The backlash against colonialism holds lessons in guilt and gratitude

 Descendants of conquerors and the conquered must move towards a universal account of history writes Mihir Bose in The FT 

In the tsunami of words on the poisonous legacy of slavery and empire generated by the death of George Floyd, an African-American who was killed in Minneapolis in May by a white police officer, two stand out: “gratitude” and “guilt”. 

Should descendants of those who built empires on the back of exploitation feel guilty for what their ancestors did? Or should the descendants of the colonised feel gratitude that their ancestors were conquered? 

My wife is a descendant of the conquerors, having been born into the British Cecil family which has produced prime ministers and great political leaders. I am one of “midnight’s children”, born a few months before India won its freedom from British colonial rule in 1947. While I joke that she is a child of the conquerors and I of the conquered, I do not expect my wife to feel guilty for what her ancestors did. But I do reject the idea that I should be thankful that my ancestors were conquered. 

That the conquered should feel gratitude was a view often expressed during the days of the British empire. It was not uncommon for the British to say that the Indians needed to be “civilised”. As Winston Churchill, who was then out of government and campaigning against self-rule for India, put it very bluntly in a speech in 1931, the vast majority of Indians “are primitive people”. 

Today, some historians imply I should be grateful for colonial legacies. Niall Ferguson, in his book Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World makes the argument that the empire “enhanced global welfare — in other words was a good thing”. He adds that it brought free markets and the rule of law. Other individuals are still as blunt as Churchill. 

While I do not think my ancestors needed to be civilised by Europeans, they had many faults. My family are high-caste Hindus and there is no denying the abominable way these upper echelons of society treated the so-called untouchable castes, now known as Dalits. My abiding childhood memory is of my mother giving the sweeper woman tea and sweets, thinking she was being generous, while telling us that nobody should ever use her cup and plate. 

Years ago, I visited Bangladesh, where my family is from. While very hospitable, the Muslims there made it clear they had not forgotten the dreadful way my rich Hindu ancestors had treated theirs. I know I need to acknowledge such historical truths, but I do not see why I should feel personally guilty. 

The same applies to my wife. For example, on a family trip (including nephews and nieces) to the National Portrait Gallery before the Covid-19 pandemic, we stopped before a portrait of Arthur Balfour, nephew of three-times prime minister Lord Salisbury and himself a prime minister. The potted history mentioned that, as foreign secretary, he was the author of the 1917 Balfour Declaration in support of “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”. 

I pointed out that, a few months before, he had warned the British cabinet in a memo, that Indians would not be able to manage parliamentary democracy because they were not of the same race as Europeans. Even education would not bridge the racial divide. Balfour and his fellow cabinet ministers, presided over by Lloyd George, did not dispute Lord Curzon’s estimate that it would take Indians 500 years to learn to rule themselves. I said this not to make my wife’s family feel guilty, but to highlight that the history we have been taught is far from the complete picture. 

This is what we need to tackle: call it the “Machiavelli problem”. More than 1,500 years before the Renaissance diplomat and philosopher wrote his book on statecraft, The Prince, an Indian called Chanakya wrote a treatise on the same subject called Arthashastra, as a handbook for a great king. 

Niccolò Machiavelli may or may not have known about its existence but it cannot be disputed that, while Machiavelli was merely a theoretician, Chanakya helped build one of India’s greatest empires. Indian schoolboys know of both men and the diplomatic enclave in New Delhi is called Chanakyapuri. Yet Chanakya is often described as the Indian Machiavelli and he is hardly known outside India. 

The result of imbalances like these is that descendants of the conquered, like me, always carry two bags: one containing the conqueror’s history, the other that of the conquered. Descendants of the conquerors, like my wife, only have to worry about the first bag. 

Unless we can equalise these historical weights and start to move towards a truly universal history, the past will continue to divide us and we shall always be wrestling with the problems of guilt and gratitude.

How to Criticize with Kindness: Philosopher Daniel Dennett on the Four Steps to Arguing Intelligently

Maria Popova in Brainpickings


“In disputes upon moral or scientific points,” Arthur Martine counseled in his magnificent 1866 guide to the art of conversation, “let your aim be to come at truth, not to conquer your opponent. So you never shall be at a loss in losing the argument, and gaining a new discovery.” Of course, this isn’t what happens most of the time when we argue, both online and off, but especially when we deploy the artillery of our righteousness from behind the comfortable shield of the keyboard. That form of “criticism” — which is really a menace of reacting rather than responding — is worthy of Mark Twain’s memorable remark that “the critic’s symbol should be the tumble-bug: he deposits his egg in somebody else’s dung, otherwise he could not hatch it.” But it needn’t be this way — there are ways to be critical while remaining charitable, of aiming not to “conquer” but to “come at truth,” not to be right at all costs but to understand and advance the collective understanding.

In Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking (public library) — the same fantastic volume that gave us Daniel Dennett on the dignity and art-science of making mistakes — Dennett offers what he calls “the best antidote [for the] tendency to caricature one’s opponent”: a list of rules formulated decades ago by the legendary social psychologist and game theorist Anatol Rapoport, best-known for originating the famous tit-for-tat strategy of game theory. Dennett synthesizes the steps:


How to compose a successful critical commentary:

You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.

You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).

You should mention anything you have learned from your target.

Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.

If only the same code of conduct could be applied to critical commentary online, particularly to the indelible inferno of comments.

But rather than a naively utopian, Pollyannaish approach to debate, Dennett points out this is actually a sound psychological strategy that accomplishes one key thing: It transforms your opponent into a more receptive audience for your criticism or dissent, which in turn helps advance the discussion.

Compare and contrast with Susan Sontag’s three steps to refuting any argument.