Posted on: May 20 2004

The British are the crooks who created the whole mess in this world

Well, this is not my opinion. But what exists in almost all academic textbooks in the country from where I write. It is okay. For, it is a nation with leaders who have to have someone to blame for all their shortcomings.

But what would one say when this theme is heard on many media, including the visual ones, that come from the English nations? Yes, it is true. There are times when I feel even the BBC is just parroting the Indian vernacular media opinion, on many international events. For persons, who listen to the BBC for hearing the British perspective on events, this comes as a real mental damper.

I have seen this theme coming in writings from the US, mainly from the software industry’s encyclopaedia writings. Also, in many TV channels like the National Geographic, and others. There is need to check the history version that comes across through the thought processes of persons who have imbibed the textbooks from the new Third World Nations.

I can tell you of an internationally mobile man, who was into international business, telling an acquaintance of mine, who was also in similar activities, that he would not speak in British English. He would speak only American English. Why? : ‘ Because I can’t bear what the British did to my country’.

A few days back, I saw a programme on the National Geographic Channel on the War on Elephants in India.

It came with a most mediocre understanding of the realities of India. First of all, a term ‘a nobleman’ was seen used. Actually, there is no such term that can be usable to any Indian other than from a purely religious perception. The best term of comparable meaning would be a feudal lord, or zamindar ; this being is not to be equated with the English Aristocracy, for the zamindars exists mainly as parasites and suppressors of the whole society under them; with negligible intellectual input of value for the improvement of the society.

Then came a declamation: The tragedy of the Elephants that continue is a creation of the British rulers, who cleared the forests. The whole dialogue is nonsense. The most efficient menace for the forest animals are the Forest Department Officials. Many of them have become very rich. And there is actually much poaching going on with connivance at various official levels. But then, ultimately the small time persons who are used for such activities are later left to fend for themselves, and mostly hunted down by the very officialdom that had used them.

Then the tragedy, of very poor people living on the edges of the forest, where they are forced to compete with the Elephants, was shown. This theme actually reflects the inept way of understanding events in isolation, when studying nations like India. The undercurrent of the theme was that these persons are living there because of the British policy of creating Tea plantations after clearing forests.

But the question of what are these people doing there after some 55 years of Independence, with meagre income, far removed from the areas where the official bosses live in splendour, with little education, and splendidly exploited, and left to fend for themselves from the animals, remains. And why they look so crude, when the nation can afford to train them to finer personalities also needs reflection.

There is a lot of antipathy for Britain and USA in many small time nations. And I have dealt with the real reasons for this, in my book. Yet, the fact that the opinion makers of the English nations also need to be more careful in uttering opinions, which can be used by the very vile, needs to be debated.