Comment by BlackJack | Hacker News Reader

Comment by BlackJack | Hacker News Reader

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The Mughal's did bad things too, but some of their kings like Akbar at least tried to integrate society and not cause religious strife. The Mughal Empire did a lot of bad things in India, especially nutcases like Aurangzeb, and Indian people recognize those bad things.

The problem, as I understand, is that a lot of British people don't know all the bad things the Empire did, or don't learn about it the way German people learn about the Holocaust and the Nazi's. Same thing might apply to Belgium - I was appalled to visit Brussels and see a park called "Leopold Park" [1] in the center of the city.

Edit: Turns out this park is named after King Leopold I, the first king of Belgium, and before the Congo atrocities. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15314232 for the person who educated me :)

On a more personal level, as an Indian person who grew up in the US, I always thought Churchill was a badass dude and a good wartime leader. It wasn't until Middle School that I learned about the WW2 famines and all the stuff he said about Indian people. He hated Indians and was extremely racist. His decisions directly lead to the death of millions of people in India. He's no better than Hitler or any of those dictators in my view, and it's mind boggling that people idolize him as the Lion.

Tangent aside, a lot of people did bad things (globally), but saying the Ottomans are bad or the Belgians are bad doesn't absolve the British Empire of its crimes. I don't think we need reparations or blame anybody today, since we all understand bad things happened, but more people should be educated about what happened and how to make sure it never happens again.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_Park

> Churchill's decisions directly lead to the death of millions of people in India. He's no better than Hitler

It gets even more ironic than that. During the 1940s Bengal famine, things were so bad that the Axis powers offered to step in and send humanitarian aid. Churchill not only refused, but he tried to prevent the newspapers from printing news of the offer, so that people wouldn't know how truly unnecessary their starvation was.

Lest I be mistaken, this is not to say that the Axis powers were somehow anything other than evil themselves. But it does highlight the level of hypocrisy of the British to claim the moral high ground when their own leader was intentionally starving millions to death out of spite. (And yes, it was spite - read what Churchill himself said on the topic).

Churchill was merely following proud English tradition: when the Great Famine decimated Ireland as a result of British policies (and during which Irish food exports to England continued unabated), Queen Victoria prevented the Ottoman Sultan from donating more aid and food than she had herself.

Being neither British nor Indian, I'd always thought of the British as not horrible colonialists of India, that is until I listened to Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History podcast. [1]http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/15-the-prime-minister...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943 offers an alternative view.

"Offering aid to your enemy, to highlight their weakness" is a standard propaganda technique, not to be taken at face value.

> hypocrisy of the British to claim the moral high ground when their own leader was intentionally starving millions to death

no disagreement here.

Why is this Winston asshole a hero again? Stabbed so many people in the back. One can understand if not condone the pre WW2 packs that compromised with Hitler. This is inexcusable.

The park was called after Leopold I, the first king of Belgium, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Belgium. This was in 1877, a decade before the Congo atrocities. (Source: https://nl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopoldpark_(Brussel) in Dutch)

Thanks for educating me. I updated my post.

But I think your remark was valid though. Leopold II's atrocities get very little attention in Belgium compared to Nazism.

There are still quiet a lot of statues of him. Which indeed sounds weird in relation to Hitler statues. It might be an idea to give them the same treatment as the Nazi party grounds in Nuremberg. Proper context next to them.

>There are still quiet a lot of statues of him.

That I find kind of odd. His treatment of the locals in the Belgian Congo is sort of the gold standard for imperial oppression.

> Leopold II's atrocities get very little attention in Belgium compared to Nazism.

That is true. I'm Belgian; I can't remember having heard about this e.g. in history classes; it's something I came across later on.

> It might be an idea to give them the same treatment as the Nazi party grounds in Nuremberg.

What treatment? Wikipedia says that it became a memorial, but doesn't say what it became a memorial to.

This is solely my personal opinion. But it isn't a traditional memorial.

It is in a rather unmaintained state (minimal reinforcement), with relevant information displayed next to and on it and is freely accessible to all.

"The Mughal's did bad things too, but some of their kings like Akbar at least tried to integrate society and not cause religious strife."

I wouldn't be so sure of that. A lot of Akbar's praises can be attributed to 'creative' history writing after the 1950s.

Interesting, do you have sources for that?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Hindus

Scroll down to Akbar and you'll find some interesting things. Also of interest is Allauddin Khilji.

It only talks about Akbar's early reign (remember he was crowned at the age of 13) and was under the influence of Bairam Khan. Later years he removed the jaziya tax on Hindus, gave them high postions in his court and would not be recognized as Muslim (see Din i Ilahi). He is also supposed to have made a lot of effort to understand other religions. There is a reason why he and Asoka are considered Great Emperors of India.

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