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Comment by pacetherace | Hacker News Reader

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India should focus on getting their own shit together. They can be content in the knowledge that Britain is a shadow of its former self, without the resources to pay back a fraction of what they took.

Oh the reparations are not happening. But world needs to be aware of the level of apathy the British government had towards its colonies (even in the 20th century)

>>Oh the reparations are not happening.

That is not how anything works in history. When Britain gets weak enough, The sub continent will likely invade and exact its reparations by strip mining every last square foot of Europe.

To think that some war or conflict stops for you just because you are former party to it is hilarious to imagine. What do you think your victims will do the moment they have any power over you?

Yes I’m sure there were never genocides and famines before the British got there…

Not on the scale as afterwards, no.

The problem with ancient history as that you never really knew what happened and exactly how many people died. Europeans certainly weren't the first empire to lay claim to India. Warfare, invasions and famine are as old as human history. India is one of the oldest civilised parts of the world so has had its fair share of all https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_India

Hahahaha, I am Indian and your statement is so wrong. The Brits were nowhere close to the Islamic invaders when it come to genocides in India. The latter would kill people from tens thousands to hundreds of thousands, in one go just because they didn't happen to be Muslim.

I’m also Indian. The British regime is likely responsible for tens, if not hundreds of millions of deaths through the forcible extraction of food and wealth, and the impoverishment of generations of Indians since. The atrocities of the Mughals are not to be ignored but the simple fact remains that India’s population grew greatly during the period of colonization, as did the brutality and extremity of the methods of extraction.

One source: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/india-35-milli...

Are you sure? I couldn't find any good sources on British genocide, but Wikipedia has a list of massacres in India: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_India In sum, the number of casualties from Colonial India is orders of magnitude lower than both pre-colonial and independent India

None of the pre-colonial massacres exceed 500k; the Bengal famine alone killed over 2 million: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943

Except the British didn't genocide during the partition of India - the internal clash of Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims going to war was it's own doing... You're framing it like British soldiers went in there and massacred India during that time. Wrong.

It was absolutely the fault of the British. The partition lines were drawn by lawyer with little to no inputs from experts.

Err, the original instruction from the British government was to avoid partition and preserve a united India.

Ultimately self determination involves taking responsibility.

Too bad the Indians did not want to be a dominion like Australia or Canada or NZ, they wanted to settle for nothing except for independence from British rule

If a lawyer on mars drew an arbitrary line down my street and said people on the side opposite mine were "not of my kind" I wouldn't start murdering them and trying to move the line.

"It's more complicated than tha..."

No, it's not.

These discussions are difficult because events happen as series; what is meant by responsibility and "who's fault"? Is everyone who participated in the series of events to blame as they did not prevent it to progress? In what ways are drawing pertition lines and performing violence similar and different in terms of guilt or "faultiness" (and is there any point in discussing it)?

You may not even disagree; you and GP state different things which may both be true depending on what is understood by "fault"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_India

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