The Politics of Apologies: Portugal, Slavery and the Politics of the World Order

I get extremely agitated when Portuguese academics express the need to apologize for, and attempt to undo the damage done during the colonial period, especially that of the slave trade that was conducted in part by them. It is not that there is no need to recognize that this slave trade, and other heinous practices under colonialism took place. There is such a need. An example of this need for recognition is the rather disingenuous manner in which in the course of a competition searching for the 7 wonders of the Portuguese architectural world, the history of slavery linked to a number of Portuguese architectural marvels was omitted. But this recognition does not necessarily imply the need for an apology. Even if it does, the fact of apology carries its own baggage; baggage that can further complicate relations between the colonizer and the formerly colonized.

When Portugal apologizes for slavery, it does not do so on a blank slate. It does this on a slate that is already loaded with a large variety of meanings. For example, it is understood that slavery was the slavery of ‘black’ people. Further, it is understood that this slavery was conducted by ‘white’ people. Thus when we apologize for slavery, we apologize not only as Portuguese, but as ‘white’ people who did grievous injury to ‘black’ people. What this apology does therefore, is to re-inscribe race back into international relations. It makes some people (not all) from the African continent black, and the people in continental Europe white.

This easy equation between white and black is also deeply problematic because the historical situation is not so cut and dry. When Portugal engaged in slavery, it was not only white people who were conducting this trade. The trade flourished also because there were other groups from the African continent (‘black’ and otherwise) who participated in this trade. Not just those in the African continent though; the slave trade was profitable also for a number of Goan families, whose current fortunes are built in part by their participation in the slave trade. For the Portuguese to ignore this complexity and shoulder the entire blame for the slave trade is sweet, but it results in another patently colonial act. It casts the (‘white’) Portuguese as responsible and the others (‘Black’ and African) as not. Classic colonialism rested on the distinction between the all-knowing, responsible, adult White, and the child-like, irresponsible, coloured native.

None of this is to suggest that the Portuguese are wickedly manipulating statements to re-inscribe a racial dimension to post-colonial relations. On the contrary, the urge to apologize comes from the more conscientious segments of Portuguese society, who are appalled by attempts to forget or ignore the barbarities committed in colonial times. However what they fail to realize is that given that the postcolonial world is already configured by certain practices established by the dominant powers of the world, their apology only goes to further complicate and worsen postcolonial relations.

What might these practices established by dominant global players be? Take for example the fact that when we speak of slavery we very often only speak of and imagine slavery in the Atlantic Ocean circuit (i.e. toward the Americas). The slave trade in the Indian Ocean is completely erased. Further it is imagined that only Africans were enslaved. Historians of Goa will know that there was also a slave trade in Chinese and peoples from the Far East. And yet one but rarely hears of this trade.

The reason for this bias is owing to the Anglo-American leadership of the debate. This stress leads to the whole imaginary that is created particularly for the US based Afro-American, that the continent of Africa is ‘Home’. There is the specific imagination of these Afro-descendants in the Americas as the African ‘Diaspora’. Some time ago, in the sixties and the seventies, the whole idea of a return to Africa, that was quite fashionable among Afro-American activists. The experiences of those who ‘returned’ were disastrous. The idea however still has some resonance. This longevity can be explained by the similarity of this construction with other racist and nationalist imaginations. It feeds from and in turn supports the whole idea of the State of Israel and the right of Jews to return to a land (that is imagined as originally being theirs). It buttresses the whole idea of Muslims in India being invaders and hence eternal outsiders to the country. The slave discourse that the Portuguese unwittingly enter into when they wish to apologize is loaded with such ideas. And to be sure, there would be some in Portugal, who would like to see Portugal as a ‘white’ space, with the Blacks knowing for sure that Africa is their space, to which they are more than welcome to return to.

As I stated before, there is a need for us to not ignore or forget the cruelties of colonialism. However this whole business of apologies seems to generate as many problems as it does benefits. For one it is similar to the whole idea of righting historical wrongs. When one tries to do that, one invariably gets into a larger mess than one started with in the first place. Have a look at the wars in the Balkans, the Basque demand, the Hindutva demand. Secondly, the apologies generate as indicated above a whole new system of relations between peoples and countries. The recognition of culpability generates the demand by African (and other Third World countries) for Western developmental aid. Once again, though we recognize that Western European and Northern American wealth is built on colonial exploitation, we should recognize that the demand for aid is not so innocent. It is the demand not of the masses of people of the African and Asian nations, but of their elites. The developmental aid that comes in on the backs of the recognition of responsibility is used to cushion these elites, and to push projects that invariably hurt the poor and the marginal of these countries. Finally, the politics of apologies push certain populations in the formerly colonized spaces into tight (and dangerous) corners. In the context where some segments blame Goan Catholics for the real and imagined attacks on Hindus during the pre-Republican Portuguese regime, does this politics of apology not further condemn the Goan Catholic?

The field of postcolonial relations is a mine-field. In the case of Portugal, which does not share the history of dominant world powers, the field is even more fraught with dangers. A case of damned if you do, damned if you don’t. There are for sure however, ways in which we can recognize the sorrows of the past, not ignore them, and then go on to build relations that do not depend on apologies, especially when they involve the creation of further complications in our already troubled world. This route involves recognition of the combination of local and overseas elites in colonial domination. The route involves a refusal to allow any actions that would reinscribe racism and clientalism of formerly colonized States into international relations. The route involves getting on with our lives and not getting caught up in nationalist politics.

