Our India, their Britain - Why Gordon Brown appeared so deadly earnest

Ed: I think I'm going to cut out this article by an Indian journalist and frame it.
[...] It may sound hideous in the context of post-colonial correctness but it is undeniable that India’s perceptions of Britons were couched in terms of admiration, reverence, awe and a tinge of fear. This was as true for Anglophiles as they were for those who suffered and fought for freedom. Of course, there was a flip side too. The white man was felt to be lacking in personal hygiene and his food habits were completely suspect. Nevertheless, on balance, the sahib came out of the encounter as someone who had earned the right to forge an empire. It, therefore, followed that if Indians were to usurp that right they would have to imbibe the virtues of hard work, forbearance, team spirit, enterprise and sacrifice. A minority of Indians also wanted fair play and decency to be tagged to the attributes of good character.

The Britain of the Indian imagination, like the characters of a P.G. Wodehouse novel, probably died in the muddy mess of Flanders, Ypres and the Somme, but lingered on in the colonies for longer. However, till the permissive Sixties turned all sense of propriety upside down, Britain maintained the pretence of a “Great” prefix. Since then, there has been a systematic dismantling — all in the name of democratization — of the values and institutions Indians had learnt to admire. What replaced it was a popular culture centred on shirking, irreverence, promiscuity and loutishness. Britain earned a reputation for being the home of football hooligans and lager louts. The gentleman became an object of derision.

The translation of this moral decline into public policy was equally devastating. First, Britain became a nanny state, with the State intruding into facets of life that should have been left to either personal choice or common sense. Second, the response to the traditional over-emphasis on class was a spurious form of egalitarianism that manifested itself in high taxation, lowering of school standards and the benign neglect of cricket.

Finally, Britain turned its back on its own glorious inheritance and chose to shun power for piety. The complete collapse of old-style Labour Party socialism left a void which was soon occupied by sanctimonious environmentalism, democratic evangelism and moral equivalence masquerading as multiculturalism. Margaret Thatcher and, to a lesser extent, Tony Blair tried to turn the clock back, but unsuccessfully. The BBC World Service’s strange news sense (it treats Royal escapades as frivolous and unworthy) and its disavowal of the Received Pronunciation (RP) is a consequence. Why blame the BBC? Other pillars of the erstwhile establishment — the Church of England and the Conservative Party — are victims of this wimpishness. Read more
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