Well, the article is pretty long already, and the author says he prefers Orwell's nonfiction work. It's not like he ignored Orwell's youth as a Burmese policeman in the article.
E.g.:
> In the early essay “A Hanging” (1931), perhaps my favorite, Orwell describes a grotesque rite of passage for Burma police cadets that entailed witnessing an execution. The police are ushering a condemned “Hindu” man to the gallows when he steps “slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path.” Why, the reader wonders, would a condemned man bother?
I don't really share the GP's opinion that this ought to be in the article, but his description is nonetheless unfortunately accurate: the rise of Hindu supremacism is indeed very concerning, and saying that “India coexists and celebrates harmony with all faiths within its borders” is oblivious at best.
You can find descriptions of the things GP said in pretty much any reputable foreign newspaper with international coverage. See for instance the Guardian about the hindu temple being built on too of the ruins of a destroyed mosque: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/22/modi-inaugurat...
Fascism is both the totalitarian end state and the motion towards it (Italy in 1920-21, Germany 1931-32). Obviously India isn't a fascist regime but the trend is still very concerning.
Fascism is an ideology. While the BJP has strong ethnonationalist tendencies, it is no way facist. Statist authoritarianism and larger than life political personas have been very much the default in India since independence.
India is a big enough country that no one statement can truly apply to all of it, but the media blows such concerns out of proportion.
Yes, the rise of Hindu supremacism does exist and is a very real thing we have to grapple with. But in my experience it doesn't apply to most of India. Most people don't partake in or support communal riots, they are perfectly fine being acquainted with members of different faiths.
In a country as big as India, some incidents are bound to happen. That is a terribe way to phrase it but I can't think up of anything better. I am not trying to be a BJP apologist, but you simply can't point to such incidents and try to say that India is becoming a fascist country.
Sorry, the first sentence of the last paragraph is a truly bad way to describe my feelings on the matter. I was thinking of removing it because it is such a terrible take (if you isolate it from the rest of the comment) but I am trying to illustrate how in a country as massive as India the likelihood of some types of events occuring is much higher.
India has many problems, and I believe Hindutva to be one of them. I just don't think it is as big of an issue as the media sometimes makes it out to be, and that it is harmful to focus on it when there are far more pressing issues at hand (some of which relate to members of the ruling party).
Note: Upon reading through my comment I realized that some people might come to the conclusion that I happen to live in a region with few interfaith fights (that feels like a crude way to describe them). That is not the case, just a couple days back a mob was responsible for some disturbing events at Mira road in the same city I live in. However, I believe such events to be the exception rather than the norm. I am not trying to justify any such events in any way whatsoever.
> Which means every mosque or church that was built on top of a demolished temple stands as a monument to colonization and conquest of a people and a festering wound on the face of the nation.
Not neccessarily, most nations in Europe converted to Christianity by their own accord, and not by colonization or conquest.
From Catherine Nixey's The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World:
> When modern histories describe this period, this time when all the old religions died away and Christianity finally became pre-eminent, they tend to call it the “triumph of Christianity.” It is worth remembering, however, the original Roman meaning of the word “triumph.” A true Roman triumph wasn’t merely about the victory of the winner. It was about the total and utter subjugation of the loser. In a true Roman triumph the losing side was paraded through the capital while the winning side looked on at an enemy whose soldiers had been slain, whose possessions had been despoiled and whose leaders had been humiliated.
> A triumph was not merely a “victory.” It was an annihilation.
> ...
> For before it preserved, the Church destroyed. In a spasm of destruction never seen before—and one that appalled many non-Christians watching it—during the fourth and fifth centuries, the Christian Church demolished, vandalized and melted down a simply staggering quantity of art. Classical statues were knocked from their plinths, defaced, defiled and torn limb from limb. Temples were razed to their foundations and mutilated. A temple widely considered to be the most magnificent in the entire empire was leveled. Many of the Parthenon sculptures were attacked, faces were mutilated, hands and limbs were hacked off, and gods were decapitated. Some of the finest statues on the whole building were almost certainly smashed off then ground into rubble that was then used to build churches. Books—which were often stored in temples —suffered terribly. The remains of the greatest library in the ancient world, a library that had once held perhaps 700,000 volumes, were destroyed in this way by Christians. It was over a millennium before any other library would even come close to its holdings. Works by censured philosophers were forbidden and bonfires blazed across the empire as outlawed books went up in flames.
A lot of that was reversed in Western Europe after the western part of Roman Empire crumbled. Plenty of regions became pagan again, and only later became Christian, this time under their own accord (which means - under the accord of the current ruling power, but they were vastly smaller and more local than the Roman Empire).
> Which means every mosque or church that was built on top of a demolished temple stands as a monument to colonization and conquest of a people and a festering wound on the face of the nation. […]
> This is decolonization at work.
