lessons from the Indian Mutiny of 1857:
... Events reached a climax on September 14 1857, when British forces
attacked the besieged city. They proceeded to massacre not only the
rebel sepoys and jihadis, but also the ordinary citizens of the
Mughal capital. In one neighbourhood alone, Kucha Chelan, 1,400
unarmed citizens were cut down. Delhi, a sophisticated city of half a
million souls, was left an empty ruin.
The emperor was put on trial and charged, quite inaccurately, with
being behind a Muslim conspiracy to subvert the empire stretching
from Mecca and Iran to Delhi's Red Fort. Contrary to evidence that
the uprising broke out first among the overwhelmingly Hindu sepoys,
the prosecutor argued that "to Musalman intrigues and Mahommedan
conspiracy we may mainly attribute the dreadful calamities of 1857".
Like some of the ideas propelling recent adventures in the east, this
was a ridiculous and bigoted oversimplification of a more complex
reality. For, as today, western politicians found it easier to blame
"Muslim fanaticism" for the bloodshed they had unleashed than to
examine the effects of their own foreign policies. Western
politicians were apt to cast their opponents in the role of
"incarnate fiends", conflating armed resistance to invasion and
occupation with "pure evil".
Yet the lessons of 1857 are very clear. No one likes people of a
different faith conquering them, or force-feeding them improving
ideas at the point of a bayonet. The British in 1857 discovered what
the US and Israel are learning now, that nothing so easily
radicalises a people against them, or so undermines the moderate
aspect of Islam, as aggressive western intrusion in the east. The
histories of Islamic fundamentalism and western imperialism have,
after all, long been closely and dangerously intertwined. In a
curious but very concrete way, the fundamentalists of all three
Abrahamic faiths have always needed each other to reinforce each
other's prejudices and hatreds. The venom of one provides the
lifeblood of the others.
The Guardian, Thursday May 10, 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2076320,00.html
