Robert Tombs, a Professor of History, has a deeply silly article in the Spectator which has provoked outrage in India.
Yet, read in context, it represents nothing by the tremendous fear and revulsion felt by the Spectator- previously the voice of the lunatic fringe of the Tory party- at the prospect of a Hindu taking up residence at Number 10. What Tombs is saying is that Rishi will watch a particular Indian movie on Netflix and this will cause him to develop hatred for Britain with the result that he will hurt the country even more than BoJo's maniacal policies.
Tombs writes-
Netflix is promoting a new pseudo-historical blockbuster. RRR, which stands for Rise, Roar, Revolt, is an Indian film which has been playing to packed houses at home.
Netflix is not promoting it. It paid 40 million dollars for the Hindi rights for a popular Telugu movie- a smart move given that it is losing subscribers in many markets.
Those expecting the usual Indian crowd-pleaser featuring magic, romance, stiff-upper-lip male heroism, and improbably gory violence will not be disappointed.
Nor will those expecting entertainment of a type cinemagoers enjoy the world over.
RRR is set in the 1920s, when India was still in the British empire.
Bridgerton is an even more popular Netflix offering. It is set in during the Regency. The Queen and half the aristocracy is depicted as being of African or South Asian heritage. That's what really pisses off Spectator readers. They masturbate copiously while imaging all the dreadful things their ancestors did to darkies back in the good old days when Britain had an Empire and Yanks knew their place.
The villains are British. No surprises there. But the portrayal of the two main British characters, ‘Governor Scott’ and his wife, is unusually nasty and at the same time amazingly silly.
This is nonsense. Nobody was nastier than Merrick in 'Jewel in the Crown'- which I confess I was unable to watch. The fact is, British people- since the time of Sheridan and Burke- have taken great pleasure, or derived profit by depicting the actions of other British people in India as terribly nasty. The essential silliness of the whole Enterprise too attracted the pen of satire. Still, it was Walt Disney's 'Pirates of the Caribbean' which went the extra mile and utterly demonized the East India Company. RRR is tame by comparison. Still, it does capitalize on local legends regarding two unpopular officials- J. R. Higgins and T. G. Rutherford- who claimed credit for killing one of the two heroes depicted in RRR.
Among other incidents, the Scotts kidnap an Indian child and try to murder the mother.
Because they are hiss boo VILLAINS.
Hapless Indians are brutally tortured by assorted Brits.
But one of the Indian heroes is first on the side of the evil Scotts. Thus what the film is really about is a tribal community- the Gonds, a martial people from whom many Princely lineages have sprung, inhabiting pristine forests dotted with sacred 'teerths' of the Hindus- being oppressed by various outsiders till the hiss boo VILLAINS go too far after which even their mercenary instruments are converted to the path of justice by the heroic 'subaltern' leader.
I may mention, this is a popular theme in India right now. The first 'tribal' to run for President has just won by a landslide.
To portray British officials and soldiers roaming the country casually committing crimes is a sign of absolute ignorance or of deliberate dishonesty.
What of Bridgerton depicting half the British aristocracy as 'colored'? The truth is, the thing is good entertainment. It is neither ignorant nor dishonest. It's fun- that's all.
The Indian civil service – the highest ranks of the administration – were regarded as an incorruptible elite, highly selected and dedicated to their jobs.
Were they though? The fact is plenty of them had to be sidelined because of corruption, dipsomania, or just being shit at their jobs. Indeed, there were Governors and even one Viceroy of whom this was said. Such things had to be hushed up. Incidentally, some officials who were transferred to Iraq or Palestine were known to have raped White girls rather than forming an orderly queue to fuck Mrs. Hawksbee in the best approved Simla manner.
In any case, in the 1920s, many of them were Indians: in 1929, there were only 894 British officials in the ICS.
But, under dyarchy, their influence had diminished except in Punjab and one or two other areas. The problem was that Indian officials were either useless or disloyal or both.
So viewers of RRR will have to imagine Indian colleagues and indeed Indian superiors sitting back and allowing rogue Brits to commit murder.
Just as viewers of 'Pirates' will imagine British monarchs and aristocrats sitting back and allowing the East India Company to enslave the seven seas using black magic.
Netflix should be ashamed for promoting it
But the Spectator need not be ashamed for publishing this piffle. Come to think of it, Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was editor of the Spectator. The fantasy world which that rag inhabits has contaminated British reality.
If similar films were made slandering other nations, they would be regarded as crudely racist. Imagine a film showing twentieth-century Nigerian rulers as cannibals, or Hindu politicians burning widows alive.
