CROWN AND COMMONWEALTH
Sir,-Generalisations are notoriously dangerous, and one in J. Malton Murray’s letter in the issue of November 1 illustrates this truth. "The Empire and Commonwealth was founded on force, military conquest, and resulted in the near extermination of native peoples." It resulted in a good many other things: introduction of Western education, war on disease, suppression of barbarous customs including human sacrifice (in India they used to throw babies to crocodiles), honest justice and disinterested administration, and democratic government by stages, with self-govern-ment as the ultimate goal. Were the peoples of the old India nearly exterminated? Everybody reasonably well informed knows that under British rule the population increased, and that increase was partly due to British rulemeasures against famine, for example. (Yes, I am aware how very low expectation of life has been in India.) The gift of unity was priceless-just imagine what a Balkanised India might have been like-and it was not Britain’s fault that the sub-continent was divided when independence was achieved. The two divisions, India and Pakistan, were glad to take ovef as going concerns the systems, civil and military, erected by the British--democratic parliamentary government, the army, jus-
tice, and administration. An American publicist, very critical of some things English, said the administration of India was the greatest achievement of its kind in history. An Indian writer put it in this striking fashion a few years ago: "India and Pakistan have thrown away the British bathwater, but they cherish the baby." I have heard a Burmese say, in’ describing a similar process in his country, which has left the Commonwealth, that they had taken over "trial by jury, habeas corpus, and all that." The "all that" is a pretty good set-off against the blunders and sins of Empirebuilding. And, by the way, some two million men in India fought for Britain i4 the last war. and they were all volun-
teers.
LIBERAL
(Wellington).
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 954, 22 November 1957, Page 11
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319CROWN AND COMMONWEALTH New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 954, 22 November 1957, Page 11
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