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by drevil-v2
542 days ago
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Gandhi was controlled opposition IMO. His approach delayed the inevitable by decades. A few tens of thousands of British troops - Over 200 years of the British Raj on average there were 60,000 to 70,000 British troops stationed in India - would have been absolutely slaughtered by the hundreds of millions of Indians (1857 population estimated at 250-300 million). By the time Gandhi came into the picture, the British empire was overextended - any half decent uprising would have been successful..... unless you convinced the natives to give up on any physical form of dissent and sit down, protest and get beaten up as a virtuous slave. Truly one of the greatest psyops ever. |
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> A few tens of thousands of British troops
A lot of Indians happily joined British army because of the (relatively) better pay and better treatment.
> slaughtered by the hundreds of millions of Indians
But those were all divided into hundreds of kingdoms. In fact, a lot of Indian kings and princes preferred being a vassal of the English crown because the alternative was much worse (being imprisoned or killed by Indian rivals). Read about almost any major Indian wars/battles in the 18th century involving English and you will find a lot of neutral Indian parties, or the ones actively fighting on England's behalf.
> any half decent uprising would have been successful
Indian subcontinent suffered from a "coordination problem". Gandhi is admired because he played the biggest role in bringing a lot of them together. Of course, he couldn't bring everyone along (eg. Jinnah and Muslims), and there were a lot of other great leaders who also contributed (Patel, Tilak, Bose etc) towards uniting all the Indians, but none could attain Gandhi's stature.