Western Intellectual Framework

[Raju]

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/12/27...its-holocausts/

Why do so few people know about the atrocities of empire?

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 27th December 2005

....

When an El Nino 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 height of the famine, grain merchants exported a record 6.4 million hundredweight of wheat. As the peasants began to starve, government officials were ordered “to discourage relief works in every possible way”(2). 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. Within the labour camps, the workers were given less food than the 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 militarized 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 which had produced a crop surplus, the government’s export policies, like Stalin’s in the Ukraine, manufactured hunger. In the North-western provinces, Oud and the Punjab, which had brought in record harvests in the preceding three years, at least 1.25m died.

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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(3). Most of the remainder - over 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.”(4) 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”(5). The soldiers were told they could shoot anyone they liked “provided they were black”(6). Elkins’s evidence suggests that over 100,000 Kikuyu were either killed by the British or died of disease and starvation in the camps. David Anderson documents the hanging of 1090 suspected rebels: far more than the French executed in Algeria(7). Thousands more were summarily executed by soldiers, who claimed they had “failed to halt” when challenged.

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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”(9)(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.”(10) (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.”(11)) 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.”(12)

There is one, rightly sacred Holocaust in European history. All the others can be ignored, denied 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.”(13) 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.

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[SunSingh]

british were horrible for a lot of the wrongs they committed.

just like the tyrannical yoke of the british was thrown off, so too will the yoke of the bhramins and indian elites who keep minorities in subjugation be thrown off. )))) :D

[Raju]

british were horrible for a lot of the wrongs they committed.

just like the tyrannical yoke of the british was thrown off, so too will the yoke of the bhramins and indian elites who keep minorities in subjugation be thrown off. )))) :D

Just like beauty is in the eye-of-the beholder.

Similarly discrimination is in the eye of the receiver as well. So if you say that you were discriminated I will believe you.

but this thread is devoted towards western intellectual colonization.

[Muzumdar]

Raju bhai, before I begin to respond to your post, I have just one question: are you an Indian Christian? (You don't have to answer).

As I have seen often on this forum and elsewhere. A lot of Indians who live outside India esp in west are being thoroughly brainwashed about that country.

I am guessing that what you are specifically referring to above can be gauged from below:

The last two centuries of Indological studies have focused on the themes of divisiveness among Indians. This is today accomplished by constructing identities of victimhood with other Indians depicted as culprits:

The very premise this statement is based on is false. The notion of 'Indology' is flawed as it is etymologically based on the fictitious word 'India', which was dreamed up in the West.

If we substitute the word 'indological' with subcontinental, the supposition that there are indeed 'victims' and 'oppressors' with defined national/cultural/ontological differences is very much a fact. Not only within the past 200 years, but ever since the arrival of the Aryans.

Once you shed your Western lexicon and revert to reality, your house of wafer thin cards comes plummeting down.

i. Western feminists are telling Indian women that they are victims of Indian culture.

ii. Dalit activists are being sponsored to blame Brahmins.[ii]

Again, the word 'Indian' is problematic. Let us be very specific. Women, most of them anyway, on the subcontinent are victims of misogyny, plain and simple. Let us be even more specific; of the main ideologies that dominate the subcontinent (Hinduism, Islam and Sikhism), two perpetuate and legitimise this misogyny (these are Islam and Hinduism), one (Sikhism) is clearly against it.

While ground realities are different, on a theoretical level, the blanket term 'Indian' is useless.

iii. The divisive Aryan theory is being used as 'fact' to construct a separate Dravidian identity and to 'Aryanize' North Indians as foreign culprits.

Are you denying that the cultures of the south and north are utterly different?

And

iv. India's English language media is sometimes subverting traditions by glorifying everything Western and denigrating or ignoring everything indigenous.

This is simply untrue. The Tribune, for example, does no such thing.

On the wider point, the Western intellectual framework is not a concrete mechanism, despite what you wish us to think. Within academia, the media and government there are a plethora of divergent voices that are given a platform.

