WEBVTT 00:00:18.670 --> 00:00:21.750 Welcome back to the Monkey Mind Lab. On today's 00:00:21.750 --> 00:00:24.530 episode, we have with us Professor Amit Prakash, 00:00:24.809 --> 00:00:27.329 a visiting assistant professor of international 00:00:27.329 --> 00:00:31.170 and global studies at Middlebury College. Professor 00:00:31.170 --> 00:00:34.570 Prakash also serves as the director of the Rohatyn 00:00:34.570 --> 00:00:38.469 Global Fellows Program. A historian by training, 00:00:38.630 --> 00:00:41.130 his research delves into the intersections of 00:00:41.130 --> 00:00:44.409 imperialism, anti -colonialism, and migration. 00:00:45.149 --> 00:00:48.659 He is the author of Empire on the Seine, The 00:00:48.659 --> 00:00:53.060 Policing of North Africans in Paris, 1925 -1975, 00:00:53.500 --> 00:00:56.299 which examines the policing and state control 00:00:56.299 --> 00:00:59.420 of North African colonial immigrants in Paris 00:00:59.420 --> 00:01:03.219 during the period of decolonization. At Middlebury, 00:01:03.460 --> 00:01:05.840 Professor Prakash teaches courses on policing, 00:01:06.099 --> 00:01:09.200 borders and identification, and anti -colonialism. 00:01:09.400 --> 00:01:12.120 His teaching encourages students to critically 00:01:12.120 --> 00:01:14.980 examine how state power and identification practices 00:01:14.980 --> 00:01:18.829 shape societies. Beyond academia, He also co 00:01:18.829 --> 00:01:21.150 -hosts the history and current events podcast, 00:01:21.549 --> 00:01:24.370 'No Politics at the Dinner Table', and has been 00:01:24.370 --> 00:01:26.870 featured in the documentary, 'The Price of Safety'. 00:01:27.530 --> 00:01:30.609 Please join me in welcoming Professor Amit Prakash. 00:01:30.909 --> 00:01:33.810 Thank you very much for having me. So let's begin 00:01:33.810 --> 00:01:36.569 with the three questions that I ask my guests. 00:01:37.969 --> 00:01:40.609 What do you teach? Why do you teach it? And how 00:01:40.609 --> 00:01:44.290 did you get into it? Okay. So I teach courses 00:01:44.290 --> 00:01:47.939 broadly conceived around, let's call it, critical 00:01:47.939 --> 00:01:52.000 security analysis, but from a historical perspective. 00:01:52.319 --> 00:01:55.120 So I'm trained as a historian. My specialized 00:01:55.120 --> 00:01:58.280 work is on France and its empire, and particularly 00:01:58.280 --> 00:02:00.200 around questions of surveillance, migration, 00:02:00.359 --> 00:02:05.439 and security, and the discourses around it. And 00:02:05.439 --> 00:02:11.360 I think, you know, for the reason why, I guess 00:02:11.360 --> 00:02:15.319 one major reason that sort of transformed me 00:02:15.319 --> 00:02:20.830 is 9 -11. So 9/11, obviously 2001 and 2002, 00:02:20.990 --> 00:02:24.030 I started graduate school. And what I started 00:02:24.030 --> 00:02:26.810 to understand by following politics and also 00:02:26.810 --> 00:02:29.530 noticing the type of courses that were being 00:02:29.530 --> 00:02:31.430 offered where I went, which was Columbia University, 00:02:31.729 --> 00:02:35.889 were very much centered around this new age of 00:02:35.889 --> 00:02:39.990 security. And I think the post 9/11 era becomes 00:02:39.990 --> 00:02:42.849 kind of intelligible as such when we think about 00:02:42.849 --> 00:02:45.919 security as the dominant theme. which I see as 00:02:45.919 --> 00:02:49.680 mostly as ill, but one could say for good or 00:02:49.680 --> 00:02:53.280 ill. How I got into this, the reason I went to 00:02:53.280 --> 00:02:55.240 graduate school was basically teaching. I taught 00:02:55.240 --> 00:02:57.360 high school for a number of years before I went 00:02:57.360 --> 00:03:00.219 to graduate school, and I thought, who am I to 00:03:00.219 --> 00:03:01.560 be teaching this stuff? I need to know more. 00:03:01.759 --> 00:03:05.560 And so I needed more historical training, and 00:03:05.560 --> 00:03:07.939 teaching is still one of my favorite things to 00:03:07.939 --> 00:03:11.439 do about the job. All right, so shall we delve 00:03:11.439 --> 00:03:14.180 into today's big question? Sure, let's do it. 00:03:14.479 --> 00:03:17.680 So here's the question. If you decolonize the 00:03:17.680 --> 00:03:20.419 mind, what happens to the culture it carries? 00:03:21.919 --> 00:03:25.560 It's a very big question, right? So let's talk 00:03:25.560 --> 00:03:30.080 about, let's break it up. Decolonizing the mind, 00:03:30.180 --> 00:03:34.439 right? So this is the title of a book by a literary 00:03:34.439 --> 00:03:38.280 scholar named Thiong'o, who recently retired from 00:03:38.280 --> 00:03:42.650 NYU. And he basically made this argument about 00:03:42.650 --> 00:03:45.370 what decolonizing the mind requires, which basically 00:03:45.370 --> 00:03:49.669 means purging post -colonial societies of the 00:03:49.669 --> 00:03:54.389 linguistic traces of the colonial masters. Because 00:03:54.389 --> 00:03:57.949 the argument goes is that our thoughts are made 00:03:57.949 --> 00:04:02.090 precise and possible by the linguistic structures 00:04:02.090 --> 00:04:06.610 in our minds. So what is sayable is basically 00:04:06.610 --> 00:04:11.500 the limits of what is thinkable. And so the argument 00:04:11.500 --> 00:04:14.539 being that, well, in African societies, because 00:04:14.539 --> 00:04:17.939 French and English had been imposed by the sword 00:04:17.939 --> 00:04:21.360 and other linguistic traditions purposely crushed 00:04:21.360 --> 00:04:23.980 or at least sidelined, the reanimation of those 00:04:23.980 --> 00:04:27.399 traditions would allow for a full flourishing 00:04:27.399 --> 00:04:32.259 of, in this case, African cultures in distinction 00:04:32.259 --> 00:04:36.399 to what the colonial establishment tried to replace 00:04:36.399 --> 00:04:39.779 it with, right? So that's one approach, which 00:04:39.779 --> 00:04:43.800 is, okay, let's get rid of the old language. 00:04:44.100 --> 00:04:46.939 And we've seen this pop up in various ways. You 00:04:46.939 --> 00:04:50.540 know, Madras becomes Chennai and so on in India. 00:04:50.639 --> 00:04:53.500 So there's these sort of elements and strategies 00:04:53.500 --> 00:04:59.079 to try to sort of get rid of, I guess, the symbolic 00:04:59.079 --> 00:05:03.540 power of the past masters. I'm of two minds about 00:05:03.540 --> 00:05:06.480 how effective that is. Because sometimes it can 00:05:06.480 --> 00:05:09.360 be all style and no substance, if you like, right? 00:05:09.800 --> 00:05:12.040 So that, sure, you can change the name and so 00:05:12.040 --> 00:05:14.500 on, but you've, let's take the case of India, 00:05:14.639 --> 00:05:17.019 you'd change the names of some of the major cities 00:05:17.019 --> 00:05:19.699 and so on. Fine, it's your country, you can name 00:05:19.699 --> 00:05:23.639 what you want. But if you retain about 80 % of 00:05:23.639 --> 00:05:27.000 British colonial law and retain that system, 00:05:27.220 --> 00:05:31.459 how much actually, it seems like a cosmetic change 00:05:31.459 --> 00:05:34.540 more so than a substantive one. So there's limits 00:05:34.540 --> 00:05:37.740 to that approach. I understand where that's coming 00:05:37.740 --> 00:05:39.779 from, but there's limits to that even if you 00:05:39.779 --> 00:05:43.240 went full, you know, whole hog on it. The other 00:05:43.240 --> 00:05:46.180 element is, and this is the one I'm sort of more 00:05:46.180 --> 00:05:49.879 affiliated with or endorse, which is understanding 00:05:49.879 --> 00:05:53.819 that colonialism at its base is a set of relationships. 