I saw the first installment of Ken Burns’ eagerly anticipated “The War” last night and was not disappointed in the least.
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The Kohima Memorial: “When you go home, tell them of us and say; For their tomorrow, we gave our today“ |
These battles are important primarily because they marked the furthest advance of Imperial Japanese forces onto the Indian mainland. By holding back the Japanese in the highlands of Nagaland, combined British and Indian forces handed the imperial war machine its largest defeat thus far in the war and, perhaps more importantly, probably saved India from the savagery that had fallen upon China and Burma earlier.
In British war annals, the battle has a place in the history of WWII akin to America’s recollection of Guadalcanal. Earl Mountbatten referred to it as:
“probably one of the greatest battles in history… in effect the Battle of Burma… [was] the British/Indian Thermopylae”.
For desi’s, the historical record is somewhat controversial as the battles held the dubious honor of being the highpoint of activity by Subhash Bose‘s Indian National Army in their alliance with the Axis powers.
Kohima is the capital of the Indian state of Nagaland and is ~400 miles north east of Calcutta over modern day Bangladesh. By this point in the war, British forces had been routed by the Japanese across China, the Pacific, and most of southeast Asia and they were determined to halt imperial advances at the gateway to India.
The Japanese, on the other hand, planned to capitalize on these massive victories with an “audacious” plan to drive the British from Asia altogether, the crown jewel being India. As recounted by the British –
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…and so began the Japanese invasion of the Desh |
The start of 1944 found the Japanese with a battle plan which was audacious, far-reaching, and simple. This was nothing less than a wholesale advance into India. All told, 100,000 troops were to march to the assault, first to seize the British bastions at Imphal and Kohima, and then to proceed another 30 miles northwards and put themselves astride the Bengal-Assam railway, the main supply road to General Stilwell and the Chinese. If all went well, they would by this time have virtually by-passed the 14th Army and left Stilwell out on a limb. India would then stretch before them, and their long-term plan was to move westwards to Calcutta – relying on political unrest in India to pave the way for their advance into the Delhi.
The fighting at Kohima saw the British / Indian forces face long odds, dynamic battles racing up and down hillsides, and nearly constant hand-to-hand combat –
…The garrison, which included a battalion of the Royal West Kent Regiment and a battalion of the Assam Regiment, was small – it mustered all told just over 1,500 men, including convalescent soldiers, civilians, and cooks. Against it was launched the full fury of the Japanese 31st Division, numbering 12,000 men.For 14 days and nights the defenders of Kohima held the bridgehead to India. Now the eyes of the world were upon them because the Japanese had already made their usual enormous radio claims, among which was the one true one that they stood at last upon Indian soil.
…The Japanese finally withdrew on the night of June 6; the battle of Kohima was over. It had lasted 64 days and had seen some of the most stubborn and bloody fighting of the second world war. The
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British and Nepali Gurkhas Advancing on Japanese Lines at Imphal |
A decisive factor at Kohima was the Allied forces ability to secure provisions and men into the remote battlefield including the euphemistically-named Battle of the Tennis Court. Tenacious fighting, coupled with Japanese inability to resupply their troops eventually forced a retreat –
The decisive factor was the Japanese lack of supplies. Since the offensive started, they had had to make do with meager captured stocks and what they could forage in increasingly hostile local villages….The British and Indian forces had lost around 4,000 men, dead, missing and wounded. The Japanese had lost more than 5,000 men in the Kohima area fighting.
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p>The Battle at Imphal happened at the same time as Kohima and although the territory wasn’t quite as strategic as Kohima, the terrain permitted far larger concentrations of men and material resulting in even more numerous casualties –
Of the 100,000 Japanese who raced with sword and grenade for Imphal, 50,000 were dead.
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p>Imphal was also the venue for the most decisive action seen by Bose’s 40,000-strong Indian National Army who figured prominently in Japanese war plans including crucial flank defense & relief operations –
At the insistence of Bose, the Indian National Army made a substantial contribution. (Originally, the Japanese intended using them only for reconnaissance and propaganda.)* Units of the First Division (initially the Subhas Brigade or 1st Guerrilla Regiment), less a battalion sent to the Arakan) was directed along Tamu road along with the Yamamoto Force. [1]
* The Special Services Group, redesignated as the Bahadur Group acted as scouts and pathfinders with the advanced Japanese units in the opening stages of the offensive. They were tasked to infiltrate through British lines and encourage units of the British Indian Army to defect. Fay quotes British Intelligence sources to confirm that these units achieved some success in these early stages.
