A Quote by Margaret MacMillan
I first read the 'Raj Quartet' in the early 1970s, when Paul Scott's decision to set his novels in the dying days of the British Raj in India seemed an eccentric choice, almost as though he did not want readers. The British were tired of their imperial past.
Related Quotes
'Viceroy' is the first British film about the Raj and the transfer of power from Britain to India made by a British Indian director. It is a British film made from an Indian perspective.
Many Anglo-Indians who had lived through the last days of the Raj were old, and I felt it was important to meet them and record their memories of what life had been like for them under the British and how it had changed after India's independence.
My main aim in 'Gandhi' was to project him as the vanguard of non-violence. Nowhere in the world has a movement of non-cooperation sans violence received so much support from masses as Gandhi's movement in India did. He was, to a great extent, responsible for freeing his nation from the British Raj.
By Ram Raj I do not mean Hindu Raj. I mean by Ram Raj, Divine Raj, the Kingdom of God.
There's much about the British Raj which I think is disreputable. It was rapacious; it was a sort of kleptocracy, and it was also racist. Indians were not treated as equals.
I was more interested in the older generation as they seemed to be the last remaining remnants of the British Raj - people who remembered the railway cantonments, the Marilyn Monroe look-a-like contest, the Central Provinces,' and so on, a world long gone.
An excellent introduction to the rise and fall of the British Raj, accurate, succinct, and engaging.
Dogmatic toleration is nonsense: I would no more tolerate the teaching of Calvinism to children if I had power to persecute it than the British Raj tolerated suttee in India. Every civilized authority must draw a line between the tolerable and the intolerable.
Famines occur under a colonial administration, like the British Raj in India or for that matter in Ireland, or under military dictators in one country after another, like Somalia and Ethiopia, or in one-party states like the Soviet Union and China.
The English are a tolerant bunch and, outside elements of the London elite, never much minded the rise of the Scottish Raj: after all, we were British, well-educated, reasonably cultivated and spoke with clear, classless accents.
From the early days of the Raj, Shakespeare had been woven into the fabric of India's education, and my father understood that in a culture rich with storytelling and fantastical tales, Shakespeare's characters and storylines resonated in a powerful way.
In India, we are forced to choose our specialisation very early, whereas in some other countries, this can be done much later in life. While the British have abandoned this approach, we in India seem to be struggling with the old British system of education.
At the height of the British Empire very few English novels were written that dealt with British power. It's extraordinary that at the moment in which England was the global superpower the subject of British power appeared not to interest most writers.
I tried to keep the Raj Kapoor spirit. Everybody is not a Raj Kapoor.
The British Empire was so vast and so powerful, the sun would never set on it. This is how big it was, yet these 13 little scrawny states, tired of taxation without representation, tired of being exploited and oppressed and degraded, told that big British Empire, liberty or death.
Almost the first thing Obama did in the White House was to return the bust of Winston Churchill to the British embassy. That suggests a major re-ordering of things. It'll be fascinating to see what happens from now on. It was a genuine break with the recent past - perhaps to re-connect with the past past.
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