RajeshA wrote:
Vsudhir ji,
Expressions of regret are by a few and momentary and fleeting. Such expressions have been taking place every once in a while from this corner or that, but that did not stop Dawood Mulli-in-Bund to come to India, treat our leadership like little schoolboys, and lecture us on Kashmir.
If we want to change this behavior of Britain, we have to keep it for ever on the defensive. That means one keeps on pounding the country with historical charges of murder, subjugation, theft, etc. and keep on forcing the head of the country down into the ground.
64 years after the WW II ended, the Germans are still taken to task for their historical wrongs, and they are taken to task by all the sundry, by the Jews, by the Poles, by the Russians, by the Americans, by the Brits, by the French, by the Dutch, etc. etc. The Germans still have to pay the most into the EU budget, all out of a sense of historical sins. They still have to treat the Jews with kid gloves and keep on paying compensations.
One just has to look at how PRC has treated Japan. Can the Japanese ever think of going to China and lecturing them on Taiwan, or on Tibet, or on human rights, or anything else?! Never! PRC has been able to cower down Japan for an eternity. Japan has been sending aid to PRC in the billions to win back Chinese favor and forgiveness. But the Chinese have decided that to not be too forgiving, because that keeps the pressure on Japan. Have we no self-esteem? Weren't the hardships of our grandparents and their parents and their parents not real? {Simply rhetorical, not directed against you vsudhir ji}
One could contest that Germany and Japan were defeated powers, and as such were far more accommodating of other's charges. After Iraq, Afghanistan and the Financial Crisis, Britain too is becoming a defeated power, and that is why now is the time to "Ek dhakka aur!".
Expressions of Regret a la Britain, is a momentary thing and would not change their behavior. They have to be kept under incessant accusations and on the defensive for ever. Reparations and compensation is only a tool, a means to an end.
In the end, one does not negotiate with them about reparations simply to get reparations, but to keep them on the defensive. Do you think, Dawood Mulli-in-Bund would be lecturing us on Kashmir, if at every meet, we were demanding reparations and compensations and charging them in public? The more the charges, the more vocal the charges, the more the British will be willing to see the world India's way, especially questions of Kashmir! Wouldn't you like to see the British owning up to their follies on the Indian Subcontinent? Follies like giving away Chittagong to Bangladesh, or like allowing NWFP to become part of Pakistan, or letting Pakistan invade Baluchistan?
The next step is for Britain to start questioning the integrity of Pakistan and Bangladesh! For this the British need to be treated like scoundrels and criminals!
No need to forget. No need to forgive. But let's deal with them nevertheless in a mature way, and force them to make strategic concessions from being Pakistan appeasers to following India's agenda.
Excellent post RajeshJi. It reminds me of every other article from the BBC on India which invariably contains the footnote "India is home to more than 1 billion people and 80% of its people live under $1 a day". The message you posted should be on every footnote on Britain.
Please remember the following:
- Millions and millions of Indians died due to the imposition of taxes by Britain. Land tax policies were brutal.
- The tax levied on Indian manufactured goods led to the destruction of Indian textiles - An industry that has always been the core of the Indian economy since the first traders came in from the West thousands of years back. We literally taught the world how to spin, weave AND TO DRESS. ( Indus valley - The bust of the bearded man dated 3000 BC (?) shows a patterned robe. Even dyeing was known then). Textiles has always been among the reasons why traders landed on the West coast
-
The export of raw cotton, monopoly in India all led Britain to catapult into the Industrial revolution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial ... _in_Europe.
One should imagine why all this happened. The Middle Ages lasted until the 16th century in Europe. It was a period of total decay in every aspect of their lives. Disease, death and all-prevailing dark damp. It was not necessity. It was desperation that led to thousands of sailors and voyages to find better lands and greener pastures. Blessed by the powerful Church, the Europeans went on in what can be suitably described as barbaric, colonizing Africa and Asia. Every land they landed in has a holocaust story.
After this, in a matter of a few hundred years, Europe is on the forefront again. I am not denying the scientific contributions but what I am saying is that without the knowledge and wealth of Asia, esp. India, it is hard to imagine Europe being where it is today.
It pleases me no end to see British Industry collapsing. The very lands they colonized are having a big stake in their industry. In a land of 40 million people, a 10% unemployment rate will be devastating and it is fast reaching that milestone! British Diary industry is in coma. Steel gone. Cars manufacturing is on the threshold. Textiles - what can I say...what was never theirs is also gone.
Britain will not show any remorse. They still think media is a good escape from all their follies and they can hide behind it.
But Karma is a bitch and will catch up.
Sorry for the rant but I am frothing now .....I am constantly reminded of that Baisakhi day in 1919 and what Prince Phillip had to say!
http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1422/14220460.htm
"That's a bit exaggerated," Philip asserted, "it must include the wounded." Mukherjee, whose brother S.K. Mukherjee is the secretary of the Jallianwala Bagh National Memorial Trust, may already have been a little upset by the failure of the Queen and the Duke to record anything other than their signatures on the visitors' book. He did not, however, articulate his feelings, and merely asked Philip how he had come to this conclusion. "I was told about the killings by General Dyer's son," Mukherjee recalls the Duke as saying, "I'd met him while I was in the Navy."
That the solitary comment Prince Philip had to offer after his visit to Jallianwala Bagh was on this issue made clear that the living symbols of New Labour's imperial heritage were wholly unreconstructed. The Duke of Edinburgh was not willing to be humbled before a monument to the murderous brutality of British colonialism. The issue was not, contrary to some reportage, the number of people killed on that fateful Baisakhi day. The record ranged from 290, the initial government estimate, to 1,000, the figure broadly accepted by the Indian National Congress' independent inquiry (see separate story). Prince Philip's assertion may have been entirely accurate, but the fact that it was the only aspect of the massacre that exercised his imagination, caused offence. It suggested that the death of 379 people was in some way inadequate to appall the royal conscience, in the way the death of 2,000 people would have. Perhaps more important of all, the staggering arrogance that Prince Philip displayed in citing his source of information on the tragedy made clear the lack of integrity in the wreath-laying.
This was 1997.
Remorse from Britian ......fat chance!
Again sorry for the rant but we must not forget the events of
last month and S.M Krishna's reply, to the events a few centuries back.
Britain is a nation whose official policies continues to harm India directly.
Finally, I would urge readers to follow this site.
http://www.elginism.com/
. 
to keep a very close watch on a failing UKstan with all the nuclear arsenal and other hardware. 
. Which we must try to avoid.