A: I'm most disturbed by the comparison with Islamic invaders of India. There was no fucking India at the time, just a bunch of kingdoms. Incidentally, this Islamic invasion of India is the standard Right-Wing spiel we're getting in India.
Me: ironically when it comes to bashing the British everyone ignores how before the British there was no India at the time either, just a bunch of kingdoms
C:
I know Anglo Saxon enthusiasts who hate William the Conqueror, a thousand years later.
Simply because of 400 years of being second class citizens. Even though
Britain is based on the improvements Norman leaders made to the
Wessex-based Anglo Saxon kingdom.
While Anglo Saxon England may have been a minor power until modern times, it was the Normans who made Britain possible.
Most Indians I talk to have complicated views.
I think it’s perfectly fine for a country that was abused for hundreds
of years to keep the best of what evolved, without having to recognize
too many positive qualities in their overlords. They have the same
issues in terms of the Mughals, earlier.
And this is just the
Hindu culture. Dozens of minority cultures in the south have been
treated no better by the dominant Hindu culture, than all of them were
treated by invaders.
A:
nothing ironic about it. British empire came as traders and due to a
series of circumstances and guile, colonised the kingdoms of modern
India, using the wealth of the land to enrich itself, impoverishing the
land, and dismantling existing socio-economic structures in the bargain.
The Ottomans who invaded Hindustan settled there and built their empire
which became the nation of India. They did not loot the land as much as
they became of the land. That's the difference.
Your irony appears misplaced 🙄
There was no "nation" of India thanks to the Muslim invasions. It was the British who led to it
I'm amused you think it's worse to come as traders and consolidate power by guile than to invade and kill many people
A: your amusement pales in significance to the recorded experiences of my native ancestors. Re-read my earlier comment to note the difference I pointed out. Empire-building for natives versus empire-building for colonisers. I can't break it down further. Oh, the guile also resulted in killing many people so that's scarcely a parameter.
Me:I'm sure the invaded Indians at the time regarded the Muslim armies as "natives"A: I don't know or really care what you're sure about, but if the difference I pointed out still isn't clear, feel free to read more on the subject before presuming to argue. And I'll tell you this. Many Brits, French and even Africans came to the sub-continent as traders, and opted to mingle and live here as natives. They did not enforce bizarre laws to foster native dependence on the coloniser, nor did they create artificial famines to prove a point. Do go and learn a bit more before rattling away like a pebble in a can.
Me:
ah. I presume you are propagating myths of the bengal famine, among other things
http://
"“Churchill was not responsible for the Bengal Famine,” Sir Martin
replied. “I have been searching for evidence for years: none has turned
up. The 1944 Document volume of the official biography [Hillsdale
College Press] will resolve this issue finally”... “The idea that
Churchill was in any way ‘responsible’ or ‘caused’ the Bengal famine is
of course absurd. The real cause was the fall of Burma to the Japanese,
which cut off India's main supply of rice imports when domestic sources
fell short, which they did in Eastern Bengal after a devastating cyclone
in mid-October 1942""
https://
"The Bengal famine was caused by a cyclone and exacerbated by the
Japanese invasion of Burma. It is true Churchill prioritised feeding the
Indian army. Given what had happened elsewhere in Asia, can we say with
confidence that he would have been wiser to let the soldiers go hungry
and risk a Japanese conquest?"
https://
‘His actions, or perhaps lack of during the Bengal Famine of 1943 is
one of the things that people often talk about when criticizing
Churchill. So, throughout, 3 million people died during this famine. How
culpable was he for this and could he have done more, do you think?’
‘He was absolutely not culpable in the slightest. It's appalling, this
myth that has been created about this. In October 1942, huge cyclone
hit, hit eastern India and it destroyed the rice crop. And it also
destroyed lots of the roads and railways to which, which were needed in
order to, to feed the population, which was therefore going to starve as
a result. Now, in the past, we were able to bring huge amounts of rice,
this isn't the first time a cyclone had done this. In the past, in
peacetime, we were able to bring in rice from Burma, and Thailand and
Malaysia, and various other places to feed the populations, none of
which we could have access to, because the Japanese wouldn’t let us.
We also had Indianised the administration from 1935 onwards. And so
local governments which were Indian, dominated by Indians, were
responsible for the famine relief, and as well as the British Raj. And
the viceroy Lord Linlithgow didn't do a very good job, neither did Lord,
Lord Wavell at the beginning either. And so there is an element of
British culpability.
There's also Indian capability. Because
they didn't, they refused to sell rice to the Bengal government. There
were any number of things that did go wrong. But we actually had
Japanese U boats in the Bay of Bengal. And the idea that, that huge
amounts of grain could be, could be shipped in there was, was, frankly,
strategically wrong.
Churchill wrote desperate letters to, to
Franklin Roosevelt and others to try and get as much grain in there as
possible. And the idea that he, that he was happy to see people starve
is a complete libel on him.’
