ASIA
A Cargo of Questions 1992
India
GWALIOR
It was near here during the 'Indian Mutiny', or 'War of Independence', that the British finally defeated Tantia Topi and it was in the final assault on the fort that the Rhani of Jhansi was killed. In 1853 the British, who had recently passed a law allowing them to take over any princely state under their patronage when the ruler died without a male heir, pensioned the Rani off and took full control. Four years later she was in the forefront of the uprising in Jhansi. In defeat she fled to Gwalior, and, in a last stand, she rode out against the British disguised as a man and was killed.
In 1600, Queen Elizabeth I had granted a charter to a London trading company giving them a monopoly on British trade with India.
For 250 years British power was exercised in India not by the Government but by the East India Company.
For the British India was a place to make money, not to interfere in culture, belief and religion, except where it could assist the policy of divide and rule.
They gave themselves the right to intervene in local states if they were inefficiently run; 'inefficient' was defined as and when the British saw fit.
Are we this British?
What do the British do to the British?
What do Indian administrators do to the Indians?
What exactly was and is this British administration?
Is it a system of thought, an ideology, that disguises identifiable interests?
Then and now?
Home and Away?
What good did the British do for India?
A Cargo of Questions 2017
The LODE project of 1992 and the Re:LODE project of 2017 is about generating questions that begin with places.
To every place there belongs a story . . .
To every story there belongs another . . .
Is capitalism historically inseparable from colonialism?
State planning versus liberalisation - Economic policies in modern India
The richest 1% cornered 73% of wealth generated in India in 2017
Nationalisation, demonetisation, intimidation!
Does capitalism function through the expansion of frontiers?
To every place there belongs a story . . .
This blog-post is a matrix that originates first in the context of an artistic activity that relates to this place, Gwalior, and then connections multiply through processes of association, suggesting links, articulations and juxtapositions that the contemporary information wrap affords us, in a particular and contemporary type of consciousness, where the "loop" or "ricorso" helps the zig zagging necessary to see what is going on.
That's just the way it is . . . but don't you believe them . . .
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