Tag: british

The International Day of Indigenous people

One of the most tragic instances in history would be that of the holocaust – a word that in itself is a definition of six years of European geopolitics. In Russia, Palestine and China, the expulsion of the White Army, the expulsion of the Arabs and the brutual suppression of cultures across China in the name of cultural revolution respectively bring to picture the way in which states and not just people can sometimes be the enemy of people. However, there have been several such instances in history, most of them hidden because they were carried out by the more ancestors of the ones who ended up being economically and intellectually influential communities.

Cultural Revolution - Wikipedia
A poster calling out for Chinese Cultural Revolution

Human history is a record of forced displacements both internal and external, ethnic cleaning and genocides and murders both to the dismay and sponsored by states. When Captain Cook discovered the down under, it led a massive import of British criminals on the continent. With them came officers, scientists and explorers. The businessmen and civilians searching for more opportunities came in later. The people of the continent – the Australian arboginals, the Maoris from Oceania and many more tribes were reduced to a mere holder of small patches of lands and often no land at all by the British who had a superior military.

When the first Irish and British settlers landed in the new World of America, the red Indians offered them food and shelter which soon became a situation where the Red Indians had to fight for the survival of their lives and their cultures which was systematically and quite institutionally taken away by the New World settlers. Similarly, when the Spanish invaded Latin America, it meant a complete and absolute dissolution of their traditions and a genocide that would annihilate their population to an extent where even after 400 years, they would not attain the same.

The Last Days Of The Incas - HistoryExtra
Machu Pichu stands as a testimony to the Grand Incan Empire in the Andes before the Spanish arrived.

To add to all these miseries are the tales of the Rohingya community from Myanmar, the Tamils in Sri Lanka, the Kashmiri Pandits in Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, the now diminishing sea faring communities in Philippines and Malaysia and many more. Japanese and Italian unifications were also carried out at the cost of the local traditions, cultures and ways that the communities living there had been practicing for a millennia. In India, the use of English and Hindi have slowly gobbled up on the rich culture of local languages that the communities had. In fact, many communities from the state of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have completely given up on their languages. Bihar – a state where only 6% people had Hindi as their mother tongue now has a minority of about 20%!!

World loses about 1 language every 15 days!!!

Wikipedia defines Indigenous people as – “Indigenous peoples, also referred to as first people, aboriginal people, native people, or autochthonous people, are culturally distinct ethnic groups who are native to a place which has been colonised and settled by another ethnic group. ” But, a broader definition is the fact that indigenous people are defined by their cultures which is at a steady loss across the globe. The most important thing is to treasure the fragments of their traditions that still remain. Because a rainbow is better a rainbow.

COVID-19 and Indigenous peoples | United Nations For Indigenous Peoples

Happy International Day for the Indigenous communites.

The Quit India Movement Day

August 8th marks a very iconic day in Indian history. The Indian National Congress declared its ultimatum for the British to leave India. This movement in itself had contested set of consequences – the strengthening of the Muslim League, the rise of freedom struggle motivated Subash Chandra Bose to invade the British camps in Noth East and Gandhi, for the fist time in his career was willing to go agressive even if he had his own definitions of the word – when he announced, “karo ya maro” (Do or Die).

Quit India Movement: Who gave the slogan 'Do or Die' - Oneindia News

The Quit India movement came up at the heels of the failure of the Cripps Mission that was sent by the Raj to secure Indian cooperation towards the British war efforts in the second world war. The leader of the mission, Sir S. Cripps was left wing British statesman who was sympathetic to the cause of Indian self rule but was also a member of the war cabinet of 1942.

The proposals of the mission were refused by the Congress which had seen similar proposals in the first world war where the Raj had promised more autonomy but ended up imposing harsher taxes that resulted in the Non-Cooperation movement, the Rowlatt and Jalia Walah Bagh massacres. The Indian National Congress resigned from its positions in all provincial governments and announced the Quit India Resolution that led a national movement that was difficult for the British to look after in the face of the then ongoing second world war. Virtually all of the INC leaders were jailed for the next three years and the Muslim league got enough time to build itself a support that shook the years Gandhi had spent projecting himself and his colleagues as leaders of a secular, united state of India. To add to it was the vehement opposition Hindu nationalists showed to the movement where many, including the Hindu Mahasabha and Veer Savarakar denounced the movement pointing out to the power vacuum it might cause and quite correctly predicitng the Muslim League partially filling the same.

The British soon left the subcontinent – too weak due to the war to control a population that was showing both civil disobedience and had an army of its own – a reference to the insurgency and attacks the INA had started in the Raj’s territories.

The Quit India movement – with all its pros and cons and consequences formed a very important phase in the history of modern India.

Jinnah expected India and Pakistan to be best of friends - Telegraph India
Jinnah and Gandhi had quite different outlook and faced different consequences due to the Quit India Movement – one failed in his projection of a secular and inclusive India, the other successfully used it to campaign for Pakistan