00:05:54.730 --> 00:05:57.810 It's producing a set of relationships that are 00:05:57.810 --> 00:06:00.310 hierarchical in order. And in different colonies 00:06:00.310 --> 00:06:02.129 around the world, there were different rationales 00:06:02.129 --> 00:06:05.790 for that hierarchy. But fundamentally, colonialism 00:06:05.790 --> 00:06:08.689 is in between things. It's not the thing itself. 00:06:08.850 --> 00:06:12.870 It's how we organize things. And so if you get 00:06:12.870 --> 00:06:16.410 at that, decolonizing the mind, well, that means, 00:06:16.569 --> 00:06:19.310 first of all, doing an analysis of what colonialism 00:06:19.310 --> 00:06:22.259 actually was. And I don't think we fully understood 00:06:22.259 --> 00:06:25.720 that yet. No, it's percolated into nooks and 00:06:25.720 --> 00:06:28.019 crevices, which people wouldn't even have thought 00:06:28.019 --> 00:06:30.379 that it's influenced by colonialism, but it's 00:06:30.379 --> 00:06:33.579 very much that. Yeah, yeah. Just the basic way 00:06:33.579 --> 00:06:37.500 we see the world and so on is very much sort 00:06:37.500 --> 00:06:41.819 of dominated by a colonial perspective whose 00:06:41.819 --> 00:06:44.899 ramifications I think we still need to study. 00:06:44.959 --> 00:06:48.240 So before you can get to decolonization, I think 00:06:48.240 --> 00:06:52.079 you need to fully understand. the import of colonization. 00:06:52.579 --> 00:06:54.959 So we might be jumping the gun, if you like, 00:06:55.040 --> 00:06:56.759 to say that, oh, let's decolonize this, let's 00:06:56.759 --> 00:07:00.540 decolonize that. It might be, I understand the 00:07:00.540 --> 00:07:03.240 impulse, right? And I'm ethically sympathetic 00:07:03.240 --> 00:07:07.800 to it, but it might end up being misguided or 00:07:07.800 --> 00:07:10.420 sort of short -termist in terms of what you're 00:07:10.420 --> 00:07:14.139 actually doing because a quick victory of a name 00:07:14.139 --> 00:07:16.639 change or something like that, you know, while 00:07:16.639 --> 00:07:19.259 it does have symbolic, it's not nothing. So what 00:07:19.259 --> 00:07:22.620 I would say is this very simply that symbolism 00:07:22.620 --> 00:07:26.779 matters. It's something, but it's not everything. 00:07:26.959 --> 00:07:31.519 Of course. Yeah. So looking at, speaking of decolonizing, 00:07:31.579 --> 00:07:35.360 is it, and we've kind of answered this, but is 00:07:35.360 --> 00:07:38.680 it really about just removing statues, tearing 00:07:38.680 --> 00:07:41.660 down paintings, burning books, rewriting history, 00:07:41.879 --> 00:07:44.000 or is it something deeper, like changing the 00:07:44.000 --> 00:07:46.439 way we think, speak and see ourselves? There 00:07:46.439 --> 00:07:49.029 has been a push. even in India, to change the 00:07:49.029 --> 00:07:53.089 name to Bharat, but also speak more Indian languages, 00:07:53.189 --> 00:07:56.290 less of English. But before we can go all of 00:07:56.290 --> 00:07:58.750 that, yes, we know some of it is performative. 00:07:58.790 --> 00:08:00.430 Some of it does make a difference on a scale 00:08:00.430 --> 00:08:03.870 of like pride or something. But let's start with 00:08:03.870 --> 00:08:06.410 a real question. Keeping in mind that India, 00:08:06.529 --> 00:08:08.329 for example, is a country that's been through 00:08:08.329 --> 00:08:10.230 two series of empires. You've had the Mughal 00:08:10.230 --> 00:08:12.329 Empire, you have the British Empire. There have 00:08:12.329 --> 00:08:13.689 been other countries which have been ruled by 00:08:13.689 --> 00:08:15.790 the French, the Dutch. It's all over the world. 00:08:16.560 --> 00:08:21.019 Who owns culture? Are museums, language policies, 00:08:21.180 --> 00:08:24.800 education systems still very, very colonial? 00:08:25.000 --> 00:08:27.180 And it goes beyond that, like on a sociocultural 00:08:27.180 --> 00:08:30.759 level, the way people interact, the certain customs 00:08:30.759 --> 00:08:32.700 that people have. We looked at Hindu traditions 00:08:32.700 --> 00:08:36.059 a while back and looking at how that's been influenced 00:08:36.059 --> 00:08:38.120 by colonialism. I think the real question is, 00:08:38.240 --> 00:08:41.940 culture as we know it today, is it still owned 00:08:41.940 --> 00:08:47.580 by our colonial rulers? and overlords or is it 00:08:47.580 --> 00:08:49.259 something that we've kind of made into our own 00:08:49.259 --> 00:08:52.000 thing today okay so you have a couple questions 00:08:52.000 --> 00:08:53.899 in there i'll start with the first one in terms 00:08:53.899 --> 00:08:57.559 of is it a matter of destroying the sort of cultural 00:08:57.559 --> 00:09:01.120 treatise left over and so on i'll just say i'm 00:09:01.120 --> 00:09:03.519 no matter what book i'm not in favor of ever 00:09:03.519 --> 00:09:07.179 burning a book um whatever the book is again 00:09:07.179 --> 00:09:09.019 i think that's just sort of a misguided attempt 00:09:09.019 --> 00:09:13.659 at erasure and is fundamentally unthinking, right? 00:09:13.740 --> 00:09:17.200 So I'll start with that premise. In terms of 00:09:17.200 --> 00:09:23.340 cultural transformation and sort of starting 00:09:23.340 --> 00:09:26.399 out by uprooting something, really root and branch, 00:09:26.519 --> 00:09:30.039 uprooting and then starting anew, I think that 00:09:30.039 --> 00:09:34.879 is historically diluted, is how I would put it. 00:09:34.960 --> 00:09:38.039 Colonialism happened, and it created some irrevocable 00:09:38.039 --> 00:09:42.100 changes. Colonialism on the one hand, is probably 00:09:42.100 --> 00:09:45.179 the most powerful form of globalization that 00:09:45.179 --> 00:09:47.759 we've seen. It brought the world together and 00:09:47.759 --> 00:09:50.179 knitted the world together, but it knitted the 00:09:50.179 --> 00:09:52.919 world together just so in a hierarchical way 00:09:52.919 --> 00:09:56.720 with asymmetric power and wealth being located 00:09:56.720 --> 00:10:02.960 in former metropoles. And so that history can't 00:10:02.960 --> 00:10:08.419 just be forgotten about. And there are some important 00:10:08.419 --> 00:10:12.259 changes to the cultures that have been integrated, 00:10:12.360 --> 00:10:14.659 quite frankly, into those cultures and are now 00:10:14.659 --> 00:10:19.940 part of those cultures. I think the idea that, 00:10:20.100 --> 00:10:22.179 OK, let's just for the sake of argument talk 00:10:22.179 --> 00:10:26.100 about English, right? If, say, Nigeria or India 00:10:26.100 --> 00:10:28.919 and so on wanted to say, you know, we're going 00:10:28.919 --> 00:10:34.139 to get rid of English from all. aspects of Indian 00:10:34.139 --> 00:10:36.639 or Nigerian culture. Well, what then you have 00:10:36.639 --> 00:10:39.240 are going to be gatekeepers who are going to 00:10:39.240 --> 00:10:41.399 decide, well, this is what Nigerian culture is, 00:10:41.440 --> 00:10:44.360 and then this is what Indian culture is. So the 00:10:44.360 --> 00:10:47.679 idea of an authentic culture either to return 00:10:47.679 --> 00:10:51.340 to or to produce for the future is fundamentally 00:10:51.340 --> 00:10:53.460 based on those who have the power to define it. 00:10:53.700 --> 00:10:57.240 So really the question of who owns culture is 00:10:57.240 --> 00:10:59.490 really a question of who has the power. And so 00:10:59.490 --> 00:11:01.649 if you have the power, you have the power to 00:11:01.649 --> 00:11:05.230 say this is this, that is that. This is Indian. 