http://www.britain-at-war.org.uk/Roll_of_Honour/Cemeteries/Rangoon_Memorial/A/html/ad.htm

this is one war hindu muslim sikh fought together against the japanese as one body. what japanese did to indian prisoners of war is hardly mentioned by the west. our soliders were also tortured and if you go through the above website you will see many who died in captivity and also died working on rail lines in far east. It breaks my heart when i think of our brave sher soldiers who were dragged into this war because of indias colonial masters and so many who never returned and whos graves still lie unrecovered in the cold steep mountains and terrains of burma.

koi vichrya naal milaa daywaay

One point about the British… They are the only people who ruled (mostly ruthlessly) over peoples all across the world, committing untold horrors and still manage to claim moral superiority. !!! (Or convince some people of their moral superiority) Thats got to be the best PR job yet.

[Link]

i’m not proposing that nazis-were-worst-than-communists, etc. etc. type of arguments. i don’t care what the people at the time thought really, and do not begrudge the soldiers the choices they made. i am curious though as to the reactions i have seen repeatedly on this weblog by indians and indian americans in reference to the british colonial period, and the analogies and comparisons that get made.

Razib: whether independence was a matter of time is a separate question to whether it SEEMED like that to Indians at the time. In 1939, there was no indication whatsoever that Britain planned to let go, and once Churchill took office he made it very clear in his public statements that he had not become PM to “preside over the liquidation” of the British Empire. I do not disagree that the Nazis represent the worst of all possible worlds, but remember that even as late as 1944 most people in the Allied countries had no idea about the extermination camps (reports emanating from Europe about these were often disbelieved as Jewish propaganda by many in the US and UK governments), so to expect the average soldier who has been given a choice between staying a PoW in Axis camps or fighting for the liberation of India to appreciate the distinction is a bit much.

from what i recall over 10% of non-jewish poles were killed under the nazi rule (including jews, that would be 90% of 10% of the population, so almost doubling the body count). i am willing to bet that the hordes of ogedei (genghis khan’s grandson) would have been less destructive than that.

i found the term ‘inconvenient’ a bit off to describe the nazis, but i don’t think manish was throwing that out in a dismissive manner. but, yes, there were nations like finland who allied with the nazis against the soviets for existential reasons just like we allied with the soviets against the nazis to a lesser extent for similar motives. my impression is that the indian analogy (i.e., INA alliance with the axis) is not apropos because independence was a matter of time, and the british were not an existential threat to south asian survival.

i think whether you currently an american citizen, or indian citizen, or whatever, also matters. the saliency of the history of the “old country” is to some extent in proportion to your attachment to said country. irish americans were not necessarily happy to fight on the side of the british in world war i, but they were americans first and irish second. by world war ii, ireland was independent and the irish were more settled in america so this wasn’t even a concern.

For some inexplicable reason, desi conservatives have a special place in their hearts for British colonialism.From Dinesh Souza’s insane nostalgia for the Raj to making facile comparisons between the Nazis and the British, there seems to be a trend.

I dont know if its a conservatives only. You can see similar assinine comments coming out of liberals,liberterians,etc. Its smugness of sort, where you can judge others choices(which were often made from a position of weakness) in an imaginary moralistic framework which no one including themselves ever followed.

I dont know if its a conservatives only. You can see similar assinine comments coming out of liberals,liberterians,etc. Its smugness of sort, where you can judge others choices(which were often made from a position of weakness) in an imaginary moralistic framework which no one including themselves never followed.

WTF was the whole “lapse of judgement” issue here…. accolade?,understanding of history.

Agree that it wasnt u but u’r providing the arguements to further vinod-at-large‘s point, which has been to imply that these peasent soldiers were damnable for switching alliances.

You know this for an absolute fact ? To compare the Dutch to the German military machine in WW II is quite a stretch. Germany overran the Netherlands in days. Read your history. So to compare what the Indonesians did with reference to all already defeated Dutch colonial powers is hardly a valid comparison. The German occupying forces would have been quite a different beast to contend with.

??? you ought to read real history first , for indonesian history read sukarno’s autobiography. The dutch were playing the brit part in indonesian context and japanese worked with indonesian nationalists. The japs were not in it for altruistic reason but indonesians were able to kick the dutch out. The INA’s goal was that, And in indias context there wouldnt have been a german occupying force.