various rambling thoughts: India sold for 500,000…

I remember a childhood story that i remember affected me profoundly. The story was of the Koh-i-noor diamond and how we lost it to the Britishers. The Brits were the ‘bad guys’ who looted the best things that this country had to offer and how they obscenely display the Koh-i-noor, something that they stole from us.

It was a story told with much pain, a pain which I could articulate later as born out of impotent helplessness. At that time, I could just sense the injustice of it all. I could sense the wound. The pride of India, stolen and displayed openly by the thief. If only we were powerful and could force the Brits give it up, how wonderful that would be, i used to fantasize. I used to fantasize, Hollywood style (or rather Mossad style) of a crack team of commandoes who would steal back the diamond.

I guess i retained a bit of that boyhood fantasy till very late. If some part of it still lived somewhere inside, the following news pretty much would have killed it off…

Tipu Sultan’s sword sold off

The implicit belief of my boyhood fantasy was that no Indian, if given a chance would let a part of his history and legacy be sold off like a cheap trinket. By Indian, I mean us as a collective. The government of the people, as a custodian of the country’s pride…

In spite of having ‘grown up’ i.e. resigned myself to the ‘practical world’ of adulthood, a part of me that never let go of the boyhood fantasy has collapsed with dismay over the almost non-importance of the event for the public, let alone the mandarins in the parliament. It merited a single column in most newspapers. IPL’s cheerleaders get more space.

A part of our glorious history – that of resistance agaisnt the Britishers (Tipu was the last king to defeat the Britishers), a legacy of the perhaps the greatest threat against British rule (before 1857), a symbol of what we have learnt to be proud of (remember the serial ‘The sword of Tipu Sultan’?), is sold off to the highest bidder at an auction house in London and we do nothing!!! and worse, we are still happily doing nothing. And even worse, we have already moved on…

Tipu’s sword was taken (stolen by the ‘bad guys’ remember?) from his dead body when his capital was overrun in the Third Mysore war. The captured sword was taken a symbol of triumph to London and 150 years later, we get a chance to get it back to where it belongs. But we let it go into the private collection of somebody rich enough to display it among his/her other trinkets.

A government that sits back and watches millions of rupees being spent on as useful as their own statues (sometimes complete with handbags) is not able to spend a few million on getting back what is rightfully ours?

In 2000, Vijay Mallya bought another of Tipu’s sword amidst much fanfare, as if he was doing a service to the country by keeping it in his house. Why not make it public property? Why was it not demanded? (I would not be surprised if this is the same sword that Mallya bought, which it is, according to some reports)

Which is all a collective failure, a failure of our pride to galvanize us in demanding the restoration of dignity of our past. We just don't care enough. Perhaps we don't seem to feel that it is important enough. Our so called present ascent to a world superpower (superpower of outsourced work, mostly) gives us more pride, not a supposed colonized past.

The only question to be asked here – would China (with similar history and the supposed competition to our ascent) have sat back and let their legacy be sold off? Of Mao or of Sun-yat-Sen? How many of us would say yes to that, I wonder? Something to ponder on there…

I guess Tipu fought for the wrong country…