[FairfieldLife] The Fall of New Orleans - N.S.Rajaram

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 03:38:40 -0700

 
                                                                          
 
 
 
                        
                            Fall of New Orleans
                     by  N.S. Rajaram
 
The American hegemony today rests on its image as a nation built on freedom and equality. New Orleans has shattered this illusion 
 
LIKE THE Fall of Singapore in 1942, the symbolic significance of the destruction of New Orleans may be greater than the physical damage.

In February 1942, Singapore, called by the British the Gibraltar of the East, the Impregnable Fortress and various other equally resounding names, fell to a Japanese army less than one-third the defending force. Though not recognised at the time, it signalled the dissolution of the British Empire, and eventually the end of European imperialism itself.
 
In September 2005, the hurricane Katrina destroyed the port city of New Orleans and exposed the seamy side of American society. Could this signal the end of American hegemony?
 
The Fall of Singapore signalled the end of the British Empire; and in 1954, the French surrender to Ho-Chi-Min's army at Dien Bien Phu put an end to France's imperial pretensions.

Symbolic meaning

Superficially, there is no comparison between the military defeats of Singapore and Dien Bien Phu and the natural disaster that levelled New Orleans. But in their symbolic meaning, in the shattering of the twin illusions of might and superiority, they bear a striking similarity.

Indian historians have rarely given the Fall of Singapore the importance that it merits or seen its significance. British historians however have been quite forthright. In his book Singapore, the battle that changed the world James Leasor wrote:

"Dazed by the incredible superiority of the Japanese, the defenders' will to win had withered. ... The psychological damage was even greater than the military defeat — and this had been grotesque enough. ...Under the lowering Singapore sky lit by the funeral pyres of the British Empire ... a door closed on centuries of white supremacy..."

The important lesson is the shattering of an illusion — the notion of white superiority over non-whites — that made both the rulers and the ruled believe that Europeans were natural rulers. Kipling called it the "White Man's Burden."

It was this sense of moral superiority as much as military might and administrative efficiency that sustained these empires. Whether the British or the French brought better governance than what existed before is beside the point. Singapore in 1942 and Dien Bien Phu in 1954 shattered that illusion.

More than military defeats, it was the behaviour of Europeans, especially of the British, in the face of the collapse that exposed them as ordinary mortals rather than superior beings born to rule. This was vividly brought home to me during a recent visit to Southeast Asia where I met some war veterans who had served with my father in Malaya.

I was repeatedly told that when the Japanese attacked, "the British ran away." None of them remembered the British fighting the Japanese, only running away. As they remember it, the British then sent Gurkhas, Sikhs, Marathas and other Indians to fight the Japanese. It is their firm belief that the British left India because the victorious Indian soldiers returned to India and the British did not want to fight them. The White Man's Burden could no longer protect them.

Social breakdown

In New Orleans, what shocked the world, especially Asians, was not so much the destruction, but the breakdown of civil society that followed. The looting, the rapes and the banditry, with areas of New Orleans descending into total anarchy may have shattered the American image as much as Singapore shattered Britain's. There were frequent comparisons with the Asian tsunami and the Mumbai flood, which saw nature's fury and destruction but no social breakdown.
 
The American hegemony today rests on its image as a nation built on freedom and equality, which is propagated as also the world's ideal. New Orleans has shattered this illusion. New Orleans will be rebuilt, just as Singapore has been rebuilt into a glittering city. Can America rebuild its moral edifice also — something the British could not do?

 
                
 

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