Malinda Words: Colonial Atrocities

The most asked question on Google in the year 2019, according to reports, is ‘Where is Sri Lanka?’ I am not sure who is looking for Sri Lanka or why. Maybe it has something to do with Sri Lanka being picked as the No 1 island to visit. Again, I am not sure who concluded this or why.

Sri Lankans know where Sri Lanka is. Most Sri Lankans know what Sri Lanka is. Of course there are those who think Colombo is Sri Lanka and vice versa and who, consequently, don’t think that non-Colombots really count and therefore are often shocked at how politics unfold. That’s a different story.

There are people from other countries who know where Sri Lanka is and have a rough idea that the island is not only about tea. The more discerning and aware know the island’s history, its strategic importance in the Indian Ocean and of course who plundered what and when. Most, however, have only a cursory knowledge of the island. Arundathi Roy, for example. Gullible to the core, and yet sufferable in ways Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn are not.

Boris and Jeremy, leaders of the Conservative and Labour Parties in the UK had many things to talk about in the run up to that country’s parliamentary elections. Usually, Sri Lankans are not really bothered about by such processes, not least of all because the result, either way, has little chance of changing the predatory and condescending attitudes and actions of the UK government(s) with respect to Sri Lanka. This time, however, both leaders mentioned Sri Lanka in the course of their respective campaigns.

It’s not hard to understand. There’s a significant number of Tamils of Sri Lankan origin living in the UK who have the vote. Elections are about votes. Politicians woo voters. They are a promising lot. The aim to please. And so Boris and Corbyn had to say stuff that they believed was music to the ears of this relatively tiny segment of the voting population.

A minor matter and it didn’t really count, but it nevertheless indicates stuff. Jeremy talked of genocide. That's a good thing. Britain know all about genocide, ethnic cleansing, cultural erasure and plunder. Boris wants to achieve ‘reconciliation, stability and justice.’ Across the world, he says. In current or former conflict zones, he says. Yeah, right!

Those who get high on either Boris or Jeremy should relax. They are no different. The only good thing is that we have to deal with just one of them. As things turned out that would be Boris.

Now Britain may have reconciled itself to forgetting the past and the present when it comes to horrendous excesses (yes, a mild word, that). However, if Britain wants justice, that’s good. Here’s stuff that Britain could do.

First. Return all the loot. Second. Compensate for genocide, torture, dispossession and for having flowered up a people via divide-n-rule. Third. LEAVE US ALONE!

That country, folks, doesn’t know whether it is coming or going. It preaches democracy but is just another monarchy. It could never tell East from West and still believes the sun has not set on collective behind. It believes that it is a free country when it is in fact a client state of the United States of America. It is not sure if it is a part of Europe or if it is not. It pretends to be one country in the United Nations but when it comes to sports (like Rugby and Football) it ‘breaks’ into its constituent parts.

And they want to give us direction. Wait. I need to laugh for a good ten minutes over that!

Alright. Done laughing. Seriously, folks, when you dig deep into all this, it is not funny. It’s gruesome. And it is unresolved.

Sri Lanka is not the UK and not only because we haven’t really robbed other countries or stockpiled weapons. We don't do what they do. We don’t tell others what to do. We don’t insist they inhabit our version of their reality. We are not telling them to mind their own flowering business.

Britain has its own tumors to deal with. That much is clear. Xenophobia. Terrorism. Chicken coming home to roost. That kind of thing. Perhaps the likes of Boris and Jeremy feel good about themselves by dissing countries like Sri Lanka.

And we here they are fretting over something called ‘Brexit’. Britain + Exit, that is. The first time I heard that term, I remembered Nanda Malini’s catchy song in the ‘Pawana’ album, titled ‘Nidahas Baila’. This is how Sunil Ariyaratne saw it: sudda yanna giyeth nae, nogihin hitiyeth nae. (The white man did not stay, and neither did he leave)!

We’ve been waiting for Brexit for more than two centuries. And it’s not their fault alone. There are people among us who just don’t want them to leave. Maybe ‘Brexit’ is a Sri Lankan project. An unfettering. It might actually give a boost reconciliation, ensure stability and obtain justice simply because we won’t have rank idiots telling us who we are, what we are about and what we ought to do.

This article was first published in the 'Sunday Morning' [December 15, 2019]

Britain and post (sic) colonial skullduggery

If the Common-Welt is to be erased...

