Breast feeding, an exhibitionists' charter?

[Sriram]

Ah....there has been lots of discussion on my earlier post! Nice!

I did not mean to accuse western people but was merely pointing out a fact.  For centuries, the West has had a missionary zeal in changing the world.  "We must civilize these people somehow'...was a common intent among the British in particular and western Christians in general during those days. A superiority complex born out of the need to spread the Christian good word plus wealth, military, scientific and engineering skills....was largely responsible for this 'cultural invasion'.

This involved making significant changes in local cultures and lifestyles, sometimes for the better and often for the worse too. Nothing was ever right about local cultures. The West was always Best!

Ok....it served a good purpose in most instances no doubt. Things have worked out fine in the final analysis and I am not really complaining.  But the attitude of 'West knows beat'  did impinge itself on others and change local lifestyles. It still does.

The truth is that the 'West does not always know best'. This creates a situation where  those people who were leading healthy and sensible lifestyles to begin with were made to change it to their detriment. 

As regards breast feeding in particular, I was only pointing out that ideas and values change every now and then. One day breast feeding in public is unthinkable. Few years later it is the new fad. The point is that neither of them is right or wrong in itself. We just need to balance it out based on our values, local culture and specific needs at any time. The whole world doesn't have to think alike in everything, every time! 

I have not said anything to get agitated about. Chill guys! 

[Brownie]

Thanks Sririam, good post.

[Bubbles]

It's a generation. It's long enough for many women having babies not to have been able to remember British rule.
No. He was complaining about Indian fads with respect to breast feeding and he was putting the blame squarely on Western fashions.

No, many people alive today remember Churchill who seems to had plenty of things to say to show his attitude towards India and it's people.

https://www.quora.com/Why-is-it-that-Indians-feel-an-animosity-towards-the-British-and-not-the-other-rulers-of-Ancient-India

Some Indians are going to remember that attitude, too many to say it's all in the past.

[Bubbles]

Winston Churchill is pretty much a hero in the uk but he could be really tactless at times.

Winston Churchill was like Boris Johnson in some ways.

Gandhi-ism and everything it stands for will have to be grappled with and crushed
-Churchill, on the independence movement in India, 1930


"It  is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle  Temple lawyer of the type well-known in the East, now posing as a fakir,  striding half naked up the steps of the Viceregal palace to parley on  equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor."
-Comment  on Gandhi's meeting with the British Viceroy of India, addressing the  Council of the West Essex Unionist Association (23 February 1931); as  quoted in "Mr Churchill on India" in The Times (24 February 1931)


I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.
-Entry dated to September 1942 on a conversation held with Churchill in Leo Amery : Diaries.


I hope it would be bitter and bloody!
-Churchill, upon hearing news of conflict between the Muslim League and Indian Congress, July 1940 (makes you wonder why Britain decided on that partitioning of Pakistan...)


If food is scarce, why isn't Gandhi dead yet?
-Churchill's witty retort to British  Secretary of State for India Leo Amery's telegram for food stock to  relieve the Bengal famine of 1943


Relief would do no good, Indians breed like rabbits and will outstrip any available food supply
-Leo Amery records Churchill's stance on why famine relief was refused to India, 1944


Winston Churchill is remembered today as a great hero, a model leader, and a very witty, very quotable man. That's a very important part of it, the damage he did to India is largely ignored... purposefully. When 4 million people were starving and Churchill was joking about it, that kind of news was censored by Britain.

History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it
-Churchill, filled with wit as always

One generation isn't enough because really there is no such thing, people are born at different times.

Many people remember different things, there is no such thing as a different generation because we all blend in together, because we are not all born in set batches.

We have different generations as in individual families, but it's not universal.

I think it's an idea that has sprung out of the west that you have a young generation that is different, but it doesn't really exist.

its a myth, we are all born at slightly different times.

You could draw the line at generations for society at large, anywhere.

It's a construct.

[Bubbles]

You can read more about Winston Churcill here.

Many of the wounds Churchill inflicted have still not healed: you can find them on the front pages any day of the week. He is the man who invented Iraq, locking together three conflicting peoples behind arbitrary borders that have been bleeding ever since. He is the Colonial Secretary who offered the Over-Promised Land to both the Jews and the Arabs – although he seems to have privately felt racist contempt for both. He jeered at the Palestinians as "barbaric hoards who ate little but camel dung," while he was appalled that the Israelis "take it for granted that the local population will be cleared out to suit their convenience".

True, occasionally Churchill did become queasy about some of the most extreme acts of the Empire. He fretted at the slaughter of women and children, and cavilled at the Amritsar massacre of 1919. Toye tries to present these doubts as evidence of moderation – yet they almost never seem to have led Churchill to change his actions. If you are determined to rule people by force against their will, you can hardly be surprised when atrocities occur. Rule Britannia would inexorably produce a Cruel Britannia.

So how can the two be reconciled? Was Churchill's moral opposition to Nazism a charade, masking the fact he was merely trying to defend the British Empire from a rival?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/not-his-finest-hour-the-dark-side-of-winston-churchill-2118317.html

If our ' generation ' alive today can remember Churchill as a hero, others in the world can just as easily remember his darker side.

