As the issues of racism and privilege raise their head again, British people are re-examining their beliefs and the role that they have played in allowing racism and any form of “privilege” to continue in our world. Yes, our colonial ways have come back to haunt us once again.
As you will see from the title of the piece, I am a white, British citizen, which means that I belong to a nation with a history of colonising vast areas of the world during the time when we were known as the British Empire.
With a natural curiosity for history and culture, I have trotted far and wide around the globe to many places where the British once ruled. We ruled India until the 1960s when Gandhi and his associates led a peaceful revolution that returned India to the Indian people.
I travelled throughout India for six months and visited places of historic and cultural importance. I spent a great deal of time talking to the people about their views on our involvement in their country where English is still the most widely spoken language.
How did we end up ruling such a vast land as India? There was once a time when we traded with India but why trade when you can conquer and rule? Once we took control, India was called “The British East India Company” for the wealth we could steal from the country. Some believe we stole an estimated 45 trillion dollars (today’s valuation) of goods from India during our rule.
One of the many items we stole was tea, a drink the English are known to love. There are many plantations called tea stations high up in mountainous areas of India. I visited a tea plantation called Kelagur Tea Estate in Karnataka back in 2005.
One evening, as we watched the sunset over the tea plantation, we were joined by an elderly Indian gentleman. As soon as he realised that my friend and I were English, he was excited to talk about his experiences under British rule.
You see, he was one of the cooks to a British Raj in the 1920s. The Raj was the equivalent of the governor of each region of India. We enjoyed a wonderful evening of storytelling, as he talked of times gone by. He shared how he was taught to make a British roast dinner with all the trimmings and how the cooks had to adapt Indian food to be covered in a sauce so that the British wouldn’t miss their gravy. The Indian dish known as curry was born.
He shared, with a smile, how Indian people found the British peculiar with their airs and graces, yet he didn’t say a bad word about us.
Me? I felt ashamed to my very bones, even though I enjoyed his stories.
You see, many Indian people shared the positives of British rule, such as the building of the train network that crisscrosses the whole of India. I would always remind them that we built the train network to transport goods around the country and not to benefit the local population. We didn’t rule India to help the Indian people. We ruled India to rob Indian people. We thought ourselves racially and culturally superior, treating Indians as our subjects, while we stole their natural wealth.
This is one example of why I feel deep shame for my country’s history. Suffice to say, I do not believe we deserve the title “Great Britain,” a title that was conceived during what we perceived to be our glory years. Sometimes, I feel Britain’s current downfall on the world stage, as we become a much smaller player, is part of our karma for our deplorable past.
This is why I find myself apologising for my country in almost every land I roam. You may say that I am not responsible for the actions of my ancestors, but I have greatly benefitted from their actions. I am British and white which means I belong to one of the most privileged groups of people in the world. I can’t change this, but I can make sure that I apologise and show humility to those who do not have the same level of privilege because of my country’s actions in the past.
Indeed, I apologise for every western country, if they have meddled in the affairs of any country I visit. I guess my eyes are open to “western privilege,” which I believe has been and continues to be a real problem in the world. French, Spain and the USA, I apologise for them all.
This is why people of privilege must apologise and show humility at every given opportunity to underprivileged people, whether in their own country or the foreign lands that they visit. Privileged people have greatly benefited from the colour of their skin and/or their country of birth and not because of their actions or hard work.
It´s time to move on from our old ways of privilege if we are to live in a world based on fairness and equality.
(c) Samantha Wilson 2020. All Rights Reserved.