00:11:05.789 --> 00:11:10.029 This is coming from Timur (Taimur) or something like that. 00:11:10.070 --> 00:11:12.090 And therefore it's coming from outside. And not 00:11:12.090 --> 00:11:16.029 so even though the cultural, political, and social 00:11:16.029 --> 00:11:20.230 contributions of the Mughal descendants are inescapable 00:11:20.230 --> 00:11:23.009 in India. I teach a course that has the title 00:11:23.009 --> 00:11:25.190 of Who Owns Culture? And it's about culture and 00:11:25.190 --> 00:11:28.950 decolonization. The title's kind of facetious 00:11:28.950 --> 00:11:33.210 because there's a lot of things sort of assumed 00:11:33.210 --> 00:11:36.309 in that question, which is, first of all, that 00:11:36.309 --> 00:11:38.950 culture is something to be owned. It's predicated 00:11:38.950 --> 00:11:41.070 on this idea of a sort of possessive liberal 00:11:41.070 --> 00:11:43.970 subject that commodifies everything and owns 00:11:43.970 --> 00:11:47.350 things. Culture is constantly in flux. It's constantly 00:11:47.350 --> 00:11:50.429 being produced, and which makes it both very 00:11:50.429 --> 00:11:54.110 democratic and egalitarian, but it's also... 00:11:54.570 --> 00:11:57.049 within a matrix of power. And therefore those 00:11:57.049 --> 00:12:00.230 who have the most power in the society have hegemony, 00:12:00.269 --> 00:12:05.610 right? So, and they get to decide this is authentically 00:12:05.610 --> 00:12:07.830 India, right? And I always sort of think about 00:12:07.830 --> 00:12:11.529 the stuff with food, for instance, how do you 00:12:11.529 --> 00:12:15.929 make authentic Indian dishes, especially after 00:12:15.929 --> 00:12:19.730 Columbus, right? So that with the Columbian exchange, 00:12:19.830 --> 00:12:22.269 you get potatoes and things like that, that make 00:12:22.269 --> 00:12:25.000 their way to India. that utterly transformed 00:12:25.000 --> 00:12:27.539 the cuisine there. And there's a lot of dishes 00:12:27.539 --> 00:12:30.740 with potato in India that are seen as, you know, 00:12:30.759 --> 00:12:33.019 fundamentally authentic, but they were only possible, 00:12:33.200 --> 00:12:36.559 you know, 15, 16th century onwards, right? But 00:12:36.559 --> 00:12:38.419 India has been around for a much longer. So who 00:12:38.419 --> 00:12:40.440 decides then which is the authentic, right? It's 00:12:40.440 --> 00:12:42.580 not been authentic to the continent because it 00:12:42.580 --> 00:12:44.580 didn't grow there, but it's now a fundamental 00:12:44.580 --> 00:12:49.039 part of people will eat the aloo with dosas. 00:12:49.100 --> 00:12:52.059 People will have aloo parathas. Aloo paratha 00:12:52.059 --> 00:12:54.610 is the biggest. thing of like, oh, Indian culture. 00:12:54.830 --> 00:12:58.370 Is it Indian? Yeah. Yeah. And so one could say 00:12:58.370 --> 00:13:01.750 the same thing for like the kind of Hindi English 00:13:01.750 --> 00:13:04.570 vernacular that's developed in India. Right. 00:13:04.649 --> 00:13:07.149 So that a lot of people speak this way, this 00:13:07.149 --> 00:13:10.090 sort of this mishmash of let's call them indigenous 00:13:10.090 --> 00:13:12.830 Indian languages, but with smatterings of English 00:13:12.830 --> 00:13:15.169 and stuff like that, I don't think it's necessarily 00:13:15.169 --> 00:13:18.809 an indication of their minds being colonized. 00:13:19.240 --> 00:13:22.399 But they've appropriated that language, intermixed 00:13:22.399 --> 00:13:25.960 it, and made something new. And sometimes this 00:13:25.960 --> 00:13:28.419 is called in the literature indigenization, right, 00:13:28.500 --> 00:13:31.360 where you sort of assimilate what were once, 00:13:31.419 --> 00:13:34.419 let's call them foreign elements, but then you've 00:13:34.419 --> 00:13:37.159 sort of tamed them, if you like, naturalized 00:13:37.159 --> 00:13:41.460 them and made them your own. So, you know, in 00:13:41.460 --> 00:13:45.659 terms of, you know, the culture, as your sort 00:13:45.659 --> 00:13:49.779 of first question was asking about, kept in the 00:13:49.779 --> 00:13:55.019 sort of the culture you know the only way to 00:13:55.019 --> 00:13:59.059 actually purge a culture of elements that you 00:13:59.059 --> 00:14:03.720 decide are foreign is through force and force 00:14:03.720 --> 00:14:06.840 does not necessarily produce belief it produces 00:14:06.840 --> 00:14:10.220 compliance but it doesn't necessarily mean you've 00:14:10.220 --> 00:14:12.399 actually decolonized the mind in the way you 00:14:12.399 --> 00:14:15.399 want to right you may have the mimicry of this 00:14:15.399 --> 00:14:19.000 but you don't actually know what people are actually 00:14:19.000 --> 00:14:22.860 thinking because they might well be afraid. And 00:14:22.860 --> 00:14:25.200 we see a lot of that in the world today. Yeah, 00:14:25.200 --> 00:14:27.720 yeah. I mean, there's a lot of nationalist movements 00:14:27.720 --> 00:14:30.620 around the world. I mean, it's interesting. They're 00:14:30.620 --> 00:14:34.740 all post -colonial in their own ways, you know. 00:14:34.779 --> 00:14:38.500 So Hungary and Poland are good examples. They're 00:14:38.500 --> 00:14:41.879 coming from the post -Soviet empire. We have 00:14:41.879 --> 00:14:45.340 it in India. We have it in America now. Yeah. 00:14:45.399 --> 00:14:47.860 And we have to remember that America was also 00:14:47.860 --> 00:14:51.720 a colony. Of the British, yeah. And that's sometimes 00:14:51.720 --> 00:14:54.960 forgotten. You know, there's a quotation from 00:14:54.960 --> 00:14:58.059 a thinker, Étienne Balibar, that I like a lot, 00:14:58.179 --> 00:15:00.899 which basically says, and he's talking about 00:15:00.899 --> 00:15:03.639 borders in this case, and he basically makes 00:15:03.639 --> 00:15:06.100 the argument is that every country in the world, 00:15:06.259 --> 00:15:10.379 as we know it, was either colonized or was colonizing. 