Comment by coffe2mug
13 hours ago
I really think we (as OCI/NRI) should move on from using Jallianwala or whatever. This doesn't help. Don't use BS to justify.
Every damn guy that get visa refused uses this and in a way insults those sacrifices.
Come to reality. Present or at least last 10 years.
Who did what? You need to fix your own country. Even if British didn't invade - the princely states of India were feuding. Fighting. If it was not one country then TN and Karnataka would have gone to war.
UK were open minded to elect a non- white as PM in UK. Though he was very bad for for UK.
Do some creative things instead of using colonial things. Nobody cares. If some from that family hate UK or west then why come and live a happy life here (being UK/EU citizens). As an OCI holder, I get better treatment at immigration than I was an Indian citizen.
While lots of things exist like ISRO etc there is still abject poverty, pollution, health care issues.
Yes, India sends talents. Myself living about 10 years here.
But note. TCS etc employees gain more coming here than they contribute. Yes, skill shortage etc. at the end while using the fantastic TGV here in France - I am benefiting more than contribute despite working in a high tech scientific industry.
Eventually Bihari in TN will say I did so much work in Coimabatore mills but you guys are treating me shit; and for the non-hindi speaking Tamil in Pune they treat like shit.
If all these are better the internal economy will be great. On path to some self sufficiency. No. Instead you come here to insult current EU UK citizens. It is of no use.
The point is even if Sundar Pichai was in India he would not have built a Google.
You can be cautious but at the end people like Bhavish Aggarwal or biju or l&t CEO etc are the ones you get there. They don't give a shit about people. Until then people will try to move here. Fix that.
Otherwise people will come here to work. Just 9-5. No sat/sunday work. No fking Manager would call you after office hours.
(Again, there will be YouTube videos of NRI telling - it is better life in India than USA/EU. Yes, true. If you are 10%top earner in India or at the
Wtf am I reading...
How can you even suggest moving from Jallianwala bagh when so many people were killed in the most gruesome way. I suggest you to watch the documentary once and then go ahead and suggest the same.
> Come to reality. Present or at least last 10 years.
??? No, it is our bloody past that we will never forget what the British did that day.
Even British historians from documentaries mention that people in Britain think that British empire was "the good guys" but in reality, the atrocities committed were equal to nazi germany levels and they really tried to suppress this information getting out.
Would you say to a Jew to come to reality right now? Do you realize how in-sensitive things are you talking about right now??
Heck, Even Germany apologized about the genocide that it took against the jews (holocaust) but Britain has never issued an true sincere apology about it in much capacity.
> Every damn guy that get visa refused uses this and in a way insults those sacrifices.
Those weren't only just sacrifices. Those were cold hearted murders by British people to "fire higher" & a calculated attack to kill.
Now you mention some problems within India.
UK extracted $64.82 trillion from India during colonial rule & we are still improving. I am not kidding when I say that UK left us in freaking shambles and the partition day echos screams too.
You mention Indian states fueding. Well, firstly they are now Indian states but they were sovereign nations comprising the now Indian states. Suppose EU and America are feuding over greenland too, so would your suggestion be for say China to occupy both to create peace? Do you realize the ludicrousness in your comment?
Do you realize that Britain tried the rowlatt act and so many other acts which was the FREAKING reason that Jallianwala bagh massacre took place.
People were humiliated on a street where they had to rub their noses and walk on all fours and crawl. There can be no justification for this.
Do you realize that whole of India voted against any British law that restricted Indian freedom yet they still passed the law iirc?
India has its issues right now some because of its colonial past. I am Indian. I am trying to call a spade a spade and you aren't. If I am wrong, feel free to correct me about anything.
So even if India has its issues and I will admit nobody likes talking about Indian issues than Indian themselves. My point is, we are working on fixing them. We have a multi party system with decentralization & we are seeing growth and India has 0 angel tax, 0 startup tax, insanely good seed funds by GOVT itself and green tech cities and startup cities like bangalore, gurugram etc.
But in no way of form does India having problems try to justify the bloody past and not even Britishers try to justify it now so its crazy to see your wild response (let's admit UK's having problems too, Every country does and that's okay and that's my point)
As I have mentioned repeatedly, I am not against EU but you can absolutely see why some people in India are worryful of the deal given UK was part of EU (pre-brexit) and wants to come back (like tf?)
I am not saying that UK people are all like this. What I am saying is that they take pride in the former british empire from what I can gather when it was established on mass exploitation and blood bath.
