Most Indians would be wary of a white person who justifies European colonialisation because “it was mostly beneficial”. He — it is more often a man than a woman — is repeating an old colonial rhetoric. Rudyard Kipling, who was a complex (if colonial) fiction writer but mostly a jingoistic poet, put this rhetoric in a nutshell in his poem, “The White Man’s Burden”. The first few lines are enough to illustrate the idea in all its banal complexity:
“ Take up the White Man’s burden —
Send forth the best ye breed —
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild —
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
half-devil and half-child .”
Written in 1899, as a hymn to U.S. (not British) imperialism, this poem condenses into catchy rhymes about 200 years of European colonial thinking — and many more years of European colonial blindness. The “white man’s burden” is the civilising mission — which is used not simply to justify colonisation but also to obscure its character. So much so that when today, Jeremy Corbyn, the new leader of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom, calls for the “real facts” of the British Empire to be taught in British schools, he is met with muted criticism. Because the real facts of British colonisation, unlike what Kipling says in his poem were these: The brown (and even more so the black) man carried the burdens of Empire, not the white man; the white man went to the empire to empower or enrich himself, in most cases, and it was by no means an exile (except for prisoners sent to Australia); and the “captives” needs were not by any means a priority of this enterprise. It was a dangerous ideology: it made colonising Europeans blind to the brutality of their empires, because they could always hide behind the ideal of the “civilising mission”. Actually the ideal, no doubt sincerely held in many individual cases, multiplied the scope for exploitation, brutality, genocide, as the last few words from the lines cited earlier inadvertently indicate. If the colonised are seen as “half-devil and half-child”, you are also permitted — no, actually, “forced” against your own basic good nature — to ignore their opinions, and also to act strongly against them if they protest too much. Being “children”, they have to simply shut up and learn from you, and when they refuse to do so, why, then they reveal their other half, the “devil” in them, and what can one do but act brutally against this devil, maybe even exterminate it?
Hence, the great tragedies, famines and genocides of European colonisation. As an Indian — though Indians came off lightly compared to, say, Africans (who were actually enslaved) — we can see this today. Therefore, it takes us very little to be wary of a white man who tells us, well, yes, some bad things happened, but basically European colonisation was a beneficial, civilizational matter. We can answer him with a long list of massacres, famines and brutalities, and also note that it was largely uncolonised Asian countries like Japan and Turkey that modernised themselves first and most easily.
It took me a bit longer, being born in a secular Muslim family, to become wary of well-meaning Muslims who claim that Islam is just a “religion of peace”. But I had begun to mistrust them a long time before the Islamic State and such organisations started chopping off heads in the name of Islam. Looking at history, I had realised that while Islam can be interpreted as a religion of peace, it can also be interpreted as a religion of violence. History is full of episodes of Islam spreading peacefully, but it also contains acts of war performed in the name of Islam. Hence, today, I am not willing to be fobbed off with the claim that, oh, well, Islam is just a religion of peace. I fear that such a claim, as was the case with Europeans, blinds us to interpretations of violence that are also a part of Islamic history.
But it has taken me longest to become wary of a myth that structures most of India today: that Hinduism is basically peaceful, tolerant and secular. No, once again, there is evidence that Hinduism can be peaceful and tolerant, but there is also evidence that Hinduism can be as intolerant and violent as any other religion. Historically, sects of Hinduism have done violence to each other, as well as to people of other faiths. The sacred texts and stories of Hinduism are full of stories of violence and intolerance, just as much as the Bible or the Koran. Finally, Brahminical Hinduism has been distinguished by institutionalised violence and intolerance against the low castes and the outcastes of “Hinduism”.
When we glibly talk of how Hinduism is basically peaceful, secular and tolerant, we turn a blind eye to the darker aspects of Hinduism — in a manner similar to how Muslims blind themselves by talking of an Islam that is just “a religion of peace” or Europeans blind themselves when talking of colonisation as “basically beneficial”. And when that happens, we sanction intolerance, brutality and violence: so that a missionary family can be burnt alive, or a man killed on the rumour of eating beef.