Thanks for illustrating my point so well.
Persecuting your own citizens who worship minority religions is not decolonization in any way. These people are your fellow citizens, and what you're defending is simply persecution of religious or ethnic minorities. Hence my point about the dangerous rise of Hindu supremacist, which you're illustrating perfectly.
> Persecuting your own citizens who worship minority religions is not decolonization in any way.
Reclaiming your own temples, after giving the injured party land to rebuild their mosque, is not persecution in my book. I would argue that building a mosque after demolishing a temple at the place Hindus believe their Lord was born was a deliberate provocation, and the other party refusing to let it go for 500 years was persecution of Hindus and their faith.
No other mosque in Ayodhya was touched when this particular mosque was demolished three decades back. If Hindus were truly supremacist, every single one would have been.
> minority
There are more than 600,000 mosques in India and over 200 million Muslims. They are a second majority.
> . If Hindus were truly supremacist, every single one would have been.
Mist Hindu aren't, like most white people aren't white supremacists, but Hindu supremacism is a rising trend and that's the problem at stake in this thread.
> There are more than 600,000 mosques in India and over 200 million Muslims. They are a second majority.
That's 14% of the population (vs 80% for Hindu), it's not a second majority, it's the definition of a minority. For the record, Jews accounted for 10% of the Polish population in 1939…
Every once in a while I come across people with nostalgia for British Raj, and I point them to Orwell's essay 'A Hanging' to remind them to thank what gods there may be that they no longer live in British India.
Wikipedia says that there are currently 488 people on death rows in independent
India. Meanwhile, the UK hasn't had death rows for 60 years by now, because death penalty was de facto abolished in the 1960s.
If you are an opponent of the death penalty, I cannot see how the current situation is better, much less why gods should be thanked for that difference.
If the only thing that matters to you is that it is a native hand that wraps a rope around the condemned's neck, well, in that case I understand where you are coming from, though I don't agree with that.
Here in former Czechoslovakia, the death penalty was applied both by occupation powers and our own authorities. Same bad shit, I am glad that it is over, hopefully forever.
> "Since 2000, eight executions have been carried out in India, all executions have been carried out by hanging." (Wikipedia)
One ought to to check out the offenses committed as well. These are no ordinary crimes. Public opinion matters. It's a large and extremely complex place and "system".
Does it matter if you are on the death row? Some of those who are there will be executed, and waiting for decades if you hang or not is pretty inhuman. Once there is a legal sentence of death on you, it is a matter of policy if you actually hang or not, and policy may change with a different PM/governor etc.
That feels very bad to me. If a retentionist country wants to hang people, it shouldn't add endless insecurity on top of the punishment.
Edit.: interesting that this is controversial enough to be downvoted. Remember Trump signing the death warrants of 13 federal death row inmates during the last 6 months of his presidency? Yeah, once you are legally condemned to death, your actual execution is a matter of electoral random walk, which is pretty nasty.
You should understand, that of those 488 currently in DR, only a small fraction will ever be actually executed. It's practically the same as life term. I hope you are not against that either? The "endless insecurity" is actually deliberate, because people (majority) will actually oppose the abolition of capital punishment.
Tangentially, how should a country (read US) deal with terrorists (in the strictest possible sense of the word) who planned and carried out significantly impactful attacks against their citizens?
Its probably not being downvoted for that reason. Rather because you're just being plain wrong here.
" only a small fraction will ever be actually executed"
How can you know? It is entirely possible that a change in policy will result in all of them hanging within a month. Once you are condemned to death, the only thing between you and the gallows is policy that can be unilaterally changed by whoever decides to carry out the executions or not. The court has spoken, you won't be sentenced again. You are a dead person walking and someone in the executive branch can always decide to let you actually hang. An election of a politician who wants to look tough on crime may result in precisely that.
Tangentially, more than half of the world abolished the death penalty even though terrorism does not spare them. Spain lets Basque butchers live behind bars, so does France with its jihadists.
>It is entirely possible that a change in policy will result in all of them hanging within a month.
It seems to me you dont have the faintest clue how the Indian justice system works, I'm not even sure you're aware that India does have law and order like a civilized democracy. It has major problems within it, but it's not entirely nonexistent.
About the second point, I'd just add again, that public opinion matters.
OK, so if I am a condemned person sitting on an Indian death row, who can order my actual execution?
As far as public opinion goes, yes, it matters, but it may not be decisive. Quite a few European countries would probably re-introduce the death penalty if the question was left entirely to the population (via a referendum). I am sort-of glad that they don't go down this road; not even Ukraine sentences Russian war criminals to death.
A series of more or less automatic appeals ends up at the desk of the President. It's a deliberate act of commission by the President of the time to actually order an execution. And overwhelmingly, they tend to commute.
488 people for a country of nearly 1.5 billion is a pretty slim number. The US has 6x the death row inmates despite having less than 1/4 the population.
