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Comment by quetzthecoatl | Hacker News Reader

where do people get the idea that british were nice in India? They killed millions in WW2 famines alone (to fund the war campaign). The reprisals after 1857 mutiny is said to have killed 10 million Indians. Right there from two incidents you have 15 million deaths. British were much more save than the Nazis when it comes to genocide of "others", colonization, savagery etc. They get a free pass in the west as opposed to the Nazis simply because British killed Asians, Africans and Native Americans when Nazis killed fellow whites. This is pure racism.

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As a Brit, I can confirm that there is a large section of our population that thinks the empire was a positive thing and pines for a return to it.

Even the 'white man's burden' is viewed by many as a necessary endeavour. It's the number one criticism I have of my own country (and I have many).

It's nationalist propaganda that panders to exceptionalism and it seems to have worked on half of the electorate unfortunately.

I would say a large section of our population want to go back to a certain style of governance that they believe (true or not) was around during the empire, that of strong economic liberalism and free trade with the rest of the world. I'd say it's one of the big philosophical differences with the EU (its protectionism is its main defining characteristic, after all) that has led to the Brexit vote.

The number of people who want the empire back though, I reckon you could count those on one hand.

If it was about skin colour, the deaths of a million Irish in the Great Potato Famine would not be considered “totally different” to the deaths of 3-7 million in the Holodomor, also known as (Stalin’s) “Famine-Genocide in Ukraine”.

I think it’s mainly that the UK, as the winner, got to write the history books.

(I’m not claiming that it cannot be partly racism — how many of “us” know about the Belgian Congo? — but mainly it’s “we are settlers, you are colonisers, they are invaders” and “our boys are heroes, your boys are soldiers, their boys are barbarians” in people’s minds).

Racism is not only about skin color. Nazi seen other whites as different race too - Jews, Slavic and British for that matter too.

I know. My response was in the context of (paraphrased) “why are systematic deaths of Asians, Africans and Native Americans at the hands of Caucasians given a free pass when the same crimes against Jews were correctly prosecuted?” — and that is a difference of skin colour.

Where did I mention skin color? I mentioned "others" and racism. In the case of Irish, it was religious fanaticism ("Others").

For the record, I am not saying it's not skin color. Primarily it's race/nationality (=~ skin color), and thus british empire falls on the same side of West/Europe/Caucasian people. What other reason is there for the people of west to not treat the atrocities that colonial empires committed (towards brown/black/native people) the same as what Naizs did to white european jews? Especially given what the colonialists were an order of magnitude more cruel in both savagery and the number of people murdered?

As with any puritanism movement, there are other factors determining "purity". Aside from skin color, you have religious denomination.

The phrase that I saw was “killed fellow whites”.

I don’t understand what your point is here, I’m afraid — if the reason that the suffering of Jews is recognised is simply because they are part of the “us” group, despite multiple millennia of racial and religious discrimination, why would the Irish count as a “them”? It’s easy to forget how severely “othered” Jews used to be. The only explanation I have for the dichotomy is that the Jewish people were the enemy of the enemy, while conversely the Irish were… I’m not sure which time period to consider, but in my youth they were “terrorists”, which I guess made “them” a direct enemy in popular discourse at roughly the same time that Jews were unambiguously innocent victims. The same model also explains why communists killed in the holocaust are ignored in half the often quoted death statistics: communists were the enemy in this period, rather than the poor innocent victim of the brutal regime whose destruction was totally a pyrrhic victory (for the Empire) that had to be justified.

>> if the reason that the suffering of Jews is recognised is simply because they are part of the “us” group, despite multiple millennia of racial and religious discrimination, why would the Irish count as a “them”?

Jews were them until and during the WW2 (even now as per some section of western populace). Antisemitism was officially declared church doctrine in various denominations (even today Polish easter celebration happens with the effigy burning of a stereotypical jew). Antisemitism was not just in Nazi Germany. It was the norm all over the Europe. Jews suffering got recognized mainly because (IMO) it is a tool to highlight the Nazi horror - the bad guys as per the European lore.

