Empire: World History - 18. The Empire Implodes

Episode Date: November 22, 2022

In the finale of our series on the British in India, William and Anita are joined by Sathnam Sanghera. With him they discuss the legacies of the Empire: how has it affected the politics, curriculum, and national institutions of modern Britain? To get your free two week trial for Find my past, go to www.findmypast.co.uk and sign up.   LRB Empire offer: lrb.me/empire   Twitter: @Empirepoduk   Goalhangerpodcasts.com   Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me Anita Arnan. And me, William Drupal. Now, we are very excited. Our special guest star today, I think you call it the Brad Pitt of the publishing world really these days. Adam Sengera is with us, his empire land.

He didn't push back on that. No, well, it took the world by storm how imperialism has shaped modern Britain. Book of the Year. Book of the Year, it's won countless awards and prizes, and it has been the bedrock of a lot of political debate in our sphere here in the United Kingdom. Can I just start off with just one thing? I don't know whether you feel slightly resentful, that, you know, here you are, you're talking to me, William. And William can bang on about Empire quite a lot. He doesn't get a single death threat and you have copious amounts of horror in your postbag. Yeah, no, it's, but actually I feel grateful because I feel like

I'm not an historian. And historians who have quoted at length in my book have been so kind. And I feel like I'm kind of riding on their work. So I feel like the death threats are a kind of prize or a counteraction to that. I mean, what kind of thing, just for the people who don't know and who are coming to this, they might be quite horrified that you can get death threats for writing a book, but you do. What are people taking most umbrage at? Well, people, I get a lot of racist stuff, people saying that I should be more grateful as a brown person for what empire and this country have done for me. Actually, I get people coming up to my events now, actually turning up in person and then shouting at me for not being respectful enough about British history, for not

recognising all the positive things that British Empire has done for the world. And we should say that you're not unique in this, in that last time we met at Sardnam, which was at that kite festival outside Oxford, I was on stage with David Olusaga, who also has had death threats for writing about empire as a non-white Brit. Yes, a non-white. But those of you who don't know, if you're listening from not Great Britain, he is an eminent and respected historian, but he is a black historian who writes about empire and slavery and things that are uncomfortable as well.

So that doesn't surprise me at all, actually. A death threat. I was surprised by, I wasn't surprised by, in a sense, insults and Twitter wars and so on, but actual having to have a bodyguard, it doesn't, it doesn't. I don't. I mean, I sort of opened my eyes to this because on Twitter, Salam, for a while, you were sort of sharing the kind of vitriol that you were getting. You don't do that now. I don't know whether that's because you're just over it, or you just, you know, you've dealt with it or, you know, plod has gone round and knocked on doors. But, you know, it was, it doesn't shock me. It doesn't shock me.

I think what's happening is that for the first time ever, we've got brown people in Britain writing about imperial history. And it's an inversion of the racism of, you know, 19th century empire. And it really disturbs a lot of people, it upsets people who feel like they've got connections to British Empire. And they take it very personally. It's interesting. I mean, when I do stuff in India, I get, particularly on Twitter, a lot of angry pushback from people who think that what I say about the Mughal Empire isn't to their taste. But in both Britain and

in India, I'm allowed to talk about East India. But are they saying, well, when the pushback comes from India, because that's interesting. Is it because if you talk about the moguls, you're too pro-Muslim in this atmosphere? The idea is if I say anything nice about the Mughal Empire, about it being a multicultural space, about emperors such as Akbar being tolerant emperors who abhorst the Jazeer and brought Hindus

to become their generals and who led their armies against other Muslim armies in the Deccan. That sort of stuff goes down very badly among right wingers in India. But I've been extremely rude about the British Empire for 20, 30 years now. It's a family business. And literally I've never had the sort of letter that Satnam posts on his Twitter. Not one. I've had bad reviews from people that disagree with them. Yeah.

But which is why I was saying to Satnam, I don't know whether now you look back on it because it's been, now you're out in paperback, very handsome paperback it is too, by the way. But now that you've had a year to kind of digest all of this and excrete it or whatever it is you do with venom that's aimed at you, do you understand it any better? And do you deal with it any differently? I think I deal with it a bit better.

But actually, I think if anything, I underreacted. I think if you're a journalist like you are, Anita, and I think you dabble in journalism with him, that it's quite a macho world and everyone gets some. kickback, right? Everyone gets some abuse or, you know, negativity online. And so I just thought it was part of being well read, I guess. But it was what William said, you know, you were quoted in a Guardian article, made me realize it wasn't normal. Actually, I found it quite emotional because it made me realize that it's not acceptable. And in journalism, no one asked you if you're okay.

