91 online
 
Most Popular Choices
Share on Facebook 34 Printer Friendly Page More Sharing Summarizing
OpEdNews Op Eds   

Open Letter to H. E. Mr. Gurjit Singh, Ambassador of India in Abyssinia (Fake 'Ethiopia')

By       (Page 1 of 2 pages)   No comments

Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
Open Letter to H. E. Mr. Gurjit Singh, Ambassador of India in Abyssinia (Fake 'Ethiopia')    Attention: H. E. Mr. Gurjit Singh
Ambassador of India

Mr. Naveen Kamal Sharma
Private Secretary
Ms. Ekram Beyan,
Social Secretary
Tel: 011-123 55 44 (Direct)
011-123 55 38 to 41 (General)
Fax: 011-123 55 47 or 1235548
Email:
rajdut@ethionet.ethttp://www.indianembassy.gov.et/   Your Excellency,   

As I read your comments about "Ethiopia's contribution toward ensuring peace in the Horn of Africa" and 'Ethiopian' foreign policy in general (in Abdi Guled's recent article India supports the presence of the Ethiopian troops in Somalia, I felt obliged to share with you the following points, being sure that your real interest is to promote in Africa the best possible image of the country of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore.  I am convinced you do your best to promote India's cooperation with Abyssinia, but I am also absolutely convinced that you, making the reported comments, acted in striking opposition to Mahatma's loftiest value, Satya (Truth).  

 

One could understand that diplomacy is not a philosophical endeavour but in our global world, I believe you will agree with me, Your Excellency, it is the patchwork of Gandhi's Search that is missing most. That's is why so many people in Africa and elsewhere expect so much from India's rise to a globally prominent position.  What would otherwise be the point of India's becoming the world's no 4 GDP (US $ 3 trillion), if the country pursues typical colonial foreign policy, perceiving for instance the antagonism to China's penetration in Africa only in terms of immoral stance, disregard for Truth, disrespect for Human Rights, and utter historical and political fallacy?  

Your Excellency, if Mohandas Gandhi was humble and great enough to solemnly declare that his life's purpose, namely the discovery of Satya (Truth – perceived as God), could be achieved mainly through 'learning from his own mistakes and conducting experiments, I believe you have the strength and the honesty to do precisely the same, during your tenure in Eastern Africa.  

India Cannot Pursue Anti-Gandhi Policy in Colonial Abyssinia (Fake 'Ethiopia')  

In fact, 'Ethiopia' did not ensure "peace in the Horn of Africa and the continent as a whole" because – before all the rest – 'Ethiopia' did not ensure peace at home.  It would even be an oxymoron to expect from this country to do so, after having butchered the subjugated Nation of the Ogadenis (in 2007), after having massacred the subjugated Nation of the Anuak (in December 2003), after having slaughtered the subjugated Nation of the Sidamas (in May 2002), after having murdered the subjugated Nation of the Shekacho (in March 2002), and after having performed similar, inhuman policies as regards many other subjugated and tyrannized nations, namely the Afars, the Oromos, the Kaffas, the Kambaatas, the Gedeos, the Hadiyas, the Wolayitas, the Gumuz, the Berta, the Shinasha, and the Agaw.   

Your Excellency, I am sure I am not the first to address you, speaking of 'Ethiopia' and making use of the proper term 'Genocide' for the policies and the practices carried out by the ruling Amhara and Tigray Monophysitic Abyssinians, who invaded all the aforementioned nations' lands in different moments in the late 19th century, and tyrannized, terrorized and dehumanized them ever since. Many distinct scholars used the term 'Genocide' when analyzing aspects of the 'Ethiopian' tyranny; it reflects an undeniable historical reality.  Your Excellency, The term Genocide starts with the improper, criminal use of the name of 'Ethiopia' for the country ruled by the Amhara and Tigray Monophysitic Abyssinians. The correct name of the country is Abyssinia; under the use of the term 'Ethiopia' is hidden Africa's most excruciating – cultural, spiritual and physical – Genocide.   

