The selective full memory of the liberal intelligentsia

I noted two weeks ago the 50th anniversary of the passing of one of the greatest men of the 20th Century, Sir Winston Churchill. I was not alone as many noted the passing of this great leader who stood alone as the dark forces of Nazism, Communism and Fascism moved along Europe, seemingly unstoppable. Naturally those who despise the west are not impressed by this date or the man. I give you a nobody named Ishaan Tharoor.

The dark side of Winston Churchill’s legacy no one should forget

There's no Western statesmen — at least in the English-speaking world — more routinely lionized than Winston Churchill. Last Friday marked a half century since his funeral, an occasion that itself led to numerous commemorations and paeans to the British Bulldog, whose moral courage and patriotism helped steer his nation through World War II.

Churchill, after all, has been posthumously voted by his countrymen as the greatest Briton. The presence (and absence) of his bust in the White House was enough to create political scandal on both sides of the pond. The allure of his name is so strong that it launches a thousand quotations, many of which are apocryphal. At its core, Churchill's myth serves as a ready-made metaphor for boldness and leadership, no matter how vacuous the context in which said metaphor is deployed.

For example, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair earned comparisons to Churchill after dragging his country into the much-maligned 2003 Iraq war. So too Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose tough stance on Iran's nuclear ambitions has been cast by some in Churchill's heroic mold — the Israeli premier's uncompromising resolve a foil to the supposed "appeasement" tendencies of President Obama.

In the West, Churchill is a freedom fighter, the man who grimly withstood Nazism and helped save Western liberal democracy. It's a civilizational legacy that has been polished and placed on a mantle for decades. Churchill "launched the lifeboats," declared Time magazine, on the cover of its Jan. 2, 1950 issue that hailed the British leader as the "man of the half century."

But there's another side to Churchill's politics and career that should not be forgotten amid the endless parade of eulogies. To many outside the West, he remains a grotesque racist and a stubborn imperialist, forever on the wrong side of history.

Churchill's detractors point to his well-documented bigotry, articulated often with shocking callousness and contempt. "I hate Indians," he once trumpeted. "They are a beastly people with a beastly religion."

Mr Tharoor, I would not defend his exact words but them again I don't know what context they were said in. He may have seen something quite disgusting to anyone and used it to generalize the Indian people. Now, you may recall the experience of General Sir Charles Napier when he was informed of the Hindu custom of burning the widow alive on the funeral pyre of the deceased. His response,

"Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs."

Should we judge every Hindu or Indian on this one act?

He referred to Palestinians as "barbaric hordes who ate little but camel dung." When quashing insurgents in Sudan in the earlier days of his imperial career, Churchill boasted of killing three "savages." Contemplating restive populations in northwest Asia, he infamously lamented the "squeamishness" of his colleagues, who were not in "favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes."

At this point, you may say, so what? Churchill's attitudes were hardly unique for the age in which he expounded them. All great men have flaws and contradictions — some of America's founding fathers, those paragons of liberty, were slave owners. One of Churchill's biographers, cited by my colleague Karla Adam, insists that his failings were ultimately "unimportant, all of them, compared to the centrality of the point of Winston Churchill, which is that he saved [Britain] from being invaded by the Nazis."

But that should not obscure the dangers of his worldview. Churchill's racism was wrapped up in his Tory zeal for empire, one which irked his wartime ally, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. As a junior member of parliament, Churchill had cheered on Britain's plan for more conquests, insisting that its "Aryan stock is bound to triumph." It's strange to celebrate his bravado in the face of Hitler's war machine and not consider his wider thinking on other parts of the world. After all, these are places that, just like Europe and the West, still live with the legacy of Churchill's and Britain's actions at the time....

Churchill and the British may not have been angles, but they also brought India (and many other nations) under a single language, a rule of law and growth under a massive amount of investment. I want to say a decade ago India's middle class was rising because the low cost of telecommunications combined with the large number of English speaking highly trained employees were able to corner the market for computer service assistance. Without the intervention of the British Empire, India would not have that. Not to mention the rule of law, for both criminal and civil actions. Were the English the best in all aspects, no. Was Churchill a saint, absoutly not. But his greatness in standing alone against the appeasers, warning the world of the threat of Hitler during the 1930s, rallying the last nation in Europe to stand against the NAZIs, leading the nation he loved through it's "finest hour" will not be degraded by his, at the time common, racial beliefs. Unlike you Mr. Tharoor, he was and is forever on the right side of history.

One of the favorite movies is The Shoes of the Fisherman, a story of a Russian becoming pope in the middle of the 1960s Cold War. Discussing the plans to bury the previous pope, the reporter tells his audience:

The Pope was dead. They would mourn him with nine days of Masses and give him nine Absolutions-of which, having been greater in his life than other men, he might have greater need after his death.

Greatness generally means you will not be an angle. Churchill was great and his memory will survive. Thank God for men like him at the time we needed him most.