9 minute read
Hamburg, 1992
Por Madhu Bhaduri
One of the richest cities of Europe, situated on the Elbe River a short distance from the sea, Hamburg belongs to the traditionally trade dominated centres which are historically known as Hansiatic States. These city states had the distinction of being governed by traders, not by princes. Their city centres were built around the dominant position of the trading house in front of which stood the administration and government. The church stood a short distance away in the third place. Others among Hansiatic States are Bremen, Rostock and the beautiful town of Leubeck. I was posted as Consul General to Hamburg in 1992. The area of my responsibilities extended to include all these towns and the whole of North Germany including Schleswig Holstein. Amit was invited to be visiting professor at the University of Bremen which was a commutable distance away. Later he was fellow at the Centre of Advanced Studies in Berlin, still not too far from Hamburg.
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Like most German cities Hamburg is very efficiently administered. Its pulse however is in its trading activities and the place of the church in the life of its people has been diminishing. There was a time when people shared their problems with the parish priest and sought his advice. That position has long been taken over by psychiatrists who charge hefty sums for expensive advice. The role of the church is now getting more and more restricted to providing funeral service. I remember a remark made by my friend Margaret Wenz when I asked her why she continued to pay church tax when she was not religious and did not ever attend Sunday church. ‘I will need the church for my burial’, she had said.
The situation in India is quite the opposite. Our God men offer not only advice they also provide a network of security and society to lonely individuals. Their business is thriving beyond their living space into TV channels and even abroad. The more popular amongst them are multi millionaires with access to the highest political ranks.
On my arrival as Consul General of India I was welcomed by the tea traders and their associations with large receptions and long speeches. Many of the importers of Indian tea had been in the trade for a long time, some for more than two generations. Hamburg is the port of largest tea import from India in Europe. The tea traders have elegant shops with fancy prices. I was appalled that the government of India was giving them US $1,000,000 (one million dollars) every year in the interest of ‘export promotion.’ My advice that this contribution from a poor country to one of the wealthiest trading associations makes little sense and should be discontinued fell on deaf ears. By now I was not a beginner and had learnt the limitations of my profession so I was not altogether surprised not to receive so much as an acknowledgement to my letter from the commerce ministry in Delhi.
A regular and invariable refrain at all gatherings organized by the tea traders was that they were facing a big problem; the market for Darjeeling tea had been stolen from them. A certain professor Faltin in Berlin was through his ‘nefarious activities’ causing them heavy losses. This aroused my curiosity. I was driving to Dresden for a conference and decided to meet the professor on my way in Berlin. He gave me an appointment and also agreed to have lunch with me.
This was my first long journey through united Germany. East and West had come together but the East side still looked very different and less prosperous. There was a lot of building activity on roads and even more prominent was the activity of putting new roofs on house tops that was going on. There were visible signs of unemployment. Unemployed youth stood in groups in centre of towns.
Professor Faltin’s place was very close to the house of Gunter Grass, the famous German writer. The professor was teaching economics but this place where I was to meet him, was where his project was located. He asked me if I was interested in seeing his project which he had launched along with his students as part of their course. He showed me around 3-4 rooms where his students collected mail and post from buyers of Darjeeling tea from all over the country and then packed and posted the product directly to them. Not a penny was spent in setting up shop and even more interesting nothing was spent on advertisement. I told him that his competitors in Hamburg and Bremen were losing their sleep having lost their market to him. He laughed and explained that the tea traders were passing off for Darjeeling tea only one part of it mixed with nine parts of Assam tea at exorbitant price. He was selling pure Darjeeling tea. The consumer was buying genuine quality tea for a fair price. There was no need for advertisement. People learnt about it from word of mouth. In course of time I met many people who were buying tea by post from Berlin.
