Colonial mindset - Kingdom of Dahomey - Golden Bear

 

In June 1834, Thomas Macaulay came to Ooty, spent under a year as a British historian and educationist. By 1835 after returning to London, he formulated an education policy for all colonies, but he knew that it would particularly be more important to establish his theory of English language and culture in the crown jewel which was, India. This policy was spread out quickly by the British and got known as Macaulayism, which amounted to thrusting the English language and customs; while simultaneously taking away the local language and customs from the colonial subjects.

On August 15, 2022, while addressing the Nation from the ramparts of the Red Fort on India’s 76^th  Independence Day, Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modiji spoke  about the 'Panch Praan' for the coming 25 years (Amrit Kaal). Elaborating on the second Praan, he said, “In no part of our existence, not even in the deepest corners of our mind or habits should there be any ounce of slavery. It should be nipped there itself. We have to liberate ourselves from the slavery mind set which is visible in innumerable things within and around us. This is our second Praan Shakti.”

The history of modern India is deeply entangled with two centuries of British colonialism, and decades after Independence, our nation has continued to carry its colonial baggage in various forms, some conspicuous, and some subtle. Over the past few years, the Government has  been steering India away from these vestiges of British rule, and a number of steps have been taken across several domains to firmly mark the identity of New India, truly freeing it from its colonial past.

A colonial mentality is the internalized attitude of ethnic or cultural inferiority felt by people as a result of colonization, i.e. them being colonized by another group. It corresponds with the belief that the cultural values of the colonizer are inherently superior to one's own.  Sadly, still some support those colonisers who took away the Nation’s wealth.  It is not India alone, many Nations were colonised – the invaders did not do them any good – they only looted and took away their riches!

A colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule.   Often they came as traders -  The Portuguese, first arriving by ship in May 1498, began establishing trading outposts in India. The first successful voyage to India was by Vasco da Gama in 1498, when after sailing around the Cape of Good Hope he arrived in Calicut.  The British colonisation of India began in 1757 when the East India Company was permitted by the Mughal Emperor to establish a trading post in Calcutta. The East India Company then took control of Bengal after the Battle of Plassey in 1757 and slowly began to expand its influence over the rest of India.  The Dutch Republic, England, France, and Denmark–Norway all established trading posts in India in the early 17th century.  

Ghezo, was King of Dahomey (present-day Republic of Benin) from 1818 until 1859. Ghezo replaced his brother Adandozan (who ruled from 1797 to 1818) as king through a coup with the assistance of the Brazilian slave trader Francisco Félix de Sousa. He ruled over the kingdom during a tumultuous period, punctuated by the British blockade of the ports of Dahomey in order to stop the Atlantic slave trade.

Ghezo ended Dahomey's tributary status to the Oyo Empire. Afterwards, he dealt with significant domestic dissent, as well as pressure from the British Empire, to end the slave trade. He promised to end the slave trade in 1852, but resumed slave efforts in 1857. Ghezo was assassinated in 1859, and his son Glele became the new king.

When King Ghezo ascended the throne in 1818, he was confronted by two immediate obstacles: the Kingdom of Dahomey was in political turmoil, and it was financially unstable. First, he needed to gain political independence by removing the hold that the Yoruba empire of Oyo had over the Dahomey since 1748. Secondly, he needed to revitalize the Dahomey economy.  Both of these objectives relied on the slave trade. King Ghezo implemented new military strategies, which allowed them to take a physical stand against the Oyo, who were also a major competitor in the slave trade.   He also put stipulations on Dahomey's participation in the slave trade. Under his reign, no longer would the Dahomey be traded, as they were under his brother's, Adandozan, leadership. Dahomey would focus on capturing people from enemy territories and trading them instead.

