Armies Are Now Obsolete
The 19 th century history of the Internal Wars of the New Zealanders is fascinating and gruesome. Tens of thousands of Maori died in the intertribal Musket Wars of the opening decades of the 19th century. On a per capita basis the estimated casualty figures for these wars is equivalent to around 200,000 New Zealand deaths in the First World War (instead of the 18,000 lives actually lost). As expected, these events remain shadowy, as if they were almost exclusively the concern of Maori with European participation largely confined to the supply of weapons. Ron Crosby’s The Musket Wars (1999) and Angela Ballara’s Taua (2003) are two significant works that have attempted to shed more light on the causes and consequences of these devastating campaigns. HUG has been looking systematically into the history of these wars and especially tracking the international debates on the very idea of muskets during the period of 1839-1945. We reproduce two short articles and a letter to the editor from three leading newspapers of New Zealand. ARMIES ARE NOW OBSOLETE Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 53, 30 August 1930, Page 24 “Future wars will be fought and decided by civilians, not by soldiers. Present-day armies will be superfluous— useless.” That is the sensational prophecy of Lieut. Colonel Mayer, one of Frances’s leading military experts, expressed in a forthcoming book, advance excerpts of which, appear, in ‘ the Neues Wiener Journal. Chemistry, and aircraft will fight future wars, and; both these elements will be directed, chiefly by civilian experts, not by soldiers, asserts the French military expert., Four, thousand aircraft, high explosives, and gas-bombing ,’ planes, will represent a greater offensive arid: destructive power than an army of a million soldiers, according to Lieut.-Colonel Mayer. Organic chemistry has produced more than five thousand different gases, with many new ones being discovered or invented every year, he says. The world conflict swept away the alleged eternal truth and principles of classical, strategy, and at the close of the way, convinced of this, and that Germany would not be able to attack for at least fifteen years, Lieut.-Colonel Mayer’ suggested that the French army be completely demobilised and disbanded for ten years. He was told that his suggestion could not be taken seriously. “Notwithstanding that it is clear that a handful of civilian experts can, with combined gas and air attacks, destroy the largest and best-trained army in the world,” he says. In support of this theory, the French military expert cites Napoleon; who wrote during his last year on St. Helena: “Every victory of my troops was the triumph of new ideas. The time will come when neither cannon nor bayonets will be necessary for victory.” He declares that H. G. Wells is right when he says that the wars of the future will be fought by civilians. War operations of to-morrow will be sudden surprise attacks, unexpected in time and place. They will demoralise and intimidate the enemy. Forts, barracks, and present-day armies arc as irrevocably doomed to pass away as were tho bow, arrow and spear at the first shot from a musket. It is quite natural that the heads of the armies to-day are interested in seeing that no radical change takes place in the present system and order of things, declares Lieut.-Colonel Mayer, adding: “That Governments and General Staffs close their eyes to the truth does not alter the might and power of the facts.” AMMUNITION TO THE NATIVES. Colonist, Volume XII, Issue 1222, 11 June 1869, Page 2 Often than once we have noticed the fact, or probable fact, that outside white men, men of our own civilised Caucasian race, have supplied the rebels with ammunition. An incident has occurred in the North which gives conviction to the charge. We learn by the Hawke’s Bay Herald that Ensign Witty, in marching to join the force, found, near Putere, in Napier Province, a keg which had contained powder, with a maker’s name in Boston on it. American whalers have frequently been suspected of engaging in this disreputable traffic, by means of which cannibal savages are enabled to destroy peaceable and law loving white men. We hope, if there is any possible clue by which to trace the mercenary men who can thus trade in the blood of peaceful settlers, that the Colonial Government will prosecute the search for evidence to the utmost, and appeal to the American Government to take measures to stop such iniquity. There is no civilised Government in the world which knows better than the Government of the United States, the evil effects of such doings; for their frontier wars with the Indians are replete with parallels of the Poverty Bay massacres of helpless