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Reeking of fish and opium: Sassoon Docks
April 23, 2008 | 28 Comments
It’s a common theme when any politician or publicly-known scumbag kicks the bucket in India (or anywhere else, for that matter). The media – both state-controlled and private – gets into overdrive telling us what a monumental loss it is to society. As they did in the Pramod Mahajan case.
Check out this fawning obituary in The Tribune. All the scandals, the accusations of corruption, strong-arm tactics, links to the underworld, etc. are pushed under the rug.
We skipped the awkward bits and wrote anecdotal obituaries of his pragmatism and pugnacity; we competed with each other to claim him as the one politico-friend we were not ashamed to have; even when we alluded to his seamier side we mostly spoke admiringly of his willingness to look controversy in the eye.
It happens often. Some public figure dies, you’re thinking “Finally… good riddance.” Atleast that’s what I thought when Indira Gandhi died. (The Emergency she imposed in the ’70s affected my family at a personal level).
And here was Bore-darshan with 14 days of mournful santoor players belting out yawn-inducing tunes and telling you how she was “Mother India, charismatic, champion of the poor …” yadda yadda yadda. We’ve never seen a news report thats says, “XYZ was a jerk. Now, let’s get on with life.”
But Bore-darshan is state-owned and she was the prime minister, so yeah, her lapdogs were in charge of that channel.
What do private networks have to gain by putting up this act of servitude to those in power?
When Narasimha Rao was caught taking a “donation” of wads of bills crammed into a suitcase from scamster Harshad Mehta, we heard about what an accomplished man he was, ya know, he could speak 25 languages!!! Heck, when Harshad Mehta died, you had India Today really reaching to place a halo on his head. And we all read how brave and misunderstood bandit queen Phoolan Devi was. When Narendra Modi and Sharad Pawar kick the bucket, we will hear about what “great administrators” and “wonderful people” they were.
When J visited India last year, he took these pictures from the balcony of the Colaba apartment he was staying at, across Sassoon Docks, Bombay. It’s the hub of fishing activity in the city, where the fisherfolk (mostly of the Koli community) converge each morning to sell their wares. It’s a historical landmark and one of the few docks open to the public in Bombay (now re-christened Mumbai. Um…. no…. for us it will always be BOMBAY).
We wondered about the history of Sassoon Docks. In doing so, we affirmed yet again that history is not the simple recounting of events. It is written and re-written by those in power. They, their descendants, and their dependents scrub out that which is unflattering, and romanticise the part that suits them, with full complicity from the media. And we discovered the true beauty of the World Wide Web.
My first stop: Wikipedia.
Sassoon Docks was built by Albert (Abdullah) Sassoon, son of David Sassoon. In history books everywhere, David Sassoon and his son are described as ‘philanthropists who gave a great deal of their immense wealth to charity.”
Some wiki nuggets about this famous Baghdadi Jew family:
“Following the footsteps of his father, David Sassoon served as the treasurer under Ahmet Pasha, the governor of Baghdad at the time, and became implicated in a corruption scandal which saw David Sassoon and his family fleeing for safety in 1829, and finally settling down in Bombay with some of the family’s wealth in 1833.
“He started business in Bombay with a counting house, a carpet godown, and an opium business. He was soon one of the richest men in Bombay. He chose to follow the market, but he pursued all his enterprises better than his chief rivals, the Parsis. By the end of the 1850s, it was said of him that “silver and gold, silks, gums and spices, opium and cotton, wool and wheat – whatever moves over sea or land feels the hand or bears the mark of Sassoon and Company.”
“Although he did not speak English, he became a naturalised British citizen in 1853. He kept the dress and manners of the Baghdadi Jews, but allowed his sons to adopt English manners. His son, Abdullah changed his name to Albert, moved to England, became a Baronet and married into the Rothschild family. All the Sassoons of Europe are said to be descendants of David Sassoon.”
Did they say opium?
What does Wiki say about ‘Opium Wars’?
The Opium Wars, also known as the Anglo-Chinese Wars, lasted from 1839 to 1842 and 1856 to 1860 respectively,[1] the climax of a trade dispute between China under the Qing Dynasty and the United Kingdom. British smuggling of opium from British India into China and the Chinese government’s efforts to enforce its drug laws erupted in conflict.
