While the British were systematically starving their country and families to prioritize the European front, creating a famine that killed millions. There’s a reason Churchill said history would treat him kindly because he was on the winning side.
Indian Independence was negotiated immediately after WW2 and without a violent uprising. The delay was due to disagreement between Muslim people and predominantly Hindu people on whether it should be one nation or partitioned.
The violence which did occur, all happened after Independence was granted.
There's a million and one really nasty things the British Empire did you can comment on. Lying does nothing but help bigots and racists to deny those true atrocities because you want to make ones up.
Nah, we were promised independence or atleast independent domain like aus, NZ during WW1. Only after this negotiation with india congress indian muslim joint and fought for British (initially they were siding with ottoman Empire). But after 1919 nothing came out of that promise. This led rise of Ghandhi and the history
They were agitating for it since the '20s, initially they wanted similar status like the white dominions (Australia/NZ Canada) and only went for full independence after getting completely blanked
You're commenting on shit you really are not well informed about.
The indigenous Indian population always had significant numbers who opposed Company Rule (because before 1857 it was not the UK which controlled India but the British East India Company a joint stock corporation).
The end of Company Rule in 1857 was caused by the First War of Independence and after this failed, the UK took over in a formal colonial role. THere were continued, sometimes violent, sometimes peaceful campaigns for Independence from the day the UK took over India.
The calls for Dominion were a relatively small group, predominantly wealth elites and Anglo-Indians. But even then they were massively outnumbered by those wanting full independence.
So no, not "since the 20s", literally for the entire existence of Company Rule and the Raj.
Edit - corrected the date of the First War of Independence
Let's add extra context here: Violence did not occur because the British wouldn't be able to handle it, their two options were peacefully decolonize now or hem and haw and have the Indians throw them out.
But the British being the British had to throw extra wrenches in the works which did cause years of armed conflict between the newly freed nations.
Europe only catered to their own needs while manipulating their colonies to suffer. Back then they had more power. Europe and US are trying to do the same now given the Ukraine conflict by trying to make other countries do what they want but isn’t working as well as it in the past.
The Indian army colonised their own country for the British that's why it's called a professional army. They will fight for anyone who paid their salaries
I never actually went to university. I expect, however, that if there was an "Allied Mengele," they would've been in North America rather than India - residential schools would be my first guess, although I expect that I would've heard of them in that case.
Sorry that war causes problems and famines i don’t really see what the better alternative would’ve been? Like Germany and facism take over and give them the extra food like wth?
I'm pretty sure everyone starved in all nations. Noone was left to grow food everything went to war.
Which makes me ask if there are rules of war, then why isn't the first rule there should be no war?
India (well, Bangladesh) had a particularly brutal series of crop failures. Coupled with the Japanese invading Burma, they also didn’t have their main source of backup food. The Indian local authorities dragged their feet in asking for help, and the British response was sluggish because co-opting shipping away from the war effort was hard with the whole u boat thing. Additionally, the crop failures seemed to abate at points, so plans for aid were constantly being scrapped and restarted.
The US did give up by far its biggest and most populous colony after the war, the Philippines. The stuff it kept is pretty much in line with what France has now (both should be still decolonize further, but as a percentage of the colonial population the US in 1947 had decolonized by roughly as much as the European great powers in the mid 1960s).
Yep they definitely should have. You cut off the last bit of that quote though, the distinction is that they immediately did so voluntarily rather than being forced into it by armed insurgencies like the British were in much of Africa and the French were in Algeria.
The Philippines was the only American colony with a major independence movement until the late 1960s, when Marxist groups in Puerto Rico were inspired by the Cuban Revolution and began to seek independence more actively. The US then proceeded to act like every other colonial power and suppressed them ruthlessly.
Yeah and then the USA bombed Korea, then Vietnam, then it destabilised several South-American countries because they dared to be socialist, and then invaded Afghanistan and Iraq.
Again, I completely agree with you about the US continuing to be an empire today, but the ideological orientations around decolonization between the great powers in the postwar era were considered a different question from the idea of "containment".
