Division of Indian Sub Continent

^^^
Very true. The Gallianwallah Bagh massacre under the orders of General Dyer in Amritsar, 1919 springs to mind.
He was relieved of his command and ordered to stand trial, but, the outrage expressed at his removal by Brits in India and in the UK was huge.
Donations from an outraged public paid for his defence.
They thought the General who killed hundreds of unarmed men, women and children, did the right thing.

The Gallian Wallah Bagh was a square that was surround on all four sides by buildings. The only entrance was an alleyway.
The alleyway was too narrow to allow General Dyer's maxim guns entrance (thank God!).
The Gurkha soldiers only stopped firing into the crowd, that had no way to escape, when they ran out of ammunition for their rifles.
A truly disgraceful episode.

all countries have these dark deeds
either against there own people or those abroad

blighty will always have things like dresden on its conscience

Stroll if your a german then
glasshouses, bricks etc. come to mind

difficult to think of a civilized country that hasn't had a dark day
and as for our hosts the south last year springs to mind

I am German, what has this got to do with it?

I don't go around defending the past actions of my country and calling others uncivilised muppets.

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Originally Posted by stroller

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Originally Posted by Marmite the Dog

But, the answer about why they like to kill each other is because they're a bunch of uncivilised muppets.

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That is rich, coming from a Brit.
Inform yourself about the atrocities committed by the British rulers, then decide who the "uncivilised muppets" are.:mad:

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You can bring up isolated incidents if you like, but the fact of the matter is, if you look at the history of Britian in India (or any part of the Empire) the positives far outweigh the negatives. Even now, getting on for a hundred years later, nearly all of the non-white ex-colonies have not yet reached the same levels of development that they enjoyed as being part of the Empire.

:talktohan

Yes, I agree. If you ignore the racial attitudes of the time and just look at the infrastructure and institutions the British passed on, then the positives do outweigh the negatives.
The populations of the countries that gained their independence, were all handed over fully-functioning countries.

Yet, many of these countries were later hijacked by ideology, or, the military, and today are basket cases.
Blaming colonialism for all their problems may have sounded convincing in the sixties and seventies, but today is starting to sound like a sef-pitying excuse.

I am not disputing that British rule has brought many positive developments to India, whether this outweighs the negatives is a judgement I cannot make.

It is speculative what would have happened if...
One could argue that a different form of governing would have evolved without colonial interference, and economy, education etc. focused to benefit the place itself, not to create wealth in a far away country.
Remember, colonialisim wasn't a humanitarian mission to help the local 'muppets'.
Though towards the end of the Empire Britain was losing money in India - the administration was too costly, I think.

In my opinion it is wrong to put all blame for the present situation on the locals, history has lead to the present.
But the way forward certainly lies within India and Pakistan now.

Stroll
you're being german has nothing to do with it, nor are you an apologist i was making the point that all COLONIAL powers including america and indeed many countries who are not clonial powere have these kind of stains
i think Marmers has emphasized the point in concern with positives
we are aware of the atrocities
as we are aware of everybody elses atrocities

you are the one with the bit rich comment
read the input from Sir B Thetyim and Marmers for background on the situation

Another point that gets overlooked a lot is that during the 18th century the British representatives of the East India Co were extremely sympathetic to the local rulers and were multi-lingual, multi-cultural and were accepted into some of the Moghul courts as equals. Many adopted Mughul dress and had Muslim wives. Sadly, the Victorian age dawned and the British started looking down upon these people; probably due to the increasingly large technological chasm as the industrial age bloomed in the UK and the religious ferver that swept through the isles. India benefitted from this though, as they gained infrastructure and sound economic prectices, leaving them well equiped to be an important player on the world stage.

Unfortunately, they fucked up.

^
When the tide turned, the Mughul intelligencia was killed off and the sympathetic British governors treated as traitors, so I don't think you can add this episode to the positive things Britain has left India with.

Sorry I don't have the link at hand, but there's a very interesting article on the net about the events you've mentioned.

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Originally Posted by Marmite the Dog

Another point that gets overlooked a lot is that during the 18th century the British representatives of the East India Co were extremely sympathetic to the local rulers and were multi-lingual, multi-cultural and were accepted into some of the Moghul courts as equals. Many adopted Mughul dress and had Muslim wives. Sadly, the Victorian age dawned and the British started looking down upon these people; probably due to the increasingly large technological chasm as the industrial age bloomed in the UK and the religious ferver that swept through the isles.

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This is very true, the change in attitude came when the British East India Company in London thought that this "sympathetic attitude" towards the locals was starting to interfere with their profits. Also, the instatement of a Governer-General in India that changed the policy of allowing missionaries to preach had a huge effect.
The missionaries successfully discredited all those British that had fully assimilated into Indian society, by claiming that they had become heathen.
After the Indian Mutiny that started in 1857, the British Crown took over the direct running of India from John Company. By then Victorian values had fully eclipsed the enlightened attitude the British displayed in India up until the late eighteenth century.

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Originally Posted by stroller

When the tide turned, the Mughul intelligencia was killed off and the sympathetic British governors treated as traitors, so I don't think you can add this episode to the positive things Britain has left India with.

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I thought I made it perfectly clear that this was NOT a good thing.

Do you always deliberately misread things so you have a point to argue against?

I misread, again, sorry - it's the "India benefitted from this though" which put me on the wrong track.

I don't know what it is about your writing that makes me jump, not the first time this happened. I'll take more time to digest your comments in future.

