I’ve been meaning to post something for a couple of weeks about how pleased I was to discover that London is hosting an ‘India Now’ festival this summer.
Starting with the somewhat bizarre spectacle of a replica of the Taj Mahal floating up the Thames to be photographed next to various famous London landmarks, it is now incorporating all sorts of activities including for example a three-week festival in Trafalgar Square, and a mela in Ealing, as well as lots of other things.
I think it’s great and definitely plan to go to some of their events, probably the big Trafalgar Square extravaganza.
India means a lot of different things to different Londoners. For a very sizeable number, it is where either they or their parents or grandparents come from.
For many others, India means call centres, which they speak to probably more often they would like. For others, it is somewhere they have been on holiday.
For me, it is the country I was born in, and somewhere I enjoyed travelling through again a few years ago - so I naturally feel some affinity for.
For cricket fans it means, well, the lot who beat us last week.
And for many businesspeople India means the great potential future rival to China - seen by many as more palatable because it is a democracy. And it is indeed a developing country with lots of exciting potential to develop - both in a business sense but also because of the potential to improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people. However there is also the potential for that development to go badly wrong - as shown by for example the horrible problem of farmer suicides.
For all these reasons I think it’s good to see London and the UK celebrating its relationship with India. And at a time when the actions of some criminal terrorists put a negative spotlight on some British Asians, it is obviously also good to cement good relations generally.
I am aware that this whole event is being prominently funded and promoted by Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, that next year he is up for re-election, and that there is a very sizeable south Asian vote in London (which reminded us how important it is when it proved decisive in the recent Ealing Southall byelection, for example).
The opportunity to promote himself as well as his office with public money in this way, is one of the consequences of the Mayoral system which it is difficult to see as entirely wholesome, but that doesn’t seem to me a good enough reason not to welcome this festival.
Surprisingly I can’t find it mentioned anywhere in the official promotional material for the festival, but it is presumably also timed to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of Indian independence from Britain in August 1947. I imagine that will come to the fore on the 15th (the actual day of Independence).
However celebrations in India this year, are also marking the 150th anniversary of the First War of Indian Independence, as it is now officially known in India - more commonly known still in this country as the Mutiny. I imagine this aspect will be getting rather less prominence here, since different interpretations of those events are still controversial. It certainly isn’t described as the First War of Indian Independence on the statue of Sir Henry Havelock, seen by contemporary Britain as one of the heroes of the Mutiny - a statue which stands, of course, in the middle of the festival in Trafalgar Square!
August 6th, 2007 at 15:48
We can celebrate the rise of India and other countries without ‘throwing out’ our own history. Clearly the British Empire was a mixed experience for the various people involved but it is also a fundamental part of what Britain is. The most obvious evidence of empire is the amazing mix of people in London - which is by far the most cosmopolitan city in the world and the one which seems to make the most effort to celebrate its diversity.
The specific subject of the Indian Mutiny/First War of Independence is one of perspective. It did indeed begin as a mutiny among Hindu and Muslim soldiers falsely told that their rifle cartridges were greased with pork/beef fat and the British name for the strife (it was never a war in the traditional sense) is therefore accurate. That it has become a more significant event for Indians is not surprising and does nothing to affect the British view of the situation. Indians will rightly mark this event as a major story in their history.
I can’t recall the quote but someone rather wise once bemoaned a country without a history. As an Englishman, a Europhile and indeed an ‘Indiaphile’ with family links to the subcontinent, I would urge you to steer clear of revisionism. Diversity is the key and diversity means letting others have their own point of view!
Apologies for the long comment.
August 7th, 2007 at 1:08
Hi
Thanks for the comment. Yes, I agree that countries certainly shouldn’t ditch their history and I definitely agree with what you say about the need for diversity in all this. However when you say the Raj was a “mixed experience” I do think the experiences generally divided along a fairly clear line!
On nomenclature for the events of 1857, I always thought that “the uprising” was quite a good compromise term, allowing both points of view to interpret it in the way they preferred. And I think although obviously it did start with the rifle grease issue, there were some underlying bigger causes too which were not without reason (such as fear of forced conversion to Christianity).