China’s defeat in both wars forced the government to tolerate the opium trade. The United Kingdom coerced the government into signing Unequal Treaties, opening several ports to foreign trade and yielding Hong Kong to Britain. The British also gained extraterritorial rights. Several countries followed Britain and forced unequal terms of trade onto China.
This happened during David Sassoon’s lifetime. Sassoon + opium on Google takes us a to a whole slew of articles talking about how the Opium Wars by the British against the Manchu Emperor were to secure the Sassoon family’s right to traffic opium at will in China. A chunk of the profits went to Queen Victoria and her government.
The problem with most of those links is that they lead to fundie Christian or Muslim sites focussed on Jew-baiting.
This link was an exception. It deals with economic history:
Since his firm was already established in Calcutta and Singapore, he had a branch at that time at every link in the India-China opium chain except in the coastal system. This link was provided by the extension of Peninsular and Oriental Steamship Company’s services on the coast in the early fifties … Early in 1871, the Sassoon group was acknowledged to be the major holder of opium stocks in India and in China; they were owners and controllers of 70 per cent of the total of all kinds…” – Edward LeFevour in Western Enterprise in Late Ch’ing China
Then, on a whim, I typed Tata + opium – yeah, the same nationalistic scions of Indian industry. Ka-ching!!!!
The Tatas and the Sassoons appealed to the Hong Kong Legislative Council in 1887, on behalf of the Opium Importers and dealers complaining that a bill to regulate the sale of opium “would prejudicially affect their trade.” (More at Salon.com)
In the annals of globalization, there are few contemporary crimes committed by either transnational corporations or modern governments that match the scale of the 19th century enterprise in which the British Empire fought two wars against China to ensure its right to profit off Chinese citizens addicted to Indian-grown opium. Indeed, the first Opium War was kicked off when Lin Zexu burned 20,000 chests of opium, a hefty proportion of which belonged to Sassoon & Co., one of the above-named petitioners.
Thus, the Opium Wars began with the British Army fighting as mercenaries of the Sassoons. The wars ended in the treaty on Nanking, which gave the opium traders like the Sassoons and the Tatas freedom to trade without restrictions in China. It gave the Sassoon family compensation for 2 million pounds of opium confiscated by the Chinese government. And it gave the British territorial sovereignty over several Chinese islands including Hong Kong. This information has been scrubbed from Wikipedia (it’s cited in some anti-Semitic sites as being part of Wikipedia under ‘David Sassoon’ but is no longer there). Wikipedia is a place where anyone can add info, and others can delete it. Someone has recently gone around removing the Sassoon name from anything that talks about opium. Or Rothschild and opium. Others are free to add these nuggets back on if they wish to. That’s the beauty of Wikipedia.
However, what about our history books? And other parts of the Internet? The only place where you can still find this information is on some hate-mongering sites, and the stray document recording the minutes of a meeting in the Hong Kong Legislature nearly a century and half ago. As a child I read how the Tatas and the Sassoons made Bombay what is it, and how leaders of Indian industry helped the Congress in overthrowing the Brits. These were Indian history books written by us, not by the Brits. I guess a bunch of doped-up Chinese don’t matter in the grand scheme of things.
This is the era of the “free flow of information”. I guess the beauty of the Internet lies in the fact that it’s so vast and leaky, that’s it’s difficult to plug every source.
The Chinese government is trying hard, in collusion with Google, Yahoo and others. The U.S. government has been trying, through various legislations.
Governments do not have to try too hard to convince the media. The media is willing to do it for them without any prompting. And consumers of the news are only too willing to push unpleasant facts under the rug. However, the larger the worldwideweb grows, the more difficult it becomes.
That’s a brief history of how Sassoon Docks, Elphinstone College and Sassoon Library in Bombay were financed. These institutions helped secure the ‘philanthropic’ title for the Sassoons.
Currently, Sassoon Docks are home to a bustling fish market, where the Koli community (the original inhabitants of Bombay) sells it’s daily haul of fish.
Koli Woman (Wikimedia Commons)
Don’t mess with them. They always carry a sickle in the folds of their saree.
They are struggling to maintain their occupation and lifestyle amidst the urban chaos. You can see some vignettes of Koli life at Anna Parabrahma.
