Happy Independence Day to my fellow Indians

Happy Independence Day to my fellow Indians, 
pic from unknown source, uploaded to Flickr by FredMikeRudy
We Had No Beggars in India. Right.

Today on August 15, India's Day of Independence from British Rule, I received this frequently forwarded pic in my email....yet again. Apparently a spoof, as it turned out, two years ago. But this time around the words seemed even more jarring to my soul.

When I consider that they 'broke' the country after all, and then after the damage had been permanently put in place they 'fixed' it (to their advantage, or so they thought) it sounds a little like BP now fixing the problem after making sure they got as much as they could out of it all first. Placing a cap on the spill while making sure they did an advance recap of their expected losses due to the lawsuits of the century that are impending.....

The difference now is that though the wealth has skyrocketed and brought India to the forefront of the world's economies, the Poverty and misery is not disappearing, just being relegated to the back burner.
 
from wikipedia : In 1982 Gertrude Himmelfarb wrote that "most professional historians have long since given up reading Macaulay, as they have given up writing the kind of history he wrote and thinking about history as he did. Yet there was a time when anyone with any pretension to cultivation read Macaulay". Himmelfarb also laments that "the history of the History is a sad testimonial to the cultural regression of our times".
 

God Save all the Kings, Queens, Jacks and Jokers of this world. God help us all.

The controversy, blogged elsewhere :

http://sundayposts.blogspot.com/2008/01/lord-macaulays-quote-on-india.html

Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay