LONDON: The mask over the origins of the Commonwealth is off, or at least it will be next week. About time, perhaps. It is polite to speak at Commonwealth gatherings now of diverse nations sharing a common purpose , as a working microcosm of the world at large. But there is near silent agreement at such meetings to say nothing about its origins.

There is little even by way of minimal acknowledgement that the Commonwealth is a group of countries that include Britain and other countries that were once a part of the British Empire. Britain and its former colonies, that is, except that no one likes to put it that way.

That will change when Commonwealth Day is observed on Monday March 8. Because while Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon has issued a polite statement on the Commonwealth, quite another kind of celebration will take place at the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum in Bristol, about 100 miles west of London.

That this museum was set up in Bristol is no coincidence. It is to Bristol that the great majority of black slaves from Africa were brought in the days of Empire. The city became the centre for celebrating such triumph as the Empire was.

Those around during the Empire are being invited to relive their memories. "We want people to tell us how they remember celebrations of Empire Day in their times in the former colonies," Claire Thompson from the Empire and Commonwealth Museum told IPS. "It is obviously Empire we will be talking about, but the Commonwealth as well."

The museum will ask people about the Commonwealth as well, she said. "We do ask people to question the Commonwealth too," she said. "Whether it is an outmoded grouping of countries, and whether it can be a force for good. The Commonwealth obviously realizes it's not perfect, but it is moving on."

The museum is a reminder how Commonwealth Day grew out of Empire Day. Empire Day was celebrated all over Britain on May 24 every year from 1904 to 1958. May 24 is the birth date of Queen Victoria who reigned over Britain at the peak of Empire.

But celebrations up to 1958 continued six years after the coronation of the present Queen. The Queen who is head of the Commonwealth headed celebrations of Empire Day for years after much of it was gone.

In 1958 Empire Day was renamed British Commonwealth Day. And it was some years after the 'British Commonwealth' became just the Commonwealth.

The empire museum came to be renamed the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum. The clubbing of the names is a source of much national and international embarrassment. If there is one thing that nobody mentions at Commonwealth meetings, it is that museum.

But will the museum celebrate the Empire or the Commonwealth? Events planned at the museum on Monday show that the past has not quite been disconnected from the present.

The education department of the museum will record interviews with visitors about their experiences of celebrations of the Empire. That is about as close as one could get today to at least part celebration of the Empire itself.

Exclusive archive material showing how Empire Day was celebrated in Britain and its former colonies will be shown on the day. This will include historic documents, photographs and films. The museum is strong on such material, and not so strong on protests and movements against the Empire.

The idea of celebrating the Empire originated in Canada in the late 1890s. Britain picked up the idea soon, prompted by the desire to create a closer bond between the 400 million living within the Empire, and to celebrate what was hailed then as "the magnificence and power of the Empire."

The theme for this year's Commonwealth Day, celebrated always on the second Monday of March, is "building a Commonwealth of freedom". Freedom, eminently, was not what the Empire was about. But an official attempt persists in clubbing the Empire and the Commonwealth as the expression of common good and common values.

"The theme highlights the importance of democracy, national self-determination, individual liberty and human rights, values that provide common ground for the Commonwealth as a whole," says an official statement from the British government.

The British will be celebrating memories of Empire, and with that also "national self-determination" as an aim of its offshoot, the Commonwealth. The British are particularly good at doing this sort of thing without blinking.

McKinnon sought to bridge the two ahead of the celebrations next Monday. "The modern Commonwealth was born out of the quest for freedom," he said in a statement on Wednesday.

"Its purpose, its goals, its identity were shaped by the struggles for autonomy and political emancipation everywhere in the Commonwealth. Today, more than ever, freedom is at the core of the Commonwealth project."

McKinnon had more to say about the Commonwealth and freedom. "Freedom is, of course, a fundamental right," he said. "But it is also a tool that enables us to improve our lives and change the world around us.

Freedom means being able to express opinions about the kind of society we wish to live in; freedom means access to healthcare and education; freedom means the opportunity to provide for ourselves and our families."

All, in short, that the Empire either opposed or failed to provide. McKinnon was saying that the Commonwealth is now opposed to all the values of the Empire without actually saying it.

The contradictions will be buried in ceremony. A multi-faith, multicultural observance will take place at Westminster Abbey on the occasion, and will be attended by the Queen in her role as head of the Commonwealth. - Dawn/The Inter Press News Service.