But then my publisher started asking if I was okay, and I found that quite emotionally, overwhelming. Because I was like, oh my God, no one's ever asked me for my cake in about 20 years. And this, I think, you know, is very much in the context of a big change in this country in the last five years even, whereby empire, which was something which was in the top attic, dusted down, forgotten about, has come back to the centre of British political life, but not necessarily in a good way. It's now become a political football punched around by left and right and brings us in a sense no clearer to closer to understanding this extraordinary wide-ranging phenomena over thousands of years. Yeah, and it's been weaponised by a government who

basically quite deliberately and cynically thought it's a way of holding on to the Red War voters, people who are probably economically left-wing but socially right-wing, people who, you know, believe in the Queen, they believe the flag shouldn't be insulted and they think you should be proud of British history. I mean, it's a very calculated thing they've done. There's absolutely no proof from where I'm standing that it's going to work. And there's no, there's no fighting the fact that we've got the most racially diverse generation in history in Britain now. And there's no fighting the fact that people are really interested in empire and colonialism, which is partly why you're doing this podcast, I imagine. And why your book is sold, I mean, how many, how much did it

sold out? I mean, several, several. Bajillion. I think this is a bajillion. The number is Bajillion, I think. But the pushback would be, and you know it, is that, you know, these criticisms are coming from people who say, look, we cannot abide feeling guilty for being who we are, for the things that happened centuries ago that had nothing to do with us. I mean, it's the whole argument of goes on in America that, you know, slavery wasn't us, but why do we have to keep apologising for it? And here, too, you know, people saying, look, you know, the fabric of, of my street has changed. I mean, I hear it. I do a phone and So, you know, my granny lives on a street now when nobody speaks English.

And there's a whole, in it, there's a complexity. And I suppose, you know, the argument on the other side is this doesn't feel like our country anymore. Yeah. My argument isn't that we should feel bad about it. Actually, there's too much feeling when it comes to talking about empire. People talk about their pride or their shame. And my argument is you don't need to see it through the prism of your feelings.

You just need to try to understand it. And that's an argument that David Oli Sogo makes as well. History is an argument. Which is a crucial, crucial argument, not just in this country. Same is true. I think in India, where I live for most of the year, there is very much a tendency that people assume if you write about the moguls, you are there to glorify the moguls. That word comes back and back.

He writes by the mogul. He glorifies the moment. Obviously, he's pro-mogal. Can I just tell you one story? I mean, which I didn't know how, because you're right, is the emotion. When it's emotional and emotional, I don't get any. of the stuff that you get satnam, partly because I don't get the sales figures, I mean, honestly, but I can definitely arrange it. But I have had this one really peculiar thing where I turned

up at a literary festival and this, you know, lovely old man came sort of ambling up to me and said, do you recognise the ribbon on my hat? And I said, well, no, no, I don't. It's very smart ribbon. And he was like, oh, you should. It's from the same regiment that shot those Indians at Janiawana Barg. And I was like, oh. And he goes, you know what? And I will wear it proudly. And I was like, I didn't know what to do with it. I just didn't know. It was something that I could never have countenanced anyone would say, particularly since, you know, my granddad was there. And I've just told a whole story for an hour and a half about, you know, how but for the grace of God I wouldn't be here or whatever.

But then he then sort of, and he was an elderly man. He then stood behind my left shoulder throughout the book signing just with his arms crossed wearing his hat. And I just, I don't know what I don't know. Normally I can argue with anybody or talk to anybody or discuss anything. but that was just such a raw wall of you know. I didn't know what to do at all, honestly. I have similar things and they often are elderly people.

And I struggle because I've been brought up as a good Indian boy to respect my elders. At the same time, you have this very angry elderly person and they're not always white. I've had Indian, as we know, there's huge empire nostalgia in certain parts of the Asian community in Britain, you know? And I never know what to do.

I mean, I would say, look, you know, you've asked me this same question repeatedly. I give you my answer and you don't want an answer. What you want is obedience and I'm not going to give that to you. Goodness. So let's go back in a sense chronologically and work forward from the independence and partition of India in 1947. The British packing up and getting out of it to their own surprise with their own selves virtually unscathed. I think under 10 British casualties in in 94 to 7 in partition. But among the people over whom they were meant to be guarding their safety and their and their well-being up until August,

1.5 million deaths, hundreds of thousands of rapes, abductions and torture and horror. what happens next in the story of empire? How quickly does the empire sort of implode, if you like, head towards British shores? Well, I guess the year after, we've got a crucial piece of legislation in Britain. We've got the 1948 Nationality Act, which I think is the key to understanding everything,

in that what it did is that it enacted what had been true for decades, that anyone born an empire had the rights of a British citizen. So that opened the door, you know, literally in that that was the reason why people on the SS Windrush came to Britain in the first place. You know, they didn't come to apply for citizenship. They came as citizens. And I think that is a very important fact. It's a fact that wasn't recognized by the government, which is why we've had the windrush scandal, you know. When you end up deporting people who came as citizens, it's a pretty messed up state of affairs, isn't it?

