Slaughter in Nigeria
There has been a mass slaughter of a tribe in Nigeria, with hundreds dead. The killers were from a rival tribe, with the two tribes also being separated by religion. As the two groups had both tribal and religious differences, a single, clear motive has yet to emerge. The authorities are suspected of complicity:
Funerals began taking place for victims of the three-hour orgy of violence on Sunday in three Christian villages close to the northern city of Jos, blamed on members of the mainly Muslim Fulani ethnic group. While troops were deployed to the villages to prevent new attacks, security forces detained 95 suspects but faced bitter criticism over how the killers were able to go on the rampage at a time when a curfew was meant to be in force.
Newspapers reported that Muslim residents of the villages in Plateau state had been warned by phone text message, two days prior to the attack, so they could make good their escape before the exit points were sealed off. Survivors said the attackers were able to separate the Fulanis from members of the rival Berom group by chanting “nagge”, the Fulani word for cattle. Those who failed to respond in the same language were hacked to death.
(Hat-Tip: Chairwoman)
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Sickening … absolutely sickening.
“Survivors said the attackers were able to separate the Fulanis from members of the rival Berom group by chanting “naggeâ€, the Fulani word for cattle.”
Fancy that. As Sunny’s friend Mehdi Hassan could have explained to the corpses, the term ‘cattle’ is a harmless one in Islamic discourse, lacking any sinister or dehumanising connotations. Their deaths suggest an Islamophobic hysterical reaction on their part.
Now watch the useful idiots roll up to blame Anyone But Muslims. Perhaps they can even figure out a link to Israel or the US.
Looks to me like this is a lot more to do with dwindling resources and land grab than ‘evil Muslims hack up Christians’:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/03/attacks-might-not-be-about-religion-in-nigeria/37224/
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/03/attacks-might-not-be-about-religion-in-nigeria/37224/
http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/africom-latest-us-bid-recolonize-continent
Or perhaps I am wrong and next week there will be a shocking expose of al Qaeda in the Nigerian Delta (AQND).
Earwicga. You are wrong. Been to Nigeria twice and the hatred to christians from muslims in the north is palpable. Country is split linguistically and by religion, and oil is as well which compolicates matters. For the big boys it all comes down to petro dollars as usual.
The local muslims were not attacked, this is religion at its worst.
These guys need a good dose of colonialism and re-education to get past stone age tribalism. Clearly they have no concept in how to control their own people.
Hacking to death due to being a different religion? From a country that claims to be civilised.
One step down even from nuclear armed Pakistan where a christian recently got 25 years for touching a Koran without washing his hands, and a woman in Saudi got 300 lashes and 18 months in jail for reporting she was being harassed. That will teach her for thinking justice even existed there.
I just love all those fair and reasonable lessons we can learn from wahabi-ism and other muslim sects that cannot accept the views of other, let alone be seen as equals.
A pity, as the muslims I know are great people and I genuinely had no issues when my daughter became good friends with a muslim girl from school. More in common than not. That is the way it should be.
According to this
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1971010,00.html
there was a similar slaughter of Muslims by Christians in January. I couldn’t find out more about this easily – I don’t know whether this means it’s not true or, alternatively, that the media is more interested in violence committed by Muslims. (Though there may be some contexts, or certain bits of the media, in which problems associated with Muslims are underplayed.)
@ rob mcnaughton:
One step down even from nuclear armed Pakistan where a christian recently got 25 years for touching a Koran without washing his hands,
That’s BS. It’s not been reported in any mainstream press anywhere in the world. For a start, that isn’t a crime in Pakistan or anywhere in the world. Washing your hands before touching the Quran is MUSLIM ettiqutte, nothing more. It’s like jailing a person for using a fork with their right hand rather than their left. It’s a BS news story.
Back to the topic. What is the Nigerian government doing about stuff like this? Some of the press reported it as a revenge attack against some murder of Muslims from some other tribe. How long has this tit for tat been going on for?
platinum – I had vaguely heard something about the Koran story – but I was receptive to your assertion that it was BS – however there does seem to be plenty of coverage of the story.
http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Punjab:-Christian-couple-touches-Qur%E2%80%98an-with-dirty-hands,-gets-25-years-in-prison-17778.html
http://www.muslimsdebate.com/search_result.php?newsid=3656
@ platinum # 5 – Of course it is a bovine manure story … it is however the breath of life to some who would sooner rely on emotive goblin tales then reasoned thinking for their prejudice …
It is without a doubt for the Nigerian government to step in and if necessary for the international community to put pressure on the Nigerian government to do so.
Whether this is indeed a tit for tat revenge attack may make addressing the matter somewhat more complex however it needs to end; sooner rather then later. Allowing this type of behaviour to continue unchecked will not lead to an end of the matter but only to an escalation of (mutual)atrocities.
What struck me is that it appears to have been a well planned attack …
It was horrific to see. The scars of this one attack will last for generations. How many are there we don’t even know about? It’s a failure of government and society when such actions take place.
Religion may be the flag they fly but reality is, nobody who ever had everything he wanted does something like this, this is driven by usually by resources and need/demand for them.
Of course to say that your killing to take someone elses belongings is downright wrong, whereas killing the same people in the same manner “for god” is somehow noble.
Funny how Chairwoman didn’t mention the massacre of Muslims BY Christians in the same country just a few months ago. Not that it takes away from the severity of this incident. But to say that only Muslims do this, is typically disgusting crap from the Muslim-haters.
@ Blanco # 11 – I cannot find any reference to anyone claiming that only Muslims do this. It may well be that it has escaped my notice; in which case I would appreciate it if you could point it out to me.