See Anjali’s Aaji’s (grandma’s) kitchen in the fishing community of Thal. And join her in a walk through her ancestral village near Bombay.
- Bee
Filed Under: Bombay, fish market, Kolis, Mumbai, MUSINGS, opium trade, Sassoon Docks, TRAVEL
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28 Comments
Good post, Bee! I can understand being respectful to the dead but to deify them is plain sick – I never cease to be amazed by politicians and businessmen freely acknowledged as rogues in my childhood painted as Gods and philanthropists and visionaries now!
agree. so you don’t worship MGR and NTR? you are supposed to.
If only they (Tatas) had had hindsight.
They couldn’t have been smuggling it into China though, given the petition. Legal drug trafficking? Just a potential business opportunity? Ethics and morals came to the family once they had wealth then? Isn’t that usually the case with families who have a long lineage?
But thank god for legal uses of opium. If you have ever seen anyone whose only medication was pain relief from narcotics like morphine …
On a brighter note: is that bombil she is selling? I’m hoping Anjali will chime in!
yes, even i need morphine when faux news or bore-darshan are on.
Yup, the old practice of deifying people! Very informative post, folks. History is always a partial view from whoever wrote it!
The picture is beautiful!
So when should I expect the prize? I am willing to share it with the others who got it right.
Will read the article later.
taporis from bombay or its suburbs (like pune) are not eligible. we should’ve blacklisted their IPs before putting up the quiz.
I would strongly recommend that the prize, if any, be given only to those whose taste buds have relished fresh fish and continue to do so today. And those who want the prize now but will read the article later should be disqualified.
Where did all the emoticons go?
that emoticon plugin is no longer being updated so we took them off.
So only you get to use emoticons? Where is the justice?
Or do the WP emoticons work?
the WP ones don’t work. if i remove the plugin they may work. what i use work ‘cos i’m using the plugin emoticons.
Hey, but you didn’t put up the tapori disclaimer first! Either way, I ain’t no tapori, boss.
Refreshing read. Sometimes, just sometimes, I miss the excitement of working with the mainstream media and reading something like this reminds me why I am better off outside. What does private media get by eulogizing and being servile? Looking at the ownership (and their links) might give the answer.
All our “eminent” sarkari historians are bent upon proving how outsiders made India what it is. Which means the original people of India contributed nothing to world civilization. If you are to believe them they were tribals, neanderthals, and it took the Aryans with their superior genes to civilize them! Although the Aryan immigration theory has been proven to be nothing more than a figment of imagination, our eminent historians insist of it being the supreme truth. They also the ones responsible for glamorizing the rapacious Mughal empire. As long as Indians don’t start taking pride in who they are, we will continue to answer calls from irate customers in a fake American accent. Alas!
For once, I guessed something right. and you say no prize? Not fair!:-D
Hey I guessed it first. Ab mera janam Bambai me hua to mai kya karun….. So prize?
BTW, I did read the article and loooooove your write ups and pictures. Wish I had it together enough to write and take pictures, it’s all I can do to cook dinner.
A memory triggered by the pictures is that I can rarely appreciate sunsets from those special “vista” points. Each evening for years, just looking out of the bus window coming home, I got my spectacular sunset over the ocean near Haji Ali. All else pale in comparison – The orange of the sky really does blend in with the sea, btw.
Awsome post J & B. Private media is owned by the politicians SIL’s BIL’s etc..so ofcourse they all kiss ass.
I don’t mind the politicians praising their own after they die – but the journalists doing it just gets to me!!
The sickle is nothing compared to being caught on the wrong side of a Koli woman’s mouth – Once while travelling by the Bandra Local to Churchgate we were standing (on tip toe most probably and all squashed like sardines)near the entrance where a Koli woman was sitting with her basket of fish. One PYT in her office best of short skirt and ruffled white blouse was delicately sniffing and rolling her eyes at the fish, the basket, the smell – we just ignored her because if she didn’t like it she should have been in the First Class. But her constant “tsk tsks” and the hankie-to-the-nose routine and under the breath mutterings really started getting on everyones nerves after a while. FInally the koli bai had had enough – she stood up and smacked her with a small fish and said in Marathi – “NOW you will have something to complain about” – tthe PYT was left looking on aghast, fish water dripping from her face
They will lick, kiss and lick some more! What else can one expect when most of the media-medium is owned by one politician or the other. One cant believe Papers now days leave alone TV news! It changes from channels to channels…The best example was Karunanidi’s arrest by Jaya – the then CM. It was hilarious how the news was twisted to one’s perusal by Sun TV, Jaya Tv and 50-50 by Raj! It was amazing! Fun times that!