But I think the 1984-8 Nationality Act is key to understand. understanding what happened, which is essentially Britain became a multicultural society because it had a multicultural empire. And what was the motives of the government in person? And presumably it wasn't as a sort of benign piece of multiculturalism. It's because post-war Britain needed manual labourers. Yeah, basically they thought that, you know, being racist might be damaging for Britain. And, you know, Britain had long for decades, had a kind of dual attitude towards racism. It officially was anti-racist, but unofficially it was racist, you know, in terms of legislation. So in terms of legislation, when you say that there was racist legislation,

what are you thinking about? Well, throughout the, you know, the white colonies, the places at Canada and Australia, you know, there was legislation which stopped Asians from immigrating there, Australia had a white Australia policy, you know, and unofficially Britain allowed that, but officially the colonial secretary was against it. So it had a hypocritical attitude towards racism within its empire, and that continued. So 1948 was an attempt to officially continue being anti-racist. It had ambitions for the Commonwealth to be, you know, a post-racial kind of entity, but unofficially, that's when we started having a massive clampdowns on immigration, and that's where we started having racist immigration legislation, which led directly to the Windrush

scandal. And both of you are Punjabi, both come from the north of India. When do your families begin to make their way here? Well, I mean, I've got sort of a dual experience, and that my husband's grandfather was the first to come here, and he settled in Taunton. So, you know, the only brown person for miles and miles. And he sold clothes. He was a peddler on a bicycle, selling from door to daughter to door, which was something that Punjabis came and did, because it wasn't perishable. You could sleep on your wares. You could go about, you could make money, and you could go back with it. But he didn't. He sort of made, you know, a success of it. And then other generations followed. With my story, it was my dad was a newly qualified doctor.

The NHS was crying out after the Second World War, didn't have enough doctors. So he was asking from the Commonwealth doctors to come over and staffed this sort of freshly baked idea of the NHS. So he came over in the late 60s. So in a very different story in the sense, it's qualified, skilled. Yeah, I mean, you know, it asked for, you know, so sort of came over.

And that, and then later on got married and later on I was born here. So what about you, Soutland? What was your trajectory? Well, I was much later, but it's interesting in relation to your story, that the Minister of Health, driving that policy to get overseas,

crewment was one Enoch Powell. Yes, I know. I know. And yes, I know Midlands boy, Wolverhampton, not far from your manner. Yeah, MP for my local town. And yeah, my parents came in 1968. So a later phase of immigration. And they came to Wolverhampton, pretty much at the time, Enoch Powell was making that a rivers of blood speech. And what was, what was it that drew them? Because I know for, you know, my family, you know, it was a better life. It was, you know, they were not wealthy. And, you know, my dad was the only one who'd sort of gone to university and had a qualification and thought that he could help his family by getting a job. Yeah, my grandfather had something like 14 kids. So the land couldn't be

divided into, you know, it was economic immigration, wasn't it? But also, you know, these workers were needed in places like Wolfhampton. There weren't English people around to do the hard work in the foundries. And my grandfather, who came before my father, you know, he worked until the age of 74, you know, doing manual labour. Why was that? Why suddenly was there this need? Because, you know, my impression not knowing anything about that period would have been that British industry would have been contracting in the late 40s, early 50s, not massively expanding and needing new labour. Why was suddenly this great need for Halifax to reach out? I think that the World War II had taken its toll on the population. Also, you know, like now, you know, English people don't necessarily want to do certain kinds of work, I would say. You know, I didn't sense a huge amount of desire in the 80s for my white neighbors to be wanting to do the work that my parents were doing.

Even I was doing in factories, you know. Yeah, and it's a different approach to Germany. You know, Germany always had the idea of, you know, they will go back, gas arbiter. You're a guest worker in this country. you know, three or four generations later, these families are still known as gas-starbiter as if they're going to go back. After partition, many of the officers

who'd actually fought alongside Indian soldiers were the first sponsors of the guys coming over here for work. But many other Punjabis, many other Indians coming here for the first time, had a very different reception. Yeah. I mean, when I was looking at what happened in my hometown. I was really interested to know what happened to the Irish, exactly a hundred

years beforehand. And they had a very similar experience to the Punjabis in that they arrived to England unable to speak the language. They had a different weird religion. You know, they were accused of being dirty and they were doing the work, like laying roads and railways that the British shied away from. The navigationals, yeah, there were even songs. I mean, we've taught songs when I was at school, navigational, the navvies, which was just so it turned into a pejorative. But, yeah, they dug up the canalways, the roadways. And you have places in East London where you have successive waves of immigration occupying the same area, don't you? First of all, the 1930s, the Jews, then the Cypriots in the 60s, then the Bangladeshis in the 70s.

Yeah, and so they settle into ghettos, and then they're accused of creating slums. And that's actually the only place they can live. I was really shocked to discover that in Wolverhampton in the 60s, you know, brown people were banned from not allowed to buy houses. in certain areas. There were protests if a brown person got a council flat. This wasn't that long ago. It's in the 1960s. And both of you have mentioned Enoch Powell, again, for anyone who doesn't know who he is, do you want to talk a little about him? Yeah, Enoch Powell is often considered like one of the greatest politicians of Britain who

never became prime minister. He was conservative. He's great ambition in life, which I think is the key to understanding him, was to be viceroy of India. I didn't know that until I read that in your book. That's so interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, in some ways he was very fond of India. You know, he learned Indian languages. He worked there during the war. But he was devastated when Empire kind of was dismantled in India. He wrote a report actually explaining why to Winston Churchill, why we should hold on to India.

