I think this India vs. China argument shouldn't have to boil down to communism vs. democracy (which itself is an offshoot of democracy vs. authoritarianism and capitalism vs. communism argument). Both countries are unique in their situations and neither can be considered a great harbinger of their respective philosophies, both countries are merely too big and too complex to explain so easily.
What has Democracy solve for India? Lesson for us.
- Thread starter ThatDamnGood
- Start date
- Status
Joe Shearer
PROFESSIONAL
- Joined
- Apr 19, 2009
- Messages
- 27,493
- Reaction score
- 162
- Country
- Location
It is not my practice to enter food fights, especially food fights between two national factions, but this is getting out of hand in terms of inaccuracy and downright distortion.
This displays a superficial, almost non-existent knowledge of recent South Asian history, specifically the history of British India and its ending.
In 1919, under the Morley-Minto reforms, the first Indian elections outside municipal elections (held decades earlier, and through which Indians had come to positions of legislative and administrative authority of sorts) were held. This system marked the beginning of the administrative system known as dyarchy.
There were two major developments from this: educated Muslims, who had been educating themselves in the western system at the urging of their progressive leaders such as Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, were reinforced in their fears, dating back 14 years earlier, that a simple, legislative reservation of seats in favour of their community would not translate into reasonable shares in education, in government service or in jobs in general. They began seeking a settlement of affairs that would assure those three parameters of growth in particular, which search in time evolved the Two Nation Theory. Although it is discredited today, it is discredited for the wrong reasons by both Pakistan and by India, and it would have been better to have drawn lessons from it before rejecting it so comprehensively.
The second development was that identity interests other than Muslim, which was then the most evolved and advanced, came to the early understanding of their quest for identity recognition and acceptance by the rest of Indian society, and for recognition in legislative terms.
In 1935, there was a comprehensive and deep-rooted reform of administration and legislation, driven by the Government of India Act of that year. What is commonly not understood by most observers outside India, this set commenting on this thread most decidedly, others as well as a general rule, as well as by most Indians and Pakistanis not fully aware of their countries' respective legislative histories, is that much of current practice in the three countries of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh is founded on this act, and the administrative experience of this act.
This was a reasonably mature stage of self-governance, and was intended to be the penultimate step before full self-governance, within a Dominion status, that is, the head of the British state would continue to be the head of state in the Dominion, but all legislative decisions would continue to be taken by the Dominion independently. In other words, the Dominions were planned to be clones of Great Britain. This was intended for India, according to some British accounts at a very late date, some 40 or 50 years later.
While from the British point of view this was a big step, from the Indian (=South Asian) point of view, it wasn't much. By this time, the movement for self-determination through a mixture of non-violent and violent means, short of military means, necessitated by the decisive British military success in suppressing the uprising of 1857, had matured into a movement for outright independence. What was a significant feature of this period was the sharply-focussed quest of various minorities for their recognition and for their protection. It is necessary to summarise this movement briefly, to address some incredibly obtuse suggestions that have been made to the effect that democracy was thrust down our throats and that we exercised no choice as a state (not as a nation, which in the South Asian context is to be read within a minority-aspirational context).
In 1857, the independence and freedom of action of the Mughal court at Delhi was sought to be re-established by a combined rebel army of Muslims and Hindus, who rose against their British officers and rallied to the court at Delhi.
There were other significant factors behind this uprising, including the suppressed anger of many Indian princely states, independent entities under the same governance as Tibet under China until 1959, that is, independent under suzerainty of another power. These Indian states were enfuriated at repeated and frequent interventions in their succession and sometimes even in their administration; like other rebellious states under suzerainty elsewhere in the world, they were of the opinion that their antiquated and mediaeval government and administrative systems should be brought to modern times in a graduated and progressive manner (each prince had a different view of what time-frame was reasonable, very advanced and progressive in Travancore-Cochin, most regressive in some others which are better not named). In turn, as in other examples in the world, their suzerain power firmly rejected this and sought to introduce earlier transition. The suzerain power sought sounder human rights, greater development and economic growth, apart from social freedom; parallels are thick on the ground.
