Author: N.S. Rajaram
Publication:
Date:
By accepting of the Order of Leopold Sonia
Gandhi has committed an act of sacrilege against the name Gandhi.
Sixty years after Mahatma Gandhi fell to an
assassin's bullet, it has come to light that the most illustrious bearer of
the Gandhi name today accepted the Order of Leopold, instituted by the Belgian
royal family. The name Leopold, King of the Belgians is synonymous with the
worst excesses of European exploitation of Africa. Leopold, the king whose
name the award carries was a slave merchant who rivals Hitler as a mass murderer.
Much of the controversy since the story broke
has focused on the violation of Indian law by a high official (Sonia Gandhi)-
accepting an award that requires swearing allegiance to a foreign power. It
is a legal technicality that ignores the moral dimension. Her acceptance was
a sordid and ignoble act that smacks of servility and utter callousness to
human suffering. (For the record, though founded by Leopold I, it was appropriated
by Leopold II in 1908 by integrating it with his own order of the Congo Free
State, which was the victim of his atrocities, more of which later.)
The name `Congo Free State' is one of the
great ironies of history, for Belgian Congo under King Leopold was a massive
slave colony that was ruthlessly exploited for its rubber and ivory. According
to a recent BBC report by Mark Dummet (http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/hi/africa/3516965.stm):
"Of the Europeans who scrambled for control
of Africa at the end of the 19th century, Belgium's King Leopold II left arguably
the largest and the most horrid legacy of all." Leopold claimed he was
taking over the Congo Free State to civilize the natives by bringing Christianity
and Western capitalism to Africa. In the process "he turned his `Congo
Free State' into a massive [slave] labour camp, made a fortune for himself
from the harvest of its wild rubber, and contributed in a large way to death
of perhaps 10 million innocent people."
Leopold's plan was to harvest as much natural
rubber as possible from the forests before organized cultivation of rubber
could break his monopoly. He was interested also in looting the ivory gathered
by African tribes. His government created a force called Force Publique to
terrorize and plunder the African natives into surrendering everything they
possessed and provide also slave labor for harvesting wild rubber. Dummet
quotes an eyewitness report:
"One officer['s] method. was to arrive
in canoes at a village; the soldiers were then landed, and commenced looting,
taking all the chickens, grain etc, out of the houses; after this they attacked
the natives until able to seize their women; these women were kept as hostages
until the chief of the district brought in the required number of kilograms
of rubber. The rubber having been brought, the women were sold back to their
owners for a couple of goats apiece, and so he continued from village to village
until the requisite amount of rubber had been collected.
Companies operating in the Congo used prison
stockades to keep hostages. If the men in the village resisted the demands
for rubber it meant the death of their wife, child or chief. The Force Publique
supplied military might under contract and each company had its own mercenaries.
Adam Hochschild in his book King Leopold's
Ghost- A story of greed, terror and heroism in colonial Africa quotes the
Governor of the Equatorial district of the Congo Free State when the demand
for rubber became ferocious: "As soon as it was a question of rubber,
I wrote to the government, `To gather rubber in the district. one must cut
off hands, noses and ears'." The victims were often teenagers or even
younger who were `punished' in this manner for not meeting the quotas assigned
to them. (http://www.wwws.org/articles/1999/sep1999/king-s06_prn.shtml )
Hochschild also notes: "During expeditions,
Force Publique soldiers were instructed to bring back a hand or head for each
bullet fired, to make sure that none had been wasted or hidden for use in
rebellions. A soldier with the chilling title `keeper of hands' accompanied
each expedition." Sometimes the soldiers saved bullets for their personal
use like hunting by amputating the victims to meet their quota.
So if anyone deserved to be called maut ka
sudagar-merchant of death-it was Leopold, King of the Belgians.
If Smt Sonia Gandhi, a European of humble
origins, feels honored to be admitted to an order that carries the name of
this mass murderer because he was a European prince it is her prerogative.
But she should do so in her own capacity as Antonia Maino. For God's sake,
don't drag the name Gandhi into it.
