Chapter 52: The Return of the British Empire (Part II)

During World War II, Winston Churchill famously said about the British air war: "Never before have so many men been protected by so few." "Actually, this sentence has changed slightly, and it is the living history of the British Empire: there has never been such a small number www.biquge.info of people controlling so much land and population.

In the 17th century, England had a population of only 4 million, half the population of Spain and a quarter of that of France during the same period. Even at the height of the British Empire, the population was only 40 million. But, beyond the tiny island of Great Britain, which rules over a population of 345 million and 11.6 million square miles, is aptly called the "empire on which the sun never sets", and London has become the capital of the world.

In the last world war, it was Britain, with so many colonies spread all over the world, that it was Britain, which was the last of the European powers in terms of size, that it gained a war potential that was unparalleled in the world, and could sustain a protracted war without collapsing. The colonies scattered throughout Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Oceania could provide Britain with a steady stream of war materials, and as long as the logistics and transportation lines were not cut off, the British could hold on for a long time, which was incomparable to Germany. Moreover, Britain in wartime could also organize troops from various colonies, and the colonial armies formed by India, Canada, Australia, South Africa, etc., could completely make up for the manpower gap caused by the war. Even if one German soldier were exchanged for ten colonial soldiers, such a battle loss ratio would be very advantageous for the British, but the Germans could not withstand such huge attrition.

But there is a premise for such a victory, that is, the enemies of the British Empire can only be located in Europe, and not from Asia at the same time. Otherwise, the seemingly powerful and invincible British colonial empire will collapse like a broken house made of cards, in the blink of an eye.

Fortunately, until the outbreak of World War II, the British Empire, which consisted of dependencies, colonies, protectorates and condominiums, was still vast and boundless, and the sun would never set on the map of the British Empire. The right to life and death of 563 million people of all colours and languages - Tamils, Chinese, Bushmen, of South-West Africa, Dravidian natives, Melanesians, Australians, Englishmen, Canadians and others - still depends on the gentlemen of Whitehall in London.

In the midst of the magnificent British colonial system, the British Indian Empire, which stretched from the Khyber Pass to Cape Comorin, was undoubtedly the most shining jewel in the crown of the British Empire, and one of the most gorgeous treasures.

From the middle of the 19th century onwards, Britain turned India into a colony of its own, a slave state. In this hierarchical country, the highest class was naturally the British white and other white races, followed by the original princes and nobles of India, followed by the Indian commoners, and the lowest were the original Indian untouchables. The British would not allow any revolution in India, because it would endanger Britain's own interests. So, nobles are still nobles, commoners are still commoners, and untouchables are of course still untouchables. India became a paradise for the British and a paradise for white adventurers. All the white hooligans and even beggars who are extremely bored or miserable in England can come back in a few years as long as they go to India, and within a few years. As for the nobles of the original family, or the children of the rich, if they go to India, they will become a superior person, enjoy supreme dignity in India, eat and drink all the delicacies of the mountains and seas, fine wine and delicacies, and there are slaves in and out, and the environment of the residence is elegant, luxurious and rich.

During this time, the British Indian Empire was like a magnificent edifice, the cornerstone and witness of the British Empire, symbolizing the glorious achievements of the British Empire and the crystallization of years of painstaking management by the British colonists.

However, even the Indians were not a people willing to be slaves forever, and in this world war, the Japanese katana from the East and the anger of the subcontinent itself finally crushed the gem bit by bit.

By the autumn of last year, the entire flag of British India had been torn to pieces, leaving only the capital Delhi still stubbornly resisting, but after losing the port of Mumbai, the last link to the outside world, the Governor of Wavell who was trapped in Delhi seemed to be doomed.

