"Yes. In the end, you will walk out. Because 100,000 Englishmen simply cannot control 350 million Indians, if those Indians refuse to cooperate." - Ghandi (1982)
Yet today 350 million Indians can keep 100 Tibetans from marching to their homeland.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7293418.stm
So tell me, what validates one peoples' struggles above the struggles of another peoples'?
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3 comments:
It is part of the natural cycle of political power to be on top some times and down others. The oppressed Indians during the colonial period are now the new oppressive regional force in relation to an even more powerless group, the Tibetans. This cycle, it seems, can be observed all over the place and all over the historical map: for instance, the marginalized Zionists in Palestine are now the Israelis who are keeping the Palestinians down; the much-abused American colonies revolted against their master, leading to a nation far more powerful than their place of origin. Today's oppressors are tomorrow's oppressed.
Maybe I hopped on the punk bandwagon and feel overly sympathetic to the Tibetans, but c'mon. It's like receiving a gift from someone who then expects you to be perpetually indebted to them. It's great that India allows them sanctuary from China, but if India is meddling in the Tibetan state's affairs to avoid upsetting Mao's tadpoles it is only a matter of time before the Tibetan government-in-exile is banned from India as well. I wouldn't be surprised to see them matriculate toward Nepal in the near future (if Nepal will have them).
But, sadly, you're right. On an individual level we do it too. We don't like being on the bottom rung and thus become obsessed with securing our future away from prior meager existences. I would imagine it's ingrained in our instincts. If eating the red berries makes your stomach explode you're going to make sure you never feel the vile oppression of red berries again. It's a dog-eat-dog world my friend (insert Chinese cuisine joke here).
you spelled gandhi incorrectly?
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