Dahomey is a 2024 documentary film directed by Mati Diop. It is a dramatised account of 26 royal treasures from the Kingdom of Dahomey which were held in a museum in France. The film explores how the artifacts were returned from France to Benin, and the reactions of Beninese people.  The film was an international co-production between companies in France, Senegal and Benin. It was shown in the main competition at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival and  won the festival's top prize, the Golden Bear.  It is scheduled for theatrical release in France on 25 September 2024

The documentary film blends facts and fiction to narrate the stories of 26 African artworks. The royal artefacts from the Kingdom of Dahomey (1600–1904) were taken to France during the colonial era (1872–1960). In the 21st century, they were put on display in the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, a museum of non-European art located in Paris. Following a campaign for repatriation, the artefacts were returned to Benin. Among the returned works were statues of two kings of Dahomey, Glele and Béhanzin. Their throne, which had been seized by French soldiers in 1892, was also given back.  The art pieces are now displayed in a museum in Abomey, the old royal city, about 65 miles from the Gulf of Guinea.[8]

The film includes a discussion by students at the University of Abomey-Calavi, presenting their views on the repatriation of cultural assets. Some of the students criticise the fact that only 26 of a total of around 7,000 objects were returned. A prominent role in the film is given to the 26th art object to be repatriated, a statue that represents King Ghézo.  A voice-over by the Haitian writer Makenzy Orcel [fr; ht] (who wrote this part of the script), playing the object, tells of the time it spent in storage at the Paris museum, its memories of Africa and thoughts of returning to its homeland.

The Golden Bear  is the highest prize awarded for the best film at the Berlin International Film Festival. The bear is the heraldic animal of Berlin, featured on both the coat of arms and flag of Berlin.   The statuette shows a bear standing on its hind legs and is based on the 1932 design by German sculptor Renée Sintenis of Berlin's heraldic mascot that later became the symbol of the festival. The figurine consists of a bronze core, which is then plated with a layer of gold. The total weight of the award is 4 kg (8.8 lb).

 
With regards – S. Sampathkumar
5^th Mar 2024.

Curved Beak !!

Every morning as I feed, 2 or 3 dozen or more of Pigeons come flying down – in a few months, I have taken hundreds of photos and capturing them on flight is challenging ! 

Here are couple of photos taken recently – a White and a Brown Pigeon -  and in the 2^nd one I found something different – notice  the beak ! 

The pigeon uses its beak to eat, probe for food, preen, feed its young, courtship and fight. I have noticed that the top beak is looking  more curved over the lower beak.  The beak, bill, or rostrum is an external anatomical structure found mostly in birds, but also in turtles, non-avian dinosaurs and a few mammals. 

Not all beaks are same ! different birds have them different depending on their needs !! 

Birds like Crow, Jays, Magpies, Orioles, Robins, Thrushes, etc. exhibit a generalized type of beak, adapted for a wide diet. They have All-purpose bill that allows them to eat fruit, seeds, insects, fish and other animals. The large, strong bill is a tool useful for many purposes. Birds of prey like Harriers, Falcons, Eagles, Vultures and Owls have sharp, curved bills for shreading and tearing meat. Raptors also have a unique “tooth” tucked inside their upper bill. This “tooth” is shaped like a small triangle and is called a tomila. It helps the bird kill its prey quickly by cutting the prey’s spinal cord. 

Seed eaters like Sparrows, Pigeons, Peacock and Finches have short, thick and conical bills. The cone shaped bill helps the birds to crack seeds and nuts for food easily. The edges of the lower mandible (the lower bill) fit into special grooves in the upper mandible (upper bill). These type of bill is also known as “Cracker”. 

Although the word "beak" was, in the past, generally restricted to the sharpened bills of birds of prey, in modern Ornithology, the terms beak and bill are generally considered to be synonymous. The word, dating back to  13th century, comes from the Middle English bec (via Anglo French), which itself comes from the Latin beccus. 

Sometimes a Pigeon’s upper beak will  longer than it should, usually in a downward curve or a hook.  This will eventually make picking up seed impossible and the pigeon will  have difficulty in eating, though it can easily harm other Pigeons in a fight.  

With regards – S Sampathkumar
2.3.2024 

accident and container falling at Sea - legos washed ashore !!

In the deep Ocean getting washed to beaches are numerous things – yet this is different.  On a stormy day, out in the Ocean, thousands of  plastic yellow ducks, blue turtles and green frogs fell from a cargo ship and were lost at sea.  Ever since,  these durable plastic bath toys have been floating around the world,  landing in Japan, Alaska and Hawaii and even spending years frozen in an Arctic ice pack.  Marine Cargo in transit, packed neatly and stowed in a 40-foot shipping container, rough seas and huge waves knocked the bath toys overboard, along with several other containers that sank straight to the ocean floor.