But he then became an NMP for a place like Wolverhampton, where I'm from, which was an area of mass immigration from empire. So his values, his traditional imperial values, clashed. with what was happening there. And he made a famous speech, the Rivers of Blood Speech, which argued that we had to end immigration immediately and send these immigrants back because it is going to result in the demise of Britain itself.

And I would argue he was wrong. I mean, he was talking essentially about the Sikhs. He was talking about people like my parents, you know, and now Sikhs are regularly praised for being an ideal immigrant community, you know. So I think he was clearly wrong. And do you think it was significant that he'd had that imperial past that he'd been to India.

Had he worked as an Indian civil servant? He'd certainly bicycled round and explored, didn't he? Yeah, yeah, I think that Indian experience is essential to understanding his politics in Britain because he essentially saw the Indian community arriving and saw factionalism. He was worried that, you know, Britain was going to become divided in the way that India had become divided at partition, you know, with communities at each other's throats. and he couldn't be persuaded out of that way of seeing multiculturalism. And in the Rivers of Bloodspeech, he famously talks about, you know, the black man

ending up with a whip hand over the white man. And that is an imperial image. You know, it's an image of slavery. And that's the way he saw race. And it's not confined to Powell. Everybody sort of crystallizes this kind of language around Powell. Do you remember, Sartan, there was John Townand, who was around in the 80s, I think. And he also said as a member of parliament

that foreigners employed in the industry should be sent back from whence they came once they'd finished the jobs that they'd done. And used phrases like mongrel race and stuff. You know, it's like in the 80s. Yeah. And, you know, in the 80s to 90s, any politician who ever said that Inot Power was right

lost their job immediately, like dozens of politicians did. But now, you know, Inopal is Najafaraj's political hero. Will you take that idea forward, Sartan. So the link between empire, which many people I think would assume is something that is almost ancient history now that has left only monuments in India, the Victoria Memorial New Delhi. What are the legacies in our psyche this side in Britain? Well, huge things like Aningis talked about father being a doctor. There was one survey that found that in the Ronda Valley in Wales, nearly three quarters of all GPs were South Asian.

in 2003. That's incredible, isn't it? But even now, like 44% of the NHS England workforce is black or minority ethnic. And obviously, you've got the corner shops, you've got Asians in the media, people are Anita, Mira and Lenny Henry. And I would say it's the defining thing

that's happened in Post-World Britain is that we become a multicultural society. But the narrative that I grew up with was that we came here uninvited. You know, that was the narrative of Enoch Powell. That's been the narrative of the media, forgetting that often people came in as citizens and forgetting that we have links going back centuries, you know. Now we've got a prime minister who is also an artefact of empire and Rishi Sunak,

the man behind number 10. Did it surprise and shock you? Yeah, it did. And I think people on the left are struggling to welcome him and they shouldn't because you've got to remember the imperial context of this, you know. You remember that quote from Lord Cousin saying there were no Indian natives in the government of India because there was no one amongst 300 million Indians on the subcontinent who was capable of the job. You know, brown people weren't allowed to do the most basic things in India. I mean, Sikhs were tried out on the trains and then denied the right to drive trains.

And back here in England, you know, people couldn't get jobs as teachers, as transport workers. And now you have a brown prime minister. And you've got to celebrate that, you know, especially in the country. context of the, you know, the Paki-bashing that I grew up with where beating up brown people was a sport in the West Midlands. And now this is brown people, brown person are number 10. It's an amazing thing. And not only number 10. I mean, I think William touched on this, didn't he, that, you know, you have sort of bravun who's in, who, before her, Priti Patel, you have had quasi-quartang only very recently, and before that, Sajid Jowad. But that has happened in a very short

space of time. So you know when everyone got very excited about Obama's election in America said, we are now post-racial. We are post-race. There's a new era. Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Satem, are we there yet? Absolutely not because, you know, he wasn't elected by the public. And let's face it, even Barack Obama's election in America did not end racism. So we've still got a lot to do. I think people are struggling with it because basically he's not progressive, you know, and yet what is achieved is a great progressive goal. And my friend, Nesri Malik, put it very well in that saying, I think she wrote in the Guardian saying that in Britain,

diversity has become about celebrating the increased number of brown people at the top, but they only get there if they've promised to leave everything unchanged. So you're in a bit of a paradox there, aren't you? You have more brown people, but they're not doing much for the cause. You see, whereas I know there are people who are on the right of politics, who are of Asian extraction, who would be just devastated at that assessment of their beliefs, they would say, you know what, we have come to our political beliefs, not because we wanted a seat at the table. We have a seat at the table because we have those political beliefs.

Yeah, but I mean, even the election campaign, frankly, was an illustration of racism. I mean, Rishi was by far the most qualified guy right from the beginning. And he kept on having to prove himself against utterly hopeless people. and then they finally gave him a chance. I think what he shows is how white privilege works in that. You have to be absolutely perfect as a brown person to be given a chance. Similar thing with Barack Obama. The guy didn't put a foot wrong in terms of the election process.

