The White man’s burden (1899-2007): a lesson from cattle

C. Wijeyawickrema cwije7@yahoo.com

British diplomat Dominic’s recent trip to a newspaper office took me back to the days that I was studying history. In 1899 Rudyard Kipling penned "The White Man's Burden" appealing to the United States to assume the task of developing the Philippines, recently won in the Spanish-American War. And Teddy Roosevelt, the U.S. president (1901-09) took it very seriously.

Yet, no former colonial master was able to beat the record of Dominic’s Britain, when one thinks of the “burden” it carried. Compared to what had happened in Angola or Algeria under the Portuguese or the French, respectively, England was fortunate with people like Lord Macaulay who did the paper work to create a class of “Brown Britains,” black whites (in Colombo) or coconuts in Mexico (white inside, brown out side) to perpetuate colonialism and colonial mentality in its former colonies. In this regard Macaulay was far superior to Lord Nelson or Cecil Rhodes.

When the “half-naked fakir from India (Gandhi) directly, and the mad man from Germany (Hitler) indirectly, via Franklin Roosevelt—help to defeat Hitler on condition that colonies will be given freedom—forced Churchill to give up the empire, he was assured of continued behind the scene control of former colonies through a class of Macaulay’s children. Dominic’s trip to the Daily Mirror office is an open resurrection of the “burden” his folks had in Ceylon from 1798-1948.

I have no doubt that Dominic is familiar with the Enclosure Movement, the 18th century movement among wealthy British landed aristocrats to enclose their farms forcing the agrarian poor off the old "village commons" that now became "enclosed" as private property. In the American West this enclosing became a cattle issue. Ranchers wanted open access for their cattle. Farmers, on the other hand wanted to protect their farms from cattle. So it became “fencing in or fencing out” issue. Who should erect the fence? What is the purpose of the fence? Should ranchers fence in their cattle or farmer fence out neighbor’s cattle?

This was exactly what had happened to the diplomat Dominic. His embassy is his sovereign territory. He is inside a big fence. He could invite anybody to his castle inside his fence. Any other movement on his part is “fencing out” for him. He will be on some one else’s territory. In the case of a cow it does not know the rule relating to the fence. It only feels that there is a fence. A diplomat cannot have this luxury. What was it that Dominic wanted to do? Have a chat and give moral support to the editor? In that case he could have invited the editor to his territory. Did he have any other hidden agenda such as a one-person protest march or a solitary solidarity trip to support press freedom or oppose a government winning a terrorist war? This is giving moral support to all kinds of politicians in Sri Lanka. Diplomats are not allowed to do that.

White man’s burden should not become white man’s double game with dollar power. Would Dominic allow the Iraqi or Pakistani diplomat to visit a Taliban newspaper office in London to offer moral support? This kind of double standards are in the DNA of white colonial minds nurtured and massaged by local anti-national mudalalis. It was due to sheer ignorance in one case such as “…Who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole literature of India and Arabia.” Macaulay (1835) (Macaulay: The Shaping of the Historian by John Clive, Random House, 1973, p.372).

It was hypocrisy in some other case such as “When it became a question between the suppression of free speech and the affirmation of the British imperial mission with its ideals of freedom and human dignity, Lord Lytton, viceroy of India decided in March 1878 to enact a law to suppress “seditious” newspapers published in native languages. He said that natives must first be taught what is democracy and freedom before they are allowed to enjoy such refined principles of European society! (The world revolution of westernization, T. H. Von Laue, 1987, p. 13).

White and Japanese diplomats must respect democracy. In December 2005, for the first time since 1948, a non-Colombo person was elected as president of Sri Lanka. We no longer have experts on polling booths handling military camps. The war is not winnable group has now become the human rights group. Amnesty International can do what it wants out side Sri Lanka. But British and German diplomats must realize that they cannot operate outside their fence.

It is still a mystery what Kipling really meant by his poem. Was he sarcastic or was he sympathetic? We know that his other poem East is east and West is west was given a totally opposite meaning by later generations. Similarly, one hopes that diplomats such as Dominic are not wearing an HR mask to get down UNO forces to save the dream of Eelam terrorists.