By Belayneh Abate
Every Ethiopian involved in blackmailing and harassing Fano will come to their senses and read about the very long dignified history of FANO. The story of Fano is the story of freedom, dignity and sovereignty. Like language, religion and culture, the spirit of Fano may originate from certain regions, but this spirit has no ethnicity, religion or geographical demarcation.
To appreciate how Fano’s spirit holds the heads of the Ethiopian generation series, please read at least the relatively new book “*Empireland” by a British Indian author, Sathnam Sanghera. Mr. Sanghera’s book is one of the most scholarly, well-written and researched I have ever read on the eternal wounds of colonialism. Almost a third of the book is a list of references.
Empireland details how the British empire colonized and abused its colonies, especially the Indian subcontinent for over 300 years. The British Empire colonized the Indian subcontinent after establishing all methods of control through a nefarious trading vehicle called the East India Company. The Empire sent 250,000 soldiers to India and deceived the Indians that they were guards of the East India Company. (page 32). In addition to arms control, the empire used ethnicity, religion and India’s various Caste systems to divide and rule and force them to fight each other while looting their national treasure.
Once the empire controlled Indians, Indian men and women were treated as subjects, not as human beings with dignity. The Empire forced Indian men to fight the Empire’s first and second world wars. During World War II, 1,440,500 British troops were withdrawn from India. (page 198). Similarly, the empire used their women and men as slaves and soldiers during the scramble for Africa and other colonies.
Although Indians were serving the empire in every capacity, from cleaning up their filth to becoming soldiers for their colonizer’s global expansion, their colonizers were treating them as subhuman. For example, one of the generals of the empire labeled them as “a kind of dumb, almost animalistic servility in his letter to his parents (page 29). Another colonizing general dismissed the Indians as idle, luxurious, ignorant and cowardly and blamed them for the famine that killed an estimated 10 million Indians in 1770. (page 129). In 1860, it was commonplace to refer to Indians as negroes (page 39).
While the Empire used a trading company to colonize the Indian subcontinent, it used piles of Bibles to colonize Africans. As Chinua Achebe said in his novel Things Fall Down and later Desmond Tutu used it in his speech, when the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and the Africans had the land. The missionaries said, ‘Let us pray.’ The Africans closed their eyes and prayed. When the Africans opened their eyes after praying, they had the Bible in their hands and the missionaries had the land.
After the empire colonized Africans using the Holy Bible as a weapon, it began to sell them as raw materials. Between 1660-1870, the empires sent about 3 million slaves to the Americas. As the book Empireland described the voyage, “slaves were kept chained together or on deck to prevent mutiny during the middle passage, piled in tiers with no room to stand or turn… “. The generals of the empire used to say that “Negroes are made to serve the whites, just as black ants are made to serve the red ants” (Page 159).
Furthermore, when one of the colonizing generals ordered blacks to be killed, he said, “blacks have nothing to do with me, it was like killing a dog.” (page 163). In Kenya, unruly slaves were once “roasted alive” (page 206). In the Gambia, a colonizer whose African wife had given birth to a black baby accused her of infidelity and crushed the baby in a mortar and fed it to a dog” (page 215).
While the empire was colonizing the Indian subcontinent through a trading company and Africa through stacks of Bibles, it appears to have had cordial relations with the Ethiopian Fanos, such as Fano Tewodros. In fact, Fano Tewodros had a pistol as a gift from Queen Victoria. (page 60).
However, the pistol gift gesture was to test the waters of Fano’s mender (village), which has been hostile to invaders perhaps since man was created or Lucy’s descendants evolved into humans. Assuming that the cordial relationship was genuine, Fano Tewodros asked the masters of the empire to help establish a national armaments factory. However, the empire sent some missionaries who were actually spies.
Realizing the purpose and plan of the expanding empire, Fano Tewodros was unable to withstand this treachery and treachery like his predecessor Fanos, who had defended the freedom, dignity and sovereignty of his country for thousands of years. As a result, he imprisoned these spies, and this bold action angered the empire. The irritated empire appointed General Napier, who was credited with suppressing the Sikh army during the Sikh Indian Mutiny (page (page 60).
General Napier organized 13,000 soldiers and 26,000 camp followers. (page 60). As usual, the empire used Indian soldiers and other colonists to conquer Ethiopia. As we know, the empire also lured and used our traitors to betray Fano Tewodros and fight other Fano. As living and dying with dignity is the hallmark of the Fano, Fano Tewodros took his own life as the well equipped British army had the upper hand over the untrained traditional Fano warriors who were also fighting the indigenous traitors otherwise known as BANDAS.
After Fano Tewodros took his life for his dignity and the honor of the nation, the invaders were still hated and rejected by the surviving Fanos. The invading imperial soldiers left after looting the country, especially the treasures of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.
According to Empireland, British scholars had a “strong fascination” with Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity, and during the invasion they sent a team of religious experts with the soldiers so that they could effectively loot the church’s assets (page 59).
The war against Fano and the Tewahedo Ethiopian Orthodox Church dates back many thousands of years. Unlike subcontinental India, Africa, and Latin America, Ethiopian Fanos and Ethiopian religious scholars have been instrumental in anticipating and early recognition of the intent and plan of expanding European or other empires. These empires were unable to use the Bible as a medium because Ethiopic was the home of the Old and New Testaments long before the European Empires. They could not use trade or missionary as a tool because of the three dimensional culture of Fanos and church scholars.
As history shows, Fano culture is strongly associated with freedom, dignity and sovereignty. The spirit of FANO has preserved the unique physical, cultural and religious independence of Ethiopians since the creation of the ancient nation. Later, the spirit of FANO shone like the rainbow on Noah’s ark to proclaim and spread freedom in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America.
Therefore, please refrain from your reckless deliberate or ignorant propaganda against Fano. Please think at least a hundred times before you speak against the past, present and future Fanos who were and are ready to sacrifice everything for freedom, dignity and national integrity.
Blackmailing and harassing Fanos is like choosing slavery over freedom, dishonor over honor and subjugation over independence.
Fano’s spirit is the spirit of freedom and should be universally celebrated. Thank you.
*EMPIREbased on Sathanam Sanghera, 2021 Edition
The writer can be reached at [email protected]
__
To Publish Article At borkena, please send a submission to [email protected] for review.
Telegram channel: t.me/borkena
Join the conversation. Follow us on twitter @zborkena to get the latest Ethiopian news updated regularly. Like the jar on facebook also. To share information or send a submission, use [email protected]
