EASTER 2010

GROUPS
GARDENING
Joan came back from Thursday's meeting to say she had been talking to a gardener at Singleton who told her that everything, including their walled garden, was a month late this year. Looking back at last years blog I find my previous posting showed the few daffodils in our garden was the 21 March and there were only a few, last year it was 28 February.

ITALIAN
This group will miss Easter Monday but reconvene for 12 and 19 April before breaking due to Carolina's holiday until Monday 7 June.

POLITICS  and CITIZENSHIP
Meet Tuesday 13 April at the slightly later time of 2.15 pm to give a little more time to those who come by bus.
The Discussion will be open to the floor, the topic 'Identify one issue you would want an incoming government to debate and act on'

HISTORY
A few years ago a large proportion of the groups held their meetings in The Dolphin Hotel. The History and Local History groups were two that remained there after the rates were raised but this year they had to move when the hotel was closed. The Local History group have relocated to the Grand Theatre and the History group to the upstairs room in Environment Centre, which for those who don't know is in Pier Street, the narrow street running down the side of the Evening Post monstrosity.
   
The Life and Times of Robert Clive of India was the topic at last Friday's meeting of the History Group, that's what attracted me for India is still foremost in my thoughts, and the opportunity to get the colonial period into better focus was too good to be missed. The previous lecture set the scene with an Overview of the British Empire by Professor David Howells, and continuing the same vein on 23 April with Catherine the Great and the Russian Empire by Dr Helgi Opik.

Marian Howells had carried out the research starting from the Charter from Elizabeth I which established what was to become known as The East India Company in 1600.

But Clive was not born until 125 years later. He started as a clerk or 'writer' at Fort St George in Madras, the which we visited within 24 hours of arrival in India. Chennai (earlier Madras) is the fourth most populous city in India at 5.4 million. It seemed very close to the bus terminus on our map, as places always do in big cities. But it was not an easy place to find on foot, until we realised you have to cross the main dual carriageway south along the coast by a narrow, hidden pedestrian underpass; nor was it a memorable visit - though perhaps it is wise to make allowance for jet lag and tiredness on our first exposure to tropical heat in 2010.

The first impression was the scare of passing armed security to get into an area which now doubles as the Administrative Centre for the Government of Tamil Nadu and a tourist attraction - not a happy pairing except that it isn't much of an attraction.

We briefly entered the fusty museum nearby and uninspired promptly left, though it probably held much dating back to the period when it was the headquarters of the British. But the adjacent St. Mary's church where Clive was married was of far more immediate interest. The earliest Christian Church was founded in Kerala in AD 54 by St Thomas but St Mary's was the first Anglican church  in India, built in 1678-80 it is the oldest British building in the whole country. It doubled as a military haven in times of siege, mainly by the French in nearby Pondicherry, and had to be largely rebuilt after the seven year war with the French 1756-63. 


We remember the church also as the place Joan made our first purchase, four cards containing beautiful hand painting, typically of flowers butterflies and dragon flies on leaf skeletons, leaves devoid of chlorophyll, by young people under the trademark of TRPPAADAM.

Same technique but different subject

Google informs the Trppaadam Service Society was established in 1972 by the Bethany Mission of the Catholic Church and operates with help from Bharat (India) Aid. It works with the poorest villagers of Kerala, sponsoring education for children living at home and running a centre providing healthcare, education and jobs for hundreds of young women and caring for abandoned elderly and mentally handicapped people picked up from the streets.

We saw examples of the same card technique later in Kerala, which is on the opposite west coast, but of none of the same quality. We buy little when we travel because of the over-riding need to travel light, but Joan can never resist interesting cards. Examples of the hand painted batik ones we brought back from Sumatra more than a decade ago still hang as pictures on the stairway of our daughter in law in France. 

To return to Clive, untrained as a soldier, his bravery and skill at soldiery almost immediately became noticed. In 1755 he became Deputy Governor of Fort St David, a little south of Madras, with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. In this role he went to Calcutta and purchased Bengal for the East India Company. He left India for good in 1760. 

Warren Hastings was Governor of Bengal in 1772 and a year later was Governor General of the Presidency of Fort William (Calcutta) in which capacity he supervised the rest of the East India Company. 

It was not until Government of India Act was passed in1858 that the territories of the East India Company came under direct control of the Crown, and thus the incumbent Lord Canning became the first Viceroy of India.

But I felt uneasy at the idea of a benevolent British Empire and so I am going to explore how this stacks up with the Indian view of the East India Company and British period drawing on a series of 20 fascinating posters photographed in the Gandhi museum at Madurai - but difficult to read because of the reflections from glass. Those who followed my diary blog at the time will probably remember that visit best for a shitting episode.

Madurai Temple

Paragraph added 6 April 2010
At this point I should make it absolutely clear that what follows are not my opinions but largely a series of quotations of what appeared on 14 of the 20 posters in this museum, occasionally linked by my prose explaining the context of the poster. As such it represents only the view of the curator of that museum, though I think it is widespread amongst educated Indians (admittedly on scant evidence). The quotations in inverted commas are of course selected by me but I believe them to be a fair representation his intentions. The posters with few exceptions refer to the English rather than the British, which would be more correct.

AN INDIAN TAKE ON THE ENGLISH, MADURAI GANDHI MUSEUM

 
1) The first photograph sets the scene - 'In the 17th century the Whiteman came to India to buy spices, textiles, pearls, precious stones ... he found himself in a country ruled by Rajahs and Nawabs quarrelling amongst themselves'. 'In 1749 Mohammed Ali supported by the British and Chandra Sahib supported by the French fought for the throne of Carnatic. Mohammed won and became the Nawab but the British completely controlled him.  ...... 'Thus began the period of British conquest and rule of India, a period of slavery and humiliation ..' Welsh take heart from now the oppressor is known as the English - my joke as a self conscious Englishman!

