Openhartig interview van wijlen Anil Ramdas met zijn goede vriend Stefan Sanders

[MO_NL]

Luister hier naar en je gaat iets meer snappen van wijlen Anil Ramdas.



Stephan Sanders in gesprek met Anil Ramdas



Aan het begin van het interview dat Stephan Sanders op 31 juli 2009 in OBA Live had met de op 16 februari op 54-jarige leeftijd overleden Anil Ramdas, noemt hij zijn gesprekspartner "de man met wie ik een van de langstlopende en meest moeizame vriendschappen van mijn leven onderhoud".

Het wordt een memorabel gesprek, niet in het minst vanwege de eerlijkheid over hun 'vriendschapsliefde' (Sanders). Over hun eerste ontmoeting in 1986 waarbij ze direct een enorme verwantschap bij elkaar ontdekken. En over het einde van de zorgeloze vriendschap, jaren later, als gevoelens van afgunst en verraad opspelen.

Geen onderwerp wordt geschuwd; in enkele gevallen worden misverstanden rechtgezet. Ramdas is buitengewoon openhartig over zijn angsten, de demonen die hem achtervolgen ("Nu komen ze te weten dat ik helemaal niets voorstel."), zijn eenzaamheid en zijn drankgebruik. Sanders, die de valkuilen van overmatig acoholgebruik niet helemaal vreemd zijn: "Ik ben meer een D66-alcoholist. Maar jij bent meteen zwaar fundamentalistisch, een SGP-alcoholist. Niet af en toe, maar altijd te veel drinken. Iedere dag."

Beluister hier het gesprek

[BaMb-InO]

Dank, een genius minder op de wereld. Jammer.

[Egmond Codfried]

17 april 2012 om 15:21
Review:
BADAL, OR THE SUICIDE OF A REFORMED HOUSENIGGER
by Egmond Codfried

Anil Ramdas (1958-2012) was a great and prolific Surinam journalist, writer, publicist and TV presenter in the Netherlands. He was also a director of De Balie, where important social debates are staged. He was considered an important and accomplished Surinam Indian intellectual who interviewed many famous writers derived from the subcontinent, and was the VS.Naipaul specialist of The Netherlands. He knew all about the history of Indian Cinema. But he recently took his own life, on his birthday, which was a sad shock to me. Badal is an interesting autobiographic work, and a quintessential, extravagant Surinam novel, virtuously written, full of colour and music. With subtle humour, set at international locations, and filled with famous people.

The reports are conflicting; some write that Ramdas insisted Badal was not autobiographical. I would suggest that until a biography is written we go by autobiographical in order to benefit from his life and thinking. Ramdas saw a new Holocaust coming against the allochtones in The Netherlands, even against himself who had went all out to be just like the white Dutch. His conversion must have been between 2009 and 2011, between ‘Paramaribo, de vrolijkste stad in de jungle’ (2009) and ‘Badal’ because the first book has no criticism of The Netherland or The Dutch. It would have seemed more fair to me if next to the criticism of Surinam, he would have acknowledge that Surinam was plundered, and was fighting its way out of post-colonial hell. He assumed the usual superior tone of the Dutch we know so well, of people who hate us, and do not want us to prosper, who block different partnerships and new financial partners for Surinam. Ramdas wrote to highlight our weaknesses and failures, to satisfy the Dutch, and to be popular among them. For this he qualifies as a housenigger, and his sad demise should be a warning to other houseniggers.

This is reinforced by his own admission. He was as a man who sold his soul to the devil, and realised his mistake, but could not redeem himself due to personal demons. Even Badal in itself shows Ramdas as a writer playing both sides, not really coming clean, and withholding any criticism of the Dutch elite. He attacks Surinam ministers and the president, but not a word on the Dutch government, shows a strange bias. Are they above criticism, are they gods? As any good Dutch writer, he self-censures himself, by only finding fault with the little people, and Ramdas singled out the poor and uneducated Dutch he labelled as ‘white trash.’ It’s telling that in his youth he belonged to the group of Surinam Hindustanis who were so insanely racist against Blacks, that they even opposed independence, and set fire to valuable historical buildings, terrorising the whole nation. Strange to think that both India and Indonesia fought for their independence, and while the Indians and Indonesian in Suriname are strongly identified with their countries of origin, this does not seem to include their pride of independence and prosperity. So as much as I’m hurt by his dead, and in view of his adding to Surinam literature canon, in spite of himself; his mentality should be denounced as a housenigger, or ‘colonialist’ as he calls it. His unadulterated hatred of Blacks was what made him attractive to the Dutch, who take great pains to divide the allochtones among themselves.