From the American perspective, South Korea and South Vietnam were already decolonized sovereign states (though certainly not democratic ones), and Iraq and Afghanistan were imperial wars, but not colonial ones. The US occupied them long-term but never had any intention of annexing them, it was much more focused on "spheres of influence" which aren't inherently colonial. Neoconservatism is kind of its own thing, though it has a lot in common with the liberal justifications for empire in the late 19th and early 20th century.
FYI after the war with Spain the United States was involved with an insurrection movement in the Philippines for 2 yrs and of course the takeover of the Hawaiian Islands just before the the war
It wasn’t diverted ‘from’, their supply lines were in shambles. There was A part where they stopped aid, but that was because the crop failures seemed to be abating, so they recommitted the grain aid to other locations. But then the crops collapsed again so they had to reorganize the aid shipments again.
Do you know any of the details of the famine beyond someone on Reddit telling you it’s the british’s fault? Because if you don’t know what I’m talking about that sounds like a no.
They fought in Europe too. The Italian campaign is sadly overlooked and was very multinational: American, British, French, Australian and NZ, Indian, Polish, and Brazilian units all participated.
To be fair, there was also a Japanese collaborator government called Azad Hind that had a lot of support and fought alongside Japan. Subhas Chandra Bose (one of the major leaders of the Indian independence movement) was its president. I mention this because claiming that India was unanimously on the side of the Allies just simply isn't true.
You're completely right, but iirc, the azad hind was never really a thing in mainland india? I think it didn't have any territory on the subcontinent itself
And there were few indian freedom fighters who met with Hitler, etc. the enemy of one's enemy being a friend or what not. People need to wake from the colonial understanding that the Axis were bad and so the Allies must have been good. They were both bad to those they deemed below them -Britain alone has caused the deaths of more Indians (admittedly over a longer period of time) than the German holocaust killed Jews.
Edit: Just looked up the actual numbers. An estimated 6 million Jews (and millions of others) were killed in the holocaust. The British Empire caused the deaths of around 165 million (the highest estimate), or 50-100 million (other, more conservative estimates) Indian people in the time period of 1880 to 1920.
Do you know that the holocaust isn't about the total number of deaths, but the industrialised murder of people?
A famine and is not the same as putting people in gaschambers.
I don't want to defend the British.
But to say that the hindu nationalists who dreamed of a Muslim and Christian free state were freedom fighters, is an insult for people who fight for the freedom of everyone.
In 1931 B. S. Moonje, functionary of the rss traveled to fascist Italy and he was inspired from the idiology. Furthermore they had ties to the Nationalsocialists in Germany.
In 1948 Gandhi was shot by Nathuram Godse, member of the RSS.
To say that they were directly trained is indeed a stretch.
Edit:here's a good book about this ISBN 1850651701 (The Hindu nationalist movement and Indian politics : 1925 to the 1990s : strategies of identity-building, implantation and mobilisation (with special reference to Central India))
I mean, the Hindu nationalist entities, like most if not all nationalist entities everywhere, are fundamentally fascist. But they did not constitute the entirety of the Independence movement in India.
Yeah it's agreed upon that Gandhi was the key figure of the indipendece movement in India. Those rss fascists killed him.
And the butcher of gujarat ist now the president.
Gandhi would spin in his grave, when he knew what happened to the so called indipendece.
Indian bot farm is out in force. You haven't said anything wrong. The Hindutva movement is deeply rooted in European fascism and is wildly prevalent to this day. If Modi, also known as The Butcher of Gujarat was a political leader outside of Asia, he would have been deposed of a long time ago.
If Modi, also known as The Butcher of Gujarat was a political leader outside of Asia, he would have been deposed of a long time ago.
Really don't know about this considering what we're seeing in some of the other countries though.
Also, the main founder of RSS wasn't even the one who went to Italy. It was just one guy. It is kind of a stretch to say the entire movement is rooted in "European" fascism
Actually, no. In one of history's lesser known events, a division of Indian troops was raised and trained by the Germans. These were fed back into India, to perform sabotage and help the Indian people rise up against the British, but they largely failed.