In addition, mediaeval India, from roughly 1200 onwards, had been fought over by mercenary armies maintained by each state, and provided and led in military terms by contractors, known as 'jemadars', who were responsible for raising a fixed head of men, for whom he was paid a lump-sum by contract. Purely as a frivolous aside, these were India's warlords; suppressing them was an important objective of 1857.
This uprising was ruthlessly crushed, and the British sought out two leading groups, one representing the earlier reigning dynasty, the other the constituents of the Army which rebelled, recruits from Bihar and Oudh, to be penalised. The first reprisal was aimed at the Muslims, the second reprisal was aimed at the Bihari and upcountry recruiting reservoir. This second reprisal of the British has consequences in India even today, and these consequences are not clearly recognised even by Indian leaders. External commentators have neither the learning and knowledge nor the patience to deal with these factors, unfortunately, which leads to a lot of distorted information flowing about unchecked, largely due to an equally unaware Indian constituency.
Apart from the reprisals, the suppression taught educated Indians that for some time to come, any attempts at self-determination, the initial efforts, would have to be non-violent, or at least non-military. However, this cold shock had hardly worn out when the British took a good administrative decision but a bad political one: the partition of Bengal in 1905.
As far as this point, most initiatives in India, bar some peculiar to Muslim, some peculiar to Hindus, were united efforts of both communities. From 1905 onwards, the educated sections of the Muslim community came to lose faith in the willingness of the majority and the legislators of the majority to look after their interests. This led to the Muslim League formation; the delineating and increasingly confident expression of the Two Nation Theory, and finally, through a gut-wrenching series of manoeuvres and actions on both the Asian and British sides, to independence of a partitioned British India, and to the reversion of all states under suzerainty to completely independent status.
During this entire period, there was a strong violent movement against the British, a movement which was in no way authorised, justified or certified by either the League or the Congress. These efforts were the hallmarks of Bengal, and climaxed in the efforts of a Bengal leader seeking armed struggle, his opposition by M. K. Gandhi, and his expulsion from the Congress.
The final point that needs to be made, most clearly, is that present-day India's constitution was formed by a Constituent Assembly set up for that purpose, and which worked for two and a half years to draft the Constitution of India. The leader of this effort was a leader of a minority, a social minority, and a firm opponent of the Congress Party, and perhaps one of the brightest intellects in the sub-continent - with the possible exception of M. A. Jinnah and J. L. Nehru.
There was nothing accidental about the adoption of democracy.
There was a choice in India as well, though not as well-marked a choice.
Unfortunately, as an epigram, this one lacks bite.
No one who lives in India, not even the Communists, want to live in communism.
Put very simply, the Armed Forces Special Powers Act says that while the acts of the civil authorities taking action against violent occurrences is carefully modified and governed by legislative acts, there is no such act governing the acts of the military authorities. Earlier the practice was that magistrates accompanied the military and authorised whatever was needed to be authorised, it was seen in contemporary cases that this was sometimes not possible: a magistrate cannot be stationed at every bunker, for example. Hence this AFSPA. It allows military forces to take action without reference to the civil authorities in situations where the civil authorities are unable to function.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Before you get carried away (justifiably) by the amateur and ineffective methods that have earned your indignation, please look at the anti-terrorist campaigns of the 60s and 70s in Bengal. Their methods and success ratios may open your eyes.
LOL!
Did you make a collective decision to adopt democracy?
Did you vote for democracy?
NO!
Your democracy is also pushed down into your throat.
This displays a superficial, almost non-existent knowledge of recent South Asian history, specifically the history of British India and its ending.
In 1919, under the Morley-Minto reforms, the first Indian elections outside municipal elections (held decades earlier, and through which Indians had come to positions of legislative and administrative authority of sorts) were held. This system marked the beginning of the administrative system known as dyarchy.