00:15:10.860 --> 00:15:13.019 and sometimes both at the same time, right? So 00:15:13.019 --> 00:15:14.960 that's what the modern world is. That's the sort 00:15:14.960 --> 00:15:18.120 of cauldron in which it was forged to get beyond 00:15:18.120 --> 00:15:21.200 it, to decolonize it. Again, I still think we 00:15:21.200 --> 00:15:24.460 need to have a fuller reckoning with what we 00:15:24.460 --> 00:15:26.820 were given before we can decide what we want 00:15:26.820 --> 00:15:30.840 to do when we want to move on. So we still have 00:15:30.840 --> 00:15:34.320 a lot to unpack about colonialism. I think we 00:15:34.320 --> 00:15:36.700 really need to sit down and look at... The extent 00:15:36.700 --> 00:15:38.740 to which it influences our lives today, even 00:15:38.740 --> 00:15:40.019 though people, oh yeah, the British are gone 00:15:40.019 --> 00:15:42.820 or the French are gone. They may not be there 00:15:42.820 --> 00:15:45.519 physically, but their ideals are still very much 00:15:45.519 --> 00:15:49.779 influencing society and laws being made today, 00:15:49.860 --> 00:15:52.539 especially in India, looking at the legalization 00:15:52.539 --> 00:15:56.379 of the LGBTQ community. It took 75 years and 00:15:56.379 --> 00:16:00.059 it's still not legal to get married. Same -sex 00:16:00.059 --> 00:16:03.419 couples are not acknowledged. The West has moved 00:16:03.419 --> 00:16:06.509 on. Why are we still sticking to the Victorian 00:16:06.509 --> 00:16:10.090 norms of it. Right. Right, right, right. And 00:16:10.090 --> 00:16:12.450 so there's different things to think about. There 00:16:12.450 --> 00:16:14.389 might be some elements that are contributions 00:16:14.389 --> 00:16:16.549 from, let's say, French and British cultures 00:16:16.549 --> 00:16:19.590 that you want, right? There might well be things 00:16:19.590 --> 00:16:22.389 that you want to retain. And that's why this 00:16:22.389 --> 00:16:26.269 sort of either -orism, and it's sort of, I think 00:16:26.269 --> 00:16:28.850 it's predicated on this idea that these cultures 00:16:28.850 --> 00:16:31.169 are hermetically sealed and then they clash and 00:16:31.169 --> 00:16:33.070 one was just sort of juxtaposed on the other, 00:16:33.149 --> 00:16:36.000 or superimposed, I should say. Not really the 00:16:36.000 --> 00:16:38.820 case, right? That's not how culture works. You 00:16:38.820 --> 00:16:40.820 know, anthropologists have been demonstrating 00:16:40.820 --> 00:16:45.740 this for decades now, that culture is something 00:16:45.740 --> 00:16:49.279 that's alive, is not static. And that's precisely 00:16:49.279 --> 00:16:53.460 what makes it so valuable. And it's also precisely 00:16:53.460 --> 00:16:57.580 what makes it so political. You can see that 00:16:57.580 --> 00:16:59.860 every movement, these nationalist movements, 00:17:00.159 --> 00:17:02.960 they all start as cultural movements. And they 00:17:02.960 --> 00:17:06.160 identify an element in their given culture that 00:17:06.160 --> 00:17:08.539 they think is objectionable. And then they organize 00:17:08.539 --> 00:17:12.140 politics around it. So, you know, which is a 00:17:12.140 --> 00:17:14.140 long way of saying politics is downstream from 00:17:14.140 --> 00:17:16.940 culture. Yep. There's this one joke which a comedian 00:17:16.940 --> 00:17:19.859 made, which basically said, in India, you have 00:17:19.859 --> 00:17:22.279 to plan a political campaign around suppressing 00:17:22.279 --> 00:17:26.599 a minority to get elected. Yeah. It's like, which 00:17:26.599 --> 00:17:27.980 one are you going to pick? Right, right, right. 00:17:28.140 --> 00:17:31.039 And which, again, is an old tactic, right? That's 00:17:31.039 --> 00:17:34.670 as old. legislative or electoral politics tactic 00:17:34.670 --> 00:17:38.930 that I think in modern politics was really perfected 00:17:38.930 --> 00:17:41.190 around the turn of the century, around 1900, 00:17:41.650 --> 00:17:44.990 the last century, I should say, in Vienna, right, 00:17:45.029 --> 00:17:48.549 around antisemitism, right? So that it's Viennese 00:17:48.549 --> 00:17:51.470 mayoral politics were utterly transformed by 00:17:51.470 --> 00:17:56.410 the political innovation of mobilizing antisemitism 00:17:56.410 --> 00:17:59.049 to whip up votes. And now you can just sort of... 00:17:59.720 --> 00:18:03.000 identify a minority identify a vulnerable community 00:18:03.000 --> 00:18:07.400 that cannot have much pushback had used them 00:18:07.400 --> 00:18:09.660 politically and it's been unfortunately very 00:18:09.660 --> 00:18:15.059 effective so let's move on to the next aspect 00:18:15.059 --> 00:18:20.140 of it uh mental colonization you mentioned a 00:18:20.140 --> 00:18:23.160 couple of thinkers or historians who've worked 00:18:23.160 --> 00:18:28.859 on this and they explored how empire lived and 00:18:28.859 --> 00:18:32.579 lives in the mind shaping desires self -image 00:18:32.579 --> 00:18:36.299 and what is seen to be civilized or polished 00:18:36.299 --> 00:18:41.240 like even today in india there are certain activities 00:18:41.240 --> 00:18:45.099 or certain things that you do that classify you 00:18:45.099 --> 00:18:49.700 as a sophisticated upper class rich person but 00:18:49.700 --> 00:18:53.400 they're inherently very british drinking chai 00:18:53.400 --> 00:18:56.019 in india very common people drink chai on the 00:18:56.019 --> 00:18:57.890 side of the road But when you have high tea, 00:18:57.990 --> 00:19:01.289 it's suddenly when it gets really fancy. Still 00:19:01.289 --> 00:19:06.230 the same thing, but it's all in the mind. So 00:19:06.230 --> 00:19:10.650 how would we look at those activities today and 00:19:10.650 --> 00:19:13.049 look at what these thinkers have to say about 00:19:13.049 --> 00:19:18.470 it and then maybe be aware of or adapt? Yeah, 00:19:18.490 --> 00:19:23.329 so Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, we talked about already a 00:19:23.329 --> 00:19:28.319 little bit. would make the argument of trying 00:19:28.319 --> 00:19:31.039 to actually rid the society of that practice 00:19:31.039 --> 00:19:37.599 and use, and by practice, I mean using consumption 00:19:37.599 --> 00:19:44.539 of a given good as a metric to status. So that's 00:19:44.539 --> 00:19:46.480 part of the colonial, that's the relationship, 00:19:46.819 --> 00:19:50.519 right? So the chai is the chai, but if you change 00:19:50.519 --> 00:19:54.960 the context in which it's being drunk, then suddenly 00:19:54.960 --> 00:19:58.980 you can start making class and status assumptions 00:19:58.980 --> 00:20:03.240 and associations, right? And so I think that's, 00:20:03.240 --> 00:20:04.940 you know, that would be the target is that try 00:20:04.940 --> 00:20:08.440 to get rid of that relationship, which would 00:20:08.440 --> 00:20:11.119 be difficult, right? Which would be difficult 00:20:11.119 --> 00:20:14.359 and would take probably decades, if not centuries, 00:20:14.539 --> 00:20:17.000 right? But that would be the sort of the long 00:20:17.000 --> 00:20:21.220 game. Fanon would make an argument really about 00:20:21.220 --> 00:20:24.180 going, what he says, going to the people. right, 00:20:24.200 --> 00:20:27.940 going to the masses and not thinking about what 00:20:27.940 --> 00:20:31.759 he calls colonized intellectuals, of which he 00:20:31.759 --> 00:20:35.539 is one, but that he believes that the colonized 00:20:35.539 --> 00:20:40.480 intellectual is a little bit too indebted and 00:20:40.480 --> 00:20:45.039 therefore sympathetic to the presuppositions 00:20:45.039 --> 00:20:47.500 of the colonial ruler, that they don't even sort 00:20:47.500 --> 00:20:49.380 of challenge them, that this wouldn't even, a 00:20:49.380 --> 00:20:51.200 question like that wouldn't even come up for 00:20:51.200 --> 00:20:52.980 them, right? It wouldn't even be on their radar. 