A: oh goodness! British pro-establishme
Me:
it's OK, I'm not a fan of nationalistic xenophobic racist ignorance
For those interested in what the literature says:
"Like the turko-afghan sultans of Delhi, the mughals were also foreign conquerors"
--- Vol. Iii: Medieval Indian Society And Culture / J.L. Mehta
"the Mughals were foreign invaders of India"
--- Mughal India / Giles Henry Rupert Tillotson
"Nadir Shah’s invasion did no more than reveal the real weakness of the
Mughal Empire to the whole world – the Marathas had long been aware of
it. But it brought home to the latter the danger of a foreign conquest
of India. This called forth an interesting proposal from Baji Rao. He
proposed that all the nobles, high and low, should join together with
their armies in a kind of confederation as it were to reduce the affairs
of the Timurid line to a better order, and to oppose “the enemy”, i.e.,
the foreign invader"
--- Medieval India: From Sultanat to the Mughals Part - II / Satish Chandra
--- Indian Sociology Through Ghurye, a Dictionary / S. Devadas Pillai
"northern India was not spared foreign invasion... Islam brought a new pattern of life... the Mongols contributed to this assimilation [of foreign Muslims]"
--- A History of India / Romila Thapar
"In the early medieval period, the Rajputs belonging to north India were floating around restlessly looking for a home before finally settling down in the Rajputana (mostly today’s Rajasthan) area. Then, they pushed themselves into the political arena and established numerous small monarchical kingdoms. In addition to these fiefdoms, large states arose elsewhere in India between 750 CE and 1000 CE—the Palas in eastern India, the Pratiharas in western India and the upper Gangetic valley, and the Rashtrakutas in the Deccan. The feudatory pattern of relationships played a key role in the political and economic developments of those times and also in the rise and fall of small and big kingdoms. It also made these states incapable of withstanding the foreign invasions. In the absence of a paramount power in the country, it was comparatively easy, first, for the Arabs in 712 CE and a hundred years later for the Turks who had settled down in what is today known as Afghanistan to undertake expeditions into India. The Turks, a Central Asian people, later led conquests beyond the frontiers of India and from thence advanced into the Indian mainland.
By the beginning of the twelfth century, Delhi with its strategic location had begun to surface as the new power centre from where the fresh entrants marched into the fertile Punjab and the Ganges valley. What emerged from there was a period in Indian history that triggered prominent trends in thought and institutions. It is during this period that the Arabs, Afghans, Turks and Persians gained a firm foothold on the Indian soil and made it their permanent abode...
The foreigners brought with them a new faith, hitherto unknown military practices, love for gardens and lakes, passion for building palaces, forts, mosques and other kinds of structures, fascination for delectable foods, ideas and philosophies, and traditions and customs that India had never been through in the past"
-- A Comprehensive History of Medieval India: From Twelfth to the Mid-Eighteenth Century / Farooqui Salma Ahmed
A:
goodness, aren't you all over the place... From Churchill to being an
authority on the Ghulams and their successors. And yet, the difference I
pointed out still eludes you, between a coloniser and an invader.
I haven't the faintest idea whence came xenophobia and racism but I would add false equivalence to that charming list.
Also, you might like to enjoy Meenakshi Mukherji, R C Majumdar, and
Abraham Eraly. Even thr Cambridge history volumes understand the
difference I mentioned. But you don't want to, hey, it's all cool.
Me:
so in your book invasion is good but colonisation is wrong? Maybe the British should have invaded instead
Last I checked, dismissing people you disagree with as "British" could
count as both racism (if you are dismissing them because of their race)
and xenophobia (if you are dismissing them because they are foreign)
A:
um. Would you like to look up Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb?
And.. do look up the pedigree of the Tughlaq sultans for more 'assimmilation' stories. Also the Mughals.
If you cannot get this, please, do desist from tagging me further. I can't explain or break down the concept further.
Me: I will note that even A's preferred sources don't say what A claimed at one point about "Empire-building for natives" vs "Empire-building for colonisers" as they clearly describe the Muslim invasions as foreign
Babur bequeathed to his successors a distinguished lineage stretching back to the great Central Asian conqueror Timur, and also through the Chaghatai Turks back to Chingiz Khan. Through Timur, the Mughal dynasty claimed impeccable credentials as rulers and conquerors of extraordinary luster. (Hence the term Timurid used synonymously for Mughal in this volume). In addition Babur’s legacy included Central Asian horsemanship and battle tactics, life lived comfortably under canvas in tents, and the Turki language. He left a persistent and abiding Sunni Islamic faith and a familial connection with the orthodox Naqshbandi Sufi order which had originated in Central Asia. His legacy included a sophisticated cultural style derived from Timur’s patronage at Samarkhand and refined at the courts of his successors in Central Asia. Finally, not least of Babur’s heritage were his memoirs, written in Turki, which recounted his life adventures from his early youth in the valley of Ferghana to his conquest of India."
---- The Mughal Empire, Part 1, Volume 5 / By John F. Richards (part of The New Cambridge History of India)
"The Indian ruling chiefs could, therefore, hardly fail to recognize that the establishment of an aggressive Islamic State in the Panjab was a grave danger to the whole of India... Indians were also fully alive to the peril with which Muslim invasion threatened their religion and culture"
--- Ancient India / Ramesh Chandra Majumdar
As for A's re-modified position that invasion etc are ok as long as you stay on (which itself is different from the original point that there was no "India" both when the Muslims invaded and when the British came), even if we ignore the Anglo Indian community, the British Raj only lasted for under a century, compared to the centuries and waves of Muslim conquest and dominion
So it seems Britain's mistake was in giving India its independence. If they'd stayed for another few more centuries they would then be seen as "settlers" instead of "colonisers"
