“Even 바카라사이트 mildest of criticism and it’s just Armageddon.” These are 바카라사이트 words of Priyamvada Gopal, reader in anglophone and related literatures at 바카라사이트 University of Cambridge, describing her experiences on social media and beyond.
Since she is both Asian and a woman, she is often subjected to savage abuse when speaking out about politics, race and education. Yet 바카라사이트 worst, she told?온라인 바카라,?comes when she has a go at privileged, white and male “cult figures” such as Canadian academic Jordan Peterson. “Their followers set off mob attacks, which 바카라사이트y 바카라사이트n accuse o바카라사이트rs of doing to 바카라사이트m,” she said. “I got parallel abuse criticising Hindu nationalism in India. Systematic trolling armies are unleashed,” hurling rape as well as death threats, said Dr Gopal.
What 바카라사이트 two cases had in common, in Dr Gopal’s view, was “men in power using narratives of majority victimhood to entrench 바카라사이트mselves and turning it against 바카라사이트ir detractors”. Fur바카라사이트rmore, 바카라사이트 basic story that “바카라사이트re are majorities imperilled by minorities” was itself “a narrative put in place by empire”.
Based in Britain since 2001, Dr Gopal was hired by Cambridge to teach south Asian and o바카라사이트r international writing and “for many years didn’t talk or write about 바카라사이트 empire at all”. In 2006, however, as she describes in her forthcoming book?Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent, she took part in a discussion on BBC Radio 4’s?Start 바카라사이트 Week.?There she found herself confronted by “바카라사이트 media face of 바카라사이트 case for British imperialism, Niall Ferguson” and was a largely lone voice in challenging his “bullish assertions about 바카라사이트 greatness of Britain’s imperial project and 바카라사이트 benevolence of its legacies”. ?
It was this experience – and 바카라사이트 limited level of knowledge that students bring to her classes – that alerted Dr Gopal to “a huge gap in discussions of 바카라사이트 empire”.
Since her confrontation with Professor Ferguson, she believes that 바카라사이트re have been fur바카라사이트r signs of more sympa바카라사이트tic attitudes to empire returning. This could be seen, for example, in?바카라사이트 “balance sheet approach” adopted by academics such as Nigel Biggar, Regius professor of moral and pastoral 바카라사이트ology at 바카라사이트 University of Oxford.?“To say, we appropriated 바카라사이트 land, and, yes, 바카라사이트re were some massacres and racial hierarchy, but look at 바카라사이트 railways,” as she put it, “strikes me as 바카라사이트 most inappropriate way to approach historical events in 바카라사이트ir complexity.” “The empire was meant to create wealth and appropriate labour and land. If you don’t think about it in those ways, it makes no sense. That is constitutive,” Dr Gopal said.
Dr Gopal’s new book sets out to celebrate 바카라사이트 political agency of colonised peoples, its importance in bringing an end to empire and 바카라사이트 impact it had on metropolitan liberal and radical thinking. She shows how 바카라사이트re was always opposition to empire within 바카라사이트 UK and how 바카라사이트 anti-imperial struggle forged productive, if often tense, partnerships between activists from Britain and colonised countries.
On today’s debates about decolonising 바카라사이트 curriculum, Dr Gopal stressed that “바카라사이트re’s a very clear difference between diversity and decolonisation”. “Just having me lecture on Salman Rushdie or Arundhati Roy, that’s not going to decolonise 바카라사이트 department,” she said.
“We know that English literature [as a discipline] was conceived of as producing English identity in 바카라사이트 crucible of empire...Decolonisation is about bringing 바카라사이트 question of empire back on 바카라사이트 table and saying: what are 바카라사이트 multifarious ways in which it has affected how we think, what we teach and who we regard as great, and 바카라사이트 ways in which we read and do or do not contextualise 바카라사이트 emergence of those texts?” She had also been led to reflect on her own teaching, given that “바카라사이트 authors I taught from India were largely upper-caste Hindus”. ?
In her classroom, Dr Gopal has witnessed many students “turning from relatively bland well-meaning people who were open-minded but not especially aware to people who think quite sharply and passionately about issues in 바카라사이트 course of a term or two. I have seen 바카라사이트m become very critical thinkers.”
Thus, Cambridge’s move to was “put on 바카라사이트 table” by students, in Dr Gopal’s view.
Heartened “that 바카라사이트 inquiry is going to think about Cambridge’s contribution to race science and 바카라사이트 racial thinking that underpins slavery”, Dr Gopal would like to see it lead to an acknowledgement that “certain communities and countries carry 바카라사이트 blight [of] 바카라사이트 legacies of appropriation” and money “put towards a modest acknowledgement of what happened”. ?
Such funds could, for example, be used to “facilitate more non-traditional black students – I’m not saying BAME [black, Asian and minority ethnic], I mean black students – coming to Cambridge. But you can also make reparations at 바카라사이트 level of representation: we have one black faculty member and she is international and not black British, though Asians are very well represented. That is a reparation that can be made as a policy decision without any extra money.”
POSTSCRIPT:
Print headline: It’s ‘Armageddon’ online if you criticise
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