MG Singh wrote:Kalyani Nandurkar wrote:MG Singh wrote:I will just add a most famous quote by Nirad Choudhry.
To the memory of the British Empire in India,
Which conferred subjecthood upon us,
But withheld citizenship.
To which yet every one of us threw out the challenge:
"Civis Britannicus sum"
Because all that was good and living within us
Was made, shaped and quickened
By the same British rule.”
Who will like to deny this?
HA HA HA HA! What a quote! The perfect example of the brainwashing and Anglicization of Indians by the British. Do you even realise that you actually make it sound like Indians were nothing more than uncivilized barbaric fools with no brains until the British came and saved us from ourselves? True that they brought postal service, railways etc. etc. in India but they did it for themselves, more precisely to facilitate transferring of wealth and riches that belonged to us into their own coffers! Do you know that textile produced on Indian handlooms by Indian weavers was one of the best in the world and the first thing that British did was to take away the fine cotton produced in India to Manchester and then making us buy that same cotton at very heavy prices?? The purpose of this was clear, to increase their wealth by selling that cotton to other countries as well and at the same time depriving our looms and weavers of raw goods so that ultimately, Indian textile industry died away. This is just one example. Another example of the amazingly wonderful British Raj in India is the Great Bengal Famine in 1770 which was engineered by the British. I have given a link, if possible do read and try to clear the layers of ignorance or whatever it is that is there on your eyes! I do respect British for their some admirable qualities, I have worked closely with them and I still have many close British friends. But saying that they were our saviors and we are where we are due to them would be a great insult to our culture, tradition and everything that our freedom fighters fought for!
https://yourstory.com/2014/08/bengal-famine-genocide/
Dear friend , laughing at the quote of the greatest writer in English from India, who is honoured by the Government and the Sahitiya Academy is in my view not the best thing to do.
I maintain that whatever you see when you step out of your home is a gift of English rule. Read Dunn and you will realize what India was before English rule, thuggery, sati, Child marriage , Caste killings etc was rampant. You want that to continue. In any criticism one must be rational, yes there were faults but the good is more than that. I withdraw from further writing on this thread.
If you think that only him and other British writers are great and write only truth while others have a myopic vision of history and the greatness that was India prior to British rule, then I welcome your decision to not write further in this thread. Also if you think that Chaudhari wrote those lines to praise British, then think again and do some research. I am giving here the paragraph from wiki about the said quote. Do think again when you next try to twist lines from author's quote claiming them to be something else when they actually mean another thing.
His masterpiece, The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, published in 1951, put him on the long list of great Indian writers. He courted controversy in the newly independent India due to the dedication of the book, which ran thus:
To the memory of the British Empire in India,
Which conferred subjecthood upon us,
But withheld citizenship.
To which yet every one of us threw out the challenge:
"Civis Britannicus sum"
Because all that was good and living within us
Was made, shaped and quickened
By the same British rule.
The dedication, which was actually a mock-imperial rhetoric, infuriated many Indians, particularly the political and bureaucratic establishment. "The wogs took the bait and having read only dedication sent up howls of protest", commented Chaudhuri's friend, editor, historian and novelist, Khushwant Singh.[citation needed] Chaudhuri was hounded out of government service, deprived of his pension, blacklisted as a writer in India and forced to live a life of penury. Furthermore, he had to give up his job as a political commentator in All India Radio as the Government of India promulgated a law that prohibited employees from publishing memoirs. Chaudhuri argued that his critics were not careful-enough readers; "the dedication was really a condemnation of the British rulers for not treating us as equals", he wrote in a 1997 special edition of Granta.[4] Typically, to demonstrate what exactly he had been trying to say, he drew on a parallel with Ancient Rome. The book's dedication, Chaudhuri observed, "was an imitation of what Cicero said about the conduct of Verres, a Roman proconsul of Sicily who oppressed Sicilian Roman citizens, who in their desperation cried out: "Civis romanus sum".[4]
Also when you talk about Indian culture, I would suggest you go beyond the child marriage and sati, which sad to note that you don't seem to realise they came into practice as a way to protect young girls from Muslim aggressors.
Baki to jaisi jiski soch!!!
"I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally."
- W. C. Fields :)
