ELITES from Kenya, India, Jamaica and Pakistan are calling for Queen Elizabeth’s prized Commonwealth of Nations be dismantled – with some even demanding the return of gifts received by the monarchy.
With Black Lives Matter victimhood rampantly spreading across universities and other institutions, academics are attempting to trigger the break-up of the 56-nation, 2.5b-member organisation.
- King Charles III urged to address the “wrongs of empire”.
- Mourning and pageantry blamed for unearthing long-buried feelings from the past.
- Commonwealth described as “thrashing tail of empire”.
“I’m sure she was a wonderful person. But history and colonial exploitation happen to real people,” US Ivy League professor and Kenyan ex-pat Mukoma Wa Ngugi said of Elizabeth II’s death.
“To expect those people to mourn the perpetrators of their trauma is insane,” the Cornell University academic continued.
THINKING
“I’ve spent years without thinking about the Queen.
“But all this mourning and pageantry is making me and many others excavate long-buried feelings from our past.”
According to The Australian newspaper, there are growing demands to dismantle the Commonwealth, sever ties with the monarchy and a reckoning for “colonial wrongs”, including a return of valuable items gifted to the royal family, including the Koh-i-Noor diamond from India.
Pakistani writer Fakir Aijazuddin, who served as honorary British consul in Lahore from 1995 until this year, describes the Commonwealth as “the severed still thrashing tail of empire”.
“Now that the Royal Yacht Britannia has been decommissioned and the Queen is dead, the lure of banquets on it and in Buckingham Palace or Windsor has diminished,” he said.
“King Charles has inherited the title of Head of the Commonwealth but not the goodwill the Queen had earned.”
Indian history academic Professor Chandrika Kaul has urged the Queen’s successor King Charles III to address the “wrongs of empire”.
PRETEND
“The worst thing would be to try and ignore it and pretend it’s all done and dusted,” the St Andrews University lecturer said.
“Charles could take a leaf from his mother’s book with her visit to Ireland in 2011 when she wore emerald green and spoke of contrition and redemption.”
Prof Kaul said it would be difficult to hold the Commonwealth together.
“It’s a very legitimate question that has been on the horizon for a while and I wouldn’t underplay the difficulties.
“It’s going to be a really difficult balancing act for Charles.”
Meanwhile, Australia’s Shadow Defence Minister Andrew Hastie has described the West’s “toxic” gender and racial divisions as a threat to world peace.
“These tensions are tearing at the fabric of our democracies. Many among us are no longer confident of truth, tradition and our democratic values,” he told a Washington DC audience this week.
RACE & GENDER
Debates over gender, race and climate now dominate mainstream political life in the US, displacing more traditional disputes over taxation, welfare and foreign policy.
“The toxins are in the mainstream now – seeping through the media, in entertainment, in our schools and in our families,” Mr Hastie said.
“It has brought disruption. This has political consequences for the Western body politic.” PC
