Colonization is the process of establishing control over another people’s area and making them their colony by fully occupying them and their territory for the interests and benefits of colonizers – those who impose the rule. On such an occupied land, the outsiders have mainly economic purposes in particular, for which they distort a people’s politics and culture as well. Though the world claims to have eliminated the era of colonization, but still in the present, most of the states are facing rebellions, claiming separate national identity – or simply put, colonization is on full swing in the contemporary world – while the act of further colonizing nations and lands is still underway in various means.
Power, one of the different tools of maintaining the rule, is the main source of a colonizer to oppress the colonized, including other subordinating factors. To understand the colonization broadly, we need to dig deep into it.
The colonization is comprised of several types, the first one of which is the “Settler Colonialism”. As a type of colonization, it refers to a form which includes the replacement of the indigenous people with outsiders, normally identified as settlers. Over time, they develop a distinct identity and, eventually, sovereignty. To impose what is mentioned above, the settlers occupy the corridor of power and perpetuate the genocide and repression on the inhabitants and their cultures. The foreign invaders exploit the land and resources of such an occupied terrain with which the locals have a genealogical relationship. We can take the example of America that how the European colonizers entered and controlled its population decades ago. Today, the actual Americans, known as Red Indians, are lost in the dust of colonization.
The other form is “Exploitation Colonialism”. As we mentioned earlier, exploitation colonialism refers to the control of a territory merely for exploitative purposes. The exploitations include the use of labor force for cheaper price or for free, of the natural resources including sea, and the raw materials. The colonizers have only one thing in mind: increasing their wealth (economy) by looting whatever is possible of the colonized terrain and its population. We can derive examples of the African countries whose labors are bargained in the Mandi.
“Plantation Colonialism” is another type which refers to the permanent or semi-permanent settlement in a new region for their interests. Under the settlement, they inject various cultural bombs in a region to occupy it in a way that it remains tacit to the exploitations. For instance, they plant their language and culture in such a territory to replace theirs with those of the colonized. Everything, thereafter, changes as per the psyche of the colonizers, when they gradually succeed in diminishing the indigenous language(s) and culture.
“Internal Colonialism” is the last we will discuss in this article, which means the use of ‘development bomb’ to sustain a colonial rule in a region. Also termed as ‘uneven development’, it is the exploitation of the minority groups within a wider society which leads to political and economic inequalities between the regions and the colonizing state.
All the types of the colonialism, also referred to as the phases of colonialism, need additional tactics to further strengthen the process and cease the indigenous resistance, because they, the outsiders, have it in their mind that during such a phase, they may face resistance from the locals. Despite all their efforts, they cannot refrain the response of the colonized – the anti-colonial war.
It should be noted that each time the outsiders come, or completely plans, to occupy a region, they come with military power. After that, they begin to negate the local codes and values, language and literature, culture and traditions, and all the social values of the colonized. In the initial phase, they succeed in injecting their ideas in plenty of the natives through other correlating means as perks and privileges. With the help of these, the invaders demolish all the belongings of the colonized and distort their history so that they remain deprived of their identity as free people and their actual strength.
Within themselves, the colonizers always feel the burdens of being unveiled, and eventually, leading to the emergence of the resistance. In the middle, they try to devalue the indigenous culture, and make them a source of shame so that they themselves quit on them. The second thing they would do is to transform the local culture and language into theirs, known as the process of transformation.
Education, within such a realm, plays a key role in changing the mentality of the colonized, just as Frantz Fanon was of the view that how the French education system changed his views on Algerian at the beginning. The colonial education system will narrate stories of the heroes of the colonizers, and not the colonized. Same is the case with history and the concept of good and bad. We need to know that “good” and “bad” differ from one territory to the other and one people to the next. In fact, the medium of such an educational pedagogy would always be in the language of the colonizers. We will not be wrong to assert that after military, education is the biggest tool to maintain the colonialism. It destroys a nation by manipulating its national culture, literature, traditions, language and so forth. Therefore, during any colonization, an alternative education system plays a vital role in de-coding what is wrong in the colonial education system, which is practiced in Balochistan through political classes and study circles (as an alternate educational pattern).
