Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

>To anyone unversed in the folkways of official Britain, the Green-Cameron exchange would seem strange. It’s hard to imagine a U.S. president, Donald Trump aside, being asked if he supported the FBI—let alone responding that it ought to think about the commercial damage when it goes after suspected criminals.

Oh, the hypocrisy. White collar criminals get by just fine if they play by certain rules there just as well.

>Green acknowledges the quandary. “You can detect a certain ambivalence about corporate crime,” he says. “You can see people wondering, ‘Why on Earth are you investigating blue chip, listed companies? Don’t we need those?’ But we’re one of the richest countries in the world. We have a responsibility to do business ethically.”

Again, oh the hypocrisy. Britain became one of the "richest countries in the world" by supporting sea piracy, the East India company, the colonial plundering of the third world, the Opium trade, and so on...

> the colonial plundering of the third world,

At the time of the plundering, the countries that the East India Company plundered were not the third world. They were literally wealthy self-sufficient countries that had not seen famine or serious poverty. It is not an exaggeration that the EIC brought those countries to their knee.

Eg:

"A country that was the world leader in at least three industries- textiles, steel and ship building. A country that had everything... And after 200 years of exploitation, expropriation and clean outright looting, this country was reduced to one of the poorest countries in the world by the time the British left in 1947," he said.

https://www.huffingtonpost.in/2016/12/21/poverty-was-unknown...

I'm not much happy to defend the EIC, but Tharoor sits at the sharp edge of nascent Hindu nationalist resurgence and is known to have a bit of an axe to grind where the Raj was concerned.

https://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/aakarvani/dear-sha...

> Tharoor sits at the sharp edge of nascent Hindu nationalist resurgence

The link you gave does not substantiate that claim at all.

> is known to have a bit of an axe to grind where the Raj was concerned.

I would not be surprised that someone who is a victim has an axe to grind with a genocidal expropriative regime. What is surprising is that there are colonial apologists still around and pushing typical justifications for slavery, genocide and other crimes against humanity.

> The link you gave does not substantiate that claim at all.

No, which is why I didn't [link] it - I gave it as an example of internal criticism which postures an alternate reason for some of India's woes.

> I would not be surprised that someone who is a victim has an axe to grind with a genocidal expropriative regime

Thank goodness we're not resorting to hyperbole here. I'm not sure how much of a victim he is given his status and the historical gulf of time before his birth and the period in question.*

> What is surprising is that there are colonial apologists

Zzz, I think I tried to state I wasn't comfortable framing my response in terms endearing towards some of The Empire's worst excesses. A shame criticism must remain so rigidly polarised - I am sure that's how history was too, hard aligned and absolute.

[edit: * as a Scot with family originating from the Highlands am I ok to play the victim card for much of my ancestry moving to the other side of the Atlantic?]

>Thank goodness we're not resorting to hyperbole here. I'm not sure how much of a victim he is given his status and the historical gulf of time before his birth and the period in question

The person's country is the victim the parent referred to, not the person.

A person's whose country or community has been wrong will also rightly have an axe to grind with the aggressors, whether the person is a Black, Jew, Native American, Indian, etc.

The parent explicitly states "I would not be surprised that SOMEONE who is a victim has an axe to grind with a genocidal expropriative regime".

That's an ad-hominem argument. And Shashi Tharoor is pretty far in my mind from Hindu nationalism. He's a member of the party that Hindu nationalists oppose.

Additionally, the linked article itself is guilty of lots of omissions. For example

> Europe went to a different level in that period, particularly England after the Restoration and the forming of the Royal Society and the genius of Boyle, Hooke, Newton and all the rest of it. We remained where we were

Fails to mention that the Industrial Revolution didn't reach India for a long time because colonial government taxes on domestically produced goods stunted the growth of Indian industry.

In fact the only substantive argument the article makes is that various armed forces in India and the colonial Indian army was a professional fighting force that went to battle for whoever paid them. And that the British took over India by playing one rival faction against the other and ultimately screwing over both. Which has very little to do with the reasons for India's relative lack of development.

On balance I'll still admit that the British were responsible for making India a united nation. And India after independence adopted less-than-ideal economic policies, and suffers from lots of corruption that hobbles growth. But to pretend that looting isn't a legacy of colonial rule is wilful blindness.

+1

I view constructs like the EIC or The Empire much like waves on an ocean - functions of their time, circumstance and fortune - so don't see much point in specifically apportioning blame or contemporarily-ascribed guilt. For sure these were not entirely saintly enterprises and did indeed result in misery and misfortune for untold millions of otherwise-deserving people. But as much abroad, as at home.

As much as the wave that was Empire screwed over natives in subjugated colonies, it screwed its own at home - Britain's underclasses sacrificed at the altar of industrialism and history.

If it weren't England tramping over the various bits of Asia, it would've been its imperical antecessor. If it was not to be England's time, then their descendant. America took over from England, China might in turn America. Each Imperium is an evolution of that to which it was at first mere reaction.

These are functions of reality, and everything and everryone plays its part.

I don't see the point in creating monolithic scapegoats, because in apportioning specific blame to abstractions, we ignore the underlying causes and diminish what should be learnt.

You've got to be kidding. What about the cast system? Do you think that would be better or worse now if the british had never colonialised india? Would india be a democracy now?

> What about the cast system? Do you think that would be better or worse now if the british had never colonialised india?

The British aggressively codified, intensified and encouraged increased enforcement of the caste system in India in order to facilitate their divide-and-conquer strategy. Did you really not know that?

https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=101...

http://www.britishempire.co.uk/article/castesystem.htm

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