Bisram’s utopia can be another group’s hell

Dec 07, 2008 Letters

Dear Editor,
Vishnu Bisram, in his analysis of whether former British Colonial Territories were better off as independent nations, cites the conclusions of the late Professor William McCord that only Asian nations have shown progress since Independence.

I think if Bisram was to go back further he would find similar conclusions by many “learned” historians and others who opined that some groups were better off as slaves or second class citizens than to be given dominion over their own circumstances.

Bisram draws conclusions based on very shallow and surface examinations of history and the circumstances that shape it, a very strange conditioning from the “countryman” of a Historian who answered most of the questions regarding the state in which much of the post Colonial World found itself, in his work, “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa”.

Bisram seems to be playing the ethnic card with Ms Holder in his remarks, quote, “She seems to have forgotten that the inability to eat roti, channa, potatoes, dhal and other basic foods and to obtain paraphernalia associated with religious practices characterised life under independent rule”.

Isn’t it ironic that in his chastisement of her for not factoring certain negative experiences associated with an era in her analysis, he remains completely oblivious to the fact that Colonial rule is also associated with the negative experience of slavery, the inability to name yourself, to choose your spouse, or to live as a family?

I would put it to him that many of us would have gladly done without material amenities if we could just have what the Colonial era took away from us, but which he and many others still retain.

That is an unbroken link to our history and heritage. Bisram’s analysis proves beyond a shadow of doubt that one man’s utopia can be another’s hell.

The positives and negatives of the Colonial era cannot be measured solely on the basis of the presence or absence of amenities and materiality.

The slaves who worked in the mansions of the slave masters spent most of their time in a clean environment, ate regularly, and were clothed with clean and well laundered garments.

But their offspring were taken away and sold as chattels. Their daughters could be made concubines at the will of the master and the kids of the master had first dibs at the milk of the African mothers.

Bisram launches into a vituperative assault on Holder for her politically incorrect memory lapses, while he completely ignores centuries of worse experiences in his comparative analysis about whether nations were better off under Colonialism than they are now.

For his information, many of us prefer to live free even if our abode is a cave and we have to scrounge for a living, than to be chattels under the ownership of a self proclaimed superior group, even if we were fed regularly and had regular issues of other material amenities.

They say “show me your company and I can tell who you are”. I say share your perspective and we can tell who and what you identify with, and what shapes your thinking.
Robin Williams