Thats a cool post, Bee. I think this all stems from the Indian philosophy of not talking ill of the dead – and then stretching that philosophy a little. We do it for relatives who ill-treated their wives, or beat up their kids – but after they die, the relatives all talk about how well he provided for them.
This is an extension of that. We are a country of Chalte Yaar, Move On – which is to say we don’t want to beat a dead horse – we uncovered all the hundred horrid things about them while they were alive – why continue to beat him up after he’s dead?
About Sassoon and the Tatas and the Opium Wars – Thanks! That was an eye-opener.
I’m going to have to come back and read this over the weekend
But I remember this long discussion I had with my Hindi teacher when she was teaching us a poem called Vida Ki Samay Sab Kanth Lagave and I told her I didn’t agree… just because someone is dead, it doesn’t make them a nice person if they weren’t when they were alive…
The Indian media is really a shame, they over-hype everything unnecessarily. News chanels aren’t news channels anymore, but masala channels! Ah, I can go on….
Btw, where’s the prize for guessing??
Will get back to this post for the intensive reading.. but had a look at the pics of Sasson dock. Beautiful ! Had I seen them before I would have guessed it right as well. Grew up by the banks of the Dock .. just opp the main entrance. Though eons ago, I can still smell the paaties of the kolis while we jostled for space on the No.1 bus to school. Thks for the walk-by memory lane. Angela
As you note, history is written by the victors. Suffice to say, I’ve been to enough funerals of average citizens to note that we just don’t speak ill of the dead. Honestly at the funeral of the crustiest old ****** I ever met, who never had a nice word to say about anyone, I sat listening to his ex wife, estranged children and embattled colleagues speaking of him as if he were the second coming. It doesn’t surprise me in the least that public figures are virtually canonized.
Very good post Bee and we in our family never turn on DD during those mourning days and inturn my father calls for a celebration whenever a politician is moving away from good Earth. Like Diwali
Atleast amma used to cook a dessert and we all gather and chat, play cards and sleep well during those “holidays”.
I really enjoyed reading this post Bee and especially love the picture of the Koli woman in her bright green sari. I’ll have to go through the links in detail. Most articles and books only talk about the philanthropy of the Sassoon family, so much so that I’ve come to associate the name with hospitals, orphanages and other charitable institutions. A random article her and there would merely mention the Sassoon name in association with the Opium wars. I am interested in reading more about this subjest, do you have any book recommendations?
don’t know of any, i’m afraid.
Bee and Jai a wonderful post!
First about the re-written history. Yes in every era we have seen history was re-written to appease the rule, religious leaders, business men etc. in short history is alway what the existing power wants to showcase at the time.
Behind every great fortune there is a crime.
Honore de Balzac
French realist novelist (1799 – 1850)
Mario Puzo uses this quote effectively in Godfather.
Even Nobel Prize that is associated with peace of all the things is sponsored by the fortune earned from the destruction causing dynamite that Nobel invented. Read it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize.
It is nature’s cycle of bad followed by good I guess. The bad at some point becomes a turning point for good.
Secondly thank you for the love!
Manisha, yes those are bombil and they are the freshest you can get, see the tautness and glistening skin, thats the mark.
About the Tata’s, I do not deny history about their beginnings or the scions that they are today. We must not forget they built this country with the industrial revolution they brought in India. Personally I admire the Tatas as 2 of my uncles have worked with them. One was incharge of the Tata’s speed boat so had direct access to the scions JRD and Ratan. Both wonderful people, JRD was extremely compassionate. I have lived in their colony in my Uncle’s home provide by the company and have seen how much they do for the employees. Which company ensures that even the employee’s child gets a job in the company? Ofcourse that policy has changed abot 10 years ago as people started misusing it.
Miri I don’t endorse bad behaviour so what the Kolibai did was wrong but they do not have a enough room in the luggage compartment therefore they encroach on passenger area. Whom do we blame?