But there have been films showing Hindu politicians burning Muslims alive. There was a Visa ban on Modi. Come to think of it, Hollywood did depict a Hindu priest trying to tear the heart out of Indiana Jones. Thuggee featured in it. Suttee featured in David Nivens 'Round the World in 80 days'. Octopussy, on the other hand, was just weird.
But we can’t imagine such films, because they would not be made.
They were made and will be made provided they are entertaining. True, Tombs may issue a fatwa and try to behead his local newsagent with a pair of gardening shears. But he holds dual French citizenship. Allowances must be made.
Yet the British have long been fair game.
Britain's prosperity and place in the world has long been the target of the Spectator. Come to think of it, Meredith Townsend, who owned and edited the Spectator, published a book back in 1901 which created 'common knowledge' that the 'loyal Indian' was a myth. People like the Nehrus read it and realized there was no point supporting or pretending to support the administration.
Usually, we shrug this off. We have played such an important role in the world over the last few centuries
and are so much its laughing stock over the last few years
that we have accumulated enemies as well as friends.
Putin is an enemy. This deluded fool is worried about a Telugu film. Incidentally, YSR's son has made English medium compulsory.
In many nationalist myths, we are cast in the role of villains.
BoJo cast Brussels in the role of villain. Putin was delighted.
It’s a way that quite a few countries make up heroic stories about themselves.
BoJo made up heroic stories about himself. Fuck knows what stories the Spectator is now making up. Nobody reads that rag.
But that is no reason why we should accept these stories as true,
apparently, people stop this old fool in the street and ask him if there is any reason they should not believe Telugu films aren't historically accurate.
or start apologising for things that did not happen.
I may be a mere immigrant but I am British enough to apologize to people who bump into me in the street by expressing my deep regret for fucking their mothers.
That is not to say that there is nothing to regret.
I should have used a condom when fucking this dude's mother.
Almost every conversation about the British Raj
among ignorant peeps
sooner or later mentions the Amritsar Massacre in 1919, when a squad mainly of Gurkhas commanded by a British officer opened fire on an illegal demonstration.
That was fine. So was the crawling order. Where Dyer went too far was in forcibly enrolling all 93 members of the Amritsar Bar as Special Constables, forcing them to witness floggings, patrol the city, to salaam, and to perform work as coolies. Ever since the Kitchener/Curzon spat, it had become clear that the Army would remain independent of the Viceroy. The problem was that the British Indian Army had shat the bed during the First War. Its C-in-C, who had remained in Simla, had to be fired after which he took to drink and shot himself. Dyer, by contrast, had had quite a good War and followed up Jallianwallah with a victory against the Afghans. But he too wanted out. Soldiers had realized that however shitty life might be in Europe, it couldn't be as fucking horrible as life in India. The entire place seemed to have been intentionally designed to send a chap Doolally. Kipling might speak of India as a 'karmabhoomi'- a field for work- but nobody wanted to work any more. Entertainment offered Empires more Orient than any founded on Ind's coral strand of shit. David Niven could have soldiered in India after Sandhurst. He headed for Hollywood. The imagination could create wealth. The work of the Raj was merely to redistribute a little of a diminishing stock.
Several hundred people were killed. Yet this was regarded at the time as a unique and shocking atrocity.
Which, sadly, British soldiers didn't want to stick around to inflict on a larger scale. This was the problem. Tommy Atkin, as much as Colonel Blimp, wanted to return to Blighty so as to enjoy the Music Hall and the Punch and Judy of suburban domesticity.
Churchill condemned it in parliament. The officer responsible was sacked.
Nonsense! He was denied further employment like thousands of other officers. One may say that the C-in-C of Indian Army forced him to resign but the fact remains that he was a King's Commissioned Officer and could have been employed elsewhere in the Empire. But nobody wanted him and, in any case, 'Geddes axe' meant that even more senior officers than Dyer were being forced out.
But priests of the Golden Temple in Amritsar (the holiest Sikh shrine) thought he had done the right thing, and made him an honorary Sikh.
What a foolish thing to say! The Udasin mahants were soon to be dispossessed by the Akalis. Olivier, as Secretary for India, condemned the Udasins in Parliament. The actual position was more complicated. Some Bedi jagirdars sided with the mahants as did some Sikh royal houses. This is one reason nobody understands Sikh politics.
I have stood on the spot where the massacre took place, with feelings readers might easily imagine.
