Tuesday, May 11, 2004
Winston Churchill -- A different perspective
One of the things that struck me when I first came to the United States was the annalloyed admiration for Winston Churchill. Biographies of Churchill sell like hotcakes. Positively hagiographic documentaries abound. Everyone seemed to concentrate on the "we shall fight them in the hills..." side of Chruchill, while ignoring his alterego -- a racist/bigoted and undemocratic (offended by Germany's invasion of Poland but specifying that the principles of the Atlantic charter did not apply to India) pig. Reading Tharoor's biography of Nehru (mentioned in the previous post) reminded me of some of the startling views Churchill held in his lifetime. A few examples follow.
I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion
Or his description of Gandhi at the 1931 roundtable in London
...the nauseating sight of a seditious Middle Temple lawyer striding half-naked up the steps of the viceregal palace to parlay on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor.
He followed this up with his description of Gandhi as a "half-naked fakir of a type well-known in the East."
Worst of all was the "diversion of food, in 1943 (on Churchill's personal orders), from starving civilians to well-supplied Tommies which led directly to the Great Bengal Famine." As a result, almost as many people died in Bengal as in the concentration camps of Eastern Europe. Churchill's only response to a telegram from the Govt in Delhi about the famine was to "ask peevishly why Gandhi hadn't died yet."
This is the man celebrated as the apostle of freedom and democracy all over the West.
I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion
Or his description of Gandhi at the 1931 roundtable in London
...the nauseating sight of a seditious Middle Temple lawyer striding half-naked up the steps of the viceregal palace to parlay on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor.
He followed this up with his description of Gandhi as a "half-naked fakir of a type well-known in the East."
Worst of all was the "diversion of food, in 1943 (on Churchill's personal orders), from starving civilians to well-supplied Tommies which led directly to the Great Bengal Famine." As a result, almost as many people died in Bengal as in the concentration camps of Eastern Europe. Churchill's only response to a telegram from the Govt in Delhi about the famine was to "ask peevishly why Gandhi hadn't died yet."
This is the man celebrated as the apostle of freedom and democracy all over the West.