…On the Japanese left flank, the INA’s Subhas Brigade, led by Col. Shah Nawaz Khan, reached the edge of the Chin Hills below Tiddim and Fort White at the end of March. From this position, the 2nd Battalion sent companies to relieve Japanese forces at Falam and to Hakha, from where in turn, Khan’s forces sent out patrols and laid ambushes for the Chin guerrilas under the command of a British officer, taking a number of prisoners. In the middle of May, a force under Khan’s Adjutant, Mahboob “Boobie” Ahmed, attacked and captured the hilltop fortress of Klang Klang.
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p>Traitor, Useful Idiot, or RealPolitik-genius/casualty? The jury on Bose & the INA’s support of the Japanese is still out and controversial to say the least. I’ll refrain from this aspect of it for now to keep the focus on Kohima & Imphal-writ-large.
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p>Regardless, the desi role in WWII is often overlooked. Unlike the other major combatants, Indians in the British Army were an all-volunteer force and their numbers (over 2.5M) made them one of the single largest force contingents in the war overall. And thankfully, decisive action at Kohima and Imphal helped ensure that, also unlike most other combatants, minimal combat would be seen on desi soil.
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[related material — a pamphlet from the UK Ministry of Defense commemorating Kohima and a well written first hand account.]
And also the British misdeeds had at their core an economic goal. The Nazi misdeeds had at their core pure hatred.
I was amazed to find out that the British actually had concentration camps for Afrikaaners/Boers (i.e. WHITE PEOPLE) in South Africa at one time…during a war between the two or something (details a little vague in my head, I’ll look it up if I have time). Children (white, European-descent Boer children) were starved to death. Somehow I could imagine the Brits doing that to Indians or Africans, but to other whites? Shows you that their policies were simply designed to strengthen the Empire, politically and economically, at any cost to anyone subject to them, including genocide. That being said, they were better than the Nazis.
Putting up a deceitful veil of decency over evil acts of racism, genocide and enslavement makes the british somehow better than the nazis? It only made the british more insidious and hence more successful international criminals. Besides being genociders, enslvers, exploiters, racists etc the british were also the biggest drug pushers of all time who tried to make an entire nation, China, addicted to opium under a veil of ‘decency’ aka laissez faire capitalism.
Typical macaulayite eurocentrism. The nazis killed in Europe. They did not kill any indians other than those who were fighting for the British Empire aginst them. The British on the other hand killed millions of Indians. Yet many still-colonized subcontinentals remain brainwashed into thinking that the british were better than the nazis! Try to look at the world with desi eyes for a change.
Then there’s Aussies.
MarginalizeTheMacaulayites: I should have given you more information on the occupation of Andaman by the Japanese and why it reflects very badly on Bose.
As you pointed out Andaman was a penal colony where british exiled freedom fighters. So when the Japanese invaded they were greeted as liberators. Unfortunatly, the Japanese turned out to be worse than british- they indulged in large scale rape and murder. All in all in the short period of 3 years, the Japanese killed more people than the british had during their entire occupation.
The worst part about this is that when these atrocities occured Bose was the ruler of Andamans.
It speaks terribly of Bose that such atrocities were inflicted under his watch on a natually sympathetic population. One only shudders to think of what would have happened if the rest of India was ‘liberated’ by the Japanese similarly.
The only good thing that Bose did (and the value of this should not be underestimated in any way) awas to prove to the British that there was a viable violent option available instead of Gandhism and that the enforcers of the british empire (the indian army/civil service) could at any time take this option if there was a charismatic leader
Otherwise Rajaji’s ‘leaky boat’ comment proved prophetic.
Some of this information is in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_and_occupation_of_the_Andaman_Islands_during_World_War_II
The rest of the information is based on a Son et Lumiere Show on the history of Andamans I had seen in Port Blair ages back
51 Arjun
And also the British misdeeds had at their core an economic goal. The Nazi misdeeds had at their core pure hatred.
–> Weaver in 19th century India: Where did all the trade go ? Why am I starving?
British: We made you obsolete. We had our economic prosperity at our heart.
Weaver starves to death anyway.
Nazis were in a class of their own when it came to despicable acts. British were much more pedestrian in their killings.
As much as I like Bose for doing what he did(offering an alternative to the best-politician-there-ever-was Gandhi), he would have taken India on a lesser road than what Nehru did.
