Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

A historian asks: "Should Britain apologise for Amritsar massacre?" (the BBC Viewpoint) That is a dangerous question that might open a floodgate: Should Britain apologize for massacres against those who resisted or rose up against British rule: -the Mau Mau in Kenya) -the Zulu in South Africa -the Mahdists in Sudan -the Arabs in Iraq Should Britain apologize to -the Irish -the Bengalis (the engineered famine) - the Iraqis (1990 to the present) -the Greek resistance -the Palestinians (for her long support of Israel) -the Egyptians (for her long support of Mubarak and El-Sisi) -the Saudis (for her long support of the monarchy) -the Yemenis (for her supply of weapons to the Saudis) -'Third World' countries (for her IMF-backed restructural adjustment programme and its consequnces, debt enslavement, etc) ... I am sure I have missed a few more. The massacre in context

Inglorious Empire -What the British Did to India By Shashi Tharoor (Penguin 2017) Excerpts, part 2 "The sight if Muslim and Hindu soldiers rebelling together in 1857 and fighting side by side, willing to rally under the command of each other and pledge joint allegiance to the enfeebled Mughal monarch, had alarmed the British, who did not take long to conclude that dividing the two groups and pitting them against one another was the most effective way to ensure the unchallenging continuance of Empire.", p. 101 The tendency to separate was apparent in British attitudes from the start. Indeed, it had been evidenced in the only already-white country the British colonized, Ireland; instead of assimilating the Irish into the British race, they were subjugated by their new overlords, intermarriage was forbidden (as was even learning the Irish language or adopting Irish modes of dress) and most Irish people were segregated 'beyond the pale'." p. 102 "Laws h...

Inglorious Empire - What the British Did to India  by Shashi Tharoor, Penguin 2017 Excerpts, part 1, with my comments  The criminal Tony Blair has refused to personally apologise to the Libyan dissident Abdel Hakim Belhaj, who was tortured in a jail in Libya following a rendition operation mounted with the help of MI6 ... 
Compare that with this: "When Willy Brandt was chancellor of Germany, he sank to his knees at the Warsaw Ghetto in 1970 to apologize to Polish Jews for the Holocaust. There were hardly any Jews left in Poland, and Brandt, who as a socialist* [sic] was persecuted by the Nazis, was completely innocent of the crimes for which he was apologizing. But in doing so—with his historic kniefall von Warschau (Warsaw Genuflection), he was recongnizing the moral responsibility of the German people, whom he led as chancellor... Of course not everyone agrees that even atonement is due. Historian John Keay put it best: 'The conduct of states, as of individuals, c...

Reading about the horrors of the British rule/Raj in India, in Inglorious Empire , one cannot help but relate to such a conclusion made by "the doughty nationalist Lala Lajpat Raj:  'The British are not a spiritual people. They are either a fighting race or a commercial nation. It would be throwing pearls before swine to appeal to them in the name of higher morality or justice or on ethical grounds. They are a self-reliant people, who can appreciate self-respect and self-reliance even in their opponents.' The British tended to base their refusal to intervene in famines with adequate government measures on a combination of three sets of considerations: free trade principles (do not interfere with market forces), Malthusian doctrine (growth in population beyond the ability of the land to sustain it would inevitably lead to deaths) and financial prudence (don't spend money we haven't budgeted for). On these grounds, Britain had not intervened to save lives in Ire...