2) 'Here is the story of how this ancient but ever youthful land of ours lost her freedom and won it again'

Mysore Palace

3) English expansion in India met with the most challenging resistance from Tipu Sultan of Mysore who ravaged the Carnatic as far as Madras by 1784. The tables however were turned for he was forced to surrender half his territories, to pay 33 million rupees and hand over two sons as hostages to the English. Tipu regrouped with a modern army but was finally killed in 1799.

'The death of Tipu Sultan removed from the scene the most inveterate, the most implacable and the most fantastical and perhaps the most formidable enemy encountered by the English.' (John Marriot)

This is of particular interest to us because so far all the action is in southern part of India which we visited. We saw many paintings of the battles of Tipu Sultan, the prison cells of his English prisoners, and memorials (even the place where he died) on our travels around Mysore. We were told when looking at the fine paintings in The Summer Palace near Mysore that he was betrayed by one of his sons.


4) The Maratha and Sikh Resistance from 1775. 
Between 1815 and 1849 the English attacked the Punjab and Rajastan and 'The English had already bought the Rajput Chiefs of Jodpur, Udaipur, Bikaner etc under their control.'
These were all places we had stayed in on our only previous visit to India just after retiring over a decade ago. 
'Thus ends the period of English conquest, a century after the Plassey War, trumpeting about the old truth that united a people stand and divided they fall.'


5) Wages of Slavery.
'The East India Company raised the taxes to increase profits and to meet the costs of its aggressive wars'.
'The company even extorted forced labour from farmers in Bengal compelling them to cultivate indigo freely for the English on pain of torture or death.' 
'Farmers unable to bear the burden, sold or mortgaged their lands. Farm production fell and famines spread.' 
'The plunder of India made England industrially rich. 
'To sell her goods in India the East India Company destroyed Indian industries'. 
'The slightest protest by Indians was put down ruthlessly by the company's armies. Indians could be jailed indefinitely without trial or beaten to death.' 

6) Indian Great Revolt 1857 and Queen Victoria takes over.
The Indians from different parts of the country and different faiths combined to take Delhi from the English at the start of the 1857 revolt but by 1859 the city had been re-captured by the English,
'killing 27,000 civilians alone. People fled from the city of horror.'

'As the people of India buried their dead, Queen Victoria by proclamation in November 1858 took over the administration, ending the East India Company's rule.' 


7) Bombay 1885, The Birth of the Indian National Congress
'Indians everywhere were treated worse than slaves .... Dogs and Indians were treated alike in public places.'
'The English educated middle class were the first to speak up boldly for the nation's rights.' Leading to the formation of Congress with dynamic Englishman A O Hume as General Secretary and Banerjee as first president 'pleading for a greater share for Indians in the administration.'


8) The Partition of Bengal in 1905
'Both Hindus and Muslims rose up against the "divide and rule" of the English. Calcutta, the Capital of British India, set a pattern for a country-wide resistance.'
Spurred on by poet Rabindranath Tagore and Aurobindo Ghose founder of the Pondicherry Ashram. 

Gandhi Statue in Pondicherry


9) 1915 The Gandhi Era Begins
'In 1915 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, an Indian Barrister from South Africa, returned to India with his wife Kasturba.
'The peasants of Champaran in Bihar were forced to grow indigo plants on their lands and sell it to the British at prices fixed by them. If refused, they were tortured. Gandhi rose against this inhuman system .... finally he won in the fight, by leading the farmers, without using violence.'


10) 1930 Salt Satyagraha, the 241 mile walk to Dandi
'Under the Salt Law only the British Government could make salt.' He led the non-violent march which was the centrepiece of the film Gandhi.
'Elsewhere, all over the country, people broke the salt law.' likewise.'

'The Congress appointed Gandhi as its sole representative in the Round Table Conference at London in1931.'

11)  The Cripps Mission 1942
'Jawaharlal Nehru said "India will help England only as a free nation. Britain claims she is fighting for freedom and democracy. If that is true, let her first give freedom to India''.'
'When Singapore fell 45,000 Indian soldiers were handed over to the Japanese by the British Army.'
'The Japanese captured the whole of South East Asia. ...The British Government sent Sir Stafford Cripps to India to negotiate a settlement with her leaders in support of the War effort. The Cripp's Mission failed because it proposed self government for India only after the end of the War.'
'Gandhi called it "a post dated cheque on a failing bank".'

12) 'On 15th August 1947, India became Free
Nehru said, 'Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny and now comes the time when we shall redeem our pledge .... At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake in life and freedom. A moment comes ... rarely in history ... when an age ends, and the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting, that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the larger cause of humanity.'

13)  'WE THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens:
JUSTICE, social, economic and political,
LIBERTY, of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship,
EQUALITY of status and opportunity:
and to promote them all
FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity of the Nation:
          IN OUR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY this twenty sixth day of November, 1949, do HEREBY ADOPT, ENACT AND GIVE TO OURSELVES THIS CONSTITUTION.' 

Which country can be said to live up to that standard?

14) GANDHI ASASINATED

I read in today's paper that India are embarking on a census, which will take 11 months, and which is expected to confirm a population of 1.2 billion. By far the world's biggest democracy, perhaps the world's most populous nation, but still with much to do match the high ideals of this constitution. An end to exclusion is still urgent for poorest 50%.

   
ART EXHIBITION till 15 May
I was asked to include this by Angela Blewett