Someone Asked Me...

[f4f3]

"What is your general impression of Americans?"

Which is a hard one. I don't have a general impression of Americans anymore. Probably I haven't had since I graduated from Cowboy movies to Marvel Comics in the early 70's. When I was very young, I had the impression that all Americans were rich. Rich in wealth, rich in goodies - as Nail Gaiman points out somewhere in Good Omens (for some reason I'm sure it was Neil, not Terry), Americans had 20 flavours of ice-cream: maybe even more.
And then I started reading Spiderman, and the Fantastic Four, and The Silver Surfer, and Americans were these liberal, JFK democrats, who wanted a fair shake for everyone. Then there was Richard Condon, with his satirical take on Watergate, and Steve Gerber, who had Howard the Duck run for President, and again, it was the liberal conscience, the belief in freedom, that came across most strongly.
I could run it up through Dave Sim, and Steve Earle, and Warren Zevon till 1992, the first time I travelled in America. Where everyone, from SF to Chicago, was friendly, open, interested and good company.

Through the 90's I worked for American companies, with lots of Americans, and visited and vacationed there. I still haven't found a generalised feel for the place, never mind the people.

If I take a step back, I guess I see Americans as the right sort of people - they believe in equality, democracy, and free speech. The thing is, as I get older and learn more, I still believe in that impression, and feel that it's shared by most people in the world.

Comments

[rparvaaz.livejournal.com]

Look at the words you chose in your last comment after all, burning women...was not acceptable behaviour in England at the time we're discussing, while as far as I know it was commonplace throughout those countries.... You neither ruled out capital punishment, nor specified Sati and you find it strange that I talk about burning women in England, and don't find the mention of Sati strange? How interesting. Even more interesting is the fact that you haven't yet connected the obvious dots - which practice can be termed more 'acceptable', that which is prescribed by the law of the land, or that which is proscribed by the law of the land?

And yes, the proscriptions of the last 7 centuries haven't stopped the practice. And the reason is probably the same as the reason why we haven't managed to stop murder, or paedophilia, or rape, or terrorism, or suicide - it is one thing to recognise the undesirability of an action and legislate against it, yet another to ensure universal compliance.

You point out that I didn't mention that some princely states lagged behind even the British when it came to banning the Sati. I didn't - there were more than 500 princely states, most no bigger than tiny districts, and I neither know the position of all on Sati, nor remember the same for the states whose individual positions I may have read about. What I mentioned was a] the positions of those who ruled large tracts of India, and b] the position of other Europeans. Both of these were mentioned to refute your claims of a] the English being 'so far in advance' of the people being colonised, and b] being no worse than any other colonisers. And nothing in what you write above negates my point.

I also didn't mention the Brahmo Samaj and the Arya Samaj, and the various movements towards widow remarriage, and what Warren Hastings thought of the figures compiled by Bentick, and plenty of other things besides. The reason for this is simple - sati is probably the most well discussed and researched practice of India. If your interest in it goes beyond sneering, you should not have any difficulty finding sufficent reading material.

I am not too sure what you mean when you say I didn't explain why it was necessary for the British to ban a custom already banned under the law of individual states. Which 'individual states' did the British ban the practice in? As far as I know, the British banned it in the areas under their control - after all, it is hard to legislate in an area that isn't under your control.
[tbc]

[rparvaaz.livejournal.com]

[contd from above]

What you call taking you to task on questions of moral judgment, I call challenging the validity of the moral judgment you pronounced. And the notion of the moral superiority of Victorian England is a notion I will always challenge. For the experience of my people doesn't bear out that judgment. Millions of Indians starved to death between 1850 and 1902, not because we didn't produce enough grain but because it was being shipped out. [15.5 million by official records, 31 million according to the Indian records] That fact alone, and there are plenty more like that, compels me to discount any statement about the advanced morality of the British, never mind that they joined the long list of rulers who tried to ban sati.