@3: “These guys need a good dose of colonialism and re-education to get past stone age tribalism”
I am in need of re-education here. Which aspects of colonialism do you think were not tribalism?
@3 I shall ignore your earlier paragraphs since you finished with:
“A pity, as the muslims I know are great people and I genuinely had no issues when my daughter became good friends with a muslim girl from school.More in common than not. That is the way it should be.â€
So you must be a good egg.
My best friend is a bigot, so you see, I genuinely have no issues with bigots, just as long as they like the things I do.
Blanco
‘Funny how Chairwoman didn’t mention the massacre of Muslims BY Christians in the same country just a few months ago.’
One answer could be, that there is no ‘beginning’ ( or end ),
because the killings before christmas were preceded of other killings.
Given the fact that, for example, the invasion, annexation and subjugation of India and its inhabitants by British colonialists from the end of the 18th century onwards (and especially throughout the 19th century) was very heavily motivated by fundamentalist Evangelical Christians who regarded themselves as “Crusaders†as per the medieval predecessors, including the events of 1857 which involved large-scale massacres of thousands of innocent Hindu & Muslim civilians as well as ‘mutinying’ Indian soldiers by British troops who regarded themselves as “devout Christians†and were driven by fanatical religious fervour (as a mountain of British historical records from the period confirm), making references to “a good dose of colonialismâ€, “hacking people to death due to being a different religionâ€, and “from a country that claims to be civilised†is an ill-advised course of action to say the least.
Jai, might I add that recent research actually puts the figure of numbers massacred, by the British Raj, in the decade after the mutiny in the millions.
I guess that can be added to the 30 million famine-related deaths in colonial-ruled territories due to administrative mismanagement and/or indifference during the 190 years of the Raj, along with God knows how many more deaths of Indian soldiers and civilians resulting from both direct and proxy wars of aggressive colonial expansion in the subcontinent.
I was reminded of incidents where the colonial forces tied people at the mouth of cannons and fired.
@19 perhaps that is part of the re-education mentioned @3
Not to forget dropping chemical weapons on the Kurds when they became too uppity for Winston Churchill:
‘This would entail *the provision of some kind of asphyxiating bombs calculated to cause disablement of some kind but not death…for use in preliminary operations against turbulent tribes.’
http://www.iraqwar.org/chemical.htm‘
Phosphorus bombs, war rockets, metal crowsfeet [to maim livestock] man-killing shrapnel, liquid fire, delay-action bombs. Many of these weapons were first used in Kurdistan.
Persephone, there is plenty of re-education to be done.
Jai @ 16,
I’d like to know more about these imperialists. I suspect that, back then, most British citizens either didn’t have the vote or it was gerrymandered. I suspect also that most British citizens were exploited in a similar way, by, let us call them capitalists, much as natives or indigenous folk were by imperialists. I doubt it was a bed of roses down t’pit. I seem to recall a tiny clique of ‘landowners’ determining something called the Highland Clearances. I seem to recall a potato famine in Ireland, when it was a part of the UK.
I think there is guilt to be ascribed, but I’d ask you to be more careful about who you ascribe it to. I am fairly certain that my ancestors had nowt to do with colonialism and were, themselves, exploited.
There were also mass executions in Delhi; almost the entire city (with an original population of 150,000) ended up being deserted as its inhabitants fled or were killed. Apart from skeletons scattered throughout the city, there were so many decomposing bodies lining the main street of Chandni Chowk that the colonial troops formally taking over the capital couldn’t progress down the street on foot or on horseback without stumbling on the dead bodies underneath. Two of the deposed Mughal emperor’s surviving sons along with one of his grandsons were hunted down as they tried to escape the city, divested of their valuables, stripped naked and then summmarily executed by being shot at point-blank range.
Bear in mind also that, since the East India Company (who’d been plotting to overthrough the Mughal court and terminate the royal dynasty for a long time and had been systematically stripping its authority for decades) were technically the Mughal court’s vassals and there had never been any formal bilateral discussions to renegotiate/modify this arrangement, from a legal standpoint the EIC were actually guilty of treason. In that sense, the real mutineers were actually the colonial forces.
In the surrounding regions, entire villages were wiped out purely because its inhabitants were suspected of sympathising with or assisting the “mutineers”, without any actual evidence. There are actually colonial records of soldiers manically singing Psalms whilst bayonetting their targets, along with officers explicitly describing it as a “war of extermination” and others so deranged with rage and religious fanaticism that they stated outright that they didn’t even regard the targets as being human.
There were even arguments from senior officials to completely level Delhi and wipe it off the map, and the city was only saved due to the proactive intervention of the Governor of Punjab. The retribution was so horrific, widespread and out of control that some of the saner British officers & administrative officials started desperately trying to get their colleagues to reign in the ongoing atrocities.
Again, all confirmed in British military and administrative records from the time. And this has been written about and heavily condemned by historians as diverse as Niall Ferguson and William Dalrymple. Notable people like Mirza Ghalib were witnesses to these events too.
As Persephone has correctly stated, perhaps some ‘re-education’ needs to be done in more than one direction.
Douglas,
Initial reading material I’d recommend would be “Empire” by Niall Ferguson and both “White Mughals” and “The Last Mughal” by William Dalrymple. The latter deals specifically with the ‘Mutiny’ of 1857.
Incidentally, my remarks above were in relation to the issue of religious fundamentalism and colonialism, specifically the fact that the former was one of the major drivers in the latter in India from the end of the 18th century onwards. A few decades later, spurious pseudo-scientific racial theories also came into play and (along with the religious angle) were used to justify the Raj, although that’s a different – albeit overlapping – issue to the religious motivation.
