(1) Shows Churchill "love" has gone too far. Ranking of greatness or on some measurable scale of "racist" are dubious exercises-without stating the points of salience and a weightage scheme. But something is far more deeply disturbing here: possibility of self-deception.
If u identify with the values of Churchill, you will find him consistent with those values - if ur reading of Churchill is superficial & u only know him through his own propaganda. U won't know where he was not "honest" or honourable, or trashing his own stated values on the sly.
The disturbing part in the original tweet is simply this: its the acceptance of Churchill's logic of "superiority of a culture" as enough to justify the actions by that culture on a militarily defeated culture and those actions as not disqualifying to be a "superior culture".
Churchill chooses to ignore the idea that what "Romans" did to others could be deemed to have shown Romans as an inferior culture/civilization. If military superiority is proof of superior culture, then all those who crushed Romans in the end, were superior as cultures to Rome.
Roman technology seems to have been borrowed on many crucial aspects, as they "made their own" the tech/knowledge base of defeated cultures. The fundamentals of their legal/state forms were not their invention - there were predecessors.
In unilinear schema of history, Romans "reverted" too - as they went backwards from "advanced/progressive" 2-tier democratic legislature to "imperator" (a battlefield honour) or "emperor" autocracy mode. So the only "superiority" was their period of seeming military invincibility
A society which treated the daughters of Budica to rape and Budica to whipping for protesting the looting of her dead husbands estate - by admission from a very Roman pen - and countless other examples, cd be to Churchill's taste. But why shd such a Churchill's taste be ours too?
Churchill cd hv been beneficial to the British, might even be said to hv been beneficial to the USA and western Europe. But so was Mao to 20th c "Han" imperial project, or Stalin to Russia. Jinnah was a "great man" too, as he benefited the mullahs of Pakistan.
There is obviously a value system where the likes of Churchill/Mao/Stalin/Jinnah and assorted butchers or psychopaths in state power who hv been "successful" are all "great/honest" etc. But is that a value system which all Indians must subscribe to?
