To heed Priyamvada Gopal is to condone the brutality of a JNU education

The Tagore clan, which had previously prospered under Muslim rule, grew very rich as compradors and tax-farmers under the East India Company. Like others of their class, they were loyal to the Crown and generous in donating money for public purposes. Some also distinguished themselves in other ways- contributing to the administration of Justice or the progress of the Sciences or the Arts. In acknowledgment of their sterling loyalty and public service, they were awarded honors of various sorts, including Knighthoods held under two different Orders of Chivalry- viz the Most Exalted Order of the Star of India and, the less exclusive, Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire.

Sometimes, an award would be returned to protest a particular policy or signify discontent at some personal slight. However, British honours were never considered anything bad in themselves. Thus, after Independence, a number of senior Civil servants and other eminent people who had retained their knighthoods or other honours continued to be employed at the highest levels. After India became a Republic, some of these people also received awards like the Padma Bhushan which corresponded to Imperial honours. A case in point is Sir Raghavan Pillai who, after retiring from the Indian Civil Service, chose to emigrate to the UK (where his wife was from) and take up work in the private sector.

Priyamvada Gopal takes a different view. She thinks the Empire was evil and that it would be wrong for anyone of Black or Asian heritage to accept knighthoods under the rubric of the Order of the British Empire.

With typical fatuity, Gopal thinks Tagore had a similar scruple. The facts are quite different. Tagore had been close to Lord Carmichael, Governor of Bengal, which is why he accepted a 'bachelor' Knighthood for Services to Literature at a time when his poetry was widely read by young soldiers serving in the trenches.

 Like Gandhi, Tagore was, quite understandably, dismayed by the retrograde nature of the Rowlatt Act and utterly outraged by the behavior of the Governor of Punjab. Like certain other civilians, unconnected with the Courts of the administration, he renounced his title to send a message to Westminster.

Gopal, who is teaches in Cambridge- but only if College porters obsequiously address her as Dr. Gopal, rather than Madam- is either ignorant or writing in bad faith when she mentions Tagore in connection with the question of whether or not Black or Asian people should accept Knighthoods from the British Crown.

In the Guardian, she opines-

A century ago the eminent Bengali writer Rabindranath Tagore returned his knighthood to the viceroy of India.

 Tagore asked the new Viceroy ' to relieve me of my title of knighthood, which I had the honour to accept from His Majesty the King at the hands of your predecessor, for whose nobleness of heart I still entertain great admiration.' This is not a condemnation of British Imperialism. It is a protest against a change in policy by the Secretary of State for India.

Some Indians  have recently returned honours given by previous Indian Administrations to protest a supposed change in Government policy. This does not mean they condemn the Republic of India.

No doubt, some of these guys say silly things, magnifying their own importance, when returning honours. But then there is a good Indian precedent for doing so. Vide-

The “time has come when badges of honour make our shame glaring in their incongruous context of humiliation”, Tagore wrote in outrage as scores of peaceful protesters were massacred in Jallianwala Bagh. He would now “stand, shorn of all special distinctions, by the side of my countrymen”.

Gopal writes-

In accepting the knighthood, Tagore had been unfairly accused of being a colonial flunkey, partly because he had expressed justifiable reservations about aspects of Indian nationalism. The 1919 atrocities in Amritsar jolted the Nobel laureate into accepting that that his Knight Commander of the British Empire (the KBE still in use today) could not be treated as unconnected to the bloodied realities of that empire’s operations.