I early decided not to read his work or watch his programs as I did not like his tone of voice when he discussed Surinam and Surinamese in the same dismissive and superior terms as the Dutch always do. I considered him a Surinam Hindustani housenigger. Ramdas confesses in ‘Badal’ to adopting the sweeping anti-Muslim views of his white newspaper colleagues, in regard to the Khomeini Fatwa against Salman Rushdy, in order to be accepted; although he privately held a different, and more benevolent, Surinam derived view of Muslims. Little did I know that this was what also broke him up, as he came to realise his mistake. He finally saw The Netherlands through the eyes of the anti-colonial activists, and thus the same people he at the start of his stellar rise to fame would openly ridicule. Which had offended me. Ramdas realised that all his efforts to belong, to be accepted by his white colleagues failed, when Dutch politics recently took another, stronger anti-allochtone turn. Suddenly it was normal for journalist and intellectuals to speak with great disdain and loathing about coloured and Muslim citizens, as the great threat to the Dutch security, and civilisation.

He immediately recognized the mood as akin to what went on before the last Holocaust (1933-1945). First he had attacked his white colleague’s by arguing that Dutch literature ignores allochtones. And he singled out for criticism one popular writer who did have a middle class and educated Black woman in his novel, but depicted her in a demeaning way: no better then a Black whore. This let to a big to do, bringing him national fame, but had whites feeling themselves attacked and (as usually) ‘undeservedly’ stereotyped as racist. He next planned an essay, to top the first one, about ‘White Trash,’ arguing the crisis in Holland as a break down in civility, and a lost of culture. He saw the people who voted for the anti-foreigner parties as ‘white trash.’ Causing whites to completely turn away from him.

But he also seem to have realised that the educated, and cultured Dutch elite was equally behind these parties and their ideas. This seems to have caused a total breakdown in relations with the Dutch, and his discomfiture. But at the background, and steadily getting mixed with his professional career was his terrible addiction to alcohol. His substance abuse by his own admission went total out of control and he became a public spectacle. He was fired and lost his prestigious position as correspondent in India for the NRC Handelsblad, a major Dutch newspaper, as he battled a major health crisis. A position any journalist would give his left testicle for. Even as he gained a new chance as the De Balie director he could not regain control of his drinking and he was fired for mismanagement. He further horrified his Surinam fans by admitting on TV to take medicine for his anxieties, which drove him to drink. Next ‘Badal,’ his major, assumed autobiographical novel came out, and according to reports this did not establish him as a major Dutch novelist as he expected, which fact, next to the deterioration of his family live, led to his suicide. His death was eerily foretold in this novel, which left me heartbroken, and angry at the Dutch.

For all its pretensions of honesty, I’m still missing a true analysis of the role of our stealing Dutch elite: who are deflecting attention to allochtones. The elite is always spared by cowardly Dutch writers, who are eager to join the elite. Every failure has to be presented as a personal failure, and cases like Ramdas are falsely used to proof that the coloureds can rise to any position. Yet we Surinamese should understand that The Dutch only like to deal with sell-outs. This is important, as we will look into the coming holocaust and how members and leaders of the victimised groups are employed to deceive and murder their own kind. Also missing is an insider analyses why all Dutch newspapers, and news programs sound the same? Why, for example, we were not told that parliamentarian Ayan Hirsi Ali, was an illegal Somali woman: while she was also raising hell? We were informed that Dutch Somali’s ‘mysteriously’ fled the Netherlands to Britain, but not because of their group persecution suffered at the hands of then Deputy-Minister Mark Rutte, our present crypto-sexual Prime-Minister; when they tried to inform the media about her illegal status. I ‘m still reeling from the admission of Badal of ridiculing the anti-Pieterbaas activists, because Surinam Hindustanis think of themselves as Caucasians, and cling to the fallacy of purity of race; no matter how black in looks, and feel closer to their white Caucasian brethren, then to the Black Surinamese.

