Half-Naked Rascal Fakir

Nehru & Gandhi in 1948.
That's what Winston Churchill called Gandhi. A New Yorker book review has further quotes:

“I hate Indians,” he declared. “They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.” He had a special animus for Gandhi, describing him as a “rascal” and a “half-naked” “fakir.”

[...]

Urgently beseeched by Amery and the Indian viceroy to release food stocks for India, Churchill responded with a telegram asking why Gandhi hadn’t died yet.

But what a great figure Churchill was. Not some dirty "appeaser" like Chamberlain. Bush may have more in common w/ Churchill than all this crap about Bush "standing up to the terrorists."

Meeting Mountbatten a few months after partition, Churchill assailed him for helping Britain’s “enemies,” “Hindustan,” against “Britain’s friends,” the Muslims. Little did Churchill know that his expedient boosting of political Islam would eventually unleash a global jihad engulfing even distant New York and London. The rival nationalisms and politicized religions the British Empire brought into being now clash in an enlarged geopolitical arena; and the human costs of imperial overreaching seem unlikely to attain a final tally for many more decades.

They both had no idea what they were doing, & their stupidity & ignorance have compounded the world's problems. Fuck'em both.

Today is the 60th anniversary of Indian independence from the British Empire. They've done pretty well for themselves w/o the Great White Father, haven't they? Of course it does help if the Great White Corporate Father is happy to outsource any jobs he can to India. And if you've ever tried to cancel AOL (the Indian guy on the other end would not take "no" for an answer) you'll have noticed that the Great Black Corporate Father of Time Warner, Richard D. Parsons, has done some outsourcing as well.

See comments for a brief update/correction.