Churchill, the Greatest Briton, Hated Gandhi, the Greatest Indian
Atlantic,
by
Ramachandra Guha
Original Article
Posted By: StormCnter,
4/6/2019 10:50:16 AM
Within his homeland, Winston Churchill’s colossal contribution to saving his people from Hitler eclipses all else, and he is widely regarded as the greatest Briton of all time. So it came as something of a surprise when a senior Labour Party politician recently described him as a “villain” for having ordered troops to fire on striking workers in the Welsh town of Tonypandy in 1910. The claim provoked vigorous denunciations from prominent politicians, as well as more sober reflections in op-ed pages. When the dust settles, as it soon must, Churchill will revert to being the figure of sanctity
Reply 1 - Posted by:
Northcross 4/6/2019 11:05:01 AM (No. 25358)
I get it, Atlantic. Now we are all supposed to hate Winston Churchill, and although Trump is not mentioned, we are supposed to hate him too because he is sort of like Churchill.
24 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
StormCnter 4/6/2019 11:06:17 AM (No. 25365)
What?
12 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
Wetenschapper 4/6/2019 11:30:50 AM (No. 25353)
Ghandhi slept naked with his adolescent nieces, supposed as a ´test´ of his ability to remain chaste. Uhhh-huh. I don´t think Gandhi would fare very well in the modern Me-Too era, but because of the very fact that he was a perv, it´s easy to see why the Atlantic likes him.
19 people like this.
Gandhi was a troublemaker and a showman.
17 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
Wendybird 4/6/2019 11:59:26 AM (No. 25349)
Reading the recent book Churchill by Andrew Roberts, discusses his views on Gandhi, and his conviction that England was a mentor to India. About half through, a great read, and doesn’t try to cover Churchill’s warts. We all have some. Except Biden, of course.
12 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
Luandir 4/6/2019 12:19:16 PM (No. 25350)
Churchill was crusty, blunt, and unlikeable, but he is revered for saving his country in its hour of greatest danger.
Hmmm...
17 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
Nimby 4/6/2019 12:46:21 PM (No. 25351)
Two dead people cannot defend themselves
12 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
DVC 4/6/2019 1:33:22 PM (No. 25361)
I´m with Churchill.
Ghandi was not a great man in many ways.
13 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
Rumblehog 4/6/2019 1:45:58 PM (No. 25355)
Churchill hated Lord Mountbatten, who gave away India, even more.
14 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
DVC 4/6/2019 1:50:19 PM (No. 25369)
I have worked with a few Indian engineers in my career.
I once spent three days straight, approaching 24 hours a day, with irregular sleep breaks, doing a supercomputer test with an Indian engineer who worked at Cray.
One of the many things we chatted about over that long, pretty boring time (hours of nothing but checking the progress of very large test jobs, when one completed, I started the next) was India. At that time, I had not yet visited the country.
He told me that India owed Britain a great debt of gratitude, and would never have achieved what they have without the British. I was a bit surprised.
It was an hours long discussion, but the bottom line was that the English language had unified a VERY fractured country with over 200 indigenous languages, and the British education system had permitted India (and this particular engineer) to greatly advance themselves, and the British-built Indian railway had made travel and business, and trade possible, and inexpensive.
When I visited India, years later, I saw first hand how travel and transportation was extremely dependent on the rail system, as their roads, even 10 years later were still horribly primitive in most of the country, and even with the low percentage who had cars, the roads were choked. I also saw that English will get you by very well everywhere.
As usual, Churchill was right.
20 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
bpl40 4/6/2019 2:00:57 PM (No. 25357)
As a child of a British Indian Army officer I grew up in a household where both were revered. After all these years it is still not an either or for me.
17 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
curious1 4/6/2019 2:07:07 PM (No. 25360)
Churchill was a smart guy. Just sayin´.
15 people like this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
DaddyO 4/6/2019 3:16:45 PM (No. 25368)
"Hitler killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs. I believe in hara-kiri. I do not believe in its militaristic connotations, but it is a heroic method. That would have been heroism. It would have aroused the world and the people of Germany to the evils of Hitler’s violence, especially in 1938, before the war. As it is they succumbed anyway in their millions.”
Gandhi
14 people like this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
NYbob 4/6/2019 4:24:27 PM (No. 25359)
Old Britain was as ruthless as anyone, maybe even the Romans, but I´d love to visit some alternative universe where India never had the experience of the British occupation. Considering what happens today even after the British influence and decades of independence, I don´t think the alternative India would be that great.
10 people like this.
Reply 15 - Posted by:
TXknitter 4/6/2019 5:03:14 PM (No. 25352)
Men with the steadfast boldness of Churchill put the “great” in Great Britain. It is a far different place today.
12 people like this.
Reply 16 - Posted by:
DVC 4/6/2019 5:32:54 PM (No. 25356)
Lest anyone forget, or not know it, but Churchill was half American, and very aware of that background and proud of both sides.
11 people like this.
Reply 17 - Posted by:
franq 4/6/2019 5:38:34 PM (No. 25362)
Gandhi, MLK, Mother Teresa, JFK... All those idols had feet of clay. I never got the cult following they all seemed to have.
10 people like this.
Reply 18 - Posted by:
Griller1 4/6/2019 7:11:38 PM (No. 25364)
Churchill was the twentieth century´s greatest person. Gandhi was not. By a long stretch.
12 people like this.
Reply 19 - Posted by:
Penny Spencer 4/6/2019 7:36:40 PM (No. 25366)
#19 has it right.
10 people like this.
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The writer is on the Gandhi side.