There were two major developments from this: educated Muslims, who had been educating themselves in the western system at the urging of their progressive leaders such as Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, were reinforced in their fears, dating back 14 years earlier, that a simple, legislative reservation of seats in favour of their community would not translate into reasonable shares in education, in government service or in jobs in general. They began seeking a settlement of affairs that would assure those three parameters of growth in particular, which search in time evolved the Two Nation Theory. Although it is discredited today, it is discredited for the wrong reasons by both Pakistan and by India, and it would have been better to have drawn lessons from it before rejecting it so comprehensively.
The second development was that identity interests other than Muslim, which was then the most evolved and advanced, came to the early understanding of their quest for identity recognition and acceptance by the rest of Indian society, and for recognition in legislative terms.
In 1935, there was a comprehensive and deep-rooted reform of administration and legislation, driven by the Government of India Act of that year. What is commonly not understood by most observers outside India, this set commenting on this thread most decidedly, others as well as a general rule, as well as by most Indians and Pakistanis not fully aware of their countries' respective legislative histories, is that much of current practice in the three countries of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh is founded on this act, and the administrative experience of this act.
This was a reasonably mature stage of self-governance, and was intended to be the penultimate step before full self-governance, within a Dominion status, that is, the head of the British state would continue to be the head of state in the Dominion, but all legislative decisions would continue to be taken by the Dominion independently. In other words, the Dominions were planned to be clones of Great Britain. This was intended for India, according to some British accounts at a very late date, some 40 or 50 years later.
While from the British point of view this was a big step, from the Indian (=South Asian) point of view, it wasn't much. By this time, the movement for self-determination through a mixture of non-violent and violent means, short of military means, necessitated by the decisive British military success in suppressing the uprising of 1857, had matured into a movement for outright independence. What was a significant feature of this period was the sharply-focussed quest of various minorities for their recognition and for their protection. It is necessary to summarise this movement briefly, to address some incredibly obtuse suggestions that have been made to the effect that democracy was thrust down our throats and that we exercised no choice as a state (not as a nation, which in the South Asian context is to be read within a minority-aspirational context).
In 1857, the independence and freedom of action of the Mughal court at Delhi was sought to be re-established by a combined rebel army of Muslims and Hindus, who rose against their British officers and rallied to the court at Delhi.
There were other significant factors behind this uprising, including the suppressed anger of many Indian princely states, independent entities under the same governance as Tibet under China until 1959, that is, independent under suzerainty of another power. These Indian states were enfuriated at repeated and frequent interventions in their succession and sometimes even in their administration; like other rebellious states under suzerainty elsewhere in the world, they were of the opinion that their antiquated and mediaeval government and administrative systems should be brought to modern times in a graduated and progressive manner (each prince had a different view of what time-frame was reasonable, very advanced and progressive in Travancore-Cochin, most regressive in some others which are better not named). In turn, as in other examples in the world, their suzerain power firmly rejected this and sought to introduce earlier transition. The suzerain power sought sounder human rights, greater development and economic growth, apart from social freedom; parallels are thick on the ground.
In addition, mediaeval India, from roughly 1200 onwards, had been fought over by mercenary armies maintained by each state, and provided and led in military terms by contractors, known as 'jemadars', who were responsible for raising a fixed head of men, for whom he was paid a lump-sum by contract. Purely as a frivolous aside, these were India's warlords; suppressing them was an important objective of 1857.
This uprising was ruthlessly crushed, and the British sought out two leading groups, one representing the earlier reigning dynasty, the other the constituents of the Army which rebelled, recruits from Bihar and Oudh, to be penalised. The first reprisal was aimed at the Muslims, the second reprisal was aimed at the Bihari and upcountry recruiting reservoir. This second reprisal of the British has consequences in India even today, and these consequences are not clearly recognised even by Indian leaders. External commentators have neither the learning and knowledge nor the patience to deal with these factors, unfortunately, which leads to a lot of distorted information flowing about unchecked, largely due to an equally unaware Indian constituency.
Apart from the reprisals, the suppression taught educated Indians that for some time to come, any attempts at self-determination, the initial efforts, would have to be non-violent, or at least non-military. However, this cold shock had hardly worn out when the British took a good administrative decision but a bad political one: the partition of Bengal in 1905.
