Kolkata: In an audacious act of ill-advised colonialism, 'news website of the year' The Guardian of London, chose to substitute independence with partition while headlining our PM's address. Ironically enough, they deserve to be stoutly complimented for uncharacteristic honesty, as the malicious division was the secret sauce of their forefathers.
Perhaps the provocation was the assault on the imperialist past, clearly exiled in Mr Modi's speech as a dangerous anachronism, in both practice and thinking. Equally, the instigation may well be the enormous success of Indians across the universe, including a certain Mr Sunak in the home country. While the once legendary Islands cope with the Mr Bean-like Boris Johnson, last seen publicly struggling with an umbrella, quite like his travails with the economy and Brexit.
Just recently, I came across an interview of Mr Nehru on BBC TV, in the early 1950's. When asked by a senior journalist why Indians still adore the British in spite of the horrid occupation and indeed the Prime Minister's lengthy incarceration, he gave a rather camouflaged reply. That it was indeed the nobility of Mr Gandhi and his love for peace that lead to such magnanimity, while truthfully it was a petite accession to an old boy's club, socio-cultural British double agents pretending to be scholarly freedom fighters.
This again brings me to the core of British chutzpah, the ability to batter fry a beatific lie with the finest beer extract, so that the perpetrators suddenly turn angelic, quite like Count Dracula of Transylvania incubating blood donation camps or Mr Adolf Hitler the murderer being the earliest warrior against lung cancer, which he astoundingly was. The courage to substitute proven history with teatime interpretation is the prerogative of a notable has-been and alarmingly exercised by the intelligentsia in publications that are borderline legendary.
The unhappy obligation of diminished forces is conformance and accession, in fear of damaging retribution. While the charming privilege of a level playing field is the ability to respond suitably to historical ills, you may gingerly call it tactical revenge. Many like me would love to partner with the Modi Government to devise some such instances, ensuring the restoration of the status quo.
It can start with the fingerprinting of British nationals who enter India and insist on paperwork parity for visa issuance, the last 75 years of generational bank records if you may. Also, a self-declaration that no visitor is a descendant of General Dyer or his proven ilk of oppressors, else a retrospective penalty needs to be furnished. Importantly, all who have visited Pakistan in recent years must furnish suitable reasons for their stay, just like Iran and Israel trips demand exclusive censure from their timeless foes.
What 'The Guardian' has done in terms of denigrating independence as the partition is alarmingly a demonstration of the Churchillian domination mindset, comically theoretical. Equally, it is a sotto voice acknowledgement of how the British said auf wiedersehen to their colonies, preaching ethnocultural divide as a tool for continuing influence. At the ripe young age of 75, India has thankfully moved on and figured out the villainous skulduggery of the erstwhile monsters, however much so many of us still adore Fish and chips, off the old block ideally.
By the same distorted logic, Queen Elizabeth's 70th anniversary on the throne could well be termed as 70 years of abdication. As in her copious tenure, the beloved empire of the predecessors was systematically surrendered, India much earlier, for crippling geopolitical realities. We must know that in 2022, Great Britain is obsolete as a world power and privy to a destructive partition as well, lovingly known as BREXIT.
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