Your writing is incredible, Swarnali. My breath was taken away with your powerful style.
The subject matter is also so ridiculously heartbreaking and anger inducing. British colonialism in India boils my blood every time.
When I was in 6th grade, I had a British Economics teacher tell a class filled with students from all over the world that the smartest Indians had below average IQ. I lived in Dubai at the time — and until then, I hadn’t lived in India before. Being Indian was something that I was so ashamed of, living outside of India most of my life. When he said that, I felt like I wanted to disappear. I wanted to strip myself from my Indianness.
To so many levels was his statement wrong and so ridiculous — but at the time, none of the other Indian students in that class including myself knew enough to contradict him. Now every time I think of that incident — I wished I had said something instead of sitting there mute and swallowing it.
British colonialism has been so devastating on our country and to the world as a whole and the global order is STILL entrenched in a colonialist mindset. And the worst part of it all is that students in England or following the British curriculum world over do not learn about it properly. It is an optional part of the course and even when it is occasionally taught, the full extent of what the British perpetuated does not come across. British museums and English historical sites are still in denial of the extent of damage they caused on nations world over.
It breaks my heat because we still see the consequences of their rule to this day. On the lines of the famines, recent data actually found that because the British starved our nation so much, it changed our DNA — our bodies have learnt to retain as much sugar and fat as possible, something that people during the famines had to rely on to survive. But because we don’t live in a world where we are perpetually forced to endure artificial famines, it results in us being more vulnerable to diabetes. It’s so insane that it boggles my mind!
Just some thoughts. Thank you so much for your writing ❤️
People have to read this comment Aastha, thank you so much for sharing this experience. It’s infuriating beyond belief. The shame that you are made to feel is something I grew up with and much to everyone’s disappointment such shame is not only perpetuated by white men but also by our own teachers and people of society at home. I grew up feeling a innate sense of non belonging and shame in how we are as a people. It is only now that I am a mature adult, I can truly understand the damage being done to our psyche.
I hope next time someone shames your Indian identity you have this essay to show them. I hope you find more courage, reason and fire to burn down the lies and apathy for our collective past by being who you truly are - an Indian girl. More power to you!
Thank you for sharing this story, Aastha. Words can hardly even touch what it all means, but at the core there's that teacher thinking it's okay to say something so brutal to and about other people, especially to and about children. The way shame latches itself onto young bodies and rides along for the rest of an adult life is so real. It's unconscionable for any adult in charge of children, even for a few minutes much less for formative years, to subject a child to shame.
I loved the way you wrote ‘shame latches itself onto young bodies’, it feels exactly like that doesn’t it like the grip of a leech. It literally drains the confidence out of a young person, induces self loathing. Such irresponsibility on part of an adult who is supposed trained at teaching children infuriates me. Thanks for adding on to this Nia.
I think about shame a LOT. How much damage it does in our world, to people as individuals, and then spread out into societies. It's an horrific thing to inflict on people.
My heart burns with firey rage for your experience, of the bigoted lies told to children by an authority figure, to internalize shame inflicted and repeated again and again by colonizing principles. Grateful that you shared your story, so that we can stand beside you in refusing such lies, of calling out anyone who could imagine saying such things. ❤️🔥
The vehement refusal of such lies is so important, it sends out a message that we won’t just sit and watch anymore as false propaganda ensues. I am so threatened by the statement of that teacher, what he openly implied were principles of eugenics. Infuriating beyond belief! Thank you Freya for adding to this discourse.
John I was thinking of revisiting your essay series on the highland potato famine as well, I will do that today. That work is so relevant and ties everything together of what I was trying to say here, seems almost collaborative. I am going to link it here.
It’s wild to imagine that colonial history is also entrenched within and twisted the British Isles itself, let alone the English conquest in other parts of the world. The microcosmic forces of politics and power that has propelled so many people in a cycle of poverty and hunger still persists under other guises. This is not reflective of modern democracy - everything that the free world stands for. This needs to stop!
Thank you John for the spirit of collaboration that you always bring forward. I am so deeply grateful for your insight, wisdom, and dedication to connect the dots. We need a safe world where children can have access to clean water and have access to food, sanitation, and medical supplies. Feels like we haven’t come much far since WWII. The current reality is profoundly heartbreaking! 💔
This is stunningly well-told, Swarna. I'm glad you reposted it. Your work is truly essential. Like many others, I immediately thought of other lesser-known and well-known mass famines, and how integrated they have often been with policy. This brings that factor home repeatedly: so many of these are the consequences of choices made by powerful people to serve their own purposes. Humanity is weary of it, and life is weary of it. And to see how to dismantle it all, we need stories like this, telling the truth about what has happened, and in a voice full of love and power. A firebranded heart, you might say. 🧡
Nia in the haunting darkness of the current world events, I decided to watch Shoah, deemed to be the greatest holocaust documentary ever made, in order to drive some insight home. Have you watched it yet?