Returning facsimiles of loot does not compensate, sorry

malindasenevi@gmail.com. www.malindawords.blogspot.com.

A few weeks ago, indigenous leaders from Australia visited the Manchester Museum. They went there to collect various sacred ceremonial artifacts which were said to have been ‘taken without permission’ by early 20th Century British colonialists.

Danny Teece-Johnson, a journalist for Australia’s National Indigenous Television, had an interesting comment on the language of extraction.

‘You're saying borrowed, you're saying this and that. Nah, let's talk about the white elephant in the room: you stole it, you took it without permission, that's theft. If you did that these days, you'd get put in jail for it.’

Language is cute and few are as cute about its use than the British and of course the country which borrowed their language and perfected the art of political cuteness, the USA. Countries are never invaded, they are ‘democratized.’ The victims of terrorist attacks launched by such countries are not people, they make up ‘collateral’. Land theft never happened. Resource plunder? Never happened. Cultural genocide? No. Mass slaughter? What? That’s called ‘civilizing’. A good thing, surely?

Now around the same time or a few days after the above return of stolen goods, the University of Edinburgh, in a moment of insane generosity, returned nine skulls to Uruvarigaye Wanniyalaetto. The skulls are supposed to be more than 200 years old and are thought to be those of Wanniyalaetto’s ancestors.

Nice. Let’s say ‘Thank you, thanks for the kind and generous gesture.’

Alright. Enough applause. Let’s talk of skulls and skullduggery, taking without permission and outright theft. In 1974, P.H.D.H. De Silva published a book titled ‘A catalogue of antiquities and other cultural objects from Sri Lanka (Ceylon) Abroad.’ There are over 15,000 items listed. Remember, these are thefts that have been recorded and stolen goods that are given names, numbers and catalogued. They have ended up, as far as we can say with absolute certainty, in 23 countries and 140 holding facilities. This is not counting gene piracy and post-colonial extraction, let us not forget. The vast majority of the artifacts listen in the book are in Britain. Bristol, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Berkshire, Leister, Liverpool, London, Sheffield and Windsor are among the cities mentioned.

And they return nine skulls!

So we say ‘Thank you,’ and think ‘Such lovely folks.’ Well, Wanniyalaetto has stated that the lovely folks in Manchester had told him there were 14,000 more skulls and bones. Apparently they are to take steps to return them as well. If you clapped once for the nine skulls, you would have to clap 1555.5 times if/when these other bones are returned.

Now this stuff is not new. Eight years ago, almost to the day, i.e. from September 14 to November 24, the British Council in Colombo arranged a traveling exhibition of artifacts. It was called ‘A Return to Sri Lanka.’ That’s tongue-in-cheek that was lost on one and all, indicating how sycophantic we have become. The following was the blurb advertising the event: ‘…covers nearly 300 years of the country’s history through 150 digital facsimiles of materials from major British collections, including maps, manuscripts, prints, drawings and photographs as well as other artifacts’.

The first question: ‘Only 150?’ Wear an expression of incredulity as you ask it. Second question: ‘Facsimiles?’ Whatever expression you wear it should indicate the words used to camouflage without really wanting to, i.e. ‘What the flower?’

The then Country Director of the British Council, Tony Reilly, called the exhibition ‘a partnership event.’ The purpose, he claimed, was ‘to share it, to experience, to enjoy, to argue and talk about 300 years of cultural diversity described in each piece.’ He left out ‘theft’. He left out ‘butchery’. He left out ‘genocide’. That’s par for the course, of course.

That exhibition was interestingly funded by the World Collections Program. Well! Let’s talk ‘collections’.

In August 2018 the British Museum decided to return to Iraq eight 5,000 year old artifacts looted following ‘the fall of Saddam Hussein’ as they reported it. Fall, huh? Ha! Apparently the objected were seized by police from a London dealer in 2003 and had been in the hands of the state for 15 years before being identified as having been extracted from a site in Tello in southern Iraq. The Director of the British Museum Hartwig Fischer said at the time that the institution was ‘absolutely committed to the fight against illicit trade and damage to cultural heritage.’

Wow!

He missed this important point: Britain is the product and the repository of illicit trade (sanitized term for ‘plunder’ in the lexicon of British Apologetics).

