Long before Margaret Thatcher entered her office at 10 Downing Street in 1979, she had made up her mind about making sweeping changes in Britain’s education system. The prevailing mode of education then, Thatcher thought, was devoid of values. Having been the Secretary of State for Education and Science earlier, she had developed an unusual contempt for what she called the “education establishment”, and she exacted revenge by overhauling the system. The National Curriculum was introduced, which brought in a degree of standardisation in every course taught in schools across Britain; and history was to be no exception. The Leader of the Conservative Party believed that British children weren’t being taught enough about their motherland. Stories of “immense sacrifice” the Brits made in order to shape their great nation and how the British Empire influenced the whole world was emphasized with renewed vigour. The “history establishment” did not take kindly to the prescribed syllabi, knowing well what controlled indoctrination could lead to. Historians, teachers and professors tried their best to resist the reformation, so much so that Thatcher once remarked that fighting history teachers over the content of the new curriculum was more difficult than fighting the Falklands War. An agreement was reached. British history was to have pre-eminence in the school curriculum, but no evils of Imperial Britain were to be focused on. As a result, generations grew up in blissful ignorance of how brutal the colonial experience was to people all around the globe. In fact, a 2016 You Gov survey revealed that only around 20% of the British population saw Britain’s colonial past in a negative light, the majority shockingly unaware of the barbarities it entailed. The Conservatives’ mission to instil pride about British colonialism based on a theme of ignorant glorification seemed to work well. A new history curriculum was again drafted by Michael Gove in 2013, to be taught to school-going children between the ages of 5 to 14. But this present system too has done little to reduce the insensitive adoration of colonialism. People still live in ignorance of Britain’s colonial brutality. “Historical amnesia” is what Shashi Tharoor rightly calls Britain’s incomprehension of the Empire’s barbarism. Present generation Brits have, for too long, been unaware of the savage nature of colonial rule. And with the Brexit now being a reality, it is more important than ever to make sure they know what supremacist obsession with identity can result in. After all, racism was a major part of the colonial experience. Nobody can deny that identity is one of the major motivations behind Brexit. The strong impulse to dissociate United Kingdom and its people from the rest of Europe prompted citizens to back the move. Campaigners for Brexit saw this as an ideal opportunity to polarize people and upped the xenophobic narrative. Cutting immigration was a fundamental trump card used by the likes of Liam Fox. This resulted in an atmosphere that has not been synonymous with Britain for some time, at least recently. An ecosystem of “us versus them” against foreigners has steadily developed. It is no coincidence that the incidence of hate-crimes increased after the referendum results. Official figures cite a 41% rise in incidents of racial nature, the sudden spurt essentially being a post–referundum phenomenon. Incidents like Swedes being abused in a cafe in London to Muslims in Birmingham being told to leave Britain have increased. The Leave campaigners have successfully penetrated minds, creating a binary of indigenous and outsiders. As today’s Brits deal with conflicting schools of thought, it is necessary to expose them to the sufferings their supremacist forefathers inflicted on the people they ruled over. They must be the ones to resist xenophobic and racial temperaments. A collective conscience needs to be formed, whereby Brits do not gang up on immigrants and people of other ethnic backgrounds, whose ancestors were tortured by Brits.
The education system, that has kept the atrocities of the Empire hidden away from books, has contributed to Brits fondly remembering the days of the colonial past. The Indian, or the Pakistani, or even probably the Irish kid in British schools may not know what their ancestors suffered at the hands of the Tommies, as they are taught to celebrate the achievements of the Empire. It is not morally acceptable to have people remember the past with delight, when all it involved was racism, genocide, rapes, executions, inexplicable tortures and manufactured famines. As Britain prepares itself for life outside the European Union, their dependence on other countries for trade will only increase. India, for instance, is a country Britain is hoping to strengthen its economic ties with. “Come to Britain and open more factories and companies” is the message, as UK tries to woo Indian investors by offering more incentives. Well it is only fair then, that people appreciate the horrors Indians have experienced under colonial rule, if they are to benefit from Indian investment. No sane human would ever condone the Empire if they actually knew what it entailed. But in the class rooms of UK, British colonial history remains a highly abridged version of reality. Students doing their GCSE levels are never exposed to the hideous atrocities of British colonialism. The current curriculum emphasizes events like World Wars, Glorious Revolution, Great Depression, introduction of universal suffrage, the Cold War while having only a superficial approach to topics like Indian Independence and transatlantic slavery. Interestingly, children are proudly taught about how the British government, under the influence of Oladuah Equiano, abolished slave trade in the early 19th century, while overlooking the atrocities and killings of Africans in Boer Wars by British soldiers. Infamous slave traders are referred to as “merchants and planters” while colonial figures like Charles Napier, responsible for bringing hell to the natives of Sindh in 1843, are memorialized with a statue at Trafalgar Square. It is hypocritical that history text books vehemently condemn the Nazi Holocaust but do not teache about the barbarism of British soldiers against Kenyans in concentration camps that led to the Mau Mau uprising. Influential figures like Florence Nightingale and Annie Besant are rightly lauded, but no mention of Colonel Reginald Dyer is made, under whose orders the British-Indian troops killed over 1000 peaceful demonstrators in Amritsar, something even former PM David Cameron refused to apologise for during his visit to the Jalianwala Bagh memorial. It would be wrong to reach so far back into history, he said. “Clive of India”, children have been taught about Robert Clive over the years, as if he ushered India into a golden era, when all he did was reduce a rich country to paupers through policies of systematic exploitation. Even Britain’s favourite role model Winston Churchill was directly responsible for the death of almost 4 million people in Bengal, as he decided to divert food supplies from the famine afflicted state to British soldiers in Europe in 1943. But the Brit may never know about such transgressions, simply because he will not get to read about these incidents in his books. The child in the history class learns how the British Empire contributed railways and established democracy. Little does he know that democracy was the outcome of tremendous sacrifice and bloodshed from rebellions against British occupation. The call to introduce colonial history in UK’s schools is not something that was ideated after Shashi Tharoor’s excellent speech at the Oxford Union. It was an idea that was engendered much earlier, in the minds of many Brits themselves. Leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn has always been an advocate of teaching children about the sufferings of people under British rule. He wanted Britain’s younger generations to understand that Imperial Britain expanded its empire “at the expense of other people.” Even students from the Oxford University had demanded the removal of the statue of Cecil Rhodes, an imperialist responsible for the death of numerous Africans. “Rhodes must fall in Oxford” was the name of that popular campaign, which also fought for more representation of works of coloured people in the Oxford curriculum, essentially decolonising Oxford. Sane voices have always stood against insensitive vanity arising from national chauvinism. Before the EU referendum, consequentialists had warned that leaving the EU would have a great impact on trade and economy. But ex-London mayor Boris Johnson claimed that Britain was quite confident about trade deals in this post-Brexit world, since they had the experience of running the biggest empire the world has ever seen – another proud referral to Britain’s colonial past, quite typical of a Brexiteer. Therefore, it is necessary that children today know in detail how Britons of earlier centuries wreaked havoc wherever they went, killing, torturing, raping and starving people in numerous countries. It is important they know how people around the world suffered due to Britain’s imperial ambitions, just like they do about Germany or the Ottoman Empire. Only when the Brit can fully comprehend the plight of the people under the occupation of their forefathers, will he think twice before cursing an “outsider” to leave his country. Britain must realize that the lack of awareness will only lead to lack of empathy. Insensitivity towards foreigners will lead to nothing but shameful incidents, something the United Kingdom can’t afford after a hard Brexit.
