Neo-Colonialism

Created @January 15, 2025 2:21 PM

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Select Bosudha

Root word throws light on the practice of transporting farmers from one place
to another for farming
The word colonisation comes from colonia. It brought confrontation between
the two people the original settlers
Imperialism is determined by military domination and sovereignty over
territories,
The commonality is that both of them are power oriented
16-20th century, The time around which imperialism and colonisation where
used interchangeably
Colonialism is defined as a broad concept that refers to the project of European
political domination from 16-20th century, that ended with the national
liberation movements of the 1960s.
Neo-colonialism is reviving the colonial state after the colonizer have left
because they have been imbibed by the people internally.

Jean Paul Satre coined the term Neo-colonialism in 1956, comes from the
Lenninist Marxism. where the new form of dominion of the colonizers are
discussed. Vasili Vajrusuhave defines neo-colonialism as a new hidden colonial
policy administered by the imperialist countries over the other countries for
monetory, political and military gain.
This is mainly done by strengthening and reinforcing capitalistic ideologies. For
those who think the years of colonial rule is over, neo-colonialism is a new kind
of colonialism which reinforces the survival of the colonial system which
dominates/controls the one colonised countries in an indirect way using new
forms of political, economic, social military and technological systems. For
example the sole interset of USA in the 2003 invasion into Iraq was monetary-
oil. The politics of oil was not merely to extract oil but to control the resource
dependent countries like China and Russia which might emerge as

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 superpowers. Under the influence of American official the newly formed
government of Iraq has changed their policies on oil which is ironically
beneficial to America

Decolonisation: The process by which countries legally independent of the

colonizers come to be known as sovereign nations, that is their governance and
administration is handled by themselves.
This definition is mising the cultural, social and economic implication
The traditional definition of Decolonisation is that it is a process in which
countries legally independent of the colonizers and come to be known as
sovereign nations, this would mean the position of a constitution, a flag and an
equal status amond other countries in the United Nations Organisation. It is
labelled traditional because the definition is narrow and focuses only on the
system of political change. It does not include the economic, social, cultural
and literary implications of these changes. Decolonisation cold also mean a
concious denial of ll imperial consequences be it political, economic, social,
cultural or linguistic. This definition is more acceptable because it includes the
coloniser and the colonised in some respect to explain the idea, there are
economic, political, social and attitudinal transformations that took place with
both the colonizers and the colonised. The definition provides a broad
methodology to analyse both the perspectives in a space. However the
definition gives the wrong impression that history can be reversed or that
colonial history be completely erased. So, decolonisation is not the removal of
all the colonial remnants in the culture of the colonised instead it is the
concious understanding and awareness of the evolution of cultures.

Edward Sait: Essay called Orientalism

The word post colonialism could be divided into post snd colonialism with post
meaning later in terms of chronology or delay in terms of deference. The word
colonialism must be understood in connection to the word imperialism. The
term colonisation is derived from the latin term colonia meaning ‘settled land,
farm, landed state’.
The root word throws light on the practice of transporting farmers from one
place to another for farming. The root brings to the fore conflict between two
territories those between the original land owners and the settlers. The
migration could also pass off the settled land as the native for the settlers,

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 ironically keeping ties with the original land. The word imperialism derives from
the latin word ‘Imperium’ meaning ‘To command’. Imperialism is understood as
a system of military domination and sovereignty over territories. Both the terms
colonialism and imperialism are political and power oriented but imperialism
exercises absolute subjugation of one country over the other however both are
often used synonymously.

Post Colonialism: A word that is demarcating after colonisation adn before

colonisation but since we are already familiar with the terms colonialism and
Decolonisation so it is not so simple.

Post colonialism can be summarised broadly as the study of the effects of

colonialism on cultures and societies. It is concerned with both how European
nations conquered and controlled ‘third world' cultures and how these groups
have since responded to and resisted those encroachments. Post colonialism
as both a body of theory and a study of political and cultural change has
undergone and continues to undergo three broad stages:

1. An initial awareness of the social, psychological and cultural inferiority

inforced by being in a colonised state

2. Te struggle for ethnic, cultural and political economy

3. A growing awareness of cultural overlap and hybridity (Post-colonialism)

Literally, post colonial used to demarcate the period during and after
decolonisation, however a strict historical demarcation is not possible when
locating post colonialism. Post colonialism can be as a continuity of
colonialism. In literature, ‘third world' literature is identified as post colonial.
THis is because many third world contries have been former colonies of the
European powers.
When these former colonies have attained nation status they are refered to as
post colonial even though they have remnants of the coloniser. The entire field
of studying the literature and culture of formerly colonised nations is
categorised as post colonial studies.
Raja Ram Mohan

The one thing that the Britishers did not touch wasth Indian Classical Music.

