New Empire Builders – Neo-Cons Sneaking In

This North-South global compact … would consign … despotisms to the obscurity which the old “salt empires” of the Tortuga and Turks islands, critical to … Royal Navy, were reduced once we had overcome our saline dependency. Posted by Shri Brendan Simms (Reader in the History of International Relations at the Centre of International Studies at the University of Cambridge)

Meet The Neo-Cons

The Social Affairs Unit is a what is called these days a neo-con think tank. Unfortunately, it is neither neo nor about thought – but is definitely a con.

And the blog of one of their stars is published at their site. Shri Brendan Simms, a reader in History, I am sure, knows that what he is saying is wrong.

In this post, (linked above) Simms is proposing certain actions that “would consign the Middle Eastern despotisms to the obscurity which the old “salt empires” of the Tortuga and Turks islands, critical to the eighteenth-century Royal Navy, were reduced once we had overcome our saline dependency.”

Oil Prices – Western Democracies Are Being Held To Ransom

Simms, (like most neo-cons), has various problems in life. He starts with his “western capitalist democracies find themselves held to ransom.” Mr.Simms, how many of your glorious Western democracies, have elected a single Black head of state in the last 100 years? Or a Muslim head of State? America, your epitome of a Western democracy, is struggling to nominate a woman Presidential candidate after 200 years of Republican democracy? Or am I being naive in raising these questions?

Coming to the ransom bit, is Simmie-boy getting this feeling because of the price that the Middle East is charging for oil. Simms Dearie, I know the feeling, believe me! We Indians have been through that. It is the similar feeling that we in India, (and developing countries) used to get while negotiating for food purchases (called aid) after the Bengal Famine and while rebuilding collapsed agriculture economies in post colonial India.

All that OPEC wants is a market driven price. Any problems, Simmie? Why does the West not explore and drill for oil along their huge off shore areas and kill their dependence on oil. If the Oil producers are wary of the dollar price due to depreciating dollar, who can you blame.

If the West led by ‘helicopter Ben’ wants to print more dollars, who will pay the price ? The rest of this gullible world? Does Simms think, that oil rich countries will ship out limited oil resources with the same speed that Bernanke prints money – or helicopter drop dollars?

The Saudi Wealth

Simms feels bad that the Saudis “could buy General Motors with just six days of production.” At least, in this scenario, the Saudis are buying US companies with US currency as per the valuation done by US stock markets. It is not based on slave labour, which is what the British operated in the Turks and Tortugas – in the Caribbean.

Millions of captured Black Africans toiled (and died) in the Caribbean, to create wealth and luxury for Britain – the comfort of which he now uses to “consign the Middle Eastern despotisms to the obscurity … of Tortuga and Turks islands, were reduced once we had overcome our … dependency”

What Were The Turks & Caicos Islands

These were slave islands – and part of the Caribbean group of islands which were used by the British Navy to run their slave colonies. To call these ‘despotisms’ is right – but these were British slave despotisms.

The ’salt colonies’ are not as well known as the ’sugar colonies’ – Haiti, Cuba, Demerra, Trinidad and other West Indian Islands, and the millions of slaves that were imported and subsequently died. Similarly, millions of local Native American populations were wiped out. And of course, once their usefulness, was over, the European powers walked away.

Of course, some of these islands have become colonies, of the USA, Britain and the people there continue to serve the interests of these Western nations. Haiti, Cuba, Granada have been made an example of by Britain and USA, for trying to make a country of themselves. A lot of such places would be quite happy without the British attention they received – and subsequent ruin that they faced.

Privateers, slave traders and pirates were licensed to operate from these islands, by the British Government to loot – and kill.

Come To The Middle East Despots

After the WW1, the victorious allies carved up the entire Ottoman Empire – which stretched from the Middle East to Central Asia to the Eastern Europe.

Out of the Ottaman Empire, Iraq was carved up and King Faysal was put on the throne. A British amatuer Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell made the selection of the King Of Iraq. This new King did not even know his kingdom – and he was taken around by his new makers. Similarly, an amateur like TE Lawrence (never mind the propaganda) was used to determine the fate of the Middle East.

WW1 resulted in the Balfour Declaration, which promised a Jewish homeland, to be carved out of the Ottaman Empire. Saudi Arabia was similarly made up.

By 1916, Britain, France and Russia had signed the secretive Sykes-Picot Pact – a framework for the division of the Ottoman Empire after the future defeat of the Turks. While the WW1 was going on, a civil war broke out in Russia. Kerensky, a member of the moderate Labor party, Lenin, Trotsky et al of the Bolshevik Party, overthrew the Tsar and assumed power in February 1917.

Till 1923, the Russian Civil War continued, to the defeat of Kerensky and his White Army in 1923. Kerensky wished to continue war alongside Britain and France. Lenin broke ranks, and in October 1917, the Russian-Communists started negotiations for a peace treaty with Germany. In 1918 the Treaty Of Brest Litovsk followed. After the end of WW1, Britain and France did not honor Russia’s claim under the Sykes Picot Pact. Russians retaliated and were actively involved in destabilizing the Middle East for the next 50 years, by playing of one Middle East Country against another.

Thus the entire Middle East was put on shaky political ground. Exploitative commercial contracts favoring Anglo Saxon bloc of countries were signed with these puppet governments – and the rest of the story is being played out for the last 90 years. Hobbyists decided fates of million of people.

So Mr.Simms, these Middle Eastern despots, are a creation of Western Foreign Policy - of which you claim a College Readership.

Western Investments

“West invest blood and treasure to make the Middle East a better place” out of the milk of human kindness Mr.Simms? All investments that the west has made is by the loot from Canada, Australia, Africa – and of course, India. Out of magnamity, if we call old accounts quits, current Western investments have been made for reasons of commercial self interest. Sell your Western assets, Mr.Simms, if they are not profitable enough. Possibly, it is equivalent to one hours oil production for the Saudis – and they will buy you guys out.

Regarding the blood in the Middle East, it is the poor Arabs, Palestinians, Iraqis, Kurds, Afghans, Pakistanis who are spilling it. Western blood (whatever little) is being spilt for brazen extortion. The Middle East has become a quagmire after the West decided to intervene.

Saudi foreign policy – Export of extremist Islamist ideology

And what is the foreign policy of the West Mr.Simms. Instability in Africa, Middle East. Every terror hotspot is a creation of the West – and specifically, America. And amongst others, we in India, pay a price for this. When you demonise Islam, they pay a price.

Partnerships With The West?

What partnerships are you talking about, Mr.Simms?

The kind that you has with the Turks and Tortugas? The kind that you had when the West put incompetent Emirs and Shaikhs on the various thrones of the Middle East – and now want to ‘consign to obscurity.’ After they helped you to weaken your Cold War enemy. After they have given you 60 years of luxury – with cheap oil.

Why Wont You Accept Criticism

Now these are the points that I made on your blog, Mr. Simms – 2 weeks ago. Why the hesitation in publishing those comments.

Run you can, Simmie boy, but at least, don’t hide.

The Great Unease

Global consumer optimism surveys routinely show anxiety, unease, dread in Europe and USA. This sense of unease should be absent considering the prosperity levels, the best health-care systems, a welfare state, guaranteed unemployment benefits, their technology, their currency and their democracy.

The Indians and Chinese routinely are more optimistic – which should not happen considering the low income levels. Fancy theory apart, to my mind, it is the ’sword fatigue’ in response to constant exposure by Western Governments (to which they are exposed) which causes this low optimism.

Medieval – Renaissance Europe

16th century Europe – specifically, Spain and Portugal. The last of the Moors had been driven out of Spain. The Christian standard was flying high. The Papal Bull divided the Earth (for the Europeans) between Spain and Portugal. White Christian rulers of Spain, Isabella and Ferdinand, set historic standards in persecution and extortion. More than a million Jews were killed, crucified, burnt alive; their properties confiscated and distributed. Columbus returned to enslave the American Natives – and subsequently, work them to death.

New chapters in bloodshed were being written by conquistadors like Vasco Nunez De Balboa, Francisco Pizarro, Juan Ponce de Leon, Hernando de Soto, Hernando Cortez, et al. Not to forget the search for El Dorado led by, “above all, that prince of monsters Lope de Aquirre, colour the pages with the darkest hues of bloody emprise.” In South American memory, Francisco de Carvajal, the “demon of the Andes” remains alive. These real-life monsters set new standards in brutality, slavery and genocide.

Europe in the sixteenth century was “obsessed with questions of language, and especially so in Spain and its recently conquered American Empire“ (emphasis mine). This was driven by

what Marshal McLuhan called “the hypertrophy of the unconscious,” a phenomenon he associated with periods of revolution in media technology: the advent of print in the 16th century created a great need for sensational materials to be broadcast, and this need caused ideas that formerly had been only lurking in the dark recesses of men’s minds to come floating to the surface.

One of the great bestsellers of the 16th century was the Histoires prodigieuses of Pierre Boaistuau (Paris, 1560), a sort of Renaissance Ripley’s Believe-it-or-not containing marvelous tales on everything … Seventeen of the Histoires forty tales are about monsters, a fact that may explain why the book was republished anywhere from ten to twenty two times and translated into Dutch, Spanish and English. (from Popular culture in the Middle Ages By Josie P. Campbell).

Spanish literature of the Renaissance

From this hotbed of ferment, a representative of this period was Calderon de la Barca (1600-1681), the Spanish writer. Growing up in a Spain, a 100 years after the Conquistadors, benefiting from the twin advantages of fresh memory and hindsight - “a century of Janus, facing backward, towards the rise of the Spanish Empire … and forward, toward its decline.” His more than a 100 plays and writings represent significantly, 17th century Spain – and even Europe.

There is probably no word that is more characteristic of Calderon de la Barca’s art than monstruo, “monster.” Rare is the play in which the word does not appear several times … (from Celestina’s brood By Roberto González Echevarría).

Calderon’s play about Semiramis, the Assyrian Empire builder, showed her in a monster mode – her hybrid character the most masculine modes and the most feminine, a monster of destruction and creation”. And Calderon was not alone. The fertile growth of monsters gave birth to a new study – teratology, the study of monsters.

“Monster lore truly becomes “popular culture” only with the Renaissance … Fresh works on the subject of teratology are written by Italians, Germans, and Frenchmen. The foreruuner of the modern newspaper, the broadside were bought at street corners and at fairs by the barely literate masses. The great reformers Luther and Melanchthon used the broadside medium to popularize their propagandistic and anti-Catholic versions of two of the most famous monsters of the Renaissance, the Monk-calf of Freiburg and the Pope-ass of Rome. (from Popular culture in the Middle Ages By Josie P. Campbell).

Some of Calderon’s plays dealt with the proselytization of the Native Americans – like his play, La Aurora En Copacabana (Dawn in the Copacabana), described as a play about “the conquest and conversion of the Indians in Peru”

The success of the conquest, therefore, is attributed to (Christian) faith which is valued as mans greatest gift to the world … Thus (Christian) conquest becomes a form of colonisation with the purpose of imposing religion and culture on a land “que habitan inhumanos” (512) and is in need of redemption and education. Finally, the play tries to harmonise irreconcilable contradictions which lie at the bottom of colonial discourse. (texts in brackets and italics mine).

With this idea, must be seen something important. That is the important element of “the escape of the monster.” In the … Monster Theory, Joel Cohen has remarked that the monster always escapes. Now combine the three elements – the newly acquired colonies of America, the proselytization (or otheriwse, the genocide) and the escape of the monster. These were the ‘monsters’ of colonialism.

A very interesting play by Calderon was La vida es sueño (Life is a dream). It tells the story of Segismundo, the Prince Of Poland, who was destined to be a monster. To forestall the prophecy, Segismundo was imprisoned by his father from the time of his birth. In adulthood, released from prison to test the prediction, Segismundo fulfills the prophecy. As a analyst of Calderon’s work summarizes,

Affirming a “better reality,” Segismundo’s message speaks as well to all of Europe: the “new European man” is the real monster. (from The subject in question By C. Christopher Soufas).

200 years after Calderon, HG Wells, in the The Island of Doctor Moreau, foretold Joseph Menegle’s experiments rather well.

Onshore genocide – The Roma Gypsies

Apart from the Jewish persecution, less known is the the persecution of the Roma Gypsy, which continues till date. In Europe, kidnapping children was considered legal for most of 1500AD-1750AD. On one condition – you had to kidnap Roma Gypsy children! More than 25,000 children kidnapped. No problem. Everybody sleeps peacefully at night. Switzerland was doing this till 1973!

Roughly, between 1500 to 1750, it was legal in Europe to hunt human beings. Yes! Just like hunting for deer in India, or hunting buffalo in Africa or fox-hunting in Britain. Yes! You could hunt human beings. As long as the humans you hunted were Roma Gypsies. In Europe you could be hung to death if you committed the crime of being born – between 1500AD-1750AD! Born as a Roma Gypsy!

Europeans, in the their age of Enlightenment and Renaissance, (1500-1750) could just pick up human slaves – yes, own them like cattle and furniture, if you found one! As long as they were Roma Gypsies. Later you could also sell them for profit!

Ship owners and captains in Europe’s Golden age, (1500-1750) could arrange galley slaves for free. No wages, no salary. You just had to feed them. Use them, abuse them, flog them, kill them, drown them. You could do anything – as long as they were Roma Gypsies.