It was 6 hours of harrowing detail and recollection of events that unfolded as they were in Nazi concentration camps by the victims, bystanders, and perpetrators. The interviews were eye opening to say the least. You know what conclusions I came to after watching it fully? There is no way in life that we can in totality understand the indelible sufferings of people who have gone through such inhumane treatment. No way we can empathise with that, not even after hearing about them a million times, we just cannot fathom. These people have lived through hell and did so till the end of the their lives and after them their progeny carries the weight of their grief. It never ends. The holocaust is still ongoing in some sense with them in some parallel reality within their psyche. That is the real nature of such crimes, the ongoing of it all, the continuity. Unless we can grasp what that truly means, how it never ends, not after liberation, not after Germany’s defeat, even not after the perpetrators were brought to justice.
There’s simply no justice that can be done to millions of people reduced to piles of bones and ashes, people whose face we will never know, people, children who never had a chance. That’s what it really means. By telling these stories what I am trying to do, is not justice, not even a tribute- just acknowledgement, saying to the victims that ‘you have not faded into time, I see you.’
Thank you for speaking power into this Nia. I am forever grateful for your voice, presence, and firebrand heart. I am happy that as long as people like us care, these people would have not died in vain.
When I was in high school and we studied the Holocaust and read Elie Weisel, my English teacher said that she had a documentary that no student of hers had ever been able to get through. It wasn't Shoah; it was raw footage cut together of what U.S. troops witnessed when they went into the camps. I took it home and watched the whole thing.
It didn't know until many years later that a) my father's parents were Jewish, and b) that my own violent childhood insulated me from feeling emotions in the way I should have felt them. I couldn't watch horror movies at all (still can't), but I could watch that documentary and feel immense grief but still bear it.
Some years later, around the time Schindler's List came out, or maybe Life Is Beautiful, I decided I didn't want to watch any more Holocaust movies. I was living in Vienna at the time, and had a powerfully unsettling experience during one of their Kristallnacht memorial events, listening for my surname to be listed among the deported and murdered. (I still haven't seen either of those movies!)
Intergenerational trauma is so real and so little acknowledged, and affects all of us who carry it (which I think includes far more people than realize it; my mother's family is all white Northern European, and yet the violence and substance abuse in my family came from her side and not my Jewish half with their documented suffering--what did my mother's family carry that I know nothing about?), and there is something immense about bearing witness to what our ancestors endured. I think you're onto something huge when you say that, "There is no way in life that we can in totality understand the indelible sufferings of people who have gone through such inhumane treatment. No way we can empathise with that, not even after hearing about them a million times, we just cannot fathom." What I wonder now is whether that attempt at understanding is only the beginnings of feeling our way into what our own body-memories carry. Because you're right--the holocausts, the famines, the genocides, all of it, they're all still ongoing within the descendants of people who were there. What can we find within ourselves that honors them?
A friend of mine is a journalist for the BBC and has spent a lot of time reporting from the Middle East. Years ago I asked her about how she processes some of the horrors she's reported on, how she carries them through her life. Her answer was all about bearing witness. That maybe she couldn't change a single thing, but at the very least one person was there to say yes, this story is real, this suffering is real, and as long as I am here witnessing it there is less opportunity for those in power to deny it's happening.
I like what you say about it not being justice, not even a tribute. I wonder if English doesn't have a word for what this is. It is absolutely necessary, though, vital for any chance of humans to continue having a sense of humanity. Thank you, Swarna, for all you do to remind us all that being human should, and does, mean something more. ❤️🔥
I have tears in my eyes as I am responding to you Nia. All these shared traumas, these genetic memories that we carry within us that we are not even aware of and of some that we are, the violences that we bore witness to - I feel so human, so connected to your story and experiences. Is this the numen, the nameless that calls us to write, to create when despair grabs us? The invocations to unearth the misunderstood impulse or fear, I wonder it is the calling for an "attempt at understanding is only the beginnings of feeling our way into what our own body-memories carry" and "find within ourselves that honors them".
