The sheer brutality of colonialism

In my seminar on Politics and Literature of Postcolonial Africa, we have been discussing Aime Cesaire’s classic Discourse on Colonialism. For Cesaire (and several other radical Black intellectuals like W. E. B. DuBois), the emergence of fascism in Europe was not an anomaly, not an exceptional moment in European history.

Popular discussions, withing academia and without, encourage us to view the mass slaughter of millions of Jews under Nazi rule as an abnormality, an inexplicable deviation, in the onward march of European cultures and societies towards Progress, Reason and Enlightenment. So students are taught, very early on, to refer to “the Holocaust” in the singular, capitalizing the word to render it as a proper noun.

Cesaire argues, instead, that to view the emergence of Nazism in this light is to erase from historical memory the sheer brutality of colonial wars of conquest that have been the defining feature of European history in the modern era. In a brilliant passage (a favorite of mine), he demolishes the notion that European Nazism was an anomaly or deviation, and insists that we recognize the continuity, in cultural if not in political and economic terms, between European colonialism abroad and the Nazi atrocities at home.

I’ve been waiting a long time to quote this passage in full somewhere, and here’s my opportunity, finally. Cesaire writes:

First we must study how colonization works to decivilize the colonizer, to brutalize him in the true sense of the word, to degrade him, to awaken him to buried instincts, to covetousness, violence, race hatred, and moral relativism; and we must show that each time a head is cut off or an eye put out in Vietnam and in France they accept the fact, each time a little girl is raped and in France they accept the fact, each time a Madagascan is tortured and in France they accept the fact, civilization acquires another dead weight, a universal regression takes place, a gangrene sets in, a centre of infection begins to spread; and that at the end of all these treaties that have been violated, all these lies that have been propagated, all these punitive expeditions that have been tolerated, all these prisoners who have been tied up and “interrogated”, all these patriots who have been tortured, at the end of all the racial pride that has been encouraged, all the boastfulness that has been displayed, a poison has been distilled into the veins of Europe and, slowly but sulrey, the continent proceeds toward savagery.

And then one fine day the bourgeoisie is awakened by a terrific boomerang effect: the gestapos are busy, the prisons fill up, the torturers standing around the racks invent, refine, discuss.

People are surprised, they become indignant. They say: “How strange! But never mind – it’s Nazism, it will pass!” And they wait, and they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples; that they have cultivated that Nazism, that they are responsible for it, and that before engulfing the whole edifice of Western, Christian civilization in its reddened waters, it oozes, seeps and trickles from every crack.

The relevance of Cesaire today is not hard to understand. Think Abu Ghraib. Think Guantanamo. Think of the U.S. soldiers who have recently been accused of killing Afghan civilians “for sport.” Think of the manner in which a viciously racist campaign against Muslims and against Islam has led, in recent months, to mosques being vandalized and attacked, Muslims being physically assaulted, and Muslims as a group being blamed for the bombing of the World Trade Center.

In my seminar discussions, I often find that my students can accept all of this as true, as real, and applaud Cesaire’s polemical indictment of European imperialist culture, but balk at the political conclusions that this critique leads to. In particular, while they might learn to love Cesaire, they find the writings of Cesaire’s most famous student, Frantz Fanon, difficult to swallow, especially when they find him condoning, and indeed glorifying, violent, armed resistance to colonial rule.

One has to be reminded, time and again, of the utter savagery of imperialist domination and conquest. Absent this, it becomes difficult to comprehend the violence that resistance movements typically employ.

In this context, check out the latest blog post from ScarletGuju, a close friend and comrade of mine who is currently researching the Indian struggle for independence from British colonialism. If you ever had any doubts about the brutality of colonialism, take a look at this post, and the picture that accompanies it.

And then ask yourself what would you do if an occupying power brutalized your families, your friends, your neighbors in this manner, all for the crime of demanding the very liberty and progress that the occupiers held up as their “ideals.”

Related Articles

• Colonialism and the ‘scramble for Africa’ (cnn.com)

Faiz on Freedom

This one comes from Pranav Jani over at ScarletGuju. He writes:

“Subh-e Azad” (“Dawn of Freedom”) by the brilliant Urdu Marxist poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, best expresses to me the sense of tragedy and possibility of 1947 for ordinary people caught in the worldwind of historical events: an independence brokered through ethnic cleansing, refugee crisis, communalism, rape, and horrors of partition.