Jai,
Want to answer my question?
I have no difficulty in accepting the fact that there was exploitation of India by a clique based in the UK. Are you willing to accept that they did it for their own ends and not for a greater – think UK – good?
It is that point I want you to address. It is fine to point to colonialism as an evil, it is equally valid to point out that most folk in the UK were being exploited too. They never benefited in a meaningful way from ‘The Empire’. They were exploited in a similar manner by a similar group. Who, most certainly enriched themselves. At the expense of anyone, anywhere. Whether in India or Newcastle.
At least, that is what I think.
—————————-
I have been meaning to buy ‘The Last Mughal’ for quite a time. Perhaps your nudge will be enough.
One final point in relation to my post #24:
The post-1857 British commission formally appointed to investigate the conflict found that the alleged “mass rapes of British women” by Indians in Delhi which had particularly driven colonial forces to levels of psychotic rage had never actually occurred. The latter’s revenge-fuelled atrocities in response had been motivated by what turned out to be completely false and baseless rumours.
A detailed and comprehensive answer to your question can be found in all 3 of those books I mentioned, Douglas. Messrs Ferguson and Dalrymple explain the matter better than I could.
violent lot aren’t they all>
all need to learn lot more about co-existing otherwise it will only gets worse as the world crisis hets up.
jai and douglas clark:
it is pretty clear that elite indians (maharajahs, nizams and the like) who were ruling anyway benefited and allowed the elite british clique to administer and extract. the masses of the both countries were both exploited in different ways by their respective elites who very much worked together and partied together and had their portraits painted together, and had their kids educated at the same toff-y sort of places. they got different things out of the deal perhaps, but personally if you ask me, i bet those maharajah bods were well pleased they had a bunch of english fellows to administer their unruly populations and go and take a census and all those other things.
the key problem for the indians is that they kicked the ‘foreign’ rulers out and yes we ‘self-govern’ but how fair is this governance anyway in terms of implementing any real change for the masses. Point is there is little social change in India and this is complicated by the ideology and beliefs people hold.
so who we want to blame that on, i’m not sure. Plus we are all india shining now, and so many of the richest people in Blighty now are desi and there’s been all that reverse colonisation so..
Well Douglas it is difficult to say who they thought they were doing it for. there is no reason to think they were not benefiting but I am sure a lot of them would have believed that Empire was good for their national and patriotic interest. And patriotism was very a la mode then and not the thing it is today.
Whether the ruling elite were right or not is another matter, but hey that applies anywhere anytime.
Tony blair would say he went to war with iraq for the nation’s benefit, and he probably believes he was right.
Plus a lot of them would have believed they were helping the Indians too, and not just the Indians, the whole world. a lot of meta-theories about at that time, remember. Enlightened man and all that sort of business.
some of the indians loved it, didn’t they. the rest of them (indians) had been taught to do what their masters and betters told them to do and think not too hard, so what were they going to care? even looking at these remnant boarding schools nowadays…some of the silly traditions they do maintain. you wouldn’t think they thought colonialism was some kind of oppressive force. more like we want to be like them..and then rule our lot.
Douglas, if I could answer your question. The ordinary people of blighty were neither complicit nor benefitted greatly. One was a source of raw material and the other labour, in general.
The masses were fed whatever line that was needed to keep them in check and ‘supportive’. Not too different to how it works today.
I happen to have a few extracts from “White Mughals” on my laptop, so I’ll post them here. People can read them and draw their own conclusions, since the contents overlap with some of the areas being discussed and a couple of the questions which are being asked. These extracts are from pages 46 to 54:
“Most powerful of the critics was one of the Company’s Directors, Charles Grant. Grant was amongst the first of a new breed of Evangelical Christians, and he brought his fundamentalist religious opinions directly to the East India Company boardroom. Writing ‘it is hardly possible to conceive any people more completely enchained than they [the Hindus] are by their superstitions’, he proposed in 1787 to launch missions to convert a people whom he characterised as ‘universally and wholly corrupt…..depraved as they are blind, and wretched as they are depraved’. Within a few decades the missionaries – initially based at the Danish settlement of Serampore – were beginning fundamentally to change British perceptions of the Hindus. No longer were they inheritors of a body of sublime and ancient wisdom,…..but instead merely ‘poor benighted heathen’, or even ‘licentious pagans’, some of whom, it was hoped, were eagerly awaiting conversion, and with it the path to Civilisation.
…..It was to combat the intolerance of these Evangelicals that [the more enlightened British General] Stuart anonymously published a pamphlet called A Vindication of the Hindoos. In this text he tried to discourage any attempt by European missionaries to convert the Hindus, arguing that, as he put it, ‘on the enlarged principles of moral reasoning, Hinduism little needs the meliorating hand of Christianity to render its votaries a sufficiently correct and moral people for all the useful purposes of a civilised society’…The reaction that Stuart generated by writing his defence of Hinduism is a measure of how attitudes were beginning to change at the close of the eighteenth and the opening years of the nineteenth century. A full-scale pamphlet war broke out, with furious attacks on the anonymous ‘Bengal Officer’ who produced the work, denouncing him as an ‘infidel’ and a ‘pagan’.
…..[General] Stuart was not alone in facing criticism. All over India, as the eighteenth century gave way to the nineteenth, attitudes were changing among the British. Men who showed too great an enthusiasm for Hinduism, for Indian practices or even for their Indian wives and Anglo-Indian children, were finding that the climate was growing distinctly chilly.