00:20:54.269 --> 00:20:57.630 But if you go to the chaiwala, right, and speak 00:20:57.630 --> 00:21:00.490 with them and about their everyday life and the 00:21:00.490 --> 00:21:02.750 sort of consumptive activities of the laborers 00:21:02.750 --> 00:21:05.690 that come and so on, you could then say, well, 00:21:05.730 --> 00:21:08.589 this is actually something that's popular in 00:21:08.589 --> 00:21:11.009 the French sense. It's coming from the masses 00:21:11.009 --> 00:21:13.190 or it's coming from the people, right? And if 00:21:13.190 --> 00:21:16.210 that's then the case, sure, the British might 00:21:16.210 --> 00:21:18.569 have made tea and opium plantations and done 00:21:18.569 --> 00:21:21.309 all these terrible things and so on, but it's 00:21:21.309 --> 00:21:24.910 been integrated into the everyday life. And it's 00:21:24.910 --> 00:21:27.450 a pause from labor. It's a way to talk to your 00:21:27.450 --> 00:21:29.950 friends. It's a way to be with family. All of 00:21:29.950 --> 00:21:34.089 those things, it makes certain types of social 00:21:34.089 --> 00:21:36.309 life possible, right? And if that's then the 00:21:36.309 --> 00:21:38.750 case, you know, there's not a problem with it. 00:21:38.869 --> 00:21:43.690 Yes. But they would both agree that making distinctions 00:21:43.690 --> 00:21:48.710 based on consumptive habits to then put human 00:21:48.710 --> 00:21:51.210 beings in a hierarchy, that's fundamentally what's 00:21:51.210 --> 00:21:53.789 colonial about it. Interesting. Yeah, they've 00:21:53.789 --> 00:21:56.490 always had a policy of, well, divide and rule. 00:21:56.690 --> 00:21:58.390 And that's how you do that. Yeah, yeah. And look, 00:21:58.410 --> 00:22:00.349 we can just talk about the Indian case. They 00:22:00.349 --> 00:22:03.029 found it a little bit easier precisely because 00:22:03.029 --> 00:22:05.289 of the caste system. Yes. Right? So that they 00:22:05.289 --> 00:22:07.930 further weaponized the caste system, let me put 00:22:07.930 --> 00:22:10.210 it that way. It's a myth that the British, like, 00:22:10.250 --> 00:22:14.970 they didn't invent it, but that they fully mobilized 00:22:14.970 --> 00:22:16.650 it where it hadn't been, you know. It was there, 00:22:16.730 --> 00:22:18.990 they just made it worse. Yeah, it's been there. 00:22:19.089 --> 00:22:24.019 Sometimes it's been. fairly neutral, and sometimes 00:22:24.019 --> 00:22:26.980 it's been really malevolent. In the British case, 00:22:27.319 --> 00:22:30.200 you know, again, it's a sort of fundamental mystery. 00:22:30.299 --> 00:22:32.079 They saw the caste system and they saw, aha, 00:22:32.200 --> 00:22:34.839 we have a class system. You know, we understand 00:22:34.839 --> 00:22:37.579 that, right? And therefore we can make these 00:22:37.579 --> 00:22:40.400 distinctions. And what about the Africans in 00:22:40.400 --> 00:22:43.599 France? Yeah, so there, you know, there's the 00:22:43.599 --> 00:22:47.839 interesting thing there is that many of the North 00:22:47.839 --> 00:22:50.640 Africans who end up in France, especially the 00:22:50.640 --> 00:22:54.099 first generation, even though, you know, they 00:22:54.099 --> 00:22:57.480 eventually learn French and so on, but they make 00:22:57.480 --> 00:23:03.920 efforts to try to assimilate to a certain degree. 00:23:04.519 --> 00:23:07.640 Okay. And, you know, they wear French clothing 00:23:07.640 --> 00:23:10.440 and they speak French in the home. They want 00:23:10.440 --> 00:23:12.380 their children to speak French, et cetera, et 00:23:12.380 --> 00:23:18.740 cetera. And they're still rejected. by the official 00:23:18.740 --> 00:23:20.700 policies of the French state, right? So it's 00:23:20.700 --> 00:23:23.920 not even just a sort of de facto rejection by 00:23:23.920 --> 00:23:27.559 the society, but there's explicit policy by the 00:23:27.559 --> 00:23:30.599 French state that hopes to further segregate 00:23:30.599 --> 00:23:34.319 them. And so the response has been interesting 00:23:34.319 --> 00:23:37.759 because generations later, you've got a sort 00:23:37.759 --> 00:23:44.220 of turn to Islam and a turn to learning Arabic 00:23:44.220 --> 00:23:46.019 and things like that, things that hadn't been 00:23:46.019 --> 00:23:50.099 taught in the home. precisely because of the 00:23:50.099 --> 00:23:53.980 produced social isolation of these communities, 00:23:54.220 --> 00:23:57.180 right? So whereas there was a kind of a window 00:23:57.180 --> 00:24:03.220 where, let's call it, a more benevolent or benign 00:24:03.220 --> 00:24:07.019 kind of integration was possible, this happened 00:24:07.019 --> 00:24:10.119 during colonialism. So these groups were still 00:24:10.119 --> 00:24:13.200 thought of as fundamentally other and need to 00:24:13.200 --> 00:24:16.460 be reminded as such in the metropole. So hence, 00:24:16.519 --> 00:24:18.259 they had a separate police for them. There was 00:24:18.259 --> 00:24:20.359 obvious neighborhoods where they weren't welcome 00:24:20.359 --> 00:24:23.400 and where they should be. There were buildings 00:24:23.400 --> 00:24:26.700 that were built for them that were then concierged 00:24:26.700 --> 00:24:30.619 by former French paratroopers who had done their 00:24:30.619 --> 00:24:32.920 work in Indochina and Algeria during the wars 00:24:32.920 --> 00:24:35.220 and so on, and who were thought to know the natives 00:24:35.220 --> 00:24:38.559 the best and so on. So there was a sort of very 00:24:38.559 --> 00:24:43.299 concerted effort to mark the line of difference. 00:24:44.319 --> 00:24:46.880 between these peoples while keeping the line 00:24:46.880 --> 00:24:51.920 of French Republican universalism, which doesn't 00:24:51.920 --> 00:24:54.500 quite work. Yeah, I was just thinking, I mean, 00:24:54.519 --> 00:24:57.839 for all we've studied about Germany and Nazis, 00:24:58.059 --> 00:25:01.079 the French fought it, but it sounds very similar 00:25:01.079 --> 00:25:04.559 to the Gestapos and exactly what they fought 00:25:04.559 --> 00:25:08.380 against. That's a good point. So Fanon's teacher, 00:25:08.619 --> 00:25:11.940 Aimé Césaire, also from Martinique. great poet 00:25:11.940 --> 00:25:13.920 of the 20th century and then becomes a politician 00:25:13.920 --> 00:25:18.299 in Martinique itself. He made this argument in 00:25:18.299 --> 00:25:21.220 a short pamphlet called The Discourse on Colonialism. 