An Analogy: The product of pointless and unnecessary resentment

Sometimes old curios lead to more than just the acceptable levels of possessiveness of inanimate objects that are symbolic of all the things during our vulnerable tenure as a colony of the Crown.

Take for instance the Koh-i-Noor. Reduced to a mere 58% of it's original weight and placed in an array along with many more others of its kind, the jewel has been marginalised most brutally for the "glory" of just another monarch.

No one said life was fair but in this time of globalisation i have become more sensitised to the analogy that can be drawn from that magnificent gem and here i plan to make it known.

India was once an empire. Controlled, almost always, by a King not from within. The whole situation was characterised by a rule of "foreigners". Many "looted" but none as perfectly and as systematically as the British Raj. As much as we owe to them, they only gave in order to receive. The colonialism that we were subject to was capitalist colonialism at it's best/worst (where do you stand?). There have been a million tales of the suppression, etc, but that is not what i am going to talk about. Local rulers supress too and if you're going to tell me that's it's ok if the suppression if from within, then sod off!

BUT, look at the economy. Agrarian, we have always been but the manner in which we have been now scachled to the land is soemthing that could only have come along by manner of the metaphorical exodus of workers from their traditional occupations to tilling the over-worked, over-burdened land. The wealth of the country was whittled away on a starving populace and on the demanding sustainance of a domineering "mother country" though i only see HER as the cliched "evil step-mother".

Keeping up the flow of the income to match the serious disappearance of money and other significant valuables from the local coffers was worse than merely impossible and there came a time when that disparity in the flow meant that there was nothing left to give but more than enough to "owe". Keeping in mind that the salaries of first the E I Co.'s workers and then on the servants of the queen, plus the locals in employ and all the other day to day expenditures all came out of the trove at home, there is some seriously impossible accounting math to do.

Now add to that the almost-annual feature of a few famines sprinkled around, s'more unaccountable expenses and what do you have? A country that's going bankrupt...and fast.

Nothing feels better than freedom, eh? But what is freedom without the money...in this case or for that matter in any other? It's a little crippled. Not so much freedom as...well the sense of wings that won't work...right?

Pensez, s'il vous plait!