Thread by @avatans

"[Lord] Macaulay traveled from Madras to Ooty to meet Governor-General Bentick--a distance of 400 miles--on the shoulders of Indian men, and then back: Twelve bearers--six at a time--carried his palanquin down to Madras, as he reclined and read Theodore Hook's Love and Pride"

"[Lord Thomas Babington] Macaulay was a brilliant mind, who had already written, at the age of eight, a convincing essay on the desirability of converting heathens to Christianity."
From #TheRulersGaze by Prof. @aravindasharma

The native scholars, with hardly one exception, “have displayed a far greater respect for truth and and a far more manly and generous spirit than we are accustomed to even in Europe and America.”
~ F. Max Muller as quoted by @aravindasharma in #TheRulersGaze.

“... when they [the native scholars] were wrong, they have readily admitted their mistakes; when they were right, they have never sneered at their European adversaries.”

F. Max Muller as quoted by @aravindasharma in #TheRulersGaze.

We all knew that Lord (Thomas Babington) Macaulay was not a good character. Reading Prof. @aravindasharma’s #TheRulersGaze has strongly reaffirmed that belief.

‘‘the West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of the other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; ...

#TheRulersGaze

non-Westerners never do.”

~ Will Durant, Our Oriental Heritage as quote by Arvind Sharma in The Ruler’s Gaze.

#TheRulersGaze

As Thomas R Metcalf notes: ‘To describe oneself as “enlightened” meant that someone else had to be shown as “savage” or vicious’... The gulf between the ruler and the ruled had to be exaggerated to justify that rule.
#TheRulersGaze

“The British rule over India was shaken by the Mutiny [1st War of Independence of 1857] but survived it. The theory of evolution [Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, 1859]... would ultimately provide justification for that rule.”
~ @aravindasharma in #TheRulersGaze.

*Marxism and imperialism*

Karl Marx wrote in 1853, ‘England had to fulfill a double mission in India: one destructive and the other regenerating—the annihilation of the old Asiatic society and the laying of material foundation of Western society in India.’
#TheRulersGaze

"While the limitless British hunger for revenue... starved the Indian system of the very resources which it required to survive, its cultural and religious content and structure provoked deliberate attempts aimed at its total extermination."
Dharampal as quoted in #TheRulersGaze