David Hare, a Scottish watchmaker who founded the Hindu College in Calcutta, was actually denied a Christian burial when he died of cholera, on the grounds that he had become more Hindu than Christian. Many more found that their Indian ways led to a block on their promotion. When Francis Gillanders, a British tax-collector stationed in Bihar, was found to be involving himself too closely with the [Buddhist] temple at Bodh Gaya, to which he donated a bell in 1798, the Directors of the Company back in London wrote to the Governor General expressing their horror that a Christian should be, as they put it, administering ‘heathen’ rites. A little later Frederick Shore found that his adoption of native dress so enraged the increasingly self-righteous officials of Calcutta that a government order was issued explicitly forbidding Company servants from wearing anything other than European dress. The following year the army issued similar orders forbidding European officers from taking part in the [Hindu] festival of Holi…The shutters were beginning to come down.â€
(continued)
“Ideas of racial and ethnic hierarchy were also beginning to be aired for the first time in the late 1780s, and it was the burgeoning mixed-blood Anglo-Indian community which felt the brunt of the new intolerance. From 1786, under the new Governor General, Lord Cornwallis, a whole raft of legislation was brought in excluding the children of British men who had Indian wives from employment by the Company. Cornwallis arrived in India fresh from his defeat by George Washington at Yorktown. He was determined to ensure that a settled colonial class never emerged in India to undermine British rule as it had done, to his own humiliation, in America.
With this in mind, in 1786 an order was passed banning the Anglo-Indian orphans of British soldiers from travelling to England to be educated, so qualifying for service in the Company army. In 1791 the door was slammed shut when an order was issued that no-one with an Indian parent could be employed by the civil, military or marine branches of the Company. In 1795, further legislation was issued, explicitly disqualifying anyone not descended from European parents on both sides from serving in the Company’s armies except as ‘pipers, drummers, bandsmen and farriers’, Yet, like their British fathers, the Anglo-Indians were also banned from owning land. Thus excluded from all the most obvious sources of lucrative employment, the Anglo-Indians quickly found themselves at the beginning of a long slide down the social scale. This would continue until, a century later, they had been reduced to a community of minor clerks and train drivers.
…..It was not just the Anglo-Indians who suffered from the new and quickly-growing prejudices in Calcutta. Under Cornwallis, all non-Europeans began to be treated with disdain by the increasingly arrogant officials at the Company headquarters of Fort William…These new racial attitudes affected all aspects of relations between the British and Indians. The Bengal Wills show it was at this time that the number of Indian bibis [wives or consorts] being mentioned in wills and inventories began to decline: from turning up in one in three wills in 1780 and 1785, the practice went into steep decline. Between 1805 and 1810, bibis appear in only one in every four wills; by 1830 it is one in six; by the middle of the century they have all but disappeared. The second edition of Thomas Williamson’s East India Vade Mecum, published in 1825, had all references to bibis completely removed from it, while biographies and memoirs of prominent eighteenth-century British Indian worthies which mentioned their Indian wives were re-edited in the early nineteenth century so that their consorts were removed from later editions;
…..Twords were growing apart…..If that gap widened into an abyss during the first years of the nineteenth century, it was largely due to the influence of one man…..On 8 November 1797, Lord Wellesley [elder brother of Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington], a minor Irish aristocrat, set out from England to take up his appointment as Governor General of Bengal and head of the Supreme Government of India. For nearly three hundred years Europeans coming out to the subcontinent had been assimilating themselves to India in a kaleidoscope of different ways. That process was now drawing to a close. Increasingly Europeans were feeling they had nothing to learn from India, and they had less and less inclination to discover anything to the contrary. India was perceived as a suitable venue for ruthless and profitable European expansion, where glory and fortunes could be acquired to the benefit of all concerned. It was a place to be changed and conquered, not a place to be changed or conquered by.
This new Imperial approach was one that Lord Wellesley was determined not only to make his own, but to embody. His Imperial policies would effectively bring into being the main superstructure of the Raj as it survived up to 1947; he also brought with him the arrogant and disdainful British racial attitudes that buttressed and sustained it.â€
As mentioned earlier, readers interested in learning more are advised to buy the 3 books I recommended.
i’ve got the white mughals to give out to anyone if they’re interested.
we should have another book swap meet
Fascinating and Educational.
I had Niall Ferguson down as the master rehabilitator of empire. Did I miss something?
Or does he then go on to say despite all of the above, we were great imperialists? A bit like Rab Macnaughton at #3.
Och Jai @ 27 & 28,
OK, I’ll read the books. I am not particularily scared of being proven wrong. Though a few cites, rather than book references would have been good.
—————————
Sonia @ 30,
I think the exploitative bastards were doing it for themselves. Which is, I’ll stand corrected, what you are saying at 29? I’ll get onto 30 later…
It seems to me that you at least recognise the exploitation of Indians, I am not sure that you recognise the expoitation of British folk? I may be wrong about that, but it is not an obvious wrong.
You talk about Indian society as though it hasn’t changed.
You talk about British society as if it has remained static. It has not.
I am sure that you are right at 30. But that was just apologia for exploitation, was it not? That is what the upper classes did. I have a real difficulty in seeing myself as any sort of beneficiary of their schemes. But their you go, I am an inadvertent winner, though I’d prefer, and think, I am not.
It is not particularily difficult to see who they were doing it for.
They were doing it for themselves…
Refresh
“The masses were fed whatever line that was needed to keep them in check and ’supportive’. Not too different to how it works today.”
Ain’t that the truth!
Woops, lots of posts.
Jai. Do you think I subscribe to any of 33 or 34?
I think these people are, what, essentially wrong, bigots, idiots or summat?
