In his essay titled “Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality”, Anibal Quijano, a renowned Peruvian sociologist, examined the continuing impact of Western/European conquest on the societies and cultures of what is known as Latin America today. In particular, the subject of his attention was the “relationship of direct, political, social and cultural domination” that was established between the Western/European conquerors/colonizers (Quijano used Western and European interchangeably) and the colonized societies of Latin America, which he termed as Eurocentered colonialism. He observed that the colonial power structure in Latin America had created specific forms of discrimination to classify the societies on racial, ethnic and national lines, which remained in such societies even after political decolonization. This situation was exacerbated by the assumption that such discrimination was “objective” or “scientific”. Therefore, what was clearly the product of the colonial power structure was assumed to be based on natural phenomena and criteria, thereby lending it the façade of an unquestionable fact of nature. This brings out another layer, namely the use of sciencism by the colonizer to perpetuate, normalize and legitimize stereotypes about the colonized.
Critically, according to Quijano, while political colonialism had long been done away with, it had been replaced with Western/European imperialism, whose relationship with other cultures was the same as that of the erstwhile colonizers, namely “colonization of the imagination of the dominated”. To use a pop culture reference, a form of inception was performed on the minds of the hitherto colonized so that colonialism and colonization were no more external to their consciousness, but had become a part of it.
Quijano acknowledged that while colonialism primarily saw the colonized society as an economic resource to feed on, it also indulged in systematic repression of ideas, beliefs, images, faith and knowledge, including systems of production of knowledge, which deprived the colonized society of its ability to respond culturally even if it did not have the wherewithal to talk back politically. He diagnosed acutely that the genius of the European colonizer lay not in his brutal economic and political repression of the native, but in successfully converting his way of life as the aspirational ideal. This led to a deep embedding in the consciousness of the colonized society that it had been defeated because of its cultural moorings, and the only way for it to regain its dignity was by adopting European culture and thought processes in order to achieve economic prosperity the European way i.e. by conquering and subduing nature. Apart from the larger disruption of the relationship between indigenous societies and nature, this effectively led to universalisation of European culture, the benchmark against which all other cultures had to test themselves and pass muster, thereby giving birth to “cultural coloniality”.
As part of the process of cultural colonization, the dominant groups or the elites from the colonized society were subtly co-opted into the colonial power structure by teaching them the ways of European culture and gradually weaning them away from the rest of the colonized society. Assuming there was a fault line in the colonized society prior to the arrival of the European colonizer, which is bound to exist in every society, the active co-option of the elites and their participation in the dominating power structure only served to deepen the fault line, and if did not exist hitherto, it was consciously created, and remained even after the exit of the colonizer.
Quijano noted that the centralization/universalisation of European culture in the colonized societies of Latin America was accelerated and cemented by the fact that the European colonizer actively wielded both the stick and the carrot i.e. a once thriving and vibrant society with its own centres of production of culture and knowledge, was physically and culturally exterminated and reduced to a colonized human mass of illiterate peasants on the one hand, and on the other hand the yawning void so created was being filled by offering European culture as a way to climb the social ladder. In other words, the demand for European culture was created and met by the European colonizer, not just for the present but for all time to come. Given the utter destruction and cultural domination the colonized society had been subjected to, it was human on the part of the dominated to latch onto the closest living culture available to them, namely that of the colonizer and wear it as a badge of honour with the zeal of a new convert. In other words, adoption of the colonizer’s culture was not a matter of choice but was a sheer human reaction and necessity thanks to the conditions created by the colonizer. It was only a matter of time before the new convert to European culture not only disowned his erstwhile identity but also spewed venom against it because he associated his past and heritage with weakness, superstition and defeatism, which completed the process of severing his ties to his roots.
The one sensitive layer of this discussion which sometimes gets lost in the catch-all use of culture in the literature relating to coloniality is the impact of European colonization on native ontological and theological systems, simply put, spirituality and faith. After all, in most societies, there is a strong nexus between faith, culture and civilization, which is perhaps an understatement. Therefore, there is no reason to assume that native faith systems somehow remained untouched by the all-consuming deluge of colonization which affected every aspect of the colonized society, or that the European colonizer was conscientious enough to keep indigenous faith systems outside the reach and scheme of his grand colonizing mission. Such an assumption or the reluctance to speak about it only betrays the deep-seated nature of coloniality which posits that it is not polite or civilised to speak of the replacement of native faith systems by the colonizer’s religion. In fact, at the very least the relationship between the European colonizer’s religion and the evangelical nature of his colonization warrant examination
In the next piece, this author will continue building on these thoughts.
J. Sai Deepak is an Advocate practising as an arguing counsel before the Supreme Court and the High Court of Delhi.