Cookie Monster wrote:QUOTE (Cookie Monster @ Apr 30 2011, 10:47 PM) Churchill is viewed as a war hero and a legend as far as I know.
I obviously have a different view, but people generally tend to shove everything else under the carpet as everyone does with national icons and such.
ryjamsan wrote:QUOTE (ryjamsan @ Apr 30 2011, 11:46 PM) and what would that be?
Not being a Brit of Asian heritage from the Indian subcotinent, like say Cookie, not withstanding one would imagine it might have something to do with the general rule of Britian in India
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Churchill's views for most of his life on India and its people was pretty polarized and less then errrrm enlightened
During the 30s about self rule
QUOTE The first phase ran between 1929 and 1932, when the Gandhian movement had made the discussion of Indian self-government central to British politics. In October 1929, when the Viceroy (Lord Irwin) suggested Dominion Status for India, Churchill called the idea "not only fantastic in itself but criminally mischievous in its effects". As an ambitious politician currently out of power, Churchill thought it necessary to marshal "the sober and resolute forces of the British Empire" against the granting of self-government to India.[/quote]
QUOTE Speaking to an audience at the City of London in December 1930, Churchill claimed that if the British left the sub-continent, then "an army of white janissaries, officered if necessary from Germany, will be hired to secure the armed ascendancy of the Hindu. Speaking at the Albert Hall three months later, he claimed that "to abandon India to the rule of the Brahmins (who in his view dominated the Congress party) would be an act of cruel and wicked negligience". If the British left, "India will fall back quite rapidly through the centuries into the barbarism and privations of the Middle Ages".[/quote]
While Prime Minister his views became even more soldified
QUOTE Through the late 1930s, Churchill thought (and spoke) little about India. But then in 1940 he became Prime Minister, and had to confront the question as to what would happen to Indians after the Allies had won a war ostensibly fought to preserve freedom. As the diaries of his Secretary of State for India, Leo Amery, make clear, Churchill was implacably opposed to all proposals for Indian self-rule. In July 1940, Amery found Churchill "terribly exalté on the subject of India and impossible to reason with". When, in March 1941, Amery expressed his "anxiety about the growing cleavage between Moslem and Hindu, Churchill "at once said: `Oh, but that is all to the good'" because it would help the British stay a while longer).
An entry of September 1942 in the Amery diaries reads: "During my talk with Winston he burst out with: `I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion'." A year later, when the question of grain being sent to the victims of the Bengal famine came up in a Cabinet meeting, Churchill intervened with a "flourish on Indians breeding like rabbits and being paid a million a day by us for doing nothing by us about the war."
On August 4, 1944, after four years of suffering these outbursts, Amery wrote that "I am by no means sure whether on this subject of India he (Churchill) is really quite sane ... ". To this let me append the comment of Lord Wavell, who as Viceroy of India between 1943 and 1945, likewise had much to do with Churchill. In his diary, Wavell concluded that the British Prime Minister "has a curious complex about India and is always loth to hear good of it and apt to believe the worst".[/quote]
linkee
Before everyone goes mental on me it also should be noted that regiments like the Gurkhans fight for the Brits to this day and India is much closer relationship wise to England then say the US
edit: added the direct quotes to Churchill to kep true to the thread.