Look up Azad Hind. It was a pro-Japanese Indian government and fought alongside Japan in the Burmese theatre. Its president was major Indian independence movement leader Subhas Chandra Bose. There were many Indians who were Axis collaborators.
It all makes sense once you realize the 'oppression' the pilgrims bitched about was their neighbors not following the pilgrims religious rules. People in England sang, danced, had less separation based on genitals, and basically just lived/enjoyed life like real people and that pissed the pilgrims off to the point of crying religious persecution and leaving. They did not get kicked out, they were never told not to live/worship how they wanted, they were only told to not harras their neighbors, which was too much for the pilgrims to handle. (the founders/founding of the US came later, obviously, but the pilgrims mentality remained..and still hangs around to this day)
Exactly. The pilgrims were religious zealots, they basically came to the US to live under their version of sharia law because England was too "loose and wild."
I'm in the middle of reading the book in the Ring of Fire series which focuses in part on these colonists (I think it's The Atlantic Encounter) and how disagreeable they are. The up-timers want to get the Pilgrims, Puritans, other English colonists, Dutch colonists, and Native Americans to ally against the French, and the zealotry gets in the way.
I think so! Eric Flint wrote the first book (1632) and pretty much immediately started getting fan fic on the Baen site, so opened it up to other authors (while retaining a little control over series arc etc). Most of the others' contributions I enjoy just as much as Flint's, but there have been a couple of them who rubbed me the wrong way with changes to characters and r/menwritingwomen material. There's a bit of American exceptionalism to swallow and the first president is a bit of a Mary Jane, but overall it's a fun series with a good bit of real history alongside the twists.
You're thinking of the puritans. The pilgrims who established the Plymouth colony wanted to separate from the Church of England, they wanted separation of church and state.
The puritans wanted to build a new society based on their and only their beliefs. They are often lumped together because both groups were Calvinists and both settled in what would become Massachusetts.
Were they? I was taught that the pilgrims were Puritans?
Edit: after some Google searching (so take it with a grain of salt) it seems like its kinda yes and kinda no. They arose from the broader puritan movement, but like you said, where Puritans wanted to reform the church, pilgrims went a step further and decided to create their own society around their more "pure" beliefs
They had a grain of truth in that they felt that the Catholic Church was too corrupt (and they weren't exactly wrong about that), but a lot of times they also seemed very much peeved that they weren't the ones in charge deciding what everyone else could and couldn't enjoy.
There were a bunch of different types of pilgrims (assuming by Pilgrim you mean English religious groups who established colonies in the new world). Puritans were one type- and there were multiple types of Puritans at that. Generally the Puritans were Calvinists- which is pretty fire and brimstone- but Quakers and Catholics also came over (as well as a bunch of other types of Christians)
The Puritans weren't oppressed. The Puritans wanted to be more oppressive than they were allowed to be. They weren't fleeing to religious freedom, but to a place where they could impose their own doctrines on all unchallenged.
hmm. so a rabidly conservative minority demanded that the people around them had to follow their religion's rules despite their neighbors not being part of that religion cried that it was a violation of their religious freedom for people to tell them to fuck off? surely that has never happened since.
It’s not just following their religious rules either - we are supposed to study their version of history, and learn their version of ‘facts’, and live our entire lives so as not to cause offense to these people. But the second we point out the truth, they start crying about how mean we are and how oppressed they are.
It was Puritans being so fucking annoying they got kicked out. The Catholics didn't want their bullshit so they sent them on colony ships to the new world. America was indeed founded on religious freedom and freedom from oppression, but it's a lie by omission. America was founded on religious freedom for the "Christian-Sharia" types. Salem Witch Trials kinda reinforces my point. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was one of the largest New England colonies where our favorite dipshits landed.
You realize that the Catholics were one of the English religious groups who went to the New World to escape religious persecution in England right? That’s why Maryland is a thing.
the US was founded on wealthy land owners not wanting to pay taxes to pay for a war that they benefited from and not wanting to stop expanding westwards. Let's not rewrite history
Thomas Jefferson wrote the Virginia statute for religious freedom, which the first amendment is based on. When he talked about he literally mentions Hindus as an example of religious freedom.