What set off the Roma Gypsy Genocide

In 1420, a 60 year old man, blind in one eye took charge – and took on the might of the Roman Church and Roman Emperors.

Jan Zizka.

Over the next 12 months, he became completely blind. In the next 15 years, Zizka (and other Czech generals) defeated, many times, the combined armies of Germany, The Roman Church and others. His military strategy was studied for the next 500 years. Thereafter, the myth of military might of the Church was broken forever.

Jan Zizka allied himself with the Taborites (the radical Hussite wing). Zizka made Tábor in Bohemia into an armored and mobile fortress – the Wagenburgs.

Interestingly, a 100 years after the Hussite Wars, the European persecution of the Roma Gypsies began in full earnest. And during WW2, the Vatican joined with the Nazi collaborators, the Ustashe,  to extort gold and the genocide against the Roma Gyspises.

Military success

Zizka ranks with the great military innovators of all time. Zizka’s army was made up of untrained peasants and burghers (townspeople). He did not have the time or resources to train these fighters in armament and tactics of the time. Instead they used weapons like iron-tipped pikes and flails, armored farm wagons, mounted with small, howitzer type cannons.

Roma Gypsy Wagon Caravan

His armored wagons, led by the Taborites, in offensive movements, broke through the enemy lines, firing as they rolled, cutting superior forces into pieces. For defense, the wagons were arranged into a tight, impregnable barrier surrounding the foot soldiers – the Wagenburg (the wagon fort), as they came to be known. The wagons also served to transport his men. Zizka thus fully initiated modern tank warfare. Zizka’s experience under various commanders was useful. At the Battle of Tannenberg (1410), Zizka fought on the Polish side , in which the famed German Teutonic Knights were defeated.

Coming back …

Who were the major users of the wagons in Europe then (and now?) Answer – The Roma Gypsies.

Who were the people who could pose spiritual and ecclesiastical questions to the Vatican? Answer – The Gypsies, with their Indian heritage, were not not new to spiritual dialectics (contests, discourse and debates). For instance, Mani, and his adherents, an Indic teacher of Buddhist thought, known to Christians as Manichean thought, were the nightmare for Christianity till the 15th century. When Mani called for overthrow of slavery, the Vatican at the Council of Gangra, re-affirmed its faith in slavery. European minds were occupied with the questions raised by the Hussite reformers.

Some think they (the Waldensians) had held them for centuries; some think they had learned them recently from the Taborites. If scholars insist on this latter view, we are forced back on the further question: Where did the Taborites get their advanced opinions? If the Taborites taught the Waldenses, who taught the Taborites?

Who were the people who could help the persecuted Waldensians, the Bogomils, the Cathars to escape persecution and spread out across the Europe? Answer – The Roma Gypsies – in their wagons. The same Gypsies, had earlier pioneered the Troubadour culture in the Provence Region, which provoked the Albigensian Crusade by the Vatican.

Prokop Coat Of Arms

And who was the King of the Taborites? Answer – An entire clan of leaders who called themselves as Prokop (The Shaven /Bald; The Little and The Great) were the military leaders of the Taborites.

The word and name Prokop have no meaning in any European language – except in Sanskrit, where it means vengeance, retribution, violent justice.

Mythology as History

Jan Hus initiated the Reformation in the Vatican Church. It was Jan Zizka who broke the back of Papal authority. On the back of these Czech successes, was laid the foundation of 95 Theses by Martin Luther in 1517. The British break (1533-34) with the Holy Roman Church happened due to favors by the Papal office to the Iberian Empires – in matters of trade and colonial expansion, and the impediments to divorce of Henry-VIII at the behest of the Spanish rulers.

Today, the Germans and the British are loath to be reminded about the Czech Church Reform initiatives and the defeats at the hands of the Poles and Czechs. Western historiography about the Enlightenment and Renaissance, in Britain, France and Germany, leading to the reformation is ‘mythology as history’.

Of course, the role of the Greek Orthodox Church, the Byzantine Empire in the entire Czech saga is also worth re-examining. Were the Hussite Wars, a proxy war waged by the Eastern Church against the Vatican?

Dracula, Frankenstein, Dr Jekyll and Mr.Hyde

In the 19th century came the monster story was dubbed as Gothic – and this form of story-telling matured as a craft.

A significant array of Gothic writers emerged from Ireland (from Charles Maturin, Sheridan Le Fanu, Bram Stoker, and Oscar Wilde to the contemporary writer Patrick McGrath), in a colonial situation where a Protestant minority was the colonial occupier. (from Late Victorian Gothic tales By Roger Luckhurst)

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851), wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley started writing Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus, at the age of 18, and completed it one year later. First published in London, anonymously, in 1818 by small London publishing house of Harding, Mavor & Jones – after previous rejections by bigger publishers like Charles Ollier (Percy Bysshe Shelley’s publisher), and John Murray (by Byron’s publisher). The writer’s name started appearing from the second edition of 1823 onwards. The interesting aspect, lost in popular usge, is that the monster is not named – and Frankenstein was the scientist, who brought the monster to life.

In 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson’s book, The Strange Case of Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde was first published. This explored how ‘normal’ (Dr.Jekyll) human beings could become ‘evil’ (Mr.Hyde).

And in 1887, Bram Stoker, an Irish writer published his Dracula. The character of Dracula is based on Emperor Sigismund and his Order of the Dragon, who waged war against the Hussites – led by Jan Zizka. Infamous for his betrayal of Jan Hus, he sparked of the Hussite Wars, in which the Taborites (the Roma Gypsies) used wagons and gun powder for the first time in Europe. He founded a secret sect,  the “Dracul” called the Order of the Dragon.

Of course, these three are the most famous – but not the only ones. Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1871 “Carmilla“, about a lesbian vampire was another monster book of its time. An associate of Mary Shelley, John Polidori created the character of the “The Vampyre” in 1819 – on which possibly Dracula was based.

Most significantly, in 1896, was HG Well’s The Island of Doctor Moreau, which presaged Joseph Mengele – when Joseph Mengele had not even started on his higher education. A good 50 years before Joseph Mengele’s experiments were discovered by a shocked world.

The wellspring of these works is H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau. In this 1896 novel, a vivisectionist attempts to transform animals into men until the misshapen creatures revert and kill him, the forces of nature overcoming man’s civilizing artifices. From The Boys From Brazil (Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele, alive and well and cloning Hitlers at a secret lab in the Brazilian Amazon) to Jurassic Park (Richard Attenborough alive and well and cloning velociraptors), Wells’ basic formula has become familiar: an island; a Frankensteinian experiment; a Faustian scientist; something gone terribly, terribly wrong. (from Requiem for the Mad Scientist By Arthur Allen, in Slate).

From the 1700-1800, while Spain was in decline, for about a 100 years, Western literary field did not see too much action on the monster front. The main action was in Haiti, where zombies, the ex-murderers, the living dead became a part of the voodoo cult.

The late Victorian era was one of the most expansive phases of the empire. Britain annexed some thirty-nine separate areas around the world between 1870-1900, in competition with newly aggressive America in the Pacific or the European powers in the so-called ‘Scramble for Africa’ after the continent was divided up at the Berlin conference of 1885. (from Late Victorian Gothic tales By Roger Luckhurst)

The last of the true great monster in popular culture came from the East. Soon after WW2, as tales of Japanese atrocities started coming out and as American atrocities in Vietnam started, Godzilla came out of Japan. But a different pressure head was building up, which gave rise to a new genre – detective fiction.

Euro-Pessimism

Between 1800-1950, Western powers killed (directly or otherwise) more than 50 million people in America (the Native Americans), Africa (the Native Africans and Afro-Americans), Asia (Indians, Chinese, Arabs). This led to a situation that every other person in the West had participated in murder or massacre. Western ambiguity towards Soviet Russia on one side, Hitler on the other – and to that add, Gandhiji’s resolute opposition to colonialism – and you have a inflammable situation.

The deluge of blood and murder caused moral anxiety and was a matter of ethical dilemma amongst common folks. The pressure valve for this was popular fiction. Identifying murderers became a form of proxy, vicarious entertainment for ordinary folks. Enter the super detectives, who pick out the murderer from a room full of ordinary people. Enter detectives like Auguste Dupin, of ‘The Purloined Letter‘ fame, who “investigates an apparently motiveless and unsolvable double murder in the Rue Morgue.”

Murder in Popular Image

A trend started by Edgar Allan Poe, whose first detective novel, Murders In Rue Morgue (1841) soon became an avalanche. Writers like Agatha Christie (Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple solving murders happening by the second), Georges Simenon (and his Inspector Maigret investigating brutal crimes), Ngaio Marsh (Roderick Alleyn), GK Chesterton (Father Brown), Raymond Chandler (Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe) dealt with murder. Alfred Hitchcock made horror thrillers in similar themes.

Agatha Christie’s book filmed as Ten Little Indians, based on the book, initially released (the book) in Britain as Ten Little Niggers (later renamed as Then There None) gives the game away. Agatha Christie probably pre-saged the White desire to ensure that there should be none of the Native Americans left to tell the tale. The overt racism in Herge’s ‘Tintin in Congo’ made the world sit-up and note the pervasiveness of racism in detective fiction.

Jerome Delamater, Ruth Prigozy, in an essay compilation, ‘Theory and Practice of Classic Detective Fiction’, observe that Jane Marple, along with Hercule “Poirot becomes an equal opportunity detective who really believes that anyone might commit murder”. Dismissing the jaundiced view of human nature,” the writers of this book, while commenting about the detective fiction genre, do not mention slavery at all – and mention colonialism and racism once each.

The Mystery of the Dying Detective

After de-colonisation, as mass murder went underground, the detective-murder mystery books genre faded. This category was replaced by a new theme – the axis of corporation-government international conspiracies.

Conspiracy Theory – Full Steam Ahead

The new category of popular fiction are represented by Ian Fleming, Arthur Hailey, Frederick Forsyth, Irving Wallace, Robert Ludlum, Graham Greene, John Le Carre, et al. More and more contrived, each conspiracy theory writer has been ‘inspired’ by real life incidents.

While Ludlum’s international-conspiracy-plot-CIA-FBI-KGB series have worn thin, the spookiness of Le Carre’s Absolute Friends and Constant Gardner still work as novels representing the West.

Western Twins – Anxiety and Paranoia

To develop this understanding further, there are two classes of films that I wish to draw attention to.

Malignant Nature

Jaws (the shark that eats humans), Jurassic Park (mad scientists, conspiring technicians let loose man eating dinos) Gremlins and Poltergiest (things that go bump in the night). This paranoid fear of nature (and natural laws) seems to be a result of the subterranean knowledge of the way in which ecological damage and pollution is happening. These films produced /directed by Steven Spielberg (who is incomparable because as Time Magazine says, “No one else has put together a more popular body of work”)

Vindictive Humans

The other is the thinly disguised hate and prejudice films against the poor and the victimised. ‘Aliens’ needs just one small change for the films idea to become clear. Instead of LV-426, Nostromo the space ship, receives a distress call from some country in South America or Africa (or India, if you prefer). The meaning is clear when you see the movie while conscious of the fact that alien is is the word the US Government uses for people from other countries.

What Does This Mean

A US commentator Robert Putnam says that

“… We don’t trust each other as much as we used to. Trust in other people has fallen from 58 percent in 1960 to 35 percent in the mid-1990s. Our less trusting atmosphere has led us to recoil from civic life and social ties. We belong to fewer voluntary organizations, vote less often, volunteer less, and give a smaller share of our gross national product to charity (Putnam, 1995a, 1995b; Knack, 1992; 1986; Uslaner, 1993, 96-97). People who trust others are more likely to participate in almost all of these activities, so the decline in trust is strongly linked to the fall in civic engagement (Putnam, 1995a; Brehm and Rahn, 1997; Uslaner, 1997) …”

Elephants in the room

Most critics and commentators write about the phenomenon of detective fiction devoid of context – and the detective fiction as entertainment only.

One writer, Franco Moretti did half the job in book Signs Taken for Wonders: On the Sociology of Literary Forms By Franco Moretti. He writes,

“The perfect crime – the nightmare of detective fiction – is the feature-less, deindividualized crime that anyone could have committed because at this point everyone is the same.” He further writes,“Yet, if we turn to Agatha Christie, the situation is reversed.Her hundred-odd books have only one message: the criminal can be anyone …”

In his entire book he does not use the words like slavery, racism, genocide, bigotry even once. The 19th century, which was based on Western bigotry, White racism, Black slavery, and assorted genocides is unrecognised in Moretti’s books.

Running or hiding? Or it a case of feeling squeamish? Perhaps, a case of queasy stomach, Franco?

Another book, The Detective as Historian: History and Art in Historical Crime Fiction, by Ray Broadus Browne, Lawrence A. Kreiser does a better job. This book examines, the detective fiction genre, with some references to slavery and child prostitution.

How was this explained away

As the monsters increased, both in real life and literature, rationalizations were required. A person no less than Immanuel Kant, was pressed into service to deconstruct the ‘monster’, re-invent it and give it a positive spin.

