain internationally from admission rather than defence.
As far as the sensitive issue of 'Brit-bashing' is concerned the topic would almost seize up and disappear once a relevant acknowledgment of past wrong-doings where Britain's rule in India is concerned. We have much to learn about that era purely because we do not study enough, if at all, at school. It is a no go area.
I do not have a chip on my shoulder about the British either: I am from Devon, traditionally educated and in love with all things beautiful British and green, but what I cannot take pride in and common sense impedes from doing so to applaud something that if had happened to us we would be even more infuriated than the Indians. The past is another country and I have nothing to do with the Lytton's of this world, I readily identify with Digby and Hume et al who are a credit to our nation.
i will end here and that this much needed debate will continue.
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