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That's one of the rules of modern society: people will find any way to blame anything on colonialism. Scapegoats are nice because you don't have to fix anythin

That's one of the rules of modern society: people will find any way to blame anything on colonialism. Scapegoats are nice because you don't have to fix anything yourself.

rayiner 4y ago
As someone from that part of the world, this is one of those reasons I think western liberals are actually a threat to the prosperity of south Asia. It’s a double whammy because anti-colonialism also keeps us from adopting efficacious social patterns from western countries. (Not invented here syndrome.) Let white people in Britain fight over how many trillions colonialism expropriated from India. It’s irrelevant to desis. Britain is a shadow of its former self. They don’t have the resources to do anything about what happened.
- wizofaus 4y ago
  Perhaps it's human nature though for at least part of your cultural identity to be defined by the degree to which you differentiate yourself from other cultures. I'd think that must at least explain a lot of anti-Western sentiment in the world even in places that would seem obviously able to benefit from adopting at least some of the institutions and basic principles that have proven themselves successful in the Western world. The fact that so few places have successfully done so (Japan and S. Korea being two obvious examples) is telling.
- erenyeager 4y ago
  Anti-colonialism is still relevant in that the pre-existing indigenous institutions and communities of colonized countries were interrupted and many times shattered. Educated strata dropping into illiterates in a generation or two, ethnicity being set against each other in the new social order, the exploitation of the Subcontinent, all of these contributed to the enslavement of the people and the colonized mind. The modern day problems are inherited from the colonial history of the region, and moving forward requires reckoning with this.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    Even if true, how is any of that actionable by people on the subcontinent? How does “reckoning” help them help themselves? On the subcontinent, you’d have to go back a millennium, before the British, before the Mughals, and before the Sultanates, to get to institutions that are “indigenous.” Even if you could do that, those institutions would be wholly unfit to modern society.
    - erenyeager 4y ago
      By indigenous I am referring to before the british colonial era. Reckoning deals with mindset and history, it is an understanding of how to come to terms with all that has passed and what is happening now. You do not need to revive old institutions, but neither does a people need to be effacing their own culture, self-awareness, and history (which has already occurred) and feel inferior. The way land ownership was stratified, martial races, playing off of groups of ethnicities and religions, how one humbly starts writing a letter, the present arrangement of nations in the Subcontinent, feudal land ownership, government structures into parliaments, these are all examples of colonial legacy that affect the present day. The challenge is for people and societies to find a way through all these; integrating some, discarding some, fusing some, ignoring some, embracing some, etc. In some ways, there have been successes, in other ways, the legacy of being submissive to Western foreign powers remains. It is for charting a path as a traumatized people.
      - rayiner 4y ago
        > By indigenous I am referring to before the british colonial era. That usage is incorrect as applied to the subcontinent. Before the British was the Mughals, who were foreign colonizers as well. Before that it's Muslim invaders going back to 1200. > The way land ownership was stratified, martial races, playing off of groups of ethnicities and religions, how one humbly starts writing a letter, the present arrangement of nations in the Subcontinent, feudal land ownership, government structures into parliaments, these are all examples of colonial legacy that affect the present day. That's just a way of saying that everything is a product of history, which is a truism. That's just as true of Europeans as anyone else. But again, if I'm a Bangladeshi, how is that actionable information?

That's one of the rules of modern society: people will find any way to blame anything on colonialism. Scapegoats are nice because you don't have to fix anything yourself.

rayiner 4y ago

As someone from that part of the world, this is one of those reasons I think western liberals are actually a threat to the prosperity of south Asia. It’s a double whammy because anti-colonialism also keeps us from adopting efficacious social patterns from western countries. (Not invented here syndrome.) Let white people in Britain fight over how many trillions colonialism expropriated from India. It’s irrelevant to desis. Britain is a shadow of its former self. They don’t have the resources to do anything about what happened.

wizofaus 4y ago
Perhaps it's human nature though for at least part of your cultural identity to be defined by the degree to which you differentiate yourself from other cultures. I'd think that must at least explain a lot of anti-Western sentiment in the world even in places that would seem obviously able to benefit from adopting at least some of the institutions and basic principles that have proven themselves successful in the Western world. The fact that so few places have successfully done so (Japan and S. Korea being two obvious examples) is telling.
erenyeager 4y ago
Anti-colonialism is still relevant in that the pre-existing indigenous institutions and communities of colonized countries were interrupted and many times shattered. Educated strata dropping into illiterates in a generation or two, ethnicity being set against each other in the new social order, the exploitation of the Subcontinent, all of these contributed to the enslavement of the people and the colonized mind. The modern day problems are inherited from the colonial history of the region, and moving forward requires reckoning with this.
- rayiner 4y ago
  Even if true, how is any of that actionable by people on the subcontinent? How does “reckoning” help them help themselves? On the subcontinent, you’d have to go back a millennium, before the British, before the Mughals, and before the Sultanates, to get to institutions that are “indigenous.” Even if you could do that, those institutions would be wholly unfit to modern society.
  - erenyeager 4y ago
    By indigenous I am referring to before the british colonial era. Reckoning deals with mindset and history, it is an understanding of how to come to terms with all that has passed and what is happening now. You do not need to revive old institutions, but neither does a people need to be effacing their own culture, self-awareness, and history (which has already occurred) and feel inferior. The way land ownership was stratified, martial races, playing off of groups of ethnicities and religions, how one humbly starts writing a letter, the present arrangement of nations in the Subcontinent, feudal land ownership, government structures into parliaments, these are all examples of colonial legacy that affect the present day. The challenge is for people and societies to find a way through all these; integrating some, discarding some, fusing some, ignoring some, embracing some, etc. In some ways, there have been successes, in other ways, the legacy of being submissive to Western foreign powers remains. It is for charting a path as a traumatized people.
    - rayiner 4y ago
      > By indigenous I am referring to before the british colonial era. That usage is incorrect as applied to the subcontinent. Before the British was the Mughals, who were foreign colonizers as well. Before that it's Muslim invaders going back to 1200. > The way land ownership was stratified, martial races, playing off of groups of ethnicities and religions, how one humbly starts writing a letter, the present arrangement of nations in the Subcontinent, feudal land ownership, government structures into parliaments, these are all examples of colonial legacy that affect the present day. That's just a way of saying that everything is a product of history, which is a truism. That's just as true of Europeans as anyone else. But again, if I'm a Bangladeshi, how is that actionable information?