Your friend is doing a noble job, bearing witness. And I feel like that's why speaking our truth is important, because "as long as I am here witnessing it there is less opportunity for those in power to deny it's happening". I am so humbled by the gravity of your insights and experiences, I am truly speechless. You are so powerfully, incredibly human Nia - a rarity amongst our species. Thank you for sparing your voice to rally this cause, I am so grateful. The above comment is something I am bookmarking and will be keeping close to me all the time to remind myself why I need to write. Here's to bearing witness together!
Your response is leaving me speechless, Swarna! It's your writing that has created deep existential connections I've always felt were there but wasn't able to see or articulate. I feel you shaking the cords of humanity's very being with your words, truly, every time. Talk about a rarity!
Here's to bearing witness together. Water, moonlight, stars, and fireflies, all there to shine a light on both suffering and joy and guide us back to where we're meant to be. 🕯️
I am but a mere vessel my friend for creation to flow through. You inspire and nurture the best parts of me. You encourage the flow… like a river… and I tell myself- ‘be like water’ . To water, moonlight, stars, and fireflies 💜
This was so powerful. It is so important for us to imagine a world beyond all of this, as Rose Braz said in 2008, "a prerequisite to seeking any social change is the naming of it. In other words, even though the goal we seek may be far away, unless we name it and fight for it today, it will never come." Thank you for naming it, Swarnali!
Thank you so much for adding Braz’s quote to this. I truly and deeply believe that to be true, to call the evil by its name in order to exorcise it. Thank you so much for spending time and caring about this, it has gruesome details, it couldn’t have been easy to look and read all that. Thank you for your courage.
Thank YOU. Thank you for relentlessly witnessing these humans, these atrocities. Thank you for sharing their stories to ensure history is not only documented for the ones whose voices were silenced, but also for future readers to expand their paradigms to grow in love, not hate. I am so grateful for your voice and how you use it.
A courageous and well written reminder that the values of the powerful people who own and drive this system, the economic structure they've created, the social norms and values they believe in and thrive under are all meticulously designed in such a way that war, starvation, exploitation, racism, sexism and a never ending list of other cruelties and aggression's are carefully built into the system and will never stop without dismantling the whole vile edifice.
Thank you Berkana, an excellent and profoundly sad post.
‘dismantling the whole vile edifice’ this is exactly what we need to be doing as a part of building the modern world. It is about unmaking the structures on which the current world stands and such unmaking needs evolution of both applicable frameworks and practices of democracy.
Thank you so very much for seeing this Jonathan, it makes me immensely sad to have to post this again in relevance to the current events. I cannot fathom the deprivations and pain of people in all those parts of world that are torn by wars at this moment. My heart is breaking so bad.
An unbroken heart is a rare thing in this heartbreaking world. But a broken heart is a powerful thing, for it is only those with compassion and empathy and clear sight that have their hearts broken, and it is only those with broken hearts that will stand up and set the world on the right course again.
Keep writing Swarnali, empower those broken hearts to stand up and beat with dignity again.
Your eloquence moves me deeply my friend and your support and kindness stirs flow and observation. Thank you for speaking power into existence for my work. And thank you for sparing your empathetic and resonant voice for cause of people who need it the most. 💜
This is what Wikipedia had to say about the possession of colonial conquests- “The world's colonial population at the outbreak of the First World War (1914) – a high point for colonialism – totalled about 560 million people, of whom 70% lived in British possessions, 10% in French possessions, 9% in Dutch possessions, 4% in Japanese possessions, 2% in German possessions, 2% in American possessions”
With so many people whose life have been impacted by their decisions and policies, the British seem to be surprisingly least accountability for what they did for hundreds of years in these colonies. That’s why we get to hear more about Britain’s crooked ways more than any other colonial empire. In fact even within America, most of the indigenous land fell under British jurisdiction. Not surprisingly so, we all actually accept English as a global language too.
The British museums are full of foreign artefacts that are yet to be returned to their rightful home across the globe and yet somehow shamelessly they are put up for display and even monetised by the crown and the British government till date.
In school in the fifties and sixties, we were told we were the "good guys", unlike the others. Half the world map was still red. Meanwhile, most of those countries had become independent, while there were still colonial wars going on in Kenya and Malaysia. I grew up with a ration card, surrounded by bomb sites, being told that we'd won the war. The country is still in denial that the empire is gone and they're no longer a world power. Just look at Brexit, for example. The British Empire has been replaced by America's soft empire.