The monster taken up by Kant in an aesthetic sense to refer to those things that exceed representation considers that the monstrous describes an entity whose life force is greater than the matter in which in which it is contained. Thus rather than something that malfunctions during the course of its production, monstrosity is associated during romanticism with “over-exuberant living matter” that extends itself beyond its natural borders in order to affect a much wider sphere. ((from The subject in question By C. Christopher Soufas).

In the twentieth century, Kant’s hypothesis finds an echo when Lord Randolph William Churchill, the ‘Bulldog’ declared

“I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race has come in and taken their place. (from Minorities, peoples, and self-determination By Nazila Ghanea-Hercock, Nazila Ghanea, Alexandra Xanthaki, Patrick Thornberry)

In another instance, Churchill wrote how ’superior’ Arabs, imposed on the ‘inferior’ negroes.

The stronger race imposed its customs and language on the negroes. The vigour of their blood sensibly altered the facial appearance … (from The River War By Winston Churchill).

The Carving Of The Middle East

After WW1.

After the guns fell silent, sharp knives came out. Victorious allies of WW1, proceeded to carve up the Ottoman Empire, stretching from the Middle East to Central Asia to the Eastern Europe – the modern successor to the ancient Assyrian Empire.

An amateur, TE Lawrence (never mind the propaganda) determined the fate of millions in the Middle East. Another British dilettante, Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell made the selection of the King Of Iraq.

Out of the Ottaman Empire, Iraq was carved up and King Faysal was put on the throne. This new King did not even know his kingdom – and he was taken around by his new makers.

Turkey decided to go West – with Mustafa Kemal Ataturk mandating all Turks must cut of their beards. Out of the fog of war, came the the Russian Communists – which again the Anglo Saxon world tried to blame the rest of the world for. During WW1, Britain made the Balfour Declaration, which promised a Jewish homeland, to be carved out of the Ottoman Empire – in Palestine. The Balfour Declaration put the entire Middle East on shaky political ground.

Exploitative commercial contracts favoring Anglo Saxon bloc of countries were signed with these puppet governments – and the rest of the story is being played out for the last 90 years. Western Empire builders of today bemoan the ‘mistakes’ of past leaders – with out even considering the interests and rights of the rest of world.

Western Leadership

Midway through WW1, by 1916, the heads of the Allied powers – Britain, France, Italy and Russia had changes of governments. Italy ran through three Prime Ministers during WW1. Each of new governments had different agendas and ideas about the Middle East.

Britain, under Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, could look at Middle East (and War itself) as only a dominant super power of the period could – as imperial fodder. Georges Clemenceau, the French Premier, was diffident about colonial expansion, pragmatically viewing French resources and capability, in overextended colonial territories and vulnerable to Germans at home.

In 1915, Italy joined the alliance. At the end of the War, Italy promptly staked its claim for the borderline Balkan areas of Dalmatia and and Rijeka /Fiume. American economic interests demanded opening of markets, closed to America by colonial powers. Woodrow Wilson (couched as his personal ‘belief in self-determination’) wanted ‘independence’ for the Middle East – for the US corporations to manipulate the Middle East, which they promptly did.

The losers, Ottoman-Turkey, the Germans and  the Austro-Hungarian Empires lost their colonies to ‘self determination’ – and the winners kept their colonies. This ‘self determination’, Trotsky aptly described as “naked and most cynical imperialism.”

The unforeseen elements were the Russians. The Communist leaders pulled out of the war. Russia was replaced by their future Cold War rival, United States into the war, on the side of the Allies.

The only interest not represented was that of the Middle East itself.

27th May 1919 - Hotel Crillon, Paris, for the Versailles Treaty - Lloyd George, Vittorio Orlando, Georges Clemenceau, Woodrow Wilson @ Versailles (notice the body language)

Leaders of the Middle East

One example was Emir Hussein. He could make the British believe that Emir Hussein could raise a force of a quarter million Arabs. He could deliver 3000-4000. Shaikh Faisal was another. Muhammed Sharif al-Faruqi was the third.

Ataturk’s Turkey

Turkey – led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was reduced itself to ‘copycat’ attempt at Westernisation. After WW1, the victorious allied powers dismantled the Ottoman Empire. Turkey was reduced to a rump state.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was ‘installed’ by Western powers. Thereafter, Turkey has lurched from crisis to another. Post WW2, it has mostly been ruled by military dictatorships. From an arbiter in Europe, it has become a supplicant, begging for entry into EU. Instead of the queue in China – it was beards in Turkey. Atatürk enforced a new dress code on the hapless Turks – and the traditional fez was banned. Stop wearing the fez or else …

Demonisation Starts

After these destabilizing decisions were taken, the Anglo Saxon world has been put their propaganda machine to work overtime. Demonizing communism and now Islam. Without taking the responsibility for their own actions – and further interventions, creating further instability.

Like the demonization of the Jews before and the Red Indians after, this too is having disastrous effects – in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan. And this process of demonization is a matter of concern to the rest of the world. Preparatory work has already started in the West on re-drawing these maps again – which will favor the West some more.

Is India getting co-opted in this demonization?

Gandhiji – And The Middle East Carving

Gandhiji saw this problem 90 years ago – and his support of the Khilafat movement was prescient. Today when some Indians join in this demonization, it is matter of ignorance – and a threat.

Start Of World War I

What triggered WW1 is common knowledge. The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. How did so many other countries get involved? The Russian Tsar (related to the British Royal House and based on the support of) Britain, the Anglo Saxon Bloc and the French, supported political Serbian assassins, of Archduke Ferdinand of the Austro Hungarian Empire – and that started the World War I. Not some harmless gun shot that seemed to have triggered it off as victorious Anglo Saxon historians would have us believe.

Were some Governments involved in this assassination?

The Assassination Team

The assasination plot included Gavrillio Princip, the actual 19-years old killer, Mehmed Mehmedbasic (a carpenter, unsure of his success, finally didnt do anything), 17 year old Vaso Cubrilovic, Nedelko Cabrinovic, all of 20 years old, Cvetko Popovic, an 18-year old student, 24-year old Danilo Ilic, the main organizer of the plot and Trifko Grabez, a 19-year old.

The name of the group was Black Hand, a circle of radicals in the army around Dimitrijevic-Apis, the man who led the murder of the Serbian royal couple in 1903. The other ring leader was Vojislav Tankosić organized the murders of Queen Draga’s brother’s; Dimitrijević Apis and Tankosić in 1913-1914 figure prominently in the plot to assassinate Franz Ferdinand.

What Would Happen Today

Would the US take no action if an (imagine Islamic) assassin were to assassinate the US President-Elect. And what would the US do if (say, the) Governments of Russian or China (or for that matter, India) were to support the assassins. Well! A Balkan assassin did kill the Crown Prince (equivalent to the US President-Elect). The Russians, the Anglo Saxon Bloc and the French supported the assassins. What would happen if a Pakistani based terrorist group were to kill Prince Harry?

Alliances Of WW1

The 3 powers on the Axis side were One, Austro-Hungarian Empire ruled by the Habsburgs (whose heir apparent was killed), Two, the Ottoman Empire (out of Turkey), which obviously could not support assassins of royalty – and Three, Germany, ruled by the Kaiser Wilhelm.

Britain immediately started aggressive posturing against Turkey (the Ottomans). On July 29, 1914, Churchill, then Lord Of Admiralty, seized two Dreadnought ships being built for the Ottomans in British shipyards for the Turkish navy. The Germans needed allies and to woo the Ottomans, presented them with two ships. Britain, France and Russia declared war on Turkey on October 31, 1914.

By 1916, Britain, France and Russia had signed the secretive Sykes-Picot Pact – a framework for the division of the Ottoman Empire after the future defeat of the Turks. While the WW1 was going on, a civil war broke out in Russia. Kerensky, a member of the moderate Labor party, Lenin, Trotsky et al of the Bolshevik Party, overthrew the Tsar and assumed power in February 1917.

Till 1923, the Russian Civil War continued, to the defeat of Kerensky and his White Army in 1923. Kerensky wished to continue war alongside Britain and France.

Lenin broke ranks, and in October 1917, the Russian-Communists started negotiations for a peace treaty with Germany. In 1918 the Treaty Of Brest Litovsk followed. After the end of WW1, Britain and France did not honour Russia’s claim under the Sykes Picot Pact. Russians retaliated and were actively involved in the Middle East instability for the next 50 years, by playing of one Middle East country against against another.

Another stereotype?

Supporting the assassins was the alliance of Russia, France, Britain, (and later) America, and sundry other European countries. With this act of brinkmanship, they took the world through the agony of a huge war, the price of which is being paid even today. The Middle East problems, the rise of Communism all came out of the World War I.

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Slavery & Oppression – In The West and In India

The Moral Offensive

In 1901, Dadabhai Naoroji published his famous research – “Poverty and Un-British rule in India”. Before that, his 1876 paper, “Poverty In India” traced the rise of poverty in India due to colonialism. This laid the background for India’s Independence and shaped the strategy of Swadesh and Satyagraha. Fifty years later we were a Republic of the kind the world had never seen.

But …

This moral offensive continued for the next hundred years – provoking Nixon’s reaction during the Bangladesh War. “The Indians put on their sanctimonious peace Gandhi-like, Christ-like attitude,” an angry Nixon observed. Nixon declared, to George Bush Sr., then the USA ambassador to the United Nations, (later the President) on December 8, 1971, “We can’t let these goddamn, sanctimonious Indians get away with this. They’ve pissed on us on Vietnam for five years.”

Harry & Kill – Lord Irwin’s Peace Pact

The use of reverse-propaganda (a European tool) by the Congress against the British was singularly successful – and put the Colonial administration on the moral defensive. The British Colonial administration worn out by the “harry and kill” moral offensive of the Congress made peace. The British Viceroy, Lord Irwin brought some sembalance of propriety in colonial administration thereafter. Military war thereafter became less important.

The British response to that was ‘divide et impera’ – divide and rule; like the Euro-colonial cousins, the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg rulers. In the dying years of the Raj, the colonial administration put up issue of ‘untouchability’ and caste ‘oppression’. Untouchability, the caste system, social prejudices remained significant issues in post colonial India – and it continues to be a much debated and a divisive issue. Harijans, Dalits, manuvadis are terms and names used freely.

How much of this is real? Bad luck. It is a hoisted petard, which will blow up on the those who raise this.

Oppression – And Its Many Avatars

Legal support for slavery is a feature of the Western and Levantine societies. Trade of human beings in market place had the support of the state. In Europe and USA, laws and courts were enforced slavery. In Indic legal systems, such a feature has not been seen for the last 3000 years. The last Indic system which had explicit slavery laws were the Hittites around 1000BC. To cover up this aspect, and to shore up their image as champions of human rights, Western powers have tried to fuzzy the definition of slavery through the ILO – an creation of the Western powers after WW1.

To get some understanding on the oppression issue, a comparative examination may give a better perspective.

Wipe out of the Red Indian Population in North America

In 1492, when Columbus landed in the West Indies, the native American population was 3 million (in the what is currently USA) and more than 10 million in the Americas – and they spoke a 600 languages. 300 years later, they had become tourist attractions. The entire Anglo Saxon race was against the very existence of the native Red Indian.

The British and the independent Americans were equally brutal with the Red Indians. During the French and Indian Wars, Britain waged a biological warfare against the Red Indians by distributing small pox infected blankets to Red Indians. 70 years later, Andrew Jackson delayed (some say withheld) small pox medical supplies and vaccines from Red Indians.

During the American War of Independence, George Washington, on May 31, 1779 Washington sent his official Instructions to Major General John Sullivan:

Sir: The expedition you are appointed to command is to be directed against the hostile tribes of the six nations of Indians, with their associates and adherents. The immediate objects are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible…whence parties should be detached to lay waste all the settlements around, with instruction to do it in the most effectual manner; that the country may not be merely overrun but destroyed…

Reminiscent of George Bush threatening the world, either you are for us or against us , George Washington, made a similar remark more than 200 years ago. George Washington wrote to the President of the Continental Congress in 1776:

In my opinion it will be impossible to keep them [Indians] in a state of Neutrality, they must, and no doubt soon will take an active part either for, or against us…

Thomas Jefferson view of the native Red Indians was equally dismissive. He (King George III) has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions… (Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, 1776).

Treaty after treaty was made with Red Indians – which were broken time and again. The whites coveted everything that the Red Indian had – but mostly, his life. This “land of the free” by all possible (and some impossible) means was soon made land free of the “natives and savages”.

The US President, Andrew Jackson started by (December 8, 1829) posing as a Red Indian sympathiser. He proclaimed

“By persuasion and force they (Red Indians) have been made to retire from river to river and from mountain to mountain, … tribes have become extinct … Surrounded by the whites … which by destroying the resources … doom him to weakness and decay … That this fate surely awaits them if they remain within the limits of the states … Humanity and national honor demand that every effort should be made to avert so great a calamity.” (parts excised for brevity and ellipsis inserted; bold letters mine).

His solution – remove the Red Indians.

In 1830, 40 years after George Washington became the President, the “land of the free”, a law was passed to make the land free of the native Cherokee (Red Indian) population. The vast prairie lands were expropriated – and the Cherokee Indians were marched out by the US army. This march, Trail Of Tears, signalled the break of treaty by white Anglo Saxons. Land West of the Mississippi were to belong to the Eastern Indians ‘in perpetuity.’

