Historical revisionism in Hollywood

With Mahrukh and Che in India, I’m spending most of my evenings watching movies and I’ve seen nearly all the Oscar contenders for the Best Picture category. This evening I saw The Darkest Hour.

It’s a fine film. It shows the gritty determination of Winston Churchill, one of the tallest leaders of the 20th century, a leader responsible to a large extent in keeping the morale of the people of the Allied countries, when Hitler’s rampaging armed forces ravaged Europe.

Gary Oldman, who enacts the role of the British Prime Minister, does justice to him by a fine performance that on occasions slips into unnecessary and incongruous levity.

In a particularly poignant scene in the film, Churchill, while he is being forced to negotiate peace with Hitler by his colleagues in the war cabinet Chamberlin and Halifax, takes a tube ride to gauge the public mood.

The British Prime Minister discovers that the common Englishman and Englishwoman have no desire to broker peace with Hitler, and everyone is willing to die for the country. Churchill begins to recite Thomas Babington Macaulay’s classic poem Lays of Ancient Rome (which incidentally Macaulay wrote while in India).

“…To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods..."

This poem is a classic of the British Empire.

The filmmaker Joe Wright takes some liberty in showing a black Londoner reciting along with the Prime Minister. I doubt very much if this actually happened, not the interaction between Churchill and Londoners in the tube, but that among those common people was a black person aware of Macaulay’s poem. This is historical revisionism at best (worst?).

The fact is that both Churchill and Macaulay were products of their age (they were not contemporaries) and both were deeply conservative, with little or no regard for any race other than their own. Both had extremely inimical relations with India and Indians and both considered Indians to be inferior if not entirely despicable.

Macaulay (in)famously proclaimed, “I am quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the valuation of the Orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.”

And Churchill, of course, could just not tolerate Indians, and especially Gandhi. He exclaimed in despair, “It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious middle temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the east, striding half-naked up the steps of the viceregal palace, while he is still organizing and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the king-emperor.”

Churchill is held responsible for the Bengal famine of the 1940s, when he was famously losing to Hitler while fighting him in the air, on the beaches, on the landing grounds, in the fields, in the streets in the hills – everywhere except in the battlefield.

In her seminal book of 2010, Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II, Madhushree Mukherjee claims that Churchill ignored pleas for emergency food aid for millions in Bengal left to starve as their rice paddies were turned over to jute for sandbag production and supplies of rice from Burma stopped after Japanese occupation. Between one and three million died of hunger in 1943.

Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, which is poetry on celluloid, and, in my view, one of the finest war films ever made, is unfortunately also racially blind, and therefore, imprecise historically.

Historical revisionism was the bane of the communists at one time, but that seems to be becoming all-pervasive in Hollywood. 

Mad Dogs and Englishmen

I have a general disdain for coffee table books. They are what we from India call “time pass” books. These books are a combination of jaw-dropping factoids and fabulous visuals. Almost always, there’s little content of any significance in them.

Often they are like teasers, or movie trailer. After browsing through a coffee table book, one often feels like getting a real book that will contain more substance.

39 Clues

I prefer not to buy such books because they’re frightfully expensive.

I made an exception today. I went to Indigo (oh, these big book stores, how they manipulate you at a subconscious level) at Yorkdale mall with Che. He wanted to buy the sixth book in the 39 Clues series.

While there, I saw Mad Dogs and Englishmen A Grand Tour of the British Empire at its Height 1850-1945 by Ashley Jackson. I flipped through a few pages.

It was a gorgeously illustrated book.

I stopped at a page that had an engraving by an Italian artist Gaetano Zancon (1771-1816) depicting sati (or suttee, which is the colonial spelling).

Charles Napier

Accompanying the engraving was a quote by General Sir Charles Napier, addressing an Indian delegation protesting against British suppression of suttee:

“It’s your custom to burn widows. Very Well. We also have a custom: When men burn women alive, we tie a rope around their necks and hang them. Build your funeral pyre and beside it my carpenter will build a gallows. You may follow your national custom, and we shall follow ours.”

During the last year at Sheridan, I’ve participated in many spirited debates on post-colonialism, Orientalism and the importance of moving away from the discourse of the dominant in history.

In today’s West where multiculturalism is the governing ethos, everyone but the most rabid supporters (Niall Ferguson, perhaps?) would see the British Empire as anything but an embarrassment.

For proof, see the coverage of the 11-day Canada visit of Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, in the media. The Toronto Star's coverage appears inspired by Diana’s ghost.

A Reuters report says many Canadians feel the Royal family is no longer relevant to them.

Churchill & Gandhi

History has moved away from the direction that Winston Churchill wanted it to go.

For instance, in today’s world, not many would share Churchill’s abhorrence for the Mahatma. On the contrary, many would find Churchill's views detestable.

He was appalled to see the Mahatma draped in little more than a loincloth holding talks with the British Viceroy.

Exasperated, he exclaimed: “It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer of the type well-known in the East, now posing as a fakir, striding half-naked up the steps of the Viceregal palace to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor.”

Social reforms

However, at another – perhaps more fundamental – level, the British Raj did manage to force a revolution in India in the 19th century – in the sphere of social reforms in Hinduism.

