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INDIA ON MY MIND
[By] Msmaku Asrat
India is one
of the oldest polities in the world such as China, Persia, Egypt and
Ethiopia. But no people are so
misconstrued as the Indians. There are people who are called “Indians” in the
entire America North and South. There is also a place called West Indies where
no Indians live. The most famous ones (or the ones made famous by Hollywood
films) are the Red Indians – now
currently called Native Americans. When I was a little boy, my greatest
enjoyment was to go to the only three ‘film houses’ in Addis Ababa in Piazza area
whenever I could and if possible almost every Saturday and Sunday, as well as on
Wednesday afternoons (when my school TMS is closed for half a day) to see
cowboy films. These places were called Cinema Adwa, Cinema Ethiopia and Cinema ‘Ampir’ (Empire) Each work day you can see three films from 12:00
Noon till 6:00 PM. On Saturdays and Sundays there are matinees and the show goes on from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM. Early
morning was for children Tarzan and Chapter adventure films (ch.1 -16) The
vast majority of films shown were “cowboy films” where we see the “hero” like
Gary Cooper, John Wayne, shooting or mowing down dozens of blabbering “Red
Indians” and we stomped, we whistled and stood up and applauded until our palms
get red and our voices get hoarse. The Clot
revolvers of the heroes and other white
actors is what is known as “the 6 loader but 12 shooter” ስድስት ጎራሽ አስራ ሁለት ተኳሽ because the chambers are only six but it
keeps on firing on and on – and never
mind that. The joy is in the shooting and the killing. During my elementary and
high school years, everything American (meaning US) was admired. Their chewing
gums, their jeans, their coca cola, and above all their films are what we
cherish most. Since I was not a sport
fan of any sort my major entertainment were the films shown at Piazza. Occasionally
blockbuster movies (Mother India, Waqt, Sangham)
come from Bollywood which melted the sentiments of women in particular and was
loved by the general public if not the smart Alec Piazza kids. The fiction books we read were either British
or American. Agatha Christie and Graham Green were British Zane Gray, Robert Ludlum and the ‘Saint’
series were American. During the brutal
Derg time all “Western” films were banned and second rate Indian and Russian films
were the only ones allowed.
Then there
are the “Indians” which the Portuguese
and Spanish Conquistadores like Cortes,
Pissarro encountered in Mexico and the entire Southern America. The ‘conquistadores’
were soldiers, explorers and adventurers in the service of the Portuguese
and Spanish Empires during the 15th to the 17th Centuries.
Cortes conquered the Aztec Empire (Mexico) and Pissarro the Inca Empire (Peru).
Both Cortez and Pissarro were second cousins. In 1492 Christopher Columbus
wanted to find a Western route to India and arrived at the Caribbean Islands. He
believed that he has reached India and he promptly called the islands “West Indies” and the people as Indians.
This name was soon transferred to the mainland and the entire population of the
American continent were called Indians. In the North American and specifically
the United States they were called Red Indians. This name was changed some time
ago to Native Americans. The first and greatest Holocaust which also
included the destruction of animals and Nature was in the US after the arrival
of the ‘White Man’ in North America. An estimated 13 million Red Indians were massacred
and four times that number of buffalos, on which the “Red Indians “ depended
for their sustenance, were decimated, usually be poisoning their watering holes
and rivers. All this in order to clear the way for White settlers. But America
was rich in natural resources beyond one’s imagination. It was called “God’s
Own Country” and the holocaust was an entirely unnecessary and a most evil inhuman
act for which there was no justifiable reason, except sheer cruelty. The Second Holocaust in history was the massacre
of 10 million Africans in the Congo by the mercenaries of King Leopard II, King
of the Belgians and the sole owner of the enormous territory of the Congo in
the 19th Century. The crime was so horrendous that Europeans Powers came
together and took the Congo from the king and gave it for Belgium. And it
became the Belgian Congo. The Third
Holocaust was that of Hitler against the Jews of Europe.