settlers, and the cruel use of the tomahawk and musket on the bodies of men, women, and children, who, indiscriminately, have been the victims of the savage. It may be difficult to trace the real culprits, but the maker’s name in sanctimonious Boston, may aid the Government of President Grant in discovering the wicked dealers, who thus at once Bets the laws of war and of civilised humanity at defiance. Treat this as a definite lesson to the settlers in New Zealand. The Musket. To the Editor of the Times. Daily Southern Cross, Volume VIII, Issue 522, 29 June 1852, Page 3 Sir, — Every military man will concur in the justice of your remarks on the subjects of the inefficiency of our regulation musket, thank you for making them. But we needed not this miserable “little war” in South Africa to demonstrate the inefficiency of which you so justly complain. “It is necessary, “as you say, ”that our soldiers should hit the enemy with their musketballs,” and that “this one thing they unfortunately -cannot do,” was too often proved in the course of the unhappy war in Afghanistan. The British musket was no match for the Affghan jezail. Even in fair open fight, when the enemy were not sheltered behind their precipitous rocks,
Guddu, I and the Qawallis at Vijay Mandal
Sambudha Sen Several years ago, when I was only twenty eight, I spent an extended period as a tenant in a flat in Vijay Mandal Enclave. The Delhi Development Authority had built this relatively new block of apartments in a terrain that was typical of Delhi. As part of the rapidly developing South Delhi , Vijay Mandal Enclave had been squeezed into a bit of spare land in vicinity of Mother’s International School and the Indian Institute of Technology. And because we lay directly under the air routes that connected Delhi to the world, I’d often hear the roar of low flying planes and dream about the day when one of them would carry me to Berkeley or Cambridge. But air routes and institutions of modern learning were only recent additions in a neighborhood wedged in by Kalu Sarai and Begumpur, two ancient settlements that had never really separated themselves from a Delhi ruined centuries before Shah Jahan began building, what is for us, the old city . The ruins of Kalu Sarai were clearly visible from the narrow balcony of our cramped fourth floor flat. One morning, when I’d stepped into that balcony to enjoy the cool, damp monsoon breeze with my coffee and cigarette, Kalu Sarai’s ruined 14th century mosque had looked particularly picturesque behind the fine rain screen. I believe that my long and intense relationship with that place began from that moment. I visited the ruins that very evening and was lucky enough to have run straight into Guddu singing a qawalli. Khazan Singh told me, after Guddu had finished, that we were sitting around the mazaar of a saint whose name nobody remembered but who was universally acknowledged to be a kind and benevolent spirit. Several people from Begumpur and Kalu Sarai visited the spot to solicit the unnamed Baba’s help and ten or fifteen of them were sure to be there on Thursdays when Guddu sang his qawwalis. A retired plumber from IIT, who called himself Maula, would come in early to sweep the area around the grave. Khazaan Singh also helped in the upkeep of the place with small financial contributions. He was a Jat from Begumpur but he put on a Mussalman’s skull cap whenever he visited the mazaar. And then there was Guddu whose qawallis, more than anything else, sustained the astonishing after life that the ruined mosque at Kalu Sarai had acquired. Guddu always struck me as a very responsible man. He worked as an auto rickshaw driver and was married to a hardworking woman who’d found employment as a full time domestic servant in a Vastant Vihar house. They had a five year old son and they seemed like a decent, stable, even upwardly mobile family when I’d visited them at the clean, well lit room that the employers of Guddu’s wife had provided for her. Guddu’s ordinary life, however, turned extraordinary in the evenings after he’d finished plying his auto rickshaw. He would then immerse himself in the activity he really loved – singing qawallis. He had a magnificent singing voice – melodious, supple but also rough and passionate. His repertoire of qawallis was large, and like many qawalls he did not hesitate to insert verses of his own into the compositions of Habib Painter or even Amir Khusro. And although Guddu never went to school , he was an extremely gifted teacher. He spoke of the complex analogies and metaphors of qawallis, of their deep ambiguities, and their effortless ability to move between different languages with such clarity that I rapidly abandoned my research in 19th British culture to pursue