Just a fragment of the thoughts I have on all this, which I should try to arrange into some kind of coherent narrative. I'm feeling all the emotions. Shame, guilt, rage, frustration, but also a love and admiration for you and all my Indian friends that you're willing to even talk to me. You help keep the flame alive, Swarna. 🕯️
John I sense an essay in what you wrote here. I sense a deep stirring, I encourage you to listen to this inner voice and channel it into an essay. I I would love to read about your school and education and all your experiences of the empire reeling from its former glory around you.
I just want to tell you that I really do understand, it must be confusing to grow up in a world reconciling with the former truth. To not know what to believe and what to reject. I have dealt with it on the other spectrum when I was little. Of the shame that I naturally felt because my people suffered centuries of subjugation but also a sense of alienation because I did not want to be Indian at all. Back then I did not understand why I felt so, now I know that the self-loathing was generational- impressed upon at least a hundred years ago.
I can tell you with certainty that I am not bitter at all about it all, I am just sad, deeply so, because a child should never feel undeserving of who they are - pretty much what a child in gaza must feel now, how jew children must have felt during the holocaust.
We are in this together dear friend. We are no longer divided by our nationality or visa privileges - we are one tribe. Like Anotonia says - human first. That’s our tribe. Leaving a light on for you as you wander in the alley of your emotions and memories if boyhood. 💜🕯️
There's a memoir in me for sure, bursting to get out. You've seen bits of it escape into comments like this from time to time. I don't believe it's ever going to be one continuous narrative, nor should it be, because that's not how it sits in me. Perhaps a series of essays. I've added a tag for memoir, and my latest was the first I've written specifically under that tag.
It's scary. There's a real lack of male role models who are prepared to be vulnerable in their writing. I'm grateful to you and my other writer friends here and elsewhere who dare to go there and lead the way. Thank you, Swarna.
A memoir! How wonderful, I would read that in a heartbeat. Specially because your experiences spans through some of the most significant decades of human history- post war, post colonial, post industrial world pacified with the doubtful promises of technological progress and obscurity of wars. Some of those promises already started to show cracks, some exceeding expectations. I can’t wait to see it from your eyes.
Thank you for letting your soul shine through all of these difficult conversations. I am deeply grateful your wisdom and presence 💜
Swarna, I've been sitting with this for a few days, re-reading and thinking about it, how it overlays all that I think so many of us want to do--to bear witness to one another, to name and talk about the traumas of ancestors, the crimes of ancestors, how to reconcile with ideas of power that would do to others what has happened over and over with colonialism, empires, wars. I am so grateful for your voice, how powerful and unflinching it is in naming and describing hard truths, to not let the lives of people lost in horrific famine remain untold, to demand a better way, a better life, a better world. We need to use our voices for those who were not allowed to be heard, and you are doing that in a way that invites us all to do the same, and it is so powerful. ❤️🔥🧚🏼
Freya, I thought so much about your essay on bearing witness and naming things while re-working on this. I asked myself- “what if you wore the skin of the mother who watched her child inching to death, starving?” and I cried and cried for what seemed like a whole evening. Because that is happening as we speak, to a mother in gaza even if I am not her, it has happened to a mother in 1943 India who must have been a lot like me. These are humans we are talking about, humans like us whose flesh were feasted by vultures- how did we allow this to happen then? How are we allowing it to happen now? That’s my prime focus right now, to interrogate that part of us that allows such suffering while we simultaneously exist in our bubble without flinching.
Thank you friend for inspiring such an important spark within me. I am forever grateful for you existing alongside me speaking truth into power, bearing witness and naming things.💜
It's unfathomable, and yet it continues. It breaks our hearts wide open, and maybe that's where the power lies--in those broken pieces and lives we can find room to seek and question and never allow it to stand. I'm so grateful for your words and spirit, for letting us too know about these stories when so much is covered up. It's important. 🕯
Thank you Freya, you are a light bearer, a witness to arrival of dawn, in this very much dark world. I deeply appreciate your kindness, empathy, and presence. 💜
Your writing is incredible, Swarnali. My breath was taken away with your powerful style.
The subject matter is also so ridiculously heartbreaking and anger inducing. British colonialism in India boils my blood every time.
When I was in 6th grade, I had a British Economics teacher tell a class filled with students from all over the world that the smartest Indians had below average IQ. I lived in Dubai at the time — and until then, I hadn’t lived in India before. Being Indian was something that I was so ashamed of, living outside of India most of my life. When he said that, I felt like I wanted to disappear. I wanted to strip myself from my Indianness.
