“The betrayal, the cruelty, the racism, the indifference to Indian suffering, and the self-justification at the end…” Shashi Tharoor on the magnitude of the Jallianwala Bagh horror…
Thanks to ConnectedtoIndia.com for the footage!
Thanks to ConnectedtoIndia.com for the footage!
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00:00On the 13th of April 2019, a little over a year from now, we will have the centenary of the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre.
00:08Indians are forced to crawl on their bellies on a narrow street, and if they so much as lifted their heads, their heads were bashed in.
00:14And after all of this, when Daya was rightly criticized by some, the British conducted a subscription to reward him.
00:21Betrayal, the cruelty, the racism, the indifference to Indian suffering, and the self-justification at the end.
00:28Perfect thing to come and say, sorry, we were wrong, because they were.
00:34Talking of another book, one of your previous book, Inglourious Empire, when you held post-launch talks, you were speaking in very clear terms
00:42that the British need to atone for the past. My question is, do you think, is it required, what will it do for us Indians, isn't it too far for us to care about it?
00:52That's a fair question, it's one that some have asked, and the answer is that, first of all, that didn't put off others who felt there were historical wrongs to be righted.
01:01Willy Brandt, the Chancellor of Germany in 1970, went on his knees in the Warsaw Ghetto to apologize for the atrocities of the Nazis against the Polish Jews and other Poles.
01:12But don't forget that Willy Brandt was a social democrat. People like him, including himself, had been persecuted by the Nazis.
01:19He didn't need to apologize, he'd done no harm himself, but he just felt as head of the German government, he owed that on behalf of his nation to the Polish nation.
01:28Similarly, Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada, apologized in the Canadian Parliament to the people of India for the Komagata Maru incident,
01:36which was an incident in which a Japanese ship, more than a hundred years ago now, was turned away at gunpoint from the port of Vancouver.
01:43And the ship was laden with Indian refugees, many of whom perished on the high seas or at the hands of the British after the ship came back.
01:50So, in many respects, the Canadians were not as directly culpable. They didn't do the atrocities, but they didn't give refuge to these people, and so he apologized.
02:00All I'm saying to the Brits is, I'm not asking for reparations, that was an Oxford debate, we'll put that aside.
02:07In any case, what I semi-jokingly said, £1 a year for the next 200 years would be impossible for any finance ministry to administer, so we can forget about that.
02:16What I want simply is an acknowledgement that the history of those years needs to be faced up to.
02:23That means first, teach it in your schools. Right now you can do A-levels in history in Britain without learning a line of colonial history, I think that's wrong.
02:31So, teach it, don't brush it under the carpet. Set up museums, or at least one museum. London is littered with museums, most of which are chor bazaars, they're full of items purloined from the colonies.
02:43There is no museum to colonialism to the imperial experience. Let's see if they have the courage to create one.
02:49And finally, a simple sorry, a simple apology.
02:53And I've suggested the perfect time and place as far as India is concerned, and that is that on the 13th of April 2019, a little over a year from now, we will have the centenary of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
03:06A horrendous massacre in which Britain started off by betraying the promises it made in return for Indian help in World War I, imposed draconian restrictions, oppressed people.
03:18When they started protesting, cracked down with martial law, sent generals, then they shot and massacred peaceful people who had gathered on the occasion of Baisakhi in this walled garden.
03:30We won't quarrel about the numbers, the British say 379, our people say 1600.
03:36The truth is somewhere in between. But the fact is that the cruelty and racism that accompanied it, shutting the gates so that even the dead, the dying and the wounded would get no attention for 24 hours.
03:47Not even a drop of water from their wailing relatives at the gates as these people were dying.
03:52They were, Indians were forced to crawl on their bellies on a narrow street. And if they so much as lifted their heads, their heads were bashed in.
04:00And after all of this, when Daya was rightly criticized by some, the British conducted a subscription to reward him and gave him the equivalent in today's money of a quarter of a million pounds sterling together with a bejeweled sword.
04:13And Radhiyan Kipling, that flatulent voice of Victorian imperialism, called him the man who saved India.
04:20Well, I'm sorry. After all of that, that that entire combination, the betrayal, the cruelty, the racism, the indifference to Indian suffering and the self-justification of the end.
04:31Perfect thing to come and say, sorry, we were wrong because they were. And if they can say that, sorry, it may not do very much for us. It'll do a lot for their souls.
04:40I think it'll cleanse the British collective soul of this great sin that took place just 100 years ago.