Was the British Empire good for India?

In the conservative magazine New Criterion, its managing editor Roger Kimball responds to a "third world feminist of colour with this justification of British colonisation of India. He says "I don't check messages to our letters address very often, which means that I may be missing some amusing (albeit inadvertently amusing) communications". In the event he checks the messages today, he will find this email from me.


Mr.Kimball,
This email is in reference to your post in
reference to the "fan mail" from the "third world feminist of colour". Reading your comments on India being the beneficiary of British colonialism and how the West brought "freedom, education, and language" to the savages, reminds me of the famous Disraeli reply to a politician who attacked him for being Jewish - " Yes, I am a Jew and when the ancestors of the right honourable gentleman were brutal savages in
an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon." Yes, Indians were savages in the 18th and 19th century and when your ancestors were brutal savages in an unknown island, we were busy building great civilizations in Harappa and Mohenjadaro, fighring Alexander near the Indus, composing epic literary works in many languages. This is not to say these things somehow make India a superior country. But it is just to say Indians definitely were not savages at anytime during the last 2500 years.

Britain has produced some of the greatest scientists ever (clearly the greatest in Newton) and many of the greatest writers (after all it is your native language). But don't forget that the various parts that make up India have a great tradition of literature (including my own mother tongue, Tamil, stretching back to nearly 2000 years), architecture and ofcourse religion.

For a supposedly civilized country, the conduct of Britain in India (as in many of its colonies) is littered with brutality, inhumanity and plunder of resources. The great famine of Bengal and the genocide it brought upon Bengal is just one of the many examples of the inhuman nature of the British empire. Maybe you are using the Black Hole of Calcutta (that enduring myth) to justify your claim that the British civilized the Savages.

'If the British sinned, it was not because of their colonial rule, but because of the failure of nerve that led them to withdraw too precipitously from colonies that were ill-equipped to govern themselves--colonies in Africa, for example, and India itself. Had Britain had the courage to face down Gandhi and his rabble a few years longer, the tragedy that was the partititon of India might have been avoided." Well, how about this - if the British had never colonized India, they wouldn't have had to face down Gandhi.

"Never since the heroic days of Greece has the world had such a sweet, just, boyish master. It will be a black day for the human race when scientific blackguards, conspirators, churls, and fanatics manage to supplant him". That last bit you quote from Santayana sums up your attitude and it isn't a pretty picture. Your contrast of the good kind of colonialism that Britain practiced to the bad kind that Belgium practiced would be funny if it weren't so wrongheaded. You can keep believeing that Britain left India better than it found, but the fact of matter is that if India was better when the British left it than when they arrived, it was not because of the British, but inspite of them.

I am deeply disappointed with this screed you have written and it does nothing but show you in a poor light.


(I corrected some spelling and grammar mistakes from my email)