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Most refreshingly of all though is the way that Lawrence James is prepared to state his opinions, however fashionable or unfashionable these opinions may or may not be. He is prepared to call a spade a spade. For example, He tells us that many of the nineteenth and early twentieth Indian nationalists who have subsequently been raised to the status of Indian heroes were little more than petulant minor aristocrats fighting to maintain their own privileges - with little thought given to the typical Indian peasant. And in fact, the dispassionate and logical British authorities often did a better job at guarding and advancing Indian rights and facilities than those aristocrats who it replaced. Additionally, he is not afraid to take on the virtual deification of Mohatma Gandhi that has taken place since his assassination. When Gandhi goes off the wall, such as the time when he told the British to lay down their arms and invite the Nazis over to Britain, Lawrence James pulls no punches in his description of Gandhi's character and his flaws. He goes on to candidly tell us what he thinks of Mountbatten, Wavell, Nehru, Jinnah and all those involved in the dismantlement of British rule in India. But even more than that, he is not afraid to say that the British rule over India was not only positive - as most imperial apologists would have liked to have thought about it, nor was it all negative - as most Indian nationalists and a lot of post-colonial sociologists and political scientists have portrayed it. Rather, it was a complicated balance sheet of plusses and minuses. You need to read this riveting book to see how he tallies these particular columns. |
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