Angela, sounds like Ferrao to me? The no.1 double decker bus and the fight for the front window seat on the top deck in the morning to school to experience the cool breeze blow into your face …aha!
Very long comments sorry to be hoarding the space.
A huge thank you for writing about our Mumbai. Love yaa.
Very interesting post and quite refreshing to hear an Indians perspective on elements of Anglo Indian history. Funnily enough you did a lot of the things I did when researching the Sassoon family. Thanks and keep up the good work.
so if prostitution is “Legalised” and so is slave trade…should we be less distressed by the acts of these corporate sharks like the TATAs!!
Compassionate my ass!! which corporate major has any compassion except for its profits?
So many people fawn upon the powerful, forgetting how it would feel to be at the receiving end of that same power.
There is no way to become rich in this sordid capitalist world, other than by robbing, cheating, murdering and pillaging the world. That is what colonial was all about and that is what 1857 was all about. The entire range from the Scindias to every bloody maharaja we have today, were those whose families sided with the British, betrayed their own people and there after were rewarded for their unflinching loyalty to the crown.
If I told you what the TATAs are up to in Kalinganagar, it would make your blood curdle. They have already got more than 16 people killed and are hell bent on killing as many more if needed to grab land that belongs to the Munda Adivasi.
Jamsetji worked in his father’s firm till the age of 29. In 1868, he started a trading company with a seed capital of Rs. 21,000. In 1869, he acquired a bankrupt oil mill in Chinchpokli, converted it into a cotton mill and renamed the mill to Alexandra Mill. He sold the mill two years later for a healthy profit. Thereafter he set up a cotton mill in Nagpur in 1874. He christened it Empress Mill on 1 January 1877 when Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India. “Empress Mills”-nice patriotic name. TATAs continue to spin this yarn about their nationalist credentials.
Well where did he get this “seed capital of Rs. 21,000″? and what would be Rs. 21,000 worth today? when at the time cost of gold was roughly ONE RUPEE AN OUNCE – while today it is above Rs. 39,000 an ounce!!!
How can you be “compassionate” with thousands of crores when 600 million Indians dont even get two square meals a day. I mean what!!!
Dont forget that JAMSETH TATA also built Tatanagar on the blood of BIRSA MUNDA who fought heroic battles against the British and that Rattan Tata’s grandfather- the founder of TATANAGAR was a DRUG DEALER. The TATA’s supplied opium to the British for the Opium wars in China and was requested to come to Jharkhand after the British crushed one of India’s greatest patriots! So when Manmohan Singh went to Tatanagar to celebrate the birthday of Jamseth TATA, he was actually celebrating the anniversary year of the defeat of a heroic warrior who gave his life fighting the British!!
But is true that drugs and arms are still the easiest way to make money !!
Read American history on the murderous tales of how the Red Indians were driven to genocide by distributing blankets infected with small pox.
The idea, apparently, came from Lord Amherst, in a letter of orders to Col Bouquet, saying “Could it not be contrived to send the Small Pox among those disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occassion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them”. Bocquet replied that he would try and use infected blankets as a means of introducing the disease among the Indians, but was wary of the effects that it would have on his own men. Bouquet then proposes using- in “the Spanish method”- a combination of hunting dogs, rangers and light horsemen, in an effort to “effectually extirpate or remove that vermin” at little risk to his own men. Amherst readily agreed, hoping that the use of smallpox infested blankets, as well as any other method be used that “can serve to extirpate this execrable race”, although he did not think that the hunting dog idea was practical.
Or Agent Orange in Vietnam, Pizarro in Soth America, or the European barbarity in Africa…and the list is endless. Capitalism in all its forms only spawns hatred hatred and even more hatred.
terrorism is not linked to any religion or faith or poverty or deprivation . terrorism is too very expensive and costly to be indulged for religion . terrorism is big money and profits . the biggest terrorists are the high society filthy rich dogs like TATAS , SASSOONS ,ROTHSCHILDS ,AND OTHER RELATIVES .AFGHANISTAN WAR IS FOR OPIUM PROFITS …….IRAQ IS FOR OIL…….AFRICA IS FOR COCAINE AND DIAMOND AND GOLD MINES .
yes, study of modern history cannot go without the
study of “ROTHSCHILDS”. All History Books must now on deal with the study of these financial masters who
have made the entire world their gamefield.