![]() There was indeed horrendous suffering, but was it 'national' suffering? On the other hand, Indians included the relatively prosperous peasants of Punjab, as well as princes, landlords, educated and commercial middle classes and the Tatas. In the last decades of empire, most of the adult white males on Indian soil (about 60,000 out of 90,000) were common soldiers living in barracks, not high officials dining in bungalows. Is a sleight of hand involved here? The young British men who came, often in their teens, to work and fight in India during the late eighteenth century had less than a one-fifth chance of returning home alive. ![]() Greedy Clive is emblematic of Britain, the unnamed Bengal Famine victim is emblematic of India. Axiomatically, the Nationalist Line divides two national units. The principal division (some call it contradiction) lay between the interests of Britain and those of India. Despite denials, the crux of the case is that, in some way, all of them exploited all of us. ![]()
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