India is pretty far behind the rest of the world, but to be fair, they were enslaved for centuries then dropped and left to build a society from scratch less than a century ago. There are going to be problems, but on many fronts, India is doing better than a lot of countries in some aspects. Instead of comparing them to Western/Central Europe, it's better to compare them to other countries in their class. Countries in Central America, Subsaharan Africa, etc.
As someone who just visited a few weeks ago, one thing really impressed me about India: government hospitals provide free service. I had a medical emergency, a total foreigner who pays no taxes, and they helped me without hesitation in my time of need and refused to take a single cent. That's something I can truly admire about their country and something the world could learn from India.
scale matters. i expect that to be obvious in a place like HN
there _is_ an interesting discussion to be had about how far behind india is vs. china, but the average westerner refuses to entertain the obvious conclusion to be drawn there.
Don't try to hide your ignorance(wilful?) behind snide comments and supercilious language. Two can play at this game.
I have taken apart your insidious arguments, pointed you to books/videos/articles demolishing your attempt at "whitewashing" Indian history and your response is what? Mere petulant ad hominem attacks again betraying your lack of knowledge of the topic.
Anybody who tries to defend colonialism (which is merely slavery in a different form) is a textbook "Racist".
> First they were not enslaved. Second, it wasn't for centuries. Raj was heavily decentralized with local autonomous governance over much of its territory
That is patently false. My ancestral family had owned land in what is present day Bihar going back to reign of Akbar. Their land was given to an Englishman by the British Raj and my ancestors became laborers on their own land and they were displaced and scattered in poverty.
Yeah slavery may not be correct but what would you call pressing people into bonded or indentured labor? Contracts you can't get out of (easily). There are a lot of people of Indian origin still living in South East Asia, Caribbean, Africa. How did they get there?
The way I see it, the brits didn't go out of their way to hurt and humiliate Indians like the Islamic conquerors did. But they did go out of their way to loot the treasuries of Indian kingdoms just like the Islamic conquerors did. What the hell was doctrine of lapse? "The territory gradually expanded" Really? Like a bit of gas?
They saw a land in turbulent times which were suffering under unjust rulers and decided to revel in the opportunity and pour on the misery and fill their pockets. A bunch of truly despicable demons.
The world may not owe us a break, but I don't see why we should pretend the brits and Raj were good in any way. They were in aggregate bad. And whatever little good (or bad) has happened in India it has been thanks to our own people, their will to fight against incredible odds, and their own greed and corruption and base nature.
The brits ruled plenty of other places other than India. They are all either shitholes or rising power centers because of their own people. The brits are worth nothing.
Brown people have every capability to be just as cruel, heartless and devilishly cunning as white people.
We don't know who invented slavery and we'll never know but when European explorers arrived they did not introduce the concept. Nor did they introduce war, superstition, poverty, starvation or inequality. There's no such thing as the "noble savage".
>We don't know who invented slavery and we'll never know but when European explorers arrived they did not introduce the concept.
Wrong; the System of Racism as it is known today is entirely an invention of White European Countries. Prior to their institutionalizing of Racism on pseudo-scientific lines it was merely simple enslavement of the loser by the victor on a case-by-case basis. Also not all Countries/Kingdoms engaged in this. It is only with the expansion by Europeans that the idea of "Races" some of which were considered inferior by birth/definition because of skin color(black/brown/yellow/red), facial features(Caucasian/Negroid/Mongoloid), lack of understanding of native cultures(civilized/uncivilized), etc. became Systematized/Institutionalized and given legitimacy using what we know today as pseudo-science.
> Nor did they introduce war, superstition, poverty, starvation or inequality.
But they increased it exponentially, devastating entire countries/civilizations/cultural groups/social groups/etc. Much of the mess in the World today particularly in Africa, Middle East and South Asia has its genesis in their colonial past.
You can't know what India would be like if British rule continued to this day. Any comparison is effectively meaningless. The parent comment was arguing against nostalgia for the British Raj, and it's no less justifiable.
You can't, but you can at least compare and guess. There are still some colonies extant (e.g. Falklands, Gibraltar, French Guinea, New Caledonia), and when it comes to big stuff like death penalty, they all followed the metropolis. Even former British dominions (Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) abolished the death penalty on a fairly similar schedule.
You're so focused on capital punishment as an indicator of social health that you're missing the original point, which is that life was awful for many Indians under the British Raj.
I'm opposed to the death penalty. Thankfully the death penalty is rare in India. But that is not the point I wanted to make. It's that the casual cruelty to Indians was rampant in way that it was not for British. It's not that the the British of that era suddenly became more moral when they went back to their own country. It's that in a democracy, the rulers dare not do what imperial rulers can.(they don't need to be British to be cruel. There were plenty of Mughal and Hindu rulers of equal cruelty.) Independence from British rule gave us our independence and allowed us to become a democracy, and flawed though it may be, democratic India never had famines that killed tens of millions every decade. Freedom and democracy are precious and I think we Indians have started to take it for granted after 75 years of it.