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 There were two Homi Bhabha's. Homi k Bhabha and Homi J Bhabha, Homi K
Bhabha is

AmbivalenIIn

In defining Post colonialism, Gyatri Chakravarti Spiwak “Focuses our attention

on the continuous consequences and power of colonial discourses, practices
and mindsets on the present”; Spivak argues that the kives of women in the
‘third’ world countries cannot simply be expressed or represented using
vocabularies of the western critical theories or even the language of the male.
To Spivak this is an ethical and a political issue of the oppressed groups. She
believes that in such a case women or any other minority groups for that matter
will be silenced and the western critical theory is simply incapable of
representing this phenomenon. Spivak upholds Said's idea of marginality and
discuss's inability of women to express for themselves, as she is the subaltern.
In her seminal essay titled, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak' she mentions that the
problem that knowledge is nothing but a commodity that is created and
constantly modified by the west and transferred to the rest of the world for
financial benefits.

These kinds of communities/ people exist within the post colonial society, In
fact Spivak proposes that research is always colonial because it ‘otherises’,
Objectifies the subject. Spivak brings up the example of the practice of Sati and
argues in this case that women were merely the subject of men. It is primarily
this gender parity that restricted them to articulate to the british or to their own
society, this silences the women quite systematically and effectively , the
marginality created is an effect of the lack of communication. There is a
painting by Johan Zoffani called the ‘The Society Observes’

Anti-Colonial
The struggle between the colonised people and the colonial forces be it
ideology or power structures results in the resistance of the colonised people
against the colonial people. This struggle is apparantly translated to political,
economic and cultural institutions. There seems to be a rejection of anything
colonial and the focus shifts from Global to the Local. This kind of political
engagement is called, anti-colonial nationalism. Anti-colonialism took different

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 forms such as a liberation from racial and class struggles. It also often turned
out to be a demand for political and cultural recognition for differences
between ethnic, indigenous, local identities. Colonial ideology brought about a
perspectival change in understanding cultures. Binarism was the new order,
binarism is a binary or duality seen in entities for example there is a binary
between colonizer and colonised; white and black; civilised and primitive;
advance and retarded; good and evil, beautiful and ugly; civilised and
uncivilised; ability and inability and so on. The binary became a taboo, texts
and cultural institutions began to be read from the binary perspective. There
was even an attempt to fix the binary ideology as the reason for all struggles be
it racial or gender.

Hybridity, Ambivalence, mimicry

Beginning Post Colonialism

Michael Foucolt's Order of thing

Jean Paul Satre's

Cosmopolitanism usually refers to a citizen of the Cosmos. The term was first
used by the Greek philosophers and later the 18th century philosopher's
reintroduced it with modern affiliations. Immanuel Kant defines it as

*“Writes as citizens of the earth rather than as citizens of

particular states” ~ Immanuel Kant

According to Ulrich Beck, cosmopolitanism refers to “an emerging ethical

response” to Globalisation. When cosmopolitanists favoured cultural pluralism,
they ignored the discourses around rootedness or vernacular. Thus inherently
binarism comes into play in cosmopolitanism — The struggle between
subjugated and the subjugator the subject and the other; the global citizens
and the local citizens

Reading of a Post Colonial text

Population of Nigeria

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 The christian Population in Nigeria

The change in ideology of women's write

Manner of Colonisation

Who was the colonising Power Kno

READ

Knowing the orientali

Imaginative geography
Orientalism now: Style expertism

Latest phase

Promod K NAyar

The Hungry Tide

Displacement is a major post-colonial motif throughout the novel.