00:25:21.380 --> 00:25:26.000 And he basically said that Nazism, Hitlerism 00:25:26.000 --> 00:25:32.480 was so objectionable and people were so repulsed 00:25:32.480 --> 00:25:36.279 by it is because they were doing colonialism 00:25:36.279 --> 00:25:39.950 in Europe against white people rather. than in 00:25:39.950 --> 00:25:42.549 Asia, South America, and Africa, where it was 00:25:42.549 --> 00:25:45.150 seen as perfectly permissible to do such things. 00:25:45.670 --> 00:25:48.529 Because when you look at most forms of colonialism, 00:25:48.789 --> 00:25:52.589 it's basically racist authoritarianism. Pretty 00:25:52.589 --> 00:25:55.210 much. That there's different sets of rules. There's 00:25:55.210 --> 00:25:57.690 a definition of difference in order to rule people 00:25:57.690 --> 00:26:01.690 differently, right? So, yeah, the French did 00:26:01.690 --> 00:26:05.079 it a lot, and they did it for a long time. And 00:26:05.079 --> 00:26:06.720 then, of course, we do have to remember that 00:26:06.720 --> 00:26:08.759 there were a number of French that were all too 00:26:08.759 --> 00:26:11.660 willing to collaborate with the Nazis, as there 00:26:11.660 --> 00:26:14.660 were with a number of other countries in Europe, 00:26:14.720 --> 00:26:17.319 which tells us something. Including one of the 00:26:17.319 --> 00:26:20.079 former British monarchs. Yeah. Oh, yeah, of course. 00:26:20.140 --> 00:26:22.859 Of course. And, you know, significant portions 00:26:22.859 --> 00:26:25.880 of the British aristocracy in general, various 00:26:25.880 --> 00:26:29.000 lords and so on. But if you can go all around 00:26:29.000 --> 00:26:33.000 Europe, this is one thing to remember about empire 00:26:33.000 --> 00:26:36.769 is that. all empires require local collaborators 00:26:36.769 --> 00:26:40.150 for them to actually operate. Unfortunately, 00:26:40.529 --> 00:26:44.690 the Nazis found many willing collaborators. And 00:26:44.690 --> 00:26:48.049 the argument, Césaire's argument, is that they 00:26:48.049 --> 00:26:49.829 were prepped for that precisely because of the 00:26:49.829 --> 00:26:55.890 history of European imperialism. That's one to 00:26:55.890 --> 00:27:01.230 think about. So the French, they famously say 00:27:01.230 --> 00:27:05.829 that The race stuff is all Anglo -American. We 00:27:05.829 --> 00:27:08.529 don't do race, right? We maybe have a history 00:27:08.529 --> 00:27:12.250 of religion and religious persecution and stuff 00:27:12.250 --> 00:27:14.650 like that, but that's precisely why we have laicite 00:27:14.650 --> 00:27:18.670 and secularism in our laws. We've sort of mastered 00:27:18.670 --> 00:27:22.269 the church and all that. But when you actually 00:27:22.269 --> 00:27:24.309 look at the colonial record, there's race laws 00:27:24.309 --> 00:27:26.829 all over that colonial record. In some cases, 00:27:26.829 --> 00:27:29.450 it's very explicit. The Black Code is very explicit. 00:27:29.690 --> 00:27:31.970 In other cases, it's more muted where they're 00:27:31.970 --> 00:27:36.000 talking about French Muslims of Algeria, which 00:27:36.000 --> 00:27:38.559 is a category of citizenship. But it's not just 00:27:38.559 --> 00:27:40.900 French. There's all these other add -ons, right? 00:27:41.019 --> 00:27:43.619 So they're French, but not quite. They're French 00:27:43.619 --> 00:27:46.200 with an asterisk. And what that ends up meaning 00:27:46.200 --> 00:27:49.740 is that they're treated differently by society 00:27:49.740 --> 00:27:54.400 and the state. That's unfortunate. A while back, 00:27:54.440 --> 00:27:59.680 you mentioned how acts of what could be perceived 00:27:59.680 --> 00:28:02.400 as colonial influence are now becoming popular. 00:28:02.990 --> 00:28:07.569 So looking at, let's say, Senegal and hip hop 00:28:07.569 --> 00:28:11.950 or Bollywood in India or a specific type of literature 00:28:11.950 --> 00:28:14.349 in the Caribbean, I can't remember the name of 00:28:14.349 --> 00:28:17.849 it. Do these still carry the colonial ghosts 00:28:17.849 --> 00:28:21.430 with them? Or is this a sort of individual step 00:28:21.430 --> 00:28:25.650 out saying this is inherently Indian or this 00:28:25.650 --> 00:28:28.750 is inherently Caribbean or this is we're breaking 00:28:28.750 --> 00:28:32.029 out of colonialism? Well, it depends on what 00:28:32.029 --> 00:28:34.589 we're talking about. What, you know, what type 00:28:34.589 --> 00:28:38.329 of Bollywood film. Yeah. Right. You know, so 00:28:38.329 --> 00:28:42.970 in one, you know, Lagan, there's like there's 00:28:42.970 --> 00:28:46.970 these anti -colonial, you know, messages built 00:28:46.970 --> 00:28:49.829 into some of these films. Right. So but in the 00:28:49.829 --> 00:28:51.769 end, this is for a commercial enterprise and 00:28:51.769 --> 00:28:53.390 it's really about making money. You mentioned 00:28:53.390 --> 00:28:55.789 that because I'm in an Indian cinema class this 00:28:55.789 --> 00:28:57.609 semester and one of the perspectives we looked 00:28:57.609 --> 00:29:01.190 at was. This isn't anti -colonial. It's pro -Indian. 00:29:01.549 --> 00:29:04.329 What? And it's basically about looking at the 00:29:04.329 --> 00:29:06.190 unity of everybody. And it's not talking about 00:29:06.190 --> 00:29:08.569 the British, but inherently they are doing that. 00:29:09.190 --> 00:29:13.890 Yeah. So, look, one thing to think about is that 00:29:13.890 --> 00:29:18.650 the British Empire produced modern India. Oh, 00:29:18.650 --> 00:29:22.930 yeah. Right. So that in much the same way that 00:29:22.930 --> 00:29:26.220 the world was brought together in a very... unfair 00:29:26.220 --> 00:29:28.480 and unfortunate way but it was brought together 00:29:28.480 --> 00:29:30.859 by colonialism in the same way india was brought 00:29:30.859 --> 00:29:34.720 together by british colonialism uh through newspapers 00:29:34.720 --> 00:29:36.900 railroads and things like that these sort of 00:29:36.900 --> 00:29:40.099 far reaches of india where the lingua franca 00:29:40.099 --> 00:29:42.259 ended up being english because the tamilians 00:29:42.259 --> 00:29:44.700 don't speak hindi and vice versa and so on right 00:29:44.700 --> 00:29:52.480 so that the idea of india as one thing is actually 00:29:53.379 --> 00:29:57.200 almost as far as we know, has to go through colonialism 00:29:57.200 --> 00:30:00.980 for that to even be an idea, right? So even the 00:30:00.980 --> 00:30:05.259 call for Indian unity will forever rely upon 00:30:05.259 --> 00:30:08.259 that history. Colonialism, yeah. We had so many 00:30:08.259 --> 00:30:11.259 Maharajas and districts. Yeah, yeah. It was never 00:30:11.259 --> 00:30:13.960 united. Yeah, and even during British rule, there 00:30:13.960 --> 00:30:15.920 were still a lot of technicalities of sort of 00:30:15.920 --> 00:30:17.619 