The British abolished Sati in 1829. This direct intervention into Hindu customs by “outsiders” led to the hastening of the social reform movement among Hindus in the 19th century. Of course, the orthodox elements continued to hold dearly on to their outmoded customs. They continued to oppose interventions in the Hindu customs by the new colonial rulers.

Reading General Charles Napier’s quote in the book reminded me of another one by Sir Andrew Scoble. Sir Scoble introduced the Age of Consent Bill in 1891, which raised the marriageable age for girls from 10 to 12.

Lokmanya Tilak

The orthodox Hindus, led by Lokmanya Tilak, vehemently opposed the Bill. Tilak apparently was not opposed to the content of the bill. He was intolerant of the British and was unwilling to let them abrogate the right to decide.

The controversy flared uncontrollably. However, the Bill was passed. Sir Scoble got all the support he needed from the likes of MG Ranade and Gopal Krishna Gokhale, among many others.

Sir Scoble justified it by declaring, “The balance of argument and authority is in favour of the Bill...even if it were not so, were I a Hindu, I would prefer to be wrong with Professor Bhandarkar, Mr. Justice Telang and Dewan Bahadur Raghunath Rao, than to be right with Pundit Sadadhur Turachuramani (Sasdhar Tarakachudamani) and Mr. Tilak.”

A politically wounded Tilak, isolated in Pune, decided that the best manner in which he could recapture his position was to do something dramatic.

He did. He launched the Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav (the Ganapati festival).

Oh, yes. I bought the book. More about it this month.

Sati illustration from the book

History is opinion?

Discussing history is always interesting because it bring forth varied views from different people.

Some views are well formed and well articulated because they are based on a thorough understanding of the past. Some that are not so well formed.

I realize that it isn’t necessary to be either well-read or well versed in history to have a point of view about the past. In fact, the less one knows of history and the less one has read history, the more interesting one’s views tend to be.

Such ignoramuses can be irritating, but as they say in Hindustani, Aur bhi gham hai zamane mein (There are other sorrows in this world).

In a free society, everyone has their opinions, and they have every right to hold them dear to their hearts and express them freely.

Living in a multicultural society now and being exposed to different people and their cultures, I also realize that they have an equally valid point of view, as valid as mine, perhaps more valid than mine.

When faced with such situations, I adhere to Voltaire’s aphorism on freedom of expression both in spirit and in letter.

He had said, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

(Some disagree that Voltaire actually said this.)

Recently, I had the occasion to re-read some the essays I had written many years ago for an educational website that never used the content.

One of the most important sources that I had come to depend upon when I wrote those pieces was Bipin Chandra’s India’s Struggle for Independence. Subsequently, he also co-authored India After Independence.

In my opinion, India’s Struggle for Independence is one of the better books on the history of a tumultuous era that shaped not just the subcontinent, but postcolonial world.

Bipin Chandra’s approach is not didactic, not prejudicial, and the only message that he wishes to convey through his book is that India’s future will be secular.

I recently read extracts from an essay Empire for Sale by the British academic Niall Ferguson. Ferguson writes to provoke. And he succeeds.

Ferguson has a challenging point of view about the collapse of the British Empire. He contends that this happened because Britain fought with other European countries in the two world wars and not because of the nationalist freedom struggles.

At the height of World War II, Ferguson contends, “Events in India revealed the weakness of the nationalist movement and the resilience of the Raj. The Viceroy announced India’s entry into the war without a word of consultation with the leaders of Congress. 

The ‘Quit India’ Campaign launched in 1942 was snuffed out within six weeks by the simple expedients of arresting Gandhi and the campaign’s other leaders, censoring the press and reinforcing the police with troops. Congress split, with only a small minority egged on by Bose – a would be Indian Mussolini – electing to side with the Japanese.”

This is a statement unsubstantiated with any historical evidence. Even a cursory reading of the India’s freedom struggle would reveal that the ‘Quit India’ campaign was one of the most serious threats posed to the British Empire.

Along with the non-cooperation movement launched by Gandhi in the aftermath of the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre of 1919 and Gandhi’s Salt Satyagrah (Dandi March) of 1930, the Quit India movement ranks as one of the most decisive moments of Indian history.

The reverberations of the Quit India movement were felt everywhere thanks to the involvement of the grassroots workers of the national movement.

“The great significance of this movement,” writes historian Bipin Chandra in India's Struggle for Independence, “was that it placed the demand for independence on the immediate agenda of the national movement. After Quit India, there could be no retreat. Any future negotiations with the British government could only be on the manner of the transfer of power. Independence was no longer a matter of bargain.”

The great Winston Churchill, who was on his way to becoming the toast of the ‘free’ world, was once again checkmated by the wily Mahatma, who launched one of his indefinite hunger fasts. Gandhi’s fast shook the British establishment in India.

Viceroy Linlithgow suggested to Prime Minister Churchill that Gandhi should be released from the prison. Churchill was angry. He wrote to the Viceroy, “...this our hour of triumph everywhere in the world was not the time to crawl before a miserable little old man who had always been our enemy.”

Images:

Empire Book Cover: http://www.tower.com/empire-niall-ferguson-paperback/wapi/100349786