[Egmond Codfried]

As a Surinam Black his books are useful to explain Surinam Hindustanis to me. My whole life I was one of these Black Surinamese Ramdas writes about who took great interest in Indians. Weekly visiting De Paarl and Jasodra to admire the antics of Rajesh Khanna or Amitabh Bachhan. But I was astounded to read in ‘Badal’ that Hindustanis do not eat soup, which they also consider something of the Blacks. Poor Indians. I myself was raised on rice in one soup or another and would kill for a bowl of Cassava Soup with smoked fish or Grated Plantain Soup with plenty of coconut milk. Yet, I remember a Hindustani acquaintance hesitating when I offered him this refined Plaintain balls soup, made by my mother. I had served him beef already, so I assumed he was well versed with the Black kitchen, once this beef-taboo was out of the way. The most talkative Hindustani taxi driver, a most pleasant raconteur and chronicler of Surinam life, who diverted me on the one-hour jungle way drive to the airport, informed me that Hindustanis frequented Black Winti witchdoctors because of their powerful spell. Earlier a Hindustani lady acquaintance told me a tale of an attempt at sexual molest by such a doctor. Seemingly a hazard that comes with the territory, and is just like these Catholic priests raping those young boys. The taxi-driver talked a great deal about Brazilian prostitutes, so I assume Hindustanis do have illicit sex. Yet according to Ramdas they look with horror at Blacks, doing the sexy things they do. I must assume that while Blacks are very open and bragging about Black anything, Indians are secretive and thus quite hypocritical. Maintaining a family oriented facade, and a god-fearing front, while in secret matching Blacks in all their sinfulness. But I’m not complaining; things are improving in Surinam and there is vice-versa integration and race-mixing too. I do hate the infighting.

I was amazed how Ramdas questioning look at the Dutch matched mine. But he is quite a character. While he tells us how he set out with a group to put fire to colonial government buildings, but got cold feet and got out the car, I was rejoicing in Surinam’s independence in 1975. Yet we both left in 1980, he a year older then me. On my arrival I early on recognised that the Dutch were very different indeed from the benevolent image presented to us, in person, in writing, and via the Dutch Newsletter we were shown before every movie in our cinemas, called Polygoon Journaal. In their own environment hey sounded bloodthirsty and backward. Soon one man tried to frighten me by allowing his large dog to softly maul my arm, thinking I would flee screaming, as other foreigners are apt to do. And being steeped in traditions and stories around slavery, I always resisted being turned into a housenigger. At great cost to my emerging public success. Like my refusal to hand over the rights to my slavery drama Maria Susanna Du Plessis (1739-1795), as it was suddenly last minute decided that my rewrites with the dramaturgy would not do, and persons unknown to me should be given carte blanche to make the play. I was further instructed not to visit rehearsals, but await the premiere to see what had become of my historical play. The play was already sold to 27 theatres and people were buying tickets already. I refused, sensing this was planned from the beginning, to force my hand and delete my anti-colonialist views. And housenigger Blacks were involved in this horrible charade too. So I missed out at my one shot to possible greater success and fame. But mind you, I’m not complaining.

