We are caught in History - you and me,
But your history is not my History…

I cannot count your Stuart kings or
Tudor queens, but I can count the
Rivers of blood that flowed between
India and Pakistan…

I decline to call the First War of
Independence, The Sepoy Mutiny;
I refuse to title The Father of my
Nation, a half-naked fakir;
I totally abstain from reading
Macaulay's preposterous Minute
Or that blasphemous Curse of
Kehama …

I do not want the kingdoms
You raised on the tears of the Nile
Or on the graves of Cherokee braves;
I do not want Mackenna's Gold
Or that glorious elixir that flows
In the veins of Iraq; my heart
Of darkness is set on a dazzling
Peacock, captured from Delhi,
To grace your throne and that
Diamond, trapped in time,
Imprisoned in imperial gold…

How can I commemorate your
Soldiers, who died building an
Empire, when my heart weeps
For that rebel Bhagat Singh and
Those lawless mutineers at
Jallianwallah Bagh?

I rise in revolt, when you boast
Of ruling the waves;
I fume and fret when you knight Dalhousie,
Bentinck, Cornwallis and Clive;
I am sorry but I do not read
History, your way…

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* Note: Thomas Babington Macaulay - a "Minute on Education for India" addressed to Lord William Bentick, the Governor General of India (1835). Macaulay wanted the British Raj to educate the Indians in English and the great Western traditions in order to "form a class, who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern - a class of persons Indian in blood and colour; but English in opinions, in morals and intellect."

The Curse of Kehama (1810) - poem by Robert Southey, which satirises Hindu Gods - "the religion of the Hindus, which of all the false religions in the world is the most monstrous in its fables". Robert Southey felt that the Indian Gods with their "hundred hands and numerous heads " were "a clumsy personification of power and a gross image of divinity".

Cherokee: Native American Tribe

Mackenna's Gold: 1969 Hollywood film