The REAL India was that in the subcontinent
of Asia. The Portuguese first arrived
there and established their colony at Goa. When Emperor Libne Dingel asked the
assistance of Portugal, the mightiest power of Europe at the time, in order to
repel the Jihad of Ahmed Gran and Turkey, Portugal dispatched Christopher
DeGama (brother of Vasco DeGama, the famous explorer) with 400 soldiers from
its colony of Goa. When General Napier
(later Lord) was sent by Queen Victoria to free the European hostages held by Emperor
Tewodros, his huge army sailed from Bombay (now Mumbai), India. The India Raj (Empire) was the jewel of the
British crown. First occupied by the British East Indian Company and later
taken over by the British. The India Raj was the crowning jewel of the British
Empire. It was their richest and largest colony. They were to stay there for
over 450 years. When they left in 1948, the country was divided into two (India
and Pakistan) and later Pakistan was again divided into two (Pakistan and
Bangladesh)
What the
British did in India was phenomenal. Those who came out first in the strenuous
national exams in Britain were sent to India and those who came second stayed
behind to administer the home turf. With a 40 thousand army and an excellent
civil service the British ruled a unified India. They built an elaborate and excellent
railway system, the best in the world. And they sent Indians to Africa, from
South Africa to Kenya to build the railways there. They abolished the nefarious
and most inhuman practice of SATI.
It was a practice when a widowed woman would be forced to immolate herself on
her husband’s funeral pyre. (Hindus do nor bury their dead but burn them) The burning of women alive was a most
horrendous crime of the Hindu Patriarchal society – the most extreme crime against
women in human history. Hindus have many Gods which number more than the days
in a year. Their Gods could be humans, animals (like mice, monkeys, birds,
flies and cows). And plants as well. On the top sits the ‘sacred cow’. In their
belief in transmigration of souls that is the best you would hope for when you
die after living a correct life – to be incarnated as a COW when you are reborn
again. Like the religion of “people of the Book” (Jews, Christians and Muslims),
human beings are not created in the image of God. In fact
in the caste system there is a
hierarchy of humanity. On top are the Brahmins and at the bottom were the
Untouchables. –whom Gandhi tried to emancipate and called them Harijans (children of God). Indians also
differentiate themselves in dozens of ‘shades of color’.
The British in
an act of utter malice and calculated cruelty added another layer to all this.
They started a system of discrimination based on color and this for the first
time in human history. They put their white race on top and said that it was
dictated to be on top by Devine Providence and that the brown and black races are
created to be below them. They enforced this principle in the strictest
possible measure going to unbelievable extremes to enforce it. Slavery has
existed for millennium and all conquered people black or white were made
slaves. For example, the Arab ‘Barbary pirates’ of North Africa had captured
over a million Europeans between the 16th and 19th and
sold them to Arabs and to the Ottoman Empire (Turks.) Later Arabs were middle
men who captured Africans and sold them to other European pirates who in turn sold
them as slaves to the Americas – North and South. The British who had perfected
the color line in India and then transferred it to Africa. In South Africa the
color line has four divisions. On top were the Whites, next came the Colored
(mixed with white blood), then Indians and at the bottom the Africans.
One of
the greatest men of the world and undoubtedly of the 20th Century
was a young lawyer called Gandhi. He was born in Indian 1989 and studied as a
lawyer in Britain. In 1893 he went to South Africa and started a struggle for
the emancipation of the suppressed races but it was an uphill fight against the
Dutch (Afrikaners) and the British. With a brilliant stroke he took the battle
into the belly of the beast- the British Raj in India - where he returned in
1908. The rest is history.
I do not know what drew me to Mahatma Gandhi
in my college days because I wrote my Thesis
on Mahatma Gandhi. It may be my earlier exposure to Buddhism while in High
School and my rejection of Marxism-Leninism in my college days. In my high
school a certain Buddhist Guru was the rage in Addis Abeba with many followers
and I was one of them. When his books
come to the only bookstore in town, Janopolus in Piazza we the ‘True Believers’
rushed to buy it and then sat at the famous King George Bar (demolished over 40
years ago and never rebuilt) next door and discuss it endlessly. Then the Guru disappeared as suddenly as he
had come. But the friends I knew then lasted for a long time. I have read short
biographies of Mahatma Gandhi and Benito Mussolini written in Amharic when I was in elementary
school. It compared the lives of the two and how they died. Mussolini was
captured by anti-Fascist Partisans when he attempted to flee in disguise. He
was brought to Milan and hanged upside down in one of the streets.
