POSTCOLONIAL WRITINGS AND THE REMAINS OF BRITISH COLONIALISM

Abstract

British colonialism remains a significant event till date in the pages of world history, more so in the histories if its ex-colonies. Colonialism was not just military and political. It was first of all cultural. Manipulation of minds and knowledge was a major and primary strategy in the power of the British Empire that managed to rule over, and exploit more than half of the world. The post-independence scenario has given rise to the school of Post colonialism whose agenda is to talk back/write back to the Empire. Post colonialism aims at questioning, subverting and rereading the colonial discourses and forms of knowledge, Western constructs, stereotypes about the East and breaking down of hierarchies. But this attempt at cultural and cerebral independence has proved to be a really challenging and almost impossible task to be achieved. Post colonialism and its ideas have not remained static towards its approach to and production of knowledge. It has evolved and changed. Old ideas have been challenged and replaced by new ones. However, Post colonialism in its pursuit of authentic presentations and representations of the endless micro-narratives of ‘the other’ has at times been caught committing the same appropriations and misinterpretations against which it fights. The effects of colonialism have sipped in so deep into the histories and knowledge of its colonies that a proper decolonisation of the mind has turned hard to achieve. This paper attempts to point out some such lingering effects of colonialism that have remained as gaps in Post colonialism’s efforts at decolonising the mind.