Precisely said. It is simple psychology. I would rather have painful experiences with my own people, with whom we can grow together (hopefully, possibly), rather than an Imperialist who sees me as an other, and who I see as an other.
Imperialism is undoubtedly a trauma. We can get past the experience and even do commerce but the distaste and unpleasantness (on an aggregate) will never really go away.
I wouldn't tolerate cruelty from my own people either. That's the whole point of a democracy. It holds rulers accountable for their actions. (to some extent.)
Also, as Mahatma Gandhi pointed out, we should distinguish between British rule of India, and the British people themselves. Indians and India have no problem with the latter, only with the former. Once British rule ended, we have no enmity with Britain. We parted as friends. Indeed Lord Mountbatten is still revered as the first governor general of Independent India. (Apt considering tomorrow is Republic Day.)
Neither would I. I never said I would tolerate cruelty from my own people either.
Neither did I say that I hate the British people. But if someone from the country goes around saying that the Raj was a favor to Indians, I wouldn't like this person either. I would think they are an idiot.
As for Mr. Mountbatten I am not sure what sort of a person would "revere" this man. He probably wasn't a bad person but he wasn't great enough to be revered either. Just some bureaucrat in the right place at the right time.
Well, first it was _not_ banned when India became independent, and if anything, the British system was quite trigger happy with it. If you look at just the history of British executions pre 1967, you'll find a massive number of wrongful convictions, being overturned or pardoned decades later.
After independence, the use has declined over the decades, and in the last 20 years, it was used seven times - three convicted terrorists (one of whom may have been innocent) and four gang rape convicts (not much doubt about guilt there). It's quite rare that the sentence _isn't_ commuted in the modern era.
So, if Britain improved over time, that cannot be used to argue that the situation isn't better in India over the same time; maybe not ideal, but definitely better than at the point of Independence.
by the time of Kipling and later Orwell during peak British Empire it referred to everything East of the then European "Western World" .. and so included India, Burma, et al.
It later contracted somewhat to mainly be used for South East Aisa (excluding India | Pakistan) and more recently been dropped to the floor and is out of favour (it was a ridiculously broad brush).
I merely went halfway to frame out where it came from, how it has been used in history, and dodged the breakdown of how it became increasingly offensive post WWII.
This is what I assumed as a non-native speaker. He didn't really care about the word "Oriental", rather about the way he seemingly justifies punching people presumably beneath him.
I think you are talking about this line in the article:
> So, why didn’t he omit the racist quip about “Orientals”?
This is specifically in reference to a quote from Orwell at the top of the article:
> > coolies I had hit with my fist in moments of rage (nearly everyone does these things in the East, at any rate occasionally: Orientals can be very provoking)
The author of this article is primarily objecting not to the use of the word "Orientals" but to the defense that it's ok to beat them because everyone does it and they are annoying.
I think what the author is asking is: if he has had such a change of heart, why not simply omit this excuse? Why still provide justification that it is ok for a white person to beat a colonial subject because their cultural norms are different and annoying to the white person?
And it’s equally a reach to say they were being beaten just for the color of their skin. Unless you’ve perfected both the arts of mind reading and time travel. Why are you assuming that I’m defending something rather than merely offering a different interpretation?
>
In The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), he wrote:
For five years I had been part of an oppressive system, and it had left me with a bad conscience. Innumerable remembered faces—faces of prisoners in the dock, of men waiting in the condemned cells, of subordinates I had bullied and aged peasants I had snubbed, of servants and coolies I had hit with my fist in moments of rage (nearly everyone does these things in the East, at any rate occasionally: Orientals can be very provoking)—haunted me intolerably. I was conscious of an immense weight of guilt that I had got to expiate.
The first and last sentences of this oft-quoted passage are typically shared with an ellipsis, omitting the offensive part. I assume this erasure occurs because it is difficult to read the middle sentence and find sympathy for the man who wrote it. It affords a glimpse of the Raj’s daily violence and admits what a tormented man held festering in his heart.
Reading this, it occurred to me that a good conscience is like a high intellect, a gift which only a minority possesses. Most contemporaries of Orwell surely convinced themselves that the way they were behaving was perfectly moral and upstanding.
There's very few people that have the capacity to self-reflect and question everything they ever believed in and to pounder the morality and justice of it all. These are the people moving society forward. We wouldn't have arrived to any notion of human rights, personal freedom or democracy without them.
