Jallianwala Bagh Massacre
British troops opened fire on unarmed protestors and pilgrims. 400 to 1000 men women and children were murdered by British soldiers who were under the command of Colonel Dyer.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre
In India, we never refer to this as the "sepoy mutiny" or any crap like that.
It is always called the First War of Indian Independence. It would take us another hundred years and Gandhi and the nonviolent freedom struggle to be finally rid of the British.
But the greatest irony comes from this : that was undivided India (India, Pakistan and Bangladesh). We went from that to the most dangerous nuclear flashpoint in the world today.
"British Indian history". That pretty much sums it up. No country should ever have the ignominy of appearing second in its own history. Every Indian wishes the 1857 revolt had snowballed to freedom.
To be fair, there really was no 'India' before the British cobbled one together. Unlike China, there never was one power that controlled the whole subcontinent. It's hard to know how things would have ended up politically if not for British hegemony. Would there be a country like India, or would its various disparate parts have continued as distinct sovereign entities? Part of the miracle of the whole Indian project is that it has remained basically intact since independence. This isn't something one would have taken for granted a few decades ago.
India was like Greece, China like Rome. China had central control while India had independent states that didn't control each other politically but were unified in terms culture, communication, roads, infrastructure and importantly commerce.
Today it wouldn't make sense to say "there really was no 'Greece'". Same for India.
If you said it's not 'strictly true for India', you'd be correct, but when you say it's 'far from true' then not so much. India has two ancient languages Tamil and Sanskrit and modern languages are derived from these (but I am def not an expert). The modern forms are considered different languages, but they are quite close to each other, easy to learn one from the other e.g.the grammar is the same and words are usually just different pronunciations/intonations of a common root. It's easy to see that in the ancient past they would have had more similarity.
The original point was "there really was no 'India' before the British cobbled one together". If so, then where was Columbus trying to go? Of course there was 'an India', it just wasn't structured like a modern nation state, which is true for every other modern country as well.
Everything you say applies just as well to all of Western Mediterranean Europe. In fact, even more so, since you're dealing with just one branch of a larger language group (the Latinate/Romance languages) rather than two completely disparate ones (Indo-Aryan and Dravidian). No one now thinks of this area as a nation-state.
Western Europe, through the British conquest of the subcontinent, was woefully unaware of the internal differences. That Columbus ill-advisedly thought of India as a monolithic entity is no marker of anything.
>> Everything you say applies just as well to all of Western Mediterranean Europe.
The language thing sure does. But the only time in ancient history Western Mediterranean Europe has been part of a single state was during the Roman period. the rest of the time they evolved separately and uniquely. In contrast each part of modern India has been politically linked to the other parts multiple times through history resulting in a common culture but with some obvious diversity. E.g. Indian festivals are largely common throughout the country, a marker of commonality stretching back through history.
>> That Columbus ill-advisedly thought of India as a monolithic entity is no marker of anything.
He said nothing about it being monolithic, just that there was a place called India, and it was worth a visit.
Your original comment was "there was no 'India' ...".
There has been an India through most of history. But of course the borders of the modern state were drawn relatively recently. These are two different things.
> there never was one power that controlled the whole subcontinent
There were several - indeed, the British had it easier because the Mughals had dissipated within living memory, and all their bureaucracies and systems were still functioning.
The Mughals never controlled most of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and big segments of the North East. To claim that India as it exists today was inevitable is a shaky proposition.
That is the point. I guess in Western ideology definition of CONTROL over a land is through swords, guns and bloodshed.
The Mughals never had the south because their culture was alien to most of the uninvaded south of india.
But before them the whole of India, Pakisthan, Bangladesh, Srilanka, Burma, Indonesia, Tibet, China were all culturally the same. I would even go further to say considerably most of the regions are still culturally the same.
You truly need to read some real Indian history. The Mughals and their predecessors won North India by bloody conquest that make the British look like saints. I won't document the extraordinary slaughter during this period. See wikipedia for what Timur did to Delhi (after it surrendered) for example. He proudly describes the slaughter in his autobiography: https://www.ibiblio.org/britishraj/Jackson5/chapter09.htmlhttp://cw.routledge.com/textbooks/9780415485432/19.asp
Due to the powerful Vijaynagar empire, South India remained free for some time. At this time, you actually had Queens ruling Kerala (Attingal Queens). When the Vijaynagar empire weakened, the Deccan and Delhi sultanates united and thanks to the betrayal of two Muslim generals was thoroughly defeated in the Battle of Talikota. The massacre and rapine that occurred after defeat is still known to the local historians of the area.
Modern day Kerala was invaded by Haider Ali (Sultan of Mysore) though he faced very stiff resistance. He then decided to slaughter entire civilian populations. Believe it or not, it is thanks to the East India Company who supplied weapons to the Malabar Hindus who made constant guerrilla style attacks from the forests that Haider Ali backed off!