To so many levels was his statement wrong and so ridiculous — but at the time, none of the other Indian students in that class including myself knew enough to contradict him. Now every time I think of that incident — I wished I had said something instead of sitting there mute and swallowing it.
British colonialism has been so devastating on our country and to the world as a whole and the global order is STILL entrenched in a colonialist mindset. And the worst part of it all is that students in England or following the British curriculum world over do not learn about it properly. It is an optional part of the course and even when it is occasionally taught, the full extent of what the British perpetuated does not come across. British museums and English historical sites are still in denial of the extent of damage they caused on nations world over.
It breaks my heat because we still see the consequences of their rule to this day. On the lines of the famines, recent data actually found that because the British starved our nation so much, it changed our DNA — our bodies have learnt to retain as much sugar and fat as possible, something that people during the famines had to rely on to survive. But because we don’t live in a world where we are perpetually forced to endure artificial famines, it results in us being more vulnerable to diabetes. It’s so insane that it boggles my mind!
Just some thoughts. Thank you so much for your writing ❤️
People have to read this comment Aastha, thank you so much for sharing this experience. It’s infuriating beyond belief. The shame that you are made to feel is something I grew up with and much to everyone’s disappointment such shame is not only perpetuated by white men but also by our own teachers and people of society at home. I grew up feeling a innate sense of non belonging and shame in how we are as a people. It is only now that I am a mature adult, I can truly understand the damage being done to our psyche.
I hope next time someone shames your Indian identity you have this essay to show them. I hope you find more courage, reason and fire to burn down the lies and apathy for our collective past by being who you truly are - an Indian girl. More power to you!
Thank you for sharing this story, Aastha. Words can hardly even touch what it all means, but at the core there's that teacher thinking it's okay to say something so brutal to and about other people, especially to and about children. The way shame latches itself onto young bodies and rides along for the rest of an adult life is so real. It's unconscionable for any adult in charge of children, even for a few minutes much less for formative years, to subject a child to shame.
I loved the way you wrote ‘shame latches itself onto young bodies’, it feels exactly like that doesn’t it like the grip of a leech. It literally drains the confidence out of a young person, induces self loathing. Such irresponsibility on part of an adult who is supposed trained at teaching children infuriates me. Thanks for adding on to this Nia.
I think about shame a LOT. How much damage it does in our world, to people as individuals, and then spread out into societies. It's an horrific thing to inflict on people.
My heart burns with firey rage for your experience, of the bigoted lies told to children by an authority figure, to internalize shame inflicted and repeated again and again by colonizing principles. Grateful that you shared your story, so that we can stand beside you in refusing such lies, of calling out anyone who could imagine saying such things. ❤️🔥
The vehement refusal of such lies is so important, it sends out a message that we won’t just sit and watch anymore as false propaganda ensues. I am so threatened by the statement of that teacher, what he openly implied were principles of eugenics. Infuriating beyond belief! Thank you Freya for adding to this discourse.
I read this, Aastha, and it was on my mind as I wrote my reply further down this thread. Thank you for putting this into words.
I'm coming back to this for a second re-read. Starvation as a weapon of war is as old as war itself, and is still with us. Denial of water, too.
It's also been a weapon of colonialism, from the famines in Ireland and Scottish highands, to Native Americans, to Ukrainians under Stalin.
And you are so right that we must evolve past this. On a good day, I can feel that new world trying to be born.
Thank you.
John I was thinking of revisiting your essay series on the highland potato famine as well, I will do that today. That work is so relevant and ties everything together of what I was trying to say here, seems almost collaborative. I am going to link it here.
It’s wild to imagine that colonial history is also entrenched within and twisted the British Isles itself, let alone the English conquest in other parts of the world. The microcosmic forces of politics and power that has propelled so many people in a cycle of poverty and hunger still persists under other guises. This is not reflective of modern democracy - everything that the free world stands for. This needs to stop!
