The heathens in Britain

Subject: The heathens in Britain.

As I have mentioned in previous blogs I have enjoyed reading the books of Paul Scott and his description of India in the early 40s. They are books about the twilight days of the Raj and the people who had settled within the colonialism of white dominance, and all the blandishments of a self congratulatory assumption, which in today's 21st century seems to us crass. But is it, and do our forefathers deserve the odium and blame that is heaped upon them. Is the prism of hindsight not distorted by current norms which themselves are bound to be called into question in the future.

From the endemic racism and snobbery of imperial life, on the one hand,  to the Bengal Famine and the sectarian violence brought on by Partition, the Kashmir problem and the endemic poverty of Bangladesh, all are laid at the door of a handful of officials employed by the precursor to the Commonwealth office and East India Company.

Of course catalysts are at work for bad and good but it stretches the imagination that many of the ills in India at this time and in today's India were not also home grown.
India, a vast teaming country has many fissures in it social structure ready to exploit their power. The Caste system of preordaining from birth the relevance of a person makes harmony across the nation problematical to say the least. The endemic poverty  which this Caste system encourages is not the fault of the Raj, in fact, if anything the Raj didn't do enough to try to challenge this Hindu obsession with hierarchical distinction, defining everyone into sects from which there  little chance to escape.
The job of a foreign power is not to baptise everyone in a new faith but to work with what you have whilst at the same time ensuring the benefits, such as contract and common law justice, democracy, transport and an ordered responsible administration for  individual freedom to flourish was no mean feat.
We tarnish the memory of colonialism at our peril. We see today the freedom won by many citizens from the so called yoke of colonialism, freedom which has dissolved into factionalism and corruption on a massive national scale in virtually every country that won their nationalism back from the heathens in Britain.