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Washington Post
Published February 3, 2015
By Ishaan Tharoor
The dark side of Winston Churchills legacy no one should forget
Theres no Western statesmen at least in the English-speaking world more routinely lionized than Winston Churchill. Last week marked a half century since his funeral, an occasion that itself led to numerous commemorations and paeans to the British Bulldog, whose moral courage and patriotism helped steer his nation through World War II.
The power of his name is so great that it launches a thousand quotations, many of which are apocryphal. At its core, Churchills myth serves as a ready-made metaphor for boldness and leadership, no matter how vacuous the context in which said metaphor is deployed.
But theres another side to Churchills politics and career that should not be forgotten amid the endless parade of eulogies. To many outside the West, he remains an unvarnished racist and a stubborn imperialist, forever on the wrong side of history. Churchills detractors point to his well-documented bigotry, articulated often with shocking callousness and contempt. I hate Indians, he once trumpeted. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion. He referred to Palestinians as barbaric hordes who ate little but camel dung. When quashing insurgents in Sudan in the earlier days of his imperial career, Churchill boasted of killing three savages. Contemplating restive populations in northwest Asia, he infamously lamented the squeamishness of his colleagues, who were not in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes.
Churchills racism was wrapped up in his Tory zeal for empire, one which irked his wartime ally, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt. As a junior member of Parliament, Churchill had cheered on Britains plan for more conquests, insisting that its Aryan stock is bound to triumph.
India, Britains most important colonial possession, most animated Churchill. He despised the Indian independence movement and its spiritual leader, Mahatma Gandhi, whom he described as half-naked, seditious fakir. Most notoriously, Churchill presided over the hideous 1943 famine in Bengal, where some 3 million Indians perished, largely as a result of British imperial mismanagement. Churchill was both indifferent to the Indian plight and even mocked the millions suffering, chuckling over the culling of a population that bred like rabbits.
Leopold Amery, Churchills own Secretary of State for India, likened his boss understanding of Indias problems to King George IIIs apathy for the Americas. Amery vented in his private diaries, writing on the subject of India, Winston is not quite sane and that he didnt see much difference between (Churchills) outlook and Hitlers.
At: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/02/03/the-dark-side-of-winston-churchills-legacy-no-one-should-forget/