DUBAI, December 22, 2011 — Every country you go to captures your heart only if you identify with some facet of its history or culture or society. Besides the sheer joy of experiencing its beauty. Ireland touched us in every one of those aspects; America was part of the British Empire for 174 years, between the early 1600s and 1781. India was under British occupation for about three centuries but Ireland was ruled by the Brits for nearly eight centuries!
Ireland, America and India have a special bond as countries that were colonized by the same power, whose culture was similar to America’s but very different from India’s. Interestingly, scholars hold that the Irish language has more in common with Sanskrit than it does with English, others point to similarities between ancient Irish Brehon Laws and Indian Vedic laws. In India the British exploited the Hindu/Muslim divide, in Ireland they manipulated the Protestant/Catholic conflict. In America however they were up against the influence of Puritanism that fostered the war against what the revolutionaries considered a sinful, corrupt Britain. ”No Lords, Spiritual, or Temporal,” was the rallying cry in New England.
Irish American political leaders played a major role in local and national politics even before America’s War of Independence.: eight Irish Americans signed the United States Declaration of Independence, and 22 American Presidents, from Andrew Jackson to Barack Obama, have been at least partly of Irish ancestry. An estimated 250,000 migrated to America during the colonial era, and Irish immigrants participated in significant numbers in the American Revolution, leading one British major general to testify at the House of Commons that "half the rebel Continental Army were from Ireland."
Not many aficionados of history know about the nature of Ireland’s contribution in stoking India’s national consciousness in the seminal phase of its political awakening. Besides learning from the continent about civic freedom and patriotism, the immediate lessons of a country struggling to free itself from the British colonial yoke India essentially gained from Ireland. Indian freedom fighters were inspired by the Irish Home Rule movement launched in 1870. Observing Ireland’s Easter Rising in 1916 and the country’s subsequent independence in 1922, Indians figured if a small country like Ireland could gain independence, then why not a large and faraway country like India? Similarly, the framers of India’s Constitution drew inspiration from the constitution of Ireland written only ten years before.
Many people are unaware that before she started her work in India, Mother Teresa was trained at a convent in Ireland. There is also an intriguing relationship between Tagore and the Irish poet James Cousins who moved to India in 1915. It is fascinating because of their common belief that ‘internationalism’ not ‘nationalism’ was the way forward.
There is some indication of violent reprisals during the American Revolution, but Indian, and Irish history present clear evidence that the British ruthlessly employed genocide as a strategy. The numerical presence of the British in colonized India was never very significant; one reason certainly was the great distance from Britain. That was not a problem for them when it came to ruling Ireland. The Irish paid dearly for being England’s Catholic neighbors, enduring an eight century rule of the British. In India only the Amritsar Jallianwala Bagh incident stands out among the atrocities of the Raj, but the 1943 Bengal famine which happened as late as 1943 when four million people died was largely due to official English policy. British atrocities have been airbrushed but historians like Mike Davis who wrote ‘Late Victorian Holocausts,’ and others have estimated that there were between 12 and 33 million avoidable deaths by famine in India between 1876 and 1908, produced by a deadly combination of official callousness and free-market ideology. The Great Irish Famine (1845-1849) is probably the most glaring example of this pitilessness.
The Potato In Ireland
Glendalough in Wicklow/Image by Chris Hill
In India we have rice and roti as our staples, depending on which part of the country you come from. Potato was the staple diet of the Irish, introduced into Ireland in the second half of the 16th century, initially as a garden crop. Perhaps in those days bread and butter was the staple for Americans. In Ireland the potato eventually came to be the main field crop of the tenant and labouring classes. As a food source, the potato is extremely efficient in terms of energy yielded per unit area of land. The potato is also a good source of many vitamins and minerals, particularly vitamin C especially when fresh.
Although other crops such as wheat and oats as well as beef, mutton, pork and poultry were in plentiful supply, these were shipped out from Ireland by the English landowners for profit. Britain’s political rules at the time, forced the majority of Irish produce (root crops, cereals and animal produce) to be exported to Britain, leaving the few strains of potato as the sole food source for the Irish.
In 1845 the potato crop in Ireland was struck by a disease and half the crop failed, with the situation worsening in 1846 and 1847 when more than 1.5 million people starved to death. The main cause of this was a UK armed demand to keep food exports at the pre-famine level which resulted in genocidal forced starvation, disease and mass emigration. The British government did not help the starving population, fearing they would use the money to buy guns and revolt against English rule. Records in the Skibbereen Heritage Centre indicate around a million Irish people emigrated to America and Canada halving the pre-famine population of 8.5 million in 1845, a figure Ireland has not returned to since, with its current 6.2 million population.
I am not one of those scribes who could pass through Ireland without delving into its history, but this is a travel article and I must share the excitement of experiencing Ireland so you know why I’m so keen on returning.
Frank Raj is based in Dubai,UAE and Goa, India. He is the founder of the Guild of International Travelers & Associates (GITA), an informal network of freinds who love to help one another for friendship and travel perks.
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