In this regard, Churchill once lamented in infinite despair in Parliament, "...... The loss of the Indian colonies was a decisive blow to the British Empire. Britain was henceforth insignificant and eclipsed. ”

-- Without the endless wealth of the Indian people, and without the cheap Indian soldiers to fill the trenches, all other colonies except India would have been in disintegration and in vain. Under these circumstances, the British Empire, which was in a state of exhaustion, had to search for the last copper coin on its own soil, and to levy the last strong men of its own nation to engage in an increasingly bloody war of attrition against an increasingly powerful and numerous enemy. As a result, almost all kinds of consumer goods, such as food, fuel, liquor, electricity, clothing, and even the world-famous dark beer and cricket, disappeared from the shops of Britain. There are no turkeys and cakes on the British Christmas table, and London is dark for the New Year, because the price of electricity has risen tenfold and everyone cannot afford electricity. The English gentlemen were astonished to find that their lives had become so poor that they could not bear the scarcity.

But even so, with the limited size and poor resources of Britain itself, it was still unable to sustain the huge expenses of a full-scale war, so it could only pull down its face and ask the United States for help. Everything from fuel to food to munitions was wanted, but nothing was paid for and could only be paid on credit temporarily.

The former world hegemon has now become a beggar begging for mercy from the United States, and such a miserable situation is really heartbreaking.

But by the spring of this year, the situation had turned abruptly, and the British Empire had easily recovered most of India with almost no soldiers, relying on the dexterous tongues of a few diplomats! Such an incredible miracle simply stunned and stunned London's politicians.

“…… It's incredible, we've all seen Gandhi before, and it's hard to imagine that this dervish would give up his idea of India's independence. ”

Labour's leader, Attlee, shook his head and said, "...... And this is when India is already almost doomed to escape from imperial control! ”

“…… Quite simply, because Gandhi was an unrealistic dreamer, living in a dream world he imagined. And his followers had to dream with Gandhi. You can't treat him as a politician, his real identity is a god, a religious leader. You can think of him as the modern-day Shakyamuni, or the Jesus of India. He wanted to see a peaceful country free of war and bloodshed. ”

Churchill took a puff of smoke and said leisurely, "...... But Chandra. The Indian rebellion led by Bose was clearly pushing this ancient country into the abyss of blood and fire. And this India, born through war and killing, bears no resemblance to the India of his lifelong dream. In order to put an end to this nightmare and push India into the orbit of his imagination, he can only go back and work with us. ”

“…… And what about Nehru? He wasn't a god, he wasn't a dreamer, and his ambitions were no worse than Hitler's! ”

“…… Nehru? That arrogant, liar-mouthed lawyer? Churchill snorted from his nostrils, "...... He did hate the continued rule of India at Whitehall in London, but he hated it even more for someone else to lead India's independence...... And that's the basis for our cooperation......"

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There is a saying that as long as the route is wrong, the more knowledge you have, the more reactionary it becomes.

If this sentence were placed on the head of Mahatma Gandhi in India, it could not be more appropriate.

In general, the halo on Gandhi's head is the result of the imagination of a distant observer. In fact, Gandhi's abstract ideas and romantic spirit have not been favored by India's elite in any era. However, given the moral resources that Gandhi possessed, they had to do things that were completely contrary to Gandhi's visionary line while carrying out the name of Gandhi. Otherwise, God knows what India will be tossed into.

Chinese often say that Sun Yat-sen is "Sun Cannon", his speech is unrealistic, casual nonsense, and the "Founding Strategy" he wrote is also almost a third-rate lame science fiction novel. But if compared with Gandhi's founding line, Sun Yat-sen's "Founding Strategy" can be called very pragmatic.

So, what was Gandhi's political and ideological line? Well, there are a few main points: anti-science, anti-Western, anti-industrial, anti-violence, animal protection, environmental protection, ethnic equality, religious freedom...... In addition to the lack of a program for equality between men and women, it is basically the set of chicken soup for the soul that is small and fresh in the later generations of European and American White Left Virgins. At least Greenpeace certainly had a common language with Gandhi – although there had been a lot of nostalgic nostalgia for the idyllic era, Gandhi was the first to systematically put forward the theory of "deindustrialization" in the world.