Yes, the British were horrible. But there is no comparison to the Nazis. Anyone doubting that should read up a bit (wikipedia is a good place) on the Holocaust.
from the view point of the victims, there is no difference between colonialists, nazi, communists etc. Basically they were victims of power and aggression. The bullet fired by these aggressors follow the laws of physics and not some underlying ideology of the aggressors. did the bullets fired at jalian wallah bagh had some soft and slow motion landing because it was fired by colonialists? why do you think the tens of millions of people who died of starvation and famine better off than victims of communism and nazism?
did the bullets fired at jalian wallah bagh had some soft and slow motion landing because it was fired by colonialists?
Yes, what you say is right – when you you die you die. But for the Indians’ families who died under colonialist rule, there is a difference between who they died under. Was it institutionalized in the British empire to kill those they ruled under? no…those underlying policies are very important even if death is death – it’s very important the Indians that survived, the families of the Indians that died.
I think it is b/c of Britain’s underlying policies on Colonial rule, their own philosophy that guided their laws, is what Gandhi’s movement used to win freedom for India, in a relatively bloodless way; If it was Nazi ideology and laws that India was under, I’m sure many more millions would have been killed.
The involvement of the Sikhs in the 2 World Wars is quite well-documented (for example: http://www.sikhs.org/ww1/, http://www.unitedsikhs.org/rtt/Sikhs_in_France.htm, http://www.sikhspectrum.com/122002/soldiers_ww.htm, http://www.sikhspectrum.com/112003/sikharmynames1.htm),
but is also quite controversial on the same lines: why would a defeated Indian community sign up to defend their former enemies? Perhaps it was the “martial races” propaganda that convinced them..
Just some ideas:
Acceptance of reality?
Lack of other economic avenues?
Opportunities to exploit the new situation and advance one’s/one’s caste’s interests? Both Jatt Sikhs as well as ‘low-caste’ Sikhs gained certain benefits at least during the early decades of colonisation (although that was much before the WW1 and WW2 eras).
Lack of awareness of the big picture?
A way to continue an already long-existing military tradition?
Cultural attraction to the military?
Anyone read this story?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Article
The basic point is that there’s a distinction between bad and worse. The British were bad. The Nazis and Japanese were worse. In the end, Bose failed to make that distinction.
“Traitor” s probably too strong a word– God knows he had no reason to be loyal to the British Empire, but so is “hero.” “Useful idiot” hits the target squarely.
Speedy
indian soldiers in the british army, princes and other minions of birtish were the useful idiots who helped to sustain the evil british empire for more than 150 years.
I am surprised that there were so many apologists for the british rule in india. Lincoln once famously remarked about that the apologists for slavery should be subjected to slavery so that they stop apologzing for slavery. In the same vein I would suggest that the apologists for the evil british rule in india should be subject to kalapani type of experience or worse, should see that their children starve to death in front of their eyes– just like the millions of people in India had this misfortune due to the series of famines during the 150 years of british rule that killed tens of millions of people. I am amazed that the apologists for british rule have absolutely no empathy for the tens of millions of people who died of famines which are clearly caused by british misrule.
Yes, the consequences of British rule in India were disastrous for India and Indians but seriously does anyone think that Japanese occupation would have been any better. Considering their record in China, Korea and else where, I think it would have been a disaster of unmitigated proportions. So yes in retrospect Bose does seem like a useful idiot.
I doubt Bose was looking for the Japanese to take over India. What options did Bose have at that time? He had to take a risk. Can you suggest some allies that would have helped Bose militarily? You guys act like Bose had a choice of partners in the fight for liberation.
in retrospect even the sainted churchill is a useful idiot for allying with stalin and ceding half the europe to communism.
Bose may not have wanted Japanese to take over India, but that is in all likelihood, what would have happened had Japanese defeated the British in India. INA was a relatively small force (<50,000), and depended on the Japanese for everything and hence in no real position to challenge them. Apart from the symbolism of an “Indian Army” what did the INA really achieve? Bose’s judgment regarding the choice of his allies and tactics does seem questionable to say the least.
There is no guarantee that Japanese would have had the will to take over all of India.
And once again, what were the other options Bose had? Name one country he could have used as an alternative ally.