Building railways in India would be beneficial “to the commerce, government and military control of the country”, Governor General Lord Hardinge had said in 1843. The fact that it was not Indians that urged the rapid construction of railways in the country, but the Chambers of Commerce of Manchester and Glasgow, and the European Chambers of Commerce at Calcutta and Bombay, underlines why the British built railways in India — to make exploitation of raw material more efficient.
Read more at: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/transportation...
Britain was very much racist during that time (from what I can gather, there are still certain parties and people who are racist towards Indians)
Simply put, Britain extracted 60 trillion $ worth of our wealth, built railways to only exploit us further, killed people in massacres and humiliated them, tried to really really put down the revolutionaries for so long.
This is our past. The scars of our past still haunt India. If you can't show sympathy or have to say things like this is what people say after not getting Visa then that's so disgusting to say.
I hope I have made my stance clear. Out of our respect and sympathy to elders and our nation's sovereignity, India generally suggests to distance ourselves from UK.
India prefers a partner like EU much much over UK. We really don't want to negotiate much with UK from what I can tell. But once again, the question is if UK wants to pester back into EU, we will be questionable about any such free trade agreement.
I have nothing against the genuine normal UK people and businesses tho. I talk with UK vps providers on quite a frequency but just, I want to point out that we are aware of our past. We always will be.
I am just saying that even those UK provider would be/have been more sympathetic than you because literally not even british historians argue anything and the question they ask is if they should apologize or not but I feel like the apologies if insincere would be worth nothing.
It's saddening to see people with such mentality as yours in a forum I enjoy. I have tried to put forth reason first.
Propaganda works man, I don't blame you, When enough things get repeated, we repeat the same.
But I know that you are smart, so use reason not propaganda to answer such query. I highly recommend you to enlighten yourself over what happened in Jallianwala bagh massacre from the youtube documentary that I provided.
I am willing to have a good faith discussion (only after you watch the documentary), have a nice day.
FYI, you seem shaken by what you saw, but I do have to point out a few things:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre
1. This massacre happened 107 years ago. None of the people involved are even alive any more. In some cases even their children or grand-children are no longer with us. Judging children by the sins of their parents leads nowhere.
2. Holding grudges for so long does not seem healthy for the person holding them.
3. Another commenter points out that India is looking for a trade agreement with the UK... I guess the government of India doesn't hold the same view point as you (as an outsider, your viewpoint seems very extreme).
Edit: found the trade agreement: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/uk-india-trade-dea...
So continuing from my past comment which did get extremely long but I hope that I could capture the nuance.
My point's probably that EU and Indian relations feel the most easy to form out of any major world right now and honestly I do have a bit of bias in here as I wish to create private solutions or open source solutions from India and the EU market and its privacy conscious users feels better connection if EU and India themselves are connected better and I am feeling like the chances of that happening is quite high.
But I guess politics tricky and I can be wrong, I usually am so yeah. But I am just gonna build private (or Open source solutions) and have a bit of focus within EU market as well.
Politics isn't really my best suit because I like to come to agreements and politics in this case is trying to tangle the untangled which feels pretty tricky to do such I guess but I also really like talking about India-EU relation so yeah. Probably sacrifices must be made & looking for hopefully a healthy discussion of politics which I didn't witness in the GP's comments being honest.
See I want to thank you for this comment because we can approach something new on top of it man.
I will try to respond to each of your point but before that I have to say something.
The Jallianwala bagh massacre fundamentally showed to us that we cannot co-exist with British Raj. We have to demand for purna swaraj & such demands were what led us to our independence. So any historical book of ours mentions the massacre starting from 4th grade to all the way to 10th maybe even till college. We learn more and more gruesome details as we progress mentally.
You can go ask any Indian about Jallianwala bagh and we would all know it. I can bet on that.
(IMP): My point of extreme frustration is with people who somehow try to lessen its historical significance or somehow say factually in-accurate words like the OP did & I took my sweet time trying to explain everything. There is just no justification of what happened but you can just observe from the original parent on how some justifications were trying to be given (we gave you trains, you were fighting etc.)
What your 1) and 2) point are is about the fact that its very historically old & that's a valid point on which I will come. But you can just see even today, we have people who somehow are (propagandized?) about it. This is what annoys us as a community & why we still judge children sometimes if they are taught about the glory of british empire (this is what I feel like I have heard from people in UK) & they forget to read about the bengal famine, the jallianwala bagh massacre and all the atrocities committed whether in India or in the colonies of our African friends.
And this is why India and British relations have never really been repaired after the massacre (Quoting a british Historian)
Also, India isn't alone in this of what you consider "extremism".
Like, in China something approximately 100 years ago happened the extremely sad and depressing event we call rpe of nanking by Japan.
