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The creed of racial superiority was very
much part and parcel of the culture of the empire. The British Empire was
built on a theory of racial inferiority. The great Victorian writer and
poet Rudyard Kipling wrote extensively on the supposed superiority of the
British and talked about ‘lesser breeds without the law’. It was the alleged
superiority of the non-white races that supposedly legitimized taking over
their countries and subordinating them to second class.
Even until quite recently British
textbooks talked about Europeans ‘discovering’ countries like America,
Australia and the source of rivers like the Nile even plenty of non-white
people who were in America and Australia who knew perfectly well the source
of the Nile. And until recently writers talked about the Europeans bringing
civilization to Africa and the Indian sub-continent as if these countries
had not seen highly sophisticated Empires and societies long before the
Europeans came.
‘The British Empire was built on a theory
of racial inferiority. When you read in the old textbooks about the
supposedly civilizing mission of the British, one is reminded of the comment
of Gandhi. He was asked what he thought about British civilization. He
paused for along time and then said thoughtfully “It would be a good idea.”
So fixed in the British mind was the racial inferiority of the people whose
lands they took over and exploited that for a long time archaeologists
believed that the sculpture and carvings of the city of Benin in Nigeria
could not have been done by black people and similarly that the great ‘lost’
city of Zimbabwe in southern Africa could not have been built by black men.
In direct line of descent of that kind of
thinking is Prince Phillip’s idea that poor quality electrical work must
have been done by Indians. To have a genuinely multi-racial society there
needs to be genuine economic equality between the races. Economic
empowerment for minorities is a necessary precondition but not sufficient to
bring about a genuinely multi-racial society. Because nationhood and society
are as much about ideas as anything else, the role of culture, literature,
philosophy and the arts in building a multi-racial society is key. The first
step is that the influence of black and ethnic minorities in the culture of
a country like Britain is properly acknowledged.
The White Man's Burden
By: Rudyard Kipling
1907 Nobel
Laureate in Literature
Take up the White man's burden --
Send forth the best ye breed --
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild --
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.
Take up the White Man's burden --
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times mad plain.
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.
Take up the White Man's burden --
The savage wars of peace --
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch Sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hope to nought.
Take up the White Man's burden --
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper --
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go make them with your living,
And mark them with your dead!
Take up the White man's burden --
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard --
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light: --
"Why brought ye us from bondage,
"Our loved Egyptian night?"
Take up the White Man's burden --
Ye dare not stoop to less --
Nor call too loud on freedom
To cloak your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your Gods and you.
Take up the White Man's burden --
Have done with childish days --
The lightly proffered laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold-edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!
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