Pull down a few statues

Years ago, I was absolutely delighted with a statue that my grandma's town had installed in the town's center.  A statue of Vanchi.  The freedom fighter from the village who shot dead the British administrator for that region.  As I noted in this post a while ago, "The old teenage emotions on colonialism and anti-Britain have never gone away inside me."

Of course, the Raj ended more than seven decades ago.  But, the scars are always there.  Our lives today are not independent of the historical events. In fact, in many instances, our lives today are very much a result of historical events.  The contemporary lives of Native Americans and African-Americans today, or the lives of the Dalit, are continuations of an unbearable past, how much ever some might want to pretend, or even believe, that looking back does not do any good.

Even universities are not exempt from this.  The older the university, more the skeletons that it most likely has in its closet. Some, like Georgetown, have systematically gone about atoning for the past and are trying to make things right--symbolically, because the literal is impossible.

In the colonial countries, things are barely beginning.  I came across an essay from 2016, by Amia Srinivasan.  The last name is a dead giveaway--from my part of the old country.  But, Amia Srinivasan is not from the old country--she has origins back there.  She is a philosopher playing at the topmost tiers:

I am an associate professor of philosophy at St John’s College, Oxford. From January 2020 I will be the Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at All Souls College, Oxford. Previously I was a lecturer in philosophy at University College London.

She earned her BA at Yale.  Yep, that Yale!  In 2007.  Supposing that she were a traditional student means that now as a 34-year old, Srinivasan will be a chair-professor at Oxford. Holy shit!

Now, Oxford is in the old colonial capital.  Which means that there is plenty that they need to apologize for and make amends.  One of them is a highly visible reminder--a statue of Cecil Rhodes, who is not new to this blog.  Amia Srinivasan's essay from three years ago was about Oxford's controversial decision to retain the statue despite the student protests.

A big time philosopher who also writes for publications that even us non-philosophers can read and understand.  We need more like her.  She says:

Scholarly, specialist work is important, and we should defend it fiercely, not just in philosophy, but in all disciplines. And a lot of what goes under the name of “public” philosophy is simplistic and condescending. What we need isn't so much more philosophy that tries to speak to a non-philosophical audience, as more philosophy that comes from a place of engagement with the non-philosophical world.

Yes, I too hate that condescending tone that academics take when they climb down from their ivory towers in order to tell the masses what they think. Good for her. And good for us too.

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?