Editorial

The cruel cost of colonialism

British schoolchildren raised on stories about the empire were invariably briefed about the glories rather than the horrors of the imperial enterprise. Hence the proud boasts in the past about how the sun never sets on the British Empire, an empire greater than those of Persia or Greece, or, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, even greater than that of Rome. This was the empire that once included 20 per cent of the world's land area, incorporating some 400 million people — in fact, the single largest empire in the history of the world.

British historians have argued that it was also an empire that was for the most part run by mutual consent — a largely benevolent enterprise linking the rulers and the ruled — until it started to dissolve after the Second World War.

Yet the human cost of creating that same empire, let alone maintaining it, was all too often brushed aside. Those who dared to question the benefits of imperial rule were all too often dismissed as ignorant, politically motivated or, in some cases, unpatriotic.

More than a generation has passed since the sun finally ceased to shine on the empire, but it is only now, thanks to the efforts of four elderly black Kenyans, that uncomfortable truths have been revived about imperial rule and its associated costs. All four are demanding compensation from the British government for the mistreatment they claim to have suffered at the hands of colonial authorities more than 50 years ago.

Paulo Nzili, aged 85, claims he was castrated and beaten on the orders of British officers during the Mau Mau uprising that eventually led to Kenyan independence. Similarly, 79-year-old Ndiku Mutwiwa Mutua has revealed in the High Court in London how he was repeatedly beaten by European and African army officers before he was handcuffed and pinned to the ground with his legs pulled apart. At that point he was castrated by one or more of the officers present.

The names of the army officers involved in this hideous exercise have not been disclosed. But they are part of an emerging revisionist history of the empire that indicates it was a much more bloody, violent and repressive experience than hitherto understood or believed. Some of the torture techniques practised on colonial subjects, such as water boarding and sleep deprivation, were later used back in the UK, in the detention centres of Northern Ireland, but that is another untold or partially told story.

What is most significant about Kenya's colonial past is how successive British governments have tried to hide evidence of torture and abuse contained in hundreds of boxes of documents that were removed from Nairobi at the time of independence and secreted in the grounds of a stately home in the British countryside.

Apologists for the empire say the past should never be judged by the present because facts get obscured with the passage of time and rulers of the past genuinely believed in what they were doing according to prevailing standards. The counter-argument is that human values of decency and fairplay do not change, regardless of time and, if all was well in the past, why have British civil servants persistently connived in hiding evidence of former wrongdoings, including torture, murder, illegal detention and other unspeakable crimes?

Kenya is not the only British colony that suffered so grievously at the hands of its then white rulers. It now turns out that the Foreign Office in London holds undisclosed files from some 37 former colonies, including those from Palestine, Cyprus, Northern Rhodesia, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, Ceylon, Malaya, Jamaica, Ghana and the Bahamas. They include the 1948 files on the massacre of 24 civilians in the village of Batang Kali in Malaya, who were shot dead for allegedly participating in a Chinese-backed communist insurgency.

The need for historical accuracy and justice long overdue makes a compelling case for disclosing many other files hidden from public view. They include the records for events leading up to the 1947 independence of India, once the jewel in the imperial crown. Indeed, without these records it is impossible to verify some of the colonial misdeeds that are part and parcel of the history of modern India. How else to authenticate the legend of Indian weavers who allegedly had their hands cut off because their expertise threatened British trade?

Even more gripping is the story of the Quit India movement that started in 1942 and spawned a series of mini revolts against British rule throughout the length and breadth of India. Among those who challenged the colonial authorities were the citizens of Balia in Eastern UP, who participated in a non-violent uprising that culminated in the declaration of an independent republic, which lasted all of 12 days. The colonial authorities retaliated, it is said, by hanging 300 citizens of Balia from nearby trees and lamp-posts.

Their ghosts and the ghosts of imperial subjects from other parts of the empire are now knocking on the doors of the Foreign Office in London. They want answers to questions that have been buried for far too long in secretly held government archives

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