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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   42646 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 8, 2025

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I watched RRR last night, a 2022 Telugu-language film directed by S. S. Rajamouli, starring two revolutionary Indian heroes of old, but re-imagined to make them meet and have cool adventures together.

It was a very fun movie. The dance numbers were quite impressive, I liked the "bromance", and the action scenes were pretty funny. Everything was pretty over-the-top, especially the British, which is why I'm writing this right now.

The British were not kind to India. I don't really know any specifics on what all horrible things they did, though I am familiar with the "Blowing from Guns in British India" painting that depicted the punishment they gave for some rebellion or other. However, even so, it is kind of odd how they portrayed the British in the movie. The movie opens with a British governor paying a few coins to purchase a child from a village because he liked how she painted and sang, and when the mother tearfully tries to stop the British convoy from leaving, a soldier is about to shoot her, but is stopped because the British governor considers Indians to not be worth the cost of the bullet. Other scenes of similar callous viciousness are common: an Indian man is brutally beaten by a British soldier because the soldier felt embarrassed and wanted to save face, the heroic sepoy who carried out the governor's orders is not promoted because only three white dudes were chosen to be promoted, or a man being flogged is made to be flogged much more than usual because the wife of the governor didn't consider him submissive enough.

The movie is really fun, but interspersed with this kind of atrocity porn, with Englishmen commonly saying that Indians are totally worthless subhuman trash, considering any Indian in the governor's palace a servant, or warning the nice British woman that cavorting with one is dangerous. It came across as an ethnic caricature. I don't think there are any British men favorably portrayed. The only British people favorably portrayed are the beautiful British women at the dance party, and the beautiful British woman who takes a liking to the protagonist. This sends the message to me "all you evil Brits, get out of India, except for your women, we'll definitely be taking those." Which, fair! That's definitely a natural inclination of many people throughout history, but it isn't really brave enough to come out and say it like that.

I was left wondering what other ethnic groups it would be appropriate to give this treatment to. I feel like if you swapped the British caricature with a caricature of any other (non-white) group of people, this movie would never have gotten so popular. People would be afraid to even mention it. I liked the movie, but I wish it didn't have this ugly portrayal in it. It made it less good. Also it was 3 hours long, what the hell.

The British were not kind to India.

They were incredibly kind to India as an imperial overlord.

They actually paid money to the Raj government when deploying Indian troops for imperial operations that didn't have to do with the defence of India. The cost of war would be borne by the British treasury, not the Indian treasury. India also got access to British technology and investment. When WW2 ended, India had twice the rail network of China.

In some respects India got a better deal than the US gives its allies today. Britain and Australia don't get rebates for joining in US wars in the Middle East, they get sneered at for not spending enough of their own money on 'defence'.

Who prevented Russia from gobbling up India in their southward push through Central Asia in the 19th century? Who protected India from the Japanese (world-class experts in the field of imperial cruelty)? The British, despite huge 'Quit India' protests. The Bengal Famine was mainly due to the Japanese invasion of Burma. Unsurprisingly, if rice imports from Burma are cut off and millions of refugees flee North, during a time of wartime strain, there will be problems in Bengal. Wherever the Japanese went, there was famine. Famine in the Philippines, famine in Indonesia, famine in China and famine in East India.

And we see the same incredible overgenerosity today where Indians/ex-Raj ethnicities get all kinds of special privileges in the UK - jobs that are safeguarded for non-whites, police refusing to crack down on them despite unmentionable abuses lest they seem racist. Then there's all the foreign aid they gave India post-independence.

India just finds it easier to blame Britain for everything that goes wrong, all the poverty that remains. It also helps unite the country, there's nothing so universally popular as hating and blaming outsiders. The British and Europeans generally did far more harm to China with the Opium Wars and unequal treaties (let alone the Japanese) yet China has come out well ahead of India today.

If the British were half as cruel as the Indian media likes to suggest, India would be a servile, loyal colony today. They could've liquidated Gandhi on the spot or prevented any Indian intellectual class emerging in the first place. They could've crushed any revolt with heavy-handed suppression, machine-gun fire, gas and incendiary attacks. Just imagine the amount of devastation they inflicted on rich, industrialized Germany, all the millions of men they put into the field instead redirected instead to repress India. Success would be assured. They could've used Indians as cheap labour in factories, instead they let them start their own trade unions. Britain even let Indians become the commercial class of East Africa, enjoying the fruits of empire as a subject.

Who prevented Russia from gobbling up India in their southward push through Central Asia in the 19th century?

Doesn't seem like a very likely thing to happen tbh. Russia was unable to gobble up Turkey despite a constant desire to do so, operating through Central Asia would have been a logistical nightmare. Sure, the British ruled India with a skeleton crew, but they operated from the sea, not through the land.

Isn't the modern understanding that the whole "Great Game" narrative was mistaken anyway and that the Russian ambitions regarding Afghanistan or lands to the south of it were rather more modest than what was presented by the British propaganda?