I’d consider anyone with religious beliefs to be daft. I think killing folk, just because, is wrong beyond belief.
But, apart from giving me references, which I shall follow up, you have not, and I repeat not explained the difference between local and foreign exploitation.
I doubt you can. It is clear and obvious that the working class English, Welsh and Scots were exploited by the same upper class arseholes that Indians were…
Refresh,
It’s a common misconception. In the introduction to “Empire”, Niall states clearly that the more research he conducted on the subject, the more he realised how false his previously “rose-tinted” notions of the British Empire had actually been.
Also, at the end of the chapter dealing with 1857, Niall has written one of the most straight-talking, lengthy and forceful condemnations of the barbarising effect of aggressive imperial arrogance that I’ve ever read. He is similarly scathing about the condescending colonial attitudes towards Indians that were still in place during the early 20th century prior to Independence.
Douglas,
Of course not. More below.
******************************************
One final word on the topic (from me, anyway)…..
Following on from that, during the height of the Raj, there were systematic top-down programmes & policies targetting the British population’s attitudes towards the Indian subcontinent, its inhabitants, cultures, religions and history (some of this was mentioned in the extracts above) in order to justify colonial rule in India, the overthrow of the previous “paramount powersâ€, and keep the ordinary British population “supportiveâ€.
In a nutshell, for more than 150 years, the ordinary British population ended up being victims of cultural, religious and racial negative propaganda about Indians. Most of the modern-day ignorance, prejudice and condescension in various quarters towards Asians and anything related to the subcontinent is a direct relic & consequence of that era and the associated social re-engineering activities. Both as individuals and in terms of this country’s social culture, British people in general (both in the UK and expats in the subcontinent) had previously had a very, very different attitude indeed to “all things Indianâ€.
But, as I said, you’d need to read those books I recommended in order to learn more. They’re backed up with hundreds of fully-authenticated British and European primary & secondary records from military, administrative, commercial and trading sources, in Dalrymple’s case in particular going back to the very beginning of Mughal-era European contact with India.
Blanco @ 11 – I was sent an email about this massacre with truly horrific photographs by a Bajan friend. Her friend in Nigeria had sent them to her hoping to get this tragedy talked about.
Their take on it was that it was being ignored by the MSM because it only involved Black people and was therefore considered to be of no account.
My take on it is simply that people of all ethnicities and creeds treat each other appallingly at the drop of a hat, and that it’s time every similar incident is dragged kicking and screaming into the light and roundly condemned by all.
Interesting that you appear to attribute some sinister motive to my mentioning it.
The last time I saw such distressing photographs was in 1971 from Bangladesh. I was on my honeymoon at the time, and the late Chairman and I were so upset by them that we cut our honeymoon short and went home.
It seemed obscene to be on holiday whilst old men crawled on the ground in their own blood.
Perhaps if we all saw these things more often, people would stop doing them!
I was aware of the divisions in the Nigerian government following the illness of the President and the instability it has caused.
After doing some more reading it’s obvious that the situation is caused by corruption and poverty and the effects of land grab by non Nigerian corporations. USIP have said:
While the police have said the number killed is closer to 100, with the truth probably being somewhere in the middle. This is not an isolated incident or a purely religiously motivated hate crime:
The reporting of this latest massacre is worthy of note in a region where Islamic extremism is now under public focus following Uman Farouk Abdulmutallab’s attempted terrorist attack in America. An example is this, amongst many is a conference titled – ‘Is Nigeria a Hotbed of Islamic Extremism?, Public Workshop on Islamic Extremism in Nigeria’.
Correction to my post #41, and then I’m signing off from the tangential historical discussion.
Should say:
“They’re backed up with hundreds of fully-authenticated British and mainland European primary & secondary historical records from military, administrative, commercial and civilian sources,”
Jai – I find your comments about colonialism particuarly pertinent and wouldn’t characterise them as a ‘tangential historical discussion’.
Chairwoman – I have recently read about the genocide in Bangladesh 1971 following the mention of mass rape by Susan Brownmiller in Against Our Will and can understand how it would have affected your honeymoon.
More context from Baroness Cox:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/letters/article7057039.ece
Just looking at the point about local and foreign exploitation:
Local exploitation by a privileged strata of society has long been present, after all colonialism was the foreign outreach of local feudalism by the aristocracy. But it was not solely the aristocracy. The Tudors brought the great lords under control and allowed a merchant class to grow. Even Henry VIII’s break with Rome was about wealth, not religion: he and his supporters wanted to get their hands on the Church’s enormous wealth.
By the 17th Century, the growing middle-class was chafing under monarchical and aristocratic rule and civil disturbance ensued. The triumph of Parliament was a victory for the middle classes which took support from the farmers and workers and then turned around and betrayed them.
The 18th Century saw the renewed dominance of the landed aristocracy but by the 19th Century the growth of industry produced hugely powerful industrialists and a large middle class who mercilessly exploited the working classes.
Although the workers reacted by organizing themselves and might have seized power in a revolution, they were bought off by increased wages and benefits, largely financed by Britain’s ruthless exploitation of its Empire.
Going right back to the 6/7/8 exchange – I think, looking into this a bit more, Platinum and Miriam are right about the Christians getting 25 years for touching the Koran story being a fabrication. Everything seems to lead back to the very first link I put in my post and there is no hard evidence(?) although the circumstantial detail does look quite convincing, superficially. I thought it was interesting (and of course predictable) the way the story was taken up by so many other websites and is now being repeated by people whose politics I might not agree with but who I hope would want to stop waving the story around if it’s not true.
@46 I read the same letter as I was scanning through the comments and I think it is worth laying out – it helps debunk the usual myths being bandied about.