Instead I took to novel writing and scientific research, already getting a taste when I researched this historical play. By chance I found a portrait of Maria Jacoba van Goor (1687-1737) a rich regent class woman who looked classical African. She was Isabelle de Charrière’s (Baroness Belle van Zuylen) granny, yet was missing from her biography. By looking for the grandmother I stumbled on a major eurocentric secret, namely that Blue blood is Black blood (1100-1848). The highest Dutch and European nobility was described as brown and black of complexion, while some also had classical African looks. Those were considered pure of blood. De Charrière moved in The Netherlands, and later in Swiss, in a circle of persons connected with Surinam. Baroness Maasdam was a granddaughter of Governor Cornelis van Aerssen, and was described by her cousin James Boswell as ‘Mrs. Maasdam black as chimney. Her husband, the baron of old nobility, he called ‘Chimney sweeper.’ De Charrière wrote a poem about this black baron: ‘About his brown black complexion, (1774) and asserted in a letter that his family, of the highest nobility, was famous for being ‘swarthy.’ In Swiss she met Pierre-Alexander Du Peyrou, an absent Surinam plantation owner, connected to the Van Sandick family, and a friend and benefactor of J.J. Rousseau. He was actually the first to publish Rousseau’s work, with the money earned by Surinam slaves. Interestingly Boswell describes his master Rousseau as: ‘A genteel Black man in an Armenian coat,’ while Rousseau writes about Du Peyrou’s ‘dark brown complexion.’

De Charrière married and settled in Pays de Vaud, a region in Swiss where the people are brown, and she earlier had self-described in a penportrait for Boswell as: ‘She does not have the white hands, she knows this, and even jokes about it, but skin colour is no joking matter.’ This was towards the French Revolution when human races were invented and the nobility lost its power, and the dark complexion had stood for nobility and Black Superiority. Whites were the serfs, outcast and until 1848 were considered shoe leather. Whites were routinely condemned to life flaying, and there was a human leather industry. Whites as we know them today were only emancipated in 1848. From this year, which also marks a major change in the Dutch constitution stripping nobles from their ‘privileges?’ The image of the Moor; used by the Ancien Regime to symbolise blue blood: was added to the St. Nicolas feast, and became Pieterbaas. This yearly feast, celebrated during an atmosphere of national hysteria, should be understood as a racist initiation, to make young children aware of their whiteness. Racism should be understood as a liberation ideology, for whites did not want to be ruled by Blacks ever again. This fear still runs deep, and whites will not even acknowledge black portraits of their former rulers, as the concept of a Black king is too upsetting to them. Even now. But as Blacks have overcome the degradation of slavery, and every white Dutch is perfectly safe in Surinam, this cannot be said about the position of Blacks and others in The Netherlands, and the rest of the World. That’s a reason for me to call for The Second Enlightenment to end White Supremacy, and the Era of Revisionism (1848-1941).

[Egmond Codfried]

This knowledge is missing in the writings of Anil Ramdas. Though I have sent some papers and emails to De Balie, never receiving an acknowledgement. His ideas are like those of the Dutch, accepting ‘we don’t know’ as scientific answers about the many Moors in European art, literature, language or heraldry. When I observe people like Ramdas who struggle to be accepted as intellectuals I always hear Glenn Close in ‘Liaisons Dangereuse’ ridiculing Chevalier Darceny as: ‘Like a true intellectual he is intensely stupid’ and she cautions another ‘to make a concerted effort not to sound like the latest novel.’ Much of the trivia he pushes as knowledge left me yawning, and wondering why he does not offer something useful. Ramdas has Badal call himself a ‘charlatan,’ as he early conceded that he played a role to be accepted by whites.

But even anti-colonialism is in some ways co-opted by the status quo. And only Blacks love Blacks, most of the time. Thus only Blacks will rejoice in the discovery of Black Kings. The eurocentrist worldview is based on a great lie, whitening all of European history by the use of whitened portraits, and their grossly fake history was fixed in 1848. Any amendment might lead to a collapse, so no attempt is made to re-examine European history. Thus any Black trying to readdress Dutch history is a threat; he is dabbling with state secrets, as state racism keeps white supremacy in place. So on 27 September 2011 I was slapped with a travel ban, by the building society no less as my sudden slave master, forced to sign an ‘agreement’ in front of a judge during a suit (Kort Geding). If I want to travel for more then three weeks, I need to give the renter before two weeks notice, and he may object. This has to do with the housing shortage in the richest county in the world, and puzzlingly; my travelling seems to add to this problem. Only god knows what comes next, but troublemakers in The Netherlands usually die of strange car accidents. While I’m seeking redress and annihilation of this ban, I’m accosted by the AIVD (Dutch Secret Police) for a forced ‘Enquete,’ about my views on ‘the living conditions in Holland.’ Even if I decline, I need to phone them.

