Free Dinesh D'Souza - America: Imagine a World without Her by Dinesh D'Souza Page A

the spinning wheel.” Marx added, “This loss of his old world … imparts a particular kind of melancholy to the Hindu.” Even so, Marx emphasized that the Hindu had been living in a village system based on the hierarchy of caste and economic and social oppression. Moreover, “These idyllic village communities, inoffensive though they may appear, have always been the solid foundation of Oriental despotism.” Marx pointed out that through such mechanisms as railways and steam power, Britain unified India and integrated her into a global system of trade. Marx termed this a “fundamental revolution in the social state of Asia,” a positive development that he characterized as a “regeneration.” 3
    Progressives today reject this aspect of Marx, because Marx seems to say that while colonialism is theft, the theft was historically necessary as part of the modernizing process. Marx didn’t justify colonialism or capitalism but he sought to transcend them. Progressives, however, want to reverse them, and their abhorrence for Marx’s views in these areas is part of the reason many on the left have soured on Marx. Today’s progressivism is less indebted to Marx thanit is to Lenin. Lenin “rescued” Marx by arguing that colonialism represented the final crisis of capitalism. In Lenin’s view, the Communist revolution had not occurred in Europe because European leaders found a temporary solution to their domestic problems. They ameliorated internal class conflict by conquering other countries and exploiting the workers there. Lenin called on people in the colonies to drive out the colonizers. This, he concluded, was good not only for the self-determination of the colonies but also to accelerate the crisis and collapse of European capitalism. 4 This double benefit helps explain why the otherwise foreign ideology of anti-colonialism became so attractive to many leftists in the West.
    Marx might have disappointed the progressives, but was he right? On this particular issue, I think he was. No one, least of all Marx, suggested that the British came to India with purely noble intentions. Some Englishmen, like Macaulay and Kipling, spoke of the “white man’s burden” to share civilization with the lesser peoples, but today such rhetoric is rightly dismissed as a rationalization for conquest. Like previous conquerors—the Afghans, the Persians, the Arabs, the Mongols—the British ruled largely for their own benefit. In order to administer the empire, however, the British had to build roads, railways, and ports. They also built the major cities of India: Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras. (The subsequent re-naming of these cities does nothing to change the historical fact that they were founded and built by the British.) The British also had to educate a native class of Indians. This required teaching them English. Education exposed Indians to new ideas that were largely alien in traditional Indian culture: modern science and technology, self-government, the rule of law, property rights, human rights, individualism, and self-determination. Ultimately the Indians learned the very language of political liberation from their captors.
    Since India’s independence in 1947, Indians have been reluctant to acknowledge the benefits of empire. Years ago I wrote an essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled “Two Cheers for Colonialism” and it stirred up a big controversy when it was republished in India. Even some of my relatives were outraged, with one of my aunts advising me, “We Indians are not supposed to say things like that.” She was right; I was violating a national taboo. But that’s changing. Recently India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh spoke at Oxford University and there he did something no previous Indian politician dared to do—he praised the British legacy in India. “Today with the balance and perspective offered by the passage of time and the benefit of hindsight, it is possible for an Indian prime