With the British there Russia couldn't really do that much and didn't really want to conquer India. But without the British there, it's almost free real estate like all the khanates and small states in Central Asia that Russia swallowed up. It would be a feeding frenzy like Africa. The mountains in Afghanistan are certainly a problem but not impossible to overcome, invasions were launched down from Afghanistan into India from time to time.

The Ottoman Empire, China and Japan were some of the strongest non-European states in this period and mostly avoided colonization. India was colonized and if it were not colonized by the British probably wouldn't have been that strong.

My understanding of the current consensus on the Great Game is that neither the Russians or (sensible) Brits believed that the Russians could conquer India. Rather, they believed that Russian spies and then an expeditionary force could spark a massive uprising in India that would deny it to to Britain. Neither side was really aware of the immense logistical difficulties Russia would have faced in doing this, though, it was more an assumption that Russia would be able to overcome them at some not-so-distant point in the future.

They actually paid money to the Raj government when deploying Indian troops for imperial operations that didn't have to do with the defence of India. The cost of war would be borne by the British treasury, not the Indian treasury.

I feel compelled to quote US historian Mike Davis, via Wikipedia:

"Between 1875–1900—a period that included the worst famines in Indian history—annual grain exports increased from 3 to 10 million tons", equivalent to the annual nutrition of 25m people. "Indeed, by the turn of the century, India was supplying nearly a fifth of Britain's wheat consumption at the cost of its own food security."[6] In addition,

Already saddled with a huge public debt that included reimbursing the stockholders of the East India Company and paying the costs of the 1857 revolt, India also had to finance British military supremacy in Asia. In addition to incessant proxy warfare with Russia on the Afghan frontier, the subcontinent's masses also subsidized such far-flung adventures of the Indian Army as the occupation of Egypt, the invasion of Ethiopia, and the conquest of the Sudan. As a result, military expenditures never comprised less than 25 percent (34 percent including police) of India's annual budget ...[7]

As an example of the effects of both this and of the restructuring of the local economy to suit imperial needs (in Victorian Berar, the acreage of cotton doubled 1875–1900),[8] Davis notes that "During the famine of 1899–1900, when 143,000 Beraris died directly from starvation, the province exported not only thousands of bales of cotton but an incredible 747,000 bushels of grain."

It is absolutely standard, expected practice for imperial subjects to pay for things that benefit the overlord. If they rebel, it's also expected that a larger garrison of loyal troops from the metropole will be deployed there. Control of Egypt also had a great deal to do with India since much Europe-Indian trade passed through Egypt/Suez.

Upon investigating further, there seems to be a lot of uncertainty about how the home charge system actually worked, with various British commissions saying more should be done to pay rebates to India. Perhaps the repayment system was more honoured in the breach than observance. Nevertheless, the fact that there was even debate about repayment being insufficient indicates that this is not harsh imperialism.

The Mughals who previously ruled India fielded a huge army, it's hard to see how the relatively small British/Indian forces based in India, around 300,000, were unduly taxing the Indian economy. The Qing fielded a million men and embarked on their own expensive indigenous naval programs. If India weren't colonized by Britain, it would likely have undertaken similar expenditure and/or get invaded by someone, resulting in an increased fiscal burden. Russia for instance spent about 30% of its budget on the military around 1900.

Likewise, it's hard to see how a few thousand British administrators running the whole country could cause famine actively, though they were not great at stopping famine. The Raj was not run like a top-down Soviet machine, rule was largely indirect and delegated to Indians. I dispute Mike Davis's 'Late Victorian Holocausts' thesis. Firstly, it's inappropriate to compare to a Holocaust since a famine isn't an organized mass killing so much as a mildly disorganized mass not-saving. Secondly, much more severe famines were occurring right next door in China in this period. India has innately inconsistent weather via the monsoons and famines will happen in a subsistence economy.

Preventing famines isn't passive, it's active. It requires early warning, the suppression of hoarding and speculation, circulation of money so that poor people can buy grain and don't just get extorted by landlords and most importantly land reform... which the British weren't in a position to do given the size of the country and their hands-off stance. Indian food security still has not been fixed even today, hundreds of millions are stunted due to malnutrition.

I dispute Mike Davis's 'Late Victorian Holocausts' thesis. Firstly, it's inappropriate to compare to a Holocaust since a famine isn't an organized mass killing so much as a mildly disorganized mass not-saving.

It's normally the publishers who decide on book titles and subtitles, not the authors, and it's their evident interest to grab the readers' attention. I imagine the author is probably not a Holocaust 'relativist' himself.

Secondly, much more severe famines were occurring right next door in China in this period.

From the same Wikipedia article:

This book explores the impact of colonialism and the introduction of capitalism during the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) related famines of 1876–1878, 1896–1897, and 1899–1902, in India, China, Brazil, Ethiopia, Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines and New Caledonia.

Likewise, it's hard to see how a few thousand British administrators running the whole country could cause famine actively, though they were not great at stopping famine.

From the same page:

Davis argues that "Millions died, not outside the 'modern world system', but in the very process of being forcibly incorporated into its economic and political structures. They died in the golden age of Liberal Capitalism; indeed, many were murdered ... by the theological application of the sacred principles of Smith, Bentham and Mill."

