Indian pride undented by bombs

March 10, 2006

Indian pride undented by bombs

"Life has to go on. If we stay at home, cowering in our houses, the bombers will have won."

The bomb attacks in Delhi have shaken India's capital city

The sentiments could have been those of Londoners, back in July. Instead the voice was that of a young woman in Delhi, interviewed on Sunday, the day after the three bomb attacks in the city which killed more than 60 people.

To any rational person the vicious stupidity of murdering and maiming ordinary people in order to make some obscure point about politics or religion is obvious.

In the case of the Delhi bombs, the purpose was even more obscure than usual.

But there was nothing obscure about the television pictures of the victims: it looked like London all over again.

For the survivors, and for the relatives of those who died, nothing can ever be the same; but everyone else in a busy city has to get on with his or her life.

Like the people of London, Madrid and New York, Delhi will get back to normal surprisingly fast. That is what happens in big cities.

Colonial ghosts

The Delhi bombs have inevitably overshadowed everything else in India at present. Yet these last few days have been quietly important for India in a different way.

Last week the Indian ambassador in Iran took part in a ceremony in the capital, Tehran, commemorating the 3,500 or so Indian troops of the British Empire forces who died there during World Wars I and II.

Last days of the Raj: Viceroy Mountbatten in Delhi, 1947

Buglers from the Indian army played the Last Post. India, the ambassador said, was dealing with the ghosts of its colonial past.

Today, India is a proud and increasingly successful country, which has triumphantly remained a democracy throughout six decades of independence.

It is understandably hard for many Indians nowadays to come to terms with the fact that they were once someone else's subjects.

Some Indian versions of the country's history give the impression that the two centuries of British rule were a long series of uprisings and acts of defiance. Occasionally it even sounds as though India got rid of the British in much the same way as Algeria got rid of the French.

It isn't true, of course. India gained its independence by peaceful negotiation.

Indian anthem

The Congress leader, Jawaharlal Nehru, strongly supported the idea that Indian troops should fight alongside the British during World War II - even though, with incredible lack of tact, the British Viceroy had joined Britain in declaring war on Germany in 1939 without consulting a single Indian politician.

Nehru understood that helping the British would ensure that India would gain its independence afterwards.

Nehru backed the British in WWII to ensure India's independence

One of his early acts as prime minister of the Republic of India was to announce on 2 April 1948 that the British national anthem would be played on all formal and military occasions, while the Indian national anthem would be played afterwards.

It was inevitable that India would not want to maintain that kind of relationship very long.

But with the decline of Nehru's Congress Party and the rise of more openly nationalistic Indian politics, the myth has grown of India's long resistance to the British. Yet scarcely more than 100,000 British officials and soldiers were usually based in India.

British rule lasted because there was a basic acceptance of it. Especially in the Indian army. And during World Wars I and II, Indian troops played a vital part in many sectors, especially in Asia and North Africa.

India cannot now imagine being subject to another power, and is therefore tempted to believe it never really was

In World War I, they fought in the terrible conditions of the Western Front, and fought well. Without the steadfastness and remarkable qualities of the Indian forces, the British might not have won either World War.

We all have our national myths about ourselves. "Getting history wrong is part of being a country," the historian Eric Hobsbawm once said.

India cannot now imagine being subject to another power, and is therefore tempted to believe it never really was.

The British, for their part, conveniently forget the ugly incidents they created throughout their colonial empire, from the Amritsar massacre in India to the brutality of the way Mau Mau prisoners were treated in Kenya.

London links

In the long run, empires don't do anyone much good: neither the imperial power nor those who are its subjects.

Yet the British gave India almost as much as India gave the British: the English language, for instance, and the taste for democracy, and the very idea that this complex area could actually be one country.

The argument always comes up, of course, that Britain itself wanted to divide Pakistan and India. Not so: the British almost succeeded in persuading Jinnah, Pakistan's founder, to join a united India - until Nehru overplayed his hand, and frightened Jinnah off.

But this is all in the past. Nowadays an important proportion of British business is outsourced to India, and Indians have played an important part in changing the nature of British towns and cities for the better.

