Dawn On The Ethnic Front?
Izeth Hussain
As I have written two articles on darkness at noon on the ethnic front, it might seem to the reader that I am taking joy in being contrary by immediately afterwards writing an article on dawn on the ethnic front. I am not being contrary because I have placed a question mark at the end of my title. It is meant to signify that the dawn may take fifty years, or five years, or five months, or it may never come at all. What is important is that we should bear in mind the difference between the physical and the human realm: in the former the dawn comes automatically as the result of cosmic processes beyond human control, while in the latter the dawn will never come unless we prepare for it.
In an earlier article I quoted Hegel’s observation that it is only when the shades of night are falling that the bird of Minerva – meaning the owl symbolizing wisdom – spreads its wings and takes flight. It is precisely now, when it is darkness at noon, that we must rethink the ethnic imbroglio and try to attain at least some measure of wisdom to put an end to our decades-long criminal murderous ethnolunacy. The basic reasons why it is darkness now are these. The TNA wants far more than 13A while the Government wants to give far less. In fact it is doubtful that the Government wants any political solution on the basis of devolution. Furthermore its implicit ideology is quasi neo-Fascist and racist, which means that it is to an appreciable extent inimical to the idea of giving fair and equal treatment to the minorities. As for the outside world, it is more threatening than ever before since 1948. International investigations into war crimes are threatened and sanctions are in the offing. It is precisely this darkness that can push us into an earnest rethinking of the fundamentals of the ethnic imbroglio.
There is another reason why we should prepare for the dawn. I have in mind an essay that I read some weeks ago by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, which much impressed the former Labour leader Gordon Brown. In a Nigerian figure of speech – which I take from a novel by Chinua Achebe – Dr. Williams’ words have entered my ear and built a house. He argued that all the military victories of the English over the other constituent peoples of Britain were never complete because Britain consisted of islands and the defeated could not make their getaway, which meant that they had somehow to learn to live with each other in peaceful accommodation. At the time that Britain was being formed, frontiers on the Continent were ill-defined and porous, and they remained porous for a long while even after the nation states and firm frontiers were established. The conquered could therefore move elsewhere. That option was not open to the inhabitants of islands where the conqueror and the conquered had to live with each other in peaceful accommodation. That evidently was the basis for the long tradition of tolerance in Britain which came to be envied on the Continent. It was an example of geography determining history. Read More