Lego is a popular line of construction toys manufactured by The Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. The company's flagship product, Lego, consists of colourful interlocking plastic bricks and an accompanying array of gears, minifigures and various other parts. Lego bricks can be assembled and connected in many ways, to construct such objects as vehicles, buildings, and even working robots. Anything constructed can then be taken apart again, and the pieces used to make other objects. Lego began manufacturing interlocking toy bricks in 1949. As of 2013, around 560 billion Lego parts had been produced.

In 1997, the container ship Tokio Express was hit by an incredibly strong wave that tilted the ship, knocking 62 containers into the sea, just 20 miles from Land's End in Cornwall.  One of the containers held 4.8 million pieces of Lego, bound for New York and now, decades later, tiny pieces of the plastic construction toys continue to wash up along both the north and south coasts of Cornwall, as well as Devon, Wales and Ireland. Ironically, millions were destined for toy kits depicting sea adventures. Children in Cornwall found octopuses, dragons, diver flippers and sea grass pieces washed ashore and, thanks to an inventory provided by a Dutch shipping clerk, beach walkers in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas are now looking out for the arrival of other elements, such as tiny plastic yellow rafts, swords, pistols, hats, flippers and spear guns.

Fly swatters bearing sports team logos coasted onto Kodiak island, Alaska, by the dozens -  Beachcombers at first assumed they were debris from the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami, but authorities soon traced them to a cargo ship that had lost a row of containers that came loose from a cable during a Pacific crossing four months earlier.  Rogue oddities riding the waves are no surprise when you consider that the international liner shipping industry carries approximately 100 million containers of cargo each year. Each container is the size of a semi-truck trailer, and the ships' decks can be stacked seven containers high. Careful distribution of weight is essential, to say the least. Losing a few containers during big storms is nearly unstoppable.

Four months after a storm off the California coast dumped 15 containers into the ocean in 2004, scientists with the Monterey Bay Aquarium discovered one of the containers was providing an unique artificial habitat for marine life—with 1,100 steel-belted radial tires still trapped inside. "Cargo practices have since improved, but in the 1990s as many as ten thousand containers may have gone overboard each year,” Ebbesmeyer and Eric Scigliano report in their book, Flotsametrics and the Floating World.  Ebbesmeyer earned credit  in this flotsam arena when he accurately modelled the arrival time and place of two separate shipments of Nike shoes lost in the Pacific in the 1990s. In the first incident, which was Ebbesmeyer’s inspiration to follow flotsam in the first place, eight containers jumped ship in transit from Korea during a mid-Pacific storm in 1990, sending adrift some 80,000 individual, unlaced shoes.

Though the plastic daisies dropped into the sea in Feb 1997 from Tokio Express have been found on Cornish shores; none knows exactly what happened next, or even what was in the other 61 containers.  A quirk of fate meant many of the Lego items were nautical-themed, so locals and tourists alike started finding miniature cutlasses, flippers, spear guns, seagrass, scuba gear as well as the dragons and the daisies.  There is a Facebook page that documents the Lego discoveries, and its keeper received an email from someone in Melbourne who found a flipper which they think could be from the Tokio Express spillage.  Experts say that it  takes three years for sea debris to cross the Atlantic ocean, from Land's End to Florida. Undoubtedly some Lego has crossed and it's most likely some has gone around the world.   

"The most profound lesson I've learned from the Lego story is that things that go to the bottom of the sea don't always stay there," Ebbesmeyer adds. The incident is a perfect example of how even when inside a steel container, sunken items don't stay sunken. They can be carried around the world, seemingly randomly, but subject to the planet's currents and tides. But there's also a dark side to the story, he says. If Lego is on land then it's fun. If it's on the ocean it's deadly, a poison for birds. If you lose one container with 5m pieces of Lego in it, that is a catastrophe for wildlife.

With regards – S. Sampathkumar

9^th Feb 2015

News collated from various sources including Daily Mail; BBC and SMH.

