Postcolonialism - Dr Manisha Patil

 Postcolonialism

Colonialism

The entire history of the civilized world is in a sense the history of colonization. Colonization means the dominance of a strong nation over a weaker one. Colonialism happens when a strong nation sees that its material interest and affluence require that it expand outside its borders. Colonialism is the acquisition of the colonialist, by brute force, of extra markets, extra resources of raw material and manpower from the colonies. Since the ancient times wars are being fought to conquer lands and people. The conquerors have written the history praising their individual valor and cultural superiority and condemned the conquered as savages in need of control. While constructing this false textual discourse the conquerors have ignored their own atrocities against the larger humanity. For instance, the great ancient civilizations like Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians had open slavery. During the Middle Ages, crusades were fought in the name of religion but undoubtedly their main cause was material gain. In the modern era, we saw the full-fledged European colonization of the world which by the 1930s covered almost 84.6 per cent of total land surface. However what marks off modern European colonization from the earlier colonizations is not just its geographical sweep but more than that its rationalist mode. In modern colonization, power changed its style – in place of the earlier ‘bandit mode’ which was more violent but nonetheless transparent in its self-interest, greed and rapacity, the new rationalist mode ‘was pioneered by rationalists, modernists and liberals who argued that imperialism was really the messianic harbinger of civilization to the uncivilized world.’1 The white European male colonialist, while plundering the natives and territories of the colonies, fully convinced himself that he stands on high moral grounds. His basic assumptions in defense of his actions were:

• The colonized are savages in need of education and rehabilitation 

• The culture of the colonized is not up to the standard of the colonizer, and it’s the moral duty of the colonizer to do something about polishing it. 

• The colonized nation is unable to manage and run itself properly, and thus it needs the wisdom and expertise of the colonizer. 

• The colonized nation embraces a set of religious beliefs incongruent and incompatible with those of the colonizer, and consequently, it is God’s given duty of the colonizer to bring those stray people to the right path. 

• The colonized people pose dangerous threat to themselves and to the civilized world if left alone; and thus, it is in the interest of the civilized world to bring those people under control. 

The white European male systematically developed a colonial discourse which cuts across all the disciplines – science, mathematics, history, geography, literature, anthropology etc. – to develop an imperial mind set. He constructed his ‘self’ as a rationalist human (the famous quote of Descartes goes: ‘I think therefore I am’) capable of taking up new challenges, solving nature’s mysteries and on the account of his superior knowledge and cognitive faculties destined to rule the entire world. Then he developed an imperial ideology which worked at various levels. First of all, he attempted to degrade and then systematically wipe out the local languages and impose the language of colonizer. Then he degraded the local cultures including local religion, literature and even race. Then came mapping the territory – acquiring total knowledge of the landscape (including its people) and using that knowledge to control the territory. Unlike the earlier conquerors, say Alexander the Great who set out to win the world without knowing it, modern European conquerors first acquired the knowledge of their colonies and only then ventured to capture actual political power. Finally, they brought about textual reinforcement of the territorial possession by writing about the colonized land and people justifying their subjugation as mutually beneficial to both colonizer and colonized. In other words, the white Europeans adventurously penetrated into the so-called underdeveloped countries in Africa and Asia and new worlds of America and Australia, dominated the land and subjugated the natives, imposing their will at large on them. They eroded the natives’ cultures and languages, plundered the natives’ wealth and established their orders based on settlers’ supremacy.

Dr Manisha Patil