Thank you John for the spirit of collaboration that you always bring forward. I am so deeply grateful for your insight, wisdom, and dedication to connect the dots. We need a safe world where children can have access to clean water and have access to food, sanitation, and medical supplies. Feels like we haven’t come much far since WWII. The current reality is profoundly heartbreaking! 💔
This is stunningly well-told, Swarna. I'm glad you reposted it. Your work is truly essential. Like many others, I immediately thought of other lesser-known and well-known mass famines, and how integrated they have often been with policy. This brings that factor home repeatedly: so many of these are the consequences of choices made by powerful people to serve their own purposes. Humanity is weary of it, and life is weary of it. And to see how to dismantle it all, we need stories like this, telling the truth about what has happened, and in a voice full of love and power. A firebranded heart, you might say. 🧡
Nia in the haunting darkness of the current world events, I decided to watch Shoah, deemed to be the greatest holocaust documentary ever made, in order to drive some insight home. Have you watched it yet?
It was 6 hours of harrowing detail and recollection of events that unfolded as they were in Nazi concentration camps by the victims, bystanders, and perpetrators. The interviews were eye opening to say the least. You know what conclusions I came to after watching it fully? There is no way in life that we can in totality understand the indelible sufferings of people who have gone through such inhumane treatment. No way we can empathise with that, not even after hearing about them a million times, we just cannot fathom. These people have lived through hell and did so till the end of the their lives and after them their progeny carries the weight of their grief. It never ends. The holocaust is still ongoing in some sense with them in some parallel reality within their psyche. That is the real nature of such crimes, the ongoing of it all, the continuity. Unless we can grasp what that truly means, how it never ends, not after liberation, not after Germany’s defeat, even not after the perpetrators were brought to justice.
There’s simply no justice that can be done to millions of people reduced to piles of bones and ashes, people whose face we will never know, people, children who never had a chance. That’s what it really means. By telling these stories what I am trying to do, is not justice, not even a tribute- just acknowledgement, saying to the victims that ‘you have not faded into time, I see you.’
Thank you for speaking power into this Nia. I am forever grateful for your voice, presence, and firebrand heart. I am happy that as long as people like us care, these people would have not died in vain.
When I was in high school and we studied the Holocaust and read Elie Weisel, my English teacher said that she had a documentary that no student of hers had ever been able to get through. It wasn't Shoah; it was raw footage cut together of what U.S. troops witnessed when they went into the camps. I took it home and watched the whole thing.
It didn't know until many years later that a) my father's parents were Jewish, and b) that my own violent childhood insulated me from feeling emotions in the way I should have felt them. I couldn't watch horror movies at all (still can't), but I could watch that documentary and feel immense grief but still bear it.
Some years later, around the time Schindler's List came out, or maybe Life Is Beautiful, I decided I didn't want to watch any more Holocaust movies. I was living in Vienna at the time, and had a powerfully unsettling experience during one of their Kristallnacht memorial events, listening for my surname to be listed among the deported and murdered. (I still haven't seen either of those movies!)
Intergenerational trauma is so real and so little acknowledged, and affects all of us who carry it (which I think includes far more people than realize it; my mother's family is all white Northern European, and yet the violence and substance abuse in my family came from her side and not my Jewish half with their documented suffering--what did my mother's family carry that I know nothing about?), and there is something immense about bearing witness to what our ancestors endured. I think you're onto something huge when you say that, "There is no way in life that we can in totality understand the indelible sufferings of people who have gone through such inhumane treatment. No way we can empathise with that, not even after hearing about them a million times, we just cannot fathom." What I wonder now is whether that attempt at understanding is only the beginnings of feeling our way into what our own body-memories carry. Because you're right--the holocausts, the famines, the genocides, all of it, they're all still ongoing within the descendants of people who were there. What can we find within ourselves that honors them?
A friend of mine is a journalist for the BBC and has spent a lot of time reporting from the Middle East. Years ago I asked her about how she processes some of the horrors she's reported on, how she carries them through her life. Her answer was all about bearing witness. That maybe she couldn't change a single thing, but at the very least one person was there to say yes, this story is real, this suffering is real, and as long as I am here witnessing it there is less opportunity for those in power to deny it's happening.
I like what you say about it not being justice, not even a tribute. I wonder if English doesn't have a word for what this is. It is absolutely necessary, though, vital for any chance of humans to continue having a sense of humanity. Thank you, Swarna, for all you do to remind us all that being human should, and does, mean something more. ❤️🔥
I have tears in my eyes as I am responding to you Nia. All these shared traumas, these genetic memories that we carry within us that we are not even aware of and of some that we are, the violences that we bore witness to - I feel so human, so connected to your story and experiences. Is this the numen, the nameless that calls us to write, to create when despair grabs us? The invocations to unearth the misunderstood impulse or fear, I wonder it is the calling for an "attempt at understanding is only the beginnings of feeling our way into what our own body-memories carry" and "find within ourselves that honors them".