I have noticed your ceaseless effort to strengthen India's presence in Abyssinia; I believe that you must have already noticed a nice small picture of the first building of bank in that country; you certainly know that the name of the institution was, and still is, Bank of Abyssinia.  The name of the country changed during the 1940s and the 1950s, following the political conclusions drawn by the ruling Amhara and Tigray Monophysitic Abyssinians as regards the perpetuation of their illegal occupation of the lands of other nations. In other words, the historically fallacious use of the national name of 'Ethiopia', which consists in utter usurpation of a national name of another land and nation, was viciously conceived and tyrannically implemented in order to justify the aforementioned Genocide through the execrable and evil plan of the religious, cultural, linguistic, social, behavioural, and political amharization of the subjugated nations. However, never ever have these nations renounced to their rights to Independent Nationhood and Homeland.    The Historical and Political Truth about Abyssinia is synopsized in the following points:  

1. Tiny, Isolated Abyssinia invaded other nations' lands, extending its territory for ca. 15 times.  

Originated from Yemen, the Abyssinians (presently divided into Amhara and Tigray) after a long period of isolation and meager contribution to regional affairs, started expanding at the detriment of surrounding nations around the middle of the 19th century, due to an agreement with the English colonials; the basic directions of the English – Abyssinian cooperation were anti-Catholic / anti-Italian and anti-Islamic / anti-Ottoman. At the epic moment of the Indian Rebellion (1857), when Hindu and Muslim Indian soldiers accused the East India Company of mass conversions of Hindus and Muslims to Christianity, the Oromos of Shoa had rebelled against the Abyssinian 'king' Tewodros, a coarse vagabond whose real name is Kassa Haile, because he intended to invade and annex their lands, and imposed his nation's religion, culture and language – which all were totally alien to them.   And only 12 years after Queen Victoria had been named Empress of India (1877), 'Menelik', another Abyssinian tramp whose real name is Sahle Mariam, proclaimed (1889) himself as Emperor of Ethiopia to imitate Ezana, the first christened king of Axumite Abyssinia, who had invaded Kush (Ethiopia) and added the name of Ethiopia to those of other subjugated realms. As Abyssinia's history is full of falsifications, it is essential to note here that every claim to royal descent is ludicrous, and the mythologized line of Abyssinian kings supposedly originating from the fictional Menelik, the son to King Solomon of Israel and the Yemenite Queen of Sheba, was forged by the incredulous authors of the medieval Kebra Negast.  More credible is that you personally, Your Excellency, descend from the Great King Asoka than any Abyssinian tramp, preposterously self-styled 'king' (or even more comically 'emperor'), originates from the historical Axumite Abyssinian kings. Anything prior to them is not historical but mythical, and if employed in today's politics, racist, fascist, discriminatory and inhuman.   

2. Real Ethiopia is Ancient Sudan – Kush, the fatherland of the Eastern Kushites  

In fact, Ethiopia is a name given by the Ancient Greeks and Romans to the country immediately in the South of Egypt in the area of today's Sudan. That country was known as Kas in Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic texts, Mat Kuusi in Ancient Assyrian – Babylonian Cuneiform texts, and Cush in Ancient Biblical Hebrew texts. Wherever Cush (Kush) was mentioned in the Hebrew Old Testament, the Septuagint translators wrote 'Ethiopia' in Ancient Greek. As we know much (through archeological excavations and Ancient Egyptian epigraphic evidence, and to lesser extent through the two non deciphered Meroitic hieroglyphic and cursive writing systems) about the different phases of the great Kushitic civilization (which spanned over more than two and half millennia before the Abyssinian invasion – ca. 360 CE), we can understand very well that it was totally unrelated to the developments that led to the formation (last pre-Christian centuries) and the rise of the Axumite Abyssinian kingdom (4th – 6th century CE).  The Abyssinians are, like the Ancient Yemenites, Semites – associated with the Arabs, the Aramaeans, the Babylonians, the Phoenicians and the Jews.  The Ancient Ethiopians (also called Kushites and Meroites – from Meroe their last Pre-Christian capital in the area of today's Bagrawiyah in Sudan) were Kuhites – associated with the Modern Kushites of the Horn of Africa, the Oromos, the Sidamas, the Somalis, and also with the Berbers of Kabylia (Algeria), the Tuareg, and the Fulani and Hausa speaking nations of Western Africa.  More analytically:Note: http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/17647
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/24464

3. Historical Christian Ethiopia was located in Sudan – being other than Axumite Abyssinia 
 Although Axumite Abyssinia was christened first, Ethiopia (Kush / Sudan) adhered to Christianity a few decades after the Ezana's invasion of part of Ethiopia's territory. Quite interestingly, the Axumite occupation did not last much in the SE part of the Ethiopian territory, and did not contribute at all to the Christianization of Ethiopia (Sudan / Kush). Quite contrarily, Christianity was diffused in Ethiopia (Sudan / Kush) mostly from the North (Egypt).  Three Christian Ethiopian states have been formed in the first half of the 5th century, namely Nobatia (around Faras in the area of today's Sudanese – Egyptian border), Makuria (around Dongola, ca. 550 km in the south) and Alodia (around Khartoum).  They controlled far larger territory than the area of the Abyssinian kingdom (ca. Axum and Adulis on the Red Sea coast), and they lasted much longer (Alodia collapsed ca. 1550 – 1600). Axum collapsed with the rise of Islam, and disappeared for centuries.  The Agaw dynasty does not consist in a continuity of Axumite Abyssinia in any sense, ethnic identity and race, linguistic classification or royal / political ideology, except religion. And the rise of the Amhara Abyssinia through bloodshed does not in fact represent Agaw continuity but disruption.   

