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Quote by Walter Reid

“Linlithgow identified the obstacles to progress as Indian political stupidity and British political dishonesty, but he was himself a master of the ability to say something which meant very little, and to decorate it with qualifications like ‘in the light of the then circumstances’, and ‘subject to such modifications as may seem desirable’.”

Quote by Walter Reid

Book:Keeping the Jewel in the Crown: The British Betrayal of India
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Keeping the Jewel in the Crown: The British Betrayal of India

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Walter Reid

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“India and Burma have no natural association with the Empire, from which they are alien by race, history and religion, and for which as such neither of them have any natural affection, and both are in the Empire because they are conquered countries which have been brought there by force, kept there by our controls, and which hitherto it has suited to remain under our protection. …Lord Linlithgow, Viceroy of India, 1942”

Indian Independence Movement
Book:Keeping the Jewel in the Crown: The British Betrayal of India
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“India will never, within any time that we can foresee, be an efficient country, organised and governed on Western lines. In her development to self-government we have got to be prepared to accept a degree of inefficiency comparable to that in China, Iraq or Egypt . . . [W] e cannot continue to resist reform because it will make the administration less efficient.’ - Wavell to Churchill, July 1944”

Indian Independence Movement
Book:Keeping the Jewel in the Crown: The British Betrayal of India
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“Quite how iniquitous they (the Indian Princes) were will never be known, because Corfield told his officials to extract from the files any evidence of what were called ‘eccentricities’ on the part of the princes. No fewer than four tons of eccentricities were burned, to the annoyance of both Mountbatten, who knew just how eccentric royals could be, and Nehru.”

Indian Independence Movement
Book:Keeping the Jewel in the Crown: The British Betrayal of India
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“Gandhi did not ask when India would be ready for independence. Gandhi asked when will the British be? Just as he looked for Indians to direct their gaze inward and discover their true selves, so he looked for a transformation, a change of heart, in India's occupiers. They were to recognise that they had no business being in India. They were to recognise that they had never had any business being in India. When that realisation came, they would be allowed to depart with dignity, perhaps even with honour. They would ( Francis Hutchins, India's Revolution) "be permitted to withdraw to compose their memoirs.”

Indian Independence Movement
Book:The Forgotten Army: India's Armed Struggle for Independence 1942-1945
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“For it was the Englishmen of that day who felt race, thought race, and used the word often and publicly. It was the Englishman who, encountering an Indian or an Egyptian or a Zulu, and observing that he differed, attributed the difference not to circumstance but to blood, not to community or culture but to race.”

Indian Independence Movement
Book:The Forgotten Army: India's Armed Struggle for Independence 1942-1945
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