I tell my fans that whites are bad news. They are bad news because they are fucked up. They are fucked up because their ancestors were used as shoe leather. Flaying alive was a normal punishment and this fear and hatred has settled itself somehow as part of the white mind. The essence of whiteness is the hatred of Blacks. Whites hate and fear Blacks because they were ruled and oppressed, while civilised and christianised, by Blacks. This I have concluded after noticing how uniformly whites, worldwide, respond with ridicule, hatred and senseless denial when I present them with my evidence. I came to define their behaviour as mental aphasia induced by great fear. Many Dutch reminded me of the slave masters of old, threatening me with a whipping for defiling their sacred superior history. But the whole of Dutch history is a great lie, hiding that the Ancien Regime was Black. Isabelle de Charrière, Belle van Zuylen, did not consider herself part of the Graauw, the Canaille, the Mean People, as white serfs were called; so it’s silly to talk about her in terms of ‘we, the Dutch.’

Next their fantasy version of the Holocaust (1933-1945) leaves us Surinamese blind to the threat. Not only Jews were murdered, but also Blacks, Roma, Gays, East Europeans, the handicapped, the elderly and Jehovah’s Witness’. I suspect that the Polish nobility remained black and brown. Hitler had Jews in his army. The Netherlands showed with 90% the greatest killing among its Jewry, more then nazi-Germany and twice the number for Belgium. Again the lying Dutch scientist claim not to know; while the facts show that the Dutch, in great numbers, helped the nazi enemy to kill their fellow Jewish citizens. Allochtonen are now placed in this position as the European Jews by the aid of the public media, the next holocaust is prepared right under our noses. Allochtonen like Ramdas should be viewed as the ‘Joodse Raad’ (1941-1943) who loyally executed nazie orders to select Jews for gassing in Germany. Telling Jews not to resist, not going into hiding, and submitting their weapons to the occupier. They were like the Dutch government who en masse helped to identify citizens as Jews, according to the Neurenberg Laws. The present definition of Allochtones sounds like the Neurenberg definition of Jews. Chillingly, there are no houses built today, a housing shortage is stated towards rationalising my travel ban; as if the Dutch expect many houses to become empty. The unemployed need to look for work, while there are no jobs, while Poles and Romanians pour in; again as if the Dutch are expecting a great exodus of allochtonen. The holocaust was first a major robbing of Jewish property, art and money. And it ended with the extraction of gold teeth of the murdered victims. And the Dutch knew, and were informed by NSB newspaper about the fate of the Jews, making their: ‘We did not know, we were only doing our work,’ a great lie.

The Dutch system today is collapsing because of greed and the non-existence of a system of check and balances. A holocaust is a reset and a radical austerity measure with slave labour, reducing the population by mass murder and forced migration, murdering pensioners and others who enjoy state benefits. The people in power use any mean to hold on to power, brainwashing its people through the state media. This economical crisis is human made, while the escape plan is that the same robbers of our tax money will also take us out of this crisis. How ingenious. Surinamese should thus make plans to flee, their beautiful self-owned homes will be taken, and the Surinam government must prepare for hundreds of thousand refugees. Many will be half-Dutch, with no love or knowledge of Surinam. They should be conveyed to the jungle to build a new capital, in order not to overwhelm the slim conveniences and institutions the Surinamese contrived to found or maintain.