As far as this point, most initiatives in India, bar some peculiar to Muslim, some peculiar to Hindus, were united efforts of both communities. From 1905 onwards, the educated sections of the Muslim community came to lose faith in the willingness of the majority and the legislators of the majority to look after their interests. This led to the Muslim League formation; the delineating and increasingly confident expression of the Two Nation Theory, and finally, through a gut-wrenching series of manoeuvres and actions on both the Asian and British sides, to independence of a partitioned British India, and to the reversion of all states under suzerainty to completely independent status.
During this entire period, there was a strong violent movement against the British, a movement which was in no way authorised, justified or certified by either the League or the Congress. These efforts were the hallmarks of Bengal, and climaxed in the efforts of a Bengal leader seeking armed struggle, his opposition by M. K. Gandhi, and his expulsion from the Congress.
The final point that needs to be made, most clearly, is that present-day India's constitution was formed by a Constituent Assembly set up for that purpose, and which worked for two and a half years to draft the Constitution of India. The leader of this effort was a leader of a minority, a social minority, and a firm opponent of the Congress Party, and perhaps one of the brightest intellects in the sub-continent - with the possible exception of M. A. Jinnah and J. L. Nehru.
There was nothing accidental about the adoption of democracy.
There was a choice in India as well, though not as well-marked a choice.
Unfortunately, as an epigram, this one lacks bite.
No one who lives in India, not even the Communists, want to live in communism.
Put very simply, the Armed Forces Special Powers Act says that while the acts of the civil authorities taking action against violent occurrences is carefully modified and governed by legislative acts, there is no such act governing the acts of the military authorities. Earlier the practice was that magistrates accompanied the military and authorised whatever was needed to be authorised, it was seen in contemporary cases that this was sometimes not possible: a magistrate cannot be stationed at every bunker, for example. Hence this AFSPA. It allows military forces to take action without reference to the civil authorities in situations where the civil authorities are unable to function.
Nothing more, nothing less.
They just suck at counter-insurgency. Maybe it's because the CCP was an insurgency at one point in its history but it understand the social factors in these conflicts much better than the Indians. As a result its counter-insurgency efforts are 90% social manipulation and 10% fear and brute force, whereas the Indian army is just clueless.
I mean what the fvck is this?
This is the worse thing you can do is act like one of them.
Before you get carried away (justifiably) by the amateur and ineffective methods that have earned your indignation, please look at the anti-terrorist campaigns of the 60s and 70s in Bengal. Their methods and success ratios may open your eyes.
hembo
SENIOR MEMBER
- Joined
- Feb 6, 2009
- Messages
- 3,395
- Reaction score
- -3
- Country
- Location
Bro, a little correction here.. Recent killing of security forces and blowing up of Schools and Hospitals were not in north-east. It were in the maoist infested areas of Chattisgarh, Orisa, WB & Maharastra.
North-east comprises of the seven sister states of Assam, Manipur, Mijoram, Meghalaya, Tripura, Nagaland & Arunachal and I'm from one of these states. So trust me, no schools and hospitals were blown up in North-east.
Thanks
hembo
SENIOR MEMBER
- Joined
- Feb 6, 2009
- Messages
- 3,395
- Reaction score
- -3
- Country
- Location
Perhaps either you didn't read or din't comprehend my post properly. I did write that lots of natives died due to war and massacre. But more american died due to epidemics. That's why you jumped on to the conclusion that I'm only influenced by John Wayne and tacky western movies instead of good history books.
However your point of view is also 100% correct. The epidemics were also resultant of European occupation and displacement. If the European didn't go to America, they wouldn't have carried influenza and small pox viruses with them which would ultimately nearly exinct the natives.
CardSharp
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Apr 17, 2010
- Messages
- 9,355
- Reaction score
- 0
Hey Mr. Shearer great to see your back (hope you're staying for a bit).
My comments were not a historical judgement on the IA's counter insurgency performance, though it may have looked like it because I mention the CCP's history. (it was just a pet theory I'd thought I share, semi-offtopically). I was compare more the current doctrine and tactics deployed by India and China security forces.