Farmer gets payout after birds terrified by low flying helicopters ! & LHR noise complaints !!!

London Heathrow Airport (IATA: LHR) is a major international airport in West London, England, United Kingdom. Heathrow is the busiest airport in the United Kingdom and the busiest airport in Europe by passenger traffic. Heathrow lies 22 kms west  of Central London, and has two parallel east–west runways along with five terminals on a site that covers 12.14 square kilometres (4.69 sq mi).

Are you calm and composed – do you live in harmony – at peace in your workplace and at home ?  Peace at workplace could be disturbed by your boss, your subordinates and at times by unknown [rather unseen] scandalous elements jealous of you.  When you retire back, you expect a tranquil environment.  Blessed are those, who own a house – most of us live in apartment where some of the walls are shared.  There could be flurry of activities that keep disturbing you, shattering your peace. 

One of them is of course the noise – may be vocal, from the pets, from the electronic devices, from dance and related activities and more.  On a holiday, when one tries to catch up some lost sleep, there could be the spell of hammer continuously hitting or some fresh alteration work – not many options available. 

Away in advanced countries, nuisance is a tort.   There are two types - private nuisance and public nuisance. A private nuisance is a civil wrong; it is the unreasonable, unwarranted, or unlawful use of one's property in a manner that substantially interferes with the enjoyment or use of another individual's property, without an actual Trespass or physical invasion to the land. A public nuisance is a criminal wrong; it is an act or omission that obstructs, damages, or inconveniences the rights of the community. Nuisance law is not of recent origin, it  dates back to medieval times when its main purpose was to eradicate the nasty and unpleasant elements of everyday life.  The tort has continued and developed as a form of legal action with which to protect the environment.  Here are two interesting instances to do with ‘noise’.

In an instance reported in Daily Mail and other Press a Chicken farmer in Ninfield, Sussex has received £18,708 from the Ministry of Defence, after birds terrified by low-flying Apache helicopter stopped laying eggs.    It is reported that the farmer in Sussex village claimed compensation from the Ministry of Defence claiming that his birds so frightened by the loud noise of helicopter stopped laying eggs. 

The payout was just one of four last year made to poultry farmers who said that their chickens were so scared by military aircraft that they trampled one another death and that the survivors were so terrified by the noise, the stopped laying eggs.  It comes as figures released under the Freedom of Information Act showed that the MoD paid out a total of £1.1million in compensation due low flying incidents in 2014. It adds that payments were also made to people who lost horses, cows and puppies, which were also spooked by the noise of the military aircraft. 

The figures also showed that the MoD sanctioned a payment of £25,000 to a falconry centre in Derbyshire which lost a number of precious birds of prey when a helicopter flew over it. It is believed around eight birds including owls, hawks and falcons were killed in the incident when the terrified birds fatally injured themselves by flying full speed into the wire walls of the aviary trying to get away from the noise.  Many of the compensation payouts come with confidentially agreements so that people agree not to disclose what they have been paid for. Other payments included £42,700 for cows that died after being scared by a Puma helicopter in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, and £20,000 for an injured horse that lost its foal in a case in Dyfed, Wales. Often the biggest payouts are made to horse riders who suffer injuries when their animals bolt after being spooked by the military aircraft. An MoD report said low-flying compensation claims required particularly careful monitoring to identify potentially fraudulent claims.

In a different case, it is revealed that the 8,000 Heathrow noise complaints  are from just TWO people. Another report reveals that the 2 anti-Heathrow campaigners sent 8,000 noise complaints to the airport - with some arriving one hour before the aircraft was due to take off. The duo were using automated software to complain when a flight was due to fly over their homes near the airport.

But officials at the airport caught them out when they failed to take into account the clocks going back in October leading to complaints being made about flights which were still on the ground. The airport now believes that dozens of complainants are using similar software to generate automatic email complaints when a plane was due regardless of the noise.  According to airport officials, two individuals were responsible for 7,888 complaints in 2014. The airport claims that just 37 people using the automated email system have lodged more than 28,000 complaints.  The airport has seen the total number of noise complaints rise from 18,826 in 2013 to 94,114 last year.

With regards – S. Sampathkumar

16^th Feb 2015.