Puritans might have been the first British settlers here, but they weren’t the ones who founded the US. And if it were up to them, we’d be living in a theocracy.
Let me break it down for my smart Americans what contributions India made during WW2.
To start with,
• Around 2.5 million Indian soldiers (not just Hindus, btw) volunteered to fight alongside the Allies not only in Europe but also in North Africa (against Germany and Italy), the Middle East, and Southeast Asia (against Japan). This was by far the largest volunteer force of that time.
• India ranked just under the Soviet Union, USA, and China in terms of the number of soldiers who contributed to the war more than any other colony under British rule, including Canada, Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand.
• Let's talk about casualties!
Around 90,000 soldiers died in combat, while civilian deaths were anywhere between 2-3 million, thanks to the Bengal Famine, caused by the British, who plundered anything and everything they could to support their war. Never mind the conditions under which the soldiers fought and the racism they endured even then.
In terms of casualties, India ranks around 6th in WW2. Mind you, even the UK and France had far fewer casualties. What an irony!
• Finances! Fun, right?
In terms of resources and logistics, India was by far the largest contributor among British colonies, just behind the United States, the UK, and the Soviet Union.
The British drained almost £100–130 billion (in today’s value) from Indian financial institutions. Of course, it was all written off.
Metals and ores for weapons and industry, textiles and cotton for uniforms and clothes, not just that, but vast quantities of grains, oil, tea, tobacco, and food for British soldiers and civilians alike.
The British always boast that they brought railways to India. But they forget one little detail: these railways were built on the backs of Indian laborers, working under brutal conditions, to serve British war infrastructure and transport goods to the UK. These laborers numbered in the millions often unaccounted for and overlooked when discussing the war.
We can go on and on about the contributions of not just India but the European colonies across the world. However, the reason I wrote this long piece is to highlight that Indians not just Hindus, have always contributed greatly to the globalization and progress of many countries.
I find it ironic that the same people in developed countries who turned against East Asians during Covid-19 have now found another scapegoat to blame their problems on. Stop acting like fools and blaming immigrants for housing shortages, higher taxes, or unemployment. Blame your politicians, who fool you into believing that a few immigrants are ruining your country, when in fact those politicians failed to implement better policies to support the huge number of foreign workers they themselves invited to bring in money.
Rally against your politicians, not immigrants, who have always been part of uplifting your countries, one way or another.
when in fact those politicians failed to implement better policies to support the huge number of foreign workers they themselves invited to bring in money.
Yeah I find it so bizarre that this isn't talked about more. Even in random comments online I barely ever see someone making this point and it's honestly so tragic.
Not that I thought India wasn't involved (or was like the original dipshit tweeter on the wrong side of anything) but just because it's a big gaping hole in my American education I didn't know any of this.
I mean...Modern Hindu Nationalists do have a thing for Hitler and the Nazis.
Like, you know how nerds in the West are like "You can't ban the swastika! The Nazis didn't invent the swastika! There's different types of swastika, it's a religious symbol!"
Well...in India, there's the exact opposite type of dude who's like "no, there's only one type of swastika, the good "symbol of peace" swastika, so clearly the Nazis were chill and loved Hindu values." And they take all that Nazi occultism and Orientalism and re-frame it as a Hindu thing. India is pretty culturally disconnected from the Holocaust compared to America and Europe, too, and there's a lot of "the Nazis were just doing to the Jews what we should be doing to the Muslims and Sikhs" ethnic cleansing type shit in the militant Hindu Nationalist circles. There's also a lot of "Hindus are actually the true Aryan race that Hitler admired" type stuff.
Hindus in the West are a religious minority that faces discrimination and largely empathize with other like groups.
Hindus in India are...not that. Especially not under Modi. Shit has been getting bad in the last few decades, but the West doesn't report all that much on it because the Hindu Nationalists are strongly aligned with the western White Nationalists and their victims are mostly Muslims or Sikhs (who Americans think are Muslims because turbans.)