anything that would help me to understand the amazing longevity of the qawalli. I began purchasing translations of Jallaluddin Rumi and Fariduddin Attar and the music of Jaffar Hussain Badauni, Ghulam Farid Sabri and even Nusrat Fateh Ali who was very far, then, from international star he was to become. A close friend led me to Regina Quereshi’s book on the qawalli and I made several trips to the Nizamuddin Basti to cultivate the friendship of Miraz, whose knowledge of qawallis was, as Quereshi acknowledged , boundless . In an fit of enthusiasm, which I sustained for several weeks, I even made arragements to learn Urdu. The Urdu primer and dictionary with which I hoped to educate myself , together with the other books and music acquired during that period remain lovingly preserved and I do what I can for Miraz who ,despite his great knowledge of qawallis, languishes in a one room hovel in Nizamuddin. But a combination of ( I suppose predictable) factors caused me, many years ago, to abandon the work I began on the cultural afterlife of the Kalu Sarai masjid. Last month , though , while listening to Jafar sing Man Kunto Maula I was struck by a deep sense of longing for the work I’d set aside many years ago. Rummaging among my old papers I found a dusty notebook full of hazy and embarrassingly overwritten accounts of what went on at the mazaar : Guddu’s explanations of the songs he sang and of where they came from, the Maula’s descriptions of the unknown saint who regularly visited him during his sleep, my own immature thoughts on popular culture and on our syncretic traditions. One sequence , which I reproduce below, is typical of the notebook . It falls repeatedly into rhetorical excess and is completely lacking in the analytical sharpness that I aspire for in my academic writing. Please think of it as you would of photograph taken long ago by an amateur with a primitive black and white camera-a photograph that is blurred, badly composed but which preserves the shadow of a light that faded long ago. It had begun to rain quite hard now. I went across our narrow sitting room to shut the window that was letting the rain in. Beyond the broken walls of our compound, on a gently rising mound, overgrown with tangled shrubs, the nameless saint lay restfully in his grave. The crumbling eastern wall ,that was all that was left of his ruined
The Blind Kingdom
Véronique Tadjo Chapter One; Earth Jolts The earth jolted, violently – all of a sudden – while most inhabitants still slept. In a matter of seconds, the world turned upside down. The ground split open, trees fell, walls shifted and collapsed, stones rolled around, torrents of dust darkened the new morning. The ground trembled, furiously. The earth revolted. Everything appeared to sink into an immense abyss. Sleepers awakened into the middle of a nightmare. Roofs crumbled down on their shoulders; wailing destroyed their throats; panic seized their entire being… Then the world’s belly burst open. An atrocious heat bore down. Death knocked and the sky remained merciless. From everywhere, those who survived got out from the ruins screaming out of fright and running in every direction. Mothers fled with their newborn babies; old people staggered; children crawled around; men shouted out commands. Dogs barked incessantly. Livestock escaped from their pens. Horses went crazy. No one knew where to go. Fear, and it was a disfiguring fear, sculpted faces. In a lightning flash, the empire had collapsed. They found themselves hurled into the same fear, the same fate. Moaning stabbed the atmosphere. People died by the thousands, crushed under ruins, lost in crevices, drowned in the river’s muddy waters that flowed, flooded and swept across the land with thunderous sounds. Beings and things floundered in the water, fell and disappeared beneath the surge. Within seconds, glory was destroyed; the past disembowelled; riches annihilated. But what followed was worse. When the earth stopped jolting, finally, and the inhabitants were left facing each other, fear became unbearable. The terror of destruction took hold and paralyzed them, totally. Horror asphyxiated them. Awareness of the end of the world froze their consciousness. They ranted and raved. They muttered unintelligible words. And then – all of a sudden – the slaves began the work of digging out. They were the only ones who still had strength to react. With their bare hands, they dug through the debris and handed over the bodies: entombed children; vanished mothers; injured fathers. They called out the names. They waited. They dug. Like prehistoric people, they were at nature’s mercy. Gradually, the others awakened from their heavy inertia. The memory of what had once made up their lives, pushed them to