In the 9th
grade our science teacher was the exquisitely beautiful Mrs. Abrahams. She wore a
different beautiful sari almost every day of the school year. We swooned
and swayed whenever she comes to our classes but she charmingly and deftly ignored
our raging hormones. In 12th grade we had another Indian Chemistry teacher. He
was an Orthodox Christian. The small Indian Orthodox community in Addis had
their services at Trinity Cathedral every Sunday. Among the 12 types of the
Orthodox religions Indian Orthodox Church is one of them and the closest to the
Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahdo Church. There
was also a small merchant group called “BANYAN” in Merkato area. I have seen
them and they were selling textiles for the most part. There was also a place called “Benin Sefer”
in Addis Ababa where most of these merchants lived. Later they disappeared at
about the same time as the disappearance of Arab (Yemenite) merchants, who use
to run small shops called Arab bet. Most
importantly there were the school teachers which replaced the more expensive
“ferenji” teachers. The Indians were willing to teach into the hinterland of
the country, where they quickly turned ‘native’ mixed with the population
easily and improved the quality of education. Hundreds of thousands of
Ethiopian students are taught by Indian teachers. During this time, for example,
the British were running a failing high school called General Wingate even while
the high school education of Wingate School was five years instead of
four. Lastly, Emperor Haile Selassie made
the wise decision to invite the prestigious Indian Military Academy (fashioned
in the manner of the British Academy at Sandhurst) to establish the Harar
Military Academy which became an excellent institution. In graduate school one ‘books
of the trade’ author were the books by the noted Indian female environmentalist
Vandana Shiva.
Gandhi not only
conquered the British Empire but emerged as the most admired and respected
human being of the 20th Century. His deep understanding of the
sacred books of Hinduism - Vedas, Upanishads and Baghavad Gita
allowed him to develop the concept of non violence, non-cooperation in 1922. It
later became known as the civil disobedience movement best expressed in the
“Salt March” he led in 1930 defying importation of British salt. He then
rejected the import of textile from Manchester, England, and changed his
Western garment to locally hand woven loin cloth- an attire which made him
world famous. Churchill refused to meet this “half-naked fakir” as he called him and loftily declared that he has not become
the First Minister of Britain in order to liquidate the British Empire. Gandhi
said that India lives in its 500,000 villages and should develop small self
reliant communities with its excellent cottage industry - a precursor of “Small
is Beautiful “concept. He was firmly opposed by Nehru and others who preferred
rapid industrialization. Gandhi said that the hand loom or the spinning wheel
was the symbol of India’s self reliance. The symbol was to become the centerpiece
of India National Flag in honor of Gandhi.
However, India’s first Prime Minister Nehru and the Indian National
Congress he led wanted Industrialization. They won the day and India
industrialized much to the chagrin of Gandhi was was assassinated a few years
later by a Hindu fanatic. Gandhi had brilliantly agreed to support Britain in its
war effort if Britain in turn pledges to grant India’s independence after the
war was over. Britain had to agree and India won its independence in 1948.
Meantime Indian soldiers served under the
British army all over the world until the end of the Second World War. They
were among General Cunningham’s forces when he entered Addis Ababa defeating
the Italian Fascists. It was not their
first time for them in Ethiopia. In 1868
they had accompanied Napier’s army to construct the 20 kms or so railway which
was to transport the 13,000 men thirty thousand animals including 25 elephants
to the foot of the escarpment. When Napier left Napier dismantled and took back
this rolling stock and locomotives and left us to our own devices. Few people
remember that this was the first railway built in Ethiopia.