Environmentalism and Destabellisation

The geographical location of the Sundarbans serves as a significant metaphor
in the novel. THe physical environment is a representation of an active force
that connects the plant, animals and human life together and one is affected by
the other directly or indirectly. The topographic features habitats of the people,
professions of this tired country are responsible for the formation of their
communities. In the novel, we see a coexistence among various kinds of
people- rich and poor, educated and ignorant, the local and the outsiders- all
these kinds of people face the same consequence while encountering with the
environment which comprises of dense forests, rivers, snakes, crocodiles,
fishes, tigers and also the natural disasters like the cyclones and terrible
storms. The environment is not only important to form the narrative structure

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 but also it highlights the mystery and fate of an indiviudal’s existence even inthe
midst of a dangerous but at the same time the beauty of nature- the mohona.
The people living in close proximity with nature have their own myths and
legends about mother nature. In this novel we have the ’bonbibi’ myth that is
necessary in the formation of an identity for the people fo the tide country who
believe so much in the myths, customs, and rituals of the Sunderban jungles
and its influence upon their life. The concept of ‘Jangal’ is a distinct paradigm
which shows the difference between the civilised and the uncivilized people.
Zimmeraman provides an interesting idea about this concept of Jangal

The Jangal, like the human body provides a favoured

concept for the conceptualisation of the relation between the
outside and the inside, between wildness and culture, and at
an even deeper level, for dielectric between the pure and
impure. ~Zimmeraman

3/3/25
In ‘The Hungry Tide’, Ghosh has depicted nature’s resistance towards its
regementation and strict categorisation. We clearly see that nature has its own
workings that are beyond human control, in the Sundarbans the boundaries
collapse and the rivers merge with each other. The islands are the trairing
threads of India’s fabrics. The ragged fringe of a Sari and the anchal that
follows her half wetted by the sea. They number in the thousands these islands.
Some are immense and some are no longer than sand bars; some have lasted
through recorded histories while others were rushed into being just a year or
two ago. These islands are the rivers restitution, the offerings through which
they return to the earth what they have taken from it but in such a form as to
assert their permanent dominion over their gifts. The rivers’ channels are
straight across the land, like a fine mest net, creating a terrain where the
boundaries between land and water are always mutating, always unpredictable.
Some of these channels are mighty waterways, so wide across that one shore
is invisible from the other; others are no more than 2 or 3 kilometers long and
only a few hundred meters across yet each of these channels is a ‘river’ in its
own right, each possessed of its own strangely evocative name.
Amitav Ghosh’s novels explore the theme of destabelissation mainly caused
through Globalisation. It is based on a true historical incident, the event of
Morijhappi and also concerns the issues of the environment, its protection and

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 conservation of the Sunderbans. Ghosh shows the conflict between the
refugees and the government authorities and also focuses on the suffering of
the settlers in a hostile environment where they have no other place to go.
Kusum one of the revolutionaries of the Morijhappi fights for the cause of the
settlers and regards it to be a severe injustice of a victimless people who are
otherwise homeless. She recalls the entire event of the coming of the settlers to
the island of Morijhappi, “Once we lived in Bangladesh in Khulnajila: we were
tide country people from the Sunderbans’ ….. but the police fell on us the
moment we moves: they swarmed on the trains, we put blocks on the road but
we still would not go back; we began to walk”.

The novel brings to light the politics behind the enforcement of forest act and
conservation rules and also highlights the indifferent attitude of the politicians
across the border that treat these poor refugees with violence. One of the
settlers named Kusum wonders about the importance given to the preservation
of wildlife more than that of human beings and things.

Who are these people I wonder, who love animals so much

that they are willing to kill us for them?…. Was that we were
just human beings trying to live as human beings always
have, from the water and the soil.

Kanai also holds the same opinion and is sympathetic towards these poor
people, and he tells Piyali,

Because it was people like you who made a push to protect

the wildlife here, without regard of the human cost….
Basically in order to curry favour with their western patrons.
It is not hard to ignore the people who are dying— afterall
they are the poorest of the poor.”

In the Hungry Tide, Amitav Ghosh describes the impact of Globalisation, upon
the people of the islands of Sunderbans who are considered to be isolated and
removed from mordern day technologies and advancements. Through the
characters of Nilima and Nirmal, Ghosh exemplifies how far modern technology