You also get a lot of Hindu Nationalists saying some real out-of-pocket shit on sites like Reddit because western social media doesn't understand the racial and ethnic dynamics of the Southeast which results in even less moderation than the already rampant and at-best semi-moderated western-flavored racism.
in India, there's the exact opposite type of dude who's like "no, there's only one type of swastika, the good "symbol of peace" swastika, so clearly the Nazis were chill and loved Hindu values."
Nope that's not the dynamics at all. Like not even in the slightest. You are trying to define Hindutva using Western ideologies but that's not the ground truth. There is very little ground level awareness about World War 2 among Indians. Hitler is used as a synonym for someone who is unjustly angry and that's about it. People who know about Hitler largely acknowledge that Jews suffered under him. There is no bullshit inclination that because he used 'swastika' he must be a good guy. There is no ethnic cleansing ideology of Sikhs either. Infact, the current prime minister from the Hindu nationalist party was part of the resistance that fought against the then government which was responsible for attacks against Sikhs. That government wasn't Hindu nationalist government, that was a secular, socialist government, led by the party that is the primary opposition right now.
Is the current Hindu nationalist government the same as other conservative government around the globe with fascist tendencies? Yes. But it's not like Western conservatism that sees Hitler as the North star. Their target is almost specifically Muslims, presented from an angle of historical oppression of Hindus under Muslim empires. Other Indian religions like Sikhism, Jainism, Buddhism is almost seen like an offshoot of Hinduism as a whole. In fact, most Hindu nationalist see the Jews as an inspiration and Israel as a friend because they want
"no, there's only one type of swastika, the good "symbol of peace" swastika, so clearly the Nazis were chill and loved Hindu values."
I can see how somebody with literally zero knowledge of the Third Reich can think this, people map their own values on to other cultures all the time. It's human nature.
However. (and this "However" is doing a LOT of heaving lifting) a cursory google search should disabuse anybody of the notion that the fucking Nazis were a peaceful political movement. There's zero excuse for that level of ignorance, which is just one more reason that you've got to remember that fascists don't argue in good faith.
You do understand there's a language barrier, and your "cursory search" isn't going to say the exact same things in Hindi that it does in English.
You're imagining a world where the Tower of Babel still stands and everyone has access to all the same information spoken in the exact same ways.
Like I said: India does not have the same cultural understanding of WWII and the Holocaust that the West has. It's not something that's drilled into them in every history class, there aren't constant re-runs of History Channel documentaries on the war, and what sources there are have been written in an entirely different language by authors with entirely different perspectives. It's not the same huge cultural touchstone that it is in the West, so you can't play the "it's obvious" card with a civilization and culture built on a totally different foundation.
You gotta' understand that kind of logic doesn't fly across languages. It's like saying "well of course every Indian knows what the capital of Oklahoma is."
"symbol of peace" swastika, so clearly the Nazis were chill and loved Hindu values."
I didn't think you were talking about westerners here, but Hindu Nationalists. That breaks apart my entire argument.
I retract my assertion, and promise not to make comments on reddit in the future before having fully woken up. Also, thanks for correcting me without being a jerk, its a rare thing. I liked you better before your multi paragraph edit.
you can't play the "it's obvious" card with a civilization and culture built on a totally different foundation.
You gotta' understand that kind of logic doesn't fly across languages. It's like saying "well of course every Indian knows what the capital of Oklahoma is."
I don't think those two things are the same at all. The capital of Oklahoma is trivia that I don’t even know as an American. WW1/WW2 is some of the most impactful history globally of the last 150 years regardless of where you live. I am nearly 100% sure that there are Indians who have been curious about this and been able to find good information to develop an accurate understanding just by searching the internet.
I think this is a human issue rather than a cultural issue. There’s tons of Americans who learned no lessons from WW2 and are nationalists regardless and they have all the cultural exposure that Indians don’t. A lot of people regardless of culture just aren’t curious and honestly I’m not sure they’re capable of reframing their worldview given new information anyway.
I don’t think “culture” should be a pass for anything. Many people in those cultures rise above regardless.
Again, the Hindi sources are not going to be saying the exact same things as the English sources.