principalities and stuff like that that were 00:30:17.619 --> 00:30:22.319 notionally independent. even before, even post 00:30:22.319 --> 00:30:26.880 -1757 to 1857, that period there was a period 00:30:26.880 --> 00:30:30.779 of, you know, consolidation of power that was 00:30:30.779 --> 00:30:35.500 still highly fragmented. So, you know, any call 00:30:35.500 --> 00:30:39.480 for the total unity of India is fundamentally 00:30:39.480 --> 00:30:42.680 a colonial idea because it's talking about anti, 00:30:42.759 --> 00:30:45.700 it's responding, it's a dialectical response 00:30:45.700 --> 00:30:49.279 to colonialism. Anti -colonial nationalism is 00:30:49.279 --> 00:30:53.460 a response to that. Had there not been British 00:30:53.460 --> 00:30:56.119 colonialism or colonialism at all, we might be 00:30:56.119 --> 00:30:58.079 talking about many different countries in this 00:30:58.079 --> 00:31:00.680 vast land. Yeah, that is something we have to 00:31:00.680 --> 00:31:02.720 give to them. They did whip it together well 00:31:02.720 --> 00:31:06.940 at whatever horrible cost. At far too high a 00:31:06.940 --> 00:31:09.720 cost, right? And it's not even like this is a 00:31:09.720 --> 00:31:13.480 net positive or whatever. It's a brute fact, 00:31:13.599 --> 00:31:17.559 right? It's an inescapable fact that you have 00:31:17.559 --> 00:31:22.039 to recognize. You know, one way is about thinking 00:31:22.039 --> 00:31:24.480 about, I don't know, decolonization for me is, 00:31:24.480 --> 00:31:29.779 it's a tough word. I like to think more of like 00:31:29.779 --> 00:31:33.559 going beyond colonialism, right? Because full 00:31:33.559 --> 00:31:37.900 decolonization, well, where do we end there, 00:31:37.980 --> 00:31:40.000 right? Because the Mughals came and colonized 00:31:40.000 --> 00:31:43.180 as well. I mean, we can just layer upon layer. 00:31:43.279 --> 00:31:47.019 There's sort of a vast amount of, especially 00:31:47.019 --> 00:31:49.849 in a place like India. A vast amount of political 00:31:49.849 --> 00:31:53.170 sedimentation. Different people who, are we going 00:31:53.170 --> 00:31:54.910 back to Alexander? You know, I mean, like, how 00:31:54.910 --> 00:31:57.470 far are we going here, right? And there were 00:31:57.470 --> 00:31:59.789 Indian empires that had as well. You had the 00:31:59.789 --> 00:32:02.630 Mauryan Empire. You had Ashoka. You had the Gupta 00:32:02.630 --> 00:32:04.650 Empire. I mean, it just goes on. Sure, sure. 00:32:04.809 --> 00:32:06.630 And you're right about the sedimentation. It's 00:32:06.630 --> 00:32:08.269 suddenly the Mughals have become a part of Indian 00:32:08.269 --> 00:32:11.089 history. Yes, there are certain political parties 00:32:11.089 --> 00:32:15.710 that would like to rid that and have more. Again, 00:32:15.710 --> 00:32:18.730 nationalist context in history. So that's another 00:32:18.730 --> 00:32:22.190 way of supposedly decolonizing it. But it's more 00:32:22.190 --> 00:32:25.670 accepted that the Mughal Empire is now Indian 00:32:25.670 --> 00:32:28.130 history. And then you have colonial history, 00:32:28.269 --> 00:32:30.730 which is the British, which, funnily enough, 00:32:30.769 --> 00:32:33.109 is not taught in any of the British curricula. 00:32:33.329 --> 00:32:37.069 I did the IGCSE myself. They don't mention it. 00:32:37.710 --> 00:32:41.170 So interesting that they have left out a huge 00:32:41.170 --> 00:32:43.400 part of British history. They don't teach in 00:32:43.400 --> 00:32:45.019 A -levels, they don't teach in the O -levels, 00:32:45.019 --> 00:32:48.519 nor in the IG. Wow. That's interesting. Yeah. 00:32:49.539 --> 00:32:51.779 So this is what I'm talking about, is that the 00:32:51.779 --> 00:32:54.819 colonial fact has yet to be fully confronted. 00:32:54.980 --> 00:32:58.680 Yeah. Right? So if you haven't confronted that, 00:32:58.759 --> 00:33:04.359 and if there hasn't been a wide -ranging conversation 00:33:04.359 --> 00:33:06.640 with many participants and many perspectives, 00:33:07.140 --> 00:33:10.680 what exactly are we decolonizing? Yeah. Right? 00:33:10.779 --> 00:33:14.400 I think that's... you know it it becomes well 00:33:14.400 --> 00:33:17.319 whatever the person who's shouting the word says 00:33:17.319 --> 00:33:22.119 it is whoever has the loudest voice and on a 00:33:22.119 --> 00:33:26.259 very superficial level we're decolonizing but 00:33:26.259 --> 00:33:30.099 it's it's more about tokenism and the danger 00:33:30.099 --> 00:33:33.799 of that right like okay we replaced a statue 00:33:33.799 --> 00:33:36.920 we put up an indian leader over there or we changed 00:33:36.920 --> 00:33:40.829 the name of a road from uh Better Road did some 00:33:40.829 --> 00:33:43.710 long name, which I have no idea what it is. Or 00:33:43.710 --> 00:33:45.670 we changed the name of the train stations. Okay, 00:33:45.789 --> 00:33:47.509 great, you're doing that, but it's still at a 00:33:47.509 --> 00:33:50.130 very superficial level. And like we spoke about 00:33:50.130 --> 00:33:52.690 earlier, it's more about the symbolic, less about 00:33:52.690 --> 00:33:56.529 the structural efforts on a... I wouldn't even 00:33:56.529 --> 00:33:58.329 say a global decolonization movement, right? 00:33:58.349 --> 00:34:00.890 Because you can... There are so many countries 00:34:00.890 --> 00:34:05.910 of the Commonwealth that you can't get rid of. 00:34:06.089 --> 00:34:08.980 You can't get rid of the fact that... It happened, 00:34:09.079 --> 00:34:12.159 but you can, like we spoke about, revamp it, 00:34:12.260 --> 00:34:15.480 integrate it into your own society or make it 00:34:15.480 --> 00:34:19.320 your own and move on. But it's still at a very 00:34:19.320 --> 00:34:21.920 superficial level. We haven't begun to fully 00:34:21.920 --> 00:34:25.539 understand the depths of colonization and what 00:34:25.539 --> 00:34:27.960 a decolonized future would look like. Yeah, I 00:34:27.960 --> 00:34:30.300 mean, in terms of the question of tokenism, again, 00:34:30.519 --> 00:34:34.079 to a certain extent, there has to be some of 00:34:34.079 --> 00:34:37.530 that because you need... the pioneering people 00:34:37.530 --> 00:34:39.409 who are in these positions and so on, who have 00:34:39.409 --> 00:34:42.809 been systematically shut out, right? So those 00:34:42.809 --> 00:34:44.610 are achievements. I don't want to say that those 00:34:44.610 --> 00:34:47.909 mean nothing, right? But if it remains at that, 00:34:48.070 --> 00:34:54.389 they remain just symbolic achievements. And as 00:34:54.389 --> 00:35:01.730 time passes, they can then be mobilized to perpetuate 00:35:01.730 --> 00:35:04.329 the status quo. And if you think the status quo 00:35:04.329 --> 00:35:08.090 needs amending, that's a dangerous thing to alight 00:35:08.090 --> 00:35:10.849 upon because then you just have this sort of 00:35:10.849 --> 00:35:13.289 plausible deniability, but look, we've had, we 00:35:13.289 --> 00:35:15.289 had a black president, so racism's over, you 00:35:15.289 --> 00:35:18.030 know, that sort of thing, right? So you can make 00:35:18.030 --> 00:35:20.030 such pronouncements and people do, I mean, and 00:35:20.030 --> 00:35:24.210 it ends up being quite effective. So my kind 00:35:24.210 --> 00:35:26.469 of mantra here is that the reckoning with the 00:35:26.469 --> 00:35:30.110 past, there's, I'm going to mess up the line, 00:35:30.130 --> 00:35:33.480 but there's a line from James Baldwin. It goes 00:35:33.480 --> 00:35:37.219 something like this. Not all things that are 00:35:37.219 --> 00:35:41.780 faced can be kind of transcended, but you can't 00:35:41.780 --> 00:35:44.699 transcend anything until you face it, right? 