I try to take this subject of slavers and colonials in India further, especially in the face of the violently anti-India press coverage that the Ram Janmabhoomi Temple appears to be getting, mostly from the Anglo-Saxon media, and their cohorts in India.
Luckily for us, the usually anti-India Bollywood gang has decided that they need to keep their otherwise available to highest bidder kind of open mouths tightly shut, otherwise they would have joined in the parade of litanies too. On that subject, by the way, it is the considered opinion of this writer based also on discussion with industry participants, that Bollywood is finished, and especially the star system is now history.
And that all that is left, therefore, is the so-called mainstream news media. Which is doing its role as a last-ditch attempt to save the Slavers & Colonials and their descendants. So what is the reason for this sort of a media attack on us, what is the benefit to them? Some more background, first, and a bit of soul-searching on why it is also our fault that we let them get away with nonsense of the colonial and mughal invader sort – but using a keyboard this time.
If you go to Dakar, Senegal, on a cargo ship, probably the first guided tour that the tourist guides hanging around outside the dock gates shall suggest and almost push down your throat, will be a boat tour to the House of Slaves and its Door of No Return on Goree Island. Believe me, after a long voyage, the last thing you probably want is a boat ride – but I know very few people, if any, who have regretted taking up the option.
If you go to any seaport in Vietnam, Saigon, Ha Phong and Da Nang, you simply can not miss the pride with which the local taxi drivers and anybody else you meet tell you about how they beat the American Aggression and the Slavery from the French. They do it in a simple and straight manner, without any rancour, and some of their best clients are the French and American tourists including families of those who once they fought against.
Likewise, on the other side, where slaves were received and “processed”. Slave Museums, displaying the Truth dispassionately, and each one a memorial as well as tribute and at the same time sending the main message across – Never Forget, Never Again.
And it is this message that we refuse to accept in India. Because our Slavers and Colonials are still in fervent hope that, once again, they shall make slaves out of us.
We do not have a single Museum dedicated to Indian slavery in India. It is almost as though we do not wish to tell our own people about those who enslaved us. The British, the Portugese, the Moghuls and more. We are not just shy about this Truth, but we appear to take great care in making sure that the narrative about our erstwhile slavemasters is diverted into literally being thankful to them, and in many ways perpetuating their atrocities as great gifts to us.
What we urgently need are Museums to the Truth about Slavery in India, especially as practised by the Colonials and the Mughals – and the best place to start would be to convert the Foreign Correspondent’s Club on Mathura Road in Delhi to one. Those of us who have gone to the FCC will understand why I seek this step forward, urgently.
Those of you who have not been to the Foreign Correspondent’s Club (FCC) on Mathura Road in Delhi – here’s a crash course. Apart from now being full of all sorts of people pretending to be journalists, for whatever reason, including largely Western ex-pats looking for some action, the FCC is everyone’s idea of what a neo-colonial relic should look like, loaded as it used to be with black-and-white photographs mostly reflecting the typical Western media fascination with sadhus and elephants as well as random departing Britishers.
In addition, and I personally knew one of the boss-ladies there, the Managing Committee was, to put it mildly, heavily skewed towards correspondents from the European and English speaking countries, preferably shiny white or burnt red in colour, take your pick. With the random coconut thrown in to add to the melange’.
The FCC website has now not been updated since 2016 and from I hear, is like a library book that has not been returned, so the fine on it exceeds the value of the book. Which is why I suggested that it be converted into India’s first slavery museum. All the photographs are already in their records.