On the avoidance of small wars

[Madhu]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhilai_Steel_Plant

My grandfather after his retirement from the army, worked as the police chief of the township. My mother and aunts studied Russian as kids (optional, ofcourse).

That is interesting

Some of my family members describe "model villages" in India visited by Russian (Soviet) dignitaries. The visits are remembered with some fondness and pride. And I've had older Russian emigres tell me of their love for old-school Bollywood films. "How I loved Raj Kumar," one told me.

On the other hand, I know a number of Polish and other Eastern European emigres whose stories are truly remarkable: courageous and heart-breaking. (That's part of the cultural mix around me - Asians of a variety and Eastern Europeans). A few years ago I was reading a novel by Herta Muller - the Nobel prize winner whose books cover the time under Ceausescu - and I mentioned the book to such an emigre. It was sort of sad - my friend was surprised anyone remembered or cared how people had suffered under that system. I like hearing all these different stories and vantage points. It humanizes.


Anyway, back to Pax Americana vs. Pax Brittanica. I agree with other commenters that the British are better at discussing their past empire (their current neo-colonialisms, not so much ). Aw, just kidding. I am an Anglophile even though not a fan of the Raj.

Americans are touchy, I suppose. Who wants to admit we are an empire when that is not supposed to be the plan? Economic neo-colonialism is an almost logical second order effect of Bretton Wood institutions. How have we concluded that the Marshall plan would work outside of Germany and Japan? I contend that we have had a South Asian Marshall plan over the past sixty years, which along with Chinese and Saudi money, supported a nuclear weapons program in Pakistan. Inconvenient fact for Western internationalists.

Well, I don't know. I've gone far off of the main subject. There is this, too, on the various colonialisms:

No issue divides India's historians more sharply than the impact of colonialism. Did British rule ruthlessly fracture the patterns of Indian society, or was it compelled to adapt to native styles, and merely preside in glorified manner over the more subterranean movements of India's history?....The state which the British built in India came to stand in a peculiar cultural relationship with Indian society: the British considered their most urgent task the Hobbesian one of keeping order over a bounded territory, but the Raj could not rely on preserving the peace simply through coercion or even by the deft manipulation of interests. It had to govern opinion. This it did by ostentatious spectacle, imperial Durbars and ceremonial progresses. These despotic tea parties won over a small circle of British loyalists, but there was no reshaping of common beliefs in the society at large. The barrier was essentially linguistic, and it endured after 1947. The language of administration used by the Raj -- for example, for revenue collection and property law -- had to be understood if it was to be effective, and so an elaborate and sonorous mongrel jargon of everyday usage was created, a Hobson-Jobson vernacular vocabulary. But the language of politics and legislation did not stray from the Queen's English. The British rulers swathed themselves in mystique by proclaiming in an alien and powerful language, but few among the ruled could actually comprehend what was said,

Link: http://partners.nytimes.com/books/fi...ani-india.html

For ten Indians that I meet, I find twenty opinions about the British Raj. I've never heard the exact opinion twice. History is still being written. Scholarship that mines the Indian experience continues. What materials exist of peoples outside the traditional written tracts left over from the Raj that one might study? Much work to be done, it appears.

(BK Ambedekar is interesting to read on this subject. As a dalit, it made sense that he had ambiguous feelings about the British leaving. Is there anything more horrible than the caste system and the notion of an untouchable? The cruelty is unimaginable. Not everything the British did was terrible. And not everything bad that has happened since they left is due to the residua of colonialism. People had different experiences under the Raj. The experiences must have varied enormously. Incidentally - or not so incidentally - that is why the Pakistani elite feudal system exists, in part. They didn't want to give up their privileged position, or so my teaching has been.)