The contemporary irrelevance of a small island where the sun never set

I blog in the English language, while living in what was once a colony of Britain, after having immigrated from a country that was also a British colony.  All thanks to Britain having colonized huge territories.

It boggles my mind how Britain managed to achieve all these and more from the tiny outpost it is in the northern seas.

It is not merely the conquering of lands along, which, I still have a tough time believing was possible at all.  I mean, think about it.  From far, far away, crossing the waters, and then ruling over countries with populations  large enough to have easily overrun the rulers!  Yes, we can talk forever about the advantage of guns over swords, and the cunning divide-and-conquer approach, and whatever else.  But, at some point we have to assemble that jigsaw puzzle and wonder how that ever happened, yes?

It is not merely the conquering, and ruling over, distant lands.  Britain's empire achieved way more than that.  It has made millions like me think in the English language.  Thinking in a language has profound consequences:

‘It is hard to realize,’ Coomaraswamy writes in The Dance of Shiva, ‘how completely the continuity of Indian life has been severed. A single generation of English education suffices to break the threads of tradition and to create a nondescript and superficial being deprived of all roots—a sort of intellectual pariah who does not belong to the East or the West.’

If you cannot imagine the sheer geographic aspect of this, look up in a world map the locations of the UK and Sri Lanka, which was home to Coomaraswamy.  Think about a world before modern ships and planes and emails and telephones.  Britain's rule forever changed the histories of the lands colonized in the name of the crown.  That historical continuity was gone. For eternity. 

When I visit India, there is far less Tamil literature anymore when compared to my growing up years.  When the Tamil nativists worry that Tamil is slowly dying, their concerns are not baseless.  Students there seem to be a lot more familiar with the British and American histories, for instance, than about the Sangam literature or even the Chola Empire.

Now, look at the same world from the British perspective.  Since the end of the Second World War, Britain's influence on the rest of the world has been in a rapid decline.  The sun, which once never set in the empire, now rarely shines.  The colonies in the past wondered whatever happened to their power and influence; that same set of questions preoccupies their erstwhile masters.

Thus, I bet it hurt their sentiments a lot when Vladimir Putin's aide brushed aside the UK with a single statement about Britain's irrelevance in the ongoing Syrian drama:

“a small island … no one pays any attention to them”

The old teenage emotions on colonialism and anti-Britain have never gone away inside me and, hence, I was delighted with that statement.  I wish somebody a lot more acceptable had uttered that and not one of the minions of the maniacal Putin.

The Telegraph reminds us that this is merely the latest in a rich tradition of insults directed at Britain, including this one that I particularly like for the obvious reason:

A demon took a monkey to wife – the result by the Grace of God was the English.
Indian saying 

Thinking about Britain along these lines reminded me of the tshirt I bought two years ago when I was in Chennai.  The young entrepreneur was impressed with my fondness for the Tamil language despite my life that is anything but that of a traditional Tamil.  We continued to chat even after I bought the tshirt about which I have blogged before.  I told him about the "Veera Vanchi" stories that I grew up with.  As he got a sense of how much I hated the fact that the lands became somebody else's colony, and how history was disrupted, he brought out another tshirt and said, "this is the last piece I have, and I didn't want to sell it.  But, I think you will like it."

I bought that thsirt too. 

That young fellow's website for the tshirt advertising and sales exists no more.  I bet his business failed because there is no interest even among Tamils in Tamil Nadu for tshirts with Tamil words, and even Tamils in Tamil Nadu prefer English words and sentences instead on their tshirts--the very social problem that the entrepreneur wanted to address via his tshirts.

That is one mighty legacy for a small island that no one pays attention to.

ps: I located this translation of the verse in the tshirt ... sounds good enough to me

Like the men,
who failed to think beyond the next meal;
who find pleasure, in the faults of the rest;
whose souls toil in constant despair - mind
tangled in desparation and agony;
who wish ills to their neighbour;
who subject themselves to luck's mischief;
who live burdened with miseries,
and passed life as a burden
Born human,
did you wonder, if like those men,
I would also fall for fate's follies?