However, as colonialism begins, someday, the indigenous people resist them. Similarly, the process of decolonization begins with the first step of “Rediscovery and Recovery”. In this phase, the colonized is to go through the history – their actual history, and not that introduced by the oppressors. Let’s take, for example, the case study of the Baloch. The Baloch history was firstly written by the foreigners as British who termed the Baloch as Arabs, or Aryans, and people belonging to the other parts of the world, not the Baloch. Unless a colonized nation is aware of its original history, it cannot decolonize the other spheres.
After recovering the history, the second phase is of “Mourning”, which is a shocking phase. When the colonized feel that the rich civilization and culture they had does not exist anymore, and their culture and social codes have vanished, they begin to mourn. But the mourning phase is very short, because as soon as the colonized realize their civilization or culture are in peril, or are to, or have, vanished, they enter the next phase – the third one.
The third phase in the process is the phase of “Dreaming”. When the oppressed people realize that the outsiders have installed false elements to distort their civilization, they begin to dream – they dream as to how such colonial presence is eradicated from their society so as to reestablish their ancient cultural values and codes. It is where the colonized get the motivation and hope for reemergence, leading them to enter the fourth phase.
The fourth step is the “Commitment” phase. Under this, they completely plan and vow to take out the foreigners from their land so as to make it free again. In this phase, they get two options: either to remain constant in the mourning phase or move forward to liberation. Usually, we get people from both groups at such a phase: a group chooses the commitment to stay silent and bear whatsoever is in their ‘fate’ under colonialism, while the other group chooses resistance until the end of the colonization.
And then we enter the last phase of decolonization – the “Action” phase. In this phase, the colonized decide the acts which lead them to complete emancipation. As Fanon said, “The most effective and valid phase of decolonization is Action. In the duration of action, you have to be clear of what kind of action you are taking. In this duration of your action, don’t give euphoric dreams to your people that the colonizer has been taken out and work is finished but you have to educate your people that by taking out the colonizer, the system won’t be better, but also take out all the deep-rooted impacts of the colonizer.”
In the course of action, there are preliminary things the colonized look for. For instance, read in your language, write and express in your language, think in your language and practice under your own culture. In the middle, if the colonized finds out any of such practices marked with colonizers, it is where their action begins to decolonize. In the course of action, the colonized forces have to clarify all the mentioned things to their people so that after the colonial forces have left, their effects should not persist.
In the duration, the colonized people should not be given false hope that if the invaders have physically gone, the decolonization phase is over. NO. Decolonization is only complete, as Fanon says, when the last becomes first, which means the previous status should be restored which was prior to the arrival of the colonizers – everything at the same order.
At such a status quo when decolonization is not completed, neo-colonialism begins, which means that though the colonial forces are not directly present, but their effects and mentality have left behind. The social system which the foreigners have left behind continue to exploit the larger group of people in a territory what is said to have gained independence from the direct rule. Chopping down the aftermaths will only ensure that the last has come to its first rank.
During the process of decolonization, the indigenous people must be fully educated so that they know how to differentiate between the merits and the demerits. They should be told about the weaknesses and strengths of the presence and that what role they are to play to overcome the dilemmas. Unless they are educated in a way critical to the contemporary and future concerns, decolonization will merely become a daydream.
The colonizers, when compelled to leave and withdraw, try to leave strong marks on the system so that they continue to rule even after they are gone. The marks are sometimes left because the last phase – the action phase – did not work-out properly during the process. Quoting Fanon again, he believes: “To stop the violence you have to do a greater violence so the violent may quit and be frightened.” He also said that the action phase is the conclusive phase where a colonized is almost decolonized.
Therefore, in the last phase, the colonizers give their utmost best to stop it from finishing easily. So, they continue their violence as big as possible to counter the action phase. For instance, they target the civilians. In America, the natives were killed. In Kenya, during the Mao Mao movement, thousands of Kenyan natives were massacred. During the Bengali insurgency, thousands of Bengalis, including students, women, children and elders, were severely killed. But what is final is that decolonization is the fate and outcome of any resistance movement that shapes.
Lastly, colonization is the process of attacking a people’s sovereignty and free-will to live accordingly, while the colonial ambitions are mainly economic, for which they use armed, cultural, political, social and psychological violence. Resistance, on the other hand, is the counterforce, which is the must-come fate for the colonized.