The book's main conclusion is that the deaths of 30–60 million people killed in famines all over the world during the later part of the 19th century were caused by laissez-faire and Malthusian economic ideology of the colonial governments.

From a different article:

The regular export of grain by the colonial government continued; during the famine, the viceroy, Lord Lytton, oversaw the export to England of a record 6.4 million hundredweight (320,000 tons) of wheat, which made the region more vulnerable. The cultivation of alternate cash crops, in addition to the commodification of grain, played a significant role in the events.[6][7]

The Mughals who previously ruled India fielded a huge army, it's hard to see how the relatively small British/Indian forces based in India, around 300,000, were unduly taxing the Indian economy. The Qing fielded a million men and embarked on their own expensive indigenous naval programs. If India weren't colonized by Britain, it would likely have undertaken similar expenditure and/or get invaded by someone, resulting in an increased fiscal burden. Russia for instance spent about 30% of its budget on the military around 1900.

Fair points. However, is the main standard argument for colonial rule not the idea that it results in a higher level of flourishing and prosperity for its subjects compared to the dictatorship of their native brutish elites?

Davis argues that "Millions died, not outside the 'modern world system', but in the very process of being forcibly incorporated into its economic and political structures. They died in the golden age of Liberal Capitalism; indeed, many were murdered ... by the theological application of the sacred principles of Smith, Bentham and Mill."

Yeah I read that part, the 'many were murdered' part and that's what made me unhappy with the thesis. OK, the British killed some people at Amritsar. That's what state killing looks like, shooting guns. Or active collectivization where they're moving people around and intensively interfering with agriculture, or in wartime when armies pass by and loot/wreck irrigation and cause famines. That's killing/murder, or at least much closer to what we mean by murder.

by the theological application of the sacred principles of Smith, Bentham and Mill

I don't accept that people were dying due to the ideals of Bentham. There were no Benthamite death squads, the very idea is a contradiction.

the viceroy, Lord Lytton, oversaw the export to England of a record 6.4 million hundredweight (320,000 tons) of wheat, which made the region more vulnerable.

This is bad but it's not like he was sending troops to take the grain off to England. The grain export was due to the governments commitment to laissez-faire economics and practical limits on its power, as it says. The fundamental cause was that the Indian economy wasn't very developed, people who had grain didn't want to sell it to starving people who had no money, the govt had little capacity to force them to do so and didn't try very hard. So if one wants to say the British were negligent in their governance, then sure. But that's not actually murder, it's just not-saving, not-reforming the economy, not-reforming land distribution.

However, is the main standard argument for colonial rule not the idea that it results in a higher level of flourishing and prosperity for its subjects compared to the dictatorship of their native brutish elites?

Colonial rule is an innately imbalanced thing, it's about a stronger side controlling a weaker. So in a purely moral level, it's never really justified if you believe in sovereignty and autonomy of peoples.

Nevertheless, in this instance I think that the British ran India quite generously as compared to other potential rulers, foreign or local. The British could've been much more extractive and heavy-handed if they wanted. It was a British former civil servant who initially organized what became the Indian National Congress because he thought they hadn't solved the country's economic problems. The meeting was approved by the Viceroy. They could've pulled a Mao and invited people to speak freely about their opinions and then arrested anyone who opposed the government. They could've had a zero-tolerance policy for dissent. They could've forced Indians into humiliation rituals like the queue hairstyle in China.

Colonialism is basically about power dynamics, that the British were at all thinking about it as 'how can we have a cordial win-win relationship rather than a I win, you submit relationship' is a sign they really weren't that evil. Just think about the different mindsets. The British have this narrative that 'colonialism was good because we kept order, built railroads' or 'colonialism was bad because we caused famines, intruded on other people's sovereignty' where it's all coached in this moral frame. Turkey doesn't really care about any of that, their official attitude towards Armenia is closer to 'it never happened and they were enemies anyway, they had it coming, we were a great empire'. No Libyan will apologize for slave-raiding the Mediterranean coast, though they have more pressing issues. The Mongols put up statues to Genghis Khan, he's a national hero to them, not a genocidal murderer.

The British were/are uniquely concerned with the well-being of their subjects as an imperial power, it follows that they weren't that bad.

OK, the British killed some people at Amritsar. That's what state killing looks like, shooting guns.

Just to nitpick: it wasn't British state policy though, not even in India. The massacre wasn't ordered or sanctioned from above. The troops had no orders to disperse the protestors with lethal force.

The fundamental cause was that the Indian economy wasn't very developed, people who had grain didn't want to sell it to starving people who had no money, the govt had little capacity to force them to do so and didn't try very hard.

On the other hand, the government very much had capacity to construct an inland customs barrier thousands of miles long in order to enforce the salt tax. Something doesn't add up. Also, wasn't it within the power of the government to buy up wheat and then distribute it to famine victims in order to prevent mass death? Provided they wanted a 'cordial win-win relationship' with their colonial subjects, that is?

Amusingly, Indian nationalists and Western post-colonialists like to point to a study that shows the Bengal famine was caused by the British, because it's the only Indian famine that doesn't correlate with the monsoon conditions which have caused famine in India since time immemorial. They then turn around and blame the British for all the previous famines, too.

