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"If this were in the US or UK, Perry would likely be hated for whatever and his statue torn down." I am originally from India. There are still monuments commem
by senthil_rajasek 4y ago
"If this were in the US or UK, Perry would likely be hated for whatever and his statue torn down."
I am originally from India. There are still monuments commemorating British kings ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway_of_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway_of_India) personally I want them to be torn down.
I am not comparing Japan with Colonial India but I know that in 2023 colonialism and imperialism should not be celebrated.
- hef19898 4y agoIf the statutes of british monarchs were raised during their reign, or shortly after, those statues now represent history. A bad bit of history, but history none the less. If they were erected way later, they celebrate this bad pit of history and can be torn down. History does not have to be celebrated, it definitely has to be remembered so.
- senthil_rajasek 4y agoIf walls can become memories, statues and monuments can be torn down without losing their place in history.
- bboygravity 4y agoWhat?
- vore 4y agoWell, Nazi monuments erected during Nazi Germany are pretty taboo but we still have other ways of remembering the history. I'm personally not sold that we have to preserve giant monuments to loathed people for the sake of remembering history.
- hef19898 4y agoWell, there are still Hitler's (and others') letter boxes in the Reichstag, along with all other letterboxes for every dully elected MP up to the latest election, and future ones. WW2 and holocaust memorials can be found all over the place, ranging from impressive, and depressing, sites like Dachau Concentration Camp to a some ruins and a explanation at sites of former KZ satelite locations somewhere in the woods. Not everything the Nazis built was torn down. And I highly doubt there are Churchil or Auchinlek statues in former Bengal, and if there are, sure, get rid of those.
- LarryMullins 4y agoYou guys still have a lot of flak towers around, although to be fair those were built to be indestructible.
- mst 4y agoI quite like the "stick a display next to the monument explaining the history and pulling no punches while doing so" approach, optionally (and in some cases I suspect highly preferably) having relocated the thing to a museum first so people only have to see it at all if they're intentionally looking at stuff related to that era of history. However as somebody who's generic white british and grew up in an area that was unusually white even compared to the median bit of britain I tend to default to expecting that most of the time my perspective isn't going to add much to a debate in progress and leave it be instead.
- SkyMarshal 4y agoOne major difference is that Japan managed to open to trade while keeping control of their country, benefitting from the former and using it to rapidly develop and modernize, while not losing autonomy and sovereignty, across the entire colonial era, at least up until they lost WWII. India obviously had a very different experience with colonialism.
- Tor3 4y agoThe Meiji restoration, as this was called, removed the Shogunate (=top dog warlord) which had ruled for a good couple hundred of years and re-inserted imperial rule (i.e. the Japanese emperor was again the ruler). This was done by the Japanese themselves (a bit of civil war took place for this to happen[0]). There was no external rule forced on Japan after Perry's black ships. No colonialism or external imperialism involved, so it's not really comparable to anything else. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boshin_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boshin_War
- senthil_rajasek 4y agoMy comment was about Perry, who used violent threats to open trade with Japan, still being celebrated in Japan.
- Tor3 4y agoThere was indeed a bit of (at least apparent) threat involved. No colonialism or imperialism though - Japan has never been a colony of anyone as long as Japan as a nation has existed (which is, officially, since around 660BC [0] [0] https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/japans-national-foundation-day https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/japans-nat... (which should probably be taken as seriously (or not) as the foundation of Rome in 753 BC)
- TulliusCicero 4y agoThere was the occupation post-WW2, which is somewhat similar, if much more understandable than typical colonization/imperialism.
- user982 4y agoYou have to define imperialism very narrowly to claim that. Perry's (overt) threat resulted in unequal treaties being forced on Japan. Japan's current Constitution was similarly written by Americans and forced on it during the post-WWII military occupation. Any nation that permanently hosts uncontrolled foreign troops and bases on its homeland is, at the very best, a client state.
- valarauko 4y agoAs an Indian, I find the mention of the Gateway of India in this context odd, since it's the least egregious of the lot. Nor has there been any mainstream demand to tear it down. Locals don't treat the site with any tangible connection to the British Raj, and are at best indifferent to it. There is the plaque, but nobody seems to care. Contrast with the Victoria Memorial, the largest memorial to any monarch anywhere, the site is replete with statues of British monarchs and Governors. Bengal as a province has the longest history of British colonialism, and probably had suffered the most of any Indian region the ills of colonialism. Despite that, there hasn't been any mainstream demand to tear the place down, or even the statues. The locals are very knowledgeable about their colonial history, but seem fine with the statues and enjoy it as a place to hang out.
- Spooky23 4y agoI’ve noticed in conversations with my Indian friends, in general they seem very pragmatic with respect to the British Colonial era. Personally, I expected an outlook closer to my Irish relatives, which usually were more negative. That’s not to say that I’m projecting the feelings of a billion people from a sample of a handful of folks, and my family certainly had some strong bias wrt the Brits. My academic exposure of Indian history basically consisted of a reading about the Indian Mutiny, a bit about Ghandi, and casual mention of partition. It’s a story and history that should be told.
- valarauko 4y agoThat's an interesting contrast, and I'm sure there's academic literature which lays out why that's the case. My personal impression is that this might have to do with the immediate aftermath of Independence, faced with strong internal crises to deal with. British Imperialism & Partition had left the country bereft - food production, economic infrastructure (raw materials & factories separated by hostile borders), & general development (India at the onset of colonialism produced about a quarter of the world's GDP, and at the end was about 2%). We had a host of issues to deal with, and hating on the British was unproductive. Within 25 years, India was in three full on wars with hostile neighbors. The British were a distant enemy. I suppose the Irish antagonism with the British dates from the much more recent "Troubles", rather than historic English Imperialism.
- rayiner 4y agoI’m from Bangladesh. If it wasn’t for British colonialism, both of us would be subsistence farmers right now instead of on HN. That’s not any knock on the people of the subcontinent. It’s just math. The transition from subsistence agriculture to industrial society is an inflection point, like a lightning strike, and there’s no reason to believe it would’ve happened in India any time near when it happened in Britain out of thousands and thousands of years of history. The British themselves were colonized repeatedly, by the Romans, by the French. You don’t see them tearing down statutes or rejecting that history.
- senthil_rajasek 4y agoI can't speak for Bangladesh. Also, I won't argue against colonialism apologists on this thread.
- rayiner 4y ago[flagged]
- senthil_rajasek 4y ago@dang this sarcastic comment is a racist trope, "Britons were running around the forest worshiping trees when Indians had indoor plumbing." Could you please address this?
- Wildgoose 4y agoI'm English/British and I don't recognise this as racist, just another acknowledgement of facts you don't want to address.
- senthil_rajasek 4y agoImagine explaining why genocide or slavery or misogyny is bad to every internet comment! Which is why I don't engage with colonialism apologists. There is plenty of literature to educate yourselves on that.
- agileAlligator 4y agoI am Indian and I want them to stay. I would go so far as to say that colonial era structures are the only beautiful buildings that have been built in India in the last 100-200 years.
- senthil_rajasek 4y agoIndia has great pre-colonial era architecture. There is no Indian architecture in the last 100-200 years because of the brutal british colonialism.