October 30, 1974 witnessed a historic ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ a boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in Kinshasa, Zaire. While Foreman was the favourite, Muhammad Ali, the underdog was the crowd favourite. As Muhammad Ali landed in Kinshasa all he needed to have the crowd back him was to utter ‘Foreman in Belgian’. That was enough for the crowd to adulate Muhammad Ali. The antagonistic feelings that Belgium evokes in Congo has a history to it. However, the story will have to wait for a few paragraphs. To the whole world, Belgium projects a certain image that is in total contrast to its historical conduct.
Belgium exists in a delusion that it is a conscience keeper of this world. It invoked a law in 1993 that allowed its courts to have universal jurisdiction over war crimes. Implied is Belgian courts can be approached for trial of any individual suspected of being involved in war crime anywhere in the world irrespective whether it is linked to Belgium or not. While quite a few countries allow local courts to try foreign nationals if they are suspected of crime against the country’s nationals, Belgian law goes into territory never encroached or tested before. While criticised big, it is still to be tested in practice.
In living up to its deluded ‘glorious traditions’, Belgium has raked up the issue of National Register for Citizens (NRC) in Assam and the alleged conditions of those excluded of the final NRC list. While India has responded stating it was unfortunate, the reaction is yet mild. Furthermore, PM Modi is expected to visit Brussels shortly for Indo-EU summit. Rather than offering relative mild reaction, India must stand its ground and ensure the countries critical of India have to endure punitive measures.
Yet while Belgium seeks to be moral policeman of the world, it is perhaps time for it to look in the mirror and see where it stands. Taken together, charity begins at home. In fact, Belgium as some say exists on paper. In practice it essentially an uneasy coexistence of Flanders and Wallonia with Dutch and French communities living apart. In fact, the northern part of the country that is bigger, one witnesses only Dutch signs in this region called Flanders. Politicos are more eager to hail Flanders and avoid talking of Belgium. In the southern part of French speaking Wallonia, most of them proclaim loyalty to Wallonia rather than Belgium. As a matter of fact, loyalty to Belgium becomes secondary or incidental and the primary loyalties lie to Flanders or Wallonia. Belgium virtually functions on linguistic apartheid, the language being the fault-line separating the two regions. To a few, it is a wonder, Belgium continuing to remain a single country despite the same. There is hardly any interaction between the two communities. Incidentally, even inter-language marriages too are rare. Aside of Brussels and its suburbs where the two populations intermingle in an uneasy existence, it is virtual ghettoization elsewhere. While it is not able to erase its own linguistic divide, it keeps on harping on divides artificial, natural or manufactured elsewhere in the world.
It is time for India at least through think tanks and RW intelligentsia networks to bring to the fore the sharp language divide and it’s after effects in Belgium. A strident focus must be to highlight Belgian atrocities in Congo. Revisiting the opening paragraph on Mohammad Ali describing Foreman as Belgian, there is a deep and dark story to be told. It is a reference to the atrocities committed by King Leopold II as he ruled over his colony of Congo.
Determined to own a colony in Africa for himself, Leopold II began efforts to survey territory along the river Congo with ostensibly innocuous reason of civilizing the natives. The so called innocuous reason was sinister in design and execution. In 1885, European leaders recognized his sovereignty over the Congo Free State covering nearly 2.35 million square kilometres. It was essentially a buffer area between French and British influences.
While ivory was initial gold mine, the focus soon shifted to natural rubber. Forced labour ensured the collection of wild rubber to be exported to Europe which touched close to 4000 tonnes at the dawn of the twentieth century. Yet the locals had to pay too heavy a price for the same. Vast territories of forests were cleared, tribal and native lands were usurped and the natives forced to work to benefit to the royal family in Brussels. Ruthless plundering of rubber was accompanied by killing of millions of Congolese, the after effects which have a century hence. Taking family members of labourers hostage, imprisoning the chiefs those villages not meeting the quota were routine. Consensus hovers around nearly 10 million deaths notwithstanding the amputations of hands and legs of thousands of men, women and children, their crime being an inability to meet the quota for production of rubber. Cannibalism was not unknown with certain favoured tribes set on others. Books are being written even today on measuring the death toll, with many accounts talking of abject misery and utter abandon across villages in the Belgian Congo. A chilling photograph of Congolese native staring at severed arms and legs of his five year daughter- a punishment for his inability to produce the given quote of rubber manifests the dark past of the Belgian colonial rule. (Picture is available here ). To add to the atrocities was the epidemics of small pox and sleeping sickness. Rubber companies like ABIR exacerbated famine and disease. Murder, starvation, exhaustion, exposure disease, plummeting birth rate defined the dark ages of Belgian rule. The population of the Belgian Congo territory dropped sharply in those times. International pressures finally forced the Parliament to take control of the territory from Leopold II yet the damage done could not be repaired.
Let alone apologizing or an expression of regret, Belgium celebrates with Africa museum. The museum is filled near two million looted items and around 5000 stuffed animals. Many Congolese who settled in Belgium complain of total alienation from the mainstream society. For many years, it was as if blacks did not exist. While there are few symbols of Congolese heritage and some are even invited to the African Museum, yet they have remained as mere symbols. Healing touch is more an outcome of passage of time than any concrete effort by Belgium to address the dark period of its imperialist history.
Therefore, given the history behind Belgium both contemporary internal and historical external, it is ironic that the country seeks to present itself as a moral policeman. It is akin to criminal being tasked with maintaining decorum and civility in the society. There are enough skeletons in the cupboard. An ostrich approach is still prevalent though to a lesser degree. Yet not dearth of commentary of happenings in distant lands. It is time that Indian right wing ecosystem whatever it exists starts building discussions on the colonial project of the West and their double standards in the contemporary world without feeling a hint of regret or apology for the past.
Thoughts on Theory and Practice 
