Just another exchange of vows!

https://scroll.in/article/879633/hidden-under-meghan-markles-givenchy-veil-was-britains-bid-to-hide-its-bloody-colonial-history

COLONIAL HISTORY

Embroidered into Meghan Markle’s veil was Britain’s bid to celebrate its bloody colonial history

The bride’s dress is being praised for its floral motifs of the 53 Commonwealth countries. But colonialism destroyed the lives of India’s weavers.

Danny Lawson / AFP

May 20, 2018 · 12:01 pm
Aparna Kapadia

Meghan Markle wore a beautifully simple, ivory silk dress at her wedding to Britain’s Prince Harry on Saturday morning. The royal wedding has been a global media event though of not much relevance even to the British crown. After all, Harry is the sixth in the line of succession to the throne. And given the pressing world news from just the past week – the killing of dozens of Palestinians in Gaza, North Korea’s threat of withdrawing from nuclear talks – a celebration of the monarchy, of a country barely able to keep itself together, appears strikingly overwrought.

Markle’s wedding dress was created by Clare Waight Keller, a British woman and the first female designer of Givenchy. The garment’s most dazzling feature is its 16.5-foot silk tulle veil that has been hand-embroidered with flora representing the 53 countries of the Commonwealth. The media was all praise for the dress as a sartorial choice that represents a break from tradition. The New York Times’s fashion critic raved that it “placed the woman proudly front center and underscored Ms. Markle’s own independence”. The simplicity of the dress was also widely praised for upholding feminist values rather than those of a fairy-tale princess.

Missing in the commentary was what seems to be an obvious point – the arrogant representation of 53 Commonwealth countries is a celebration of colonial rule. Another reminder, if one was needed, that the true reckoning of the unfortunate history of colonialism in Britain is far away. It is important to restate what that was – a violent period of centuries when the hapless Commonwealth, nearly 25% of the world, suffered under an extractive alien power’s rule.

A conscious choice

Markle’s dress was not a designer’s fanciful faux-pas but a conscious choice. The BBC reports that the bride suggested the design because the Commonwealth will be an essential part of her and Prince Harry’s official work after they are married. Clearly, the sad truth of Britain’s imperial history eludes the Prince and the new Princess. The media too, especially British media, abets this glossing over. And this matters, as recently as 2014, a YouGov survey, for instance, found that most people in Britain still think the British Empire is more something to be proud of (59%) rather than ashamed of (19%).

To add insult to injury, the dress is being celebrated as a hand-crafted work, the creation of a local designer. If one just looked at India, the largest of the Commonwealth countries, of the many British-era atrocities, none were more consequential and impoverishing than the destruction of the local handloom and textiles of India. In the early days of the British East India Company’s trade with the subcontinent in the 1600s, chintz, the hand-printed and natural-dyed fabric with floral designs, was the rage in Europe; first as decorative household furnishings and later for fashionable garments. Known as palampores in Britain, these fabrics and other fine Indian textiles gained so much popularity that a parliamentary act was passed prohibiting their sales.

From this time, until India’s Independence in 1947, the Indian artisan and weaver’s livelihood and skills were systematically destroyed. It was no accident then that Gandhi chose the charkha, the Indian weavers’ basic cotton-spinning tool, as the symbol of India’s struggle for independence.

Markle’s British-designer dress and its veil with the hand-embroidered flora of the 53 Commonwealth countries overshadows this dark past. It should not surprise us, given the new age of denialism, that the royal family and the British media thought nothing of reclaiming the bloody history of colonialism as a point of celebration.

Aparna Kapadia is a historian of South Asia at Williams College in the US.

 https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

It used to be good to be King

© daily telegraph

In 1981, the televised event was easily the most watched event of recent times. The institution called marriage was still looked upon as a beacon of hope to keep the family unit intact. When they said that it was a public declaration of private intent, they meant it. It still had respect. The one act that solemnised the union of male and female was treated with due respect. Young girls went agape looking at their idol whose hairstyle they would soon be aping. They too wished that their wedding dress would be as glamorous. Forget the fact that groom stuck out like a sore thumb; his royal status would nullify all other deformities. How they adored the horse carriages, the guest list, the guests' wardrobe and the flowers. But see how it all turned out - the two-timing, the depression, the possible contamination of bloodlines, the accident, the conspiracy theory.

Much has happened since then. It is all water under the bridge now. The confluence of hearts is no longer only legitimate between members of different sexes. The bond that holds this threadbare link is no stronger than the paper that it is inked on. The preoccupation with self and hedonism has created a mockery of the man-sanctioned pledge of loyalty and responsibility. Infusion of genetic juices is no longer sacred. Offspring may have two males for parental duties. Divine approved decree is given legal status. Why the mockery if legality is the prime aim?

© Crazy History of the World

This time around the royal wedding did not garner that much excitement, at least in Malaysia, the once most of the most profitable colonies in the Commonwealth. Come to think of it, the natives' wealth was pilfered and divided amongst the self-proclaimed superior race of the world. Perhaps it is the heap of scandals upon scandals that the local media is churning by the minute, after the local elections that the function remains a non-event to the ordinary Malaysian.

