From the East India Company to the Afghan War

In my travels I tend to bump into a wide variety of people with past histories and experiences far beyond my sheltered, mono-cultural, comprehensive school, working class upbringing.

If I get the chance I always try and engage these people in conversation to to try learn something else about their job, background, culture etc.

Some lookers-in will cry "hypocrite" because I take an interest in such things whilst publishing "white power" material.

Not so, dear reader. If we want to defend the rights of European peoples, cultures, traditions etc. do we not also want to preserve those of other peoples?

What we are opposed to is the multi-culti anti-culture that comes mostly from 'American' big business giants, and the multi-racial miscegenation, both of which destroy all peoples and cultures via a Chinese water torture style of erosion of peoples, races, cultures, traditions etc.

I am not ignorant, nor am I hateful. I want to know more about different peoples and cultures, because then I learn to appreciated the differences and the idiosyncrasies of my own culture, people, tradition and race.

It is the multiculturalists who want to destroy our differences and make us all coffee coloured automatons wearing Man Utd tops, swilling X-Brand Cola and eating Americanised junk food.

To them we are all just walking wallets who, as long as we can buy the latest Nike top, it is irrelevant what we are, who we are, what blood runs in our veins, etc. etc.

And the truly ignorant are those who always talk of the "benefits" of mass immigration when they do not live amongst the immigrants, have not had their community destroyed, and ignore the destruction of our traditions, cultures and more.

At work the other day I put iplayer on in the background and listened to John Sergeant explaining about the railways built by the British Empire in India, and it made quite a few chance meetings and shared stories come flooding back.

One lady I met ran an English school in India and it was fascinating to learn from her all about the India languages and the central role of English as the 'lingua franca' of the subcontinent. She also impressed on me how the children there, although superficially poorer than those of Europe, were far happier in themselves. As any parent knows, this can quickly become a cliché when used against one's own children and most of us can probably remember our own parents saying too whenever we demanded a certain item for a birthday or for Christmas.

The unifying nature of the English language is a strange product of the British Empire. This is something I took up with another gent I spoke to as we hurtled along Britain's railway system. I also asked him if, in his opinion as someone who came from the very south of India, the British had united the various Indian kingdoms. He was quite shocked and answered that far from it, Britain had actually split India.

It was his view that India comprised of all the lands that currently include Bangladesh, Pakistan and India, and that by partitioning India the British had forever damaged India. He likened it to Ireland where historically the chieftains and tribes were always warring, even to the extent of inviting in the English to win their rival wars. Yet, he insisted, like the Indians they remained intrinsically Irish despite their regional differences, until partition.

I must admit this made me think as I had always thought the British had unified India, albeit for profit under the East India Company.

Of course, when it comes to history (and in this respect I suppose India again is like Ireland) the definition of what happened will very much depend on who you listen to, just as when you put two economists in a room you are bound to get three different versions of what will happen next!

Another interesting aspect of Indian and British history I learnt from an ex-British consulate worker, of all people. He had been based in India for some years and during a general talk about the Raj and its impact on all aspects of Indian life I mentioned the fact that India was particularly known for being Hindu (and Pakistan, Muslim) and how I was surprised India wasn't Anglican in the way many African ex-colonies were, and he told me that the East Indian Company actually banned missionaries, because they got in the way of trade too much!

This seemed to contradict much of what we are taught about British Imperialism in our schools, and seems to point to money and control being more important to the powers-that-be than Christianity.

The ex-bureaucrat said that bar a small 'crescent' in the north (he did name the areas, but I know so little of India I didn't even try to memorise them) which was penetrated by Protestant missionaries such as Methodists, the Christian religion of India was in reality Catholicism. We then talked about the Portuguese and other European settlements in India and the long impact they had. he said that some Catholic areas in India pre-date the European arrival and many Indians claim their religion back to the arrival of the Apostle, Thomas.

In one of his letters, dealing with the European 'trading posts' in India, for example St Francis Xavier said that more Indians would be Christian if the behaviour of the Portuguese traders, sailors and settlers gave a better example of Christian life! I guess nothing changes, as Gandhi said much the same, several hundred years later.

Did their search for wealth mean the British Imperial forces missed a chance to create a Christian country in the East which would act as a buffer to Islam, in the way that Spanish Conquistadors created solidly Catholic countries throughout South and Central America? Might India's Christianity even have spread to modern Pakistan and other states?

I told the bureaucrat of the example of Japan which was on the verge of becoming a Catholic country, with the regent about to convert, when British and Dutch traders persuaded the royal family that there was a "plot" afoot to betray Japan to 'foreign powers.'

The "Christian" traders had the Japanese put Crosses outside entrances to towns and anyone who refused to spit on them was condemned. Many Christians (Japanese and European) were brutally tortured and many had their feet cut off. All this because of the lies of some jealous merchants, Christian in name only. A Catholic Japan might have meant a world of difference, which the men tortured in WW2 prisoner camps might only wonder about.

This was another example of when our own kith and kin - in search of the 'almighty dollar' stopped the spread of Christianity, for shallow short term benefit.

World history may have been very different.

Perhaps we shouldn't be so surprised.

The flag of the East India Company became the early flag of the British American Colonies, only to transmogrify into the USA's Star and Stripes.

The policy of the East India Company stopped Indians becoming Christian. The policies of American big business and military make many other peoples around the world hate us (because they see them as Christians).

So whether today or hundreds of years ago, the international merchants are shafting us all, and putting money before actions that could make others think more kindly of us and our creed; which in turn might enable the Indians to be at ease in India, the Afghans in Afghanistan, Pakistanis in Pakistan and, in turn the Europeans peoples at ease in their own nations.

Dr. Saunders Lewis said that true nationalism was not about barbed wire borders, but about identity. He said that nations felt truly free under the common soil of Christendom. This is a message that other nationalists (such as G.K. Chesterton and Belloc) have spread.

These and many other nationalists promoted an anti-chauvinist, anti-parochial form of genuine nationalism that saw each people as equally valid.

Chesterton said that nationalists respected their neighbours whereas Imperialists wanted to conquer them.

In the Imperial age when the 'imperial dream' seemed the norm (despite the misgivings of some of the means if not the ends) some opportunities were woefully missed because of the greed of the international big businessmen.

In an age when the new Imperialists are fighting their illegal wars and the new international big businessmen are egging the military machine on so they can make more money, we nationalists must be seen to put forward the best for our own people, but also respect the nationhood and rights of other peoples.

If we start to act like Christian people -- as both St Francis Xavier and Gandhi attested! -- others may well learn to respect us as they haven't before.

If we continue to bully others (on the coat-tails of America) because their education policy, foreign policy or trading partners are not ours, then we will continue to be the enemy of many, which does us no favours at all.

If we behave in a civilised manner (at home and abroad) then we can build alliances, trade, understanding with peoples and nations across the globe, and seek to influence others, whilst insisting on our own rights. At the moment we just look like cowards and charlatans who do whatever America and Israel ask.