And then you compare him to Donald Trump and compare Rishi to Liz Truss. And I think you've got an illustration there of how hard brown people need to work to make it. See, I'm a lot more optimistic about this, actually. I don't have the same reading. And I don't know. I want to know what you think as well, William, because I think, you know, twice he was chosen by his fellow peers, twice. But also, you know, the fact that he wasn't doing the thing that was deemed to be populist at the time, you know, the sort of the trussonomics of, you know, we kick in the old orthodoxy, you know, I'm going to do things. I'm going to tell you things different. He sort of was going against the flow of, you know, sort of the catnip to certain parts of, you know, the right. And so some may say actually, it's. It is much more textured and interesting than that. But, Sartnam, you, I read in your very good piece in The Times, said that you felt extremely complicated about this because he was articulating, and you thought in order to get, to win his place at the table, he had to do this. He was articulating the full-fledged culture wars that you've been speaking so eloquently.

against particularly when Oliver Dowden, I remember, was making these sort of remarks. You were very strong against him. And now we have Rishi saying the same sort of thing. We don't want historians attacking our beloved empire and this kind of stuff. He said mixed stuff. He said he's not interested in the cultural war. Yeah. But he's also, at one point, said he was going to report people who vilified Britain,

by which I think he means you to. That wouldn't be surprised. He said he's going to report you to prevent the anti-terrorism agent. So I hope you've got time in your diary. I mean, I could do with the break, to be honest. That's okay. Okay, so we are agreed this is a big deal, but there is a division. Is it left?

Because I had a really interesting conversation with somebody who I won't name. He's fairly senior in the Labour Party. I said, look, you know, cabinet ministers from, you know, the diaspora, let's discuss that. How's that going? And there was a big sort of scratch of a chin and saying, no, no, we really do need to work on that. And I think for a very long time, there's been almost a cartoon broad brush portrayal that people who are of immigrant extraction will automatically be Labour voters, which is not true. That is just demonstrably not true. Certainly, I know when we, before, when I had a different hat on and we commissioned opinion polls at times of election, you had to sort of.

you had particularly sort of Ugandan Asians who lent towards the Conservative Party when you drill down and asked them why because they let us in because they let us in when others would not have let us in and you know a thing or two about that history

don't you sound I mean you've written about that very clearly yeah I'm talking to you from Wolverhampton where you know brown people vote for Brexit in huge numbers and I would see I see Asian communities in Wolverhampton and elsewhere as swing voters really they tend to the direction they go in tends to define what happens in national government.

And then I think that's, so, you know, are we post-racial? I mean, I absolutely take your point. No, racism doesn't die when, you know, you have somebody different in either the White House or at Ten Downing Street. But what is interesting to me? And I think, again, it's that sort of kind of conversation where you can have two truths being valid. What was it? One did they call Ola Shugas Razor, isn't that right? Thanks to our podcast, William.

That's what that's. Two things can be true that seem as if they cannot be true at the same time. But when I see the column inches about Rishi Sunak, the ones that attack him, they attack him because of his wealth and his shoes and his wife and the money and the fact that the disconnect that there may be if somebody that wealthy is the Prime Minister, but it's not about his race. It's not the kind of headlines, for example, Sartland that you will be aware of that were flying around in the 1970s?

Totally, yeah. And actually I was looking at some of those headlines today. And we had the Sunday Express saying that the Kenyan nations were invading Britain, which was a language that Suella Braverman has been using in relation to immigrants in 2022. Yeah, I saw you say something really interesting about that. So what do you make of that? I think, you know, things have gone full circle. But I mean, you do get people saying, how can you say that when that means that you wouldn't have let your parents in?

I think you've got to accept that diversity is brown people having all kinds of views. Even views you hate. That is diversity. And I think some people on the left really struggle with that idea. Again, I mean, just very interesting. And I only can say this because I did have a different hat on once as an editor of a news program at times of election. It was remarkable. And there were a couple.

I'm trying to remember the stats, but it was such a long time ago, where the Asian community in certain constituencies around the country were very much against immigration. And it was like because, you know, too many will make our lives difficult. You know, we're just fine now, but, you know, let him anymore, and then people won't like us anymore. Yeah, I had this bizarre experience where I did a documentary on the turban dispute in Wolverhampton in 1960s where a Sikh guy turned up in a turbine, got fired,

became a massive civil rights thing, took on Enoch Powell. I found the guy a couple of years ago living in Wolverhampton. Turns out a massive conservative voter thought Enoch Powell was a great guy. And I think what you said sort of nails it actually, which is, you know, despite the fact that this is such a colour-loaded conversation, you know, the politics of those who come from immigrant communities is not black and white. Can we just agree that it's not black and white? And I think that is now commonly perceived, more commonly than ever before.

But also, as a counterpoint of that, I'd say that it is completely possible for brown people and Asians to be racist. Discuss. Tell me, explain now, explain that a bit more. It's completely, that is getting diversity. You can say, you can point to Swella Braverman's policies and say they're racist. Just because she's brown doesn't mean, it's not right. I mean, I think, I mean, in my working career and in my personal life, I think the most racist people I've ever met in my life have been Asian. So is this, I mean, then is it just that people can be really quite shitty? Or is it like, do the roots go back to Empire? Or is it just the fact that, you know, actually people of every hue could be pretty awful?

