Perhaps, the writer should read something of the history of the British Raj written by British historians to take a more objective view, and appreciate the good British rule did in bringing India out of its medieval torpor into a fully functioning modern state, complete with a Parliament and democratic institutions, et al, something India did not have before.
It was in 1885 that Alan Octavian Hume, a Scottish retired civil servant in India, who founded the Indian National Congress, the beginnings of the democratic process. While our netas and babus travel comfortably today, the District Officers in the earlier days of British rule had to spend half-a-day on horseback before setting up camp to perform his administrative duties, surveying, report writing, listening to complaints, and delivering judgment without fear or favour. Day’s work done, he would go out shooting to bring down a bird or two for his supper.
What is generally not realised by our freedom fighters is the hardships Brits had to endure in the earlier stages. Cases are on record of someone having lunch with a fellow officer, only to attend his funeral in the evening, felled suddenly by some deadly disease. Whole families wiped out by disease. No lengthy periods of mourning like us. Life just had to go on. No guarantee one would return to England.
Going back to my school days in the 1940s, in Hubli (now, sadly Huballi) a railway junction station, it’s remarkable, indeed, the way the then Madras and Southern Mahratta Railway built this town, complete with railway quarters, spacious playgrounds for us to play, a hospital, modern for its time, and schools run by Jesuits and nuns. We had two German priests running our school. As you can well imagine, they did not suffer fools gladly, but to be fair we had all the opportunities to play – cricket, all the games, including walking on stilts! In such an idyllic setting the ideal of academic excellence could not have been further from our minds. Thankfully, we did not have to worry about high percentages, or were not plagued by such issues as the medium of instruction.
Adolf Hitler’s advice to the British was to shoot the freedom fighters. It would be as well to ponder on whether the Josef Stalin, the Russian dictator, would have tolerated Gandhi, who was only too keenly aware his tactics would work with the British. The British left us nearly 70 years ago with a feeling of unfinished business. A lot of water has flowed under the bridges of Thames and the Ganga. Instead of continuing to flog the dead horse on the score of their misrule, we should admit we are ourselves not doing too badly. Rampant corruption, a merely laughable educational system, malnutrition, millions going to bed hungry, to name just a few in the catalogue of misrule. At least the British did try. Ruling a country like India of such size, complexity and diversity, was an almost impossible task, particularly doing it for the first time.
Given a second chance they would have done better. Don’t overlook the fact that all our freedom fighters, including the master himself, were manufactures of British Imperialism. And, don’t anyone ever forget because the British came here, millions of us have gone abroad and prospered beyond our wildest dreams.