Although such ideas seemed to have been fashionable for a while in the early 21st century, in the first half of the 20th century, when war and revolution were the main themes, they were out-and-out bizarre theories. For example, politicians in modern China, whether left-leaning or right-leaning, have largely denied the importance of science and technology and industrialization. Even the comprador class, which opposes the development of national industry and wholeheartedly believes that "it is better to buy than to build, and it is better to rent than to buy", at least believes that it is necessary to build modern sea and land logistics and transportation so that it can do business with overseas countries more smoothly -- if there are no ports, railways, highways, and airports, and nothing can be transported in or pulled out, what should this comprador business do?

However, Gandhi was really opposed to everything about Western civilization, and in his book "Indian Autonomy", he expounded his philosophy of statehood and governance, and strongly criticized all the deep-rooted institutions of the West, arguing that the way out for India was to "abandon what it had discovered in the last fifty years".

He regarded all the material wealth created by modern civilization as a sin, held an attitude of uprooting modern civilization, denied modern urban life, denied the modern industrial system, opposed industrialization and big machines, advocated a return to nature, a return to the traditional quaint and quiet small peasant society, a natural economy combining agriculture and handicrafts, a self-sufficient village community autonomy, and a spiritual-based society.

Contrary to the general trend of the times of separating church and state and realizing a secularized society, Gandhi introduced religious factors into politics. Gandhi not only often used religious terminology in the national democratic movement to link religious issues with political issues, but also directly used religious methods such as hunger strikes and prayers to solve political problems, and often quoted religious vocabulary, repeatedly mentioning God, Rama, etc., emphasizing the significance of the movement in terms of religion, so that the movement has a strong religious revivalist nature. Gandhi often relied on a mysterious "inner voice" and rarely resorted to reason. In the national democratic movement, Gandhi not only relied on his inner voice to determine the way in which the struggle was waged, but also suspended the movement at will on all sorts of absurd grounds.

Gandhi opposed all technological progress, opposed the use of tractors, and demanded that people plough the land in the old ways of thousands of years ago; Oppose rice milling machinery and ask everyone to eat brown rice. There were also calls for the closure of the mills and their replacement by hand-spinning wheels so that the countryside could have something to do. For the sake of his non-violent beliefs, Gandhi decided that the hypodermic injection was an act of violence and refused to give his wife penicillin who was suffering from an acute bronchitis attack, resulting in his wife's death.

Gandhi hoped to build according to his ideals -- an India that would say goodbye to industry and science, an India that would be willing to be poor and believe in the gods, and an India that would say goodbye to the cities and return to the countryside. Gandhi was so proud of traditional Indian culture that he accorded supreme moral superiority to it, and even wanted to preserve the caste system, which denied people equality, because he believed that professional inheritance would make people conservative.

At the same time, he was extremely contemptuous of modernization. According to Gandhi's vision, the essence of modern civilization, that is, Western civilization, is evil, and an ideal India should not have railways, factories, and armies, and the number of doctors and lawyers should be as small as possible. Town life means corruption, and only the countryside is sacred. 400 million people can live happily ever after by relying on abstract concepts like non-violence and truth-seeking, and they can save degenerate Westerners......

Well, if the ideological slogan of the Boxer Rebellion in China is artistically and non-violently embellished, it is probably the content of Gandhi's claim.

-- He does not admit that backwardness means being beaten, and does not recognize the development and progress of human society, but believes that benevolence and tolerance can save everything, like an ostrich burying its head in the sand...... This kind of anti-modernity ideology, which seemed like a dream, gave Gandhi countless followers in the vast countryside, but also thundered the other leaders of the Congress party. Even Nehru, as the legal successor, publicly expressed his anger at Gandhi on many occasions, saying that "the old man is confused and pretending to be a ghost". The ascetics and beggars, who represented the traditional virtues of India, in Gandhi's eyes, were "mostly useless people who only deceive others and live on alms obtained for nothing." ”