And at a time when people in Delhi have been killed in an act of stupid violence in precisely the way people were recently killed in London, the closeness seems all the greater.

Do you agree with John Simpson's view of India today? How should its colonial past be remembered? How do you see relations between modern day India and Britain? Send us your views.

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I applaud Simpson's genuine - if somewhat clumsy - attempt to remind Britons and Indians of the closeness that they do indeed share with each other. It is true that the Indians are understandably unhappy about British (and other European) colonialism and it is true that the British often remain mind-bogglingly backward looking in their inability to fully recognize today's India as an economic and technological power.

However, at the end of the day, bygones should be bygones and it is important for both nations to recognize that India is indeed linked to Britain in a manner not dissimilar to Australia, Canada or the United States. Like those nations, India is an English-speaking and fully democratic nation with a British common law legal system and Anglo-Saxon style capital markets. Rather than downplay these links, both Britain and India would benefit from coming to peace with the shared elements of their history and culture and recognize each other as co-inhabitants of the Anglosphere.

H Juneja, Chicago and London

Although Mr Simpson is factually correct, the kind of tone he portrays throughout the article is typical British. The fact that the British did not want a separate Pakistan is true in context as it considered a united India would be a better partner in the Imperial security. But the British did systematically rob India of her riches even though she did give India a national identity and a good infrastructure like the railways and the postal services.

Subash Thomas, Bangalore, India

Reading Mr. Simpson's article reminds us of the typical Bristish pompous attitude!! The audacity to say India is better because it has learnt English! Even more ludicrous that British did not want to divide India and Pakistan!! If Mr. Simpson has read the history of India, he would know that India's greatness is not from the history of 200 years of British oppressive rule. And the British were not the only invaders in India! However, India remains India!

Nipa Reza, Zurich, Switzerland

I do agree with the views of John Simpson to a certain extent. India should remember its ties with the past era under the colonial ruler as the period of growing out and up against the British rule to attain self independence and to become one of the foremost democracies in the world. We should be grateful to the British though they also exploited us to their maximum benefit. In context of the present relationship it would be prudent for both the nations to be of mutual benefit to each other taking into consideration the world scenario.

J P Fernandes, Goa

As a follower of the great Mahatma Gandhi, I am well aware of the non-violent resistance to British rule in India. We Indians have been far too accommodating over the last several hundreds and thousands of years. This is why there have been many invading parties including the Greeks under Alexander, the Moghals and the British. Even though I accept that we have learned much from British culture, law, technology, etc, I cannot begin to believe that colonial oppression was a good thing in India. I, for one, am disgusted with being invaded (the main reason why we have such a diverse ethnicity in India) and despite being a Mahatma Gandhi devotee, I think I can safely say that I would defend India like a tiger if the need arose. No more "Mr Nice Guy". Saying that, I cannot and will not support any Indian invasion of another's territory. As for Mr Simpson's view on Jinnah, I think it is absolute hog wash.

Don, Oxford, UK

I agree that the British did bring a lot to India, however history should be explained as it was, not the more nationalistic version as it is now. For example, the mass renaming of buildings such as the airport and Central train station in Bombay, even the city's name is an example of this nationalistic agenda. One should remember that the British, despite their faults, managed to successfully create a united India. One should also remember that India was the key point of the British Empire, losing it meant losing the Empire, proving that India is a force to be reckoned with.

Chiraag T, Sydney, Australia

Factually, Mr Simpson may be correct, but his tone is somewhat patronising and he can not help but look upon this history from an anglo-centric point of view. What he conveniently glosses over with "But this is all in the past" is that India continued to suffer the effects of the Empire's greed for decades after independence. For two centuries, India was robbed of its natural resources and wealth by the Empire, to feed the British industrial revolution. The fact that the British built the railways and postal services no doubt assisted India afterwards, but let's not pretend that these were built for the benefit of the Indians - they were built to assist the Empire. The greatest and perhaps only unarguable benefit of the Empire was that it created an Indian political identity, which was absent before the Empire.

Rustam Roy, London, UK (ex-India)

you can read the article at bbc website, just search for the title!