‘Racial’ Experience: Universal & Unique?
Prof. Charles Sarvan
“On June 17, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, posted an Instagram live video discussing the detention camps along the southern US border as “concentration camps” in which she used the phrase “Never Again.” This drew sharp criticism the following day from Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, and others for allegedly misappropriating a slogan associated with the Holocaust. After several days of heated media and political debate, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum released a statement on June 24 condemning the use of Holocaust analogies.”
I was sent a message indicating that certain “scholars” have reacted to the Museum’s stance. I have no pretension of being a “scholar” and merely share my – somewhat random – layman’s thoughts. (End of Preface).
It must be admitted (and deplored) that certain words are used carelessly and inappropriately. Exaggeration damages rather than bolsters a case, and to make totally inappropriate comparisons – “holocaust”, “Nazism”, “Hitler”, “Pol Pot”, “Gulag”, “concentration camp”, “slavery” etc. – displays either carelessness or a most unfortunate ignorance of the real nature of these historical persona and phenomena. By “slavery” here I mean the African slave trade which, I have argued elsewhere, is the worst blot ever on human history, taking into consideration its duration (over centuries, numbers (running into many millions) and nature (appallingly cruel). Collective denial and willed amnesia mean that (to the best of my knowledge) there are no monuments or day of public mourning in the USA for the crime on which that country was built. On the other hand, power and influence make sure that the Nazi holocaust is constantly kept in view and mind: see my article, ‘Remember the Holocaust. Remember. Remember!’ in the Sunday Island, Colombo. 27 March 2011.
We human beings have two contrary impulses: one the one hand, to belong and, on the other, to be different. Regarding the former, Durkheim in his classic study of Suicide (1897) writes of “the need that drives us to harmonise ourselves” with society. Shylock in Shakespeare’s ‘The Merchant of Venice’ makes a powerful case for the recognition and respect of our common, shared, humanity: “Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer…? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” (Act 3, Scene 1).
The other impulse leads to the attempt to be different, to be distinguished from others. In certain individuals, this is manifested in the importance they give to the clothes they wear and to fashion in general. As with individuals, so it is with a people: to be different, special, even unique. For example, some Sinhalese Buddhists believe (in merely verbal protestation if not seriously) that they are unique because the Lord Buddha chose them out of all the peoples of Planet Earth to be the guardians of his preaching in its purest form. (To what degree this “purity” has found expression in private and public or political life, is irrelevant here.) Before the advent of Nazism, Jews in Germany were integrated, seeing themselves as different but going to form one totality. Many Jews fought for Germany during the World War One. Ironically, Hugo Gutnam, Hitler’s direct superior in 1918 and the one who recommended that Hitler be awarded the Iron Cross, was a Jew. Hitler wore the Iron Cross for the rest of his life while Gutnam, together with other Jews, lost his citizenship; fled Germany and wandered a while as a refugee in Belgium and France before finding a home in the USA. There are similarities with the Igbo experience.
I arrived in Nigeria to teach at a university shortly after the Biafran War, also known as the Nigerian Civil War, ended. The Biafrans, though a minority, had been in the forefront of the struggle against British rule, and had believed in a united Nigeria. While the North was Moslem, the Biafrans were Christian. What’s more, they had taken to Western education, largely introduced by Christian missionaries. Enterprising and industrious, they moved out of traditional Igbo territory and could be found all over Nigeria, including the Moslem dominated north. A “riot” is usually understood to be a spontaneous, even accidental, outburst of violence, while a “pogrom” means a planned and prepared onslaught on a helpless and hapless minority: the attacks on pockets of Igbo which preceded the outbreak of war in 1967 were a pogrom, and not to be “passed off” as riots. These attacks forced the Igbo to see themselves as not belonging to the nation, and to think that safety depended on separation. (Chinua Achebe, world-famous author of Things Fall Apart, was an Igbo and published his recollections in There was A Country. I suspect Achebe got this title from a poem by William Wordsworth which begins “There was a boy, you knew him well…”. It ends with the poet standing in silent grief by the boy’s grave. The dream of Biafra too, though passionately loved and sacrificed for, died very young.)
Shifting in time and place, there are similarities with Sri Lanka. I cite from my review of H.A.J. Hulugalle (1899-1981): Selected Journalism, published in the Sunday Island, 24 January 2010, under the title ‘Hulugalle: Ceylon to Sri Lanka: the failure of parliamentary. Hulugalle writes that when he became a journalist in 1918, Sri Ponnambalam Ramanathan, a Tamil, was “the leading politician in the Island.” Ramanathan fought untiringly for “the Sinhalese Buddhists who were badly treated by the Government over the religious [Buddhist-Muslim] riots of 1915.” Standing up for justice, he took their appeal to England, despite the danger posed by German submarines (Hulugalle, p. 135). Those Sinhalese Buddhists leaders who were “flung into jail had no more sincere and eloquent pleader of their cause than Sir Ponnambalam Ramanathan” (Hulugalle, p. 151). “On his successful return, jubilant crowds placed him in a carriage, detached the horses, and dragged the carriage themselves. He was not seen as a Tamil who had helped free Sinhalese but as a Ceylonese helping fellow Ceylonese. It will also be startling for many to find Hulugalle saying that (Tamil) Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam is “the father of the nationalist movement” (p. 149).
Returning to my Preface and the insistence reported there that certain words be used only in connection with the Jewish experience, I remind readers of Ludwik Zamenhof (1859-1917) who invented the artificial language, Esperanto, as a step towards the dispelling of linguistic misunderstanding, and thereby hoping for the creation of greater harmony within humankind. By and large, the attempt failed but today (whether we like it or not) we have a natural, a living, Esperanto in the English language, commonly shared and freely used. Whatever its origins, no one people can now claim exclusive ownership of the English language. That being the present reality, for a group of Jews to attempt to place prohibitions where the use of the English language is concerned seems, at the best, strange. I conclude by quoting from an article of mine already cited: ‘Remember the Holocaust. Remember. Remember!’, the Sunday Island, Colombo. 27 March 2011.