Example cases being Kashmir for India and Lhasa 2008 for China.
Although the Ind-Pak war in eastern India interests me I really know very little about it. I am taking a shot and guessing you are talking Shabeg Singh and the success in Bangladesh?
Time Assassin
FULL MEMBER
- Joined
- Jul 18, 2010
- Messages
- 334
- Reaction score
- 0
I don't know, is India going to become a Superpower? i think we knw the answer 
But its all about China, thats where i'll be so long suckers hahahahahahahahha
But its all about China, thats where i'll be
so long suckers hahahahahahahahha
CardSharp
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Apr 17, 2010
- Messages
- 9,355
- Reaction score
- 0
Wasn't trying to be contentious. As for the John Wayne comment, it wasn't to say you rely on those for information but more that it is astonishing how America was able to sanitize that part of its history and warp what happened into a Hollywood story.
The current portrayal of natives is a caricature, that is both perverse in its ennoblizing of natives and touching in its naivety.
Last edited by a moderator:
CardSharp
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Apr 17, 2010
- Messages
- 9,355
- Reaction score
- 0
Here's an interesting article about it
Massacres Paid Your Mortgage, Dude
After my last column about primitive warfare in Africa I got a lot of mail saying basically, "Gross dude! Why don't you do more on good American warfare?" Well, I have news for you guys, primitive warfare shaped America more than it ever did Africa.
Where do you live? Now answer fast: Who lived there 300 years ago? The reason you can live there without asking some chief's permission is that your tribe wiped out their tribe. Primitive warfare paid the mortgage on your house, dude. And it happened every bit as cold-bloodedly as it's happening in Africa right now.
Take Montana. Now it's vacation land for every Hollywood leftie but 150 years ago it was up for grabs. As the Anglos muscled in on them, North American tribes fought, negotiated or ran. The ones who fought lost. They won some battles along the way, but they were little tribes against the Anglos, the biggest and scariest tribe in the world. The ones who negotiated knew from the start that the stronger tribe always takes what it wants, sooner or later. The ones who ran faced the same old problem: the only places you could run to were already claimed by other tribes. The only solution, in the simple hard rules of primitive warfare, was to wipe out the other tribe.
That was how the Sioux decided to wipe out the Crow in 1860. The Sioux were fierce people. Don't believe that Kevin-Costner Dances-with-Wolves bullshit. The Sioux ate wolves for breakfast. They took what they wanted -- land, horses, slaves -- from anybody they could. But they were already beginning to realize they couldn't fight the white men. Basically, it was the Navajo vs. Ute story on a bigger scale: farmers always beat hunters in the long run, because they can feed so many more mouths. The nomadic, buffalo-hunting Sioux were some of the finest light irregular cavalry in the world -- Genghis Khan would've admired them. But they couldn't cope with the sheer numbers of white farmers overrunning the Sioux lands on the plains.
The Crow tribe's country, in Eastern Montana and Wyoming, was still beyond the range of the whites, so the Sioux decided to wipe out the Crow and take their land. The Sioux chief made a speech setting out the strategic goals of primitive warfare with classic simplicity:
"Today when the sun sets, there will be no more Absarokee [Crow] left! We will kill all their warriors and even the old men; we will save their young boys and raise them to become Dakota [Sioux] warriors, and we shall marry their wives and daughters to raise more warriors to fight the whites when they follow us to our new land."
It was a sound plan. It failed because the Crow got word of it. They were waiting when the Sioux attacked. There was a battle -- which wasn't part of the Sioux plan -- at Pryor Creek near where Billings, Montana is now, and the Sioux were beaten. One of the ironies of the battle is that Pryor Creek feeds the Big Horn River, where the Sioux were going to win their greatest victory against the whites, wiping out Custer's entire force, 16 years after losing at Pryor Creek.
Even if the Sioux had taken the Crow's lands, it wouldn't have done them much good. By 1900 the Crow, the Sioux and all the other Plains tribes were destroyed. The mismatch was too complete. In a classic primitive-warfare scenario such as what you'd have in Africa, they would have been wiped out, with a few boys spared to be raised as members of the conquering tribe. And that's pretty much what happened: the remnants of the tribes were corralled, pushed onto the least desirable land anybody could find, with their kids sent to US government boarding schools to learn Anglo culture.
