The taking down of Edward Colston 's statue in Bristol will be fully supported by many Indians. He was a slave trader, and it was despicable and inhumane no matter how it is viewed.
Following the U.S. police murdering George Lloyd, demonstrators have gone for what they perceive as a sign of the shameful activity, and definitely, Colston was among them. A statue is a public reminder of that past and shouldn't be on a public square in this day and age, no matter if he also founded institutions in town.
There is also still a drive to destroy the bust of Cecil Rhodes at Oxford's Oriel College — Rhodes was a founder in exploitative diamond trading, an imperialist and colonialist, and an inflexible believer of Anglo-Saxon dominance.
But he funded a very prestigious scholarship in Oxford and set up a university in South Africa with a foundation named after him. In the post-apartheid period, Africans thought his statue and image should be destroyed to begin the peace process — in Oxford, several students accept. After the Colston case, demonstrations against the Oxford statue of Rhodes were kept. The college artifacts. (Ironically, it was white Afrikaans-speaking students who, in the 1950s, had first requested that a Rhodes statue be pulled down in Cape Town — history travels in fascinating ways).
Indians who help the demolition of the Colston statue recognize colonialist ravages. For all, we have felt the worst of it. Around the same time, this moment forces us to confront their own past and deal through all their grey colors. The colonization issue is continuing but much more urgent today.
Why does one see the past couple of centuries in our history? A strong starting point is a secret corner of Mumbai's Bhau Daji Lad Museum (it was once named Victoria and Albert Museum). A handful of dismembered life-sized statues of the Raj 's British grandees lie in a tiny garden patch.
At the beginning of the 19th century, Lord Sandhurst, Governor of Colonial Bombay, stares into space, Marquess of Wellesley, Governor of Bengal and later the British Foreign Secretary, lies forlorn, his head off, and the Empress of India, Queen Victoria, is unrecognizable with her nose hacked away. Her statue once had a beautiful cover, but it disappeared and later surfaced in an industrialist 's garden.
Next to the museum is the sparkling equestrian statue of Edward VII, the Prince of Wales, in the zoo called Jijamata Udyan after Shivaji 's mother, (it was earlier named after Victoria). Hundreds of tourists here to see the animals walk by without a second look, unaware of the reality that this is the initial 'Kala Ghoda' after it was called Mumbai's eponymous art area. Only a couple recognized or cared about area history buffs.
Such sculptures once held pride of place in Bombay – they were demolished shortly after Independence and the government, unsure about what to do about them, installed them at their present site. Coronation Park in Delhi is where the town's colonial-era monuments hang. Ignoring that is a history better dealt with.
There are rather significant variations, of course, in the tearing down of the Colston monument – and that of Columbus in the U.S. – and the historical problems too, but there are commonalities that can not be overlooked.
Wellesley fought in the battles between Anglo-Mysore and Anglo-Maratha, rendering him an anti-Indian antagonist (except we can't make up our minds regarding Tipu Sultan!)
As for the Empress-to who paeans on her Golden Jubilee in 1887 were read by famous Indians in Bombay-how, can we judge her and her reign? During her time, the most significant changes took place in India – the railways were introduced, modern educational institutions were established (many named after her), Bombay – and perhaps other cities – saw the construction of the grand Gothic buildings of which we are all so proud. Yet India was ruled by a foreign power; thus, the arrival of Columbus set off a lengthy era of colonization in the Americas.
There are many places and institutions in India with names from the British era; some have been renamed, but all ignore the change. When you point him to Gopalrao Deshmukh Road in Mumbai, a cabbie would be surprised but will understand instantly if you tell Peddar Street. The town's pride is the Victoria Memorial at Kolkata, and Delhi still has a Lady Irwin College.
That's not necessarily pro-Raj, but it shows how deeply it's embedded in us.
A vast number of Indians may think Aurangzeb was cruel, and the British were brutal, but many will take a more nuanced approach. The government itself is firmly against the Mughals. Still, less so against the British – the RSS has not been a player in the struggle for IndependenceIndependence, whatever it may like to claim today.
That brings us to the most vexed query of all of them, which is quite essential in India today-what are we doing regarding Nehru? He was not a slave dealer or a bigot or a communalist. He's the founder of modern India, the opportunities that we see all over us. He was radical, democratic, and, above all, progressive and really much. Entire generations grow up as Nehruvian Indians even though they were raised long after he died.
Yet he is detested by the Sangh Parivar. They always have. The very qualities for we admire him are what they dislike. They are uncomfortable with secularism and are indeed awkward with modernity.
The Modi government is not likely to go as far as to tear down its monuments. Still, they have deliberately corrupted structures synonymous with its heritage, such as Teen Murti Bhavan and the Nehru Museum. They have sought to restore them with their own warped vision of history.
Narendra Modi himself never references Nehru and often continues not to remember the great guy, even though he wakes concisely regarding India's technical superiority, which was primarily attributed to Nehru's IITs set up. Narendra Modi 's followers see Nehru though anti-Hindu because it's now a Hindutva government — it can do something, anywhere. If they remove all of Nehru's traces from India, who can stop them? There's a lot of cherry-picking in the context of 'correcting' history to wipe away anything troublesome to the Hindutva project – even those that are hardline anti-colonialists ought to realize how those with their own agenda might exploit them — and dump them.
There is no hypocrisy in taking a Colston-anti view while examining colonialism in a more layered way as well. One slippery slope is blind hatred. The intention would not be to give land to those who employ a twisted argument to validate their own false statements to the history to demolish the positive and replacing it with the poor that might be historically misleading and meaningless.
ANUPAM SINGH
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