‘Badal’ does not inform us about the reasons why Badal’s long suffering wife left him and why even his children view him from a young age with loathing and and lively contempt. Quite unsettling. Why could he not charm his children? The angelic and mysterious women like S. and Ahn he charms and courts, reminds me of a self-aggrandizing Fellini, as they champion him as the Great Intellectual. Apart of his drinking he must have done other things to his family and friends of which he must have been very ashamed. Causing fights, adultery, wife battery, children torture, and psychological warfare, breaking things, bringing ill repute, and humiliation? I strongly feel that Ramdas’ anxious nature made him a premature shooter, as sex goes curiously missing from his books. I was gripped by the personal suffering, as alcoholism is a truly horrible disease. How is it possible that an educated person cannot ask for help? Yet this confirms to me that a housenigger is on all levels a bad person. He is a liar, a deceiver, trampling on death bodies in his wake. Was I not defrauded of my historical play about Masra Quassy by two houseniggers, talking about Black solidarity; while one is the highest-ranking Surinam Black on Dutch TV. A true housenigger of state. Not only shamelessly stealing my play, but mocking me too. Their role is to torture anti-colonialist, to attack and ridicule. And again Holland only deals with house niggers. Like selling your soul to the devil, who will next come to collect, not accepting to be cheated by a sudden conversion, as Badal did found out.

Nonetheless, ‘Badal’ is a major Surinam novel; Ramdas wanted to be Dutch, or a Migrant or a Cosmopolitan. Well he was not, his life ended as if he never left Surinam and was in truth still some alcoholic, Nickerian rice farmer, who hit a mid-life crisis, was abandoned by his longsuffering wife and children, and who next took his own life. Is DNA our fate? The story is a Surinam story of ill fate, with a Surinam cadenza, no matter at what spectacular location in South Africa, Washington, London or Delhi it played out. Because he remained very much a Surinam Indian, that to me is still a mysterious species, who seem to have a unity of mind not seen with Blacks, their great rivals in Surinam. To be Surinam Indian is to be severely critical about anything these Blacks do, so we know little about them, when there are no Black traditions to denounce. They keep mum about failures among Hindustanis, or injustices met at the hand of their pink Caucasian brethren. Hindustanis are playing at the role of successful immigrants, ideal immigrants to the hilt and end up coming across as frauds. They have a youth who take to soft-drugs as ducks take to water, suffer family oriented abuse, and a high incidence of suicide among their teenage children. Ramdas has a subtle humor, based on keen observation. The book reads like a stylish movie, with intimate conversations at stark settings with an Antonioni and Monica Vitti feeling, interspersed with colourful flashbacks at international locations. Some contrived nudity, but again curiously: there is no sex. The soundtrack will be a mixture of Offenbach’s opera, pop, jazz, qawwali and ‘A Night Like This’ by Caro Emerald. The extensive trivia presented as intellectualism should be cut, and personal clashes invented for the film script to reveal Badal’s character. The whole should be a passionate re-examination of the past, ending with the mournfully failed abstinence and the intentional dead by drowning on the swelling sounds of ‘Casta Diva.’

I feel the eternal soul of Anil Ramdas should be immediately taken back in grace and we need to have a Surinam street named after him. To honour his virtuosity, his successes, his bringing of cosmopolitism and Bollywood glamour to Surinam literature. As soon as possible.

The Hague, April 2012.

Badal,
Een Roman, by Anil Ramdas
Uitgeverij de Bezige Bij, Amsterdam, 2011
412 pages

[Egmond Codfried]

Het lijkt mij dat wij niet te lang bij zijn dood moeten stilstaan, maar gebruik maken van zijn leven en gedachtegoed. Ik ben hoe dan ook geïnspireerd door wat ik lees en hoop dat alle Surinamers hem gaan lezen en bespreken, want hij was een grote Surinaamse schrijver. Ondanks zichzelf heeft hij bijgedragen aan de Surinaamse zoektocht naar hun identiteit. Het is een dik boek, dus volgde een lange recensie, in het engels, want men moet toch een zekere kennis hebben om Ramdas te kunnen waarderen. Nu lees ik over Thomas Mann, die schreef over de aankomnde nazi's en Duitsland moest ontvluchten. Wellicht heeft Ramdas ook Mann gelezen, ik proef enige overeenkomsten. Stond Stephen Sanders model voor de Henri uit het boek, Badal?