Scars of the Raj

India

Delhi, (then) Calcutta and Bombay: there is a universe within ‘incredible India.’ Bangalore, Hyderabad, the hill stations in the Himalayan foothills, Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Goa: my favourite in all India, not that I’ve seen much more than one percent of that amazing country. Incredible basilicas that rival European cathedrals for beauty and abundance, amazing forts: symbols of colonial control; covering acres. Chaotic roads that GPS systems can’t disentangle; lovely people. And heat.

Goa represents a fusion of the best of Portuguese Indian custom. The result delights: siestas, little concern with time.

‘Breakfast will be round 9.30, if the staff arrive on time.’

They rarely do. Does anyone care? No.

Alcohol: Indians love it anywhere, but in Goa it’s consumption in copious quantities is di rigueur, supplemented by evenings spent smoking marijuana. The same applies even in dry states such as Gujarat, where the excise police check your car as you cross into the state: depending on how much you pay them not to check under the towels and rugs on the car’s floor.

Enter Surat on the border between Gujarat and Maharashtra. Cross from Goa into Maharashtra. A white man in the car excites more interest and promises more income. But Surat? One of India’s ‘intelligent cities’: IT focus. A major world centre for diamond cutting. It is in Gujarat, but dispensation is granted: every second shop sells grog. It is a popular destination for Gujaratis.

Ahmedabad, along with Gujarat generally, has the highest percentage of Muslims and vegetarians in India. Its treasures: the amazing stepwells of Adalaj and Rani ki Vav, reminiscent of the cisterns of Istanbul, plus numerous ancient Islamic treasures including the Jama and the Sakhez Raza Mosques and palaces.

Evenings spent there allowed my hosts to open up. What surprised me was their antagonism towards what we Westerners sometimes see as the glories of the Raj. Far from the fantasy world of Kipling and foreshadowed by the darkness of E.M. Forster, as for example, in Passage to India, your Indian friends talk of massacres, racism and oppression.  

The truth about any country’s colonialism is not pretty. British rule was devastatingly oppressive in all of its colonies. In India, maybe because of the size and scope of the country, that oppression occurred on a massive scale. Over time, the scars of that violence may be exaggerated, but they remain to this day. Maybe memory reduces the less important and highlights the possibly more provocative.

Truth? Somewhere in between. Britain was the last foreign invader, but has left the freshest scars. The French and the Portuguese only managed a toe print, in Pondicherry and Goa. Even those toeholds were an excuse for colonial domination that caused human misery on vast scales. Colonial policies saw millions killed by direct action or simple but deliberate neglect.

And why? Estimates place England’s take from India at hundreds of trillions of pounds. The hidden cost — collateral damage? — was to the society. The cost of colonialism is in its socially destructive legacy.

 Think of Reginald Dyer. English textbooks paint him as a saviour. The Indians describe him as the Butcher of Amritsar. Which is true? It depends on your viewpoint. Following the massacre of Jallianwal Bag, he ordered his soldiers to gun down unarmed Indian men, women, and children. His reason? They had ‘committed a bad act in killing English people’ — which they did. He pronounced that revenge would be taken ‘upon you and upon your children.’ Therefore we will retaliate in kind. Colonial practice at its finest.

He created a memorial at the site where a British citizen was assaulted. If an Indian wanted to approach, he had to crawl on all fours, with his belly on the ground. Keep the natives in their proper place: crawling.

Kipling wrote that Dyer ‘did his duty as he saw it.’ Of course, this action had its critics in England (I use England in this chapter rather than Britain). Even Winston took issue with his excesses. Nonetheless, when Dyer returned home — having been relieved from his post — he was given a hero’s welcome.

And Churchill? What do his diaries show? Copy Dyer. The colonies needed to be kept crawling on their bellies. Churchill despised Gandhi. The Times of India, on 24 February 1931, quoted Churchill as saying that Gandhi was ‘a seditious … lawyer… 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.’ Churchill hated Indians, calling the a beastly people, with a beastly religion.

Gandhi? A saint? When I visited Gandhi’s ashram at Sabarmati in Ahmedabad, I left with mixed reactions. Here was the site from which the salt march started. It was from this ashram that the he formulated his peaceful revolt: a revolt that swept across India and ultimately forced out the Raj.

Here he lived in poverty. Did he really? You see his worldly possessions ostentatiously displayed in the ashram. Two small cupboards suffice. Then you go outside and gaze at the vast compound of the ashram, set in delightful gardens on the banks of the Sabarmati River. Gandhi’s dwelling is in the centre. Surrounding it are homes for the acolytes, amongst whose duties were to wait hand and foot on the great man.

Finance for this? It came from all people, including the wealthiest merchants of the city whose mansions adjoined the block. Do the math. It is easy to be poor when you ride on the rich.

His memory? A saint with a loin cloth. Churchill’s? A saint with a cigar. Both are heroes. All men have flaws. In Gandhi’s case, it was the pretence; the fact that behind the legend is a reality that suggests that he had access to the kind of support that the American presidential candidates receive from the masses, but more importantly, the wealthy. Gandhi survived on support.

Consider Churchill again. When four million people were starving in Bengal, he joked about it. The press said nothing.  Churchill saw this particular famine which occurred during World War II (while Indian troops were fighting for their colonial masters) as their own fault for ‘breeding like rabbits.’

Famines, usually as a result of late monsoons, were, and still are, regular in India. Before the Raj, local rulers responded effectively to relieve suffering caused. The Raj was different. What the Raj masters saw was declining taxation revenue. They did not call it tax: it was called tributes. Shades of the Middle Ages.

To be fair, England had other things on its mind during the war. However, a cursory analysis of previous famines going back through the centuries of occupation, show that the powers, starting with the East India Company and their masters who continued their economic exploitation, showed little empathy for the millions who suffered, and, indeed, the millions who died.

Winston, chomping on his cigar, reacted to a message from India advising of the disaster of the famine, responded with: ‘Then why hasn’t Gandhi died yet?’

In modern India, more and more are crying out against the bastardry of the Raj — that the prosperity and riches of England was built on exploitation of the East in general and India in particular. No one should be too lowly to matter. Even in a land where caste systems delineate and determine fairness, there is a rising resentment and awareness of what the history books don’t tell you.

History has been kind to both Churchill and Gandhi. Both made sure their own versions survived. Churchill made history, but he wrote it in his own likeness. So did Gandhi. It is up to modern day India and its leaders and people, to follow Santayana’s maxim: He who ignores history, is doomed to repeat it.

Take one more example: the over one billion pound Koh-i-Noor diamond? Queen Victoria’s crown contain it. India wants it back. They stole it back from the Persians, but that is beside the point.

‘Give it back to us.’

I thank my friends in India for opening my eyes. As an Australian, I share the shame of our own invasion of my island country. I share the uncomfortable knowledge that we were not settlers; we were invaders. We too massacred our Aboriginal people. What did our white forebears steal from our country? The life and respect of and for the people we killed.

If only history had been different. It wasn’t. Do we live with that realisation, or do we learn from it?  Do we ignore it, or do we make amends? That’s up to you.

There are positives. I can think of three: cricket, English itself and cricket.

1.       India is cricket mad, and they regularly beat the English.

2.       Indian literature is world class. A few names? V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, R. K. Narayan, Anita Desai: the list goes on and on. People love making fun of Indian accents, particularly those who deal with call centres. The truth is that one thing the English did leave was a vibrant society whose grasp of the language that seeks to inspire most of the world exceeds that of the teachers.

3.       See 1.

So please pass me another chapatti as I relax on Vagator Beach, sip a Kingfisher beer, watch others puff on a joint and think: I could live here.