The famous massacres, like the one at Wounded Knee in 1890, where 300 un-corralled Sioux were shot down by the Seventh Cav (which was still a little steamed about Custer), are usually treated as shocking, evil things, "senseless" outbreaks of savagery. That's just nonsense. Massacre is standard primitive-warfare policy for handling prisoners from defeated tribes, especially if they get ornery.
The Sioux who died at Wounded Knee were hard to handle. They were followers of the new "Ghost Dance" religion. Religion is the last refuge of defeated tribes. The Byzantines spent their last days praying, when the Turkish cannon were blasting down the walls of the city. The Sioux turned to Wovoka, a Ute "messiah" who had the word from God that if the Plains Indians danced the Ghost Dance, their ancestors would return, wipe out the whites, and put the Indians back in total control.
If you read what the Ghost Dancers were preaching, you can see that they saw the situation in classic primitive-warfare terms: wiping out the other side totally. If they could've done it militarily, they would've; instead, they dreamed about it.
Wovoka's vision was counter-genocide, pure and simple: God was going to create a new layer of soil 30 feet deep, and all the whites were going to be buried under it -- instant fossilization. The new soil would make excellent grazing -- lots of paleface fertilizer down there -- for the buffalo that God was going to spread across the prairies, and the Indians would inherit the earth.
In other words, both sides were talking genocide, because that's the point of all primitive warfare.
Us Americans can't seem to face facts like that. We're not as consciously cold-blooded or clearheaded as the Brits, who did hundreds of Wounded Knees all over the world without flinching, and without losing any sleep either.
We had to lie to ourselves about it -- first one lie, then the opposite one. Right after the "battle" of Wounded Knee, Congress went into a frenzy of patriotic bullshit. They handed out more than a dozen Congressional Medals of Honor, the highest decoration our country has, to troopers who died in the "fight," even though most accounts of the battle agree that the Cav's casualties were almost certainly caused by friendly fire. The troopers had made one of the most basic mistakes you can make in an ambush. They surrounded the Sioux encampment from all sides, so when they started firing, anything that missed its target (and that included two Hotchkiss rapid-fire cannon that could get off almost a round per second) was likely to hit the troopers across the way.
Then, a few generations later, when the Plains were safely turned into farmland, the media started telling the opposite lie, turning the Sioux into heroes and the Seventh Cav into monsters.
It really pisses me off, the way these Kevin Costner types romanticize rebel tribes, once they're safely annihilated. It's been happening for hundreds of years, too. The Brits totally wiped out the Scottish Highland tribes -- and they were tribes -- after they rebelled in 1745. It was merciless, classic primitive warfare: men hanged on the battlefield, farms burned to the ground, kids dragged away to be trained as Englishmen, the native Scottish language and songs forbidden by law. And then, once they were sure the Highlanders were gone, the English started romanticizing everything about them, even those dumb skirts the Highland men wore because they were too dumb to make pants that fit.
When I was growing up, my teachers tried to make the Sioux into saints and the Seventh Cav into murderers. I had to read that Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee book in high school, and if my teacher had heard me even hint that it wasn't a good vs. evil story, she'd have expelled me on the spot. Everybody had a great time crying for the poor Indians -- but I noticed nobody said anything about giving them California back.
Massacres Paid Your Mortgage, Dude
After my last column about primitive warfare in Africa I got a lot of mail saying basically, "Gross dude! Why don't you do more on good American warfare?" Well, I have news for you guys, primitive warfare shaped America more than it ever did Africa.
Where do you live? Now answer fast: Who lived there 300 years ago? The reason you can live there without asking some chief's permission is that your tribe wiped out their tribe. Primitive warfare paid the mortgage on your house, dude. And it happened every bit as cold-bloodedly as it's happening in Africa right now.