The princely states that comprised Modern Kerala never truly had a problem with the British. Travancore and Kochi were extremely rich and sovereign monarchies who gave their alliance to the Queen, retaining their rule and benefiting from the British in trade.
Study of history requires careful study, a balanced mind and a proper perspective. Many people fall into a trap of good vs bad, or similar simplistic conclusions.
The British did enormous harm to the subcontinent, but it's egregious to say that the Mughals were benevolent rulers. They after all built beautiful self aggrandizing monuments by basically looting and massacring the populace. The same thing holds true for Marathas as well, who were known to patronize looting and raids via the pindaris.
As for Haider Ali, his son, who was similarly disposed, paid the ultimate price thanks to the machinations of the Maharaja's minister whom Hyder Ali had earlier dethroned. So what went around, came around, eventually.
>But before them the whole of India, Pakisthan, Bangladesh, Srilanka, Burma, Indonesia, Tibet, China were all culturally the same. I would even go further to say considerably most of the regions are still culturally the same.
That is a pretty radical claim, and I hope you have some good evidence to back it up.
There are significant cultural differences to be found within each of China and India alone; I'm not sure how you can say that they're culturally the same.
I am not sure how you separate these two instances. What is considered as China now has been together in history in one or two instances whereas India as a whole has had 5-10 instances where there have being reigns having the whole of India together . Update your knowledge of history before commenting .
It's larger in total area under one power (at circa 5 million sq. km vs. 3 million sq km. today), but it doesn't cover some of the southern-most and eastern-most parts.
Um, wrong. Mauryan Empire was bigger than present-day India.
Even Mughal Empire under Akbar was bigger. So, no. Also, the forms of control of British were different than those of previous empires.
To be even fairer, Could you please enlighten us on for what country or region where the British, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French were searching for, further to the African tip the 'cape of good Hope' perhaps?
For those interested in this topic, I can't recommend "The Last Mughal" by William Dalrymple enough.
It chronicles the crumbling Mughal Empire in Delhi, the slow shift in the Indian-British relationship from one of equals to a colonizer-colonized relationship, how perilously close the British came to losing India in 1857, and lots of painstakingly well-researched interesting anecdotes about life in that era.
Here's what he writes about the last of the Mughals: “As the political sky darkened, the court was lost in a last idyll of pleasure gardens, courtesans and mushairas, or poetic symposia, Sufi devotions and visits to pirs, as literary and religious ambition replaced the political variety.”
And about the East India Company in the 1850s: “So removed had the British now become from their Indian subjects, and so dismissive were they of Indian opinion, that they had lost all ability to read the omens around them or to analyse their own position with any degree of accuracy. Arrogance and imperial self-confidence had diminished the desire to seek accurate information or gain any real knowledge of the state of the country.”
The last sentence is as true today as it was then. India memory and its strength however have faded to the point where even its vestiges appear intangible.
What a strange coincident. Was discussing about EIC this morning. It is sad that critical exploration of its operation is not encouraged. For most Indians, it is the company that came to trade and end up ruling them.
Yet how did it operate, monopolized trade, grow and maintain it's sepoy armies ? It took them more than a hundred years to establish control and another century passed till we had 1857 and almost another to gain independence. It's been 70 years since that, where are we on the continuum. Can we recognize another EIC (internal/external) or are we condemned to repeat it.
If one understands this and can draw parallels with the way modern corporates function, people hopefully will be able to see past their doublethink.
India gained independence from the British, but the structures that held the populace in thrall weren't torn down. They still exist. The government and the corporates are it's inheritors.
I am actually surprised this article made it to the front page on hacker news. It presents a very narrow view of a much larger war. It almost looks like it came straight from the British propaganda machine.
The tone of the discourse here irks me. A small story about my late grandmother that continues to inspire me -
My grandmother had gone through the pain of seeing my grandfather all bruised up from non-violent protests against the British. When my father studied ethnomusicology in the US, he used to have many of his musician friends, some of whom were his students, over at home during his visits. Initially, to my grandmother, they were "white people" and she'd give them the cold treatment. Over time, she warmed up to them and even made good friends of many of them, despite hardly knowing any English. She would make yummies for them to express her affection.
That someone who's seen her husband come back home bruised can rise to forgiveness and move to love and friendship is something that will stay with me forever.
That is the only force that can heal the world. Not retaliation. Not counter hatred. Not "proper historical perspective". Not any analysis of which violence is worse, or who started it.
How's about we get more stories about the Bengal famine of 1943? 3M indians died b/c Churchill took their rice.
Or the 5k-10k indians that die each day b/c westerners don't let us have access to viable uranium powered energy?
Where are those stories?