The Red Indians resisted removal and forcible transfers. Their resistance was brutally crushed. By December 4, 1832, Andrew Jackson was saying,

“After a harassing warfare, prolonged by the nature of the country and by the difficulty of procuring subsistence, the Indians were entirely defeated, and the disaffected band dispersed or destroyed. The result has been creditable to the troops engaged in the service. Severe as is the lesson to the Indians, it was rendered necessary by their unprovoked aggressions, and it is to be hoped that its impression will be permanent and salutary.” (bold letters mine)

Gen. Winfield Scott was sent in May 1938, (with an army) to deliver the ultimatum to the Cherokees. Move or we will make you. At your cost.

President Woodrow Wilson echoes the ideology behind the alleged “genocide” –

“The experience of Liberia and Haiti show that the African race are devoid of any capacity for political organisation… there is an inherent tendency to revert to savagery and to cast aside the shackles of civilisation which are irksome to their physical nature. Our industries have expanded to such a point that they will burst their jackets… Our domestic markets no longer suffice; we need foreign markets. “In the matter of Chinese and Japanese coolie immigration, I stand for the national policy of exclusion… We cannot allow a homogeneous population of a people who do not blend with the Caucasian race.”

Just like Romani Gypsy and Australian aboriginal children were taken away from their parents, Red Indian children were also removed. In different continents, at different times, similar tactics were used by Europeans and the Anglo Saxons in the colonies.

Aborigines

In 1788, the estimated Aboriginal population was 7,50,000. By 1911, the survivors, were estimated at 31,000. Prior to the Anglo Saxon settlement, “Australia was an ‘empty land’ because its inhabitants did not count as human“. Today, the Anglo Saxon race prides itself for the building of Australia. Australia was a British colony and till date the Queen (or King) of Britain is the head of State for Australia.

Consider a one-time leader of the ‘free world’, the British Prime Minister during WW2, one time Chancellor Of The Exchequer, Winston Churchill, had his views on Arabs, Indians, Aborigines, Red Indians -

“I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race has come in and taken their place.“

Churchill similarly had highly enlightened views on Arabs. After all “the Arabs are a backwards people who eat nothing but Camel dung.” was Churchill’s stated stand.

One of the main causes of deaths was public health. In India, in the early 19th century, an estimated 25 million died due the cholera epidemic – as the colonial Government did not bother (to give them the benefit of any doubt). In Northern Ireland, during the Irish Famine, the then British Prime Minster with held supplies and essential aid from starving Irishmen. In USA, the Government delayed allocations to fight small pox, 20 years after similar actions for the Whites. Similarly from the Australian aborigines.

From 1860-1960

Little changed in 100 years after the American Civil War – except the matter of 25 million missing Blacks. At the start of the Civil War, the White Population of North and South was 22 million. And Blacks was 5 million. By 1960, the White population had grown by nearly 800%, to 160 million. The Black population in the meantime had grown by only 400% – from 5 million to 20 million.

What happened to the missing 400% of Black population growth? Apologists (and defenders) use white immigration to explain away some of the difference. But that further compounds the problem – because there was also about 1 million of Black immigration from Haiti, Jamaica, Africa and other countries.

Mortality amongst Blacks due to AIDS is higher than for Whites – 60,000 higher Black deaths every year. The New England Journal Of Medicine states,

“Among patients infected with HIV, blacks were significantly less likely than whites to have received antiretroviral therapy or PCP prophylaxis when they were first referred to an HIV clinic“.

Nett, nett – there are about 20-25 million Blacks missing – due to deprivation, poor health care and indifference. The maths? US population today is 300 million. Blacks population was estimated 4-5 million and whites at 20-22 million at the start of the Civil war in 1860. By the 1860 ratios, there should be another 20 million to 25 million Blacks in the USA.

But rights and equality is something else

From 1865 to 1965 Blacks though no longer bought and sold – were still excluded from the political and social systems – in the land of the free. The Freedman’s Bureau made the ‘free’ blacks into poor sharecroppers and destitute. The Ku Klux Klan became a vigilante group to ensure that Blacks stayed where they were – at the bottom of the economic, social and political ladder.

By 1890’s the disenfranchisement laws came into effect – which ensured that the disproportionate numbers of Blacks could not vote. Petty crime (where poor) where Blacks were convicted in higher ratios were grounds for disenfranchisement. These laws ensured that 10 times higher number of Blacks were disqualified compared to Whites. If that is not bad enough, it continues till now. After some 60,000 Black Voters were disenfranchised, George Bush, technically, won by less than 1000 votes (most were expected to vote against George Bush). Such tactics continue to be used to limit Black participation in democracy.

The re-emergence of the Ku Klux Klan in its second avatar continued with its agenda of Black subjugation till the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. The second coming was a mainstream event with President Woodrow Wilson endorsing the film and the message.

Black Emancipation

Black emancipation in the USA is a 1970s phenomenon, 30+ years ago event – and not 200 years ago as this article in New York Times seems to make out.

It took non-violent protests (Martin Luther King, inspired by Gandhiji) and violent threats (Malcolm X) for some kind of real emancipation and equity to come in. In the Cold War scenario, under international media glare, during the Little Rock School stand-off, Eisenhower (a Southerner himself) reacted.

Reluctantly,in 1954, he sent in the National Guard to Little Rock, Arkansas for some kind of de-segregation. The Mayor of Little Rock, Arkansas closed down the school rather than de-segregate. The eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation during the Kennedy years produced the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Demonise, Genocide and Apologise

Now that there are only a few Red Indians and aborigines left – they serve as tourist attractions. The ritual of regret and apology about their role in the genocidal past. Since, the “Jewish Problem” was solved by Hitler (there are hardly 1 million Jews left in Europe and 5 million in USA), the West and USA has no problems, anymore with the Jews. Australia, Canada and France have tendered their ritualistic apologies – and start demonizing someone else.

In fact, Jews today serve a useful purpose to the West. After the Anglo-Saxon led alliance broke up the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East (post WW1), the Israelis were introduced into the Middle East after WW2 as the Western cat’s paw. They have been suborned to the job of keeping a lid on the simmering oil rich, Middle East, and keeping it in check.

What is the real cost to the USA- an inflated arms bill. They make up the cost of suplying free arms to Israel by selling the same arms to the oil rich sheikhs. What does it cost Israel to serve as the ‘America’s terrible swift sword in the desert’ – millions of precious Jewish lives, lost in the fight to keep the Anglo Saxons in luxury.

The Western campaign aimed at the demonisation of Islam has replaced the Jewish demonisation (Shakespeare joined in with his anti-Semitic Merchant Of Venice). Without taking responsibility for the destabilisation of the Islamic World by the liquidation of the Ottoman Empire after WW1 – perpetrated by Anglo Saxon countries and the French.

The Greatest Suffering

The Blacks in the USA and Europe have seen some justice – as they were an important constituency in the Cold War. USA propaganda was on the verge of losing Africa to Soviet Russia. The Jews have been very persistent and they have not let the world forget – or the perpetrators rest in peace.

The forgotten lot is that that of the Romani Gypsies. This one segment based in Europe and USA continues to remain on the fringes and discriminated. They have been hunted (like forest animals), their children kidnapped (to end their race and social system), they have been gassed (by Hitler along with the Jews), they have been galley slaves, In fact there was a time when they could be killed, if found alive!

The History Of King Leopold-II & Congo

“Dr.Livingstone, I presume!” and that is how Henry Stanley made his name and the life of Congolese miserable. Based on this incident, he was given a contract by King Leopold-II to establish “trading posts along the Congo River”. In time, like with other colonial possessions, with a mix of fraud, guile, deceit, force, massacre and other such ‘civilised’ norms by ‘Christian’ civilisers, Congo was also made into a colony. By King Leopold-II of Belgium, in his personal capacity.

King Leopold (current king’s predecessor 3 times away) was murderer. Plain and simple.

What happened was that in 1871, King Leopold decided that he needed to get respect. So he called for the Brussels Conference. His colleague, Otto Von Bismarck, of Germany got into the act and called for the Berlin conference. Plans were hatched and agreements signed.

Based on Dr.Livingstone’s propaganda, it was decided there that Europe will directly enslave the Africans - instead of the the Arabs. At that time 90%of Africa was was free. In the next 20 years, 90% of Africa was colonialised.

King Leopold’s personally owned the Belgian Congo territory. His personal army-men and his personal agents killed more than 1 crore people. When hardly any Congolese were left, he sold Belgian Congo to his own country for GBP3.8 million. Congo was a major producer of rubber – and the King’s agents kidnapped African families – and released them against collections of natural rubber from African forests.

To understand oppression better, we also need to look at the genesis of the various religions across the world.

The Desert Religions

Judaism, Christianity, Islam were all born within 500 miles of each other and share a common culture and history. Judaism can be said to have been born when Moses led the Hebrew slaves from the Pharoah (across the Red Sea) to freedom. This possibly happened around 500 BC at the latest to 1500 BC at the earliest. His earliest followers were the Hebrews and they were a significant part of the Middle Eastern history all through till today.

The next major religious reformer in the Middle East was Jesus Christ. For the first 300 years, Roman slaves were the major believers in his teachings. Emperor Constantine earned the loyalty of his Christian troops and won the war for Roman throne by his win over Maxentius at Milvan Bridge. Prior to Maxentius, for the previous 30-40 years, Christians had been persecuted by “rule of four’ Tetrarchy reformists in Rome, headed by Diocletan. Hence, the Christian slave soldiers of Constantine were eager for victory – as the persecution under Maxentius would have been worse.

Liberated slaves were the founders and rulers of Islamic dynasties, (in India, the Slave dynasty – builders of Qutub minar). Thus all the three “desert religions” were first adopted by the slaves and only after gaining significant numbers of adherents, these religions became mainstream and commenced aggressive proselytising and conversions.

What’s Going On Here

‘Caste systems’ (by different names) are prevalent all over the world, in all societies, based on colour, race, income, wealth, education, social status, political position, et al. Most such ‘caste systems’ have no force of the state behind it or are legal. They are the burakumin in Japan today and the Blacks in Europe and USA. The most ‘respected’ caste system is the British nobility which exists even today – a caste system, approved by law. In India, colonial administration encouraged and increased divisions within society. Through propaganda efforts of the ILO, the Indian caste system, is now being equated with slavery.

Slavery (capture, kidnap, sequestration, transport, trade and transfer, re-capture of human beings) continued in the “desert bloc” till the 20th century. In the Indic territories, it was an inherited institution – and last seen in the Hittite rule around 1000BC. Faced with West Asian reluctance to give up slavery, Indo Aryan rulers disengaged politically from West Asia and Middle East from around 1000 BC. Possibly, the slave revolt of Egypt by Moses itself was a result of the liberalising laws of the Hittites. Hence the fade out of the Indic rule from the Middle East – but the continuation of Buddhist influences, trade and peoples contact.

Reformers In India

After the slave revolts in the Middle East, India was witness to major renewal movements. More than a 100 Bodhisatvas and 24 Jain Tirthankaras were major figures in India’s renewal after the slave revolts in the Middle East. Modern history, influenced by Western historiograpgy, recognizes only the “ahimsa twins” – Gautama Buddha and Vardhamana Mahavira.The “ahimsa twins” – Gautama Buddha and Vardhamana Mahavira were both princes of royal blood – Prince Siddharth and Prince Mahavira.

Their first adherents were the rulers and their methods of proselytising was also aimed at the ruling class. Ashoka The Great sent missions with his daughter Sanghamitra to Sri Lanka – where Buddhism was established.

Guru Nanak Dev came from from the upper caste family and his focus was to end fueding on the basis of caste and creed. His first converts were from upper class families cutting across religions – and hence the opposition from some of the Mughal Kings.

Gandhiji was from the upper caste and the first item on his reform agenda was end to the “bhangis” carrying faecal refuse on their heads. His initial focus was social reform and less of anti-British activities.

Half the world today follows Indic religions and culture. The other half follows the “desert religions”. The development trajectories of these two halves has been significantly different. The motivations, behavioural and acceptable civilisational norms for these blocs are different – and mostly opposite.

Same difference?

Based on the above most notorious cases of oppression, there are some clear markers for to ‘real oppression’.

Declining Populations

In all the cases above, Jews in Europe, Black population in the Africa and USA, the Gypsies across USA and Europe, the aborigines in Australia, The Red Indians in America, or the Belgian Congo, the ‘marker’ for oppression was the decline in population. And we are not talking about about a few percentage points here and there (which can be explained by many factors) but by multiples.

State Oppression versus Social Discrimination

In all these cases, these genocides were legalised – in USA with the Dredd Scott case. In Europe, anti-Gypsy laws existed till 1973 in Switzerland and other countries. The Red Indians and Aborigines were dispossessed in connivance with the State and enabling legislation. There were laws in Europe and Australia which allowed people to kidnap children of the oppressed and take them away from their parents.

Economic Rationale

All these cases of oppression are marked by a clear economic motive. Cotton plantations in the USA needed black slaves,West needed natural rubber from Congo, Red Indian landwas needed by the West, Gypsy and Aboriginal children were kidnapped by declining European and Australian populations. Europeans historically envied Jewish business success.

How much of the division of labour in Indian society was co-ercive, extractive or enforced – and how much is explained by Pareto’s Law of Social Disequilibrium?