How could Tagore, in 1915, be admitted to an order of chivalry which was only created 2 years later? Gopal is telling a stupid lie. Tagore was made a Knight Bachelor for services to Literature. He was not admitted to any order of Chivalry because, at that time, mere scribblers were considered somewhat infra dig or below the salt. Incidentally the two Indian orders, being older, took precedence over the Order of the British Empire. This may seem a trifling point, but such Knighthoods were only significant in that they caused trifling changes in the order of precedence at official functions or, in the case of Civil Servants, raised their shadow price for 'descent from Heaven' post retirement sinecures. A separate point of punctilio has to do with internecine jealousies and jockeying for position between different branches of the Civil Service or quasi autonomous bodies. In that case, an individual might feel any honour he was offered reflected on the status of the Cadre to which he belonged or the Institution, or the Corporate body, he represented. This is why some meritorious candidates might refuse a particular honour, as adversely flouting precedent, or accept one, despite a personal dislike for such baubles, on behalf of those he represented.

The belief that titles such as Officer, Dame Commander or Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire can be treated as purely symbolic, untainted by the gross brutalities of the imperial project, appear more plausible today, with historical distance.

Canada, Australia, New Zealand and so on don't appear to have had any problems with seeing themselves as part of the British Empire- if only symbolically, because they were self governing in practice. The 'gross brutalities of the imperial project' are ones which their own ancestors inflicted, not suffered under.

Patriotic Indians, like Tej Bahadur Sapru, who had supported the Non Cooperation Movement, nevertheless accepted, just 3 years after Jallianwallah, a Knighthood into 'the Most Exalted Order of the Star of India', which, as I have mentioned, took precedence over the Order of the British Empire.

Gopal must herself have visited the library in Sapru House in New Delhi. She must know that Sapru is considered a great hero of the Freedom Struggle. Yet she writes as though intelligent and well educated Indians had some irrational prejudice against accepting honours which mentioned either the Indian or the British Empire.

Accepting his Order of the British Empire, the public historian David Olusoga, who has a Nigerian father, has insisted defensively that while “the empire was an extractive, exploitative, racist and violent institution”, the fact that “there isn’t an empire any more” changes things completely.

The Indian Empire was racist and exploitative- at least as far as most Indian people were concerned- but the British Empire wasn't as far as British people were concerned. They lived in a Kingdom run by their own kind on the basis of their own customary laws and institutions. Indians, by contrast, were subjects of an Empire which, at its highest level, was entirely alien.

 India no longer gives out Order of the Indian Empire Knighthoods because, on balance, that Empire was not a source of pride or prosperity for the vast majority of its people. By contrast, the British Empire has no repugnant connotation for British people which is why they retain an Order of Knighthood named for a former source of profit and of pride which was also a great defensive resource in preserving their liberty when menaced by Hitler and his Nazi hordes.

Immigrants to Britain may take a different view- indeed, they may choose to relocate to some other country- but, in a democracy, immigrants don't get to impose their views or values on the native inhabitants- unless, of course, they are unable to maintain controls on migration and get 'swamped'.

The E-word is now a slightly retro empty term – a little bit distasteful, for sure, but happily emancipated from any historical reference.

Which is why it has been suggested that the Order be renamed 'British Excellence' as opposed to Empire. The problem here is that Mediocrity prevails in its ranks and so an anachronism is preferable to offering so blatant a target for public ridicule.

However, Olusoga’s comforting thought runs counter to the British establishment’s own adamantine but honest refusal, despite official criticism of the word as “anachronistic” and “insensitive”, to substitute “empire” in these titles with something less divisive and racially charged.

Less divisive to whom? Gopal is Indian- unless she has acquired British Nationality after coming here-  but does not represent the vast majority of even Hindu, Indian, immigrants to this country.  Rather, her position is as that of a drunken helot in Sparta- she serves as a dire warning of the brutality of a JNU education and the manner in which it renders its victims incapable of utile Paideia. Cambridge, it appears, is signalling the worthlessness of a particular branch of its 'Faculty of English' by showing that it cashes out as lazy, jhollawallah, gobshittery.
By contrast, British Asians welcomed any honour given their ancestors during the Raj and continue to be delighted when one of their own gets an OBE or any other award from the 'fountain of honours' that is the Crown- for which they, in common with other British people, have great affection and reverence.