Now let me move onto the para about Bengal and Sati. let us take the figure of 500 incidences per year. The area of the province in the pre-partition era [the 1905 partition] - 189,000 sq miles. The population of the province in the first few decades of the nineteenth century ~ 50 million [Just an estimate - the 1770 famine reduced the number to 30 mil and after a couple more horrific famines the figure was around 80 mil at the time of the first partition of Bengal]. So 1 incident of sati every 100,000 people. I have never argued with prevalent, but I need better odds than that to describe something as either 'commonplace' or 'widely accepted'.

And, finally, the most significant sentence in your comment above: And, as you took me to task about questions of moral judgment, how many deaths by burning of innocent women constitute a moral issue? 8,000? 800? 80? 8?

Since you obviously feel the need to ask, even 8 deaths are 8 too many. Now that you have your answer, I'd like you to point me to any statement of mine which says or implies anything to the contrary. Failing which I'd like an apology for the red herring quoted above and the implicit insinuation. If you are unable to do either, kindly consider this an end to not just this discussion, but to all and any further discussions. I am fine with argments, I am fine with unresolved arguments, what I am not fine with are passive-aggressive personal attacks.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

I'm familiar with famine in Victorian times. Over 10% of Ireland's population died in famine during England's rule. While exporting grain to England. India contributed to the famine relief. It's the reason I'm Scottish, not Irish. The Victorian's foreign policy was morally reprehensible. I've never argued otherwise.

I picked up "prevalent" rather than commonplace wrongly. I was offended that as far as I could tell you were downplaying the significance of a practice based on numbers - "You may decide if a practice committed by 1% of widows in less than 20% of a country can be called commonplace. All I will say is yes, it happened."

At every point in the discussion above I have been at pains to repeat and repeat that I find Victorian policy morally repugnant.

And, reading that, I can see you made no moral judgement on the practice. All you can say is that it happened.
For obvious reasons, I'm going to try to avoid making an insinuation here. But if I have a problem with your argument, that is it. That you make no moral judgement.

I was not, in the comments quoted above making any insinuations, implicit or otherwise. Insinuation is a disgusting practice, and I would not indulge in it - if I had something personal to say I would say it straight out. I was not indulging in personal attacks, nor aggression, not actively nor passively. If anything I've said before the paragraphs above can be regarded as personal comment at all, it was unintentional and I apologise for any ambiguity of expression that might have caused that, unreservedly.

Given the subject, I plainly underestimated the level at which you would take it personally, which was at best naive on my part.

Having said that, and having apologised for seeming to insinuate anything, however unintentionally, I now consider this discussion over.

[rparvaaz.livejournal.com]

Oh, I make plenty of moral judgments. I just was not aware that, in this day and age, one actually needed to pronounce judgment on the undesirability and the wrongness of sati. I honestly took the issue as self-evident.

[fugney.livejournal.com]

Uggh!!! Stop fighting! Both of you!

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

"Look at the words you chose in your last comment after all, burning women...was not acceptable behaviour in England at the time we're discussing, while as far as I know it was commonplace throughout those countries.... You neither ruled out capital punishment, nor specified Sati and you find it strange that I talk about burning women in England, and don't find the mention of Sati strange? How interesting."

You raised a practice that was abolished before the time we were discussing. Once abolished, it stayed abolished, and never happened again. While rape, murder etc did indeed continue. And for the avoidance of doubt, capital punishment in any form is reprehensible and should be abolished everywhere.In my opinion.

I'm less informed than you are as to the extent of Princely states. I raised them as an example of areas where the practice was not forbidden after the English banned it.

I did not intend to sneer. I apologise if that was the impression I gave. I have no intention of studying Sati beyond what I thought necessary to answer your point.

"I am not too sure what you mean when you say I didn't explain why it was necessary for the British to ban a custom already banned under the law of individual states."

I was wondering why there was a need to ban something that had already been banned. You answered that when you said it was as perpetual as murder and rape.