Comment by naruvimama | Hacker News Reader

Comment by naruvimama | Hacker News Reader

Britain likes to tout its common wealth status. Now having come out of the EU, the "common wealth" becomes even more important.

Gandhi whether you like it or not was a British citizen. Gandhi was a proper Englishman except his skin colour, highly educated, loyal to the British. Without him the British could have faced a very violent uprising in India.

He was instrumental in planting Nehru, who in turn was very loyal to the British, who continued to be the decision makers post independence. Britain couldn't have had a better man in their citizenery.

For those commenting about Gandhi's past or early life. Gandhi is an idea of non-violence, it is no longer about the person but what he is known for. Just like we do not discus Hitler's art prowess, oratory skills, love of dogs or fidelity, he is associated with violence and evil.

Even as an Indian I do not like Gandhi for all the mess he created and all the credits he takes for India's independence. However, with all things said and done he is an asset for any nation associated with his image. And we can use it positively.

Britain will benefit from using his image as part of its history.

I hear this argument a lot from Indians, that Gandhi was loyal to the British and he helped install a pro British government. I don't know what the proposed better alternative is. The British was ruling the country for the better part of 4 centuries by then, and changing it to something else would take years of effort. Combine this with different princely states not wanting to be part of independent India, the economic realities, and the looming threat from China - you have a recipe for a failed state. I would have preferred India not colonized at all, but there was no better alternative than this for India to become independent from the British.

Armed uprisings were few and far in-between in India. Subash Chandra Bose was the only one that came any close to having a successful army but even if he was more successful than he really was, it wouldn't last long with him aligning with the Axis in WW2.

> Gandhi whether you like it or not was a British citizen. Except the British never saw it this way. One can argue that if Britain identified all colonial citizens as their own, the Gandhian movement in India would not have gained a lot of traction at all. One of their first demands was equal treatment.

India is uniquely placed in the world in that it is a civilisational state. It's culture & religion is evolved over many thousand of years, many systems have been fine tuned.

Even in Europe or China, Christianity & Buddhism which has had the single most important influence in these regions were imported.

Even today India runs two parallel systems - the govt & its bureaucracy inherited from the British and the traditional systems.

Nothing could be worse than try to adapt a bureaucracy, police or military which was previously meant to suppress the very people who it intends to serve today.

The apathy and aloofness of the police or bureaucrats can be explained by this. Granted that it was a smoother transfer of power, and we are starting to see a great pace of reform, small govt and less of the congress.

>> we are starting to see a great pace of reform, small govt and less of the congress.

I think you are mistaken there. Different people, same set of policies, ostensibly marketed as reform for the people.

> highly educated, loyal to the British

I agree with the educated part, but you're deluded if you think he was loyal to the UK. The dude lead the "Quit India" movement in 1942 to get the UK out of India -- in the middle of a world war, no less.

For all we know he might have been a British project to be used as a safety valve.

Much of Indian history and textbooks has been written by people who are at best "coconuts", brown on the outside and white on the inside. So we might never know.

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