Gopal says a particular Order of Chivalry- that of the British Empire- is 'racially charged'. How? Unlike the higher orders which were seldom or never given to dusky or plebeian origin people, the Order of the Indian Empire and, after June 1917, the Order of the British Empire were always meant to be more egalitarian. In general the more exclusive 'Order of the Star' was reserved for blue-bloods or those whose law practice was such that elevation to the Bench was on the cards. Thus Iqbal, in 1923, was made a plain Knight Bachelor because it was his literary work, not his status at the bar, which was being honored, whereas Sapru, who was a great legal luminary, was inducted into the Most Exalted Order of Indian Chivalry.

It also ignores the extent to which aspirations to a resurgent imperial global grandeur have resurfaced, so explicitly and harmfully in the case for Brexit. Is the empire really over, or has it remained a virus-like sleeper cell in the British political imagination?

Imperial grandeur can only arise if you conquer countries. Does Gopal really believe Brexit is about Boris's desire for World Domination?

The black scholar Paul Gilroy suggests that Britain’s refusal to accept the loss of empire has produced “deluded patterns of historical reflection and self‑understanding”. Surely it is the task of black and Asian Britons to undo, not pander to, these delusions.

Why mention the Professor's racial heritage (which, to be accurate, is 'mixed')? The fact of the matter is that most relatively wealthy countries- like all very poor ones- have 'deluded patterns of historical reflection and self-understanding'. Prior to Trump's apotheosis, Europe talked as if it were a military hegemon able to enforce a 'Rules Based International Order'. This was sheer delusion. It is now piping small.

The most eloquent case for descendants of the enslaved, the indentured and the colonised to refuse honours that exalt the British empire was made by the poet Benjamin Zephaniah in this paper. He linked his own rejection of an OBE in 2003 not just to past atrocities or a “betrayal” of enslaved ancestors but to the very real afterlife of empire: racism, police brutality, privatisation, militarism, ongoing economic dispossession and the retention of the spoils of empire. One is either “profoundly anti-empire” or one accepts its many self-serving fictions along with the honour, including the notion that despite a few mishaps, it was a largely benevolent enterprise.

Zephaniah's ancestors were, quite literally, enslaved and trafficked across an Ocean. Gopal's ancestors were not. Some of her forbears did very well under the Raj but their status and life-chances declined after Independence which is why so many of them emigrated.

Zephaniah’s choice was based on clear principles, from a long and often forgotten tradition of black and Asian resistance to the global harm inflicted by empire, and the understanding that imperial and domestic rule were maintained by paternalism, buying loyalties heading off dissenters at the pass and ensuring that criticism was toned down. In the 1930s, the fiercely anti-colonial black British newspaper International African Opinion identified “the judicious management of the black intelligentsia, giving them jobs, OBEs and even knighthoods” as a key tactic for diffusing confrontation.

Some descendants of potentates who got rich supplying the Atlantic Slave Trade did indeed get Knighthoods- if they already had power. Thus the last Sultan of Zanzibar has a GCMG. But, it would be silly to think that such honours changed the incentive structure.

Bestowing knighthoods on African chiefs (indirect rule) and Indian princes elicited their assistance in controlling the colonised masses, though this was not always possible given widespread resistance.

This is sheer nonsense. Nobody cared about such baubles. Money and Munitions and Military support 'elicited assistance'. Getting a gong didn't.

A select class of non-white leaders could be upheld as exemplars of a just system even as the large majority continued to face widespread discrimination and inequality.

So what? The thing made no difference. North Korea upholds a select class of elderly US Army deserters as 'exemplars'. They regularly appear on TV to say that the US is a shithole. That doesn't stop North Koreans trying to escape across the border any time they get a chance.

Olusoga suggests that, by acknowledging the “incredible achievements of black and Asian Britons”, OBEs can be seen as a defeat of racism.