move. They gazed at each other, went down on all fours, and dug. When they were able to get someone out, they felt like they had conquered death. Clouds of loneliness and despair colored the days – the tears – the distress. How many more days? Time stood still. They looked only to survive – to eat and sleep – tightly holding on to each other, hoping that the new day would come for them, once again. No longer were there any chiefs, no aristocracy either. No longer were there slaves. People had lost their vanity, their hierarchies, their injustice. Death had taught them a lesson in humility. Death had shown them her unrivalled might by swallowing whomever she wanted. No more stratification. No more empire. Simply men and women such as they were at the beginning of time. This is when, coming from the other side of the mountains, the BlindPeople arrived. The survivors saw them approaching in a solid mass. Their army was sparkling. Dazzling rays of light streamed from their missiles and firearms. Their power was unmatched; their superiority invincible. Within a short while, they invaded the empire and installed their kingdom. Chapter Two; The King’s Palace Built on a gigantic hill, the palace spreads its wings over the city like a monstrous bat. The huge room with a hundred mirrors where the king held court formed the body of the beast and its wings were the raised ballrooms where banquets and meetings were held; the king’s chambers and those of his daughter were located in the head of the creature. They jutted out and were decorated with fine fabrics and gold encrusted ceilings. At the top of this structure, surveillance radars scanned the kingdom and picked up every sound-wave that moved across the realm. A bat was carved on the throne and the royal scepter because the bat inhabits the night and masters the sky despite blind eyes. Because the bat with its mysterious cries is the possessor of infinite powers. Because darkness is the bat’s force. Bats lived freely in the gardens of the palace. City-dwellers heard them from afar especially at the king’s consecrated feeding time. He stood up straight among them and followed the rustling of their beating wings. He knew, exactly, the special way they sounded if they liked the mixture of ripe fruit, fresh vegetables and insects he threw to them. These creatures multiplied at an uncontrollable rate. In this way, they colonized all the trees in the city and drove away the sparrows which fled, gradually, towards the North. They attacked the children, getting entangled in their hair. They scratched and emitted piercing cries like needles on eardrums. Every morning servants washed down the palace’s steps and facade. They had to rub, scrape and scrub to get rid of the excrement that these flying mammals left everywhere. The atmosphere was invaded by a stifling stench and the gardens resembled garbage dumps. Green and blue flies buzzed up around the ears of His Majesty Ato IV. While feeding his bats one particular day the king was pensive. In the evening he was to host a huge marriage banquet with the entire court in attendance. Normally, this should have put him in a good mood yet he was very unhappy because he would have preferred to spend all this money in honor of his own daughter. His only child. But she categorically refused to get married so instead he had to celebrate the wedding festivities of a young cousin. He was thinking: “Ahh, how I would have loved to marry off Akissi!” Ato IV was thinking as he returned to his chambers. I would have had made for her a
Subjects and Persons
Supriya Chaudhuri In the preface to his late and incomplete novel Jogajog (1929; trans. Relationships, 2005), Rabindranath Tagore attempted to distinguish, in a way that might seem eccentric to European discourses of the self, between subjects and persons. He used the term which I translate as subject (‘bishay’) in the sense of ‘subject-matter’, matter for exposition, which he saw as distinct from persons (‘byakti’), defining the latter as an expressive designation, if such a phrase may be allowed. This is the passage: Proper names are a form of address; subject names indicate nature. When we consider human beings not as persons but as subjects, we title them according to their qualities or states — thus one is called ‘Barabou’ (Elder wife), another ‘Mastermashay’ (Respected teacher). When the time comes for literary name-giving we fall into uncertainty. The first question is this: is the nature of literary composition to do with subjects or persons? In science the thing itself is all, the only criterion is a qualitative one. When we see a work of psychology entitled ‘A Husband’s Jealousy Concerning his Wife’ we understand that the title will be justified only through