Values change. If just about half a century ago, a king had to abdicate his throne to marry a woman of similar stature - a divorcee, actress and American; now it is a non-issue. Maybe it is because the groom is quite low down in the pecking order of ascension to the throne.

Over the years, the idea of a monarch who is bestowed by genetic make-up to decide on the direction of the country does not excite people anymore. Starting with the French Revolution, then the Bolshevik uprising and the World Wars, the royalties have fallen down like a house of cards. Now, it seems like they have to sing for their supper. They have to re-invent themselves to stay relevant. The British royal family have to keep quiet while exhibiting the share of their loot, The Kohinoor, shamelessly, without creating any more controversies. The Bulgarian dynasty was revived after winning the Presidential elections as a commoner. The Spanish have to fight out the long arms of the law. It is not easy to be a King anymore!

 © Danny Lawson / AFP

The dark cloud that hung over the matrimonial garb; 

the motifs of flowers of the former colonies of the bygone

Empire rekindles the dark past the colonial masters.

 https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Royal farce!

Being the spoil sport and wet blanket that I am, my daughter must have hated watching the Royal Wedding on TV with me breathing down her neck with some witty uncalled remarks (I think) on the side. I was not there by choice. I was quietly running on the treadmill when she barged in and conquered the remote control. I just could not understand why a girl who is preparing for her exams could not resist the temptation to waste 3 hours of  her precious time watching something which makes little sense. At least 5 channels on the cable were dedicated to bring live coverage of the event (BBC,CNN, E!,Granada TV(iTV) and NTV7.)
Hey, you cannot blame her, can you? Exactly 30 years ago, the world (especially young, single and teenage girls) went agape over the Lady D-Prince Charles wedding which was shown in full regatta. To them it is Mills and Boons in real life - Prince Charming sweeping you off your feet and taking you to Never Never Land far far away. Looking at the eventual outcome, they should have never never done it in the first place. He just swept her under the carpet.
Every girl in 1981 wanted to have a Lady D haircut and some even went suicide blonde!
What is all this farce, anyway? People of all cultures seem to enjoy other peoples' public declaration of private intent (i.e. wedding). Anyway, in this age and time, it is an accepted norm for young couple to do all the things that married couples do before the matrimonial knot. Is marriage just a certificate to enable the father's name to be legally printed on the birth certificate? (Is only maternity real and paternity fiction that only DNA can determine?) Co-habitation in love nests which bores offspring in norm in modern times, so why marry? Same gender marriage is acceptable too.
The sanctity and the undisputed loyalty (till death do us apart) of the institution of marriage have been tarnished by these subset of species of beings who brought about the legal jargon 'prenuptial agreement', which Paul McCartney found the hard way that money indeed can buy love. Yeah! Yeah Yeah!
Coming to the live coverage per se, if Amma were to view it, she would have commented that there is just not enough merry making to qualify for a wedding. There is just not enough panoramic kaleidoscopic colour and noise to hallmark that a wedding was actually going on. Everybody seem to be dressed in monotonous hues and all guys were in black, as if there were at a funeral. That's Amma's outlook!
The coverage was a boring affair (wrong choice of word) for me, at least. There was nothing exciting happening, so the compere had to kill time by talking about clothes' designers, who is wearing whose design (the same designer design both the grim faced Mr & Mrs Beckham's hat! David's hat look like 1930 Fred Astaire's one- nothing earth shattering), the wedding gowns of yesteryear bla, bla... And these also involved   full grown alpha male anchormen, for heaven sake!
Just to kill time, they were interviewing people in the crowd over sweet nothings. UK's who's who were shown trickling in one by one ... Beckhams, Elton John and partner, Mr & Mrs David Cameron...dressed to kill fashionably literally to their heels, posing gleefully to the roving cameras. Most of the ladies were donning funny giant mollusk-like contraption, sometimes with tentacles called hats - seem in vogue- well, that's haute couture for you and me.
Don't ask me what happened after that!
I finished my exercise and got ready for work, like what mere mortal like us would do. Mortals would also have to work hard to finance our own weddings, unlike some whose are state sanctioned public events sponsored by the national coffers.
Of course, many people benefit from this mammoth merrymaking. The British monarchy exerts their presence to the world, telling them that they still sell and are still relevant at this time and age, (Whatever it means!), that they are very much adored by the masses. Then, there are the media moguls who are laughing incessantly to the bank after creating a mountain out of a mole hill (which is their specialty). The hairdressers and fashion designers or whatever name they go with, can make a grand killing. And not to forget the little people, vendors, florists, mom-n-pop convenience stores and others who would prosper at least for the season.
By tomorrow, it is back to life, back to reality. Today's merry making will slowly slide to the horizon and something else will manifest from the other side!
Tomorrow may rain, so I will follow the sun...