There are also Gandhi's political opponents who openly pointed out that don't look at Gandhi dressed like a beggar, in fact, personal expenses are never small. Although Gandhi was a vegetarian for the sake of simplicity, his food was carefully selected and carefully prepared to avoid various religious taboos, and it was no cheaper than eating steak in a single meal. And the hand-woven homespun clothes he wore were in fact far more expensive than industrial products - otherwise why would humans invent textile machinery? At the same time, Gandhi was surrounded by a large number of secretaries and maids, and the expenses of organizing various spiritual and religious ceremonies were all financed by the generosity of merchants. A man who served beside Gandhi sarcastically said, "It took a lot of money to make Gandhi live in poverty." ”

Of course, even so, Gandhi was a good man, a very great man, a very charismatic guy - when the whole world was full of hatred, Gandhi fought against hatred; When the world worshipped violence, Gandhi was against violence; When the whole world was full of deception of each other, Gandhi spoke honestly; When all the countries of the world believe that "man is not for himself, the heavens and the earth will be destroyed", Gandhi advocated selflessness; While the world worships heroes and privileges, Gandhi had to live with untouchables; When the world was rampant with materialistic desires, Gandhi refused to enjoy it.

But it is a great pity that there is never an equity between a good person and a good leader.

Generally speaking, everyone is happy to be friends with a good old man, but they are not necessarily happy to let a good old man be their boss. Because, a cruel and cunning barbaric tyrant can make a country prosperous, but a naïve and kind sage leader can make his people doom.

Gandhi's eccentricities were very appropriate for a nation that revered the supernatural, but his ideas did not help the Indian problem and the future of India.

But there is no way, just as the superstitious ideas of the Boxers will be believed, Gandhi's anti-modernization ideas have also fascinated countless Indians - in this world, the approval of all the smart people may not lead to victory, but if the approval of all the fools is obtained, it can really be crowned to the throne. At this time, there were only 600,000 middle school students in India, and the number of fools was far higher than that of smart people.

In the Western world, Gandhi's status in the rivers and lakes is basically similar to that of the Dalai ♂ Lama in later generations -- although the slogans are loud, in fact they are too funny, but they do not do much harm. However, in order to catch up with the fashion, many people are willing to meet him, listen to his fallacies, and then laugh it off and disagree.

If all Indians were to act like Gandhi, then India would probably only have a lot of non-mainstream performance artists, who would not be able to achieve the great cause of independence in a hundred years by hunger strikes, marches, and strikes, and the best outcome would be to get a few official positions in the government.

However, after all, there are still some Indians who can't stand Gandhi's chatter and choose to take up arms to make a revolution.

First of all, the president of the Congress Party, Chandra, who led the wolf into the room. Bowes, supported by Japanese bayonets and naval guns of the Yamato, landed in Goa and swept through southwestern India. Then there was the head of the Muslim League, Jinnah (the founding father of Pakistan), who mutinied in Karachi and Rawalpindi and organized his own army. The Sikhs, Tamils, Nepalese, and Sinhalese also revolted, shattering the British colonial regime.

Faced with such a situation of quick hands and slow hands, Rao Gandhi could only obey the general stream and join the ranks of armed uprisings, and then, with the assistance of his close deputy Nehru, raised the flag in Calcutta at the mouth of the Ganges River and rebelled.

Although the rebellion was also half-hearted, Gandhi's influence and appeal accumulated over the years were truly terrifying, and as soon as the signal of the uprising was struck, thousands of followers rushed to Bengal Province with their own weapons and food, and in the blink of an eye, they swept through Bengal Province, controlled the densely populated Ganges Delta, and then continued to march upstream of the Ganges, capturing Bihar Province, and approaching the city of Delhi with a momentum that was unmatched for a while...... Instead, put Chandra. Bose, the president of the Congress Party at the time, was overwhelmed and could only effectively control a few provinces and princely states on the west coast.