We may indeed imagine them. Hopefully, the old codger didn't have his dick out.
Some young Indian men came up to me. I was expecting at least a reproachful comment.
Coz he had his dick out?
But they just wanted to say hello and practise their English.
Coz he had his dick out.
I mention this because hardly any British person who has been to India – and I have been half a dozen times to as many different regions – can have experienced hostility arising from the memory of British rule.
I have experienced much hostility, probably arising from the memory of British rule. when, in the Punjab, I claim to be Princess Di. Well, when I say 'Punjab', I mean 'Glassy Junction' in Southall.
Usually the opposite is true. I know Indians whose parents or grandparents held office under the Raj.
I know Britishers of the same description. They too greet me with hostility. This is because I say things like 'was your granddaddy an engine driver on the Agra line? There are a lot of people who look like you down that stretch of track'.
Indeed, in the 1920s, when this film is set, India was mostly run by Indians, under fairly distant British supervision.
From 1924, there was dyarchy. However, only British officers could be trusted with political intelligence and putting down the Revolutionaries. Power was slipping from the ICS to the Police.
The distinguished Indian writer Nirad C. Chaudhuri (whose father was a nationalistic city official)
his dad was a small town lawyer- not an official of any type
recalled that he had never met or even seen an Englishman during his childhood,
because he lived in a small town
until a British inspector came to his school and presented him with a paintbox.
Sadly, the Indian Education Service stopped recruiting about this time. But, White School Inspectors became a rarity during and after the War.
So films like RRR do not reveal some hidden truth about the past, nor do they express genuine popular feeling.
Whereas 'Pirates' expresses hidden truths- right?
They try to stir up synthetic emotions. Their main purpose, of course, is to entertain and make money. So should we just laugh, and even enjoy the melodrama? Perhaps.
Lie back and watch BoJo fuck up the country till the Spectator settles on somebody more worthless yet.
But although absurdly unbelievable, we know that nowadays people will swallow almost anything bad about the British empire.
Because Professors of History, like this codger, don't want to cross swords with the 'Rhodes must fall' crowd. Leave that sort of thing to Kemi Badenoch.
Doubtless many viewers in a range of countries will regard this as just as accurate as the most serious academic study. British adolescents will watch it too. Perhaps it will be discussed in schools as a piece of historical evidence.
Perhaps this will lead to widespread sodomy
But the worst result will be in India.
Very true! The film celebrates a Tribal hero and just a few months later a Tribal woman becomes President of India!
RRR panders to the reactionary and violent Hindu nationalism that is coming to dominate Indian culture and politics,
RRR is a Telugu film. I suppose you could say it represents NTR's Telugu Desam ideology which is similar to MGR's AIADMK ideology. This has nothing to do with 'Hindu nationalism' or the BJP. But then the Spectator does not understand British or European politics. Fuck will its readers care about South Indian politics?
fanned by the Modi government.
Telugu Desam was film star NTR's party inherited by Chandrababu whose enemy is the YSR dynasty which is Christian. Which party is the BJP's ally in the region? Nobody knows. Nobody cares. We may watch Pawan Kalyan's films and some may want him to become CM and maybe the BJP can enter Telugu politics under his banner but that's just Show business folks. Clearly, Congress incompetence has created a vacuum.
Those who suffer from this are not the British, but Indian minorities, above all Muslim but Christian too,
But YSR's son is CM of Andhra Pradesh! Owaisi, I suppose, will ally with Jagan Mohan. But, how that 'suffering'? As for Muslims, it is Britain they hate because Britain, not India, was part of the War on Terror which killed 1.3 million of their creed and enabled the enemies of the West to rise. Meanwhile, this cretin is getting worked about a Rajamouli movie! Fuck is wrong with him?
and indeed any liberals who stand up against extremism, persecution and bigotry.
Very true. Liberals are being sodomized by Hindus who are refusing them the kind favor of a reach around.
In reality, RRR does not record the nastiness of 1920s British rule, but it does reflect the growing nastiness of today’s India. Netflix should be ashamed for promoting it.
But the Spectator is not ashamed of publishing this shite from an 'emeritus Professor'. True, I found it entertaining. But underneath the BoJo type bluster and forehead of brass I detect something truly nasty. This is a man who stands around with his dick in his hand in the sacred space of Jallianwallah! True, it is a very small dick and so passing Punjabi youths were not aware of the indecency. Still, there is a type of desecration or blasphemy here which I have reported to 'Sikhs for Justice'. Mind it kindly. Aiyayo.
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