Their memories are no less valid than ours.

It's just a matter of acknowledging a different viewpoint to the one we are accustomed to.

Looking at a more detached version of history, perhaps admitting to not having such a perfect past or maybe into being misled in some of our history lessons.

 

[Bubbles]

Anyway.

I can see the attitude of the British towards the "natives" was appalling. Even the term " natives" is a way of putting people down 

I have no doubt that attitude became reflected in modifying the behaviour of local customs and traditions in India and other places.

Breast feeding could well have been looked down on, like bare breasts or no shoes, or even not using a knife and fork to eat.

The attitude can even be unconscious in the people holding the veiw.

I've seen the attitude expressed today by fellow Brits, much to my anger.

Example regarding someone as a peasant because they pick up food with their hands, but it's ingrained deep and the person holding it doesn't even see it for what it is.

[Bubbles]

The old colonial attitude is still live and well ( at least in 2014) in some elements of society.

You just need to see it for what it is.

Sandwiches have been banned from an officers’ mess after a commander noticed many soldiers were eating them with their hands as he insisted “a gentleman or a lady uses a knife and fork.”
Major General James Cowan issued the note after he noticed officers were eating sandwiches with their hands and failing to stand when commanders entered the room.
His three-page letter criticised standards at Bulford Camp in Wiltshire where he said he had seen many “frankly barbaric” techniques and habits displayed by soldiers and officers.
The note, addressed to ‘Chaps’, said: “Quite a few officers in the divisional mess seem to be under the impression that they can eat their food with their hands. The practice of serving rolls and sandwiches must stop,” the Sun reported.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/10677230/Army-commander-bans-sandwiches-in-attack-on-barbaric-habits.html

It's this sort of attitude that keeps the scars of colonialism alive.

That sense of, there is only one way of doing something to be civilised, otherwise you are letting the side down by becoming a barbaric peasant.

Meanwhile millions of people's all  over the world eat without knives and forks as is their custom.

Should this army commander then go abroad with his attitude, the good old colonialism is live and well. ( even if it was slightly tongue in cheek)

It's a form of racism that I'm not even sure the perpetrators are aware of, but have no doubt if you come from a background of different customs, you will have no trouble seeing it for what it is.

I've encountered it now and again and really the people doing it, don't even seem to be aware they are doing it.

( one of my friends once told their children off for eating with their hands, like peasants she said  . )
 

http://www.foodrepublic.com/2012/11/19/the-rules-for-eating-with-your-hands-in-india-africa-and-the-middle-east/

[Bubbles]

Oprah managed to get it wrong in India according to this.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2178765/Oprah-Winfrey-draws-India-remark-people-eat-hands.html


The army officer would definately come across as "old colonial" attitude.

There is a disparity here between what a person thinks they are saying, and how it's received.

I have no doubt that in colonial times how you ate your dinner was used to judge you as well as being a " native" , and Oprahs use of the word " still" didn't help the perception.

Like they were all backwards, or something.

I can see why that didn't go down well.

It's so easy to unconsciously judge others with different customs without meaning to.

I guess all societies have standards and stratas of society.

I guess it's just trying to be aware of our own attitudes and how our adherence to our own "standards and values" could be construed as a criticism of others.

Especially somewhere that has been colonised and in many cases judged and mistreated in the past.

 

[Brownie]

Very, very interesting posts Rose, you've expressed sentiments that many of us share better than we could and with examples to boot.

(As an aside, the army officer who objected to the eating of sandwiches with hands was expressing a very middle-middle class attitude, a bit like insisting on pastry forks or fish knives.  Honestly, for what were sandwiches invented?  To eat something without eating irons!   (I know that's not strictly true, the Earl of Sandwich invented them because he fancied a bit of meat with bread but it certainly caught on.) )

[Sriram]

Thanks for that Brownie and Rose.  Rose ...you've elaborated more than I would have attempted. Thanks.

About eating sandwiches...I think Americans are setting new standards on that.  Just watch some street food programs on TV.   

[jeremyp]

If our ' generation ' alive today can remember Churchill as a hero, others in the world can just as easily remember his darker side.

On another thread you keep insisting that people should be putting a vote that happened last month behind them. Here you are saying it's OK go be bitter about somebody who died 50 years ago.

Make your mind up.

[Bubbles]

On another thread you keep insisting that people should be putting a vote that happened last month behind them. Here you are saying it's OK go be bitter about somebody who died 50 years ago.

Make your mind up.

Someone dying is a lot more memorable than a mere vote you don't agree with!


Not that you can tell the diffence!
 

[Brownie]

You are on form Rose!  Points to you.

[jeremyp]

Someone dying is a lot more memorable than a mere vote you don't agree with!

How many ways are there in which that is an utterly stupid statement?

Let's start with two.

Firstly, it is not the death of Churchill that you claim it is OK to be bitter about, but what he did in his life.

Secondly to claim that Churchill's death is more memorable than the most important vote that the people of this country have ever undertaken is fatuous and stupid in the extreme. I, for example, don't remember Churchill's death at all.