Your friend is doing a noble job, bearing witness. And I feel like that's why speaking our truth is important, because "as long as I am here witnessing it there is less opportunity for those in power to deny it's happening". I am so humbled by the gravity of your insights and experiences, I am truly speechless. You are so powerfully, incredibly human Nia - a rarity amongst our species. Thank you for sparing your voice to rally this cause, I am so grateful. The above comment is something I am bookmarking and will be keeping close to me all the time to remind myself why I need to write. Here's to bearing witness together!
Your response is leaving me speechless, Swarna! It's your writing that has created deep existential connections I've always felt were there but wasn't able to see or articulate. I feel you shaking the cords of humanity's very being with your words, truly, every time. Talk about a rarity!
Here's to bearing witness together. Water, moonlight, stars, and fireflies, all there to shine a light on both suffering and joy and guide us back to where we're meant to be. 🕯️
I am but a mere vessel my friend for creation to flow through. You inspire and nurture the best parts of me. You encourage the flow… like a river… and I tell myself- ‘be like water’ . To water, moonlight, stars, and fireflies 💜
Absolutely the same to you, my friend. 🧡
This was so powerful. It is so important for us to imagine a world beyond all of this, as Rose Braz said in 2008, "a prerequisite to seeking any social change is the naming of it. In other words, even though the goal we seek may be far away, unless we name it and fight for it today, it will never come." Thank you for naming it, Swarnali!
Just, wow. Another must read.
Thank you so much for adding Braz’s quote to this. I truly and deeply believe that to be true, to call the evil by its name in order to exorcise it. Thank you so much for spending time and caring about this, it has gruesome details, it couldn’t have been easy to look and read all that. Thank you for your courage.
Thank YOU. Thank you for relentlessly witnessing these humans, these atrocities. Thank you for sharing their stories to ensure history is not only documented for the ones whose voices were silenced, but also for future readers to expand their paradigms to grow in love, not hate. I am so grateful for your voice and how you use it.
I am in great company while doing that. I look upto and learn from your research so much more than I can ever return. You are the best. 💜
A courageous and well written reminder that the values of the powerful people who own and drive this system, the economic structure they've created, the social norms and values they believe in and thrive under are all meticulously designed in such a way that war, starvation, exploitation, racism, sexism and a never ending list of other cruelties and aggression's are carefully built into the system and will never stop without dismantling the whole vile edifice.
Thank you Berkana, an excellent and profoundly sad post.
‘dismantling the whole vile edifice’ this is exactly what we need to be doing as a part of building the modern world. It is about unmaking the structures on which the current world stands and such unmaking needs evolution of both applicable frameworks and practices of democracy.
Thank you so very much for seeing this Jonathan, it makes me immensely sad to have to post this again in relevance to the current events. I cannot fathom the deprivations and pain of people in all those parts of world that are torn by wars at this moment. My heart is breaking so bad.
An unbroken heart is a rare thing in this heartbreaking world. But a broken heart is a powerful thing, for it is only those with compassion and empathy and clear sight that have their hearts broken, and it is only those with broken hearts that will stand up and set the world on the right course again.
Keep writing Swarnali, empower those broken hearts to stand up and beat with dignity again.
Your eloquence moves me deeply my friend and your support and kindness stirs flow and observation. Thank you for speaking power into existence for my work. And thank you for sparing your empathetic and resonant voice for cause of people who need it the most. 💜
Gosh 💔💔💔💔💔 so many wars, so much pain, and when you dig deep down into it, there’s Britain, lurking.
This is what Wikipedia had to say about the possession of colonial conquests- “The world's colonial population at the outbreak of the First World War (1914) – a high point for colonialism – totalled about 560 million people, of whom 70% lived in British possessions, 10% in French possessions, 9% in Dutch possessions, 4% in Japanese possessions, 2% in German possessions, 2% in American possessions”
With so many people whose life have been impacted by their decisions and policies, the British seem to be surprisingly least accountability for what they did for hundreds of years in these colonies. That’s why we get to hear more about Britain’s crooked ways more than any other colonial empire. In fact even within America, most of the indigenous land fell under British jurisdiction. Not surprisingly so, we all actually accept English as a global language too.
The British museums are full of foreign artefacts that are yet to be returned to their rightful home across the globe and yet somehow shamelessly they are put up for display and even monetised by the crown and the British government till date.
