The Hindu Business Line : Whitewashing, or apologising, for colonisation

The French President, Mr Jacques Chirac, recently revised the pensions of veterans from former French colonies in Africa who fought in their wars. They were receiving only about 30 per cent of what a French veteran received and have been demanding an upward revision for years. But it was a recently made movie, Indigenes, based on North Africans who volunteered to fight with the French during the Second World War that did the trick. Mr Chirac saw the movie in a private viewing even before its public release, was moved, and decided that something should be done. If only movies could solve the world's problems!

Policy of assimilation

The French policy of colonisation, at least in the early stages, was one of assimilation. It wanted the natives of the various cultures over which they ruled to assimilate the French culture. Noble indeed, till they realised it was not working. They faced a severe situation, particularly in Algeria, which they ruled for 132 years till a bloody war ended their rule in 1962.

The Algerians have been demanding that the French apologise for their colonial rule, but it is not in Western culture to apologise. The French Interior Minister and a presidential aspirant, Mr Nicholas Sarkozy, on a visit to Algeria would only go so far as to lay a wreath at the memorial for those who fought for independence.

Lower compensation

The logic of lower pension rates for the African veterans is supposedly that they live in countries with a lower cost of living. Foreign multinational corporations used to be accused of their own form of colonisation because they paid their local employees less than what they paid their nationals who worked on site. The rationale, of course, was that the expatriates were on short-term assignments, and would eventually go back to their country. But while they were among the locals, higher compensation allowed them to live like royalty.

The US, a new `soft' coloniser, has its own forms of discrimination. Let's look at the compensation paid to victims of the Iraq war. According to some estimates, over six lakh people are said to have died. The compensation rates vary since it is often left to the discretion of the local commanding officer; but rates range from Rs 27,000 ($600) to Rs 67,500 ($1500) per Iraqi. On the other hand, the compensation paid to the family of a US soldier killed in Iraq is said to be about Rs 2.25 crore ($500,000).

True, the poor countries put a low value on their people so why blame the rich. The out-of-court settlement for the families of the victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy was Rs 99,000 ($2,200) per head. But the US government managed to get Rs 45 crore ($10 million) per head from the Libyan government, which was held responsible for those killed in the PanAm bombing of 1998.

The whitewash

The British, of course, did not believe in assimilation. They saw the colony for what it was — a subsidiary that needs to be managed in a manner that benefits the holding company. The British who, of course, have never apologised for their colonisation, lay low for a while; they have decided, however, that the time is ripe for some action. Like all old structures, the Raj is coming in for a whitewash. The task has been left to their historians.

Niall Ferguson, in his Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power tells us that the British left the world a better place. Ferguson does not believe that the colonial powers impoverished the countries. That is because he avoids dealing with the more relevant question, namely, what would these countries have been if the colonisers had not landed. The statistics of Angus Maddison in his The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective gives us enough material to speculate on this.

Another writer, David Gilmour, in his Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj paints a new picture of the Indian civil service. No, they were not boorish, but high minded, men with integrity, and seeking to do right by the natives. And there is Jeremy Bernstein, who in his Dawning of the Raj tells us about the good deeds of Warren Hastings. He paved roads, founded schools, improved the water supply and so on. What if he was accused of embezzling money from the East India Company (although finally acquitted of the charge), and charging protection money from some of the rich locals.

Not all are enamoured by the idea of the superiority of the Western coloniser. Caroline Elkins in her recent Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya took a look at how the Mau Maus were treated. The new Americans, after getting independence from the British, turned around and persecuted the natives in the there, so aptly described by Dee Brown in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Even today, Christopher Columbus, the `discoverer' continues to be somewhat controversial. The local newspaper decided to publish an editorial on Columbus Day reviewing the devastation brought upon on the Aztecs and the Incas on account of the conquest of the `New World' by the Caucasians.

Meanwhile, the Gurkhas of Nepal must be encouraged by the French response to African veterans. After all, although a position in the British army is still a hot job for most Nepali youth, their pensions are lower that of a Brit's. The British government must be closely monitoring the cost of living in the Himalayan slopes.

(The author is professor of international business and strategic management at Suffolk University, Boston, US. His Internet address is )

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