Einstein: There are few enough people with sufficient independence to see the weaknesses and follies of their contemporaries and remain themselves untouched by them. And these isolated few usually soon lose their zeal for putting things to rights when they have come face to face with human obduracy. Only to a tiny minority is it given to fascinate their generation by subtle humour and grace and to hold the mirror up to it by the impersonal agency of art. To-day I salute with sincere emotion the supreme master of this method, who has delighted–and educated–us all.
George Orwell was a colonist cop who described his subjects as “brutes. The success of 1984 and Animal Farm were largely due to his wife Sonia Brownell promoting them in her job at the British propaganda ministry. He self-described as a “Tory-anarchist” but a detailed review of his life and beliefs leads me to think he was just the former.
Is "Tory" in your mind just this vast, vague ocean, with sea monsters and dragons scribbled in the corners, that lies to the right of wherever you are?
The man fought for the republicans in the Spanish Civil war, for goodness sake. How can he be a Tory? Just because socialists 90 years ago had very different social sensibilities to those of today, does not mean you can suddenly decide they were conservatives.
(Not sure how detailed your review was, but he abandoned the "Tory Anarchist" label after his experiences in Spain in the 30s, and before his socialist apologist books that made him so famous).
If you can say that and show awareness of Animal Farm, 1984 too really, in two short sentences then this is either trolling or you actually have something interesting to say if you'd care to expand on your 'detailed review of his life and beliefs'?
Sure, 1984 and Animal Farm were both fine critiques of Stalinism. They’re not that deep though, and it’s curious that this “socialist” “anarchist” author is largely revered for his critiques of communism. Again, largely because of his wife’s work at the propaganda ministry.
> Sonia worked with the Information Research Department (IRD), a propaganda department of the British Foreign Office, which helped to increase the international fame of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. With her support, the IRD was able to translate Animal Farm into over 16 languages,[3] and for British embassies to disseminate the book in over 14 countries for propaganda purposes
> Sonia is believed to be the model for Julia, the heroine of Nineteen Eighty-Four.[1][2]
> it’s curious that this “socialist” “anarchist” author is largely revered for his critiques of communism
Stalinism is not communism though, plenty of communists still hate it to this day, if anything Orwell is known for criticism of totalitarianism, not communism.
He traveled to a foreign country and joined a militia to put his life on the line fighting fascism. Does that demonstrate more or less skin in the game against fascism than Stalinism?
I’ll give you this: I was not aware of the Brownell-CIA connection at all, so thanks for that.
The common American perception of Orwell as anti-communist had something to do with that. But even if there had not been such a direct connection, that would have happened anyway. The Cold War made all political dialogue unidimensional for almost 50 years. Even today many people's minds are so shriveled they cannot encompass the thoughts of someone critical of both American capitalism and Soviet state communism - as your comments demonstrate.
Any serious examination of Orwell’s writing will show he was resolutely of the left. He was a socialist intellectual who was disdainful of the cultural fringes that the movement attracted. He largely romanticized the working class as naturally virtuous and with the right instincts for solidarity. In that way, and only that way, was he similar to right-wingers who dreamed of a return to pastoral tradition.
It’s fascinating to explore George Orwell’s complex journey from his time as a colonial policeman to his later works as a writer and critic. His introspection and ability to evolve his views over time are a testament to the power of self-reflection and the importance of questioning one’s beliefs. Orwell’s writings continue to provoke meaningful discussions about society, politics, and human nature, reminding us of the value of critical thinking and empathy in shaping a better future.
Every fan of George Orwell needs to get the Everyman's Library Hardcover edition titled Essays. It is 1400+ pages of almost all of his non-fiction writings.
The article notes that Orwell’s father was an overseer of an opium farm in India.
You might ask if it was just for medicines. Nope, the British Empire was also in the drug business, and it fought two wars against China to keep the opium trade going.
Setting aside the horrors and humiliations of colonialism (not to mention what came afterwards too), ultimately this is why Hong Kong and Shanghai are different from the rest of China. That has its effects on the technology industry even today.
96 comments
[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 155 ms ] threadE.g.:
> In the early essay “A Hanging” (1931), perhaps my favorite, Orwell describes a grotesque rite of passage for Burma police cadets that entailed witnessing an execution. The police are ushering a condemned “Hindu” man to the gallows when he steps “slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path.” Why, the reader wonders, would a condemned man bother?
India coexists and celebrates harmony with all faiths within its borders.
You can find descriptions of the things GP said in pretty much any reputable foreign newspaper with international coverage. See for instance the Guardian about the hindu temple being built on too of the ruins of a destroyed mosque: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/22/modi-inaugurat...
Other authoritarian movements or regimes that came after it either called themselves or were called fascist.
Largely speaking it's often used to refer to any authoritarian/totalitarian regime or political movement, especially right-wing ones.
Yes, the rise of Hindu supremacism does exist and is a very real thing we have to grapple with. But in my experience it doesn't apply to most of India. Most people don't partake in or support communal riots, they are perfectly fine being acquainted with members of different faiths.