The British were not kind to India. I don't really know any specifics on what all horrible things they did, though I am familiar with the "Blowing from Guns in British India" painting that depicted the punishment they gave for some rebellion or other.

The painting is an exaggerated 'Tales of India' depiction painted 30 years later by a Russian for a Russian audience. The practice of 'blowing from guns' did happen, however, and was a Mughal (i.e. pre-British) punishment adopted by the British in retaliation for the Satichaura Ghat massacre and Bibi Ghar massacre, both following the Siege of Cawnpore.

The siege of Cawnpore was a key episode in the Indian Rebellion of 1857. The besieged East India Company forces and civilians in Cawnpore (now Kanpur) were duped into a false assurance of a safe passage to Allahabad by the rebel forces under Nana Sahib. Their evacuation from Cawnpore thus turned into a massacre, and most of the men were killed and women and children taken to a nearby dwelling known as Bibi Ghar. As an East India Company rescue force from Allahabad approached Cawnpore, around 200 British women and children captured by the rebels were butchered in what came to be known as the Bibi Ghar massacre, their remains then thrown down a nearby well.[1] Following the recapture of Cawnpore and the discovery of the massacre, the angry Company forces engaged in widespread retaliation against captured rebel soldiers and local civilians. The murders greatly enraged the British rank-and-file against the sepoy rebels and inspired the war cry "Remember Cawnpore!".

To be more specific, the Satichaura Ghat massacre occurred when the surrendered British forces plus wives and children were told that there were boats waiting to take them down the river but that these boats could not be moored to the bank, forcing the British to wade into the river to get to them. As the British entered the river:

Controversy surrounds what exactly happened next at the Satichaura Ghat, whether the signal was a bugle or three shots[5] soon afterwards thousands of sepoys emerged from hidden places on shore to shoot at the boats while they were peppered with artillery. Only three boats managed to set off, men, women and children suffered the same terrible deaths, but the women were spared a massacre of the survivors on shore.

(...)

Three boats had been able to set off General Wheeler's boat, Major Vibarts and a third which was holed beneath the waterline by a round shot fired from the bank. Two boats drifted to the north bank and the occupants slaughtered. From the crowds being burned, shot and sliced to death some survivors set out to desperately swim to the boats. Mowbray recounts how Vibarts boat took on the survivors from the second, while severely damaged and still being shot at.[10]

The surviving boat had around 100 people aboard, twice the amount there was space for. severely damaged it, without a rudder, it was being pursued along the riverbanks by the rebel soldiers, by midday they were clear of fire as the artillery bullocks had grounded in the mud. The boat frequently grounded on the sandbanks subjecting the survivors to further attacks. The rebels launched a pursuit boat which also grounded and a burning boat hoping to catch the refugees on fire which was defeated by the refugees.[17] On one such sandbank the pursuers struck again. The dying Major Vibart ordered Lieutenant Thomson and two other officers and 11 privates to make a defence while they tried to refloat the boat. After defeating the enemy, Thomson and his men returned to the boat but it had gone.[18]

Meanwhile, the rebels had launched an attack on the boat from the opposite bank. After some firing, the 80 surviving refugees on the boat were recaptured. Returned to Cawnpore the men were all shot dead along with one woman and one infant who refused to leave her husband. The other wives t were pulled away.[18] Nana Sahib granted the request of the chaplain Moncrieff to read prayers before they died.[19] The women and children were confined to Savada House, to be later moved with other survivors to the Bibighar

The Bibi Ghar was a house in which:

Initially around 180 women and children were confined to Bibighar. A group of European women and children refugees who survived the Fatehgarh massacre and a others later joined them. In total there were 4 men, around 200 women and children in Bibighar.[23]

Nana Sahib placed these survivors under the care of the servant of his favourite concubine, earlier a concubine of his brother. Called Hussaini Khanum (or Hussaini Begum) she was highly abusive and made sure no servants could help them. Without soap, clean clothes or bandages for their wounds cholera and dysentery began to kill them. Without any material comforts they could only sing and pray.[22] Every day they would be led out to grind corn - not to eat, but as it was symbolic of the work of a slave to humiliate them.[24]

Fed one meal a day (by the lowest caste) they had no furniture of any kind (already emaciated from surviving the siege). It is said that orders from Delhi were received to improve treatment, a doctor was assigned and they were allowed to go out on the verandah.[22]

(...)

At 4 in the afternoon they came for the 3 male refugees from Fatehpur, the merchant and his son and a 14 year old boy. Nana's men led them out on the short walk while the women were confined in the house. Nana had assembled a crowd, sitting in rows while he sat beneath a lime tree wearing a gold turban, All of his advisors were there. Jwala Persad, Tantia Topee, Azimoolah and Bala Rao. As they reached the gate they were shot dead. Their bodies were thrown on the grass and mutilated by the crowd. This continued for half an hour before the Begum informed the women they too were to be killed.[28]

One of the ladies went to ask the commander of the guard if this were true. He said no. He would have been told. One of the guards told the Begum "Your orders will not be obeyed. “ Who are you that you should give orders?" Upon which the Begum went to talk to the Nana. The guards discussed this in her absence and pledged to never murder the women.[28] It is possible that the guard - Yusuf Khan actively pledged to save them (possibly to ensure their own survival when the British arrived.[24] The Begum returned with five men carrying sabres. Two Hindus, one young, one old. Two butchers wearing white and a member of the maharaja's bodyguard wearing his red uniform, named Survur Khan, from a distant province.