I mean, I argue in Empireland that, yeah, our particular brand of racism in Britain go straight back to Empire, you know? The racial stereotypes, the not people not being allowed to do certain jobs. the fear of interracial relationships. These are things that all happened in empire at its height. And they happened in Britain in the 1950s and 60s and 70s. And I would say they continue to happen in some form today. But also, you know, sort of the intermarriages and stuff.

I mean, that's also, you know, that has been the case within Asian communities also. Yeah, exactly. Gosh. Gosh. You know, so that's not empire. What is it? I mean, I don't know. Is it a different kind of empiricism that stretches back in the, in the, Indian empires because, you know, having, you remember this. I mean, you must do something. I certainly know when I was growing up, the scandal, the scandal that took place if a Hindu girl

married a Sikh boy or, you know, somebody who was a Shah married somebody who was, you know, a Patel even. You know, these things were spoken of as if, you know, oh my God, what's going to happen next? Yeah, there still are a bit. But I remember that empire was such a complex thing. There's a time during Empire where interracial relationships were encouraged. William's written a lot about that time. There were times when it was complete taboo in the Victorian age to have an Indian wife or an Indian girlfriend. And so it changed during empire and I think... It changes within about 30 years.

It's a completely different situation in 1810 to what it is in 1840. Yeah, and I think it's changing in post-colonial Britain as well. Saddam, do you think that all this right-wingery among particularly East African Asians, is simply to do with the fact that they're very successful. I've seen you write in your piece that Hindu, Brits, are the most successful immigrant community and two-thirds of them are in upper managerial and professional jobs. Yeah, and they are.

And in contrast, British Muslims, the last time I looked, were one of the least, or the most underprivileged socio-economic group. What it shows is that the phrase British Asian just doesn't mean very much anymore. I mean, it encompasses two, extremes of society. And maybe one really positive thing about Rishi is that he's going to make our conversation more sophisticated. There was a time in the 80s and 90s where black people and Asians were all put together. I don't know if you remember the real McCoy comedy show. It was a comedy

show involving black comedians and Asians like they're the same thing and they're not. And now, I think conversations are getting much more sophisticated. Do you think that's true when you have something like the BBC Asian network, when you have all these people put together into a single program as if it's as if it's one group. Is that no longer the case? I think you can you can choose if you want to listen to that or not. That's the thing. So they're self-selecting. But yeah, I think there's a huge amount of diversity even amongst the Asians in government. I mean, you've got Sadiq Khan, Sajid Javid. And actually the class differences are the really interesting thing because you're covering really working class people whose fathers were bus conductors and bus drivers

famously. We're going to take a break now, but do come back and join us with Sartnam Sangerah, the author of Empireland. And Sartnam, if it's okay with you, can we have a rummage through the British Museum when we come back after this short break? Sure. Welcome back. This is Empire with me, William Darymple. And me, Anita Arnins. We are talking to the brilliant Sartnam Sangerra. Both Anita and I are extremely jealous of the number of books that he's sold. You say, I'm actually resentful, and I don't like him. I'll be on mute because I've never liked him. I don't like him. I will never like him. No, he's done incredibly well. Hi, Satan.

Incredible job. And it's a book which I think is changing attitudes all over the country. You've got it into schools, Satler. Yeah, that was a big deal. Tell us about that, Sam. That's a huge deal. Yeah, it's been an amazing thing. And I guess as an author, you don't expect your book to be taught ever, let alone immediately. And there's such an appetite for teaching materials when it comes to colonialism and empire. My publisher gave away 15,000 copies. So lots of kids. To schools. And so lots of kids are now using it.

And why, in a sense, was that necessary? Why is there not more books like yours out there already? It's weirdly, you know, it hasn't. I mean, obviously every person's experience is different. But in general, we haven't taught British Empire. very well in this country. You know, it's the biggest thing we ever did. It was the biggest empire in human history, you know.

And it should be, I think, one of the main things we teach alongside the Tudors and the Holocaust. But it isn't. And you can kind of learn almost every other empire in the curriculum. We learn about the Roman Empire. Oh, gosh. I know lots about a hypercourse system. I can tell you.

But you've never did Gillian Wallerbach. And a Tolland Man. We did Tolland Man for such a long time. But even like the things that we do teach, have an imperial element like both world wars. I mean, I wasn't talked anything about the imperial contribution in both world wars. The largest volunteer army in history. But, Saldon, why, I mean, the question I'm trying to ask is, is why has this been forgotten? Why is it not at the centre of our curriculum? You know, it's impossible to imagine that, for example, in Italy,

they don't teach the Roman Empire. Why is it that we, is it sort of embarrassment? Is it sort of British modesty? What, I mean, what's going on? Why is it, why is this huge gap in our history correctly. Why do we know more about Henry 8th's wives than we do about the, you know, all the different continents which were attacked, looted and pillaged? I think it's partly to the fact that we've never ourselves been invaded, occupied, you know, we've never as a nation had a dark night of the soul like the French, you know, after World War II. It's empire happened abroad. Also, it's really divisive as we've covered already. It really divides people. It's easier to pretend it didn't happen. And also, it's incredibly complicated.

