Charles Philip Arthur George alias Charles III is now the King of England. His alarmingly obsolete coronation without Britain’s imperial symbol of colonial plundering over his head (the Kohinoor) had 2,300 guests inside London’s centuries-old Westminster Abbey.
In an elaborate, archaic and tiring ritual not seen in Britain since 1953, ‘God save the king’ was heard. The event was televised all over the world, including in Britain’s former colonies.
In attendance were about 100 heads of state inside the Abbey, including the representatives of 56 of Britain’s former colonies that London’s archaic corridors of power have cleverly put into euphemism as so-called Commonwealth.
India, Bangladesh and Nigeria constitute the three most populous lots of this ‘commonwealth’.
What constituted the ‘common’ part of the commonwealth at Charles’s coronation?
What is common between Jagdeep Dhankhar (71), India’s Vice President, and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina (75) of Bangladesh?
The Indian state of West Bengal where Dhankhar served as governor not long ago, and the country whose Prime Minister is Hasina since 2009, had a combined death toll of at least three million people in the great Bengal famine of 1943 when the British reigned supreme in the subcontinent. That the two leaders, along with 54 other representatives of former British colonies, chose to forget their region’s history at the expense of their present-day interests. Their attendance, obviously, represents the glorification of Britain’s colonial tyranny.
In terms of monetary value, Britain drained a total of nearly $45 trillion worth of wealth from India during the period 1765 to 1938, according to economist Utsa Patnaik’s 2018 research.
Such huge drain of wealth from the Indian subcontinent have corresponded into generations of extreme poverty, illiteracy and low life expectancies – the real ‘commonwealth ‘legacy’ which is anything but glorious.
For President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria, did he forget to recall that just from the Nigerian city of Benin alone, the British stole over 10,000 pieces of artefacts worth hundreds of millions which they still keep?
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That the commemoration of colonialism is symbolised in inflated glory of the vestige of the erstwhile Empire which was pompously displayed in Sunday’s coronation, the elevated Public Relations event of Metaverse age.
For billions all over the world, Charles’s coronation represents an eerie reminder of colonialism and coloniser both. At the same time, it is to the credit of London’s diplomatic success despite Britain’s demotion as top global power over the decades that it has convinced the victims of its colonial tyranny that it is now reborn and wants a common wealth for all and a shared future. This is even as it refuses to repay, even by means of symbolic restitution, the enormous resources it looted from the former colonies.
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