In a country as big as India, some incidents are bound to happen. That is a terribe way to phrase it but I can't think up of anything better. I am not trying to be a BJP apologist, but you simply can't point to such incidents and try to say that India is becoming a fascist country.
Sorry, the first sentence of the last paragraph is a truly bad way to describe my feelings on the matter. I was thinking of removing it because it is such a terrible take (if you isolate it from the rest of the comment) but I am trying to illustrate how in a country as massive as India the likelihood of some types of events occuring is much higher.
India has many problems, and I believe Hindutva to be one of them. I just don't think it is as big of an issue as the media sometimes makes it out to be, and that it is harmful to focus on it when there are far more pressing issues at hand (some of which relate to members of the ruling party).
Note: Upon reading through my comment I realized that some people might come to the conclusion that I happen to live in a region with few interfaith fights (that feels like a crude way to describe them). That is not the case, just a couple days back a mob was responsible for some disturbing events at Mira road in the same city I live in. However, I believe such events to be the exception rather than the norm. I am not trying to justify any such events in any way whatsoever.
Not neccessarily, most nations in Europe converted to Christianity by their own accord, and not by colonization or conquest.
> When modern histories describe this period, this time when all the old religions died away and Christianity finally became pre-eminent, they tend to call it the “triumph of Christianity.” It is worth remembering, however, the original Roman meaning of the word “triumph.” A true Roman triumph wasn’t merely about the victory of the winner. It was about the total and utter subjugation of the loser. In a true Roman triumph the losing side was paraded through the capital while the winning side looked on at an enemy whose soldiers had been slain, whose possessions had been despoiled and whose leaders had been humiliated.
> A triumph was not merely a “victory.” It was an annihilation.
> ...
> For before it preserved, the Church destroyed. In a spasm of destruction never seen before—and one that appalled many non-Christians watching it—during the fourth and fifth centuries, the Christian Church demolished, vandalized and melted down a simply staggering quantity of art. Classical statues were knocked from their plinths, defaced, defiled and torn limb from limb. Temples were razed to their foundations and mutilated. A temple widely considered to be the most magnificent in the entire empire was leveled. Many of the Parthenon sculptures were attacked, faces were mutilated, hands and limbs were hacked off, and gods were decapitated. Some of the finest statues on the whole building were almost certainly smashed off then ground into rubble that was then used to build churches. Books—which were often stored in temples —suffered terribly. The remains of the greatest library in the ancient world, a library that had once held perhaps 700,000 volumes, were destroyed in this way by Christians. It was over a millennium before any other library would even come close to its holdings. Works by censured philosophers were forbidden and bonfires blazed across the empire as outlawed books went up in flames.
> This is decolonization at work.
Thanks for illustrating my point so well.
Persecuting your own citizens who worship minority religions is not decolonization in any way. These people are your fellow citizens, and what you're defending is simply persecution of religious or ethnic minorities. Hence my point about the dangerous rise of Hindu supremacist, which you're illustrating perfectly.
Reclaiming your own temples, after giving the injured party land to rebuild their mosque, is not persecution in my book. I would argue that building a mosque after demolishing a temple at the place Hindus believe their Lord was born was a deliberate provocation, and the other party refusing to let it go for 500 years was persecution of Hindus and their faith.
No other mosque in Ayodhya was touched when this particular mosque was demolished three decades back. If Hindus were truly supremacist, every single one would have been.
> minority
There are more than 600,000 mosques in India and over 200 million Muslims. They are a second majority.
Mist Hindu aren't, like most white people aren't white supremacists, but Hindu supremacism is a rising trend and that's the problem at stake in this thread.
> There are more than 600,000 mosques in India and over 200 million Muslims. They are a second majority.
That's 14% of the population (vs 80% for Hindu), it's not a second majority, it's the definition of a minority. For the record, Jews accounted for 10% of the Polish population in 1939…
If you are an opponent of the death penalty, I cannot see how the current situation is better, much less why gods should be thanked for that difference.
If the only thing that matters to you is that it is a native hand that wraps a rope around the condemned's neck, well, in that case I understand where you are coming from, though I don't agree with that.
Here in former Czechoslovakia, the death penalty was applied both by occupation powers and our own authorities. Same bad shit, I am glad that it is over, hopefully forever.
One ought to to check out the offenses committed as well. These are no ordinary crimes. Public opinion matters. It's a large and extremely complex place and "system".
That feels very bad to me. If a retentionist country wants to hang people, it shouldn't add endless insecurity on top of the punishment.
Edit.: interesting that this is controversial enough to be downvoted. Remember Trump signing the death warrants of 13 federal death row inmates during the last 6 months of his presidency? Yeah, once you are legally condemned to death, your actual execution is a matter of electoral random walk, which is pretty nasty.
