It is disingenuous of Shashi Tharoor to pretend that religious hatred did not exist in India before “the British introduced it” with their policy of “divide and rule” (A legacy of exploitation and ruin, G2, 9 March). He must know that when Mahmood of Ghazni first brought Islam to the subcontinent in the 10th century, his invasion involved incalculable violence, massive loss of life and a wanton destruction of Hindu religious sites on a scale that Islamic State could only dream of. The Mughals, who were Persian and never let their Hindu subjects forget it, were as foreign to India as the British.
Those British were, of course, lucky that a power vacuum had been created by the collapse of the Mughal empire in the second half of the 18th century, which the well-organised East India Company was better able to fill than even such a warlike Hindu warrior caste as the Marathas. As George Orwell pointed out long ago, the Raj was indeed a racket run for the greedy benefit of about 1% of the UK’s population (true of all capitalism since about 1980). Nevertheless, there were great moments of civilization and glory, both for the eventually defeated conquerors and those who bravely resisted them, throughout the very short period (in Indian historical terms: 1600-1947) when the British were political players in India.
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