China still remembers it & you can see how it still impacts Chinese-Japanese relations even to this day and it impacts the whole region.
Taking a chinese article from Chinese media: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1099911/agony-endure...
Let me read you the wikipedia article of China-Japan relations:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93Japan_relations
As a result of Japanese war crimes during the Second Sino-Japanese War such as the Nanjing massacre, and the Chinese view that Japan has not taken full responsibility for them, the bilateral relationship between China and Japan continues to be a sensitive issue in China.[2]: 24
Coming to American Civil war. You can still observe how even after a 100 year old war. People of color are having issues in America even to this day & the problems still persist to this day.
My biggest issue which you might consider judgement is the fact that I feel like UK still romanticizes this era (and teaching children to romanticize it too), like they treat it as when UK had all colonies and it was all good and everything. And this is why I have an issue to this day. I have only heard that UK people still don't know the gruesome details of all the massacres which took place.
Every country have these sensitive nerves. Time really doesn't have an impact, in fact as more and more time passes on, the impact deepens in my opinion.
I just wanted to say the post to all the people who ever thought that India benefitted from Britian's colonialism. Nil nada, (negative) India was extremely exploited and India would've been better off without colonialism without a doubt of anybody's including historian's minds. I have given sources in the past detailed comment too.
This is an extremely sensitive issue to India and we don't like people who are reductionist in this approach just as China regarding Nanking massacre.
Now regarding 3) the point is that just as how China and Japan's relations have improved over the years and gotten worse as well, India and Britain's official relations are the same as well.
That being said, every Deal somehow reflects back to an average citizen in country. I am not over-exaggerating when I say that people's blood especially nationalist/political people boil over this instance. I wouldn't consider myself much nationalist and I am mostly moderate (Heck I am complimented for my moderacy) but this is literally the one point where whole India went extremist. I seriously can't explain how much sensitive this topic is.
So at some point if UK and India FTA does pass consider a huge resentment from Indian side. Politically I doubt something like this would happen but perhaps, I can be wrong I usually am but I haven't seen any one person who is enthusiastic about having stronger ties with Britain out of all countries.
It's part of our history and no matter how bloody, quite frankly we will not forget it.
I don't know what you want me to say but I will say what my heart feels in the moment. We aren't against the normal genuine people of Britain. But we are simply cautious and have our guards up because of the bloody past regarding our agreements with Britain. Britain came to India out of free trade agreements and slowly started expanding military. Of course, something like this rehappening feels implausible but not exactly off the table given some romanticization of british empire being observed from outside.
Now my point isn't to bring hate towards the normal genuine people of british state and we don't have a grudge towards the normal people. Because even British historians are really apologetic about the whole scenario and provide no single justification ever. I personally continue to have customer relations with British VPS providers etc.
I don't know how to explain this, feels a little contradictory but just as how Chinese trade with Japanese, India trades with Britain & we set aside our differences at the moment and even make friendly relations & in no way as an Individual I am saying that you britishers are responsible for what your grand parents might've done. But i am just simply reporting it on why there is a hard limit on the amount of trust and relations which can be established in the first place given the bloody past.
I really don't think that many are completely anti british but just cautious. We would still somehow prefer more EU (non British) products than say British simply something akin to how EU is now preferring to move over from America in the first place.
Sure one can argue about the events of time here again but I hope that I have done a fair job at explaining how from an Indian context time really isn't part of the equation so much as one is imagining from outside.
I don't think I am doing a great service telling. You just have to be an Indian to really know what I feel like I am talking about.
I can be wrong, I usually am. But I am speaking this comment from the experience I witness around me.
If you ever visit India, Visit Jallianwala bagh. You can say that I am from that state, those were my people & if you really want, I will be more than happy to guide you this one time.
Honestly Britishers were racist [not sure about right now] (during that time, something which British historians point out once again) and hated us and you could see that. I don't intend on answering hate with hate and that never was the intention. But the reasons are so extreme (in details and everything) that it might make the answer feel extremist.
Honestly Idk, India's answer to hate has always been an open arm or peace. We always try the peace route first (tho I feel so obligated to point out that in Jallianwala bagh, They ordered to shoot on peaceful people enjoying some festival WITHOUT any warning, just straight up shooting bullets and killing people)
I think India still runs on Gandhian principles for the most part. And that's honestly how we got our freedom.
Yes, India still has its issues (Overpopulation leading to an extremely hard competition in exams and all the other issues) and there are lots of issues and nobody likes talking about it more than us ourselves.
But overall, I still feel like there's some real optimism and hope for India and Indians kind of feel it.
Have a nice day man.
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