The guard sepoys were ordered to fall in. Half a dozen obeyed. They raised their muskets, but shot high at the ceiling of neighbouring apartments.[30][18] It was the gloaming dusk and the 5 killers entered. In the gloom Survur Khan stepped out of the house, his sword broken, to fetch another, then another. By the time darkness fell the men left and locked up the house. The screams had stopped, but the groans continued until the morning. The next day the sweepers came to throw the bodies into the well.[28] Many of the children had survived and tried to escape, children of 5 or 6. A crowd looked on and the children cried for help. No one helped them. When one went into the crowd they grabbed them and through them down the well.[30][26] Three women had survived enough to talk and were also murdered.[18]

An alternative account is that after the men were murdered, some of the sepoys only agreed to remove the women and children from the courtyard when Tatya Tope threatened to execute them for dereliction of duty. In this account Nana Sahib left "the building" (his position outside the courtyard under the tree) because he didn't want to be a witness to the unfolding massacre.[4]

The British females and children were ordered to come out of the house but they refused to do so and clung to one another. They barricaded themselves in, tying the door handles with clothing. In "Our Bones are Scattered" Ward writes that the soldier could not be compelled to pull them out, so they decided to kill them inside the building. The lack of spectacle making Nana leave.[31]

At first around twenty rebel soldiers opened fire from the outside of the Bibighar, firing through holes in the boarded windows. The soldiers of the squad that was supposed to fire the next round were sickened by the violence caused and discharged their shots into the air. Soon after, upon hearing the screams and groans inside, the rebel soldiers threw down their weapons and declared that they were not going to kill any more women and children.[4]

An angry Begum Hussaini Khanum denounced the sepoys' act as cowardice and asked her aide to finish the job of killing the captives.[4] Her lover hired butchers, who murdered the captives with cleavers, leaving when it seemed that all the captives had been killed. However a few women and children had managed to survive by hiding under the dead bodies. It was agreed that the bodies of the victims would be thrown down a dry well by some sweepers.

No one survived the massacre.[5]

The page also describes the aftermath, unfortunately but naturally this report is from the perspective of the arriving British forces:

They came to the house at first expecting the captives to be alive, instead finding only blood. Jonah finally came in to look for his family. Some Highlanders followed the tail of blood towards the trees to find Bhudree Nath leaning against the well. Following his gaze they found the bodies. "..the whole of the bodies were naked and the limbs had been separated.." a "mangled heap" of bodies, limbs in various states of putrefaction. A Highlander vomited.[33]

As more soldiers arrived they wandered sobbing through the house, "...ankle-deep in blood. The plaster was scored with sword-cuts: not high up, as where men have fought; but low down, and about the corners, as if a creature had crouched to avoid the blow.[32] Brigadier General Neill wrote at the time; "the bodies of all who died there were thrown into the well of the house, all the murdered also. I saw that house when I first came in. Ladies’ and children’s bloody torn dresses and shoes were lying about, and locks of hair torn from their heads. The floor of the one room they were all. dragged into and killed was saturated with blood. One cannot control one’s feelings. Who could be merciful to one concerned ? Severity at the first is mercy in the end. I wish to show the Natives of India that the punish¬ ment inflicted by us for such deeds will be the heaviest, the most revolting to their feelings, and what they must ever remember"[34] In the courtyard, the tree nearest the well was smeared with the brains of numerous children and infants who had been dashed headfirst against the trunk and thrown down the well.[35] Soon the people of Cawnpore were fleeing down the road to Delhi en masse, not waiting to think whether they could establish their innocence or not.[32]

Neill wrote; "Whenever a rebel is caught he is immediately tried, and, unless he can prove a defence, he is sentenced to he hanged at once: but the chief rebels or ringleaders I make first to clean up a certain portion of the pool of blood, still two inches deep in the shed where the fearful murder and mutilation of the women and children took place. To touch blood is most abhorrent to the high-caste natives. They think, by doing so, they doom their souls to perdition. Let them think so. My object is to inflict a fearful punishment for a revolting, cowardly, barbarous deed, and to strike terror into these rebels. The first I caught was a soubahdar, or native officer, a high-caste Brahmin, who tried, to resist my order to clean up the very u blood he had helped to shed but I made the provost-martial do his duty, and a few lashes soon made the miscreant accomplish his task. When done, he was taken out and immediately hanged, and, after death, buried in a ditch at the road side."[32] Kaye records him writing; "a Mahomedan officer of our civil court, a great rascal, and one of the leading men: he rather objected, was flogged, made to lick part of the blood with his tongue".[34]

