In December, people usually reflect on their past 12 months as they excitedly prepare for the New Year and beyond. Knowing what a disappointment 2020 has been, I decided to turn the page a little further back in time.
How about we go back a century, to 1920, and see how events from exactly 100 years ago still reverberate even today.
1920 marked the end of the deadly Spanish Flu pandemic. It lasted 2 years and infected about a third of the world’s population at that time. The next global pandemic would occur a 100 years later in 2020.
While the 2020 Tokyo Olympics got postponed due to Covid-19, the 1920 Belgium Olympics went ahead as the Spanish Flu was on its way out by then. Belgium had been awarded the games “to honor the suffering of the Belgian people” as Europe crawled out from the double whammy of the flu pandemic and World War 1. 1920 was a good year for Belgium as it also got to annex its bordering territory of Neutral Moresnet. Countries under embargo or blamed by the victors for starting World War 1 such as the Ottoman Empire, Austria, Germany, Hungary and Soviet Russia were not invited to the Games. It was also at the 1920 Olympics that the 5 interlocking ringed flag of the Olympics was first hoisted, and continues to remain in play a century later.
Speaking of the Ottoman Empire; in 1920 Constantinople was occupied by the British Empire and marked the dissolution of the Ottoman regime. This was not an easy task but the British Empire already had a playbook available from the time they had engineered the Arab Revolt. Fast forward a hundred years and border disputes simmer, political machinations linger and the people in the region continue to be treated as pawns – with the global players knowing well, when to move them or when to sacrifice them, to win the game!
While the Ottoman Empire fell, closer to home, the Muslims of British India in 1920 were leading a political protest campaign called the Khilafat Movement, aiming to restore the Caliphate. Fast forward a hundred years and the issue of Caliphate continues.
One of the biggest backers of the Khilafat Movement was Congress leader Mohandas Gandhi who promised independence from the Brits within a year, if the Khilafat leaders backed his Non-Cooperation Movement; which they did. The Non-cooperation Movement resolution was passed in the 1920 Nagpur session of the Congress. It passed nearly unanimously in the crowd of over 50,000 where the only leading dissenting voice was of Muhammad Ali Jinnah who opposed political anarchy and infusing religion in politics. Virtually every Muslim stood with Gandhi on this matter and therefore Jinnah, the ultimate constitutionalist, resigned from the Congress. Suffice is to say no independence was achieved in a years’ time and history is witness of how the movement was single handedly called off by Gandhi a couple of years later.
I seem to have digressed. But then again history is so fascinating. Anyways let’s go back to 1920 specifically.
1920 was the time when the British Empire was at its territorial peak and ruled around a quarter of the land on Earth. Fast forward a hundred years and inexplicably enough, Brexit is what is much prized by their public.
Speaking of prizes, the Nobel Peace Prize in 1920 went to a French politician who was then the President of the Council of the League of Nations which had been formed that year to maintain world peace. Although, with the onset of World War II a couple of decades later, it’s apparent that it failed in the only job it was crucially tasked with.
1920 also marked the year when women in USA finally got the right to vote and it took exactly a hundred years for an American woman to get to the second highest office in the country in 2020.
On the gloomier front, Wall Street had its share of news with it being bombed, in September of all the months, in a case that remains unsolved to this day. It was also the year when a certain Charles Ponzi setup his company that promised doubling the investment in 90 days. Fast forward a hundred years and neither terrorism nor greed or gullible investors have gone away.
All that remains to be seen now is how we evolve, learn from our past and if 2120 will be any different.
But in the short term, dare I wish you a blessed new year 2021!
This article by Asher Noor, was first published on Medium.