It seems Chairwomen (that dreadful Islamophobe!) did not draw attention to the preceding Christian-Muslim massacres as… um, there were none.
“Having visited northern Nigeria and Plateau state many times in recent years, I fully endorse the urgent need for measures to curb violence, which could increase and has the potential to destabilise Nigeria.
However, your leading article reflects an inaccurate misrepresentation of the history of violence in referring to “a Christian-on-Muslim attack in Januaryâ€. There are always claims and counter-claims, but on that occasion, reports clearly indicated that the killings began when Muslim youths attacked Christians on a Sunday morning, on their way to church. Muslims were also killed as those under attack began to fight back.
In the violent attacks, not only in Plateau state, but also in neighbouring Bauchi and other northern states, a consistent pattern has emerged: they are initiated by well-armed Muslim extremists, chanting militant slogans, attacking and killing Christian and other non-Muslim citizens and destroying homes and places of worship.
In the early stages of the attack, the Muslim militants take corpses to mosques, where they are photographed and released to the media, creating the impression that these are Muslim victims. The security forces have reportedly been too slow to intervene to stop the massacres. Subsequent retaliation has led to the deaths of Muslims, some of whom also died when security forces eventually intervened.
During our last visit, I met Muslim and Christian leaders who are committed to trying to promote peace but their endeavours will not be helped by misunderstanding the reality of the situation. All the evidence on the ground indicates that these acts of violence are not primarily political or tribal. They are instigated by militant Islamist extremists…”
So perhaps Blanco @11 would like to offer Chairwoman an apology?
@16… Oooh, I think the “colonialism cures all” argument is bollocks of course, although it is amazing how quickly a discussion can deteriorate in to a “what have the Romans ever done for us?” type discussion.
They were presmuably no better or worse than the Mughals, who were not averse to a spot of mass murder themselves and were kicked out by those wretched Brits who at least didn’t stay long, unified the country (alright, against them) and developed a middle class (alright, for their own purposes) who were able to use the traditions and systems left behind (law, democracy, language) to build modern India.
Of course the Aryans who preceded the Mughals were the worst of all – enslaving the indigenous population and reducing them to the state of untouchables (the caste system a fantastic form of societal control).
It’s so easy to blame imperialism (although I grant you that this wasn’t the point of the thread). The most hilarious current example is the Falklands.
1600′s – empty rocks claimed by British seafarers.
1800′s – Spanish settlers sweep through South America committing genocide on the native population to a degree Hitler would envy.
1822 – a bunch of Spanish pirates claim the rocks for themselves (even though the land opposite the islands is still occupied by natives they have not yet exterminated)
1822 (or something) Brits kick them off. Hurrah!
2010 President Kirschner (doesn’t even sound Spanish to me) claims islands for “indigenous” population, and their cousins in the north (who also of course grabbed their own land through genocide) gang up against the “imperialists”.
Funny thing, history.
earwicga @ 46
What context is Baroness Cox adding – she is “correcting” the Times’ article that stated that the January attack was instigated by Christians ?
She is adding the “context” that it is Muslims (she adds a few weasel words about them being extremists / militants) who start these attacks. Of course, this is the Baroness Cox who invited Wilders over to show his film.
Though I personally would not chose to go and see ‘Fitna’, dislike … no, let me rephrase … detest all that Geert Wilders stands for I fail to see what bearing Baroness Cox’ invitation to the creep has on her standing on this subject.
another evidence of muslim’s nature given by muslims themselves (they don’t even try to hide) – the evidence that will never be noticed by tolerancy defenders…
the more crimes muslims commit – the louder they and the lefties scream about “islamphobia” and “mass media propaganda”
||||Funny how Chairwoman didn’t mention the massacre of Muslims BY Christians in the same country just a few months ago. Not that it takes away from the severity of this incident. But to say that only Muslims do this, is typically disgusting crap from the Muslim-haters.||||
because it could never be compared, muslims always lead in cruelty.
by the way, about mentioning the context – do muslims often mention about Damur, then they scream about Sabta and Shatila? typically for disgusting muslim defenders
“Presumably” isn’t the right approach to take. It’s better to conduct thorough research on the subject and then draw conclusions once you’ve read all the facts, rather than basing opinions on assumptions. Those 3 books I mentioned earlier would be a good start.
British colonial rule in India lasted 190 years. And the Mughals weren’t “foreigners” from a fairly early stage of their reign, either “ethnically” or culturally, due to the extensive amount of intermarriage with members of Hindu Rajput royalty and the fact that Mughal culture itself became a hybrid of Indian culture and modified Persian culture; and during most of the “Great Mughal†era, from Emperor Akbar until the time of Shah Jahan, and eventually promoted again by later successors like the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar, non-Muslims were integrated into the highest levels of the imperial administration, coupled with explicitly pluralistic and tolerant policies.
A similar level of cultural assimilation, integration and syncretism was occurring amongst the British in the EIC prior to the end of the 18th century, which was one of the reasons that a range of deliberately divisive colonial policies began systematically being implemented — because the people at the top didn’t want a recurrence of what had recently happened in America, and because of the massive influence of fundamentalist Christian Evangelism (and later various dubious racial “theories”). It didn’t just affect Indians – the destructive impact on more enlightened British people along with the children & descendents of Brits who had married Indians has also been discussed to some extent in the extracts from “White Mughals†in my posts #33 and #34.
There had already been a middle class in India, and it had existed for thousands of years. Along with China, in GDP terms India had continuously been one of the top-two wealthiest regions in the world for at least 2000 years, and its GDP actually increased during the “Great Mughal” era. However, by the end of 190 years of British colonial rule, it had been reduced to one of the poorest regions in the planet for the first time in its history, and has only recently begun to recover.