In school in the fifties and sixties, we were told we were the "good guys", unlike the others. Half the world map was still red. Meanwhile, most of those countries had become independent, while there were still colonial wars going on in Kenya and Malaysia. I grew up with a ration card, surrounded by bomb sites, being told that we'd won the war. The country is still in denial that the empire is gone and they're no longer a world power. Just look at Brexit, for example. The British Empire has been replaced by America's soft empire.
Just a fragment of the thoughts I have on all this, which I should try to arrange into some kind of coherent narrative. I'm feeling all the emotions. Shame, guilt, rage, frustration, but also a love and admiration for you and all my Indian friends that you're willing to even talk to me. You help keep the flame alive, Swarna. 🕯️
John I sense an essay in what you wrote here. I sense a deep stirring, I encourage you to listen to this inner voice and channel it into an essay. I I would love to read about your school and education and all your experiences of the empire reeling from its former glory around you.
I just want to tell you that I really do understand, it must be confusing to grow up in a world reconciling with the former truth. To not know what to believe and what to reject. I have dealt with it on the other spectrum when I was little. Of the shame that I naturally felt because my people suffered centuries of subjugation but also a sense of alienation because I did not want to be Indian at all. Back then I did not understand why I felt so, now I know that the self-loathing was generational- impressed upon at least a hundred years ago.
I can tell you with certainty that I am not bitter at all about it all, I am just sad, deeply so, because a child should never feel undeserving of who they are - pretty much what a child in gaza must feel now, how jew children must have felt during the holocaust.
We are in this together dear friend. We are no longer divided by our nationality or visa privileges - we are one tribe. Like Anotonia says - human first. That’s our tribe. Leaving a light on for you as you wander in the alley of your emotions and memories if boyhood. 💜🕯️
There's a memoir in me for sure, bursting to get out. You've seen bits of it escape into comments like this from time to time. I don't believe it's ever going to be one continuous narrative, nor should it be, because that's not how it sits in me. Perhaps a series of essays. I've added a tag for memoir, and my latest was the first I've written specifically under that tag.
It's scary. There's a real lack of male role models who are prepared to be vulnerable in their writing. I'm grateful to you and my other writer friends here and elsewhere who dare to go there and lead the way. Thank you, Swarna.
A memoir! How wonderful, I would read that in a heartbeat. Specially because your experiences spans through some of the most significant decades of human history- post war, post colonial, post industrial world pacified with the doubtful promises of technological progress and obscurity of wars. Some of those promises already started to show cracks, some exceeding expectations. I can’t wait to see it from your eyes.
Thank you for letting your soul shine through all of these difficult conversations. I am deeply grateful your wisdom and presence 💜
Swarna, I've been sitting with this for a few days, re-reading and thinking about it, how it overlays all that I think so many of us want to do--to bear witness to one another, to name and talk about the traumas of ancestors, the crimes of ancestors, how to reconcile with ideas of power that would do to others what has happened over and over with colonialism, empires, wars. I am so grateful for your voice, how powerful and unflinching it is in naming and describing hard truths, to not let the lives of people lost in horrific famine remain untold, to demand a better way, a better life, a better world. We need to use our voices for those who were not allowed to be heard, and you are doing that in a way that invites us all to do the same, and it is so powerful. ❤️🔥🧚🏼
Freya, I thought so much about your essay on bearing witness and naming things while re-working on this. I asked myself- “what if you wore the skin of the mother who watched her child inching to death, starving?” and I cried and cried for what seemed like a whole evening. Because that is happening as we speak, to a mother in gaza even if I am not her, it has happened to a mother in 1943 India who must have been a lot like me. These are humans we are talking about, humans like us whose flesh were feasted by vultures- how did we allow this to happen then? How are we allowing it to happen now? That’s my prime focus right now, to interrogate that part of us that allows such suffering while we simultaneously exist in our bubble without flinching.
Thank you friend for inspiring such an important spark within me. I am forever grateful for you existing alongside me speaking truth into power, bearing witness and naming things.💜
It's unfathomable, and yet it continues. It breaks our hearts wide open, and maybe that's where the power lies--in those broken pieces and lives we can find room to seek and question and never allow it to stand. I'm so grateful for your words and spirit, for letting us too know about these stories when so much is covered up. It's important. 🕯
Thank you Freya, you are a light bearer, a witness to arrival of dawn, in this very much dark world. I deeply appreciate your kindness, empathy, and presence. 💜
same love. it means so much to connect with you. 🕯️ 🧚🏻 💜