That afternoon we walked to a restaurant nearby for lunch. I found Professor Faltin to be a soft spoken and modest person. The place he had chosen for lunch was unpretentious. As we sat down he asked me how I had come to know about him. ‘I was told about you by your enemies
who want to kill you’ I told him. He laughed heartily at my reply. After this meeting I seldom missed a chance to meet the professor when I was in Berlin. The last time we met he was working on designing a new type of brick. He presented to me a small sample of it in white porcelain which is among my carefully kept precious objects. This was a phase in Germany when unemployment was high and the presence of foreigners especially Turks was being resented. The general complaint was that foreigners did not make an effort to join the ‘mainstream’. To my Indian ears it sounded very familiar. The majority communities in all democracies have the same complaint. Why don’t the minority communities eat what we like? Why don’t they dress and speak as we like? The list is unending.
To counter this prejudiced behaviour, a movement was launched by some liberal and open minded people. They went to schools, colleges, institutions and door to door explaining the dangers of treating minorities as unwanted people. Finally a massive march was organized around the Alster lake in the centre of Hamburg to show solidarity towards minorities and foreigners and point out that they also are humans. I could not resist joining this march which included men, women, very old people and children in such large numbers as one is not used to seeing in Europe. As the evening grew darker candles in the hands of the marchers lighted the town and lake like a real Diwali. A few days later in another part of town through which I was passing my attention was caught by the title of an exhibition which read something like this: ‘Somewhere or the other each one of us is a minority’.
Even in our own country we become a minority. A Punjabi in Chennai, a Bengali in Punjab a Tamil in Assam; they are minorities in their own country. If we are willing to understand this reality then we could avoid being oppressors and oppressed depending on where we are. In Germany the efficient killing of six million Jews in especially constructed gas chambers during Hitler’s regime had tarnished the image of the country as a civilized nation. The fault of the Jews was that they were a minority. As I write these lines a storm has broken out in America among people of Indian origin, because an Indian was shot dead in a bar in Kansas for not being a white American. The seeds of targeting of minorities, to a large extent lie within the idea of democracy itself, which is: Rule by the majority which turns into Rule for the majority. Democratic countries have yet to evolve safe guards to protect minorities from majority oppression.
Indians settled in America who felt quite comfortable there till yesterday and who were generally unconcerned about the plight of ‘others’ (like black Americans who are now called African Americans) suddenly find themselves in the company of the latter.
Some intellectuals of Hamburg organized a lecture by a highly respected Rabbi from Israel in a prestigious hall in the city centre. The eloquent speaker traced the history of the oppression of Jews stretching over 2000 years. Keeping in mind the undercurrent of a feeling of guilt in a German audience, he had steered clear from mention of the fate of Jews in Germany’s recent history. His point was that the state of Israel still faced hostility bordering on oppression from its neighbours. At the end of his speech he offered to answer questions from the audience. There was an uncomfortable silence till I decided to ask a question which has bothered me. Hitler’s large scale killing of Jews had not happened overnight. It was preceded by passing of many laws which discriminated against the Jews. First, rules were made so that they could not continue their studies, then they could not keep to their chosen professions, next they could not keep their jobs and step by step they were edged out. They had to give up their professions then their properties till finally they had nothing left to give up except their lives. Those Jews who read the writing on the wall left Germany. Among them were well known intellectuals like Einstein and Freud and leading bankers also. The Jewish community of Europe neither lacked money nor intellectuals, scientists and professionals, why did it not organize itself to resist and to protest the step by step annihilation of the community?
The distinguished Rabbi waited and then said to the large gathering: ‘Our children ask us this very question. We have no answer’.
Every minority community has to face this question. Since somewhere or the other we are all a minority the question is relevant to all of us. To seek protection is one thing to organize protest is another thing. Without organizing protest the chances of getting protection are dim. The Dalit community in India was given some protection by the constitution of the country but even after seven decades their plight is deplorable. Of late, a slight wind of change is visible in better organization and bolder forms of protest. Hopefully this wind will gather force.
Madhu Bhaduri has Master’s degree in Philosophy from Delhi University (1965) and joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1968.
