An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India

by Shashi Tharoor

India’s independence marked the dawn of the era of decolonization, but many nations still came to freedom only after bloody and violent struggles. Other peoples have fallen under the boots of invading armies, been dispossessed of their lands or forced to flee in terror from their homes. Non-violence has offered no solutions to them. It could only work against opponents vulnerable to a loss of moral authority, governments responsive to domestic and international public opinion, governments capable of being shamed into conceding defeat. The British, representing a democracy with a free press and conscious of their international image, were susceptible to such shaming. But in Mahatma Gandhi’s own day non-violence could have done nothing for the Jews of Hitler’s Germany, who disappeared unprotestingly into gas chambers far from the flashbulbs of a war-obsessed press. It is ironically to the credit of the British Raj that it faced an opponent like Mahatma Gandhi and allowed him to succeed.