(continued)
1. The Aryans didn’t immediately precede the Mughals. The Delhi Sultanate did, and prior to that there had continuously been waves of migration by various groups into the subcontinent for thousands of years. There were also numerous other empires in the region, most of which were local, some of which stretched into regions outside the subcontinent, and in the case of Persia originated outside the subcontinent and covered some parts of the northwest.
2. “Aryans” make up a minority of India’s population (mostly, although not exclusively, in various parts of the north). The majority of Indians all over the subcontinent are either a mixture of Aryans, the original indigenous population and various other groups which migrated to India over the millennia, or some combination of two of the above. It will vary from family to family and region to region, but mostly this includes members of the “higher†castes. Also, most Indians are not “untouchables”, and never have been.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that, throughout the 19th century onwards, British colonial authorities (backed by the Evangelist clergy) were involved in deliberately distorting pre-colonial Indian history and demonising the Mughals and the associated Indian Muslim elite in particular, because they were aiming (successfully, as it eventually turned out) to replace the latter as India’s paramount powers and therefore needed to justify & legitimise their own rule and the associated actions they undertook.
Even more so because of the fact that, when Brits stationed in India dived into local society and cultures (which most of them did, prior to the end of the 18th century), it was Mughal culture which they embraced most of all, especially the most capable & successful members of the EIC. In many cases people would end up cutting their ties with the EIC completely and seek employment with various local rulers instead, a level of continuous employee attrition which the EIC had previously accepted because they knew that they couldn’t match the Indian elite in terms of salaries or lifestyle (along with higher standards of living, the latter was also more tolerant and pluralistic than its European counterparts at the time). So, again, from the end of the 18th century onwards, heavily backed by the rise of Evangelical Christian religious fundamentalism in Britain, a massive amount of historical, religious, racial, and cultural distortion & revisionist propaganda about India and Indians was implemented by the EIC and its post-1857 administrative successors in order to put a stop to this. We’re all still having to live with the legacy of those actions today.
All very deliberate, very calculating, and very cynical.
But as I’ve said previously, you’d need to read those 3 books by a couple of Britain’s most acclaimed historians in order to get the full picture. It’s the best way to begin to undo the destructive legacy of the Victorian propaganda campaign I mentioned in #41 and which has been confirmed by your own assertions.
British colonisation in India was not benign: the rationale was that Indians were a lesser race that required taking care of. The ‘aryan invasion’ theory (where aryans came from Europe) served to justify that all Indian advances (mathematics, science, etc) originated from a higher race.
The biggest impact of British colonisation is this: just before the British Raj, India’s GDP was identical to Europe (excluding Russia). After the British Raj, do I need to tell you?
Ok, I will tell you Boyo. From this page:
“An estimate by Cambridge University historian Angus Maddison reveals that “India’s share of the world income fell from 22.6% in 1700, comparable to Europe’s share of 23.3%, to a low of 3.8% in 1952″.[43]”
I think these dark-skinned people from India were doing pretty well before the British arrived.
Miriam @53
“I fail to see what bearing Baroness Cox’ invitation to the creep has on her standing on this subject.”
Well, she’s apportioning blame for the awful conflict to one side and, IMO, she’s not doing so as an impartial observer.
‘After the British Raj, do I need to tell you?’
You may have to.
Jai, are there any financial statistics available which gives the numbers? How many ’000s of billions was extracted from the Indian economy?
Looks like Ravi has some of the numbers. Anyone got a calculator to convert to pounds shillings and pence?
@ Wibble # 60 – Really? Not when reading the whole article it doesn’t. Seems to me as if she is trying to get all parties to address the issue of violence.
Addressing and correcting the facts of the latest incident does not of necessity mean apportioning blame for the entire awful conflict to one side; or another for that matter.
Refresh,
Further to Ravi’s comment #59, I’d previously provided the percentage figures on another related discussion thread here: http://www.pickledpolitics.com/archives/7469#comment-193454
Thanks for the figures Jai. The amazing thing is that this figure was only 300 years ago.
There are some further ramifications. The advances and innovations of the Industrial Revolution certainly played a major role in increasing Britain’s GDP and the overall standard of living in this country – the problem is the fact that this was heavily financed by the wealth generated from the exploitation of overseas colonies (especially India) and, until the start of the 19th century, the massive proceeds of the transatlantic slave trade that Britain had been heavily involved in for centuries. The latter resulted in the enrichment of the banking sector in the City of London along with cities like Bristol and Liverpool in particular. Along with various protectionist trade policies imposed on India, there are certain reasons that India was impoverished for the first time in its millennia-old history and that simultaneously Britain finally became a First World country (for the first time since the Roman era), and many of them are not necessarily benign.
This certainly doesn’t mean that there should be any animosity whatsoever towards modern-day white British people or indeed any lack of patriotism towards Britain in 2010, but it does mean that people should have a clear and accurate understanding of history and especially the ongoing impact on attitudes towards the Indian subcontinent and people in/from that part of the world, irrespective of the aforementioned Victorian propaganda & brainwashing efforts.
It’s also worth considering that the extent of railway facilities and electricity production in Indian territories under colonial control wasn’t even close to that of the United States during the same period, despite the similarly large landmass, the US’s comparatively smaller population, and the fact that the colonial administration actually had the resources of a global empire at their command. So much for the propaganda about the Raj being “for the betterment of the Indiansâ€.
