Rishy Bukoree
One of the best and most absorbing books I have come across recently is the acclaimed »Empireland » by Sathnam Sanghera. Before knowing anything about the book, it happened that I noticed the author while randomly stumbling on his interview with Stephen Sackur which was aired on the BBC sometime in late 2021. The interview, in particular the author’s views on the colonial past and legacy of Britain, on racism and Western civilization, made quite an impression and led me to eventually buy the book.
Although Empireland is mostly about how modern Britain has been shaped by its colonial past, what is really fascinating about it is the manner in which its contents, facts and deductions merge to enlighten about the state of today’s world, about how colonialism has impacted former colonial societies and how many events and information that are mostly ‘hidden’, untold or not propagated enough. It also shows the biased manner in which History is generally taught and told, mostly through the Western lens « as if the teachers went out of their way to avoid telling us about it: we explored both world wars at length (…) but I don’t recall it once mentioned that tens of thousands of brown people from across empire were fighting for Britain (…), and while we studied the Irish Potato Famine, no one cared to illustrate the tragedy by comparison to famines in India« .
Empireland enabled me to learn more about the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, a key event « marking the moment the Raj lost its grip on the largest empire in human history« , a massacre described by no less than Rabindranath Tagore as »without parallel in the history of civilised governments » and for which Gandhi admitted he had « underrated the forces of evil’‘ in the empire. What we also learn about the atrocities of Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar, which occurred on 13 April 1919 are that the crowd had gathered in « peace ». « Some were there to listen to a political speech, but the majority were ordinary students, watchmakers, barbers, hawkers, pedlars and pilgrims visiting the Golden Temple (…). » Rioters who protested a few weeks before the massacre were described as « striking niggers » and « scum« . The killings could not be justified and shed light on the inhumane, evil and racist mindset of the colonizers. 
The book also quotes George Orwell: « the high standard we enjoy in England depends upon our keeping a tight hold on the empire, particularly the tropical portions of it such as India and Africa. Under the capitalist system, in order that England may live in comparative comfort, a hundred million Indians must live on the verge of starvation – an evil state of affairs, but you acquiesce in it every time you step into a taxi or eat a plate of strawberries and cream. » Even Lord Salisbury, later Prime Minister, is quoted as saying « if our ancestors had cared for the rights of other people, the British empire would not have been made« , adding « as India must be bled, the bleeding should be done judiciously« .
From colonialism and colour bar to slavery and indentured labour, Sanghera conveys facts and interweaves them to make us understand how the tides of the past have helped create the modern world:
“Then we have the colour bar which ran through both imperial society and post-war Britain like letters through seaside rock. (…) Lord Curzon once observed that ‘there were no Indian natives in the Government of India because among all the 300 million people of the sub-continent, there was not a single man capable of the job’ (…).”
“India, as a shared physical space between British colonials and ‘native’ Indian people, had changed drastically from the end of the eighteenth century into the nineteenth. Indian people lived in ‘Black Town’ or the ‘native quarter’, described as a ‘walled area, enclosing a mass of narrow, winding streets, peopled by a swarming mass of filthy natives, including a generous sprinkling of beggars, lepers, cripples and other grotesques’. The British cantonment regions, however, were completely different. Houses were spacious, Palladian in style, and were often part of a private compound with land, gardens and quarters for servants. The British even lived within their own time zone. When the Indian people would begin the evening feasting and dancing, the British would go to bed. Before the Indians stirred in the early hours, British women were up for their morning ride so that the daytime sun would not affect their complexion. The British were encouraged to be aloof, intimidating, to dress differently from Indian people. (…)”
Sanghera further deems wild racial stereotypes to be the most racist import from empire. For instance, “when 1.5 million Indians went overseas as indentured labour between 1834 and 1920, filling the gaps created by the abolition of slavery in the European colonies in the early nineteenth century, they endured being stereotyped in often entirely contradictory ways. Initially, it was standard to portray Africans as lazy and untrustworthy, while Indian workers were deemed industrious, reliable and obedient. However, once Indians were ensconced on the plantations and having to contend with brutal hardships and humiliations, they fell from favour. In truth, the planters suddenly claimed, the Indians were weak, dishonest and filthy. (…)”
Moreover, Sanghera leaves no stone unturned to demonstrate how institutional racism has prevailed in empire, how, despite the posture of moral high ground because of the abolition of the slavery and the defeat of Nazis, empire still “dominated the slave trade for a significant period, ran one of the biggest white supremacist enterprises in the history of humanity and dabbled in genocide, and the stain of it has seeped into many aspects of our contemporary culture, from the jobs market to the sinister re-emergence of violent white supremacy”.
There is so much more in this book that deserves to be read, the more so the author himself is on an identity quest, questioning himself, his roots, his ‘formatted’ British education and mostly Western way of life. This definitely resonates with anyone who understands the importance of deconstruction, of multiple identities and of the need to strive, in peace, for the best in the hybrid nature of interactions taking place in multicultural societies.
‘Empireland’ is definitely among the most interesting books I have read, especially in terms of food for thought. It has also helped confirm some of the issues identified by Robin DiAngelo in ‘White Fragility’ and facts brought to light by David Zucchino in ‘Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy’, two equally fascinating books that I read in 2020, and which still find echoes in recent events around the world, not least the 6 January 2021 Capitol attack.
I understand through a few exchanges of correspondence with Sanghera that he will soon start some research on indentured labour in Mauritius for his next book, as he is extremely interested in understanding the evolution of societies where indentured labour took place. Let us hope that he gets the material he requires so that his next book can be equally enlightening for us Mauritians.