Majority Oppression Or Military Might

In all these cases, the majority oppressed the minority – or massacred them till the oppressed became a minority. Military might was used for oppressive purposes – like King Leopold-II in Congo, till such time, the oppressed became numerically weak.

Does this hold true for India?

What about Harijan massacres incidents. Two aspects – these massacres are not approved or condoned by law. Massacres and death of Red Indians, Aborigines, Jews, Gypsies were approved by law (yes, that is right! Click on links and other posts to get more info on that). There are equally massacres by the ‘oppressed’ in UP, Bihar, Rajasthan, J&K, MP – which shows a failure of the ‘over-burdened’ State rather than oppression.

The Oppressed Make The Laws In India

At the time of Indian Independence, the ‘oppressors’ (the ‘ruling’ Brahmin Hindus) gave the role of Constitution writing to the leader of the ‘oppressed‘ – Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar. No ‘oppressed’ class has been ‘given’ such a position and responsibility in any country of the world – ever. No ‘oppressor’ lets the ‘oppressed’ write the laws.

And for the record, let me state, BR Ambedkar was NOT given that position – he earned it.

The Oppressed Population Grows Faster than the Oppressors

The population of the ‘oppressed’ is growing at a faster rate than the ‘oppressors’. Thus the ‘oppression’ of the majority in India is resulting in a faster growth for the oppressed. A first in the history of oppression.

Reservations Of Opportunities

The US affirmative action (a dilution of the Indian reservation system) was a persuasive system – whereas India is the only country where the ‘minority’ oppressors are supporting a enforced, legally mandated system of reservations for the ‘oppressed’ majority. The whole world is fighting to steal, rob, snatch, kill and maim for opportunities -but in India the ‘oppressors’ are giving away opportunities.

Caste System & Slavery

‘Caste systems’ (by different names) are prevalent all over the world, in all societies, based on colour, race, income, wealth, education, social status, political position, et al. Most such ‘caste systems’ have no force of the state behind it or are legal. They are the burakumin in Japan today and the Blacks in Europe and USA. The most ‘respected’ caste system is the British nobility – which is a caste system, approved by law.

Slavery was different – and a distinctive feature, promoted (largely) by the Western and Middle Eastern powers. It had state sanction, state protection, laws passed by the kings, emirs, emperors, parliaments and legislating authorities. The US Supreme Court (Dredd Scott Case) even prohibited slaves from approaching courts for any redress. There was an organised, legal, sponsored industry involved in the kidnap, sequestration, transport, trade and transfer (and might I add re-capture) of slaves – with the might of the state behind it.

India – The Second History

For most Western historians (and also Indians), only the Core North India, is Indian history, society and culture. This is the history which British propagated and showed India as a defeated civilisation. Invaded, pillaged and dominated. Inferior and poor. Technologically backward. This is the history that is taught in schools and exists in popular imagery.

Despite its many fallacies, this view is being perpetuated by propaganda interests of the Anglo-Saxon bloc and the (various versions of) Congress party which has been the ruling party for the most of post-colonial India.

Along the Dakshinapatha दक्षिणपथ

There is another part to that history – which today influences and touches half the world. This history is full of wealth, military successes and a spread which taken India deeper than any other civilisation in the world. While the previous history was along the उत्तरपथ uttarapath, this story lies along the दक्षिणपथ dakshinapatha.

Its starts at Kerala, a highway across Nagpur Jhansi, Gwalior, Delhi ,Kashmir and ends in modern Iran. This history and geography is loosely dominated by the Dravidian segment of India.

Colonial historians (from India and the West) dismissed Dravidian history as subordinate and lesser than Aryan on the basis of the Aryan Invasion Theory. Now that the Aryan Invasion /Migration Theory does not have a leg to stand on, the contribution by the Dravidians along the dakshinapatha दक्षिणपथ becomes more important.

Where It All Started

The oldest Indian language, not based on Sanskrit, is Tamil. There is 3000 year old history that Tamil language has, which makes it one the oldest, living language. Related languages are in use even today in Pakistan, where the Brahui tribe speaks a related version of the Tamil language. The Brahuis have marriage preferences which are similar to South Indians (cousins preferred in marriage) – rather than North Indians.

How did Tamil land up in Baluchistan? And thereby hangs a tale.

The Elamites

The people of Elam (yes in Tamil, Eelam means homeland), were the first to civilise the Iranian Peninsula in the 2700 BC period. They were contemporaries of the Egyptians, the Mittanis and the Hittites. The Elamites were a significant people till the 800BC in Persia (modern day Iran).

The Elamites concluded a major treaty with the Akkadian King King Naram-sin (Naram to Narain and Sin is the moon goddess, Chandra; possibly Narayan Chandra). Akkadian language is itself implicated in being in cahoots with Sanskrit and Indus Valley languages – and the creation ans spread of most modern languages except Sino languages.

The Elamites, Mittanis and Hittites ruled an area stretching from Iran to Iraq up to modern Turkey. Numerous kings have Indian names – like Shutruk (Shatrughna), Shushinak (Sheshnag – the eternal serpent on whom Vishnu rests) Siwe /Sive (Shiva-pal seems to be his name - Dravidians have a significant Shaivite following even today).

One of the most prominent rulers of Babylon was Nebuchadnezzar (as spelt in English). Replace ‘b’ with ‘d’ and you are very close the Tamil name of Neduncheziyan (Nedunchedianuru) – a current and modern Tamil name. Interestingly, Neduncheziyan is more famous as the fabled erring Pandyan King in the Tamil classic – Silappadhikaaram. Neduncheziyan mistaken justice, brings him grief and finally death. Neduncheziyan is overshadowed by the other King, Cheran Senguttuvan’s fame in the Tamil classic, written by Jain Saint, Elangovadigal.

The goddess figurine seems to show parallel preferences between Elamite concept of female beauty and today’s Kodambakkam.

Ophir

This was a famous city from which ancient Egypt, Babylon, Sumeria and other Middle East countries imported gold, sandalwood, ivory, gems, (wild animals and birds(peacocks, monkeys). This now seems to be a corruption of the Tamil kingdom of Oviyar. Oviyar were one of the ruling tribes of South India and Sri Lanka. Ophir (as the Greeks called it and the West knows it) was a kingdom in South India and Lanka - a legend in its own time. Ships sailed from Sopara (modern Nallasoppara) and Lothal.

The Satavahanas

Immediately after the decline of Mauryan power in the Deccan, rose the Satavahanas. Based in the Godavari and Krishna river region, their origin is is disputed between being Andhras or Marathas. Many of Sakas and Yavanas were taken onto Satavahana administration. Indianised Sakas and Yavanas, (Dharmadeva, Agnivarma or Rishabhadatta) from the Central Asia-Iran-Afghan region, were tribes and peoples conquered by Alexander and subsequently available as mercenaries. The spread of Buddhism gained strength during this reign – which we will see became a significant feature of Dravidian spread. The Amravati stupa, was built during this period.

Satakarni I (C. 180-170 B.C) was one of the early Satavahana rulers. He expanded to western Malwa (a Sungas territory) and clashed with the powerful Kalinga ruler Kharavela. He performed performing Aswamedhas thus announcing his suzerainty – desides celebrating a Rajasuya. His queen was a Marathi princess Naganika and a Naneghat inscription describes him as ” Lord of Dakshinapatha, wielder of the unchecked wheel of Sovereignty”.

Hala (C. 19-24 A.D) the seventeenth Satavahana ruler compiled Saptasati in Prakrit, married a Sri Lankan princess, (described in Prakrit work) Lilavati. Gautamiputra Shri Yagna Satakarni (C. 78-102 A.D.), in an inscription at Nasik, took pride in calling himself `Destroyer of Shaka(Scythians), Yavana (Greeks) and Pahalava’ – Pahalava referring to the Pahlavi dynasty of Parthian area of Iran. More than 13000 coins were found from his reign – now famous as the Jogalthembi hoard.

The Chalukyas – 5th Century to 12th Century

Vijnaneshwara who accomplished renown by inscribing Mitakshara- a book on Hindu law in the court of Chalukya Vikramaditya VI. Somesvara III was a magnificent intellectual and king who amassed an encyclopedia of all arts and sciences called Manasollasa.

The Maritime Saga

So, these Indians from South were involved in Middle East administration and were a major maritime power till the 17th century. Indonesia, Philipines, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia were at various times ruled by these Dravidian rulers.

The world’s largest religious complex is the Hindu temple of Angkor Vat – in Cambodia.

Simultaneously, trade introduced Islam and Christianity into India in Kerala, Bengal and Kashmir – before any invasions. The demographic change in Indian religious due to invasions was magnified by colonial historians to create animosity.

More coming up in the next 1 week.

As can be seen, North and South Indians were different language and practices but saw themselves as apart of Bharatvarsha – i.e India. Unlike what European historians would like us to believe. Lot of the material is available as links in this post also.

Sonia Return That Metal (Oops … medal)

What Should Sonia Gandhi Do

Sonia Gandhi should return the Order Of Leopold Medal. If she is an Indian. If she respects India and its values. Values that her mother-in-law, her grand-father-in-law and her Nehru-Gandhi family stood for and gave their lives for.

What Does That Medal Mean

That medal, Sonia, smells! It smells of blood. Of decaying flesh. I am sure you don’t want such a smelly piece of metal. I am sure the moment you reject this piece of trash, 10 better medals will come your way. Medals which are worth more and will mean something better. With the medal will come, the clamoring spirits and ghosts of 1 crore murdered Congolese who will haunt you.

Give up that medal, Sonia. Just like you gave up the Prime Ministerial position.

It will prove that you are like your mother in law. She gave it all up by calling for election in 1977. And yet , 3 years later, she won it all back. She was a brave lady. She could have been prejudiced against the Sikhs. But, her need to trust was greater than the importance of her security. She could have been blind to the Bangladesh problem. It took courage and steel to take on an ally of the US. She could have (but did not) cosied up to the USA like the SEATO and CENTO nations did – and paying a price for that now.

The History Of King Leopold-II

“Dr.Livingstone, I presume!” and that is how Henry Stanley made his name and the life of Congolese miserable. Based on this incident, he was given a contract by King Leopold-II to establish “trading posts along the Congo River. In time, like with other colonial possessions, with a mix of fraud, guile, deceit, force, massacre and other such ‘civilised’ by ‘Christian’ civilisers, Congo was also made into a colony. By King Leopold-II of Belgium, in his personal capacity.

King Leopold (current king’s predecessor 3 times away) was murderer. Plain and simple.

You see what happened was that in 1871, King Leopold decided that he needed to get respect. So he called for the Brussels Conference.  His colleague, Otto Von Bismarck, of Germany got into the act and called for the Berlin conference.Plans were hatched and agreements signed.

Based on Dr.Livingstone’s propaganda, it was decided there that Europe will directly enslave the Africans - instead of the the Arabs. At that time 90%of Africa was was free. In the next 20 years, 90% of Africa was colonialised.

King Leopold’s personally owned the Belgian Congo territory. His personal army-men and his personal agents killed more than 1 crore people. When hardly any Congolese were left, he sold Belgian Congo to his own country for GBP3.8 million. His greed and the Belgian attempts to white wash those dark deeds is what you are becoming party to.

The Election Commission Notice

The Election Commission and its notice are another issue – which I am not commenting on or worried about. TN Seshan gave the Election Commission real fangs and they can make life difficult. But the Congolese are a different matter. Yesterday it was the Congolese. Who will it be tomorrow? What can one say about tomorrow? But the greed and inhumanity of the European colonialists is something we can be sure of.

Andy Mukherjee’s Poverty

Andy Mukherjee – On The American Stimulus Package

Andy Mukherjee, on Wednesday, February 13, 2008, in his syndicated column used his Asian background with devastating effect. Devastating to his (at least, partly Indian) background.

He writes, “the stimulus package that has been put together to keep the U.S. economy from tipping into a recession”.

Just what is the problem with that. In the current economic thinking, all Governments are expected to create these ‘stimulus’ package.

Andy Still Talks Of Aid

He further writes,

“At $168 billion, the largesse is almost three-fifths more generous … than the record $107 billion that 22 rich nations together gave out as official foreign aid in 2005 …” (ellipsis mine)

I thought every country has a right – and as per current acceptable political philosophy, it is the bounden duty of Governments to be generous to their citizens. What exactly is the objection that Andy has to the US Government’s ‘largesse’ and ‘munificence’, (his words)? I am unclear about on that till now.

Which planet is Andy on? Since he is writing a business and finance columns, is he aware (I hope he is) of the large body of research that shows how aid has in fact creates problems – and doesn’t solve any. The notorious PL-480 was abandoned because it elongated the cycle of food scarcity.

Low self esteem, Andy?

He advises,

“Middle-class Asians ought to turn green with envy at the “home bias” implicit in the munificence of President George W. Bush’s administration.”

So what does Andy expect – Uncle Sam should be more liberal to Asians than to Americans? Does he expect Americans to earn and be taxed for the benefit of Asians? And just why does he think that Asians (at least Indians) will turn green with envy.

I am sure that Asia wishes to compete with the largest, best, competitive economies – but surely there is no envy involved (exceptions apart). I am also sure (unlike Andy) that, in time, we will create a level playing field (more important and more on that later) and Americans will want to be born in Asia (and most probably, India).