It's such a long history. There's no consensus. No one agrees about when it started or when it ended. It's much easier to go on about the world wars, which have clear beginnings, clear ends, and importantly, have very clear morality. And we're on the winning side. I mean, that helps also. Yeah, we've defeated the evil racist German.

Can I just say, I just want to point something else. You know, Sartland gets so much flag, but I have heard lots of interviews that you've given, and you always say we, because actually, you know, we haven't had this. We, and you are proud of being. British? Can we just remind people that, you know, that you can be a critical friend as well? Yeah, I showed the book to a couple of historians when I'd written it. And a couple of them said, do not use the word we. And historian never uses the word we, you know. I guess this is something I would have learned if I did history at university. But I decided to keep it because that's how I feel.

I feel like this history, good and bad, complicated, nuanced, is ours, brown and white. And the problem with teaching it has always been that it turns into an argument between the children of colonized and the children of the colonizers. And you can diffuse that by saying we. You've often talked about how people just talk about good and bad, as trying to weigh up the ballads sheet of history. Yeah. Why are you against that approach? Well, you know, this is very complicated history. It's a very long history. It's not like a phone you've bought, you know, on Amazon. on it, you're going to give a five-star rating to. I don't think you can weigh up massacres against the railways.

I think that's like philosophically an absurd thing to do. Also, I don't think it's possible to come to an overall rating. All you can say is that good and bad things happened and we should try to understand it. And part of the reason we're so screwed up by empire is this endless need to balance it, you know? And we don't talk about, you know, the Holocaust in that way. You would never say about Nazi Germany, were they good or bad things? But yet, it seems to be okay for, you know, imperialism in Britain. Although in India, some people are re-evaluating Hitler, aren't they?

I mean, there's some people on the fringes of the right wing in India who say, you know, actually, all things aside, Hitler was, you know, cared about his country and... Goodmiter ways. Yeah, that actually is, I'm hearing it. I'm hearing it, albeit from the fringes. Look, I did say before the break that we were going to rummage through the British Museum. We can start there and we can move to any number of National Trust places, if you like. But it's something that William and I have struggled with because we wrote a book together about the Coenor Diamond. And wherever we've gone in the world, we are always asked, where should it be?

Where should it go back to? And we've always resisted because actually, and I genuinely sincerely mean this, it's complicated, it's a thorny question. And that's not for me. It's for lawyers to sort out later. When it comes to, you know, the furious rows, which start from Elgin, and then move on through Benin bronzes and, you know, through any number of things at the VNA. What's your feeling about that, Zatnam? I think it's okay to give some of these things back in the way that smaller museums of Britain universities are already doing,

in the way that people are already doing it in France, Germany and America. And, you know, the crucial statistic for me is that the British Museum, you know, doesn't have 99% of it. collection on display. If you started giving back a few things, you know, like the MacDala Crown, which is like the VNA, some of the Tibetan things that were clearly taken from the bloodied hands of innocent people, you would open up amazing discussions. It would improve our relationships with the world at a time we really need to. And it would be good for our souls. And also, we'd still have everything. More or less, we'd still have a lot of stuff. I was actually at the VNA party

and Tristram Hunt made a sort of rallying speech about all the expressions they put on and so on but his final thing was a plea and there were many politicians there at the party to re-look at the act of parliament which forbids him sending stuff back in law at the moment. The trustees are not allowed to send stuff back because there's actually an act of parliament

stopping them doing it. Yeah no it's absurd but if you look at the smaller museums like the local council ones of Glasgow Unique University and Aberdeen University museums, they are giving stuff back because they're not restricted. And I think the international conversation has moved on. And Britain is still stuck in this really bizarre way of seeing its museum artifacts. I mean, I think it's part of obviously a much wider thing whereby we do still, British people, I think, accept that, you know, what the Belgians did in the Congo was terrible cutting off hands of rubber planters, that what the Germans did in

Southwest Africa was appalling. But somehow we have this image still in our heads that our empire was different from other empires, that our empire did not rape loot and pillage in the way that other Europeans did. And I think part of that is it's all those films at the 1970s and 80s. All those films like, Jewel of the Crown. It's the clipplingisation and it's looking through those rose-tinted and it's all about polo with the Maharajas and elephants. All those ladies and crinleine dresses. It was delightful. Everything was lovely. You know. Played croquet and similar. It was all lovely.

And that is the kind of lingering impression. Lots of people who would be right thinking about other empires and be appalled by the Holocaust somehow think that what the Brits did in India was some and elsewhere was different. But I obviously, so this is again, this is, you know, just a personal anecdote, which is, you know, take it or leave it. But when I've gone around talking about, you know, the massacre, I mean, I know it's sort of very central because it's that sort of the Punjabi spirit was so very battered by what happened in Jeline Varg. And when I talk about the people who were behind it, and it happens to be an Irishman, who's very prominently figures in all the decisions that led up to that horrific act of violence, colonial violence in 1919, I promise you, even now I get letters from Ireland saying I had no idea I'm so sorry.