The first
time I went to India was in 1979 to attend the Non-Aligned conference ably
presided by Indira Gandhi the Prime Minister of India (Mrs. Gandhi is no
relation to Gandhi but is the daughter
of the first PM Jawahlal Nehru. He gave her the name Gandhi out of respect to
the Mahatma.) During the sixties I had a sister living in India who was
married to a diplomat. Another sister had also joined them there. When they
returned the husband and wife were extremely impressed by India, he by the philosophy
of Hinduism and she, by the beautiful brass, paper Mache and wood artifacts
which she had collected a whole household full and they were indeed beautiful. They also gave a daughter born there an Indian
name. The other sister, even though educated there, India left no impression on
her. It was as if that she has never been there. The Indians who came to East, Central and Sothern
Africa to build railways stayed there and became prosperous and served as a
buffer between the native blacks and the ruling British. Kenya gained its
Independence in December 1963 and the fiery “Jomo” (burning spear) Kenyatta of
Mau Mau fame completely surrendered to the British after independence. The
Indians were the rich traders who treated Kenyans like dirt. I noticed this in
late 60’s and early 70’s when we, from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs used to
pass through Nairobi several times a year while going to the OAU Liberation
Committee meetings in Dar Es Salaam. It was as though Kenya was still under
colonial rule. The Indians showed supreme arrogance. While they walk the
streets they look straight ahead and the “natives” had to scramble or fall on
each other to make way for the Indians. The Indians of Tanzania have long left
because of the spirit of Socialism and Ujamization
introduced by Neyrere. So when Idi Amin drove out the Indians it was a
singularly brilliant stroke and, those of us who have seen them in Kenya were
the first to applaud his decision. The Indians
of Uganda had maintained their British citizenship but Britain was not prepared
to accept them crating a huge embarrassment to Britain which reinforced their
determination to topple Idi Amin. Now it appears that Museveni, the Western
stooge, has invited the Indians back and with compensation paid.
In this year
of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the OAU the TPLF
government is deeply embarrassed by the decision of their late Meles Zenawi to
deny Emperor Haile Selassie his place of honor by erecting a statue for him at
AU besides that of Nkrumah. The spineless African leaders are said to have been
deeply ashamed to having succumbed to the dictat
of one bully who is now dead and buried. As I written elsewhere in the past
it was Kwame Nkrumah who composed and read the following poem at the signing of
the OAU Charter in 1963 where I was fortunately present.
Ethiopia
shall rise
Ethiopia, Africa’s bright gem
Set high among the verdant hills
That gave birth to the unfailing
Waters of the Nile
Ethiopia
shall rise
Ethiopia, land of the wise;
Ethiopia, bold cradle of Africa’s ancient rule
And fertile school
Of our African culture;
Ethiopia, the
wise
Shall rise
And remould with us the full figure
Of Africa’s hopes
And destiny.
The
successors of Meles are trying to
redress that historical error first by allowing their doormat of a President
(whom they told to shut up when he dared to speak about Patriarch Merkorios) to
write a letter to OAU asking that Emperor Haile Selassie statue be erected. The
Weyane may even go further and restore the name Haile Selassie to the
University and Tafai Makonnen to the school he built. During this time when the
world is focusing on Ethiopia on account of the 50th Anniversary of
AU the TPLF gang is showing some pro forma gestures about fighting corruption. One
half of the government is investigating the other half- a total farce. It has
always been known አሳ የሚገማው ከጭንቅላቱ ነው so does leadership. All this is a calculated
window dressing theatre of the absurd for the benefit of the current crowd
being assembled in Ethiopia. TPLF will not change its spots or be expected to kill
the chicken that lays the golden egg of corruption. After all that is their
mainstay and the raison d’être of
their very existence. The youth in
Ethiopia appear to be energized and are boldly challenging the dictatorship. I
hope that they would WALK the TALK and succeed
where others had faltered.
Abebe Bikila 1924-66 EC (1932 - 1973)
The hero of the time was Wami Biratu who held the national re-cords in 5,000 and 10,000-meter races. During the marathon race, the crowd at the stadium was waiting to see Wami Biratu come as a winner. In the first few kilometers, Wami was leading. After a while, radio broadcasters informed the crowd that a young unknown ath-lete by the name of Abebe was leading. As Abebe was extending his lead, the crowd waited anxiously to see this new sensation. Abebe easily won his first major race and later on went to break the 5,000 and 10,000-Meter records held by Wami. With these impressive results, Abebe qualified for the Rome Olympics. Finally, Abebe‘s dream of wearing that sport out-fit with Ethiopia‘s name written on the back was realized.
