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From: wmartin@brl-smoke.ARPA (Will Martin )
Newsgroups: net.nlang.india
Subject: Re: Mountbatten's role in India
Message-ID: <802@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 10-Feb-86 12:01:38 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-smok.802
Posted: Mon Feb 10 12:01:38 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 12-Feb-86 21:45:24 EST
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Based on recent postings, I'll acceept that the PBS "Masterpiece
Theatre" series on "The Last Viceroy" is heavily dramatized, and the
characterizations in it are not representative of the true natures of
the historical personages involved. There is still one aspect that has
been nagging at me while I watch it: the continued strong feelings
against subdividing India into independent states. This is being
portrayed as being so strong as to be "revulsion" or "hate" against the
very concept.

Maybe I'm totally wrong, but it was my understanding that what is now
India WAS a large number of separate and independent states before
the British forced it together by military force. What would be so wrong
with self-determination, and allowing those states to resume their
former independence? Why should India be a single large country, forcing
together many disparate language and ethnic groups, if they would prefer
to be independent individual countries? I can certainly see that a
politician would prefer to have power over a large country, instead of
being the leader of a smaller state, but, speaking in simple moral
terms, it appears that the principle of self-determination should
outweigh such desires, and that any area in which the inhabitants wished
to be independent should have been allowed to follow that path. After
all, if these states later determined that they were not self-sufficient
or that independent government was too much of a burden to continue,
they always could have decided to merge later on. This seems the path of
greatest freedom and true democracy. What was wrong with this concept?

Will