>whose colonization did introduce positives to the natives left behind all over the world.>
Time, trade, and technology might have introduced those positives in India even without the British.
You have to remember that India had such strong roots in its own culture and civilization that British were unable to influence in the two centuries that they were in India. Almost every part of the regional Indian culture (for there are many) from clothes, music, language, architecture, handicrafts, religion, cuisine, and customs; the things that matter more to the lives of ordinary people, pre-date the British. There were a variety of rulers in India, each with different level of administrative and military capabilities. Some were patrons of the arts (the weak Nabobs of Avadh)and some of science (Raja Jaisingh). The regional culture is so strong that even 200 years of British influence and 50 years of Indian democracy have not made a dent.
The British did introduce a more representative form of govornment which gradually (over 80 years) approached democracy. And they did provide some of the institutions that are pillars of democracy.
>And some Americans read Howard Zinn, openly question authority of any stripe, and can still maintain sufficient objectivity to acknowledge that Gandhi's methods would be useless against, say, Hitler or Pol Pot, but were very effective against a reasonably civilized UK, whose colonization did introduce positives to the natives left behind all over the world.> |