There is no one dogma that they all follow. You should put down Marx for a moment and use your own brain my friend,

Guru Rakha,

Muzumdar

[chatanga]

india was always divided before the brits came, and they were the ones who united the land and people. Are you sure that ou have your topic heading corrrect raju?

if anyone has divided the country then it is the indian govt . No intellect needed raju. You just need to open your eyes.

[SunSingh]

It was in fact bhramins who helped Muslims conquer india. They were their guides. They also acted as guides for the British.

[Raju]

Sangat,

plz do not turn this thread into brahmin bashing thread. On all others threads that is what is going on. :D

let me devote this thread to exposing the western agenda vis a vis its former colonies or third world in general.

thanks

india was always divided before the brits came, and they were the ones who united the land and people. Are you sure that ou have your topic heading corrrect raju?

if anyone has divided the country then it is the indian govt . No intellect needed raju. You just need to open your eyes.

Google is your best friend Chatanga, and wiki is your personal assistant. Just look up boundaries of Mauryan Empire, Kushana Empire, Saka Empire, Naga Empire everything shall become clear to you.

It was in fact bhramins who helped Muslims conquer india. They were their guides. They also acted as guides for the British.

brahmins did not help muslims conquer India because the muslim were busy cutting off brahmin's heads as they kept invading new places. So you can't help those much who will keep cutting your heads at first sight. Can you ? :rolleyes:

yes, they could have helped the Brits because they saw in the British their chance to get even with Muslim.

In fact the British were used as a proxy by a lot of disaffected groups and people in India to get even with others.

And boy did the British make use of this opportunity.

[SaRpAnCh]

http://www.sikhsangat.com/index.php?showto...st&p=355773

[Raju]

http://www.sikhsangat.com/index.php?showto...st&p=355773

how sweet Sarpanch. :lol:

you are the sweetest guy on this forum and take the award for tenacity. :WW:

Now please allow me some privileges on my thread ?

[apne]

India as a 'name' or 'homogeneous sphere' was devised and first used by people living in European continent. How do you define 'west' and 'east' precisly? for geographic terminals and for referring to astronomical terminology. 'Earth' is not divided into 'east' or 'west', only lands of people inhabitating it are.

Man started from one source, there is enough scientific DNA research to prove that all man on earth is from one branch of family.

However, hinduism is different on this regard. It clearly divides people into four species and confirms gender in-equality and social in-equality as law and will of Nature. According to hinduism, if it is not a hotch-potch of various beliefs, man is not from same branch of family but one class of man is as different from another class of man in original paternity, as is man from a monkey. It becomes more evident when you read Ramayana, where there were two species of man, one proper man and other half ape. In hinduism even God has different forms which are very much different from the other forms, so much so even the supreme being is not free from divisions with no unity, Gods in hinduism are often at loggerheads (more than often over women).

Brahmins, who are proper Hindus and reign supreme in religious and moral discourse of hindu philosophy, have been feeding to other people (originally to kashtriya, sudra, vaishya and more recently to buddhists, sikhs, jains, christians , muslims. etc.) that 'Man' by laws of nature and by the Hindu way of origin of Man, is un-equal and different from one another. Nature while giving birth to man on earth has pre-determined his role on Earth. Some are made by nature to be superior and another to be inferior, one is nearer to god and another is away, one is intelligent (Brahmin) and another is dull (sudra). It is ironical how people blame the British for inventing the 'martial race' theory (another way of dividing india, they would argue) but forget that this was invented and followed for hundereds of years in India by Hindu society in the form of 'Kashtriya' class of people.

Now a set of people belonging to this system of thought want to create fear in people by inventing conspiracy theories, by blaming what they term 'another different class' of people on earth , by claiming that different traditions (buddhism, Sikhism) which sought to diffuse 'plurality of race' concept were trying to divide 'India' (did it ever exist before 1947).

It makes me want to spit on people belonging to this thought process who want to lay the blame of the past 5000 years of social in-equalities, divisive politics, social exlpoitation, denial of freedom of thought and action, right to life, euality in social system on a 100 years of british rule or 200 years of mughal rule. SICK :v1: