Suman K. Sharma
Time is a great joker. How it parodies the powerful! On 26 January this year, while we were celebrating our 66th Republic Day, Tony Abbott, Prime Minister of Australia, appointed Prince Philip a Knight of the Order of Australia. The occasion was the ‘Australian Day’ which also falls on 26 January. Nothing the wrong with it you would say, except that Australia’s Head of the State is the British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, and the recipient of the award, her husband. In plainer words, the Australian Prime Minister took it upon himself to decide that an honour, albeit the highest in his country, be bestowed on the spouse of his sovereign.
To understand fully the significance of the event, let us go back to the times when the vast continent Down Under became a British colony. The year was 1788 and the date – yes, you have got it right- 26 January. Britain was ruled by George III. France, its nearest continental rival, was seething with republican fervor. It would overthrow royalty in a matter of a year and a half in a massive upsurge of July 1789, which Charles Dickens has depicted so graphically in his novel A Tale of Two Cities. North America, a former British colony, had freed itself from the mother country by its Declaration of Independence of 4 July, 1776. In 1788, the US of A comprised not all of the fifty states, but only the original thirteen. India, a newly turned British colony, also figured prominently in the affairs of Great Britain as on 13 February, 1788 impeachment proceedings were initiated against Warren Hastings, its first Governor General, for extortion from rajas and other grave charges. (Hastings would eventually be exonerated in a trial that lasted seven years and cost him lots of money and also wrecked his health).
Well, India had its riches and its bountiful rajas in the 18th century. What did Australia have back then? What motivated mandarins of the British Empire to stretch their logistics over a distance of 10246 miles (16489 kilometers) over sea? (India, in comparison, is only 6536 miles (10520 kilometers) by sea from UK). Australia possessed vast lands and natural resources. A whole continent extending over 29,88,901 square miles (77,41,220 square kilometers), which even today is the world’s largest net exporter of coal, it offered bauxite, coal, iron ore, copper, tin, gold, silver, mineral sands, lead, zinc and even diamonds to the 18th century world before which oil, natural gas, and nuclear fuel had not yet proved their potential. The problem was how Britain could exploit these humongous resources.
The short answer could have been deployment of slaves. But slaves were not only expensive; there was a growing opposition to slavery in England itself. Granville Sharp, considered ‘an eccentric and pious Englishman’ by his contemporaries, posited that the constitution of England did not permit slavery. The English and Scottish courts had pronounced judgments against slavery in 1778. Under Sharp’s influence, the Society for Effecting the Abolition of Slave Trade had begun to lobby the British Parliament for their cause.
Such were the circumstances in which a proposal was mooted for settling convicts in a British colony. Convicts were cheap to be deployed and at hand too. So, on 13 May, 1787, the first fleet of 11 ships set sail from Portsmouth for Australia, carrying 1350 persons, including 780 convicts. The oldest convict was 82 years old and 20 percent of them were women. The fleet arrived at the Botany Bay on 18 January, 1788. The place was not found suitable by the landing party and it moved to Port Jackson. Eight days later, on 26 January, a settlement was established at Sydney Cove.
Look at Australia’s 26 January and our own. While we celebrate the day we gave ourselves a democratic republic, Australians commemorate it when their land came under British thralldom. But this January Australians seemed to tell Britishers that enough is enough. Now we will award one of your prominent citizens who has rendered commendable services to our people. Australia’s PM may have been widely lampooned for his decision to decorate Prince Philip, but it is hard to deny that he has made a point and a telling one at that. When Barack Obama – the first citizen of arguably the world’s prominent-most nation, came to India as the Chief Guest of the 26 January celebrations, our PM, clad in a designer bandgala with Narendra Damodardas Modi spun all over it, looked him in the eye and ‘Barack’-ed him more than once. The world sat up and listened.
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