been grotesque.
What he should have been emphasizing is: “Look, powerless
people who are being led to slaughter can’t do anything. T herefore
it’s up to others to prevent them from being massacred.” To give
them advice on how they should be slaughtered isn’t very uplifting—
to put it mildly.
You can say the same about lots of other things. Take people
being tortured and murdered in Haiti. You want to tell them: “T he
way you ought to do it is to walk up to the killers and put your head
in front of their knife—and maybe people on the outside will
notice.” Could be. But it’d be a little more significant to tell the
people who are giving the murderers the knives that they should do
something better.
Preaching nonviolence is easy. One can take it seriously when
it’s someone like [long-time pacifist and activist] Dave Dellinger,
who’s right up front with the victims.
India today is torn asunder by various separatist movements.
Kashmir [a far-northern province disputed by Inda and Pakistan] is an
incredible mess, occupied by the Indian army, and there are killings,
detentions and massive human-rights violations in the Punjab [a
province that straddles Pakistan and India] and elsewhere.
I’d like you to comment on a tendency in the T hird World to
blame the colonial masters for all the problems that are besetting
their countries today. T hey seem to say, “Yes, India has problems,
but it’s the fault of the British—before that, India was just one happy
place.”
It’s difficult to assess blame for historical disasters. It’s
somewhat like trying to assess blame for the health of a starving and
diseased person. T here are lots of different factors. Let’s say the
person was tortured—that certainly had an effect. But maybe when
the torture was over, that person ate the wrong diet, lived a
dissolute life and died from the combined effects. T hat’s the kind of
thing we’re talking about.
T here’s no doubt that imperial rule was a disaster. Take India.
When the British first moved into Bengal, it was one of the richest
places in the world. T he first British merchant-warriors described it
as a paradise. T hat area is now Bangladesh and Calcutta—the very
symbols of despair and hopelessness.
T here were rich agricultural areas producing unusually fine
cotton. T hey also had advanced manufacturing, by the standards of
ann
(Ann)
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