Andy’s Cheques by mail programme

Unlike the 111 million US households that will enjoy some tax rebate, there won’t be any cheques in the mailbox for the Asian workers.

And who exactly does Andy think, is going to send cheques by mail to Asians? Americans? Just why will Americans do that? How does Andy think Americans will fund this Andy’s ‘cheques by mail’ programme? Does Andy think that 60-80 million working Americans can suport 3 billion Asians?

And why does Andy think that Asians will queue up to take this charity? Just why is Andy’s opinion of Asians so low? Is is it because of his own low self esteem?

Asians Are Funding the US Stimulus Plan

Asia lost last year (my estimate) more than US$300 billion dollars due to the monetary policy of the USA. Deliberate, well thought out monetary policy by the USA Government.

The truth my dear Andy, is that American lifestyle is being maintained due to Asian stupidity. The Chinese, Japanese, Indian, and other ASEAN countries have lent the USA – which is in the hock, by over US$4trillion dollars. They will lose US$ 300 billion for the privilege of lending US$4 trillion to the USA.

What? Asians Fund The USA …

Why? Because the system is fixed. Go back to Bretton Woods! The Anglo Saxon Bloc controlled 80% of the world’s gold production and reserves. Hence, only they could underpin their currency with gold- which the world accepted. It is separate story that they defrauded the world – and the system unravelled within a short 20 years.

And the world has been paying a price for that moment of folly.

What Does Asia Need

Asians need to create a new financial system. That is what Asia needs – and that is what US has been sabotaging for years now.

And a case for that is what I would have expected from you, Andy – or is that too much too ask for!

End Of Slavery In Europe & USA

Haiti – First Slave Independence

14th August 1791. St Dominque. An African slave overseer killed a pig. And that signaled off the world’s first successful slave uprising.

Boukman Dutty, a Voudou N’Gan (oungan, houngan, voodoo priest), killed a pig as a part of an African tribal ritual Bwa Kayiman, dedicated to his ancestors and Ogoun, god of fire, iron and war. Ogoun and Erzulie Dantor (Ezili Dantor), a Vodou l’wha (loa) a warrior spirit, responded to this call to protect these slave warriors.

25th August. Night of Fire.

50,000 slaves rose in revolt. More than 1000 sugar and coffee plantations were put to fire. Flames could be seen as far as Bahamas. From 31st December 1803, to 1st January, 1804, liberation brought about by vengeance was celebrated, and independence was declared.

St. Dominque, now called Haiti, was a French colony with 800 sugar plantations and 4,00,000 slaves from Niger and Dahomey (now Benin) in West Africa. Haiti, the jewel of French colonies, accounting for 40% of French GDP in 1700s, was the largest market for slaves in Atlantic trade. Considered “the single richest colony in the world“, it was the largest producer of sugar in the world and competed with British colonies (like India) for indigo production and had thousands of coffee plantations.

Christopher Columbus, the first European to Haiti, in 1492, and started the exploitation of Haiti. What happened to the original population of Haiti? An estimated 1.3 million, may have been 3-4 million (admittedly not White, but nevertheless) people. Done to death by forced labour in silver mines over the next 10 years.

Imperial Opportunism

After the revolution in Haiti, Spaniards and the British rushed in to take advantage of this opportunity and to re-enslave the rebels. The newly freed slaves time and again, beat back the new British and Spanish enslavers.

“The army failed. Five years and more than 12,000 British deaths later, the redcoats withdrew. An army of rebel enslaved Africans had defeated the army of the world’s superpower, and the largest slave-trading nation.

The humiliation of this defeat sent a shock wave through the British establishment and, indirectly, strengthened the forces in parliament that voted to abolish the slave trade in 1807.” (from William Wilberforce: The Real Abolitionist? By Adam Hochschild)

The Haitians, initially led by Boukman Douty, re-grouped under Toussaint Louverture, Georges Biassou, Jean Jacques Dessalines and Henry Christophe. On January 1st, 1804, Haiti declared themselves free and a republic. It was world’s first republic established by people of African descent.

Haiti, (unlike today’s Israeli Jews) supported liberation movements. Haiti’s successful revolt and the defeat of the Spanish and British armies encouraged other colonies of South America to demand and fight for Independence. This fight was led by Simon Bolivar – after whom Bolivia is named.

After being expelled from Venezuela, it was Alexandre Petion, the Haitian President, who gave shelter to Simon Bolivar in 1815, with arms, ammunition, a printing press and other aid – after a clear promise that all the freed countries of the South America would abolish slavery. A promise that Simon Bolivar did not keep – until significant pressure was put on him. In spite of winning freedom with the help of African people, the newly freed countries of South America discriminated against the very same Africans who helped them get freedom. Moreover, in 1826, at the Congress of American States, under US pressure, Simon Bolivar did not invite Haiti.

Shivas dun mai spoiwne

Haiti’s developments stampeded Europe and USA. Afraid that US slaves will follow the Haiti example, US did not recognise Haiti, till November 1864 – 60 years after Haiti declared Independence.

Jefferson (possibly while dining alone), was afraid that Haiti would create a “great disposition to insurgency among American slaves.” He imagined that “dull, tasteless and anomalous” Africans would have

“ten thousand recollections by the blacks of the injuries they have sustained, new provocations, the real distinctions which nature has made, and many other circumstances will divide us into parties and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race.“

Restrictions on slavery were discussed all over Europe and USA. The US imposed restrictions on import of slaves – which increased the price of existing slaves in the trade market. But slave traders like Jean Laffitte soon ran rings round this by smuggling slaves from Cuba. Merchants and traders protested against Jean Laffitte’s smuggling of other products. Planters did not like slave traders because the slave traders made slaves ‘expensive’. The planters pressured Government’s into passing various laws restricting ‘trade’ in slaves.

Jean Laffitte’s smuggling operations stopped in 1821. After 14 years of successful slave smuggling. Jean Laffitte became a ‘folk hero’ in New Orleans for flouting restrictions against import of slaves (slaves that White southerners needed). It was his ‘patriot outlaw’ image which got him his following. He was ostensibly seen as aiding the government during the 1812 war with the British – which was decided on the basis of his business interests.

Britain & Abolition Of Slavery

Britain technically abolished slavery in 1807, after the Haiti experience. While slavery was supposedly abolished in 1807, trade in ‘pre-existing slaves’ continued. Slave ships and traders had to pay a fine of GBP 100 per slave, if caught. The law was not seriously implemented. In the few cases where slave ships and traders were caught, slaves were simply thrown overboard.

British trade and agriculture brought pressure to stop slavery by other European kingdoms. Paid labour had made French products uncompetitive – which made Napoleon re-introduce slavery. This re-introduction of slavery by the French (circa 1804) diluted British resolve to end slavery.

Further rebellions in Barbados (1816), Demerra (1823) and Jamaica (1831-32) finally forced the British hand. Freedom to British slaves came finally in 1833 after the British Government passed yet another law, to outlaw slavery, Slavery Abolition Act in 1833 – and paid ‘compensation’ to slave owners. An egregious and glaring example was the ‘compensation’ to the Bishop of Exeter and his partners of GBP 12,700 to ‘compensate’ them for the ‘loss’ of 665 slaves in 1833.

Yet another chapter …

After the finally abolishing slavery in 1833, indentured labour replaced slavery with indentured labour. Upfront, indentured labour was only slightly more expensive, but was cheaper in the long run. Indentured labour also came fewer issues related to capture, transport, trade and maintenance of slaves – with a veneer of respectability that was needed for propaganda purposes.

Also, Britain had India – a huge colony to fall back on for indentured labour. How could the British afford to buy indentured labour? Bought with new gold discoveries in Canada and Australia. Nearly 1 crore (10 million) indentured labourers were shipped out from India alone to various parts of the world – and continued till about 1917. As is to be expected, the UK Government grossly underestimates these figures.

By the time the indentured labour scheme was finally brought to an end in 1917, it is estimated that 2.5 million East Indians had been shipped to British colonies around the world. (From Empire’ Children – Channel 4).

Beggar Thy Neighbour

It was also economic warfare. Based on immediate colonial interests, promises were made to American slaves by Britain. During the American War Of Independence, British Colonial forces, encouraged African slaves to run away from their White masters. Property was promised to them in Canada and Sierra Leone. Some were sent to London. Based on these promises, an estimated 75,000-100,000 slaves abandoned their White American owners.

The key to Haiti’s wealth – slave labour. Hence, the British efforts to ban slavery – as a part of their beggar-thy-neighbour strategy. Haiti was contributing major surplus to the French – and Britain had to undercut French economic gains from Haiti. The French efforts to get back into India against Britain through Tipu Sultan (during the Mysore Wars) had made life difficult for Britain – and hence they needed to undermine French economic resources.

It had little to do with human rights. While slavery (especially in the Caribbean) was being abolished, the same Britons were committing genocide in Australia, New Zealand, and Africa.

The Rise Of Cuba

Spain took up the slack that the fall of Haiti created. Cuba within the next 50 years became the centre of Caribbean trade. After the fall of Haiti, by 1860, Cuban production grew to 500,000 tons of sugar – nearly 1/3 of the world’s production. Under Spanish rule from 1511, the indigenous population was annihilated and the island was populated by imported African slave labour.

What did the ’statesmen’ from the land of the free do? Henry Clay, Secretary Of State, in President John Quincy’s administration,was clear that “This country prefers that Cuba and Porto Rico remain dependent on Spain …” Of Henry Clay, Abraham Lincoln declared, “During my whole political life, I have loved and revered Henry Clay as a teacher and a leader.”

In 1844 Cuban slaves revolted unsuccessfully. 10th, October 1868, Carlos Manuel de Céspesdes released his slaves and El Grito de Yara War, (a 10 year campaign) against Spain started. General Valeriano Weyler, “The Butcher,” was sent to stamp out the independence movement. He created modern history’s first concentration camps. Hundreds of thousands of men women and children were put into concentration camps.

Modern Concentration Camps

In Havana city, 52,000 people died. The peasants retaliated by burning down vast Spanish owned sugar plantations. Weyler was recalled to Spain in 1879. October 7th 1886, slavery was finally abolished. Spain continued to rule Cuba – with greater repression.

“Seventy-five percent of Latin America’s exports to the United States came from Cuba and half of the Latin American imports from the United States went to Cuba in 1894. The United States had well entrenched itself in the Cuban economy and did not want to lose a valuable market so close by. Spain clung to its remaining claim. Cuba was caught in the middle in the mid-1890’s when the United States reduced sugar imports with the Wilson-Gorman tariff and Spain restricted United States imports to Cuba. Proponents of annexation and independence divided Cuba’s population.” by Brad Williford in The Cuban Revolution of 1895-98

The American Civil War

From 1861-1865, American went through the Civil War. Lincoln’s War, after all was more about economics than about slavery. It was about White unemployment, low wages to Whites due to competition from slave labour, due to high import tariffs (half to 80% of total import taxes were paid by American South).

In his inaugural speech, Lincoln promised ‘there will be no invasion‘ if he is allowed to use the “power confided to me … to collect the duties and imposts” – which some senators refused to endorse, seeing it as a threat of war.

Propaganda states that this war was fought to free the American Slaves. But for the next 100 years, there was little change. “Freed” slaves were forced into share cropping by a federal programme – Freedmen’s Bureau. Yes, people could no longer be bought or sold, could not be captured or kidnapped.

But in the land of the free, the African American man was still used – and abused. There was one use of the free African Americans. They were used to kill the Native Americans – who called these African-American Soldiers as Buffalo Soldiers.

Imperial Ambitions

125 years after Independence, US was developing colonial ambitions. The ‘Monroe doctrine’ was used to create colonies in the American backyard. “Yellow Journalism” was invented to whip up public sentiment. On April 25th 1898, the US Congress declared war. For the next 4 months, the US fought The Spanish-American War.

On August 12th, 1898, Spain signed the peace treaty. On December 10th 1898, the treaty of Paris was signed. USA ‘bought’ Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico and paid Spain US$2,00,00,000. Of course, the ‘inferior’ populations of these countries – Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico were unfit for inclusion in the Paris negotiations about their future.

Cubans were nominally declared free but with many conditions. In 1915, again the Monroe doctrine was invoked to invade Haiti. In the 1960s-70s, Chedi Jagan and his struggle to break from US domination (in the Caribbean) was sabotaged.

A degree of freedom

In America, opposition to slavery was about race. What if the African American slave population in the American South became like Haiti? Just before independence, against a population of 400,000-500,000 African  Haitians, there were about 25,000 whites and 40,000 mulattos.

What if the African  population in the American South (nearly 80% at the start of the Civil War) rose to say, 150%. Four million African American compared to five million Whites in the American South at the start of the Civil War.

Another Haiti would have very well happened in Southern American South too. A truncated USA was a real fear – if not a certainty. None other than “Benjamin Franklin said with alarm that importing slaves had “blacken’d half America” …

So, what did the White Fathers do? They set up in Africa, Israel’s predecessor! Liberia (another land of the free?) and the successor state of the British deportation to Sierra Leone. Behind this idea was Jefferson again, (dining alone again, Thomas?), who suggested that US should “take measures for procuring on the coast of Africa, an establishment to which the people of color of these States might, from time to time, be colonized.“

In 1816, the USA decided to follow Jefferson’s idea and colonise Africa (Africa had to pay the price of Jefferson’s dining alone). An artificial situation was created, where escaped, freed Africans were sent to Liberia. The local population were of no consequence – like latter day Palestine.

