Globalisation and altered identities

This is the background against which the story unfolds: It8217;s 1838, and The East India Company has been making incredible profits by exporting opium grown in India to China and turning millions of Chinese into desperate addicts. But the Chinese emperor has now banned the opium trade and Company Bahadur is lobbying the British government to order a military assault on China to force it to reopen the market This would become what is known now as the First Opium War. Meanwhile, the Company has also coerced all farmers in today8217;s Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to cultivate only opium. As the opium trade collapses, millions face starvation, since they don8217;t grow any food crops anymore, nor do they have the money to buy food. But the Company has discovered another revenue stream; it has begun supplying Indian labour to plantations in Mauritius. The merchants make money, and are also saved from the social unrest that could result from mass starvation in India8217;s most fertile plain.

The Ibis is a schooner carrying a batch of these labourers. Among those on board are Deeti, a Bihari Rajput widow who has run away with the chamar Kalua; Neel, a zamindar who has been framed by his British creditor for forgery; Jodu, the boatman who has always dreamt of the high seas; and Paulette, a young Frenchwoman who was brought up as a Bengali by her botanist father. For all of them, the journey means a new beginning and a total and irreversible break from all they had known and the way they had lived till now. The future is uncertain, yet their destinies are now blank slates, waiting for them to write their own stories.

We are given a hint that Kalua the chamar would 8220;found a dynasty8221;, and Ghosh8217;s website informs us that Neel would spend many years in South China. These people would ride the wave of globalisation, and be changed irrevocably. The Englishman recording the names of the labourers, doesn8217;t know how to spell the name Madhu Kalua, and writes it down as Maddow Kolver. Global trade changes identities, in passing, carelessly, without a second glance.

The British merchants equate free trade with Christianity. Jesus Christ himself stands for the seamless unimpeded flow of goods across borders. The emperor8217;s opium ban is an attack on Christianity itself. The Chinese consumer has the choice not to buy opium but must have the right to access opium. Remember, the East India Company was the first true multinational company.

Language itself changes. The lascars on the ships speak a unique argot that is a mixture of Bhojpuri, Hindustani, Portuguese, Chinese, English and who knows what else. This is the Esperanto that moves capital and labour all round the planet, no matter what the lascar8217;s nationality is. The British sahibs and mems speak an English that has incorporated so much of Hindustani in it that their cousins in England would scarcely understand what they are saying. At every level of society, identities, roles, values, hierarchies and histories are altered, reshaped, obliterated.

It is exciting and scary to look at our world through the filter of Sea of Poppies. The world we live in today is going through changes of massive magnitude yet sometimes too subtle for us to notice. We change without even noticing how we change; we often believe we have made a choice when actually there was no such choice available to us. We have very often no idea where we are going, and what the world will look like after tomorrow. In a sense, all of us, as we second-guess our way to the future, are travellers, pioneers, fortune-seekers. Like Maddow Kolver or Jodu the boatman.

Sandipan Deb, former Editor of The Financial Express, heads the RPG Group8217;s forthcoming magazine venture.

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