THE SUN NEVER SET

“And water'd heaven with their tears 

Did he smile his work to see 

Did he who make the lamb make thee"

Blake's tiger is a divine creature. A creation of a natural world therefore. The tiger's mystic beauty implies the benevolent aspect while it's evil behavior signifies the bad. Blake's awe through out the lines for which " that god once created the good and the bad another time "  voices something striking. Doesn't it tell us something about this world ? the men who live in it ?

The British Empire was the history's largest empire that spanned the globe. They said that sun never set on it because the empire was humongous and it was always daytime somewhere in the empire. It's hard to track down when and where this long daylight began. The whole process of claiming a colony was undoubtedly arbitrary.Essentially British began to own land striking flags in random beaches. This could be called as how they began building up their empire. The influence and the power of the British ran across the world in many ways.

The British had its own good. Being pioneers of the industrialization, they helped spreading technology through out the world . Alongside the technologies , new agricultural techniques were introduced. Trade became one of the biggest reasons for the expansion of the empire. Improvement of trade involved importation and exportation of products of its colonies.They modernized education. Africa was such a beneficiary of British education where the their society ran through formal education and even residents were taught to read and write. Countries like India and SriLanka are devised by Britain . They inherit their laws , their constitutionalism  and even the infrastructure developed by them like  transportation resources , irrigation  and  telegraph lines. India thus became " the jewel of the British ". India titles for the longest rail road in Asia today consequent to the English developments. Little things like interaction with other languages  to enrich language with new vocabularies was a result of this widespread empire.

However the bad outweighed the good. The empire was built upon the death of hundreds of thousands of people. Colonies prevailed ruthless acts of imperialism. Acquisition of countries were always made with treaties that always favored them. The locals were pushed into colonies and grabbed the most fertile and the productive land. Simply speaking , opportunists they were!. Alienation of locals from their native land lead to fury of the indigenous people of the colonies and ancient records state that such activities brought about nationalistic movements that demanded freedom and liberalization from the colonization. These further lead to outbreaks that killed many citizens. Military forces were used to take authority over buoyant indigenous communities . The death toll was countless in these wars while some were locked up in cells. Human rights were violated unconditionally.

Followed by all these the empire came in to an end with the decolonizing. Apparently the Colonial British switched themselves to as the “Commonwealth”. 1887 marks the first Colonial Conference held by the Commonwealth leaders. The objective of such conference was to strengthen the Commonwealth relationship and to address the pressing commonwealth issues of the day.  Further subjection to amendments the summits renamed the Conference as the “Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings “(CHOGM) of which the inaugural meeting took place in 1971 in Singapore, later succeeded in every two years. The CHOGM 2013 was more a seasonal sensation that gripped the entire SriLanka. Starting from the little trees planted all over the Colombo streets, the pavements and roads were reconstructed to welcome the looters who jiggled the country sometime back in an attempt to make benefits. For those who witnessed, it was more a bigotry than a genuine workout, I feel. After a week’s exercise there is no fruitful outcome to be seen. The entire talk was about the breached human rights and the media justice. We as Lankans should realize that Cameroons’ are neither interested in the post war development nor the rehabilitation going across the country today. Methinks that nobody could say it’s totally unfair to go for an international inquiry or fair to have such. It’s clean enough for one to think that appointing your own committee and having own inquiries into allegations will have no enough transparency and therefore heading to international inquiry via a third party would satisfy means. On the other hand it’s evident that international inquiry may not favor us as the majority of the nations are conceived of the consequences.

The empire no longer exists yet holds the name for its grandeur and triumph. To some of us its glory seems fake though in the modern context. The only query lying on the British is why we, “SriLanka “all the time? British being the heart of protecting human rights is no longer adhering to its rules too. Recently leaked British Government documents reveal that in 1972 British soldiers were given an indemnity from prosecution for illegal killings of the civilians during the Irish wars. Further many  killings have been made against the civil Iraqians , systematically being beaten up and tortured . Surprisingly the British Army has held no official inquiry to many of these killings and no British Army has been prosecuted. Britain's human rights violations are likely to be a blind eye in the face of other countries today. Having their violations kept aside pretending to not to know about them, it's ironic in a way that they are preaching other countries about safeguarding human rights like the “honorable masters" of all. 

As awful this empire may be, still there are people who embrace its two century long daylight. Blake's wonderment in fact is usual. The conflict that Lanka is going through now is very much two folded. Inquiries in to allegations may carry their good and bad and so does the God's creation of the Tiger. British once "watered the heavens with their tears” but the question remains whether "they smile to see the destruction caused?".