An excellent counterpoint–ideologically and symbolically–to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s famous “Tryst With Destiny” speech, “Subh-e Azad” reminds us, on this 60th anniversary of Indian/Pakistani independence, that while we all must keep seeking the “dawn of freedom,” today’s South Asian dawn for nuclear testers and global corporations, for car-owners and the wealthy with their bloated bank accounts while farmers commit suicides and poverty rates rise–this is not really what freedom was supposed to be about.
But pay attention to the last line: this is not just about despair…

“Dawn of Freedom” (August 1947)

–Faiz Ahmed Faiz, translated from the Urdu by Agha Shahid Ali

These tarnished rays, this night-smudged light–

This is not that Dawn for which, ravished with freedom,

we had set out in sheer longing,

so sure that somewhere in its desert the sky harbored

a final haven for the stars, and we would find it.
We had no doubt that night’s vagrant wave would stray towards the shore

that the heart rocked with sorrow would at last reach its port.

 

Friends, our blood shaped its own mysterious roads.

When hands tugged at our sleeves, enticing us to stay,

and from wonderous chambers Sirens cried out

with their beguiling arms, with their bare bodies,

our eyes remained fixed on that beckoning dawn,

forever vivid in her muslins of transparent light.

Our blood was young–what could hold us back?

 

Now listen to the terrible rampant lie:

Light has forever been severed from the Dark;

our feet, it is heard, are now one with their goal.

See our leaders polish their manner clean of our suffering:

Indeed, we must confess only to bliss;

we must surrender any utterance for the Beloved–all yearning is outlawed.

But the heart, the eye, the yet deeper heart–

Still ablaze for the Beloved, their turmoil shines.

In the lantern by the road the flame is stalled for news:

Did the morning breeze ever come? Where has it gone?

Night weighs us down; it still weighs us down.

 

Friends, come away from this false light.

Come, we must search for that promised Dawn.

Random thoughts on 60 years of independence

Whose Nation? Whose Independence?

What, to the dalit, is the 15th of August? What, to the adivasis, have these sixty years brought? What, to working-class men and women, do today’s celebrations mean?

In 1841, the anti-slavery crusader and abolitionist Frederick Douglass asked of his white American audience, “What, to the Negro, is the Fourth of July?” In a moving section of his speech, he speaks of slavery as a phenomenon that mocks the very notion of independence.

Fellow-citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them…. To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is American slavery. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave’s point of view…. I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery–the great sin and shame of America! … I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just.

Read through the eyes of India’s millions of impoverished citizens, Douglass’ words ring true in contemporary India as they did in pre-Civil War America.

Thinking about justice

This is not to say that the Indian elites are totally oblivious to the plight of the oppressed and the downtrodden. In fact, a public debate has been raging for years now about affirmative action, reservations and set-asides, quotas in hiring, and other remedial measures that the state might undertake in order to help redress centuries of discrimination.

The fact is, the presence of inequality, oppression and poverty on such a vast scale (see my previous post, “India Shining, indeed“) is an embarrassment for a ruling class that sees itself as competing on the world stage for status and prestige as a global power. So there has to be some attempt at solving these problems, right? Right.

Enter the Indian think tank.

Indicus Analytics, which calls itself “India’s leading economics research firm,” conducted a study titled “Peoples’ Expectations from the State in the Context of a Globalizing Indian Economy” for the National Foundation for India (NFI). A pdf file of the full report can be found here. The study was aimed at understanding what people expect of the government, particularly in relation to “underprivileged” sections of society. In other words, whether Indians favor government involvement in aiding dalits, so-called “Other Backward Classes” (OBCs), and other oppressed communities.

The study seems to have been conducted quite well. It’s survey sample size, and its attendant methodology seem, to my untrained eye, to be quite sound. The results of the study were fairly unambiguous. One of its major findings was that, regardless of class or caste,

majorities of the respondents are sympathetic towards the underprivileged sections of the society and favor the need for special schemes for their development. Majority of them suggest government jobs for them. Those in high-income group believe better access to health and education service is also important for their overall development. Only about 21.71 percent of respondents consider that the government should only focus on better opportunities for all. (p. 11)

So it appears that most Indians believe that oppressed castes, dalits, and other marginalized communities ought to receive special government assistance. Affirmative action (reservation) policies, one might argue, would be welcomed by a broad spectrum of Indian society.

But we know that the loudest voices are those of people who oppose quotas and reservations. Why is this so?

Well, take a look at what the head of Indicus Analytics, one Laveesh Bhandari, has to say about the issue in a recent op-ed piece in the Indian Express. Titled “Social Justice Without PhDs,” the article lauds a recent Supreme Court ruling that stayed the implementation of quotas for OBCs in higher education. The government wanted to set aside 27 percent of seats in government-funded institutions, including the prestigious IITs and IIMs, for OBCs.

