Recently, my sister changed her WhatsApp profile picture to the logo for “I’m taking time off from Keti Koti”, the sympathetic campaign that lets you mark the 1st of July free to celebrate the abolition of slavery. The idea is that if enough people do this, Keti Koti will also be made a national holiday in the Netherlands.
She meant well, but it sparked a massive row in the family app. The Indian side was furious, the messages pouring in so fast that it looked like the live stream of a World Cup final.
“Why are you supporting a commemoration that only reflects on slavery in the western colonies?” grumbled Great Aunt D.
“There were many more enslaved people in the Indies than in the West,” sniffed niece B.
“In the Indies, moreover, slavery was abolished not on July 1, but on January 1,” wrote grandnephew P.
“Well, a commemoration on January 1 doesn’t seem like a good plan,” my sister muttered to me. “Then you’re too broke to think about anything at all.”
Still it stuck, because she changed her profile picture back. I sympathized with her, but also understood the reaction from the Indian side. In the impressive Something horrific was done there writer Reggie Baay shows how gigantic and horrible the slave trade in the Dutch East Indies was. However there the enslaved were exploited, mistreated, tortured and raped. That slavery there, despite its abolition in 1860 (three years before that in the West), continued into the twentieth century. Yet many don’t seem to know this, according to Baay because “…by far the majority of the descendants of the enslaved in the East are unaware of their own history of slavery.” Partly because of its marginal place in our education. Many of my Indies friends have no idea how widespread slavery was in the Dutch East Indies.
“Can’t we just commemorate the Indian slavery past with Keti Koti”, a niece tried again? That got her so angry that she left the family app.
“There is no place for us anywhere,” said Great Aunt D. “Not at commemorations, not in canons, not in schools, not in the collective memory.”
A great-uncle who is deeply involved in colonial history wrote: “No Keti Koti for us. Not until there is as much attention in the Netherlands for slavery in the East as for slavery in the West.”
He concluded: “Equal slaves, equal chains, equal recognition.”
This has been haunting me for days now.
Ellen Deckwitz writes an exchange column with Marcel van Roosmalen here.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of June 30, 2022