Tangentially, how should a country (read US) deal with terrorists (in the strictest possible sense of the word) who planned and carried out significantly impactful attacks against their citizens?
Its probably not being downvoted for that reason. Rather because you're just being plain wrong here.
How can you know? It is entirely possible that a change in policy will result in all of them hanging within a month. Once you are condemned to death, the only thing between you and the gallows is policy that can be unilaterally changed by whoever decides to carry out the executions or not. The court has spoken, you won't be sentenced again. You are a dead person walking and someone in the executive branch can always decide to let you actually hang. An election of a politician who wants to look tough on crime may result in precisely that.
Tangentially, more than half of the world abolished the death penalty even though terrorism does not spare them. Spain lets Basque butchers live behind bars, so does France with its jihadists.
It seems to me you dont have the faintest clue how the Indian justice system works, I'm not even sure you're aware that India does have law and order like a civilized democracy. It has major problems within it, but it's not entirely nonexistent.
About the second point, I'd just add again, that public opinion matters.
As far as public opinion goes, yes, it matters, but it may not be decisive. Quite a few European countries would probably re-introduce the death penalty if the question was left entirely to the population (via a referendum). I am sort-of glad that they don't go down this road; not even Ukraine sentences Russian war criminals to death.
India is pretty far behind the rest of the world, but to be fair, they were enslaved for centuries then dropped and left to build a society from scratch less than a century ago. There are going to be problems, but on many fronts, India is doing better than a lot of countries in some aspects. Instead of comparing them to Western/Central Europe, it's better to compare them to other countries in their class. Countries in Central America, Subsaharan Africa, etc.
As someone who just visited a few weeks ago, one thing really impressed me about India: government hospitals provide free service. I had a medical emergency, a total foreigner who pays no taxes, and they helped me without hesitation in my time of need and refused to take a single cent. That's something I can truly admire about their country and something the world could learn from India.
there _is_ an interesting discussion to be had about how far behind india is vs. china, but the average westerner refuses to entertain the obvious conclusion to be drawn there.
I have taken apart your insidious arguments, pointed you to books/videos/articles demolishing your attempt at "whitewashing" Indian history and your response is what? Mere petulant ad hominem attacks again betraying your lack of knowledge of the topic.
Anybody who tries to defend colonialism (which is merely slavery in a different form) is a textbook "Racist".
That is patently false. My ancestral family had owned land in what is present day Bihar going back to reign of Akbar. Their land was given to an Englishman by the British Raj and my ancestors became laborers on their own land and they were displaced and scattered in poverty.
So fuck off with your whitewashing.
The way I see it, the brits didn't go out of their way to hurt and humiliate Indians like the Islamic conquerors did. But they did go out of their way to loot the treasuries of Indian kingdoms just like the Islamic conquerors did. What the hell was doctrine of lapse? "The territory gradually expanded" Really? Like a bit of gas?
They saw a land in turbulent times which were suffering under unjust rulers and decided to revel in the opportunity and pour on the misery and fill their pockets. A bunch of truly despicable demons.
The world may not owe us a break, but I don't see why we should pretend the brits and Raj were good in any way. They were in aggregate bad. And whatever little good (or bad) has happened in India it has been thanks to our own people, their will to fight against incredible odds, and their own greed and corruption and base nature.
The brits ruled plenty of other places other than India. They are all either shitholes or rising power centers because of their own people. The brits are worth nothing.
Brown people have every capability to be just as cruel, heartless and devilishly cunning as white people.
We don't know who invented slavery and we'll never know but when European explorers arrived they did not introduce the concept. Nor did they introduce war, superstition, poverty, starvation or inequality. There's no such thing as the "noble savage".
Wrong; the System of Racism as it is known today is entirely an invention of White European Countries. Prior to their institutionalizing of Racism on pseudo-scientific lines it was merely simple enslavement of the loser by the victor on a case-by-case basis. Also not all Countries/Kingdoms engaged in this. It is only with the expansion by Europeans that the idea of "Races" some of which were considered inferior by birth/definition because of skin color(black/brown/yellow/red), facial features(Caucasian/Negroid/Mongoloid), lack of understanding of native cultures(civilized/uncivilized), etc. became Systematized/Institutionalized and given legitimacy using what we know today as pseudo-science.
> Nor did they introduce war, superstition, poverty, starvation or inequality.
But they increased it exponentially, devastating entire countries/civilizations/cultural groups/social groups/etc. Much of the mess in the World today particularly in Africa, Middle East and South Asia has its genesis in their colonial past.
You can't, but you can at least compare and guess. There are still some colonies extant (e.g. Falklands, Gibraltar, French Guinea, New Caledonia), and when it comes to big stuff like death penalty, they all followed the metropolis. Even former British dominions (Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) abolished the death penalty on a fairly similar schedule.