My main point is that colonial Briton was worse than Nazi Germany, and Europeans fails to see that (or outright deny it) simply because colonial victims were not fellow whites (and may be tyranny of distance) and it doesn't fit into the Allied good guys vs the Axis bad guys WW2 narrative. My secondary point is that it was just bad guys vs the even worse guys, and the winners white washed their crimes highlighting the losers as the ultimate evil villains from whom they saved the humanity.

I wonder if we’ve been agreeing with each other this whole time?

Europe has not given itself a free pass when it comes to colonialism. For example, at the moment they're hiding a bell in Cambridge University lest it turns out to have formerly been used on a slave plantation. There was no government organised genocide in British colonial history that I know of, not even in Ireland in the 17th century where arguably the worst atrocities were carried out. Saying Britain killed millions in India in WW2 is complete hyperbole.

> Saying Britain killed millions in India in WW2 is complete hyperbole.

Between two and three million people died in the Bengal Famine of 1943. The extent to which the British regime was responsible is still debated, but it would seem that the Churchill government refused to supply food aid (or at least only supplied a fraction of that requested) and refused the local administration permission to import food themselves.

two to three million is conservative estimates - from the famines in bengal, in world war 2 alone. There were other famines in India during WW2. There were other famines in India during british raj. There were other famines in other colonies.

The person I was responding to said words to the effect that they killed millions of people in India in order to win the war. That simply isn't true. An inadequate attempt to provide relief is not the same thing as actively killing people.

The person you were responding to is me, and yes, it is true that millions of indians were killed to fund war. The famine was directly caused by Briton redirecting the harvested grains and other resources from India for war efforts and scorched earth policies to counter the imminent Japanese invasion from the east (Japanese occupied Burma). Time and again it's whitewashed by blaming the poor people that died from whom the grains were forcefully collected, climate (disputed by everyone except the british and not supported by soil analysis or climate models), and the Japanese.

You are very certain about something about which they're is no consensus amongst even Indian commentators. Some refer to policy failures. No one apart from you is call it a deliberate killing of millions. I'm not sure why you feel the need to be so vehement about it.

Define 'consensus'. In anycase I dont see that a fruitful line of argument. I can easily dismiss smoking causes cancer by adopting such a line.

Consensus as in agreement and no, you cannot easily dismiss smoking causing cancer in that way. There is a scientific basis for the latter. For the former, some commentators are attributing the famine to a malicious intent whereas others attribute it to a policy failure. British policy at that time in that place was focused on preventing a Japanese invasion of India. If that policy had failed and Bengal had been invaded, the fate of the people there would very likely have been worse. Britain was in a tight spot at that time, doubtless things could have been handled better but there were a lot of mitigating factors. Referring to it as a deliberate killing millions of people to win the war is just plain wrong

> Consensus as in agreement

That's ill defined if you get to pick and choose whom you consider in the pool to establish "they're is no consensus amongst even Indian commentators". This seems more opinion than fact.

Even for the issue of smoking causes cancer I can easily constitute a pool who will contest that there isn't a convincing body of evidence that categorically shows that smoking causes cancer (not that I agree with a view).

The Britain and its sphere of influence has a skin in the game to deny that intentional harm was done.

> Referring to it as a deliberate killing millions of people to win the war is just plain wrong

Its not by magic that food disappeared from Bengal and ended up were the British wanted it. It was not a case of accidental misplacement of car keys. That qualifies for 'deliberate". They also weren't unaware of the famine related deaths, that came up in the British parliament multiple times. I am not sure which part of "deliberate killing millions" you are contesting.

That is opinion. Churchill's benchmark was if Gandhi was still alive it couldn't possibly a famine. That speaks for the general British position then.

I am saying there is no consensus because there are different conclusions about the situation drawn by different scholars. You are saying that's not a convincing approach to take, that you could do the same about tobacco, which I don't believe, actually. You then proceed to state your opinion as fact despite it being most likely the result of a, relatively speaking, cursory reading of others' writings on the topic. What leads you to dismiss the views of other scholars who happen to have come to a different conclusion on the Bengal famine?

> An inadequate attempt to provide relief is not the same thing as actively killing people.

You can kill by neglect. I don't think you can simply dismiss the accusation as "complete hyperbole".

You can but neglect of duty can doubtless happen when you are overwhelmed with just trying to survive yourself fending off an invasion from the adjacent territory.

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