THE EVIL THAT WAS THE RAJ ... 1

When I reflect on the torture the British inflicted on our incarcerated freedom fighters, I cannot restrain myself from denouncing the absolute evil that the British Raj was for all its surface pretensions about it being a civilising force among the less civilised races of the world. How our boys and girls were tormented physically and psychologically by the British passes the bounds of my imagination and I wonder how we, Indians, have conveniently forgotten these episodes of our national history when no other nation on earth does so.

The Chinese have not forgotten Japanese atrocity on their people and have not forgiven Japan ever for it. The British keep talking of the Black Hole Tragedy and had raised a memorial monument in erstwhile Calcutta which still remains and has not been razed to the ground by independent India as Mountbatten did to the INA Memorial in Singapore. The Jews will never forget the systematic extermination of their people by Nazi Germany in an attempt to wipe out the race from the face of this earth. Then why do we, Indians, so blissfully forget the perfidies of the British on us?

Under Winston's Churchill's specific orders five million Bengalees were allowed to die of starvation after British wartime policy created an artificial famine in Bengal in 1943. Netaji's offer of a shipload of rice grains was rejected by the British Indian Government. Rice was exported to the war zones abroad for the British soldiers for whom even a buffer stock was created as hapless Bengalees died for want of even a bit of starch that was not there for their bellies to fill. Britain won the war but at whose cost and at what cost paid by India? O Indians, have you forgotten these totally?