Chapter X / Osterley Walk
End
Colonial pasts run deep into the veins of the present.
It exists in our gaze of the displayed objects at Osterley House -
as treasures, ornaments, riches
and in their confinement within the walls of an English villa;
A vacuum that they are embedded within.
It lives on in how the house speaks of these objects
The nuances in its language or the lack thereof
as if they were meant to merely serve its grandeur.
It exists in the nonsensical assortment of antiquities;
In the reckless acts of cutting, gluing, altering
material landscapes that are severed from their origins:
in chinoiserie, in japanning, in coromandel work.
It lies in the absence of the name “the East India Company”
In any of the labels in the house.
And in the continued use of the title, “a party palace”
while its dark associations and histories are unspoken in the premises.
The colonial past survives as the Natwest Group -
of which Child & Co was a subsidiary -
bankrolls the climate crisis,53 wars and settler-colonialism.54
It prevails in the brutal policing56 and custodial deaths57
in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu.57
It survives in the EIC-founded Madras Bank,
known today as the State Bank of India:
an investor in cluster munitions.58
It lingers in the exploitation of workers by P&O Ferries,
who owned the builders of the fourth Osterley ship.59
It manifests in the irony of the National Trust
that “looks after nature, beauty and history…”60
while refusing to sever ties with
a bank complicit in apartheid and ecocide.61
We bear witness to the story of Osterley Park,
and the Childs that owned it,
and the riches that the Childs owned,
and the ships that brought them the riches,
and the East India Company that fed them riches,
and Fort St. George that was its citadel -
in Madras that was its port -
in the state of Tamil Nadu that was its Madras Presidency -
and the far-reaching impacts of British imperialism
along with Indian neocolonialism.
We bear witness to our colonial present.
53 Gayle, Damien. 2024. “HSBC and NatWest accused of financing North Sea oil extraction despite pledge.” The Guardian, March 22, 2024. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/mar/22/hsbc-and-natwest-accused-of-financing-north-sea-oil-extraction-despite-pledge
Financial Times. 2024. “NatWest chair played down ties to oil company caught up in 1MDB fraud.” September 6, 2024. https://www.ft.com/content/80832480-84fb-40c2-a147-d6baf093ceba
54 Don’t Bank on the Bomb. Scotland. “6.1.1 Natwest Group’s Policy.” Accessed 22 September 2024. https://nukedivestmentscotland.org/rbs-groups-policy/
Don’t Bank on the Bomb. 2020. “Natwest, update your policy!”. Accessed 22 September 2024. https://natwest.dontbankonthebomb.com/
International Company to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). “Change NatWest! Join the call for the banking group to divest from nuclear weapons.” Accessed 22 September 2024. https://www.icanw.org/change_natwest#:~:text=NatWest%20Group%27s%20current%20defence%20sector,in%20the%20nuclear%20weapons%20industry.
Don’t Buy Into Occupation (DBIO). 2023. “European Financial Institutions’ Continued Complicity in the Illegal Israeli Settlement Enterprise Report.” Accessed 22 September 2024. https://dontbuyintooccupation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/2023_DBIO-III-Report_11-December-2023.pdf
56 Vijayan, Suchitra, and Sofia Lois. 2020. “DON’T RESIST, WE CAN KILL YOU — A MASSACRE IN THOOTHUKUDI.” The Polis Project. https://www.thepolisproject.com/watch/dont-resist-we-can-kill-you/.
57 Deeksha, Johanna. 2024. “Tamil Nadu police's brutal violence against the state's weakest citizens.” Scroll.in, July 8, 2024. https://scroll.in/article/1068691/the-tamil-nadu-polices-brutal-violence-against-the-states-weakest-citizens.
TheCommuneMag. 2024. “A Continuing Story Of Custodial Deaths In Tamil Nadu - The Commune.” January 13, 2024. https://thecommunemag.com/a-continuing-story-of-custodial-deaths-in-tamil-nadu/.
Radhika, Sudhakar. 2020. “Jeyaraj, Bennix case and the RSS in Tamil Nadu.” Round Table India. https://www.roundtableindia.co.in/jeyaraj-bennix-case-and-the-rss-in-tamil-nadu/
58 Press Trust of India. 2016. “SBI in 'Hall of Shame.'” Business Standard, 2016. https://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/sbi-in-hall-of-shame-116062000016_1.html
Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor. “Cluster Munition Ban Policy - India.” Accessed 4 October, 2024. http://the-monitor.org/country-profile/india/cluster-munition-ban-policy?year=2023
59 Armstrong, Allan. 2022. “P&O and Life Under Empire 2.” Bella Caledonia, 2022. https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2022/03/27/po-and-life-under-empire-2/
60 “What does the National Trust do?” n.d. National Trust. Accessed October 2, 2024. https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/our-cause
61 Canary. 2024. “National Trust sees week of protests over links to Barclays.” August 1, 2024. https://www.thecanary.co/trending/2024/08/01/national-trust-barclays-2/
Isaac, Anna. 2023. “National Trust resists pressure to ditch Barclays over environmental concerns.” The Guardian, August 20, 2023. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/aug/20/national-trust-resists-pressure-to-ditch-barclays-over-environmental-concerns
“Boycott Barclays.” 2024. Palestine Solidarity Campaign. https://palestinecampaign.org/campaigns/stop-arming-israel-3/
62 Zia, Ather. 2020. “The New East India Company”. The Haunting Specter of Hindu Ethnonationalist-Neocolonial Development in the Indian Occupied Kashmir. Development Volume 63. Pg 64-65. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41301-020-00234-4#Sec5
Stanton, Gregory H. 2023. “India.” Genocide Watch. https://www.genocidewatch.com/country-pages/india