A later text, written by an eye witness but published decades later writes; "On the date of my visit a great part of the house had not been cleaned out; the floors of the rooms were still covered with congealed blood, littered with trampled, torn dresses of women and children, shoes, slippers, and locks of long hair, many of which had evidently been severed from the living scalps by sword-cuts. But among the traces of barbarous torture and cruelty which excited horror and a desire for revenge, one stood out prominently beyond all others. It was an iron hook fixed into the wall of one of the rooms in the house, about six feet from the floor. I could not possibly say for what purpose this hook had originally been fixed in the wall. I examined it carefully, and it appeared to have been an old fixture, which had been seized on as a diabolic and convenient instrument of torture by the inhuman wretches engaged in murdering the women and children. This hook was covered with dried blood, and from the marks on the whitewashed wall, it was evident that a little child had been hung on to it by the neck with its face to the wall, where the poor thing must have struggled for long, perhaps in the sight of its helpless mother, because the wall all round the hook on a level with it was covered with the hand-prints, and below the hook with the foot-prints, in blood, of a little child."[36]

The incident marked a significant downturn in the relationship between the British and Indians, which obviously hadn't been fantastic to start with but had been at least somewhat collegial, certain parts of India being entirely happy to point the British at other parts they didn't like and earn plunder and British coin in the process. To their credit, many of the Indian soldiers involved refused to take part in the massacre, although I'm afraid I doubt it got them much when the British returned.

I apologise for posting atrocity porn, even with sources, and would put the quotes in an expandable section if I could. But if we are going to have a thread discussing downstream whether the 1800s British were the official Worst People In The World in conjunction with the Nazis, Stalin, Mao and slavers, or merely just very bad, could we please have a bit more providing of sources and a bit less of 'everyone knows'?

I can understand why India was happy to see the back of us, and I imagine that similar stories could be told from the other side. I also get that the OP was complaining about overly-exaggerated portraits of British awfulness. Most ethnic grievances can point to a tit-for-tat spiral. But it seems relevant that British 'unkindness' in India largely post-dates the kind of stuff that is at least as bad as anything Hamas or ISIS did.

From my own brief research: India's GDP did not decline during British rule, their percentage share of the global economy reduced because the Industrial Revolution was happening in Europe. As for the Benghal famine, I claim no detailed knowledge but as far as I can tell the worst allegation is that Britain (in 1943 i.e. in wartime siege) did not attempt to alleviate a natural famine because they were busy being under siege by Nazi Germany, which to my eyes makes it pretty different to something like the Holodomor or famines under Mao.

Following up on the famine, it seems that the case against Britain is that although there were supply shortages everywhere (remember that Britain was under rationing at the time!), the British managed to supply food to most places except Bengal, which allegedly they neglected out of racism or a desire to punish.

The case for the British is that they begged the Americans to help because they couldn't spare supplies or shipping (Roosevelt apologetically said they were too busy) which doesn't sound much like the behaviour of racist oppressors, and that they were unable to commit further transport ships because they were needed for D-Day and there was too much chance of them being sunk:

Experts' disagreement over political issues can be found in differing explanations of the War Cabinet's refusal to allocate funds to import grain. Lizzie Collingham holds the massive global dislocations of supplies caused by World War II virtually guaranteed that hunger would occur somewhere in the world, yet Churchill's animosity and perhaps racism toward Indians decided the exact location where famine would fall.[230] Similarly, Madhusree Mukerjee makes a stark accusation: "The War Cabinet's shipping assignments made in August 1943, shortly after Amery had pleaded for famine relief, show Australian wheat flour travelling to Ceylon, the Middle East, and Southern Africa – everywhere in the Indian Ocean but to India. Those assignments show a will to punish."[231] In contrast, Mark Tauger strikes a more supportive stance: "In the Indian Ocean alone from January 1942 to May 1943, the Axis powers sank 230 British and Allied merchant ships totalling 873,000 tons, in other words, a substantial boat every other day. British hesitation to allocate shipping concerned not only potential diversion of shipping from other war-related needs but also the prospect of losing the shipping to attacks without actually [bringing help to] India at all."[232] Peter Bowbrick elaborates further on the British government's delay in shipping food, stating that Linlithgow's request for food shipments in December 1942 was half-hearted and that it was made on the assumption that Bengal already had a food surplus but that it was being hoarded, which is why it was ignored by the British metropolitan government. Further delays after April 1943 stemmed from the refusal to divert ships away from the preparations for Operation Overlord, whose failure would have been disastrous for the world and whose success was as a result prioritised above aid to India.[233]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943#Famine,_disease,_and_the_death_toll

A movie set in Japanese colonies or WWII could easily portray the Japanese that way. Apocalypto portrayed the maya very similarly.

I feel like Apocalypto released in 2022 would have had significantly more Maya apologetics. I've seen some revisionism on it in recent years, but it's sufficiently in the rear view mirror and not a big enough movie to really get the momentum.

Look, as an Irish person, it's very funny to have Alison Doody (Irish actress) playing the evil Englishwoman, and I'm sure she got a kick out of it for the exact same reason: it's the Brits versus the rest of us.

