When a Colonizer’s Specter Refuses to leave a Modern Society

If the impact of English colonization for India, was ruinous, its aftermath, was probably as malicious (if not more ). ; In “An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India” Shashi Tharoor journeys through some of the most tumultuous phases of Indian history, particularly in the wake of the freedom struggle, casting together the colonial origins of modern day India’s problems.

For most Indians growing up years after independence, any entertainment of the probability of an alternate India, bereft of the problems that it currently faces and fundamentally different from the one they have always known and lived, would seem either ludicrous or unfathomable. A postcolonial country, is home to citizens who have so fully internalized the memory and reality of the times that they live in that the faintest glimmer of possibility, that times could have been different would be inconceivable. As things go the legacy of history, while being a juncture for learning, can also the biggest obstacle to overcoming it. Particularly, when privileged, growing up in a postcolonial country is at once both disconnecting and instructive. One’s insight of society’s problems, are colored by a colonial lens and the articulation of ideas, thoughts and ideologies dictated by that very same colonial context.

This being precisely the pick-up point for the analysis of modern-day India’s debilitating issues of social breakdown & collapsing rule of law. This issue is not limited to the country’s present predicament, but reflective of a more historic disintegration, the yoke of which India’s struggles to shake off.

One of the most pernicious ways, ways colonial and post-colonial societies collapse, is through an imposed interpretation and reorganization of the colonized country’s social and political fabric to suit strategic, cultural, economic and moral ends of the colonizer. Economic destruction, (while substantial) pales before the rupture of the India’s fabric under colonial rule. A particularly anguishing example, is that of the unity between Hindus & Muslims prior to British rule ( key difference over here being “unity” & not “harmony”). Both religions had been such an integral part of the Indian fabric, that they had soon become indistinguishable; societies which are in such close proximity to each other tend to almost coalesce. Not to mention, both had fought against a foreign enemy keen on subduing them. An artificial distinction between the two communities (enforced by an education system, divisive alliances and political incitement) drawn by a triumphant colonizer became the source of fractiousness, that continues to plague the subcontinent. What the book suggests, almost flies in the face of modern India’s liberal use of the word “secularism”, as though it connotes, a situation where communities agree to “live with their differences”, as opposed to a historic reality, where they had almost merged unto each other. Another dark yet comical instance is that of the British “Census”, trying to enumerate and categorize a diverse country to satisfy strategic as well as intellectual purposes. What makes this quite peculiar is the fact that many colonial officials were unfamiliar with the complex, overlapping relationships between different Indian communities (who remained united under one empire, despite being so), and tried to impose their own interpretation of what these communities were and categorized them accordingly. A very telling fact made, throughout is how British colonial institutions were defective by design; the colonial bureaucracy in India operated through a system of foreign “Imperial Bureaucrats” and ubiquitous paperwork whose main role was to administer colonial subjects and raise taxes; naturally they did not have an attachment towards the people. It would seem almost vexing, how such a system continues to exist in the country many years after independence administering a people no longer subservient to its colonizers.

But perhaps, what is perhaps most resonant are some of the uncomfortable questions the book raises on the supremacy of the narrative that rules our world. It is this narrative, that the “Era of Darkness” inverts with acute perspicacity and empathy; the supposed inevitability of tumultuous outcomes, faced by many countries that have been freed from colonialism. India in a way epitomizes, the very example of such a country, where a former economic giant till the 18th century, was reduced to shambles by a colonial power. Tharoor, vividly demonstrates, how any attempt for the country to rebound (which were many), were in fact arrested by the colonial government’s fomenting of communal instabilities, draconian political laws, dysfunctional institutions and military brutality. Much work has demonstrated, the steady downfall of the country under colonial rule, and the struggle to build a nation from scratch in the aftermath of independence. “Era of Darkness” flair lies in making such atrocities visible to a larger audience. The danger of such narratives lie in the fact, that to a large extent it obfuscates a part of history elevating some and putting down others. This is then reflected in the attitudes of leaders whose treatment of more downtrodden nations borders on a combination of either contemptuous pride or paternalistic fervor. The particularly tragic example of the Haiti comes to mind (poorest country in the western hemisphere and former French colony). To imagine that a country in the west is poorer than some countries in West Africa would seem almost inconceivable. Yet, this is in turn the cumulative result of historic policies that deprived the nation of its agency, and set it on a course, it could not extricate itself from including debt obligations imposed by its former colonizer and environmental degradation of the region by France. In a way “An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India” is a telling statement on the journeys of postcolonial societies throughout the globe, who through the condemnation of historic forces stymying their rise, have not gotten a chance to tell their side of the story.