Why I started looking “East”​-ward in 2020

In several of my last posts on LinkedIn, I have been talking about Indian and multinational corporations, and drawing parallels to the rise of the first multinational corporation (the British East India Company) in India. I am not usually a history buff or a fervent nationalist, so this trend of citing historical references on colonialism is quite unlike me. I blame it directly on the people who gifted or introduced certain books to me in the last year :)

Books have an amazing way of planting thoughts into your mind. It somehow happened that I ended up reading at least four books in 2020 that covered the same topic. In fact, one of those four books (Gun Island) was a surprise gift from my aunt, and the back cover did not even mention this topic in the description. While reading that book, I felt that there was some form of serendipity at play here. Or maybe it is just that the topic I am talking about is a popular one these days.

Well, the topic in question (and the common theme among the four books) is:

Post-colonialism: … “study of the cultural legacy of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the human consequences of the control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands” (Wikipedia)

In fact, this is something I had not felt strongly about the negative effects of British rule while growing up. Like many of my friends, I had even casually remarked many a time that the British rule was actually good for us. Well, as it turns out I was up for a good thrashing from Mr. Shashi Tharoor.

1. Shashi Tharoor’s “An Era of Darkness”

First on the list of books is Shashi Tharoor’s “An Era of Darkness” (picked up by my wife on a trip to Crossword Bookstore). Some say that Shashi Tharoor’s speech at Oxford Union is what started this entire series of books or discussions about the negative effects of colonialism.

The British gave us the railway, the English language as a common language for the country, great architecture and buildings that we still use today. As a result, many people in my generation casually say that the British rule was actually good for us. Yet, by reading Tharoor’s book, it was amply clear to me that the amount of damage imposed on India by British rule was greater by orders of magnitude. Tharoor maintains that the extent of extraction of wealth that happened during the time of British rule just cannot be legitimized or supported in any way. Tharoor’s book is full of facts and figures. A third of the way into the book, I had to leave it. However the message really did hit home.

Many people in my generation casually say that the British rule was actually good for us… Tharoor vehemently disagrees.

2. William Dalrymple’s “The Anarchy”

My Dad gifted me William Dalrymple’s, “The Anarchy” as a New Year’s gift in 2020. After reading Dalrymple’s “In Xanadu”, my Dad and I were already fans of his writing.

The book talks about the 50 year period between 1750–1800 when the East India Company transformed from a small trading firm to the biggest military and governmental power in the Indian subcontinent.

This is a fascinating book and also my favorite book of 2020 (probably because I spent the most time reading it).

3. Suketu Mehta’s “This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant’s Manifesto”

The next one on my list, Suketu Mehta’s “This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant’s Manifesto”, was written in response to a wave of recent anti-immigration sentiment in the U.S.

Suketu Mehta expresses his disappointment at this change of sentiment in a country that was very immigration-friendly at some point (not to mention the fact that US was, in fact, originally founded by immigrants from Britain and other parts of Europe).

Overall, I found Suketu Mehta’s book to be the hardest hitting and the most depressing of the four because it contained real life stories of families torn apart by these immigations. After a certain point, I had to put the book down but just because these facts were so difficult to digest. Unlike Dalrymple’s “The Anarchy”, this book is not about a certain point back in our history, nor is it a piece of fiction like Ghosh’s “Gun Island” (next on my list). It is about happenings that are going on right now, at this very point in time on the borders of US and Europe.

Apart from writing about the current plight of millions of immigrants, the book constantly reminds us that the current status quo regarding immigration to the Western world is a direct effect of colonial extraction over centuries (more on that below).

4. Gun Island

One of the few fiction books I read last year was Amitava Ghosh’s Gun Island. This was gifted to me by my aunt Sudipta Sen and I am really thankful to her for introducing me to Amitava Ghosh’s writing. Now this book is a piece of fiction, but it deals with two global topics within the story:

• One is climate change (something I have always instinctively cared about).
• The other one is post-colonialism (something that I had never thought about deeply before last year)

Compared with the previous books, Gun Island talks about colonialism in a different way. It is a fictional story but is based on the real accounts of immigrants, particularly those from Bangladesh, India and the Middle East. It tells of how they cross the Mediterranean, overcoming many perils, to get into Europe.

“The wave of immigration to North America and Europe is a direct effect of the imbalance created by colonialism.”

Amitava Ghosh explains that this is just a circle going around. At some point, the colonial powers were forcing slaves to migrate from the colonies to their home countries. At the same time, they were extracting, wealth and raw materials from the colonies and exporting those resources into their countries. Ghosh claims that this highly unequal transfer of power and wealth has led to an imbalance in the world that exists till now. And that this is the reason why so many people from previously colonized countries are now emigrating to those developed countries. Gun Island is a piece of fiction, but it has a very strong voice about the topic of postcolonial imbalance in the world. Though the book brings this depressing theme out very strongly, it is still palatable and has a happy ending. I managed to finish reading the book and derived some positive messages from it.

But why bring this all up on LinkedIn, a professional networking site?

Do not get me wrong. I do not hold any grudges against the British for colonizing India. The British just made the best of an opportunity that they were provided. Humans tend to be like that. Indians did not go about colonizing countries in the past (or at least as much as the European powers), but we have enough of our own historical baggage to account for already (the caste system, for example).

The British just made the best of an opportunity that they were provided…

we (Indians) have enough of our own historical baggage to account for already.

After reading the books. I just felt more empowered by being able to relate the current world situation with our colonial past. Turns out that 70 years after India gained independence from the British, our colonial past still affects the career and life choices for even the most educated and well-off amongst us. But let’s delve into that in another post, shall we?

Reposted from Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-i-started-looking-east-ward-2020-kriti-sen-sharma-ph-d-/