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 and thoughts have reached these people of the Tide Country. Nilima works for
the Bandaban Trust and it is told, “The hospitals equipments had come from the
donors…. some from India and some from foreign. There was a diagnostic
laboratory and x-ray room and even a dialysis machine”. The people of the
small island of Lusibari had utilised the resources necessary for building a
hospital which would ensure a safe and healthy living of its people. The hospital
has many mordern tools and equipments which is made possible through the
process of globalisation. Moyna trains herself as a nurse and learns the skill of
saving and helping the needy people and this shows how the effect of
globalisation has seeped into the rural and ignorant people. The training given
to the nurses in the novel also shows how modern technologies and
developments are not only circulated through globalisation but they are also
adapted to fulfill the requirements of various people of a locality. Through the
novel Ghosh hints at the fact that the Globalisation has a far reaching impact
upon the people who are considered backwards and uncivilised. Through
globalisation even these section of people have benefitted a lot and the
transfer of knowledge and effect of communication will pave the way for
further education and advancement in technologies and ideas. However, Ghosh
shows negative aspects of globalisation as well, this is seen in the inhuman and
indifferent attitude sown by the urban people towards th settlers of Morijhappi.
Nirmal’s journal documents, the situation of discrimination and oppression done
to the refugees there. He refers to a conversation between Nilima and a doctor
who is from Calcutta. The doctor says about the situation of Morijhappi, “O,
these refugees! Such a nuisance”

Although the doctor is well informed about the actual incident and torture that
the refugees faced, he still remains detached from the entire incident and does
not sympathise. WE see how the social categories and hierarchy alienate the
poor and the underprivileged. Moreover some of the environmentalists and the
people who are engaged in the tourist industry promote the preservation of
wildlife, especially the tigers without visiting the Sunderbans and even knowing
the suffering of the people who live in this part of the country.
Terri Tompsky in Amitav Ghosh’s ‘Anxious witnessing and the ethics of action in
the hungry tide’ says, “Bengal’s Sunderbans epitomize alternity, it is the region
that until hte advent of its environmental significance, was seen as
inconsequential in the political and economic calculus of the nation state.”
The lives of animals are supposed to have more significance tham that of the
people living in the Sunderbans as the wildlife yields more revenue form the

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 visiting tourists, not only the elite section of people feel a sense fo detachment
towards the subalterned settlers of this region. The sense of detachment arises
from the feeling fo superiority of class and ethnocentricism. In this context
Tomsky observes, “In order to be an ethically engaged cosmopolitan one must
be sensitive to particularities and local conditions. They must learn to identify
with the ‘other’.”
In the novel, Kanai who lives in New Delhi cannot relate to the people of the
islands of Sunderbans when he comes to Lusibari. An entirely different region
that this Tide country was, Kanai was unable to treat the people there with
equality as we see with the case of Fukir who was considered inferior to him
due to their class differences. Through this novel Ghosh tries to bring to light
the idea that the lives of the subalterned can be improvised through the
process of globalisation, only if the cosmopolitans move beyond the
established social norms and class discrimination.

Narrative structure of the novel

The Hungry Tie is one of the most popular novels written in Indian english
literature. Amitav Ghosh raises an important issue that of relation between
humans and the wildlife and how one is affected by the other. For this the
setting he chooses is uite significant in itself. The place is believed to have
derived its name because of the mangroves which is locally known as
Sundari tree. However in the novel the Sunderbans is refered to as the beautiful
forest. It si a place rich in flora and fauna and is characterised by the
confluence of river channels consisting of both fresh and salt water, the
environment acts as a dominant force in the novel which determines the fate of
almost all the people in the island. Ghosh is gifted with an excellent sense fo
place as is seen in his other novels as well. Not only is the setting an important
factor inthe novel but he sets the novel against a historical backdrop. The novel
recounts the eviction of the refugees of Morijhappi incident in 1979 by the left
front government of west bengal. Ghosh’s narrative is a combination of fact and
fiction that depicts the lives of the people of the island of Sunderban, their
customs and belief but also revisits the past nad documents the Morijhappi
incident in 1979 that is true event in history. The novel comprises of many other
histories apart from Morijhappi incident. We have the story of the life cycle of
the Iravati dolphin. How it was identified and the history of the aquatic life of

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 which it is a part. Their is also reference to the story behind the foundation of
the town of Canning, the shipping inspector named Henry Paddington who
named cyclones which devastated the regions,

Nilima, Kanai
The island of Sunderbans, are constantly affected by the flood tide or the huge
tidal waves formed by cyclones but Ghosh makes us realise that is us the layers
of Human history together with the collaboration fo past knowledge, experience
and memory that enhances our understanding of a particular place or region.
There is a constant shuffling of past and present events; the past incidents are
mostly related to Morijhappi which we come to know from Nirmal’s journal and
the present story comprises of Piyali’s research in the islands and lives of other
characters in the novel namely, Nilima, Fukir, Moina, Tultul among the other.

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