could britain have held onto india indefinitely if it had less concerns for human rights?
Yes.
No.
Yes.
>>576431
No
there would be a war for freedom sooner or later and its not meme empire era anymore so no
No, the British lost India because they treated the locals like shit.
>>576480
>>576452
If the Brits had the heart for it they could've held India. Pooloo's just fucking suck at war.
>>576431
Before the British, wasn't 'India' more of a continent. All the states that make up modern day India had separate cultures, religions, dialects and rulers.
>>576431
Depends on what you consider India and the price of nerve gas.
>>576554
Kek'ed
>>576431
After a while the center of the Empire would have become India just like how The Center of the Roman Empire turned from rome to the Greek Areas
If the British are willing to see that happen for the sake of the Empire then it might survive
>>576487
its the 20th century after 2 ww
you are going to have a hard time explaining margareth why his son nigel, age 20 had to die in bumfuck nowhere jungle village
so naturally a pro india liberation party would come in power and release all the trouble, war and dead ppl india became
Despite Britains occupancy in India they were still a minority.
Treated as second class citizens the Indian populace would eventually have an uprising leading to a civil war.
The only way I see Britain forever ruling India would be through systematic genocide whilst they're in power. Shifting the population balance in their favor.
Most popular methods would include, mandatory neutering of males, spreading genetically modified diseases to specifically target the Indian populace, and any other form of mass execution.
>>576431
The British could have held onto India if they had had the sense to poison Gandhi and if they'd won the battle of Singapore.
India is not a naturally egalitarian society. The idea that a popular movement for freedom would have arisen out of a caste based society if the worst kind of western-centric projection. Especially since the British were not particularly abusive overlords - I guarantee you that if you had asked most Indians who they liked better, their Indian landlord or their British district commissioner, they probably would not have chosen their landlord.
It took Gandhi to introduce Indians to the idea of popular sovereignty and nationalism, and remember that Gandhi was educated at English universities. And still, the British remained largely popular among the average Indian. But it took the defeat at Singapore to fatally damage Britain's long-term prospects in India for good. History generally concentrates on Gandhi because history likes narratives that are about the triumph of noble ideals, but the truth is that Britain's position in India was maintained by prestige rather than force, and losing the lynchpin of their eastern defences to a numerically inferior, and more importantly Asian, army made the British look weak in the eyes of ordinary Indians.
>>576566
I wasn't joking. They probably would have had to execute the Indian and Cairo RAF for mutiny and used the Bomber Command who were already trained in the arts of ethical dissimulation.
>could britain have held onto india indefinitely if it had less concerns for human rights?
It's the other way round OP
People in the Indian subcontinent have never cared about who the ruler was, politics etc.
They've always and most still are more interested in day to day living, peace of mind, satisfaction, soul growth stuff.
No empire before the British (even Mughals) in the history of the people treated them so badly that a people of such varied cultures interests joined together and wanted out.
The British could could have held onto India indefinitely if it actually had more concerns for human rights (instead of just pretending that they did)
In short, this post:
>>576480
No. France couldn't in Algeria despite going all out, and India is way bigger and more complicated to rule. Colonialism was simply dead in the postwar era.
>>576735
On top of this, the light hand that the British used was the only thing that made India worth owning in the first place.
Owning India is great, when a garrison force of a few thousand troops is all that's needed. When you start talking about the millions of troops it would have taken to military subject India, India becomes very, very expensive, rather than very, very profitable.
>>576735
>the mughals didn't treat indians badly
Are you fucking serious?
Interesting fact: in 1947 the Brits had more troops stationed in Palestine than in the entire Indian subcontinent (70k to 50k).
>>576766
Don't bother, Indian historiography is dominated by marxists who push the "muslims dindu nuffin hindus and muslims were best buddies before DA EVIL WHITE MAN made them hate each other" narrative.
Literally The Eternal Anglo: The Paperback Edition
>>576786
>>576860
thank you for your contribution
>>576431
Removing morals from the equation, I doubt it.
Past the 19th century, Britains hold on her empire got more and more precarious as its ability to bring overwhelming firepower onto any one place was diminished.
Britain could have held India for maybe two decades before they were pushed out completely,leaving an endless civil war behind them between the various ethnicities.
>>576772
They didn't actively have to deal with tens of thousands of guerrillas in Palestine. Although this betrays the British unpreparedness for the India-Pakistan partition.
>>576431
No. Britain could've used machine guns, tanks, and strategic bombers to slaughter millions of Indians and burn towns and cities to the ground, which is probably what you're considering. The problem is that colonies were primarily maintained for money and resources.
The Cold War pretty much ensured that any rebellion in the Western sphere of influence would be supported by the Soviets and vice versa. Any Indian uprising receiving arms from the Soviets could easily have made the cost of Britain maintaining rule to expensive to justify, considering the whole point of the colony was economic to begin with. In modern times, mass communication has also brought the horrors of war home to the people and made it harder for nations to successfully carry on long-term operations overseas.
Britain could've kept India longer than they did, and fucked shit up really good there when the people got around to rebelling, but they couldn't have held it indefinitely.
Yes
>Kill all the B*ers when they rebel
>Nobody throws Gandhi off a train when he visits South Africa
>He's just a lawyer now
>Indian independence never becomes popular
