Going Beyond the Holocaust
Went to hear a talk on Imperialism and Genocide by Amiya Kumar Bagchi. Baba had coerced me into writing a report on it so I was paying extra attention and taking down notes. I usually have an attention span of a 5 year old but it expands immensely when I have a pen in hand so I thought I'll share some words of wisdom from Prof Bagchi...
Bagchi's talk was a great attack on the neo-imperialist, Euro-centric version of history we have become so used to reading and believing. When we think of genocide what usually comes to our mind are pictures of the Holocaust and not about equally heinous massacres in Vietnam and in Palestine, and the trail of "genocides" Britain left behind in its days of imperialism and the US leaves behind now. These, according to Bagchi, are not “accidental” ommissions from the history we are taught. Genocide is just one aspect of this “history of denials”. The history which denies that famines which killed millions in India and Ireland were just another aspect of the “civilizing mission” of Imperialist powers. The history which denies that the genocide we are witnessing today has roots in the rise of imperial capitalism. The history which conveniently glosses over the role of European and North American imeprialism in current forms of genocide.
Genocide is not a new phenomenon but while earlier it was used to conquer land, in the more recent history, imperialist powers have devised new methods and motives. The methods may be as explicit as armed warfare or as strategic as slowly starving people into submitting whether through famines (as seen in India and Ireland during Bristish colonialism) or by imposing economic sanctions (the contemporary variant we see now ala Bush).
I would have liked to say that the audience listened to all this in rapt attention and understood everything - but then that wd be too optimistic! A surdy boy got up and asked him "why he had chosen to ignore what Russia had done", another chap was "disappointed' that he hadn't touched upon current topics (tho that was the beauty of the talk it was apparently about history but was actually so contemporary) and the last chap said something that no one understood "something about genocides being justified if we have to eliminate the other and form a nationalist group??" Ahh well, at least it made a lot of people think about new forms of genocide - even if not fully understand what AKB's contention was...
Bagchi's talk was a great attack on the neo-imperialist, Euro-centric version of history we have become so used to reading and believing. When we think of genocide what usually comes to our mind are pictures of the Holocaust and not about equally heinous massacres in Vietnam and in Palestine, and the trail of "genocides" Britain left behind in its days of imperialism and the US leaves behind now. These, according to Bagchi, are not “accidental” ommissions from the history we are taught. Genocide is just one aspect of this “history of denials”. The history which denies that famines which killed millions in India and Ireland were just another aspect of the “civilizing mission” of Imperialist powers. The history which denies that the genocide we are witnessing today has roots in the rise of imperial capitalism. The history which conveniently glosses over the role of European and North American imeprialism in current forms of genocide.
Genocide is not a new phenomenon but while earlier it was used to conquer land, in the more recent history, imperialist powers have devised new methods and motives. The methods may be as explicit as armed warfare or as strategic as slowly starving people into submitting whether through famines (as seen in India and Ireland during Bristish colonialism) or by imposing economic sanctions (the contemporary variant we see now ala Bush).
I would have liked to say that the audience listened to all this in rapt attention and understood everything - but then that wd be too optimistic! A surdy boy got up and asked him "why he had chosen to ignore what Russia had done", another chap was "disappointed' that he hadn't touched upon current topics (tho that was the beauty of the talk it was apparently about history but was actually so contemporary) and the last chap said something that no one understood "something about genocides being justified if we have to eliminate the other and form a nationalist group??" Ahh well, at least it made a lot of people think about new forms of genocide - even if not fully understand what AKB's contention was...
posted by Amrita Pande at 4:10 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home