It gets worse. During the course of 190 years, there were approximately 30 million famine-related deaths of Indians in colonial-ruled territories as a result of colonial mismanagement and/or indifference. The number of major famines in India post-Independence in 1947 ? Zero.
As I keep saying, perhaps there’s a lot of “re-education†that needs to be done, in more than one direction. And ultimately, as Ravi and I have both indicated, the economic figures speak for themselves. So do the systematic religious and racial policies implemented during that era, along with the words of the individuals & groups directly involved in promoting those attitudes. Numerous examples of the latter have already been provided on this thread, and (again) readers interested in reading more accounts of the perpetrators (including first-person records) are advised to read the 3 books recommended.
Ie. from 1947 until the present day (not just in the year 1947).
Economic figures from history must always be taken with a pinch of salt. Firstly, they are very difficult to estimate. Secondly, the relative change in GDP is more of a reflection of the rise of Western European countries as a result of the industrial revolution (a good comparison today would be how China’s economic growth has reduced Europe’s share of world GDP).
British colonialism was in no way benign. Was it worse than earlier forms of colonialism in India? It is impossible to say based on a statisitical argument. What did change, as others have pointed out, was that the British remained, after a certain point, self-consciously aloof.
I’m going to make a few further points here and then I really am signing-off from this thread, as it appears to be coming to a close and I think everyone involved has said all that can be constructively said on the topic.
Be that as it may, the destruction of local arts, industries, long-standing trade networks and political institutions and the devastating effect on previously-affluent Indian provinces & their inhabitants is a matter of documented historical fact (confirmed by British historians), starting with the impact of the actions of Robert Clive and the EIC in 1757 and continuing throughout the Raj.
In the case of Britain, the Industrial Revolution did not occur in isolation; it was heavily financed by the matters described in my post #67. The enrichment of Britain was the priority for those involved in the Raj and its counterparts elsewhere in the world, not the development (beyond a limited point) or enrichment of India itself.
Notwithstanding the fact that smaller European colonies already existed in India prior to the rise of British power in the region, it’s worth emphasising that “colonialism†and “imperialism†do not necessarily mean the same thing, although there’s obviously an overlap. Considering that the primary aim was the exploitation and looting of Indian wealth for the benefit of Britain (or at least – pre-1857 – for the enrichment of the EIC and its shareholders, and post-1857 for Britain as a whole), there is an argument to be made for the fact that it was a more large-scale, systematic and organised version of the raid & pillage expeditions into India which had been conducted by a couple of groups originating outside the northwest of the subcontinent during various periods in the 700 years prior to the Battle of Plassey. Some of the latter, like the EIC (and its post–1857 colonial successors) from the end of the 18th century onwards, did of course also claim an explicitly religious justification for their activities.
Kulvinder made a superb point about this subject on PP earlier this year, so I’m going to paraphrase him and expand on that:
Territorial expansion into one’s immediate vicinity and/or the neighbouring regions via military conquest is one thing; it’s been par for the course in human civilisation worldwide for thousands of years. India has been no exception, whether it’s involved local powers such as the Mauryans during the classical period or the Rajputs in northern India immediately prior to the Delhi Sultanate, or groups with origins outside India but relatively close to it, such as the Delhi Sultans or indeed the Mughals themselves.
However, what is a different matter is sailing thousands of miles to the other side of the world, completely bypassing the regions in one’s proximity, turning (relatively) peaceful trading operations into a vehicle for conquest via the utilisation of an armed military wing, recruiting soldiers from the region one is targeting to fight & kill other people from the same region, deliberately implementing concepts of “divide & rule†on both military and civilian populations as an explicit matter of policy, using the target’s wealth to enrich one’s home territory thousands of miles away whilst giving relatively little priority to the development of the region one is subjugating, and claiming moral justification and intrinsic superiority not only via religious fanaticism but the creation of completely fabricated pseudo-scientific racial theories which resulted in deliberately-engineered racial apartheid. This takes it to a whole other level, especially the last point, because the consequences have lasted into the present day and are still ongoing.
The remarks made by another commenter about “What did the Romans ever do for us ?†aren’t an appropriate analogy, unless white British people in 2010 are claiming that it is relatively common for modern-day Italians to treat them as though they are still “conquered natives†and a literally separate and inferior subspecies of human, from a country and a culture with absolutely nothing positive to offer at all.
Anyway, as I said in one of my earlier posts, this doesn’t mean there should be any animosity from Asians towards modern-day white British people or the UK in 2010. However, it is definitely important for people to understand the historical origins of the bigotry, ignorance and condescension which Asians can still be subjected to (including some of the more extreme forms of neurotic and even psychopathic behaviour which can occur), especially the fact that this is specifically a legacy of a very long and very wide-ranging 19th century propaganda & social-reengineering programme driven by explicitly religious fundamentalism, fabricated racial theories and self-justifying needs to legitimise colonial subjugation & expansion. Again, it must be emphasised that this didn’t just affect Indians – it also had an extremely destructive effect on British people who had more enlightened attitudes (previously the majority), especially those who actually spoke up against what was happening.
Most of all, it’s imperative for people to grasp the fact that, prior to the initiation of these corrupt activities from the end of the 18th century onwards, traditional British attitudes towards the subcontinent and people in/from that part of the world for centuries previously had historically been far more enlightened, broadminded and respectful in mainstream British culture, and that, far from allegedly being “politically-correct†or “multi-cultistsâ€, in many aspects those modern-day people derided as “British liberals†are in fact being far more “traditionally British†in their attitudes towards Asians than the racists, either those with a subtly condescending stance towards Asians or the more overtly-bigoted far-Right.
Time to amicably draw a line under this discussion, Mr Rumbold.