Imperialism is undoubtedly a trauma. We can get past the experience and even do commerce but the distaste and unpleasantness (on an aggregate) will never really go away.
Also, as Mahatma Gandhi pointed out, we should distinguish between British rule of India, and the British people themselves. Indians and India have no problem with the latter, only with the former. Once British rule ended, we have no enmity with Britain. We parted as friends. Indeed Lord Mountbatten is still revered as the first governor general of Independent India. (Apt considering tomorrow is Republic Day.)
Neither did I say that I hate the British people. But if someone from the country goes around saying that the Raj was a favor to Indians, I wouldn't like this person either. I would think they are an idiot.
As for Mr. Mountbatten I am not sure what sort of a person would "revere" this man. He probably wasn't a bad person but he wasn't great enough to be revered either. Just some bureaucrat in the right place at the right time.
After independence, the use has declined over the decades, and in the last 20 years, it was used seven times - three convicted terrorists (one of whom may have been innocent) and four gang rape convicts (not much doubt about guilt there). It's quite rare that the sentence _isn't_ commuted in the modern era.
So, if Britain improved over time, that cannot be used to argue that the situation isn't better in India over the same time; maybe not ideal, but definitely better than at the point of Independence.
Was the term already obsolete at the time of writing, as to deserve analysis beyond considering natural in context?
E.g. one would probably not consider unusual the term "indian" for native Americans in the same period, I believe.
the Diocese of the East, aka
the Diocese of Oriens, aka
Dioecesis Orientis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocese_of_the_East ;
by the time of Kipling and later Orwell during peak British Empire it referred to everything East of the then European "Western World" .. and so included India, Burma, et al.
It later contracted somewhat to mainly be used for South East Aisa (excluding India | Pakistan) and more recently been dropped to the floor and is out of favour (it was a ridiculously broad brush).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orient
I merely went halfway to frame out where it came from, how it has been used in history, and dodged the breakdown of how it became increasingly offensive post WWII.
Orientals can be very provoking
> So, why didn’t he omit the racist quip about “Orientals”?
This is specifically in reference to a quote from Orwell at the top of the article:
> > coolies I had hit with my fist in moments of rage (nearly everyone does these things in the East, at any rate occasionally: Orientals can be very provoking)
The author of this article is primarily objecting not to the use of the word "Orientals" but to the defense that it's ok to beat them because everyone does it and they are annoying.
I think what the author is asking is: if he has had such a change of heart, why not simply omit this excuse? Why still provide justification that it is ok for a white person to beat a colonial subject because their cultural norms are different and annoying to the white person?
This leap of conclusion gave it away. I'd be happy to be wrong but honestly the racist intent feels obvious to me.
The first and last sentences of this oft-quoted passage are typically shared with an ellipsis, omitting the offensive part. I assume this erasure occurs because it is difficult to read the middle sentence and find sympathy for the man who wrote it. It affords a glimpse of the Raj’s daily violence and admits what a tormented man held festering in his heart.
very powerful
from: https://todayinsci.com/E/Einstein_Albert/EinsteinAlbert-Quot...
The man fought for the republicans in the Spanish Civil war, for goodness sake. How can he be a Tory? Just because socialists 90 years ago had very different social sensibilities to those of today, does not mean you can suddenly decide they were conservatives.
(Not sure how detailed your review was, but he abandoned the "Tory Anarchist" label after his experiences in Spain in the 30s, and before his socialist apologist books that made him so famous).
> Sonia is believed to be the model for Julia, the heroine of Nineteen Eighty-Four.[1][2]
Stalinism is not communism though, plenty of communists still hate it to this day, if anything Orwell is known for criticism of totalitarianism, not communism.
The common American perception of Orwell as anti-communist had something to do with that. But even if there had not been such a direct connection, that would have happened anyway. The Cold War made all political dialogue unidimensional for almost 50 years. Even today many people's minds are so shriveled they cannot encompass the thoughts of someone critical of both American capitalism and Soviet state communism - as your comments demonstrate.
Any serious examination of Orwell’s writing will show he was resolutely of the left. He was a socialist intellectual who was disdainful of the cultural fringes that the movement attracted. He largely romanticized the working class as naturally virtuous and with the right instincts for solidarity. In that way, and only that way, was he similar to right-wingers who dreamed of a return to pastoral tradition.
IMO, his Essays are where the essence is; the novels are merely a thought-experiment on how far you can map the ideas onto a "realistic" world.
For example, reading his Notes on Nationalism (https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...) will give you greater insight into Animal Farm/1984.
You might ask if it was just for medicines. Nope, the British Empire was also in the drug business, and it fought two wars against China to keep the opium trade going.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars
Setting aside the horrors and humiliations of colonialism (not to mention what came afterwards too), ultimately this is why Hong Kong and Shanghai are different from the rest of China. That has its effects on the technology industry even today.