Glimpses of the Colonial Times

Whenever there is a discussion, conference, seminars or any kind of speeches on the Indian independence, there are always mentions about the freedom fighters and how the war had affected adversely the people’s lives. Unfortunately, throughout these, the influence of and on South India during the British era is rarely mentioned which is disappointing because there were remarkable amount of freedom fighters from Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala and so on. Regardless, there were a number of common people whose daily lives were affected with the hardships of the war. The other day, I was talking to my Grandmother on telephone and I was asking her about the colonial times and what did she remember of them. She said she couldn’t remember much for she was barely 8 years old or so at the time. The place where she lived was the southern regions of Kerala where most of the aftereffects of the war were poverty and hunger. She recollected her mother talking about how they did not have enough food to feed the family and how they had to depend on tapioca, during those days, for food.

Then she recollected about the sense of fear and hopelessness which blinded in the people’s minds as everyone used to inquire about the situation in the North where the fight mostly had its effects. She also mentioned the caste system that prevailed in the state during those times, called ‘Ayitham’. It was a form of caste system which had the main feature of ‘untouchability’ which was imposed by the Brahmins, who considered themselves as the superior caste, on the lower castes of the society like, Ezhavas, Nairs, etc. These created social tensions among the people of the state as a whole as the lower caste people were not allowed to visit the temples, attend the same schools with the higher caste population and such restrictions were fought by a number of leaders like Sahodaran Ayyappan, T.K. Madhavan, Mannathu Padmanabhan, E.M.S Namboodiripad, C.V Raman Pillai, etc; and movements were held like the Vaikom Satyagraha where held to protest against such social injustice. The Vaikom Satyagraha was the first systematically organized agitation in Kerala against orthodoxy to secure the rights of the depressed classes. For the first time in history, the agitation brought forward the question of civil rights of the low caste people into the forefront of Indian politics. No mass agitation in Kerala acquired so much all-India attention and significance in the twentieth century as the Vaikom Satyagraha. (Source: Wikipedia) 

Thus, there may not be any direct impact on the southern regions of India, mainly in Kerala, during the British rule but the people were indirectly affected with the hardships of the war in a number of ways and social barriers were at its highest. Whereas, after the Indian independence, the situation has improved to be so much better as the war had ended and so did the brutal injustice which was based on the caste system. “Maybe,” my Grandmother said, “our leaders were too busy fighting the villains inside their own state to fight the ones from the foreign country.” 

Upside Down World

I’m not the type of person who reads books related to politics or history or anything of that sort. In fact I have zero knowledge about the world wars and stuff like that. The book Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking-Glass World is not really my thing but recently I went through some portions of it and I found it very impressive and realistic. As far as I know (thanks to Google and Wikipedia), the book was originally published in Spanish in 1998, was written by Eduardo Galeano, a Uruguayan author who was greatly impacted by the political turmoil during the 20^th century military regimes in Latin America. The ruminations of this book were formed as a result of Galeano's desire to remember the past traumas and as well as to learn from them. Though focusing on Latin America, Galeano uses what he has learned from the political and social environment within Latin America to understand injustices and social dynamics throughout the rest of the world.

The twenty pages that I had to read, and tried to comprehend as best as I can, describe matters which relates to economy, war and injustice in the society and the developed world. The introductory part states the rewards that the upside down world provides: scorns honesty, punishes work, prizes lack of scruples and feeds cannibalism; which, I find very true and relatable. Throughout the pages one can find statements so powerful that they almost hit you with their iron fists. For example, as Galeano talks about survival of the fittest, he states that ‘killer instinct is an essential ingredient for getting ahead’ which is a fact we witness in almost every political, social and economical scenario. Talking about the world economy and how it exploits the poor in favor of the richest, Galeano states that, ‘the world economy is the most efficient expression of organized crime.’

As Galeano points out that the worst violators of nature and human rights never go to jail but they hold the keys, he is mocking the authorities who misuse the power vested upon them. He also portraits the pathetic situation of human relations these days as he states that the looking glass world trains us to view our neighbor as a threat, not as a promise. We recognize ourselves in our differences and build links based on them. The economy of today’s world is so terrible that the common man can no longer survive in peace and thus Galeano writes ‘advertising enjoins everyone to consume while the economy prohibits the vast majority of humanity from doing so.’ He also points how discrimination causes a sense of hatred in the minds of the unfortunate ones who don’t have their voice in the society; as he says that ‘the ones who count arise desire and envy among those of us the market discounts in a world where respect is measured by the number of credit cards you carry.’ He also says that the mass media informs us to look at ourselves in a single mirror as he reflects how media shows us what we are supposed to be and how far we are from that, making us frown at our own media-made flaws and inefficiencies.

The disgraceful situation prevails where governments play the smiling villain’s role as in many countries social justice has been reduced to criminal justice. Galeano rightfully states that public rights are reduced to public charity and handed out only on the eve of elections. Along with the government, Galeano also talks about poverty and how it is portrayed. He says that poverty used to be the fruit of injustice, now it’s the fair reward for inefficiency, which shows the attitude of the rich towards the poor as in the reason behind their poverty is nothing but sheer laziness. He also states that poverty may create pity but it no longer causes indignation, as people often tend to think that the poor people ‘deserve’ to be so. Wealth and poverty emerge from eternity and towards eternity they march, and that’s the way things are because God or customs prefers it that way.

Moving on to issues related to drugs, Galeano says that the war on drugs in a cover for social war. The following points are stated:

•       Among the ghosts of international terrorism, narco-terrorism is the one that’s most frightening.
•       US Citizens spend $110 on drugs a year
•       Drugs make fortunes for the bankers and offer useful pretexts for the machinery of war
•       A problem of public health has been turned into a problem of public security that respects no borders
•       If imported cocaine were to disappear, in two months it would be replaced by synthetic drugs
•       In Brazil and everywhere else, those who die in the war on drugs far outnumber those who die from an overdose

Thus to conclude, Upside Down presents the relationship between developed (or “first world”) and developing (or “third world”) nations. Galeano suggests that we can start to understand our perceptions of power as based from media interpretations when these "facts" are turned upside down again and forced to stand on their own, Galeano also challenges the First World, Eurocentric readers with the question of why Europe and America are always presented on the top of the world, and why can't Latin America and Australia and Africa be seen as the top of the world. As globalization continues, the difference between the rich and the poor of the world just keeps growing, and with this increased polarization has come a new vocabulary of degradation to describe class and racial differences. People are drawn to capitalism with the promise of choice, but as Galeano points out, those who are allowed to actually make those choices are limited often by money, gender, and race.