"There are countries with an extensive Asiatic Empire, who, faced by political activity of a kind that in India has long been accepted as mild and entirely constitutional, promptly shoot and hang it out of existence, and inform the outside world that it was "communism". If you call a thing communism, you can do what you like to it, and get away with it. (American Women's Clubs, which have suffered much distress by the spectacle of England's wickedness, never vex themselves about these other Colonial Empires.) The Indian Government, faced by murderous organisations, prosecutes their members anachronistically, for such crimes as "proposing to wage war against the King-Emperor", "seeking to deprive the King-Emperor of his sovereignty over India"... It has invented a form of martyrdom which is mostly garlands for its more distinguished practitioners."
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Original Language: English
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Edward Thompson, A Letter from India (1932), pp. 61-62
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/British_Raj
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British Raj
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