With the setting up of Liberia, slavery was moved off shore. In 1926, large parts of Liberia were leased out to Firestone – for rubber plantations. Even in Africa, these ‘freed ’slaves were enslaved again – which continues to this day.

A significant reason why slavery was not popular in the North was the depressing effect of slavery on wages and employment. Poor (free) whites had to compete with slave labour for employment – and that was a non-starter.

From 1860-1960

Little changed in the next 100 years after the Civil War – except the matter of 25 million missing African-Americans. At the start of the Civil War, the White Population of North and South was 22 million. And African-American was 5 million. By 1960, the White population had grown by nearly 800%, to 160 million. The African American population in the meantime had grown by only 400% – from 5 million to 20 million.

What happened to the missing 400% of African American population growth? Apologists (and defenders) use White immigration to explain away some of the difference. But that further compounds the problem – because there was also about 1 million Afro-American immigrants from Haiti, Jamaica, Africa and other countries. Nett, nett – there are about 20-25 million Afro-descendants missing – due to deprivation, poor health care and indifference.

Mortality amongst Afro-Americans due to AIDS is higher than for Whites – 60,000 higher Afro-American deaths every year. The New England Journal Of Medicine states,

“Among patients infected with HIV, blacks were significantly less likely than whites to have received antiretroviral therapy or PCP prophylaxis when they were first referred to an HIV clinic“.

But rights and equality is something else

From 1865 to 1965, Afro-American though no longer bought and sold – were still excluded from the political and social systems – in the land of the free. The Freedman’s Bureau made the ‘free’ Afro-Americans into poor sharecroppers and destitute. The Ku Klux Klan became a vigilante group to ensure that Afro-Americans stayed where they were – at the bottom of the economic, social and political ladder.

By 1890’s the disenfranchisement laws came into effect – which ensured that the disproportionate numbers of Afro-Americans could not vote. Petty crime, (where poor) Afro-Americans were convicted in higher ratios, were grounds for disenfranchisement. These laws ensured that 10 times higher number of African-Americans were disqualified compared to Whites. If that is not bad enough, it continues till now. After some 60,000 African-American voters were disenfranchised, George Bush technically won by less than 1000 votes (most were expected to vote against George Bush). Such tactics continue to be used to limit Afro-American participation in democracy.

Castro and Che

The re-emergence of the Ku Klux Klan in its second avatar continued with its agenda of Afro-American subjugation till the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. The second coming was a mainstream event with President Woodrow Wilson endorsing the film and the message.

Emancipation

The Cuban revolution is not a 50 year old event as this article seems to make out. And Afro-American emancipation in the USA is a 1970s phenomenon, 30+ years ago event – and not 200 years ago as this article in New York Times seems to make out.

It took non-violent protests (Martin Luther King, inspired by Gandhiji) and violent threats (Malcolm X) for some kind of real emancipation and equity to come in. Of course, it is no co-incidence, that both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King were assassinated.

In the Cold War scenario, under international media glare, during the Little Rock School stand-off, Eisenhower (a Southerner himself) reacted. Reluctantly, in 1954, he sent in the National Guard to Little Rock, Arkansas for some kind of de-segregation. The Mayor of Little Rock, Arkansas closed down the school rather than de-segregate. US (and the West) earned bragging rights in the eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation during the Kennedy years with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 – and the Nobel Prize for Martin Luther King.

Demonise, Massacre and Apologise

Now that there are a few Red Indians and aborigines left (they serve as tourist attractions), there is the ritual of regret and apology about their role in the genocidal past. Since, the “Jewish Problem” was solved by Hitler (there are hardly 1 million Jews left in Europe and 5 million in USA), the West and USA has no problems, anymore with the Jews.

In fact, Jews today serve a useful purpose to the West. After the Anglo-Saxon led alliance broke up the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East, the Israelis are the Western cat’s paw.

They been suborned to the job of keeping a lid on the simmering oil rich, Middle East, and keeping it in check. What is the real cost to the USA- an inflated arms bill. What does it cost Israel – millions of precious Jewish lives, lost in the fight to keep the Anglo Saxons in luxury.

The demonisation (Shakespeare joined in with his anti-Semitic Merchant Of Venice) of the Jews has now been replaced by demonisation of Islam. Without taking responsibility for the destabilisation of the Islamic World by the liquidation of the Ottoman Empire after WW1 – perpetrated by Anglo Saxon countries and the French.

New political constructs

Colonial loot from South America and India, Canada and Australia reduced cost of capital to hasten industrialization. Thus ‘zero’ cost capital from colonial loot and ‘zero’ cost slave labour drove the engines of industrial Europe. Patronage by large land owners, financial backing by emerging ‘industrialists’ gave the educated and qualified, the resources to focus on innovation and invention.

This was the ‘Golden Age of Capitalism.’ As slavery receded (due to many revolts and rebellions) in 19th century, Capitalism also faded. Slavery and colonialism allowed creation greater concentration of wealth – in exchange for greater perceived freedom. Two aspects led to decline of capitalism. One, was receding slavery, and secondly lack of new colonies and peoples to loot, pillage, and commit genocides.

After the eclipse of Capitalism, the West needed a new economic model.

A popular writer waxing nostalgic for this ‘golden age’ was Ayn Rand. Her glossing over slavery, her token objections to segregation were reminiscent of an age gone by. Her disregard for family structures was her contribution to ‘modernizing’ capitalism. The economic contribution of slavery to the wealth of the West, the creation of patronage structures for ‘innovation and invention’ and the loot from the colonies were all absent from Ayn Rand’s hagiography on capitalism.

Communism

Faced with a crisis of labour due to abolition of slavery, England started looking at alternatives for a new economic model. They selected a fugitive theorist, whose theories were creating interest in mainland Europe.

Communism awarded a monopoly over slavery to one employer – the State. Single employer, total monopoly, impress the slaves with the glory and future. This was the only Western ideology that was born out of design. With the demise of slave trafficking, 1832 in Britain; slavery re-introduced in 1802 by France) Europe was concerned about labour and industry.

France, Brussels, Britain etc. took the lead and provided patronage to Karl Marx and Frederick Engels to devise another system – an alternate to slavery.

Their books, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, The Communist Manifesto (published in) 1848 laid the basis for an alternative to capitalism. In the next few years, their publications found eager publishers and sold well. Their popularity could be gauged by the significant royalties, Marx and Engels received, from the sale of their books – and could live on earnings from their writing careers.

Obviously, Communism could not be ’sold’ to the designated victims, that they were the new slaves. It had to be ‘bought’ willingly by the ‘target audience’ as yet another ‘level of freedom’. Slavery sold as a promise of freedom – You have nothing to loose but you chains.

Socialism

Socialism

Most European countries moved away from the slavery-capitalism-colonialism model during the 1900-1950 period. The new political construct was Socialism – which gave freedom to labor to change employers. This was a major improvement for labour – from earlier slavery and serfdom model, where employer-change was not possible.

In turn, the number of employers was restricted, so that there was not too much competition for labour or markets. The burden of labour welfare on imposed on the limited number of employers – in return for limited competition for customers and employees. This resulted in a high tax burden on employers – in return for lesser competition, high trade barriers, non-tariff barriers.

A twist in this socialist model was the Bretton Woods mechanism. At one stroke this created ‘invisible’ reverse flows from the poor to the rich countries – with minuscule but ‘visible’ show of flows from the rich to the poor.

Splendid Isolation

Fear of success or opposition, in country after country of the Americas and Pacific, the USA has been involved in destabilisation and intervention. One time USA allies are now hot beds of terrorism. Afraid that US slaves will follow the Haiti example, US did not recognise Haiti, till November 1864 – 60 years after Haiti declared Independence. Moreover, in 1826, at the Congress of American States, under US pressure, Simon Bolivar did not invite Haiti.

The US record against the growth and stabilisation of Cuba does not bear repetition. Having ‘bought’ Cuba from Spain (like Puerto Rico, Guam and Philippines), USA believes and feels that they ‘own’ Cuba.

In 1904, the US pressured Tomas Estrada Palma, a ‘puppet’ Cuban President, to sign the Platt Amendment. This allowed US intervention in Cuban affairs, if ‘vital’ US  interests were at risk (meaning at US will) – finally modified only in 1934Under this ‘new deal’ ‘Cuba would be allowed to export 22% of the sugar the US imported, by paying 0.09¢, a pound tariff duty. In return, little or no duty would be levied by Cuba on goods imported from the USA.’

The Greatest Suffering

The African-American in the USA and Europe have seen some justice – as they were an important constituency in the Cold War. USA propaganda was on the verge of losing Africa to Soviet Russia. The Jews have been very persistent and they have not let the world forget – or the perpetrators rest in peace.

The forgotten lot is that that of the Romani Gypsies. This one segment based in Europe and USA continues to remain on the fringes and discriminated. They have been hunted (like forest animals), their children kidnapped (to end their race and social system), they have been gassed (by Hitler along with the Jews), they have been galley slaves, In fact there was a time when they could be killed, if found alive!

Good Job, Dinesh

I came across two blogs which possibly best represent attempts to ‘white wash.’

One is from a member of the US Conservative Right, part of the Republican propaganda team – aapla, our own Dinesh DeSouza. He tries, speciously and very hard, to show how it is the White, Christian, Americans who actually freed the slaves – after the slaves were sold into slave by their ‘Black Brothers’. Of course, he cannot see the long history of trade in slaves, the laws and might of the state which enforced this trade, the continuing attempts (under disenfranchisement laws) to deny Afro-Americans, their voting rights. Dinesh does a fabulous hatchet job on how the West can make me a colonial subject of the Raj again.

The second blog, by an academic, celebrates a pseudo-anniversary. This post, ‘a professor at a large state university,’ abandons academic integrity to promote propaganda, instead of academic excellence. At least, he published dissenting comments. Bro.Dinesh DeSouza does not publish dissenting comments.

Or for this matter this book review in The Times about slavery – which doesn’t once mention the one reason, why slavery was abolished – Haiti and slave revolts.

The Indian Voter

The Indian Republic has spawned the most unique democracy in the modern history. Eminent cultures and nations, when faced with 20th century Anglo-Saxon power of industry, colonial exploitation, global financial manipulation tried ‘copycat’ versions of European nations. Prime examples of those were Russia, Turkey and China.

Russia – Westernising Since Peter The Great

Peter the Great, (of the Naryshkin family) co-ruler of Russia, (along with Ivan of the Miloslavsky family) ruled from 1682-1725. For more than 40 years, his agenda was to create Russia in the Western mould. His travels to Germany, Britain, Sweden (before becoming a Tsar) shaped this agenda. One of the first things he did after becoming a Tsar was to ask his boyars (Russian nobility) to shave their beards! Catherine The Great continued this during her reign from 1762-1796. For the next 125 years, Russia vacillated between a medieval country and modern western country.

Now, the imprisoned oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky takes pains, who at one time nursed political ambitions, earnestly says,“…I’m convinced that Russia is a European country, it’s a country with democratic traditions …”

Chinese Wedding

China – Mao & Sun

In the 20th century, one of the first countries to become a ‘copycat’ states was China.

The first major Asian power going down the western path was China, led by Sun Yat Sen. His original name Sun Wen and Chinese call him Sun Zhongshan and he started calling himself Yat Sen. Sun Yat Sen decided to westernise and make China into a Republican democracy.

Chinese were made to cut their queue – pleated hair braids. This diktat was enforced in 20 days time. Sun Yatsen and later Mao Ze Dong made the Chinese change their dress styles too. The effect of this Westernisation – an enduring sense of being ‘followers’. The Chinese add a Western name to their Chinese one – Michael Tang, Bruce Lee, Jerry Yang, Tommy Tang, Tommy Chi. In Hong Kong and Macao, White tourists are royalty. Chinese companies routinely parade White, Western investors – and the Chinese investors follow. Western marriage ceremony, Chinese couples think, is very romantic. The Christian Church wedding is common in China.

Not that Indians are too far behind – consider Steve Sanghi, Paul Parmar, or the best of them all, Bobby Jindal.

Ataturk’s Turkey

Turkey – led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was reduced itself to ‘copycat’ attempt at Westernisation. After WW1, the victorious allied powers dismantled the Ottoman Empire. Turkey was reduced to a rump state.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was ‘installed’ by Western powers (much like Hamid Karzai).  Thereafter, Turkey has lurched from crisis to another. Post WW2, it has mostly been ruled by military dictatorships. From an arbiter in Europe, it has become a supplicant, begging for entry into EU. Instead of the queue in China – it was beards in Turkey. Atatürk enforced a new dress code on the hapless Turks – and the traditional fez was banned. Stop wearing the fez or else …

RK Laxman display's his colonial baggage

Japan – Democracy By LDP

Although Japan never ‘Westernised’ in the manner of the Russia, China or Turkey, Japan’s democracy is an external construct. After the Japanese surrender in WW2, Supreme Commander of Allied Powers, Douglas MacArthur ruled over Japan. A translator’s mistake started the Japanese to work on a new constitution. MacArthur rejected the draft submitted, saying it was “nothing more than a rewording of the old Meiji constitution.” MacArthur put his own staff on the job – and supervised the writing of the Japanese Constitution. A new draft was written in the next 10 days.

