Let’s talk about imperialism, shall we? Not the gory details, not the struggle for emancipation, but the imagery of imperialism, the idea behind it, and the attitudes of the imperialists.
So, who were the imperialists, and what did they do, in order for me to dedicate this article to them? By imperialists here, I refer of course, to the group of people belonging to European nations from around the 15th Century onwards, which engaged in the practice of conquering regions in Africa and exploiting their resources to earn some profit for their respective nations. This came at the cost of many human and animal lives and the absolute destruction of cultures and ecosystems. But they did this, by advertising the natives as regressive, unscientific, beastly, dirty, garish, disgusting, and more.
Simply put, they were different from the imperialists. The darker skin of the natives convinced the imperialists that they(the natives) were ugly disgusting freaks desperately needing the help of their white saviors. They concluded that the natives were tasteless, their culture worth nothing, their traditions meaningless and brutal, their labor meant for them to exploit, their lives, quite essentially, worth lesser than theirs and in need of help. Now, of course, they wouldn’t expound these thoughts so openly. They did these under the garb of appearing as a messiah to these people. They claimed the tribes needed education, declared their ways of life as primitive, and expressed the need to bring these into the fold of the white European world. This of course wasn’t an equal world. The Atlantic Slave Trade, one of the most barbaric business practices to exist, resulting in the deaths of no lesser than 1.8 million (not accounting for deaths which occurred after the “slaves” were traded) was only one of the more explicit depictions of the lack of regard for lives of the natives.
Markus Rediker vividly describes these bloodthirsty pursuits of profit in his 2007 book, The Slave Ship: An American History. The Slave Trade aside, these so-called progressive nations waged a ruthless war on the global south, milking it for resources and denying it to the natives who laid claim to them. These “progressives” who later went on to propound the values of “equality, liberty fraternity” and treatises which preached the importance for all “men” to be equal, continued to treat the natives as animals, perhaps even worse. The same progressives who slam the USSR and China for “creating famines” overlook the Bengal Famines, the Boer Concentration Camps, the Mau Mau Uprising, the unbridled loot of resources across the global south, and the absolute demonization of the natives with the aim of establishing race supremacy over them while monopolizing the profit from their resources. All this, under the garb of “helping”, rationalize and “modernize” them, being a progressive liberal savior to them, a classic Trojan Horse if I may say so.
While i recount the savior attitude of the imperialists I can’t help but see similar traits even today. While the world may have gotten ride of colonial-era- imperialism, there is still a certain class hegemony that prevails amongst us. Be it within castes, ways of life, and in many more ways. A teenage Instagram Influencer, while making a video on rape culture, proudly asks his followers to show the video to drivers and maids as they need it the most. Yet another refuses to treat tribals as anything more than an unfunny punchline and declaring them as “junglee”. They justify this aversion by telling me that tribals are uncivilized, sexist, homophobic, and primitive.
They now include people from other socially and economically backward classes within their narrative, saying that we should educate and civilize these tribals, teach them from our books, make them learn our ways, and urge them to abandon theirs. I simply have to wonder though, how does a rich upper caste teenager know the significance of tribal rituals when he actively shuns them and has never interacted with them. How do they call the cleaner’s son dirty without ever talking to him?
How do they declare SC/ST/OBC students availing of reservation as those without merit when his own surname earned him a boost through societal hierarchy towards the top? How do they declare all of them as homophobic as transphobic when they embrace their sexuality with much more confidence than anyone in his class? What gives them the authority to posture themselves as progressive when they can’t acknowledge the lived experiences of the masses? What tells them that they are better than anyone else simply because they got more opportunities than most people did because of their position on their social ladder? Do they realize the class ignorance and prejudice they exude towards these people simply by treating them as infants in the need of help when they’ve been through untold struggles and had their position on the social ladder shred them of pieces of dignity they were due? Do they realize they’re becoming the messiah no one asked for when they treat a girl who cycled 600 kilometers for basic needs as a hero instead of as a victim of a ruthless system?
Do they realize their hypocrisy when their defense of LGBTQIA+ rights extends to inviting their UC gay classmate to dinner while making the identities of other lesser-known sexual minorities a punchline and ignoring the plight of so many trans folks when they ask for help? Do they not recognize the stark difference in media portrayal of themselves and others which influences their mind space? When almost all affluent upper-caste characters of a certain movie get names suiting their dignity and a Dalit character gets named kachra, do they not spot the brazen imposition of superiority? When they judge trans folks as “people at the signals” do they not realize that not only are they unable to differentiate between sex and gender, but they are also guilty of being unable to understand the circumstances that led to this travesty( in which, mind you, they still thrive, regardless of what the world says)?
Do they not realize that simply appearing progressive is not the same as inculcating progressive practices? Or will they continue living under the myth that their privilege allows them a higher moral ground than others?
When I speak of being progressive, someone tells me that India has decriminalized sec 377 and is on the path to legalized, hence of course we must be progressive. Its’ however noteworthy to me how same-sex marriage isn’t inclusive of trans individuals and if legalized under the Hindu Marriage Act would exclude people of other religions as well. I am often reminded of some words by Kirubba Munuswamy, the first female Dalit Supreme Court advocate, “Imagine the difference between judgments coming from an Upper Caste Male Judge and a Trans Dalit Judge. That is true progressiveness.” That is to say, we can only be truly progressive when we stop looking at ourselves as a savior. Our privilege doesn’t give us that authority. We need to understand that we must actively seek out intersectional personalities and hear their voices instead of speaking over them, or for that matter, speaking for them without any knowledge of their lived experiences.
Our allyship which we boast of, oh so proudly, isn’t helping unless we lend our ears actively to the cause and listen. It’s about time we look around ourselves, look at our social media crowd, and see how diverse it truly is. As yet another voice I look up to said “Isn’t it weird how no one had told the kids what upper-caste pages to follow, they already follow them” with respect to people struggling to find Dalit voices on the internet. The point here is that our privilege affects our crowd and the people around us in ways we don’t often realize.
To conclude, drop the savior approach when we deem ourselves as progressive. Drop the idea that simply because someone hasn’t been afforded the same privilege as you, they are neither inferior nor morally weaker than you. Make sure your allyship actually counts for something, act passively, let others lead where they should.
Comments