Jolly Good Fellows and Their Nasty Ways

Jolly Good Fellows and Their Nasty Ways: "What Newsinger offers instead is an annotated catalogue of British crimes, some more familiar than others. The story of the brutal suppression of the Indian Rebellion of 1857-58, for instance, has been the staple of nationalist Indian narratives and is gen erally encountered in most histories of the British empire. The chapter on the 1940s which covers the Quit India ‘disturbances’ INA trials, and the Royal Indian Navy mutiny, is more intellectually rewarding since the historiographical focus has been largely on the Hindu-Muslim communal conflict. At the same time that Churchill was waging a valiant struggle against the Nazis and Japanese, he complained to Leo Amery, Secretary of State for India, ‘I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.’ The Hindus, Churchill ob served, are a ‘foul people’, and the Royal Air Force’s surplus bombers could, in his opin ion, be suitably deployed ‘to destroy them’ Amery privately noted, ‘I didn’t see much difference between his outlook and Hitler’s."