From 1955, when the LDP was formed, it remained in power for the next 38 years. In 1993, for the first time, a non LDP Government was formed – The Shinseito (Japan Renewal Party) came to power. Compare that with India’s first change which occurred within 26 years.

After a change in the ruling party, the Japanese miracle ended. A 10 year economic slump followed.

RK Laxman it it all wrong!

Indian Democracy

The Indian Voter is a very unique specimen. Forged out a feudal-colonial regime, he was coached by Gandhiji. Time and again the Indian Voter has voted in a very perceptive manner – rationally and without emotion.

1956 Election

In the very second General Elections of 1956, two leftist parties, gained 19.33% of popular vote, formed the world’s first elected Communist Government.

Nehru, a legend in his own life, venerated and loved by the people he ruled, was given a warning. Perform or else.

What shocked and stampeded Nehru was 19.33% of the combined vote won by Leftist parties (CPI and the Praja Socialist Party – a party formed in 1952, whose founder members were Jayaprakash Narayan, Ram Manohar Lohia, JB Kripalani) – versus Nehru’s Congress which got 47.78% of popular vote. This challenge to Nehru within 10 years of Independence from a non-Congress platform made these socialist leaders legends in their own lifetime. The Communists went ahead and formed the world’s first elected Communist government (the State Government in Kerala).

The Left parties were given an opportunity. The Leftists did not live up to their promise. Apart from regional mandates, the Left were not given any major opportunity.

Nehru thereafter went down the socialist road. Possibly, looking at the ’ship-to-mouth’ economy, the socialist road was the humane answer. To a society coming out of the nightmare of colonial exploitation, the State as a parens patriae was a plausibility – as most voters were too poor and unable to take care of themselves.

Alphabet soup

1969 Election

Indira Gandhi had sacked Morarji Desai as the Finance Minister over his obstinacy – on the Gold Control Act, bank nationalisation, etc. It was also rumoured that he was in CIA pay – a plausible allegation, as the rickety structure of Bretton Woods was propped up by the Indian ban on gold imports by Morarji Desai. Other disgruntled Congress party members had split from the Congress to form the Congress(O).

The voter saw through the disgruntlement on one and Indira Gandhi’s imperious ways were beginning to show on the other. The Indian Voter gave her a razor thin majority – and the Congress(O) sulked as a major opposition party. The Indian Voter did not have any appetite for the negative agenda of Congress (O).

1971 Election

Indira Gandhi after a dramatic war in Bangladesh War (the largest PoW capture in the history of modern warfare by any country) and with an electrifying slogan – Garibi Hatao, called for elections. This decisiveness and a weak opposition won her the election.

1977 Election

Within 26 years after the first election in 1952, India changed its favorite political party. Post 1975 Emergency, India after being ruled by diktat, chose to remove Indira Gandhi. Opposition parties, for the first time in free India, gave the Indian Voter a clean choice. And the voter decided. The Indian Voter chose change.

Indira Gandhi was voted out.

1980 Election

A chastened Indira Gandhi was voted back to power. A vengeful opposition party was sent into the wilderness. India took it first steps towards liberalisation. New industrial capacities for cars and scooters were approved. The economy slowly started getting unshackled.

1984 Election

After Indira Gandhi’s assassination, Rajiv Gandhi won a landslide victory – on a so-called sympathy wave. But the Indian Voter simultaneously voted for a different party for the local, state level Government. So, there was a national Government led by Rajiv Gandhi and the opposition party won the election in Haryana!

Who Is the Indian Voter

He is poor. He is not the rich Indian. He typically should be swayed by promises and subsidies. But he can be a very perceptive. He has never given the negative agenda of the Leftists a major opportunity.

Indian Muslim women voting & electronic voting machines

He is illiterate. He votes with his “heart” or his “caste”. He does not understand the “issues”. But he did not buy the India Shining story that the BJP, a ‘Hindu fundamentalist’ party was peddling. Similarly, I doubt if they will back Manmohan Singh’s attempt to ’sit at the high table in the global comity of nations.”

This democracy was a home grown democracy, written, managed and nurtured by Indians. There will be many challenges ahead.

Unlike many, I do not believe, this is the end of the road for Anglo Saxon Super-power status – and the Chindia-India-Asia century is not near. But the Indian Voter will live up to the challenge. India’s indigenous democracy is not the ‘copycat’ that others countries tried.

Country Business Model Of The West

The Myth Of Western Technology

In the last 50 years, after WW2, the rise of Japan, Korea and China in manufacturing and technology and the Indian software success, have taken away the sheen from the myth of western technological prowess. Post colonial revisions in history are eroding the euro-centric version of biased history.

Failed Westernisations

For some time, the easy way out seemed to be ‘copycat’ westernisation. One of the first ‘copycat’ states was China. China, led by Sun Yat Sen, (original name Sun Wen and started calling himself Yat-sen; Chinese call him Sun Zhongshan), was the first major power which tried going down the western path. The Japanese invasion of Manchuria sounded the death knell of the Chinese Republic and Monarchy.

China – Mao & Sun

Sun Yat Sen decided to westernise and make China into a Republican democracy. Chinese were made to cut their queue – pleated hair braids. This diktat was enforced in 20 days time. Sun Yatsen and later Mao Ze Dong made the Chinese change their dress styles too. The effect of this westernisation – an enduring sense of being followers. The Chinese add a western name to their Chinese one – Michael Tang, Bruce Lee, Jerry Yang, Tommy Tang, Tommy Chi.

In Hong Kong and Macao, white tourists are royalty. Chinese companies routinely parade White, Western investors – and the Chinese investors follow. Western marriage ceremony, Chinese couples think, is very romantic. The Christian Church wedding is common in China.

Not that Indians are too far behind – consider Steve Sanghi, Paul Parmar, or the best of them all, Bobby Jindal.

Ataturk’s Turkey

Turkey – led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was the next ‘copycat’ attempt at westernisation. After WW1, the victorious allied powers dismantled the Ottoman Empire. Turkey was reduced to a rump state.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was ‘installed’ by Western powers. Thereafter, Turkey has lurched from crisis to another. Post WW2, it has mostly been ruled by military dictatorships. From an arbiter in Europe, it has become a supplicant, begging for entry into EU. Instead of the queue in China – it was beards in Turkey. Atatürk enforced a new dress code on the hapless Turks – and the traditional fez was banned. Stop wearing the fez or else …

Russia – Westernising Since Peter The Great

Peter the Great, (of the Naryshkin family) co-ruler of Russia, (along with Ivan of the Miloslavsky family) ruled from 1682-1725. For more than 40 years, his agenda was to create Russia in the Western mould. His travels to Germany, Britain, Sweden (before becoming a Tsar) shaped this agenda.

One of the first things he did after becoming a Tsar was to ask his boyars (Russian nobility) to shave their beards! Catherine The Great continued this during her reign from 1762-1796. For the next 125 years, Russia vacillated between a medieval country and modern western country.

Now, the imprisoned oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky takes pains to show how Russia is a western nation and should be democracy. Khodorkovsky, who at one time nursed political ambition, says, “…I’m convinced that Russia is a European country, it’s a country with democratic traditions …”

The Anglo Saxon Country Business Model

These Turkish and Chinese failures down the western garden path is to mistake the trees for the forest. There are five major features of the Anglo Saxon country model which these countries did not copy. Not that I am recommending that they be copied.

The Use Of Corporations

The use of the British East India Company was an eye opener for the rest of the West. After Vasco da Gama’s discovery of trade route to India (for Europeans) round Africa, the British were the first of the block – with the English East India Company formed in the 1600.

The Dutch started soon after with the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (Dutch East India Co.) in 1602. The Danish Opperhoved initially started in 1616 and was reborn in 1732, as Asiatisk Kompagni. The Portuguese organised themselves as chartered company in 1628. The French came with the French East India Co. in 1664. The Swedes joined the rat race in 1731 with Svenska Ostindiska Companiet. The Italians came in as the Genoa East India companies. The Hanseatic League had its own operations.

In North America, the Hudson Bay Company (Compagnie de la Baie d’Hudson in French) was given a Royal Charter in 1670 by Charles II. It practically owned Canada when the Dominion of Canada was formed – and is the oldest surviving company in North America. It monopoly ended only in 1870 – a few years after the Indian Independence War of 1857.

Anglo American Oil Company (subsidiary of Standard Oil) of Iran plotted the the assassination of Iran’s Prime Minister Haj Ali Razmara and the overthrow of the Mohammed Mossadegh regime. Thereafter, it was the puppet regime of Shah Of Iran which terrorised Iran for 30 years that paved the way for return of Ayatollah Khomeini – and Iran’s regression to medieval times. And who was leading this campaign – Kermit Roosevelt (Teddy Roosevelt’s grandson).

In South America

In 1997, the CIA de-classified papers which admitted it planned and executed the coup in Guatemala – something that was known all along. This was done to protect the interests of the United Fruit Company – which owned large tracts of agricultural land in South America, used South American labour and shipped out fruit to America. Guatemalan farmers were run out of the market.

When Guatemala proposed land reforms so that Guatemalans could prosper in Guatemala, the Government of Jacobo Arbenz was overthrown. By the way, the term Banana republics came into being from the frequent intervention of the US into South American countries – and then ridiculing these countries for instability. To obtain US Governmental intervention, the United Fruit Company engaged services of Sigmund Frued’s nephew as PR front man.

The last 100 years saw the use of these companies as a means of economic dominance. ITT was used in South America for installing and removing dictators

“… ITT papers published by Jack Anderson in March 1972, and in the hearings on these papers conducted by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a year later. This material establishes that offers of financial aid aimed at stopping Allende were made by ITT president Harold S. Geneen to the CIA in July 1970 and to Henry Kissinger’s office in September” (Foreign Affairs; January 1974).

Had Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger not responded to International Telephone & Telegraph and Pepsi-Cola by overthrowing Salvador Allende, Chile “would have found a less violent, more constitutional way out of its conundrum.” writes Stephen Kinzer in his book Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change From Hawaii to Iraq.

To gain control of the Panama Canal Company, the operator of the Panama Canal, US engineered the secession of Panama from Colombia. With a puppet Government in place, The Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty allowed the U.S. to build the Panama Canal. Subsequent interventions to advance Western oil interests in Colombia and the Canal interests in Panama have reduced Governmental authority in these countries. Drug cartels, kidnapping and ransom now control the economy of these countries.

Nearer home, of course, the next ruler of Pakistan (military or otherwise) is decided by US – at least for now.

The Cornering Of Gold Supplies

For the last 150 years, the ABC countries (America, Australia, Britain, Canada) comprising the Anglo Saxon bloc (countries, colonies and companies) have controlled 90% of the world’s gold production. Till (a large part of) India was a British Colony, they also controlled more than 50% of the above-the-ground gold reserves. This gave them absolute liberty to print depreciating currency and flood the world pieces of paper(called dollars and pounds), manipulate the world financial system and keep other populations poor and backward.

Enslavement & Annihilation Of The Natives

They could capture gold supplies by the annihilation of native populations in America and Canada (‘Red Indians’ are tourist attractions now), killed the aborigines in Australia (and apologise now).

Till the middle of 19th century, raw slavery continued. By mid 19th century new forms of slavery was introduced – indentured labour, share cropping, etc. They re-invented slavery (in the 20th century again) and renamed it as apartheid which made native populations into slaves. They could, of course, truthfully claim that great Anglo Saxon frontiersmen discovered gold and settled empty continents – in ‘hostile conditions’.

The Creation Of Client Sates

Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, most of South America – have been reduced to the situation of client states. The basic position is Uncle Sam knows best – or else! These states have become production centres for the USA, cheap labour will be given an ‘opportunity’ to serve the ‘master’ states.

All these states also have significant military presence of the Anglo Saxon Bloc -which is a matter of concern for India.

The Alternate Model

The western model of (natural and people) exploitation has runs its course – for instance, in India even salt was made into a high-tax commodity. It is a dead end model. Parts of this model, have been used successfully by other countries – Japan with its keiretsus and Koreans with their chaebol. But obviously, this is a model that the West is an expert in – and what others copy, the West has finished with. Copycat models allow the west to predict the next steps easily and taken competitive actions with certainty. The answer for others is to create another country model. The only country which has tried this is India.

India for instance is very different – where non-State reform has played a very major role in crime, policing (JP’s dacoit reform), land reform (Vinoba Bhave’s Bhoodan movement), political change (JP’s Sampoorna Kranti movement). After the economic buffer from Bombay High oil discovery in 1974, the Indian State has certainly, steadily shed various aspects of its colonial legacy. More importantly, India did not go through the slavery-colonialism-capitalism route at all.

It has instead inching towards a republican, (largely) market driven, democratic, declining role of State, multi-ethnic-religion-linguistic political model which is unique in modern history. What India needs to do is to one decrease the colonial inheritances further and two, give this country model a name. The lack of a academic name, slots India as a socialist country – where as it has been reducing the features of a socialist State.

The underestimated and undermined political leadership in India, has worked at renewing  the Indian model – which is non-exploitative, stable and can bring equity and growth. It is this model that before others, India (and Indians) should believe in – and beat a modern path for the world to follow.
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