“I was amazed to find out that the British actually had concentration camps for Afrikaaners/Boers (i.e. WHITE PEOPLE) in South Africa at one time…during a war between the two or something (details a little vague in my head, I’ll look it up if I have time). Children (white, European-descent Boer children)”
What’s to be amazed? Whites kill whites? Browns kill browns? Mirabile dictu! Also–the people actually carrying out murder on command are usually chosen for the job. They rarely pop out of nowhere–it takes selection and grooming. Maybe that wacko I recently heard is right–the ruling class is a bunch of reptilians. but I digress….
I am just reading an essay on depopulation of various types in the last 200 years. For such a small population, the English (not my favorite flavor, btw, but not the worst either) certainly stand accused of killing an awful lot of people. I am not sure it was quite possible, especially in the 19th century, victimization hyperbole notwithstanding. My friend who showed me the genocide essay, reminds me that the quite white population of Ireland, right next door to England, lost several million during the mid-19th century famine, despite mild sympathy and milder assistance from the British government. All the usual nastiness attendant to such a situation, went on. Yet Irish survivors–Catholics even–cheered Queen Victoria when she visited them a few years later. Her great-grandson got cheers when he visited India in 1920. Human relationship with our “leaders” is very strange and unpredictable. Yet colonized countries continued to be a source of volunteers for the British army into the 20th century. Go figure.
Some SMs are amazed that Indians would serve with distinction in the British army? Why? It was job. Also a chance for public display and acknowledgement of some admirable skill. It’s not rocket science figuring out why they would do it. After all, while the comparison may not be entirely apt, much of the “American” army in Iraq are mercenaries, or the modern term, “contractors.” Hitler was inspired by the Turkish genocide of the Armenians in the first decades of the 20th century–as he put it, “who remembers that now.” The British may have been inspired by the Irish disaster in their treatment of the Boers. Allowing people to starve when food is at hand takes a certain cold-blooded detachment and practice. In fact, the Irish themselves collaborated with the British, sending food to England for profit. The way of all flesh. They needed the money.
Yet although hunger, disease and emmigration did depopulate that country, I would not apply the word genocide. That has stronger connotations of intent and concentration. The Turks deny they committed genocide of the Armenian Christians because they can blame it on other ethnic groups in the country, or they say that many of the people died during forced marches and of disease. Witnesses however, speak of deliberate murder and torture.
However, after spending time at missions in Africa, I would not say the cruelty there, African on African, any less horrific. They make do with cruder tools, but they get the job done. The infernal machine keeps on grinding away, base human nature and the triumph of those with the bigger toys.
If their treatment of people of Indian descent is anything to go by, you can be sure that the Nazis’ feelings towards Indians, whether they were fighting for the British or not, were not going to be benign:
To amitabh et al. (and apropos the surprise at white on white cruelty): its all about power. When you are more powerful than the other, you look for reasons to justify your power. racial or cultural superiority is one of them. for example, before the political ascendancy of the east india company in india, there are several instances of the mughals putting europeans to death for various ‘crimes’. some complained, but since the balance of power was more or less equal in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, even british and dutch officials (of the various east india companies)agreed with the mughals. the basic reason was that they were equal in power. this would have been unthinkable after the mid eighteenth century when the british slowly began to take over india.
“If their treatment of people of Indian descent is anything to go by, you can be sure that the Nazis’ feelings towards Indians, whether they were fighting for the British or not, were not going to be benign:”–
Oh, I should not think they would be benign! of course I know about the Roma’s fate. Still, i don’t think they intended to exterminate India–I mean, come on–just too many people and anyway, they were in their own continent. The Third Reicht wanted Germany for germans and the rest of Europe and western Asia for Germans. I don’t think they thought it through too much further. A tragic thing is, that the Nazis were willing to have the Jews leave and go to Palestine, but the British, who then ruled it, would not have it; even Jewish leaders were not too enthusiastic for various strange, inscrutable reasons. Truly tragic to have so much murder and mayhem in such recent, “civilized” history.
Acually, German linguists did realize that the Gypsy was an “Aryan” language, and at first, the Gypsies were just studied under Nazi scrutiny. Many were killed, but from all accounts, compared to the Jews, the genocide of gypsies was often half-hearted and sporadic. There is a story of a village in Italy, where the Nazis rounded up a bunch of Roma children and were going to kill them. The Italians would not have it–they got very angy and made the Nazis leave the children alone, which they did. The kids were not killed–forget where I read that; but i don’t think intervention on behalf of Jewish kids would have worked in such a situation.
