It is disingenuous of Shashi Tharoor to pretend that religious hatred did not exist in India before “the British introduced it” with their policy of “divide and rule” (A legacy of exploitation and ruin, G2, 9 March). He must know that when Mahmood of Ghazni first brought Islam to the subcontinent in the 10th century, his invasion involved incalculable violence, massive loss of life and a wanton destruction of Hindu religious sites on a scale that Islamic State could only dream of. The Mughals, who were Persian and never let their Hindu subjects forget it, were as foreign to India as the British.
Those British were, of course, lucky that a power vacuum had been created by the collapse of the Mughal empire in the second half of the 18th century, which the well-organised East India Company was better able to fill than even such a warlike Hindu warrior caste as the Marathas. As George Orwell pointed out long ago, the Raj was indeed a racket run for the greedy benefit of about 1% of the UK’s population (true of all capitalism since about 1980). Nevertheless, there were great moments of civilization and glory, both for the eventually defeated conquerors and those who bravely resisted them, throughout the very short period (in Indian historical terms: 1600-1947) when the British were political players in India.
The twisting of historical facts and rising religious nationalism happening now in India and throughout south-east Asia does not bode well for the future.
Ralph Lloyd-Jones
Nottingham
It’s a pity that Shashi Tharoor lumps together all the British in the India where I grew up as nothing but foreign exploiters. My father, “PJ” (later Sir Percival) spent a lifetime in the Indian civil service working for the betterment and ultimate independence of the India he loved. He learned several of its languages and spoke three, notably Bengali, fluently. After the second world war, when Churchill looked as if he would renege on his wartime promise to give India independence in return for its support during that war, my father, then leader of the European group in the legislative assembly, told him that he would cross the floor of the house and join the Congress party if he did so. On retiring, PJ wrote several books on India, notably The British Impact on India, in which he gives a balanced account of the benefits and the burdens of British rule.
My brother Michael spent almost all his life in independent India farming and breeding horses in Bihar. So please, Mr Tharoor, don’t blame the all the British in India.
John Griffiths
Monmouth
As a child of the Raj, I read Shashi Tharoor with particular interest, but I have a question: how does he square those views with India’s seizure and often brutal occupation of Kashmir, which has been going on, in one way or another, since 1947?
Brigid Keenan
Shepton Mallet, Somerset
I wonder if Shashi Tharoor has read much Kipling. In spite of Kipling’s reputation as a bugler for empire, his relationship with India was complex and often humble. His prose is anything but “flatulent” and his terse short stories – too little read – are among the best in the language.
Elizabeth Cook
London
Britain may have “buried a large part of its 20th century history, along with the rest of the country’s tradition of brutality and crimes against humanity in building its empire” (Building Brexit on the myth of empire, 7 March). But, to give the devil his due, it is an incontrovertible fact that Britain left positive legacies of social and economic development in the empire. In Africa, for example, the British transformed a borderless continent inhabited by warring tribes and clans, ravaged by disease, into modern nation states. They built hospitals, schools, elaborate networks of roads, railway lines, air and sea ports. Crucially, they introduced the rule of law, which protected all Africans irrespective of their tribe, clan or religion.
Tragically, the baby was thrown out with the bath water at independence, ushering in a vicious cycle of self-destructive civil wars across the continent, as demonstrated by the current violence in South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi. At the same time, despotic leaders are amending their constitutions and clinging to power for the sole purpose of stealing development funds. The result is a widespread lack of opportunities, which is forcing hundreds of thousands of African men, women and children to take risky journeys in search of a better life in Europe. In 2015 and 2016, an estimated 10,000 African migrants perished in the Mediterranean.
Ironically, it is Britain which is funding several NGOs that are performing the role of governments in providing basic education, health services and clean water. It is also feeding millions of refugees in internally displaced persons’ camps across the continent.
Sam Akaki
Director, African Solutions to African Migration
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