Empire_ What Ruling the World Did to the British - Jeremy Paxman [142]
And the empire has turned out to have a remarkable talent for causing trouble from beyond the grave. Britain has yet to elect a prime minister who doesn’t take on a vaguely imperial tone of voice: none can resist the temptation to lecture other governments. Tony Blair took office promising to reinvent Britain and ended up sending its forces into action in six different conflicts. One British Prime Minister says it is time to stop apologizing for empire (Gordon Brown, 2005), the next (David Cameron, 2011) talks of tensions between India and Pakistan over Kashmir and says ‘as with so many of the world’s problems, we are responsible for the issue in the first place’. This is the authentic voice of post-war education, proud self-chastisement, a weird blend of Mr Pooter and Uriah Heap. Forgotten is the fact that India was partitioned to prevent the friction which the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, said would otherwise blight the lives of Muslims: does Churchill’s conversion to the cause of creating the world’s first modern Muslim state also make Britain accomplice to the resurgence of political Islam?
These are complicated questions with which so many of the British prefer not to grapple. Ignorance is profound, with much of the population aware, perhaps, that IPA beers were originally India Pale Ale, brewed in England for consumption in the subcontinent, but unaware of the reason why the British were there in the first place. Even British schoolchildren are not obliged to study the story of what their ancestors created. Perhaps in the dark recesses of a golf-club bar some harrumphing voice mutters about how much better the world seemed to turn when a great-uncle in baggy shorts ran a patch of Africa the size of Lancashire. But, by and large, no one has much to say about empire. Judgement has been passed and the case is closed. This, surely, is one of the peculiarities of our age. Just as the high-pomp imperialists assumed that the sun would never set on the empire, so the post-imperial age wallows unreflectingly in the assumption that the prejudices of its own generation will last for ever. Even Kipling could see through the pomp of his time.
At Ootacamund, in the Nilgiri mountains of southern India, the Indian owners of one of the bungalows built by the British offer a ‘Raj Experience’ – B&B, with English food presented on clumsy English furniture. The rack-and-pinion railway still climbs improbably up from the sweltering plains to the cool of the town they called ‘the queen of hill stations’. A church, botanical gardens and golf course, half a dozen well-regarded schools with names like St Jude’s and Laidlaw Memorial, all offer evidence of the colonial inheritance. The rich red soil of the terraced fields in the blue hills around the town is thick with ‘English vegetables’ – carrots, cabbages and cauliflowers. But ‘Snooty Ooty’ is now officially known by its Tamil name of Udhagamandalam, and many of its bungalows slowly succumb to the pleasant damp of the hills, the English flowers planted by the settlers long run to seed. The maharajah’s summer palace struggles on as a hotel, its vast, galleried ballroom now little used, although if you ask nicely the manager will find you a cue for the snooker table up there. (The game was perfected one rainy afternoon, beneath the buffalo heads hanging high on the walls of the Ootacamund Club.) But most visitors prefer modern hotels, and the new businesses – manufacturing and pharmaceuticals – are what matter to the town now.
Most of the customers for the Raj Experience weekend in Ooty are British. There are other places, too, where they can also play at being harmless imperialists – among the stuffed-animal trophies at the