Amreekan: On the Roma: “..proportionately, the death toll equaled “and almost certainly exceed[ed], that of Jewish victims..”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust)
Hey even Anne Frank survived for a while under Nazis. Sparing a group of children under the hostile pressure of the locals means little –> After all, Italy during WW2, was either a mainly independant ally (prior to Mussolini’s deposition) or a hostile country (post Il Duce’s lynching). It makes little sense to turn an ally against you over such a small matter.
The Gypsy toll proportionately equalled the Jewish toll? Do you mean percentage of total wiped out? In Eastern Europe the Jewish population was reduced by some 90% in Poland (largest percentage of Jews in Europe), and the Baltics; 80% reduced in Hungary, 60% reduced in Romania. Pretty much eliminated in Greece. No Jews were wiped out in Denmark. Overall, about 90% reduction in Europe, although it is true that a large number of Jews escaped to Russia and other places. A Jewish fellow once told me that Stalin organized a removal of Jews from the advancing Germans. This surprised me as I know Stalin was anti-Jewish although his daughter married one. I very much doubt that 90% of the Gypsies were killed off. In fact, I KNOW that was not case. However, I will research to find more exact information–please, do not depend on Wikipedia for your information, except that of a very cursory and generic nature. Do not depend on most commenters here, unless we are siting some very good stat sources, more than one preferably, and can make corroborations. As for your assertion that many more Roma would have died had the Nazi regime remained–well, duh, as they say nowadays. And many more Christian Poles and Communist Slavs as well, who were also on the decimation list.
the imphal war memorial has many soldeir whose names doesnt even appear on their plates. think about it, they gave up their live n noone’s there to remember them
As far as British concentration camps are concerned, there is a notable difference between a concentration camp, simply somewhere to confine a large number of people in a small space (hence the ‘concentration’ bit) and a Nazi Death camp which, as we all know, was designed specifically to kill. The deaths of many Boers in British concentration camps was specifically down to an inabiltiy to keep places like this free of disease etc – they were never designed to be camps of death. As for colonial massacres – truly horrific but don’t forget that this was a time when Britain was quite happy to watch it’s own poor starve on the streets of London and to execute some hundreds of it’s own soldiers (WW1) by firing squad for alleged cowardice. Truly brutal times. It doesn’t surprise me how appallingly the people of the colonies suffered when you compare the disregard Britain had for it’s own.
My last post wasn’t meant to sound like an excuse for British imperialism by the way! Another thing to note MarginalizeTheMacaulayites is Elkin’s book about the Mam Mau uprising is regarded as being greatly exaggerated and completely sensationalist by numerous historians, British and otherwise, which do her cause no favours; this is a shame as the Kenyan revolt of the 1950’s, and it’s subsequent defeat, is a shameful episode in British history. Your claim of 300,000 killed specifically by the British is, again, sensationalist, untrue, and also ignores African massacres of it’s own people. Again – not meant to be an apology, just a desire to ensure that history is seen from both sides and in context; Elkin’s book does not do this. The section you quote isn’t even from the book but from a reviewer. Having read it, it’s not even a review but a one sided rant from a man with an obvious agenda. The British behaved apallingly in Kenya (and in numerous other countries)but as far as Dolan(Elkin’s reviewer) and Elkin are concerned there’s a tendency to let the facts get in the way of a good story. You also use the term genocide far too loosely – the term means a systematic and deliberate murder of a whole ethnic group – the British, for their numerous crimes, have never indulged in the form of deliberate extermination to which you refer.
My father served in the Indian Military under Sam Manekshaw when he was Corps Cmdr in the N-East and during my formative years I had the pleasure of meeting several decorated WW2 veterans. Their stories enthralled many of us who were motivated by their example to join the Indian Army.
Somehow, the current generation has lost much of their pride because they are unaware of what exemplary men (and women)this country has given to the world. Thank you for the good work done here. I have sent the site to many of my colleagues so that we are all reminded of and take pride the blood that flows in our veins.
Chazqpr and others defending the British here: Yes, the British very much did set out committing atrocities with the specific aim of genocide in mind. The aboriginal peoples in Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand and North America were targeted for genocide by the British, which is one reason we know less about them today!
