|
Though Trevor Royle might have
erred frequently on a number of counts, yet he succeeds in
recreating the England in India with all its warts. The secluded
and sanitised life in the cantonments and the proverbial British
civil service’s fair play and incorruptibility is repeatedly
brought in focus without ignoring the fact that the British too
had evolved a Brahminical order of their own in their ‘white’
society which was even more abhorrent than that of the original
practitioners. He also sidesteps the
philosophy
behind the construction of the urban centres for the British and
the structure of governance that they put in order, which had
the dual purpose of making life for the British safe and
ensuring loyalty of their Indian subjects.
A number of
Indian readers might find fault with the author’s perception
of the events leading to the partition of the country. In the
aftermath of the ‘Direct Action’ of the Muslim League. He
dwells in considerable detail on the incidents of retaliation
rather than the complete picture which ultimately made the
Congress leaders agree to the Partition. Similarly the attempt
to absolve the British of the responsibility to stop the carnage
of the Partition is weak, as is the earlier attempt to defend
the role
of the
much-touted system during the famine of Bengal. In the idyll of
the author, there was no place for India which not only suffered
from debilitating poverty but where death in the form of
malaria, cholera and malnutrition stalked every step of Indian
existence.
His observation
about the British ICS officers opting for Pakistan rather than
India raise more questions than answer any. He observes, many of
the "younger officers were willing to throw in their lot
with Pakistan. Not only was Jinnah’s new state badly in need
of a sound administration but there was a general feeling that
it had received a raw deal during the division of the spoils.
There was, too an age-old feeling among some British officers
that the Muslim races, with their simplicity of character and
directness of speech, were preferable to Hindus uncomplicated
and conservative in out- look, they appeared to mirror British
ideals of service of loyalty that were so often missing in the
brasher Hindu nationalists."
Obviously, for
Trevor Royle the British had a divine right to rule, and
therefore they needed subjects whose loyalty they could command.
One might well wonder, though the book is not concerned with
that topic, if democracy has failed to take roots in Pakistan
because the bureaucracy has not been the instrument of radical
change.
Trevor Royle is
also guilty of paying scant respect to the efforts of the
Indians to push towards the goal of independence. He would have
us believe that the British were themselves working towards that
aim since the 1920s, and more so since the people of England and
Europe had realised that the "prime object after the war
was to enter a new world of freedom."
Nevertheless, the book makes
interesting reading since it gives an Englishman’s view of
life in British India, and one which, probably elaborates the
feeling that ‘the Scots conquered India, English ruled it and
the Labour gave it away."
|
AFTER
having endured the period of the 1960s and 70s when the
British imperial rule was frequently castigated by
intellectuals, The Last Days of the Raj takes the
reader through those momentous last days which marked the end
of a relationship, and which, according to the author, was
"not always unequal or unfair; (nor) was it a simple
matter of exploitation." Obviously, the book is an
Englishman’s view of the last days of the Raj.
