The same kind of collective amnesia is displayed by caste Hindus towards
the Dalits. How many Churchill's lurk among the Hindu pantheon, I wonder?
Please look at this wonderfully designed timeline on Black History at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/blackhistorymonth
The corresponding Dalit one would have to be at least 10 times longer, since
they have been enslaved for that much longer.
- Jogesh
P.S. Hindu apologists needn't reply. Nor need myopic Gandhi-bashers.
Churchill - the truthBlack history month starts tomorrow, but what we really
need is white history month to dispel all the myths
-
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/garyyounge>
-
- Gary Younge <http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/garyyounge>
- The Guardian <http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian>,
- Monday September 30 2002
-
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/accessibility>
Winston Churchill's finest hour may, yet again, be upon us. More than 50
years after he won the war and lost the election, Churchill is the man of
the moment. On the night of September 11 his biography was on the bedside
table of the then New York mayor, Rudolph Giuliani; now his bust sits on the
Oval office desk of George Bush. In May his name topped a BBC poll of the
100 greatest Britons. And last week, the televised portrayal of his prewar
years, Gathering Storm, won three Emmys.
There is a certain irony in the timing of this transatlantic adulation. As
Tony Blair and Bush trot the globe warning of the evils of chemical weapons,
Churchill hardly stands out as a role model. As president of the air council
in 1919, he wrote: "I do not understand the squeamishness about the use of
gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisonous gas against uncivilised
tribes." A few years later mustard gas was used against the Kurds. Nor did
his distaste for the "uncivilised" stop there. He branded Gandhi "a
half-naked fakir" who "ought to be laid, bound hand and foot, at the gates
of Delhi and then trampled on by an enormous elephant with the new viceroy
seated on its back".
True, despite these flaws Churchill led his nation to victory in war. But
then so did Stalin and it is unlikely Russians would put him at the top of
their 100 greatest. That Churchill remains so revered tells us more about
Britain than it does about him.
We live in a multi-racial nation which champions a mono-racial history. It
puts Sir Henry Havelock, who distinguished himself by leading the massacre
of thousands of Indians, in Trafalgar Square, and it shamelessly displays
its colonial booty.
So as black history month begins tomorrow we should turn the tables. October
is when black people relate the truth about our past so we might better
understand the present and, it is hoped, navigate a better future. It aims
to redress the imbalance in whose stories are told and how. Thirty-one days
may be insufficient, but the purpose is important: it gives us the chance to
hear narratives that have been forgotten, hidden, distorted or mislaid. It
is time to ask whether white people would not benefit from doing the same
for the other 11 months of the year. White people are in desperate need of
becoming better-acquainted with their own history.
The very notion of black and white history is, of course, both a theoretical
nonsense and a practical necessity. There is no scientific or biological
basis for race. It is a construct to explain the gruesome reality that
racism built. So long as there is discrimination against races, we will also
need to discriminate between them. Yet while blackness is relentlessly
examined, whiteness is eternally presumed.
Black history is not a sub-genre of history. It is not an isolated part of
the past with sole relevance to black people. Logic suggests, you cannot
have black history without white history. There would be no Nelson Mandela,
as we know him, without the architect of apartheid, Hendrik Verwoerd; nor
would we have known of Rosa Parks had it not been for Mr Blake, the white
driver who refused to let her sit at the front of the bus.
Nonetheless, given the imbalance of whose stories are told, the demand for
white history months might appear odd. The trouble is not that we do not
hear enough about white history, but that what masquerades as history is
more akin to mythology. White people, like black people, need access to a
past that is accurate, honest and inclusive. We do not need more white
history; we need it better told.
The object here is not individual guilt - there are therapists for that -
but collective responsibility. Slavery, colonialism and empire - propelled
by economic expansion and justified by white supremacy - inform much of what
Britain is today. The wealth they created funded everything from industry to
commerce and roads to railways in Britain. The poverty they engendered
contributed to everything from famine to war and disease to debt elsewhere.
To deny this is just one more version of white flight - a dash from the
inconveniences bequeathed by inequality. "I am born with a past and to try
to cut myself off from that past is to deform my present relationships,"
writes Alasdair MacIntyre in his book, After Virtue. "The possession of an
historical identity and the possession of a social identity coincide." This
is not just true of race but of gender, nationality and religion as well.
Arguably, one of the principal beneficiaries of historical honesty would be
the Irish.
So it does not mean that white history is racist history. A white history
month would include many a progressive voice. Anti-slavery campaigner
William Wilberforce, anti-apartheid leader Trevor Huddleston, and Rhaune
Laslett, who was instrumental in organising the Notting Hill Carnival, would
be on the syllabus, as would the story of the Lancashire cotton workers in
1862, who supported the blockade of the southern states during the civil war
to show their "detestation" at the attempt "to organise a nation having
slavery as its basis".
But in place of this reckoning we have a national psyche that is both
selective in its memory and particular in its perspective. "When it comes to
empire there are several types of ignorance," says Katharine Prior, the
historical adviser of the new British Empire and Commonwealth Museum opening
in Bristol on October 25. "There are some who are not aware of the different
dimensions of the history of colonialism and others who know only a version.
It's a mix of received opinions and vast gaps."
The problem with these "gaps" is not only that they omit historical truths,
but that they distort current realities. The ignorance goes all the way to
the top. Only this could explain a home secretary who calls on immigrants to
speak the local language at home and integrate here when the British
tradition was to do exactly the opposite in the empire. Or the Labour
minister Jeff Rooker, who refers to asylum seekers as "young, single men who
have deserted their families for money", when he could just as easily be
talking about the staff at the East India Company. The myopia reaches all
over the world. Britain once ruled Palestine, Zimbabwe, India, Pakistan, Sri
Lanka, Sudan and Iraq - to name but a few - where conflicts rage that are
directly related to their colonial legacy. But to look at our foreign policy
you wouldn't know it.
Black Britons know it because we experienced it first hand. It is those
white Britons who have either forgotten or never knew, or who prefer a
version edited beyond both comprehension and credibility, who need to be
taught. The first white history lesson would start with a quote from a
prominent politician. "This small island [is] dependent for our daily bread
on our trade and imperial connections. Cut this away and at least a third of
our population must vanish speedily from the face of the earth." His name?
Winston Churchill.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
Jogesh
Peena haraam hai na pilana haraam hai
peenay ke baad hosh mein aana haraam hai