By the spring of 1946, the situation in the subcontinent was roughly as follows: Field Marshal Wavell, the British Viceroy of India, was left with just over 10,000 miscellaneous troops and a lonely city of Delhi surrounded on all sides. Gandhi and Nehru conquered the entire Gangetic plain east of Delhi and held India's traditionally best core hinterland. The Muslim League leader, Jinnah, controls the Indus Valley, Congress Party chairman Bose controls the southwestern coast of Mumbai, most of Madras and Ceylon, and the Sikhs control the smaller Punjab province to the east. Coordinated by the Japanese, Jinnah, Bose and Sikhs formed a de facto alliance and faced off against the Gandhi-Nehru group in eastern India across the British-controlled capital of Delhi.

Then, between the two major military-political blocs that dominated the East and West Indies, there were a large number of princely princes and self-proclaimed warlords and bandits, as well as Nepalese who had been pressed down from the Himalayas to the north and also fought on the outskirts of Delhi.

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In the course of administering the colonies, the British were typical of the people as long as they were profit-oriented. With profits guaranteed, the British were more than willing to hand over the actual governance to the local indigenous powers in order to reduce the cost of maintaining the colony. Therefore, when the British ruled India, they did not infringe on the fundamental interests of these princely princes, but signed a treaty with these princely princes: the princes of the princely states must recognize Britain as their monarchy, be willing to accept the British vice-king (who is also the vice-governor of India) as the supreme ruler of India, and agree to the vice-king's control of India's defense and foreign affairs. On this premise, the British agreed to retain their princely status and allow them the right to self-government within their own domains.

It can be seen that the British did not bring the idea of democracy to India, and if they really wanted to give freedom and human rights to the Indian people, then it should first abolish these feudal princely states and the privileges of the princes. However, instead of doing so, it signed an agreement with the princes of the princely states to legally recognize the legal status of these princely states and princes. This shows what the colonialists really meant.

Therefore, if we think that it was the British who sent advanced ideas to India, the British who conveyed revolutionary ideals to India, and the British who brought India advanced production methods...... If anyone thinks so, then this can only be described as wishful thinking.

Thus, after the British ruled India, India could be said to have become in fact two Indias, one with New Delhi as the center and the other with five hundred and sixty-five princely states, the princes of these princely states still ruled over one-third of the territory and a quarter of the population as hereditary and supreme monarchs. The situation varied greatly from one princely state to another, with some rich princely states, such as Hyderabad and Kashmir, almost the size and population of the European powers, and princely palaces filled with priceless jewels. But there were also poor princely states, the territory was so small that it was the size of a park, and the princes had so little property that they were close to beggars, and they had to live in dilapidated stables.

On the whole, the princes of the princely states of India, rich and poor, religious or extravagant, corrupt and enlightened and progressive, were loyal to England without exception. In both world wars, they were generous and bloodied for Britain. He even organized, equipped, and trained several expeditionary forces, and under the guidance of the Mizi Banner, they fought on various battlefields.

Even in the process of the collapse and disintegration of the British Indian colonies, the rebellious attitude of the traditional princely princes of India was not positive, and a considerable number of the princes even fought loyally for the British Empire until the last moment, until they were defeated by Bose's Indian National Army. The remaining princes also supported their own troops in desperation, or took refuge in the relatively tolerant side of Gandhi, or set themselves up as kings, and waited and watched for the time being.

In fact, they are always looking forward to the flag of the British Empire that will one day fly again on the soil of the South Asian subcontinent.

- Although as a bourgeois revolutionary, Chandra. Bose and the radical wing of the Congress Party led by him were far from being comparable to the Russian Bolsheviks in their efforts to suppress the princes of the princely states, and at best they were at best at the level of "abolishing feudal prefectures" and "equality of the four peoples" of Japan's Meiji Restoration. Specifically, the abolition of the caste system, the confiscation of the land of the non-cooperative princes, the development of industrialization, and so on. But for the princes of these Indian princely states, whose ideological realm was mostly still in the era of feudal serfs, this was already a great rebellion like the devil.

Not to mention that in the turmoil of the revolutionary war, even the Congress Party, which started the war, could not control the chaotic social order at all. Many strongmen from the grassroots took advantage of the situation out of control to raise troops and kill the landlords and princes to the ground - although the religion of India can numb the people's sense of resistance to a certain extent, when the beacon has been lit, there is still nothing to prevent the mob from committing crimes.