The first man, who was born a slave, with ancestral roots in Africa, to be knighted was a barrister who resisted Westminster's attempt to bring his native island under direct rule. But his getting a gong didn't change anything. Rather, it was his appointment as Chief Justice of his native island which made a difference. Racism can't be defeated or enforced by accepting or refusing a gong. Becoming a barrister and then a Q.C and then a Judge, on the other hand, can make a difference. But that involves being smart and talking sense. Gopal's brand of gobshittery is counter-productive.

Apart from the ways in which tokenism usually enables hierarchical and exclusionary systems to continue business as usual

those ways are wholly imaginary. Tokens don't matter at all. No Indian was ever bought off by such a trumpery bauble. Nor was any West Indian or African or any one else. On the contrary, leaders of Independence movements had often previously received honors of one type or another, which, however, did not soften their patriotic zeal.

, the more vital question is whether OBEs actually facilitate what Olusoga correctly describes as the “need to confront” not celebrate the history of empire.

Okay, Olusoga studied History and so at least a portion of his brain must have turned to shit. Still, why is it vital to ask whether the OBE- which nobody gives a toss about- is 'confronting' some long dead institution about which nobody gives a flying fart?

The role of an officer of the empire is hardly calculated to induce that much-needed confrontation.

Much-needed by whom? Only shitheads like Gopal are interested in the subject. Nobody else cares.

The British establishment, utterly reliant on fictions of imperial glory and benevolence,

WTF? The British establishment is utterly reliant on this country's export of 'invisibles'. Money is what they care about. 'Fictions of imperial glory' don't pay the bills.

is not so naive as to facilitate its own undoing.

That's why they hire shitheads like Gopal to teach only utterly shite subjects like Post Colonial theory or Subaltern Studies, not anything that might contaminate the minds of the lawyers and accountants and STEM subject mavens they need to keep the economy solvent.

Olusoga and others are fully entitled to their personal choices and private compromises.

As is Gopal- who left India where Whites are few and far between to settle here where they are so plentiful that they can be employed in menial capacities- like the college porters whom Gopal has so furiously confronted & blisteringly denounced- as if they were the collective incarnation of an impenitent Brigadier Dyer engaged in the massacre of innocent brown people whose blood now stains Cambridge Quads in quantities comparable to that shed at Jallianwallah Bagh.

What is more questionable is the presentation of these personal decisions as politically sound choices made selflessly in the name of all black Britons.

Gopal chooses to teach in England, not India. That is her personal choice. As a black Briton, I personally deplore it coz she makes us look stooopid and, like, hopeless stuck in a late Seventies time warp, innit? Goodness Gracious Me satirized that sort of thing so much more deftly.

Does having a few black names with OBE after them really signify that the British establishment acknowledges the profound historical contributions of black and Asian people to this nation, not least through producing much of its wealth?

No. It signifies nothing at all. Gongs don't matter. Achievements do.

Beyond exceptional individual achievement, non-white Britons have also collectively organised for rights, fought racism challenged the empire, lobbied for legislation, run for political office, led demonstrations, produced community newspapers, and engaged in radical political education,

 'Collective achievements' are also individual achievements. They require courage and dedication and integrity. Some achievements turn out to be imaginary or counter-productive. 'Radical political education' based on stupid lies- like the notion that giving or withholding Gongs changes anything- is not an achievement. It is an example of shitting the bed.

So no: the “only options on the table” are not “to accept or decline” a seat at it.

WTF? Does Gopal think getting a Gong means taking a seat at the Round Table in Camelot but, coz of Modred's evil enchantment, you just keep getting reamed by neo-liberal Unicorns?

No. Her credo is even more bizarre.

The real task is to bring this country to an understanding of what empire was, did and continues to do – and to question how a genuinely democratic decolonisation can be achieved in future.

Telling a bunch of stupid lies is not a 'real task'. It is a side effect of getting very drunk or or your brain turning quietly to shit. Decolonisation happened long ago. It can't be achieved in the future. By contrast, resisting the Spanish Inquisition is the need of the hour. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. They're very sneaky that way.