(Published in the Gomantak Times, 14 Oct 2009)

Palestinians, Jews and Zionists

Christopher Fonseca, the trade unionist, deserves a public commendation for having made history of sorts in our State. Exactly a week ago, he organized a public meeting in solidarity with the Palestinian people at the Institute Menezes Braganza. This public meeting was perhaps the first ever public meeting in Goa on the Palestinian issue and for this alone he deserves credit. However, Comrade Fonseca didn’t just organize a meeting; he organized a meeting which had the hall overflowing with people. For the Palestinian issue to merit such attention in Goa was truly a commendable feat. For all of this, thank you Comrade!

Despite being a by-and-large politically vibrant place, why is it that till date Goa has failed to respond to the Palestinian issue? The answer could perhaps lie in the Indian framework within which we are imbricated. Ever noticed how the Palestinian issue does not figure as much as it does (and should) in the Indian electronic media? At times you would imagine that the Palestinian crisis doesn’t even exist! This happens for good reason. A friend in a prominent national network tells me that they traveled to Israel only when transported there by the Israeli State (guess whose side of the story they presented?) Another friend, in a rival national network cynically pointed out, that ignoring the Palestinian crisis and representing an Israeli point of view made eminent sense. “This way we can do the same thing to Pakistan no?” She’d hit the nail on the head. In many ways India would like to see herself as a subcontinental Israel, since it allows us similar options for belligerence against our neighbours.

This is not the time however for a comparison between Hindutva and Zionism; that should be left for another column. We ought to evaluate now, a statement made at this historic meeting.

Speaking at the meeting Sheik Hassan displayed to the world, the ignorance of the Goan people regarding the politics of the Middle East. Sheik Hassan sought to take the origins of the conflict way back into Biblical times. It was the Jews, he said, who killed the Prophet Jesus Christ. Now the same people are killing the Palestinians. What else can you expect from the Jews? There ought to have been gasps of horror, followed by shocked silence in the hall. Instead the audience sat on, as placid as a calm lake. Clearly both speaker and audience were mired in the same pool of ignorance. What Sheik Hassan spoke at the meeting was clear and distinct anti-Semitism, Jew-hatred. And before we proceed to defend the rights of the Palestinians against the barbaric depredations of the Israeli state, it is imperative that we clear our confused vision, to see what the real issue is, and cleanse ourselves of this pointless Jew hating.

To begin with, the Jews did not kill Christ. If we want to blame a Jewish cast, then we need to possibly blame the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Council that included the High Priest before who Christ was first presented. Even within the Sanhedrin though, there was division as to the question of Christ’s ‘guilt’, so we don’t have a clear-cut culpability of the Sanhedrin. You have only to read the Gospels (though the Gospels themselves are not historical documents telling us an objective political truth) to know that the power of life and death rested not in the hands of the Jewish leadership, but in the hands of the representative of Rome, at that time Pontius Pilate. It was Pontius Pilate who sentenced Christ to death, and dramatically evaded responsibility by washing his hands off the blood of Christ. It is the ensuing act by members of the Sanhedrin that is used to pin the guilt of Christ’s death onto the Jews, the scene where the crowd cries out, ‘His blood be on our heads and on the heads of our children’. In time, this scene was blown out of proportion, especially in the course of the European Middle Ages when it was used to justify acts of routine violence against the Jews. It was not a crazed mob that screamed out these words, but a small coterie that went before Pilate. Surely one does not blame an entire community (even then spread out across the world) for the words of a small and insecure elite?

Sheik Hassan picked on the worst kind of rhetoric he could find to rouse the audience to anger, obfuscated the issue, and for this should be roundly condemned. The problem of Palestine did not begin with the Jews of biblical times, it began much closer in time to us. Secondly, it is not the Jews who are to blame, but the Zionists. As I will seek to elaborate at another point of time, Zionists are primarily Jews, but they are in the thrall of a logic that can extend across religions, including even, Hindus, Muslims and Christians.

Zionism is an ideology that seeks to establish a separate state for the Jewish people, and in the course of its evolution, settled on Palestine as the appropriate location. Zionism, emerged in the context of the racist nationalisms that marked the close the Austro-Hapsburg Empire, when various groups banded themselves into racist categories and demanded their own nation-states. Zionism should be seen in this context, as another kind of racist nationalism, quite divorced from the religious tenets of Judaism. In fact, some of the most bitter opponents of the Israeli state and Zionism are segments of the Orthodox Jewish population. It was God they hold, that dispersed the Jewish peoples from Israel, and it is only the Messiah who will establish the Kingdom of Israel again. To attempt to establish an Israeli State therefore, is to go against the wishes of God. These same groups, point to a shared history, and of peaceful coexistence between Christians, Muslims and Jews prior to the arrival of the Zionists in Palestine. This is a fact; it was only after the arrival of aggressive Zionists, who sough to displace the local Arabs (both Christians and Muslims) that Palestine collapsed into the mess that it has now become. Interestingly, like the key thinkers of Hindutva, most of the founders of Zionism, were not practicing or believing Jews.

However, it is not just religious Jews who oppose the State of Israel, there are other ‘secular’ Jewish voices as well, that oppose the racists and inhuman actions of the Zionist State of Israel. These Jewish voices exist both within the State of Israel, for example the Shministim, the Israeli high school graduates (as young as 18 years of age) who been subjected to repeated jail terms for their principled refusal to serve in the Israeli defence force because of the ongoing Israeli occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people, the organization ‘Not In Our Name’ and a number of others.

Sheik Hassan’s statements are regrettable, and he would do well to apologize and retract this statement. Unfortunately, his position is one that is shared by a number of Muslims, a position that they would do well to reconsider, since it works to only place them within this absolutely uncritical category of global Muslim. This position leads us nowhere, only to problematic rhetorical positions that eventually paint us into a corner.

Israel is not a Jewish project, it is a Zionist project, all Jews are not Zionist, and not all Zionists Jewish.

(Published in the Gomantak Times 4 Feb 2009)