And I feel really awkward about that because why are you sorry? And I've had people weep in book signing cues going, I'm so sorry. I didn't know that bastard was our bastard. And I've held a man who's crying, which is just so mad. And I don't know what to do. It's like any number of things I don't know what to do with it. It's not guilt that you're asking for either, is it? It's not that.

No, it's actual academic history, you know. If we, say, gave back the McDala Crown, which is in the VNA, which was taken under brutal circumstances, you could have amazing scholarship, you know. You could have bring people over from Ethiopia to talk about it and vice versa. And we can look progressive. We can do what France has done and look at our collections. And, you know, Germany has actually paid reparations to Namibia recently. And I feel like we've got our heads in the sand.

And it's not an acceptable way to go forward. Because young people, I think they feel the way about museums, the way our generation felt about zoos. Very nice point. Yeah. that a previous generation thought it was fine and suddenly a point passes and people just see the problems

I get this on Twitter when I put, I'm very keen on Indian art whenever I go anywhere I like to photograph a bodhisattva or some gorgeous book and beautiful photographs there too and more and more the response is not what a gorgeous thing

it's what's it doing in the Gime what's it doing in the British Museum we want it back why is it here and that just didn't happen five years ago yeah I mean the latest sort of pronouncement from somebody who actually had power was David Cameron wasn't he was like he was accosted when he went to India about the Coenore that always happens anyone

goes to India they're asked immediately about the Coenore Diamond when are you giving it back seems to be the first question and he said well we can't because if we started giving stuff back our museums would be empty I am I bumped to George Osborne recently he's a chairman of the British Museum and he said I'll read your book um it's not fair to say we've only got one percent of our collection on display because you know that 99 percent some of it's really small items and I thought oh well the Coenol Diamond's quite small You know what does that mean? It's smaller now than it was when it arrived.

That's true. It's very true. Some of those items are also human remains. We've got to remember that. Those should be buried, cremated. And there's thousands of them, you know, throughout our museums. Why are we not doing something about it? We're coming to the end of our time together, which is a great pity.

But now that you've opened this door into this really quite tricky terrain, is this something that you're going to sort of stay in and, you know, work in in the future? or you've just now had a gutfall. I'm just, I need to, I need to write about Wombles or something. How are you feeling about this? He has come at some personal cost, but I am also feel, I realize there's a massive demand. So I am writing a sequel about the ways in the British Empire shape the planet, not controversial at all. Learning lots, and I'm hopefully doing a kid's version as well.

But then I will write about something else. Salam, tell us also, you've been working, not just getting your books into schools, But I think you've been talking about changes to the curriculum, too. Yeah, I mean, this is the crucial thing, and we need to teach this stuff. And, you know, the national curriculum does have some empire in it. But it's tiny compared to how important it is. Also, we're going to need to remember this history. Explains our current multiculturalism.

It explains a lot about scandals, from the Stephen Lawrence murder to windrush, and we need to understand it. So there's a lot of campaigns out there to get this on the curriculum. And I feel like it's happening. I mean, Wales has already changed its curriculum. Scotland is on its way. Whenever I do sort of the political sort of phone-in type work that I do, I get the impression from both sides that everybody thinks we're at a crossroads.

Everyone. But it's very debatable about which road we're going to take. And people feel very differently about it. Do you first of all feel that we're at a crossroads? And where do you think we're going to end up? I think, yeah, we've had crossroads for a while. but I feel like, like I said earlier, the young generation feel so passionately about this.

You can't fight it, you know. It's reflected in their culture, in their Instagram accounts like Brown History, in films like Black Panther, which has this amazing scene set in the British Museum where he just takes the artefacts that have been stolen. And I feel like you can't fight that. It's going to change.

It's all about when politics in England catches up with the fact. One thing we haven't talked about is the National Trust, where you encouraged last year that the National Trust members basically backed this re-evaluation of houses with colonial collections. Yeah, that was encouraging. It was really depressing to see the massive backlash in the right-wing media, mainly, to be honest, the telegraph, you know, and they've been persecuting the National Trust for more than a year. But I'm glad the National Trust has stuck to their guns. And, you know, what they're doing is their job.

They're explaining the history of their places. And yet, some people seem to object to that. I met the descendant of Lord Clive, whose house in Wales is full of loot. And I expected him to be very defensive, but he was like, this is disgusting. I'd like to give something back. He'd actually been to India himself and apologised.

Goodness. That's what we need. We need people to break the old narratives. Yeah, except when they do, I mean, like Justin Welby going and lying on his front and Jeline Walabar. That's the Archbishop of Canterbury. Yes, the Archbishop of Canterbury. I mean, that was met with.

with a furious response. People accused him of being a virtue signal. Yeah. That's his job. I mean, it's your Hobbeship Cadbury. You are a virtue signal.

Jesus was a virtue signaler. I thought he's a very powerful thing he did. Thank you, Sutton. Fantastic. And keep up the good work. I'll wait to read the new book. Thank you for having me. That's all from Empire this week.

From me, Anita Arndinth. And me, William Durimple.