The Daily News did well in giving wide publicity to the speech on human rights (Daily News 21/8) made in the House of Commons by Robin Cook, Britain’s Foreign Secretary and following it up with an editorial hint that cynics may need a pinch of salt to swallow the well-intentioned professions of the British government.
There is indeed a visible change of heart not only among British politicians but also among politicians in both Europe and America about doing something to improve the human rights record everywhere. However, saying is one thing, doing another. But first, how sincere, how credible are these intentions ?
There is a reason for this doubt. Recently we heard President Clinton apologising for some misdeeds done by the American government to some of its black citizens. Tony Blair, British Prime minister, apologised the other day to the Irish people for causing some unnecessary hardships a century or so ago.
His queen, on the other hand, refused to apologise for the brutal killing of several hundreds of the residents in Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar in the Twenties. .Australian Prime Minister John Howard was also heard a little earlier saying he was sorry for what had happened to a minority of his own citizens, the Australian Aborigines and the suffering they had under gone, but certainly not willing to apologise to them on behalf of the Australian government.
These varying levels in the qualities of mercy these honourable gentlemen and ladies are willing to extend are disturbing. One would have expected them to fall over each other in rushing to apologise and asking to be forgiven knowing how dear the question of ‘human rights’ is to the West. That alone may have wiped off all the heartburning of the past. But that, alas, was not to be, so a few examples from the past may help to tell this story better.
When Vacs da Gama came to India there was one whom he regarded as his inveterate enemy and that was the Muslim. The issue was not fundamentalism but trade. On one occasion while crossing the Arabian sea he ran into a group of Muslim junks and set about destroying them.
With his superior gun power he seized the boats and as described in Lendas da India, ‘after making the ships empty of goods, prohibited anyone from taking out of it any Moor and ordered them set on fire.’ This act of piracy and terror has been defended by the historian Barroes who makes the following observation: ‘It is true that there does exist a common right to all to navigate the seas and in Europe we recognise the rights which others hold against us; but the right does not extend beyond Europe and therefore the Portuguese as Lords the sea are justified in confiscating the goods of all those who navigate the seas without their permission.’
Some may argue that such incidents cannot happen today. The question, however, is whether such notions are still lingering deep down in the European mind. Fears that they still are and that Europe has done little to allay them are portentous. What can be seen, on the contrary, is Europe’s quest after World War II to device better and more sophisticated laws than Barroes dreamt of to keep out the outsider from acquiring the benefits of the European economy and reserve the right to enter to a selected few.
What we can hear when Robin Cook speaks of equality and human rights is the warning voice of George Orwell heard in another context. ‘We are all equal, but some are more equal than others.’
A few hundred years after da Gama’s splendid exploits in the Indian Ocean we are given another opportunity of viewing how Europeans appropriate special privileges for themselves. This time from an unexpected source - the Commander-in-Chief of India in the early part of this century - Lord Kitchener. It may be taken as his final belief about the brave men he led:
‘It is this consciousness of the inherent superiority of the European which has won for us India. However well educated and clever a native may be, and however brave he may have proved himself, I believe that no rank we can bestow on him would cause him to be considered an equal of the British officer.’
Proof once again of how the European mind looks on all those people living outside Europe. It seems to be a legacy Europe has inherited from the Greeks. For the Greeks who looked on their immediate neighbours felt superior to them and their manners and the way they spoke, the words sounding to them like ‘ber-ber’ from which, we are told, the word ‘barbarian’ was coined and applied to all non-Greeks.
Besides, their neighbours unlike them, seemed ready to prostrate themselves before ‘tyrants’ whether king or god. It is this legacy that the West appears to have inherited from the Greeks and now it seems to be adding to the ‘burdens’ of the white man.
All this would not be of much consequence if the arrogance and superiority were left behind and not left to linger at the bottom of the European’s racial memory. But that seems difficult. It surfaces once again sharply into focus especially in Europe’s relations with China, one of the fonts civilisation on this planet.
Nearly all the nations of Europe are guilty of the humiliation afflicted on China. For none drew back from the declaration made by the President of the Hongkong chamber of Commerce in 1870:
‘China can in no sense be considered a country entitled to all the same rights and privileges as civilised nations which are bounded by international .law’.
The handing back of Hongkong to China would have been a good moment to take back this kind of declaration and express profound regret for the action of those British officers who burned down the Summer Palace in Peking, an exquisite beauty described by the French Commander Montauban as ‘a character that nothing in our Europe can give any idea of such luxury’.
Which now brings us to the agony of opium piled on China in the name of trade. There is still the unanswered question addressed to Queen Victoria which Her Majesty the Queen Elizabeth II may attempt to answer, even though now it may be 160 years late, when she visits India soon.
It was the East India Company in Calcutta holding a charter from the British government which began the cultivation and preparation of opium to be smuggled into China and the money earned in this fashion used to pay for the tea imported from China. The question that was addressed to Queen Victoria, who was also the Empress of India, by the Special Imperial commissioner, Liu-Tse-hsu, appointed by the Emperor of China to end the smuggling of opium by the British was the following:
We have reflected that this noxious article is the clandestine manufacture of artful schemers under the dominion of Your Honourable nation. Doubtless you, the Honourable Chieftainess, have not commanded the growing and sale thereof.
(the British government was well aware of what was going on and as K.M. Panikkar points out in his Asia And The Western Dominance, ‘Indeed the British government was committed to the hilt in this illegal and depraved traffic and the piracy which went along with it’)
Liu, however, went on to tell the Honourable Chieftainess that in Britain itself ‘people are not permitted to inhale the drug. If it is admittedly so deleterious, how can you seek to profit by exposing others to its malefic power to be reconciled with the decrees of Heaven ?.’ How, indeed, Your Majesty Elizabeth !.
Another shocking side in the European mind is its reluctance to accept the verdicts given against white men by non-European courts. In colonial India a Planter’s assistant who once committed a particularly ‘cowardly and brutal’ murder was turned into a martyr by the European residents in India by agitating for a reprieve for him.
This has its echo even today.
When a Singapore court recently decided to punish a particularly bad form of adolescent loutish behaviour of an American youth there was a howl of protest from a white public which forced even President Clinton to intervene. And when white drug pushers, male and female, are found guilty by say a Thai court, as happened recently, the Australian media highlighted this as if a great injustice has been done exaggerating the horrors of Asian jails.
Far from helping to stabilise societies the single-minded promotion of human rights has the opposite effect. It appears to be the factor responsible for the moral destabilisation societies, visible today.
This is because those who preach these rights do not also enjoin the people to reciprocate by performing their duties and obligations as citizens, as workers, as students as women and children.
The horrendous tragedy surrounding Diana is a clear instance of what we can expect from this uninhibited exercise of a right. It is doubtful whether even the shock of this sad death would provoke the West to change its course.
With this background how can the larger public living outside Europe be convinced of the intent and purpose of Europe campaigning for ‘human rights’?. Before launching out Europe must convince itself that the rest of humanity also holds certain human values as precious and dear.
They still possess lithic evidence proclaiming from ancient times tolerance, justice, shelter and protection to both man and beast. In a religious context, however, there is no particular emphasis on human rights.
In Christianity the churches remind their flock of man’s disobedience and the fruit of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste brought death unto the world and all our woe. And for that sin he will have to earn his bread by the ‘sweat of thy brow.’ No eight hour day, no EPF or ETF or any such perks for him.
For the rest of the other religions, Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, Taoist, what old Khayyam said is acknowledged by all. For once the moving finger writes and having writ moves on not all our tears can succeed in changing its course.