Looking back at Chapter 1, I suddenly thought I made an unfortunate comparison. I had compared the East India Company to BP. In fact, Britain and India are two countries.
So let us look at Britain and France, two countries. Let us say that the East India Company could be compared to TOTAL, the French version of BP. So TOTAL would have run Britain with a private French army to control Britain, with the support of the French government.
This would have been horrific to the Brits. Of course, this could not happen, but this is what happened in India. Britain did this to India with the power of the East India Company.
We have to go back further now, right back to Elizabeth 1st when, from 1577 to 1580, Sir Francis Drake circumnavigated the globe and came back with spices from India. In 1600, James Lancaster sailed to India, specifically for the Spices.
Portsmouth has a pub at the entrance to the Harbour called Spice Island and this is where the spice ships would arrive. In Cardiff there is an Indian restaurant called Spice Island as this name would mean a great deal to Indians but not much to the Brits.
Queen Elizabeth died in 1603 but her influence had already been enormous as her privateers went out discovering new worlds although most of them were interested in the Americas.
12 years later, after Lancaster’s voyage, the East India Company set itself up in India, with its own private army and the support of the British government and its navy and privateers, which was made up of England , Wales, and Ireland. When James VI of Scotland, became James 1st of England, then Scotland became a part of this kingdom.
Under James 1st and future rulers, the East India Company grew in power in India from 1757 to 1858.
From 1769 to 1770, there was a man-made famine in Bengal. Millions of Indians died. The famine was caused by exploitative tax revenues by the Company and devastation from war with the Company which Bengal lost.
If you look at drawings of the Bengalis they look like victims of a concentration camp. The Company did nothing to help the victims that they had caused. Then in the Boer War (1899- 1902) in Africa, the British created Concentration camps and committed horrific cruelties there.
Then, between 1857 – 1858, there was a major uprising against the rule of the East India Company. It was the sovereign power on behalf of the British crown.
The uprising was unsuccessful but it forced the British government to take over control of the rule of India from the East India Company.
However, this was not a blessing for India. A century of British rule drove a wealthy and vital India into poverty and weakness. Charles Dickens, a champion of the poor in England and opponent of slavery, held a rabidly racist view of Indians,
That he would “strike that Oriental Race, with merciful swiftness of execution, to blot it out of mankind and raze it off the face of the Earth”.
The new government of India ran India as a dictatorship and only the British had rights. The Indians had no rights and no voice.
Although the British improved India’s legal, justice and civil service systems and the rail and roads, it was not to benefit the Indians.
The rail and road systems allowed duty-free British products to be sold all over India. This caused the collapse of major native industries such as cotton textiles.
The British gave no thought to the Indians’ welfare and only felt the importance of their society and their profit margin.
Although the aristocracy despised trade they had no hesitation in living on the profits made from cruelty both in India and the slave trade.
What was interesting in the novels of the time in India, the pure Indian and obedient servant was sort of trusted but those of mixed race were always the villain of the piece, even though the Anglo-Indians ran the country for them.
A famous example in film was the Kenneth More film with Lauren Bacall called “North West Frontier”.
Herbert Lom played the evil villain, a man of mixed race who was trying to kill the little Indian prince.
Speaking as an Anglo-Indian myself, I find it hilarious but, of course, behind the Lom character is a series of disgusting prejudices against us.
Ambalavaner Sivanandan, came from Ceylon (Sri Lanka), in the post- colonial migration, and became the Director of the Institute of Race Relations for 40 years from 1973 – 2013.
The famous quotation “We are here because you were there” was his.
He explains how there are two types of racism.
One is the racism that discriminates which happens every day and the other is the racism that kills which is happening more and more in this modern society.
When the Brexit referendum was taking place, racism raised its ugly head to a massive extent particularly in Wales as Wales voted to come out.
A friend of mine was having a hearing test in her own home and the audiologists always have to carry luggage with their machinery inside. The Asian audiologist arrived and as he was unpacking the car, a neighbour came up to him and said, “You’re not moving in, are you?”
A woman was being interviewed in the street in Cardiff. He mentioned that the building she was standing in front of was built with European money. Her reply was,
“I don’t care. Send them back where they came from, that’s what I say.”
Another friend was doing some repairs on a client’s house. The man next door assumed that the carpenter agreed with him. He started ranting about immigrants. You can imagine the kinds of words he was using and he only stopped when the carpenter made it clear he did not agree by saying that if it wasn’t for the immigrants in Wales, the NHS would collapse, from surgeon up to cleaner.
We have to be on our guard against racism and sexism and stand up to people who denigrate people of colour and women.