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Originally Posted by stroller

I don't know what it is about your writing that makes me jump, not the first time this happened. I'll take more time to digest your comments in future.

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Make sure you do, or I'll make you wear a grey shirt for a week!!

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Originally Posted by Marmite the Dog

Unfortunately, they fucked up.

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I wouldn't go this far as they have been rather successful in 'stealing' high tech jobs from the United States. The vast majority of our 'help' centers regarding tech support, etc. now go to India. Assembly takes place in China, tech support and engineering now take place in India. It's just a shame that we haven't done a better job of assisting the world's largest democracy. Instead, we have coddled and aided the butchers in Beijing.

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Originally Posted by Marmite the Dog

divide it back up into the small kingdoms and principalities that existed before Britain civilised them

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They were good enough to live without the British.I mean they were civilised enough to rule the whole sub-continent.

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Originally Posted by endure

Let's assume that the Brits are totally and completely responsible for fcuking the division up.

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Yes they totally are.They are responsible for every inch of the land they divided and they are responsible for every Indian,Pakistani and kashmiri killed cos of that division for the last 50 or 60 years.Actually the Bahadur Shah Zafar (the ruler at that time) didn't invite the brits to colonize the sub-continent they came in for trade.

Mhz
that's the most blinkered drivel including Harry's ive ever read on this forum

i appreciate it may be a sensitive issue for you but it really is just a load of shite

its not my place to decide what is civilized enough to live without

honour killings maybe?
thugee's?
Chinese land grabs?

britain made mistakes all over the world; no argument
but as i said before the subcontinent is perpetuating the problem
india, pakistan
grow some balls and sort it out

its not britains fault if the whole lot blow themselves back to the sharia/ brahmanist stone age from which we dragged them

Lets say they were scum bags and having all those Brahman and sharia law going on,What entitles the British to pop in and rule them and treat them like a second class race??

What makes the British so sympathetic and caring to civilise them??

Let's say the British tried to civilise them which is utter crap I dont see any difference.There are still honour killings which are not part of the religion.That makes the British empire a failure once more.

Actually this might be a sensitive issue for you but making the British colonizers look good is just load of shit.They were ruling the people by force cos they entered by force and they made them their servants.If thats civilised then I dont wanna be.

some good points there
sensetive issue for me no,
ancient history why should i be concerned, proof is in the pudding though, we are discussing in ENGLISH not hindi/ arabic, on a medium devised by blah, blah, blah

i mean if you had sooner remained isolated, like Bhutan for example then fair enough, we should have left you to moghul/ mongol/ chinese/ russian/ japanese domination, i mean look at those utopias hey?

your right britain didnt try to civilize you, that was a by product
the fact that you cant remain civilized is your failure not ours

Civilized by who's definition? I think assuming that someone's civilized by your or my definition is the very core of what's wrong when some nation goes in and tries to remold some other civilization to their own desires.

Do you think Iraq is better off now because America is trying to force American ideals on people who don't want that?

If being colonised by the British was so bad, how do you explain the progress other ex-colonies like Singapore and Malaysia. They have had their share of problems since independence, but intead of blaming the British got on with it, and are way ahead of India and Pakistan in terms of development, living standrads, etc.

So blaming the British doesn't really cut the mustard.....

^
mine obviously that's the only one that matters in my narrow blinkerd mind
are the kurds better off since the imperial forces went in, yes

how about the marsh arabs?, probably

its a bad comparison because the emporer only wants their gooey black stuff and doesent really give a flying fuck

cricket is civilization
coca cola is not

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Originally Posted by reinvented

the fact that you cant remain civilized is your failure not ours

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I agree that my country is fucked in many ways for example:Corruption and uneducated religious fuckwits and many other things but getting civilised by the british is something that I dont agree with.you mean the Indian sub-sontinent would have been a jungle with human beings if british didn't colonioze it??

No reinvented it would have been a very big problem for the U.S.A and Britain by now.

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Originally Posted by Whiteshiva

If being colonised by the British was so bad, how do you explain the progress other ex-colonies like Singapore and Malaysia. They have had their share of problems since independence, but intead of blaming the British got on with it, and are way ahead of India and Pakistan in terms of development, living standrads, etc.

So blaming the British doesn't really cut the mustard.....

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[sarcasm]Well, gee, when America defeated the British we went to become a superpower. Why haven't the rest of all of Britain's colonies also become superpowers as well? Are the rest of them defective, stupid, uncivilized? They must be since they aren't doing as well as we are.[/sarcasm]

Blanket statements don't cut it, do they?

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Originally Posted by reinvented

^
mine obviously that's the only one that matters in my narrow blinkerd mind
are the kurds better off since the imperial forces went in, yes

how about the marsh arabs?, probably

its a bad comparison because the emporer only wants their gooey black stuff and doesent really give a flying fuck

cricket is civilization
coca cola is not

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Maybe to someone else living in mud huts and eating third born children is 'civilized.' Would be OK for them to invade England, colonize for several hundred years, then abandon England and partition it before leaving?

No country has the right to go in somewhere, colonize, modify culture, then abandon that country and the complain because the people there don't want to live the same lifestyle. God knows the U.S. is guilty of that. I don't think the Iraqis, for example, should be forced to accept democracy on American terms if they don't want it.

MHZ im really not standing in judgement on your country
all countries have issues
as for it being a problem for the UK, i dont see how unless it would have been colonized by the russians or the french as they hoped

realistically i'm sure it would have developed but equally realistically large parts of it are still medieval, well if you watch national geographic