Those concentration camps in South Africa were also death camps in many cases– it wasn’t merely neglect, but specific British attempts to starve the families (including wives and kids) of the Boer soldiers. When the Irish were starving, the British deliberately shipped food away to starve still more Irish. And in India? After 1857, the British wiped out entire villages to cow the Indian people– over 1 million estimated to have died in the reprisals. Those famines of the late 1800’s, in which 43 million Indians were killed, were in large part engineering to mass-murder Indians and reduce the drive for independence. After WWII, the British committed atrocities worse than the French in Algeria– hundreds of thousands of Kenyans tortured and/or killed in British death camps worse than anything at Auschwitz or Bergen-Belsen. British officials such as Lytton and Trollope cheered on the death of the “brown peoples” quite happily!
The British were not only as bad as the Nazis– they were much worse than the Nazis! Any belief to the contrary is just a capitulation to propaganda. When Bose was allying with the Japanese, he did so as a way to beat up on the British. Bose didn’t want the British or the Japanese to be ruling India, so his plan was to set them against each other. Far too many Desis fall for the stupid British propaganda that “the Japanese would have been worse than the British.” Again, Bose wasn’t advocating rule by any outside power, he was doing what any clever independence leader has always done– pitting imperial powers against each other.
And frankly, this is what worked. The Nazis destroyed Britain and its industry in Europe, while the Japanese humiliated the British in Singapore and elsewhere, weakening the British economically, socially and even demographically. Freedom for India came about in large part because of this. The fact is, Gandhi had had predecessors whom the British killed unsparingly; after the World Wars, the British were too weak to do this. The Nazis were evil bastards, no doubt, but far too many Desis forget that Nazi ideology was explicitly derived from the Brits’ own racist ideology used in Africa and South Asia, and the Nazis’ focus was on Europe, not on Asia. And even the Nazis’ war aims were complicated– it was in part a Napoleonic-style push for conquest, but if anything it was more an avenging response to the Versailles Treaty. The more sensible members in the German Officers’ Corps (including the ones like Stauffenberg and Rommel who sought to kill Hitler) even knew that the Germans could never hope to occupy, let alone hold such vast and settled territories in Europe, before civil wars and factional fighting would have ousted the Nazis in bloody conflict anyway– they could only hope, at best, to unite them into some kind of social/economic union with a German center. (A very ironic and ultraviolent precursor to what eventually became the EU.) The fact that Hitler was basically an unrestrained fool trying to imitate Alexander the Great, made him not only evil but damaging to his own cause.
IOW, the Nazis’ war crimes get more “press” b/c they committed them in supposedly “more civilized” Europe, whereas the vast majority of the British atrocities (with the exception of Ireland, of course) were committed against Asian, African and aboriginal peoples considered less “civilized” and therefore without the sympathies of Western historians. This of course is changing now, but we need to dispel the idea, once and for all, that the British were “better” than the Nazis. They merely had different targets, largely Black and Brown people outside of Europe, whom the British mass-murdered in much higher numbers.
In fact, the British committed these atrocities in large part because they were militarily incompetent. Remember that the British lost three different wars in Afghanistan in 1842, 1879 and 1919, with the Afghans not only having defeated the British, but wiped out entire British regiments– which, needless to say, consisted in large part of Indian soldiers! Around the start of the 19th century, the British had earlier lost 2 wars against ad hoc South American regiments (the famous Liniers’ Regiments stretching into Montevideo), had been humiliated by the Haitians, lost to the Albanians leading Egypt in 1806, and of course been beaten by the Americans (with their French and Spanish allies) in 1780. This fine tradition of British military incompetence was continued into the First Boer War, on the Somme and Gallipoli, against the Bolshevik Forces in 1920, against the Irish and Iraqis in 1920-1921, then after WWII, against the Egyptians (Suez), Israelis (1948), the Chinese (1950, British decisively pushed back from Yalu along with the Americans), the Vietnamese (the forlorn Gracey expedition), Cypriots and Yemenis (1950’s and 1960’s). All of these enemies, great and small, utterly humiliated and defeated the British.
IOW, the British were losers on the battlefield and even they knew it, so they only way they could keep a population in line was either to bribe the rulers (which very often worked) or, if a military challenge broke out, to commit mass genocide against the population. That’s what happened to India after 1857, and only those Desis still brainwashed by British propaganda would ever try to defend the British as being “not as bad” as the Nazis or Japanese. They were much, much worse than both of them.
BTW, Nita’s blog has a nice and comprehensive discussion on this very topic:
http://nitawriter.wordpress.com/2006/12/28/british-rule-in-india-and-nazi-rule-what-is-the-difference/