Britain’s partners in crime in this business across the Atlantic, the USA, uses the same kind of language. In September 2019, US authorities returned a stolen coffin to Egypt, two years after it was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The 2,100 year old coffin of a priest called Nedjemankh had been featured in a exhibition of artifacts from Egypt. Apparently it had been looted and smuggled out of Egypt in 2011. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, speaking at a repatriation ceremony, opined that this was one of hundreds of antiquities stolen by the same ‘multinational trafficking ring.’

Multinational trafficking ring! That’s a descriptive worth holding on to. That’s what colonial rule was all about, wasn’t it? That’s what's happening even now, isn't it? Wars are not about democracy, resolutions are not about human rights. It’s about creating conditions (including the support of or installation of pliant governments) for the highly profitable business of plunder. Land, oil, strategic geographies, water, genetic resources, you name it, it's all ‘open to exploration,’ let’s say.

What’s the market value of nine skulls? What's the market value of 300 facsimiles compared with that of the originals? Of course, the curators of museums and custodians of other ‘collections’ didn’t kill anyone or rob things. They are, however, holding on to stolen goods. There is no talk of returning these to the descendants of those who were robbed and probably killed in the process as well.

And it can’t start and end with artifacts. Yes, it is hard to ascertain the true value of everything that was stolen and even more difficult to obtain the true cost of the damage in terms of cultural erasure, destruction of livelihoods and lifestyles, forced dislocation and all the trauma that was part of such things. Britain is reported to have paid out 20 million sterling pounds to slave owners in the colonies of the Caribbean, Mauritius and the Cape of Good Hope as per a census on owners as of August 1, 1834 under the Slave Compensation Act of 1837. Words! It was not the slaves who were compensated but the slave-drivers!

That’s a benchmark. Contrary to the Anglophiles in Sri Lanka, who get nostalgic about a ‘British Rule’ that took places long before they were born, and who talk about roads, railways and such, the truth is that the British were out and out brigands. They didn’t build roads and railways. A subjugated people’s labour is congealed in all that was built with money extracted through brutal systems of taxation (without representation, mind you!). In addition to mass slaughter, they destroyed temples (and built churches on their foundation — ‘to civilize the heathens!’ Yeah, right!) and either burnt or robbed countless invaluable Buddhist manuscripts. Yes, we can add the theft of intellectual property to artifact theft, resource extraction, labor exploitation and gene piracy. If the British could quantify and compensate slaves, we could quantify reparations for colonial plunder.

And they return nine skulls! Did someone say ‘Hooray!’?

There are no facsimiles of the blood they spilled, the tears shed, the screams before butchery. No facsimiles of villages torched and children killed. No facsimiles of temples razed to the ground or forests cleared (and the timber shipped out) for coffee and tea. And it’s not facsimiles of artifacts and manuscripts that are now housed in the British Library, the Victoria and Albert Museums, the Natural History Museum in London and other loot-holding facilities.

Eight years ago, when the British Council was bragging about facsimiles, a friend offered the following: ‘they fokkin' brazen aint they? so let's see, they steal and then show us pix of what they stole but wont return? No one asking for reparations or loot? Is there a catalog of the stolen in collections? Is Keppetipola's skull still in Scotland?’ And I wrote, ‘This is not a “return” to Sri Lanka. This is about slapping one cheek and slapping the other too for good measure. “Returns that can be Xeroxed” sums up the season of plunder that does not seem to have ended after the British “left”. They could return what they robbed and keep the facsimiles in their collections, after all.

But they’ve returned nine skulls! Hooray!

But then again, they’re refusing the return the Chagos Islands to Mauritius despite an advisory opinion issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The archipelago is now the site of the US military base in Diego Garcia. And the USA, which just the other day threatened to arrest and sanction judges and other officials of the International Criminal Court if it moves to charge with war crimes any US citizen who served in Afghanistan, would probably thumb its nose as the ICJ if it ‘tried to be funny’.

Well, funny is the word. It’s hilarious.

They returned nine skulls. I could die laughing. EXCEPT, it is no laughing matter. It’s skullduggery in cute form indulged in by multinational artifact traffickers.

Danny Teece Johnson was correct. They should all be serving time in prison, these do-gooding, skull-giving beneficiaries of skullduggery.

Skulls. Indeed!

Malinda Words

17 December 2019

Brexit: long overdue!

02 December 2019

Britain and Post (sic) Colonial Skullduggery