analysis of this subject. But if ‘Othello’, the play, bore such a title, it would not have pleased us. For in this case it is not the subject, but the play that is important. That is to say, a totality made up of the plot, the style, the portrayal of characters, the language, the metre, the significance, the dramatic quality. This is what we might call the form of a person [personhood]. From the subject we gain information; from the person we gain the pleasure of self-expression. We bind the subject to our minds, adjectivally; we remember the person through her or his name, by addressing him or her. The purpose of this entire excursus on names, whether belonging to subjects or to persons, is to justify Rabindranath’s re-naming of his own work, though in fact the name he chose for it is not a particularly good illustration of his thesis. But what he says has its own interest. The individual Rabindranath identifies as the subject of address through the use of a proper name is, rather oddly, not the fictional person, but the fictional representation as a whole, the text. Persons, that is, are possessed not only of a certain self or identity; they are identifiable, or interpellated, in a social sense. We can, he says, address them. It does not seem to matter to him that the person thus addressed may be a text, a fictional projection of identity which is not so much a matter of linear persistence in time as composite, made up of the juxtaposition of different elements. Relatedness is important, but it is not something that the text can assume as a psychological or physiological given, since textual persons clearly do not exist in real time. Yet European notions of personhood have usually been founded on the sense of continuity or relatedness. Richard Wollheim begins his book, The Thread of Life, by quoting Kierkegaard: It is perfectly true, as philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards. And if one thinks over that proposition it becomes more and more evident that life can never really be understood in time because at no particular moment can I find the necessary resting-place from which to understand it – backwards. The problem of understanding a life in time is one that occupies Wollheim too, in a study centrally concerned with the nature of persons and of personhood. For it seems clear to him that persons are being conscious of leading their lives in time, beings whose identities are both subjective and relational – capable, that is, of reflecting upon themselves and the continuity of their physical and psychological experience. This continuity, this sense of an identity conferred upon events, upon the life that is led, is what Wollheim terms the thread of life. In his cultured, humane, philosophically post-Freudian study, he follows this thread, like Theseus in the labyrinth, as far as it will take him, even to the recesses of madness and death. But one classical premise of personhood that he will not abandon is that there is a thread: that persons are, in one sense or another, continuous with themselves, and therefore identities. The narrative representation of persons in European literature has historically been dependent on types of unity-relation established through moral and physical continuities, continuities of experience. But this notion begs several questions, one of the most pertinent of which has to do with the boundary of the self and its event-history. One speaks of persons, and one speaks of them leading lives in time, but is the life led in time – i.e. a relation (in two senses) of events – itself the person, or is there a person distinct from the life that is led? Western metaphysics (contra physicalist interpretations of consciousness from Locke to Dennett) encourages us to prefer the latter possibility, and this is essentialism of a kind, one signally assisted by the triumph of Cartesian philosophy in the seventeenth century. Personhood in the European novel from Richardson to Kafka is located in the indivisibility of the single consciousness, a consciousness attached to a body which acts and suffers, but exceeding that body in its reach and curiosity. In European representations of the self, moreover, identity is doubly constituted: as a sign, a means of being known to others, or identified – and as consistency, as being identical with oneself and one’s event-history. Historically, this double implication of identity is crucial to the political, economic and moral arguments of Western culture, arguments premised on such terms as freedom, knowledge, and responsibility. It is as an identifiable human being who recollects and is conscious of her (more usually his) past actions that an individual can be held to be free and responsible. And as we all know,