History is done and dusted
Aparticularly harsh narrative that circulated in social media after Queen Elizabeth II’s death, blamed her for sins of the past committed by her forebears and the erstwhile empire. The accusations were often accompanied by demands for a return of something once taken to England.
For example, the Kohinoor diamond in case of India (and Pakistan, and Afghanistan, and Iran!) and the Cullinan diamond for South Africa. Demands were also made for all that land, castles and wealth gained by profiting from slavery and exploitation.
Such discussions may be valid philosophically, but can they come up with a price tag for past “misdeeds”? If that is a fair remedy, it should be universally applicable to all such situations. That is impossible. Nor will it compensate the victims who were actually wronged. Those crying foul are litigating the past by applying current sensibilities that in turn may become invalid in the future. They are also using a double standard, applicable to “the invader,” but not themselves.
We could begin with claims of the “jewel in the crown” of the British empire, India. The Kohinoor diamond never belonged to the people of India. Its most famous owners were the Mughal emperors, the masters of India and its people. The Mughals, like quite a few other Indian dynasties, were also colonizers, and were comprehensively successful at it and for much longer than the Brits.
The Kohinoor was wrested from the waning Mughals by a Persian ruler, made its way to an Afghan king and then was given to a Sikh ruler to buy his alliance. In the city of Lahore, the East India Company (comparable to Goldman Sachs of today) and not the British monarch or government, dispossessed a 10-year-old Sikh ruler of the stone.
Consistent with its history, the Kohinoor founds its way into the hands of the monarch ascendant and was gifted to Queen Victoria. If we start claiming stones on the basis of their land of origin, then the same quarrel must also be taken up with Iran and Russia, who are in possession of comparable (in fact, larger) Mughal diamonds.
Did a failing empire, so motheaten that a mere trading concern (the aforementioned East India Company) brought it to its knees, deserve to exist? True to the nature of such companies even today, it operated to turn a profit for its investors, not the welfare of the inhabitants of plantations or the country it owned.
As the company declined, the British government took control of India. That led to India being pulled from medieval times into the twentieth century. Where would India or Pakistan be today, were it not for that chapter in its history?
Still, if we are going to avenge the past by demanding satisfaction of the queen and her family, should we not be tracing every officer and clerk of East India Company, a large number, who became fabulously rich at the expense of India and her people. Then turn our attention to the descendants of those in the Indian Civil Service?
While we are sorting out colonization, how about the matter of the Dravidians, the original people of India, and the invading Aryans? And the resultant Hindu caste system and the ever-ongoing cruelty wrought upon the Shudras, the servant caste, and the “untouchables”? All the treasure in India could not make up for the eons of injustice in their case.
Then there is the matter of slavery and Africa. Will the African descendants of slave traders at least apologize to the descendants of slaves sent to America, who suffered enormously? Slavery in Africa goes back into the Roman times, if not farther. Natives too profited from this evil. It was Queen Victoria’s emissaries who tried convincing African chiefs to give up slavery. (England had abolished the slave trade in 1807.)
Who should compensate for the wrongs done to Africans by Africans, or Romans? If the queen or king should apologize for a practice that preceded their birth, should not President Joe Biden be held accountable for the Vietnam War and the invasion of Iraq?
How will the Native Americans be compensated for the harm done to them and the land taken from them? No one contemplates returning the continent to them, or even large parts of it.
Today, we can argue whether or not Alexander was Great. But what of the lands laid bare by his ambition? Was the Parthenon not created by wealth that came off the back of nations subjugated into the vast Greek empire? Is it right to benefit from the fruits of conquest, then turn around and protest when the tables are turned?
Who will determine a cut-off point in history beyond which demanding compensation is unreasonable? History is done and dusted. It cannot be undone by substituting ourselves into victims of the wrongs done in the past.