1984

Glass Beads, Trinkets & Indians

T. SHER SINGH

It’s a different century, but little has changed.

The players are the same. Invaders posing as traders. The native Indians bowled over by shiny objects.

The same glass beads and trinkets. The same greed. The same stupidity.

The same outcome.

You’ve read, I’m sure, of how the earliest sahibs who arrived on American shores, though small in number, first befriended the natives, winning them over with little, worthless ‘goodies’ and receiving fur and horses and gold in return.

The glass beads and trinkets were later replaced with guns and liquor. The Indians, in return, lost their sovereignty. Their religion, their culture, their self-confidence, their self-esteem. In fact, they lost the very reason … and will … to live.

You’ve read about it. So have I.

It’s true. It’s history.

I can vouch for it.

Years ago, while I was still a student doing my ‘articles’ with Canada’s largest law firm, I was given a job that took me into the deep recesses of that history and I saw for myself, first-hand, how the “West Was Won”.

We had a client … ironically, from Europe … in the process of buying one of the biggest new malls in Mississauga, a suburb of Toronto, in Ontario, Canada.

As a lowly articling student sitting literally at the bottom of the law-firm’s totem pole, my task was to trace the chain of ownership of the real estate involved in the purchase, back to its original owners, to ensure that the current owners had good title to pass on to the purchasers.

The subject property -- now known as “Square One” -- consisted of a stupendously large swathe of land sitting in the heart of a still nascent Mississauga.

I spent days buried in documents that slowly, steadily, took me back centuries to the very first transaction of the land -- virtually, the whole of what we now call Mississauga -- whereby ownership was transferred from the ’first owners’ -- a native Indian tribe -- to the second owner in recorded history, a rag-tag crew of newly arrived Europeans.

I remember staring at the ‘signature’ of the grantor for a long, long time. It consisted of a bunch of scratches, placed on a parchment by a handful of Indians who knew neither to write nor read in ANY language.

The “consideration’? That’s the word lawyers use when they don’t want to say ’price’, because it would make the scam too glaringly obvious.

A pittance.

My personal tryst with North American history took place exactly 30 years ago. Coincidentally and ironically, in 1984.

Today, that same property is worth billions … in Euros or Dollars, you take your pick. Not a bad investment someone had made that day, wouldn‘t you say, with what amounted to not much more than a handful of glass beads and trinkets.

You figure out the net gain. For the ’smart’ investor.

And the net loss for the gull.

*   *   *   *   *

Which brings me to the present and the modern-day traders and Indians.

I now refer, of course, to the Injuns of India who have been giving away their land and treasures for glass beads and trinkets for centuries. In fact, from long, long before their namesakes were gulled at the other end of the globe.

Traders came to India from every little hole in Europe. And Indians willingly gave away their all, having already got used to seeing their wives and daughters, sisters and mothers, carried away by invaders from the northwest and auctioned in the Afghan bazaars of Ghor and Ghazni. [This is not an exaggeration: please read your history.]   

The ‘traders’ first carved out the subcontinent between themselves, then fought like dogs with each other to push each other out.

The Brits won the prize, which ever since they refer to as “The Jewel in The Crown.“ In their crown, that is.

Their adventure took off when a Hindu baniya (trader), Omi Chund, entered into a mephistophelean relationship with, and sold his soul to Robert Clive.

The rest is history. 400 years of it.

It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears -- especially on the part of the Sikhs who, incidentally constituted a mere 2% of the subcontinent’s population -- to finally oust the foreigners.

But 400 years of European slavery, which in turn had merely replaced a millennium of Mongol and Mughal slavery, had left behind a deeply entrenched DNA of servitude and chicanery.

The Gurus managed to, over the course of two-an-a-half-centuries of nurture and transformation, liberate the Sikhs from the mire of the land.

But the brahmins and the baniyas, both beneficiaries of the Gurus’ largesse, continued their ways.

“Independent’ India is now in the hands of the heirs of Omi Chund.

Mohandas Gandhi was a baniya, cut from the same cloth. So is Narendra Modi, poised to be the new ’leader’ of India. He models himself on Vallabhbhai Patel, another ‘Omi Chund’ baniya.

The Nehrus, brahmins all, did their thing too -- it came naturally to them through genetics. Until it became convenient to adopt a baniya name. So they too call themselves ’Gandhi’ today.

So, where does this new India stand today?

As always, the whole world is lined up at their doors … wanting to do trade, as before. We have glass beads and trinkets, Lamborghinis and Teslas, to sell to you. And arms too. Give us your riches, and we will turn a blind eye to all else you do to yourselves and yours.

Ah, say the Indians, see … the world loves us! We are now world class. So, yeah, let’s buy their aircraft carriers and gunships and helicopters, and we’ll let them in to do trade in our bazaars.

And as all good traders do … remember how efficient the Brits were in doing this, for F-O-U-R  H-U-N-D-R-E-D  Y-E-A-R-S! … we’ll keep all dissidents in check. We’ll kill them all, if necessary, and bury them out of sight, so that the exchange of modern day glass beads and trinkets with furs and guns remains unfettered, unhampered.   

The traders are all happy: the Brits, and Americans, and Israelis, and Russians, and the French …

The baniyas and brahmins are happy. They sit Omi Chund like, at the top of their heaps. [The baniya Ambani actually lives atop a heap 27 floors high. Literally.]

In the meantime, for the billion and more plebeians, life hasn’t changed much, has it?

You turn on the tap in New Delhi, India’s flag-ship city -- not to mention anywhere else in the country --  and chances are, there is no water.

You turn on the light switch, and chances are, there is no juice.

You step out, and you can cut the polluted air with a knife.

But you can’t let your daughters and sisters and wives and mothers out, unless they travel in convoys, because of rape and that so-Indian invention, the gang-rape.

You can’t call the police, because they need bribes. Or are the same ones who raped you.

You can’t call your politicians for help because they are out of the country busy making deposits in foreign banks.

For you and I, our greatest joy in life is having a daughter or a few of them, of watching them laugh and grow, of guiding them into rearing their own loving families.

In Omi-Chund’s India, having a daughter or more is a life-long curse. Imagine! A life where your children give you no joy.

But hey, the Indians sound happy. You can hear the laughter and merriment all around, the loud Jai Hinds and the Jai Ho’s. The fun-loaded bollywood dance numbers. The world loves them because, you see, everyone wants to sell them things.

You look anywhere, everywhere … there’s song and dance everywhere. Right?

[“Lord, what fools these mortals be!” My apologies to Will Shakespeare.]


January 16, 2014  

 
  

      
 

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