Take Montana. Now it's vacation land for every Hollywood leftie but 150 years ago it was up for grabs. As the Anglos muscled in on them, North American tribes fought, negotiated or ran. The ones who fought lost. They won some battles along the way, but they were little tribes against the Anglos, the biggest and scariest tribe in the world. The ones who negotiated knew from the start that the stronger tribe always takes what it wants, sooner or later. The ones who ran faced the same old problem: the only places you could run to were already claimed by other tribes. The only solution, in the simple hard rules of primitive warfare, was to wipe out the other tribe.
That was how the Sioux decided to wipe out the Crow in 1860. The Sioux were fierce people. Don't believe that Kevin-Costner Dances-with-Wolves bullshit. The Sioux ate wolves for breakfast. They took what they wanted -- land, horses, slaves -- from anybody they could. But they were already beginning to realize they couldn't fight the white men. Basically, it was the Navajo vs. Ute story on a bigger scale: farmers always beat hunters in the long run, because they can feed so many more mouths. The nomadic, buffalo-hunting Sioux were some of the finest light irregular cavalry in the world -- Genghis Khan would've admired them. But they couldn't cope with the sheer numbers of white farmers overrunning the Sioux lands on the plains.
The Crow tribe's country, in Eastern Montana and Wyoming, was still beyond the range of the whites, so the Sioux decided to wipe out the Crow and take their land. The Sioux chief made a speech setting out the strategic goals of primitive warfare with classic simplicity:
"Today when the sun sets, there will be no more Absarokee [Crow] left! We will kill all their warriors and even the old men; we will save their young boys and raise them to become Dakota [Sioux] warriors, and we shall marry their wives and daughters to raise more warriors to fight the whites when they follow us to our new land."
It was a sound plan. It failed because the Crow got word of it. They were waiting when the Sioux attacked. There was a battle -- which wasn't part of the Sioux plan -- at Pryor Creek near where Billings, Montana is now, and the Sioux were beaten. One of the ironies of the battle is that Pryor Creek feeds the Big Horn River, where the Sioux were going to win their greatest victory against the whites, wiping out Custer's entire force, 16 years after losing at Pryor Creek.
Even if the Sioux had taken the Crow's lands, it wouldn't have done them much good. By 1900 the Crow, the Sioux and all the other Plains tribes were destroyed. The mismatch was too complete. In a classic primitive-warfare scenario such as what you'd have in Africa, they would have been wiped out, with a few boys spared to be raised as members of the conquering tribe. And that's pretty much what happened: the remnants of the tribes were corralled, pushed onto the least desirable land anybody could find, with their kids sent to US government boarding schools to learn Anglo culture.
The famous massacres, like the one at Wounded Knee in 1890, where 300 un-corralled Sioux were shot down by the Seventh Cav (which was still a little steamed about Custer), are usually treated as shocking, evil things, "senseless" outbreaks of savagery. That's just nonsense. Massacre is standard primitive-warfare policy for handling prisoners from defeated tribes, especially if they get ornery.
The Sioux who died at Wounded Knee were hard to handle. They were followers of the new "Ghost Dance" religion. Religion is the last refuge of defeated tribes. The Byzantines spent their last days praying, when the Turkish cannon were blasting down the walls of the city. The Sioux turned to Wovoka, a Ute "messiah" who had the word from God that if the Plains Indians danced the Ghost Dance, their ancestors would return, wipe out the whites, and put the Indians back in total control.
If you read what the Ghost Dancers were preaching, you can see that they saw the situation in classic primitive-warfare terms: wiping out the other side totally. If they could've done it militarily, they would've; instead, they dreamed about it.
Wovoka's vision was counter-genocide, pure and simple: God was going to create a new layer of soil 30 feet deep, and all the whites were going to be buried under it -- instant fossilization. The new soil would make excellent grazing -- lots of paleface fertilizer down there -- for the buffalo that God was going to spread across the prairies, and the Indians would inherit the earth.
In other words, both sides were talking genocide, because that's the point of all primitive warfare.
Us Americans can't seem to face facts like that. We're not as consciously cold-blooded or clearheaded as the Brits, who did hundreds of Wounded Knees all over the world without flinching, and without losing any sleep either.