In contrast, Gandhi's idea of "returning India to the state before the arrival of the British" made the princes very excited: even if they could not return to the "good old days" before the arrival of the British, but kneel down again under the banner of rice and be a loyal vassal of the British king, at least it is better than now!

And as the brutal wars and bloody revolutions continued, Gandhi, who had once advocated independence, gradually began to feel that it was better to let everything return to the peaceful days of British rule than to let India continue to bleed and finally tear into a pile of pieces.

-- If the radical wing of the Indian National Congress led by Bose still has a bit of the style of a revolutionary who kills and decisives, then the moderate wing of the Congress party led by Gandhi is no longer a revolutionary at all, but can only be said to be a politician who is good at putting on a show and a dreamer who is full of foolishness.

Therefore, Gandhi was genuinely tired of bloodshed and wanted peace to be restored at all costs; The remaining princely princes hated the revolution and wanted to restore India to its former state; Nehru wanted to squeeze out the current Congress chairman, Bose, and replace him as the new king of India...... Unlike Gandhi, a compassionate absolute pacifist, Nehru was a highly arrogant nobleman, a careerist even more arrogant than Hitler, who compared himself to Alexander the Great from an early age.

In his book The Leader, US President Richard Nixon described Nehru as "brilliant, empty-sighted, aristocratic, short-tempered, arrogant and conceited," and "sometimes aggressive, unabashedly exuding a strong sense of superiority."

In Nehru's eyes, India should be the center of the world, and the rest of the world should behave and live according to Indian moral standards, according to Indian values - as early as 1934, Nehru wrote ambitiously in his autobiography: "My personal vision of the future is this: I think that in the future there will be a federation that includes China, India, Burma, Sikkim, Afghanistan and other countries." ”

Hey, it's even crazier than Hitler's Mein Kampf! You forgot that India itself is still a colony!

Obviously, a pretentious "man of destiny" like Nehru would never be willing to submit to anyone.

Therefore, the three parties with evil intentions have already secretly colluded and planned more than one conspiracy to seize power. It was only in the years when the combined fleet of the Japanese Navy swept through Unai and dominated the Indian Ocean, facing Chandra, who was supported by Japan. Boss, they don't dare to talk nonsense at all. After the collapse of the Japanese Empire and the withdrawal of the Combined Fleet from the Indian Ocean, Nehru discovered another very awkward problem.

- Even if he united the princely states that were inclined towards him, he would not be able to defeat the alliance of Jinnah, Bose and the Sikhs.

Although they all carried the banner of the Indian National Army, Bose's descendants were British and Indian prisoners of war captured by the Japanese on the battlefield, and they were also professional soldiers, and then they were trained and tested by the Japanese army, and they were stronger than the rabble under Nehru and Gandhi.

The forces of the Muslim League leader Jinnah were even more difficult - during the days of British rule in India, the headquarters of the Indian civil service was in Delhi, but the headquarters of the Anglo-Indian army was in Rawalpindi, which is now Jinnah's base. In other words, the orthodox inheritance of the Anglo-Indian army is in the hands of Jinnah.

As for the Sikhs, not to mention, as early as the Mughal era, they were already the most capable group of people in the whole of Hindustan......

In contrast, Gandhi, the grandmaster of the non-violent non-cooperation movement, let alone lead troops to fight, even carry out terrorist attacks. Nehru's men also had little military talent. Although the arrogant princes of the princely states have a small army, their strength is also very limited.

What's more, they didn't have any military industry in their hands - India under the British colonizers could not produce even a single artillery, a rifle or a single bullet. The few arsenals built with the help of the Japanese were all on Bowes's territory.

So, in order to obtain the supply of ordnance and ammunition, in order to win the Indian Civil War, the princes of Nehru, Gandhi and the princely states decisively hugged the British thighs again, and Prime Minister Churchill happily picked up a huge bargain......