[chakde]

There are entire generations of british historians since WW2 dedicated to the PR propaganda of how good the british were for the colonies and until very recently the western opinion has been entirely shaped by this propaganda - almost any book written by a British historian of which you'll find countless in your library have the same basic point of view.

Opposing viewpoints are not hard to find if you actually take the time to look. See Mike Davis' Late victorian holocausts and the making of the third world which I think is the best explanation of why the differences between east and west are now so great.

Or R.C.Dutt's "Early economic history of the british empire". It's seriously astounding how much money was funnelled out of India and used to build modern Europe and America, while the native Indian industry was killed off.

All this makes the British PR effort entirely justified of course.

Indians came across the 3 monotheistic religions in reverse of order of their birth and their ethos being completely different from their own, did'nt realize their aggressive nature - India had become pacifist since the time of Buddha and Ashoka. By the time the british came, India had already been weakened by the Muslim rules which itself had fallen out of dominance because of new trade routes. So India was doubly weak and this allowed the British to use their resources to easily win and weaken India even further.

The fact that a few Indians were able to leverage the internal dissensions within Europe to their advantage gets very little coverage but was the real story of how the course of history was overturned.

[nagrom]

> There are entire generations of british historians since WW2 dedicated to the PR propaganda of how good the british were for the colonies and until very recently the western opinion has been entirely shaped by this propaganda - almost any book written by a British historian of which you'll find countless in your library have the same basic point of view.

That's odd - I grew up in Scotland and our history lessons were mostly about how bad the British empire was and how evil our imperialistic ancestors were. We weren't taught anything about the instilled systems of law and governance, the ending of the slave trade, the breakthroughs in science and engineering, etc. - I've discovered all these things afterwards, by myself.

Generally speaking, I would say that the majority of the British public have a negative view of the empire and are pretty much blind to the fact that it did a lot of good as well as harm.

[burgerbrain]

Ok, Islam and Christianity I'll buy, but exactly what harm do you figure Judaism has done to the people of India?

[chakde]

None at all.

But the whole fascination with idol and temple breaking which Indians can't fathom about Islam turns out to have its origins in the Judaic story of the golden calf.