We had to lie to ourselves about it -- first one lie, then the opposite one. Right after the "battle" of Wounded Knee, Congress went into a frenzy of patriotic bullshit. They handed out more than a dozen Congressional Medals of Honor, the highest decoration our country has, to troopers who died in the "fight," even though most accounts of the battle agree that the Cav's casualties were almost certainly caused by friendly fire. The troopers had made one of the most basic mistakes you can make in an ambush. They surrounded the Sioux encampment from all sides, so when they started firing, anything that missed its target (and that included two Hotchkiss rapid-fire cannon that could get off almost a round per second) was likely to hit the troopers across the way.
Then, a few generations later, when the Plains were safely turned into farmland, the media started telling the opposite lie, turning the Sioux into heroes and the Seventh Cav into monsters.
It really pisses me off, the way these Kevin Costner types romanticize rebel tribes, once they're safely annihilated. It's been happening for hundreds of years, too. The Brits totally wiped out the Scottish Highland tribes -- and they were tribes -- after they rebelled in 1745. It was merciless, classic primitive warfare: men hanged on the battlefield, farms burned to the ground, kids dragged away to be trained as Englishmen, the native Scottish language and songs forbidden by law. And then, once they were sure the Highlanders were gone, the English started romanticizing everything about them, even those dumb skirts the Highland men wore because they were too dumb to make pants that fit.
When I was growing up, my teachers tried to make the Sioux into saints and the Seventh Cav into murderers. I had to read that Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee book in high school, and if my teacher had heard me even hint that it wasn't a good vs. evil story, she'd have expelled me on the spot. Everybody had a great time crying for the poor Indians -- but I noticed nobody said anything about giving them California back.
TenjikuKensei
FULL MEMBER
- Joined
- Nov 13, 2010
- Messages
- 194
- Reaction score
- 0
The treatment of Native Americans was the worst Chapter in that Continent's history. however, the number you gave is a astronomically high one.
for starters, at that time the entire world population ranged from 500 mil to a Billion, with the bulk of the population in Asia
TenjikuKensei
FULL MEMBER
- Joined
- Nov 13, 2010
- Messages
- 194
- Reaction score
- 0
Are you serious? or are you being sarcastic? if you truly believe this, then we are on the opposite ends of this particular issue
Chinese-Dragon
RETIRED TTA
- Joined
- Jul 9, 2010
- Messages
- 33,932
- Reaction score
- 52
- Country
- Location
Well, that is just what I read.
I am hardly a historical scholar though, so I will defer to you here.
Chinese-Dragon
RETIRED TTA
- Joined
- Jul 9, 2010
- Messages
- 33,932
- Reaction score
- 52
- Country
- Location
Are you serious? or are you being sarcastic? if you truly believe this, then we are on the opposite ends of this particular issue
Well, Chinese society/history has always been about the "greater good". The needs of society as a whole, have always been more important than individual freedoms.
Other countries put more emphasis on the individual, and that is their choice, I don't see anything wrong with it.
TenjikuKensei
FULL MEMBER
- Joined
- Nov 13, 2010
- Messages
- 194
- Reaction score
- 0
I'm not a scholar either. But the number of a 100(or 114) Million sounds astronomically high when one looks at the entire world population of that time.
However, I do agree that this was a worse pogrom/holocaust than the one faced by the Jewish and Gypsy (everyone forgets the gypsies or...Roma(as they call themselves) populations during ww2 because according to even conservative estimates...about 60% of the native population of the Americas was eradicated...while some put the % as high as 90%
so as a "people" the native Americans faced a far greater Holocaust than the Jewish or the Roma people faced. Further the numbers will be even higher (probably nearer to your figure) If they were adjusted to the 1950s population figures.
CardSharp
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Apr 17, 2010
- Messages
- 9,355
- Reaction score
- 0
Are you serious? or are you being sarcastic? if you truly believe this, then we are on the opposite ends of this particular issue
Then I guess we are, but the on-going loss of life in Kashmir suggests that the moral position may not actually be a moral position.
- Status