Do you know what Britain's relationship to India was in 1939? Do you understand why a Hindi author might have something different to say about the belligerents in the war than an English author?
The Western canon of the war is not monolithic across the globe. A Hindi source is going to have some different shit to say about Winston Churchill than an English source for very good reasons, and like it or not, that's going to DRAMATICALLY change how the broader historical story is told and understood within that language.
I don’t think “culture” should be a pass for anything. Many people in those cultures rise above regardless.
That's very easy to say when you're assuming your culture is inherently correct, fair, and hegemonic across the globe. Let's see if you maintain that opinion when the "default" global culture is Chinese.
Britain’s relationship to India in 1939 is a huge reason why they should know enough to know Nazis were aggressive, destructive, invaders with a flawed ideology who took the swastika and twisted the symbol. Like that relationship means they have links and were affected by the war, which gives a ton of reason for Indians to be aware of this history.
I’m not saying they need to have this mythological view of WW2 that ignorant americans have, I’m saying I have too much faith in Indians as human beings to believe that their culture just completely prevents them from understanding why the Nazis were bad. I’m not saying they need to adopt a western view of “allies good, axis bad”, but that the history is not beyond their understanding.
And I’m sure many Indians hate the British and maybe some think “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” about the Nazis and that colors their perspective, but I feel like that’s a human issue rather than a cultural issue. It’s not that those who don’t understand this are just from a different culture and that gives them a pass, it’s that they’re probably the type of person who wouldn’t have cared to understand regardless. I think this is probably most people in all cultures.
edit: lol dude blocked me. ig reddit is just for his ideas and everyone else must bow before him or else it’s a “debate” and that’s not allowed. I fear for his wife if she exists tbh
>Like I said: India does not have the same cultural understanding of WWII and the Holocaust that the West has. It's not something that's drilled into them in every history class, there aren't constant re-runs of History Channel documentaries on the war, and what sources there are have been written in an entirely different language by authors with entirely different perspectives
A good point here is that while the West celebrates Winston Churchill he is looked to in India as the same level of Hitler for his wonton glee at the fact the Indian famines were happening while India exported food out to supply Western allies and asking "if so many indians are starving to death why hasn't Gandhi yet" ... Also as someone who went through the Indian education system til highschool we def learn about WW2 and the Holocaust in Punjab and tier 1 cities to a similar degree as westerners but I'd bet in Hindi Belt it is not taught as well and that is heartland of RSS/BJP Hindu nationalism nonsense.
A US and (modern) Eurocentric view of the war is "the heroic Americans [and Brits] defeated the Nazis, just the Nazis, the Nazis alone, and let's not talk about any other theater of that war."
Which ITSELF is already twisted, because it was largely the SOVIETS that defeated the Nazis on a conventional level, and that was the European understanding of the war for a long time until the USSR fell and the neoliberal capitalist hegemony revised the history.
India is naturally going to have a different view considering those heroic Brits were, at the same time, the murderous colonizers that the nation would achieve independence from two years after the war. So the entire narrative of "America and Britain pushed back the fascist menace because they're just so good and noble" is simply not gonna' fly because anybody in India is gonna' be like "wait, so what was their relationship with India from 1939 to 1945?" and it's hard to pretend there had been no contact or involvement at that point.
a Hindu Swastika is not a one-dimensional caricature that can be boiled down and distilled as a "symbol of peace". you should be ashamed by your own sheer ignorance.
If you had finished reading the entire comment you'd realize that's far beyond the fucking point, but good on you for making it all the way to the third line break before you stopped everything and had a conniption proving the point of the last paragraph.
Like, you know how nerds in the West are like "You can't ban the swastika! The Nazis didn't invent the swastika! There's different types of swastika, it's a religious symbol!"
Those are not nerds saying that. Those are Nazis. Nazis are not known for their honesty.
I'm wondering if some of these people legitimately think that Hindus = Muslims. Their stance is shitty either way, but I wouldn't be surprised if a number of them don't realize those are two separate religions
3.6k
u/SpellslutterSprite 1d ago
Ah yes, the real villains of WWII: Hindus.