Is the nationalistic Indian movie being even-handed to the former colonial masters? No, you say? Oh let me fall back on my fainting couch in shock. Yeah, no surprise there. It's not a documentary, it's a rousing action-adventure movie that's about as historically sourced as any mid-20th century movie about Davey Crockett or George Washington. The two main characters never met in real life, but why let that get in the way of a good story to get the audience going "hell, yeah!" It's in the same spirit as Mise Éire (except we didn't have tigers).

Julie Davis of "Happy Catholic" gets it: review here, podcast here.

The over-the-top aspect also applies to the depictions of the British Raj which, to be fair, we've seen matches in some other South Indian films. The Raj are usually like the Nazis in our own movies — big, bad, and making you long for their demise.

All I could think about was if a ended with a musical dance number praising Abe Lincoln, Roosevelt, Grant, every american hero with big statues of guns, it would be the most conservative movie ever made.

I thought it was fun!

I haven't seen The Patriot, but isn't the way the British are portrayed in that movie similar?

Mel Gibson has form. Braveheart is an even better example. (Obviously English are the villains in Braveheart, not British, but I don't think that distinction matters to Irish-Americans.)

I'm reminded of the Monkey Dust "Jerry Brickhammer" parody of a fictional Hollywood production of Diary of Anne Frank with all the Nazis as Englishmen and the Jews as literally Irish, but it seems to have disappeared from the Internet along with a lot of other Monkey Dust material.

Or the typical A Very Irish Film.

Reminds me of this definitive encapsulation of Finnish cinema.

It's more one particular civilian/children/wounded/prisoner killing colonel. The film does a skilled job at rousing a ton of hatred and focusing all of it on Jason Isaacs.

Is the nationalistic Indian movie being even-handed to the former colonial masters?

Yeah but anybody with a cursory understanding of Indian history knows how silly a lot of this stuff is. I've watched Lagaan and there's the mild hilarity of the Raja being held up as caring for the people and part of the proverbial furniture when he's most likely from an invasive Mughal lineage.

Probably I'm just being uptight and oversensitive, and would have appreciated the movie more if I was a kid or something. I just feel like the movie is a little conflicted in going between "hell yeah, grenades on arrows!" and "Oh my God... racism...". Am I supposed to take it seriously? I thought I wasn't, but in that case, why is a good third of the movie dedicated to showing how bad the British were? But I also take your point, I'm probably overthinking it.

I dislike white as an umbrella term, because Indian distaste is clearly towards a specific type of upper-class British oppressor. They are white. But more importantly, they are:

  1. white
  2. 18th century
  3. upper-class
  4. British
  5. men

All 5 together, create a caricatured evil. Make a small change, and the resulting individual isn't considered evil anymore. As you observed, gender is easiest to change, and a 'white 18th century upper-class British woman' becomes a protagonist.

Hollywood does this all the time. White isn't inherently evil.

1970s white Slavic USSR communist is evil. 19th century southern low-class slaver ? Shoot away. You have to tick all the check boxes. Even the Nazis are always in uniform. Among black people, the quintessential African warlord with a child army is obviously evil. The mountain dwelling bearded Islamist in traditional garb with ak-47s ? evil. Wrinkled old cougar with small dog and leopard print jacket ? Evil. In India, old & fat god man turned politician rings all types of alarm bells.

As bad as British atrocities were (the famines aren't talked about enough), the Catholics (Portuguese inquisition) and Mughals (specifically Aurangzeb) were leaders on cruelty. However, given that India has a large catholic & muslim population, it is difficult to portray them as explicitly evil without ruffling a few feathers. Not a lot of protestant whites in India. The British are an easy consensus target.

The mountain dwelling bearded Islamist in traditional garb with ak-47s ? evil.

Depends on the era. Take Rambo III, where Rambo fights with the brave and gallant Mujaheddin against the evil Soviets in Afghanistan.

Portraying the British as villains is normal. My issue is that they are complete caricatures. Yes, confederates were frequently caricaturized as well. However, I can't really tell you any modern media where it would be acceptable to make a caricature of even an African warlord with a child army. What would it look like, if we use RRR's portrayal as the standard? Team America: World Police got away with caricatures of mountain-dwelling bearded Islamists in traditional garbs with AK-47s, because it was a different time (just 20 years ago!) and because they caricaturized everyone.

I could say that the easy formula for who you can caricaturize and who you can't is about skin color, since it's acceptable to do it to communists, slavers, and Nazis, but perhaps there is another element here. Communists, slavers, Nazis, and the British are known worldwide quite well, discussed at length and recognized as generally quite bad. It could be that one is only allowed to caricature that which they understand very well, and due to the West's recent ascent to power, every notable example is white.

Pre-perestroika and all that, the Russians/Soviets were the go-to villain for every Hollywood action blockbuster. You didn't need deep exploration of characterisation, they're Russians? They're the Bad Guys!

Modern media sure, but Indian media obviously has different standards. I can't say I particularly mind it, Indian movies like that are just over the top about everything. Adult cartoons in the West still have those but they've mainly fallen off. Blood diamond and Lord of War had pretty over the top depictions of Africa but movies set in African civil wars just aren't that common these days.