Now, there is no doubt a lot of political opportunism involved in the debate over quotas–the ruling UPA government is hardly a champion of the poor and the oppressed. Bhandari, however, critiques the quota proposals as unfeasible and impracticable. The crux of his “argument” is:

It is quite apparent to anyone who has gone to an Indian university that there is a lack of infrastructure, there is a lack of proper management, and there is a lack of quality teaching and teachers. None of these can be addressed within a year or two.

Why not? The prosperous Indian economy is awash in freshly laundered money–why not tap into some of that and make a real turnaround in infrastructure so as to be able to provide better educational opportunities for all?

Bhandari then goes on to make the same bland assessment of the state of teaching in India. There aren’t enough quality teachers and professors, he tells us, and therefore it is unrealistic to try to increase the number of seats in higher education. He briefly considers the possibility of hiring teachers from abroad, like China has done, and dismisses this too as unrealistic.

Having dismissed all possible means of implementing quotas as “unrealistic,” what does Bhandari offer as a solution to the lack of advancement of “OBCs”?

The OBCs (and all of Indian youth) would benefit more if our politicians devoted their highly innovative minds to figure out how we could ensure vocational and skill-based training for all.

In other words, keep the elite institutions as bastions of the … well, elite. Then, provide “skill-based” training to the OBCs so as to feed the growing labor demands of a growing economy. Good, skilled cheap labor then becomes available to … the elites. Who needs quotas and reservations?

To hear Bhandari pontificate about achieving “Social Justice Without PhDs,” when he himself has a Ph.D. from Boston University, is quite amusing.

Thus the head of a firm that conducts a survey that shows widespread support for government action to boost the opportunities for OBCs writes an article that essentially goes against the spirit of that study! Astounding, isn’t it!

(The NFI, it turns out, is a “grant-making and fundraising organization” that funds NGOs in India, and is in turn funded by, among others, the ubiquitous Ford Foundation (with its shady history of collaboration with the CIA), European Christian aid missions like the Interchurch Organization for Development Cooperation (ICCO), and the American India Foundation, whose honorary president is none other than–you guessed it–Bill Clinton.)

Thinking of Kashmir

A nation that oppresses another can never be free. This is the essence of Marx’s argument about national oppression.

What does it mean to celebrate the “independence” of one’s nation, while at the same time denying another people their right to self-determination? A recent poll showed that 87% of the people of Srinagar continue to demand independence from both India and Pakistan.* Granted, Srinagar is not Kashmir, and still less is it representative of the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir. But the sheer unwillingness of Indians to even consider an independent Kashmir shows that their own conception of national independence is hollow, shallow, and exclusivist. Our independence is a good thing, but they can never be free: Kashmir is, and must remain, a part of India. Isn’t that what the British thought about “their” India?

So what is the meaning of Independence Day to Kashmiris, who have lost some 80,000 lives while fighting for self-determination?

On this “glorious” independence day, why not take a look at what one Kashmiri has to say about his own struggle for independence–check out my January, 2004, interview with Yasin Malik.

Thinking of Partition

Good fences make good neighbors, wrote Robert Frost. He certainly didn’t have the Indian subcontinent in mind.

Bring up the issue of partition in a discussion about Indian/Pakistani Independence Day celebrations, and you will be roundly rebuked. “We must look forward, not backward,” you will be told. But the very idea of an independent “India” and an independent “Pakistan” is inconceivable without reference to the holocaust that was Partition.

A passage from Amitav Ghosh‘s novel, The Shadow Lines expresses this paradox. In it, the protagonist marvels at the fact that national boundaries have had such a strong hold on people’s imaginations. Looking at a map, he is amazed that

there had really been a time, not so long ago, when people, sensible people, of good intention, had thought that all maps were the same, that there was special enchantment in lines; I had to remind myself that they were not to be blamed for believing that there was something admirable in moving violence to the border and dealing with it through science and factories, for that was the pattern of the world. They had drawn their borders … hoping perhaps that once they had etched their border upon the map, the two bits of land would sail away from each other like the shifting tectonic plates of the prehistoric Gondwanaland. What would they think, I wondered, when the realized that they had created not a separation, but a yet-undiscovered irony … the simple fact that there had never been a moment in the four-thousand-year-old history of that map, when the places we know as Dhaka and Calcutta were more closely bound to each other than after they had drawn their lines….

——————–

*Thanks to Naveen for drawing my attention to this poll.

Thanks also to Desi Italiana‘s intrepid questioning of nationalism for inspiring this post.