OUR COMMON HERITAGE/AWARDS

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: july/august 2022 :: RMTnews 28 What is my inheritance? To what am I an heir? To all that humanity has achieved, to all that it has thought and felt and suffered and taken pleasure in, to its cries of triumph and its bitter agony of defeat, to that astonishing adventure of humanity, which continues and beckons to us. But there is a special heritage for those of us of India, not an exclusive one, for none is exclusive and all are common to the human race that has gone to make us what we are and what we are likely to be, wrote Jawaharlal Nehru first Prime Minister of India in his book The Discovery of India. The South Asian History month in July and August co- founded by Dr Binita Kane is now in its third year and gaining widespread recognition. It will be followed by the well-established better known Black History month in October. Black Africans and South Asians share a common heritage as colonised, oppressed, enslaved people, with rich cultures, ancient civilisations, diversity of languages, phenomenal creativity, technical skills which were all destroyed. People made destitute and beggars in their own lands. Human beings forcibly removed from their native habitat as slaves then being enslaved to serve the colonial masters in the Americas and the Caribbean. Their substitution by more than a million Indians following the ‘abolition’ of the “slave trade” in 1833 and the proclamation of the India Act in the same year creating indentured servitude. The abolition of slavery act provided that after a brief period of ‘apprenticeship’ every enslaved African in the British Empire should be emancipated and an enormous sum of £20 million was paid by the British tax payers upon till 2015 to compensate the owners of the enslavers for ‘their loss’. This magnanimous act of ‘reparations’ was done during a period of economic distress faced by the working class in Britain. India Act of 1833, started the second era of British Indian history according to Ramsey Muir late professor of history at University of Manchester; from the first phase of conquest to that of reorganisation and penetration. The India Act set out noble ideas “that the interests of the native subjects are to be consulted in preference to those of Europeans whenever the two come into conflict and the principles of British law could never be made the basis of an Indian code”. The actual reality in implementation was as far removed as rules and legislation are to the current British government and its PM today. Two key events of our heritage, which RMT members may be familiar with are the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919 and the less talked about Bengal famine. In 1943 up to four million Bengalis starved to death when Winston Churchill diverted food to British soldiers …. Commenting on the Bengal famine in 1943 Churchill is quoted as saying “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly OUR COMMON HERITAGE Harsev Bains of the Indian Workers Association introduces South Asian History month Jawaharlal Nehru