4. Ethno-religious Breakdown – the Identity of the Tyranny  

In today's Abyssinia, following the 19th – 20th century colonial expansion, an excruciating Semitic Amhara and Tigray Abyssinian tyranny has been imposed over the outright majority of the country, the masses of the subjugated nations that are all either Kushitic (Oromo, Ogadeni, Sidama, Afar, Shekacho, Kaffa, Kambaata, Gedeo and Hadiya) or Nilo-Saharan (Anuak, Berta, Nuer, Shinasha). Amhara and Tigray Abyssinians total ca. 30% of the country's population. However, the complexity of the Abyssinian quagmire involves religious oppression as well, and this is practiced either against the aforementioned nations (who adhere to various religions, namely Islam, Christianity and historical African religions) or against the significant Abyssinian Muslim minority. As ruling ethno-religious group, the Monophysitic (Tewahedo) Abyssinians do not exceed 18% of the country's population.   

5. The Monophysitic Abyssinians are not proper Christians, but heretics.   

Their hatred against the Roman Catholic Church is proverbial. At the times of the Ottoman empire and the Safevid Empire of Iran, it was better for a Catholic priest or missionary to spend years on Islamic territory than in heinous, unrepentant Monophysitic Abyssinia.  The following excerpt from the Catholic Encyclopedia New Advent highlights the sort of 'Christianity' the Monophysitic Amhara and Tigray Abyssinian pseudo-diplomats represent. At the same times, it offers a summary of Anti-Christian persecution that took place in the country - 'friend of the Western Christians'.

This is what the unrepresentative pseudo-diplomats of Abyssinia try to keep hidden from anyone:

"The Sovereign Pontiffs, nevertheless, have bestowed a constant solicitude on the Christians of Ethiopia. The first missionaries sent to their aid were the Dominicans, whose success, however, roused the fanaticism of the Monophysites against them, and caused their martyrdom. For more than a hundred years silence enfolded the ruins of this Church. At a later period, the fame of the Crusades having spread, pilgrim monks, on their return from Jerusalem, wakened once more, by what they told in the Ethiopian court, the wish to be reunited to the Church.

The Acts of the Council of Florence tell of the embassy sent by the Emperor Zéra-Jacob with the object of obtaining this result (1452). The union was brought about; but on their home journey, the messengers, while passing through Egypt, were given up to the schismatic Copts, and to the Caliph, and put to death before they could bring the good news to their native land.

More than a hundred years later, in 1557, the Jesuit Father Oviedo penetrated into Ethiopia. One of his successors, Father Paëz, succeeded in converting the Emperor Socinios himself. On 11 December, 1624, the Church of Abyssinia, abjuring the heresy of Eutyches and the schism of Dioscorus, was reunited to the true Church, a union which, unfortunately, proved to be only temporary.

Next Page  1  |  2

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).

Rate It | View Ratings

Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis Social Media Pages: Facebook page url on login Profile not filled in       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Orientalist, Historian, Political Scientist, Dr. Megalommatis, 51, is the author of 12 books, dozens of scholarly articles, hundreds of encyclopedia entries, and thousands of articles. He speaks, reads and writes more than 15, modern and ancient, (more...)
 
Go To Commenting
The views expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
Writers Guidelines

 
Contact AuthorContact Author Contact EditorContact Editor Author PageView Authors' Articles
Support OpEdNews

OpEdNews depends upon can't survive without your help.

If you value this article and the work of OpEdNews, please either Donate or Purchase a premium membership.

STAY IN THE KNOW
If you've enjoyed this, sign up for our daily or weekly newsletter to get lots of great progressive content.
Daily Weekly     OpEd News Newsletter
Name
Email
   (Opens new browser window)
 

Most Popular Articles by this Author:     (View All Most Popular Articles by this Author)

Open Letter to H. E. Mr. Gurjit Singh, Ambassador of India in Abyssinia (Fake 'Ethiopia')

The Collapse of the Mubarak Regime and the Re-birth of Egypt

Egypt in Crisis, Self-governed Cairo, and the Emergence of Egypt's Civil Society

Open Letter to HRH, Hamad Bin Khalifa al Thani, on Ethiopia

Some Nuance for Barack Obama

A US President for Nuclear War?

To View Comments or Join the Conversation:

Tell A Friend