Oh So Good Britishers!
My friend Ishan has pointed me out to this post by Ravikiran Rao on about how good the Britishers were! By sheer co-incidence, I also happened to visit this path breaking post in the morning. I was as much amused, as Ishan is, and so would you.
I felt so indebted to those kind hearted souls who "transformed" India to a "modernized" (third world)nation, that I would kiss their sun tanned hands, and their balding heads whenever I would meet a firangi. Not only that, I would lay down prostrate on my stomach on their very sight, with my hands clasped together in gratitude.
Of course, for this blogger and some of those repliers, I felt like the same way I felt when I heard this by Sunny Deol or read this debate in Indian Express.
But I left away with just one tiny comment as many of these bloggers get very incensed even with a small difference of opinion. A few guys like Amit Varma and Gaurav Sabnis have closed commenting facility on their blogs because of this. In this case I would have disagreed with every line of it, so might have started a big debate. I don't want to be a reason for the closure of comments on this blog.
Coming back to the post. See, these guys are libertarians. All they think of is economy, per capita income, GDP and disinvestments. They don't even half think about the other aspects which were so important at that time. See how he says - "The question was not whether they wanted to help India. The question is what they ended up doing."
I have heard about this stuff about laying of Railway infrastructure for a zillionth times now. As if we never laid roads, or started Airlines, or built our military after independence. Then they would talk about modern government, English education, and all those related stuff, but won't care a thought about how British oppressed, exploited local people.
How biased was there governance! How partisan was their courts and judiciary. How different laws and yardsticks were there for Indians and British. A farmer can't grow a crop of his choice, locals can't make salt on their own, and not to forget those exorbitant taxes. Still they supposedly made us modern, because we are industrialized and prosperous now.
Don't you feel this is akin to what a metropolitan judge did to the nurse who was raped and maimed by that sweeper by offering her to marry him. Suppose she had accepted, then, would that rape have become glorious? Or suppose she had given birth to a child, then that heinous act become noble? Never.
But libertarians are hardly ever close to ground reality. They always have a macro and simplistic view towards all the affairs. This post is a perfect example.
I felt so indebted to those kind hearted souls who "transformed" India to a "modernized" (third world)nation, that I would kiss their sun tanned hands, and their balding heads whenever I would meet a firangi. Not only that, I would lay down prostrate on my stomach on their very sight, with my hands clasped together in gratitude.
Of course, for this blogger and some of those repliers, I felt like the same way I felt when I heard this by Sunny Deol or read this debate in Indian Express.
But I left away with just one tiny comment as many of these bloggers get very incensed even with a small difference of opinion. A few guys like Amit Varma and Gaurav Sabnis have closed commenting facility on their blogs because of this. In this case I would have disagreed with every line of it, so might have started a big debate. I don't want to be a reason for the closure of comments on this blog.
Coming back to the post. See, these guys are libertarians. All they think of is economy, per capita income, GDP and disinvestments. They don't even half think about the other aspects which were so important at that time. See how he says - "The question was not whether they wanted to help India. The question is what they ended up doing."
I have heard about this stuff about laying of Railway infrastructure for a zillionth times now. As if we never laid roads, or started Airlines, or built our military after independence. Then they would talk about modern government, English education, and all those related stuff, but won't care a thought about how British oppressed, exploited local people.
How biased was there governance! How partisan was their courts and judiciary. How different laws and yardsticks were there for Indians and British. A farmer can't grow a crop of his choice, locals can't make salt on their own, and not to forget those exorbitant taxes. Still they supposedly made us modern, because we are industrialized and prosperous now.
Don't you feel this is akin to what a metropolitan judge did to the nurse who was raped and maimed by that sweeper by offering her to marry him. Suppose she had accepted, then, would that rape have become glorious? Or suppose she had given birth to a child, then that heinous act become noble? Never.
But libertarians are hardly ever close to ground reality. They always have a macro and simplistic view towards all the affairs. This post is a perfect example.
posted by Unknown at 4:38 PM
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