Sinners came out pretty recently and their portrayal of the local white Southerners is a pretty insane caricature. Like a ton of the narrative hinges on them deciding to lynch the black community just 'cause with no particular provocation after selling them an old mill.

Naah, we don't realize they're caricatures because they don't get portrayed with the over-the-top characterization that's common in Indian media.

A Hollywood equivalent would be Tarantino. Hanz Landa and Calvin Candie are comically evil. The African warlord in Lord of War is straight out of a caricature. Indian movies definitely portray local (Indian) villains as having a similar level of cruelty. Rocky 4's Ivan Drogo was as much a caricature of communist evil as Rocky was a quintessentially American.

To me, RRR is best understood as a Rocky movie. And it's a damn good one at that.

Now, you may argue that the British were never as evil as the Nazis, Stalinists or African warlords. But, there is little video evidence in support or against.

What we know is that India was a rich nation turned destitute over centuries of colonialism. India suffered from preventable famines that killed millions in a few decades. Famines of magnitudes that the nation hadn't seen for centuries prior. Indians and Hindus were treated as if they were sub-human (though nowhere as bad as chattel slavery). We know that the British decision makers of that time (Churchill, Dyer) are viewed as heroes of their home nation. Add all that up, and you can see how the British could be imagined to be as evil as the Nazis or African warlords.

I don't think the British were as evil as the movies portray them. Not even close. But, I think it's a fair price to pay in exchange for 3 centuries of winning.

What we know is that India was a rich nation turned destitute over centuries of colonialism. India suffered from preventable famines that killed millions in a few decades. Famines of magnitudes that the nation hadn't seen for centuries prior.

Pardon me, but I don't think we do know that. I would be surprised if we have such complete and accurate data about famine in pre-British India that we can confidently state that they didn't have famines that were as bad as the ones they had under British rule. Furthermore, do we all know that these famines were preventable? I don't.

Finally, did British rule actually cause India's economic growth to slow down? Because if so I was also not aware of that.

Naively, I would assume that being ruled by one of the earliest countries to industrialize (Britain) would mean that India had better access to the technologies of the Industrial Revolution than a country outside the British sphere. Since industrialization turns every other variable into a rounding error, I would expect early access to British technology to similarly drown out any damage the East India Company or the Raj were capable of doing. Bear in mind that the number of British people on Indian soil was always tiny, and for the most part the British were just occupying the top rung of a pre-existing power structure that was, and remained, populated almost entirely by Indian people who were carrying on day-to-day business as they always had. I would be surprised if such a small number of people could have a significant impact on India's economic growth.

Finally, did British rule actually cause India's economic growth to slow down? Because if so I was also not aware of that.

Population growth was faster under the Raj than under the Mughals (and faster under the Mughals than any other pre-Raj government). Given that mass living standards in India remain at bare subsistence (with negligible growth in GDP per capita) until India escapes the Malthusian trap in the 1990's, we can reasonably assume that most of GDP goes to keeping peasants alive, and that the faster population growth under the Raj corresponds to faster GDP growth.

The claim that India was a rich nation turned destitute by colonialism (Mughal + British or just British according to factional ID) is the Big Lie of Indian nationalism. India was dirt poor when the British arrived, and slightly less dirt poor when we left. Its just that if you go far back enough everyone was dirt poor, so the working definition of "rich country" was "dirt poor country where the elites can afford blinged-out throne rooms with big shiny diamonds". By that definition, Mughal India was the richest country in the world. And it is indeed the case that the biggest, shiniest diamond was no longer in India at independence.

occupying the top rung of a pre-existing power structure that was, and remained, populated almost entirely by Indian people who were carrying on day-to-day business as they always had

I mean ironically the post of colonial overlord had historically bounced between a bunch of non-Indian invaders prior to the British. Mughals et al. It's not like Britain came in and were the only ones to ever subjugate the Indian people.

Would you agree with this in mind that immigration from India to the UK is probably not a good idea for the British?

It could be that one is only allowed to caricature that which they understand very well, and due to the West's recent ascent to power, every notable example is white.

Chinese Communists are also known worldwide.

Hmm, now that you metnion it, Fallout 3 had Chinese soldiers in it that were hostile, and I guess they were kind of caricatures. I might just be entirely wrong, on every front. It happens.

Weren't a bunch of those Chinese soldiers in-universe holograms created to exacerbate stereotypes?

Yes, they were. But aren't they identical in voice lines to the real Chinese soldiers you meet in some factory or other? I don't remember. I do think putting in some caricatures (or, really, just throwaway characters that aren't fleshed out and don't need to be fleshed out because they have a specific purpose, "angry and want to kill you in a language you don't understand") with a handful of voice lines is probably different from making a movie with caricatures that take a ton of screentime. But it did disprove my notion that you can't make caricatures of non-white ethnicities.

I think Fallout 3 does interesting things sometimes, so I'm glad it exists, but Bethesda sucks at writing, so I can't recommend it to anyone. Sad!

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