00:35:44.800 --> 00:35:49.280 So that hasn't happened, right? That has not 00:35:49.280 --> 00:35:51.880 happened. And if anything, there's been the reverse, 00:35:52.000 --> 00:35:55.460 which has been the purification of the colonial 00:35:55.460 --> 00:35:59.280 adventure, if you like, as something that is 00:35:59.280 --> 00:36:02.239 positive, that... the British and the French 00:36:02.239 --> 00:36:04.639 and the Dutch and so on should be proud of, and 00:36:04.639 --> 00:36:07.840 they've been made to feel bad about it. But actually, 00:36:08.000 --> 00:36:10.679 there were these sort of humanitarian aspects 00:36:10.679 --> 00:36:13.719 to it, right? I think that's the wrong direction 00:36:13.719 --> 00:36:16.360 to go. Unfortunately, that seems to be the direction 00:36:16.360 --> 00:36:19.360 most societies are going in. Even if you're talking 00:36:19.360 --> 00:36:22.300 about like reparations and stuff, I saw this 00:36:22.300 --> 00:36:24.800 really ridiculous thing that there's this British 00:36:24.800 --> 00:36:27.260 reporter who's saying, if a country can afford 00:36:27.260 --> 00:36:29.940 to put their flag on the moon, we shouldn't be 00:36:29.940 --> 00:36:35.280 giving them and helping them out with finances 00:36:35.280 --> 00:36:39.579 and stuff. The trillions of dollars worth of 00:36:39.579 --> 00:36:42.960 stuff that has been taken away, one, I don't 00:36:42.960 --> 00:36:44.320 think they can afford to give the money back 00:36:44.320 --> 00:36:46.440 as such. Like they can't afford to just pick 00:36:46.440 --> 00:36:48.880 up a bunch of trillion dollars and just give 00:36:48.880 --> 00:36:52.019 it back to India. Two, I think maybe just too 00:36:52.019 --> 00:36:53.900 corrupt in India now to do that. What will they 00:36:53.900 --> 00:36:56.780 do with the money? Yeah, well, I mean, I think 00:36:56.780 --> 00:37:00.690 there's in the question of reparations is, It's 00:37:00.690 --> 00:37:03.550 a very dangerous one for the former colonial 00:37:03.550 --> 00:37:07.269 masters, right? Because if, especially at the 00:37:07.269 --> 00:37:11.969 national level, right? So different sort of regions 00:37:11.969 --> 00:37:14.630 and municipalities have done this across the 00:37:14.630 --> 00:37:17.349 former metropolitan world, let's call it that. 00:37:17.750 --> 00:37:20.489 But it's never been adopted by the national state 00:37:20.489 --> 00:37:22.949 because that is a precedent. Once that precedent 00:37:22.949 --> 00:37:26.110 comes, there's going to be a lot of people knocking 00:37:26.110 --> 00:37:31.989 on the doors, right? To a certain extent, I understand 00:37:31.989 --> 00:37:38.130 why they would be reticent to do this for their 00:37:38.130 --> 00:37:42.250 own finances, for the political blowback that 00:37:42.250 --> 00:37:45.110 would come. National pride. Yeah, yeah. And the 00:37:45.110 --> 00:37:48.250 amount of people balking at this in domestic 00:37:48.250 --> 00:37:51.889 politics would be huge. The flip side is, of 00:37:51.889 --> 00:37:54.750 course, that if you go to law school, one of 00:37:54.750 --> 00:37:57.869 the first classes you take. is something called 00:37:57.869 --> 00:38:01.530 torts, right? Which is just the French for wrongs, 00:38:01.530 --> 00:38:04.010 right? And, you know, so when you've been wronged, 00:38:04.010 --> 00:38:06.309 you take somebody to court and usually, you know, 00:38:06.309 --> 00:38:08.590 it's civil compensation, right? You get the civil 00:38:08.590 --> 00:38:12.570 compensation. Well, we have records for a lot 00:38:12.570 --> 00:38:15.030 of this stuff, right? I mean, there's a lot of 00:38:15.030 --> 00:38:19.690 torts that happened and it's pretty easy. So 00:38:19.690 --> 00:38:22.309 when people say, well, how much, how would we 00:38:22.309 --> 00:38:24.679 distribute it? It was like, well, we have. a 00:38:24.679 --> 00:38:27.219 process for that actually pre -existing in our 00:38:27.219 --> 00:38:30.760 court system to adjudicate that. And this would 00:38:30.760 --> 00:38:34.579 just be a matter of scaling and mobilizing researchers 00:38:34.579 --> 00:38:36.820 who are specialists in certain regions, stuff 00:38:36.820 --> 00:38:39.739 like that, to do the tabulations of, you know, 00:38:39.739 --> 00:38:42.420 measuring labor extracted or resource extraction, 00:38:42.659 --> 00:38:44.880 whatever it may be. It could all be done. It's 00:38:44.880 --> 00:38:47.719 just a matter of political will, right? So I 00:38:47.719 --> 00:38:51.320 think I always just say that reparations have 00:38:51.320 --> 00:38:54.480 happened already. it's just that the slave owners 00:38:54.480 --> 00:38:56.380 got the reparations for their loss of property 00:38:56.380 --> 00:39:00.139 right so that the british crown made the slave 00:39:00.139 --> 00:39:03.300 owners whole after in the 1830s they banned slavery 00:39:03.300 --> 00:39:06.840 and it was half the crown's wealth for one year 00:39:06.840 --> 00:39:09.039 that they handed over to former slave owners 00:39:09.039 --> 00:39:14.639 Haiti, who famously had not only a democratic 00:39:14.639 --> 00:39:19.099 revolution an anti -colonial revolution an anti 00:39:19.099 --> 00:39:21.980 -slavery revolution but also an anti -racist 00:39:21.980 --> 00:39:25.539 revolution, they were rewarded for that with 00:39:25.539 --> 00:39:28.960 basically an indemnity to pay until 1944 to the 00:39:28.960 --> 00:39:31.500 French for effectively loss of property by their 00:39:31.500 --> 00:39:34.659 slave colony, right? So whenever you're wondering 00:39:34.659 --> 00:39:37.440 why Haiti is the poorest country in the Western 00:39:37.440 --> 00:39:40.679 hemisphere, it was meant to be by such policies. 00:39:40.840 --> 00:39:44.320 There's a clear logic there, right? So those 00:39:44.320 --> 00:39:47.679 reparations have happened, right? Reparations 00:39:47.679 --> 00:39:50.500 from colonialism and slavery have happened. just 00:39:50.500 --> 00:39:52.239 not in the direction you think they might have 00:39:52.239 --> 00:39:56.679 gone. Yeah. And of late, there's been talk of 00:39:56.679 --> 00:40:03.360 the British museums and them lending out or having 00:40:03.360 --> 00:40:05.159 like a timeshare sort of thing where they'd be 00:40:05.159 --> 00:40:06.840 like, okay, the Kohinoor spent six months in 00:40:06.840 --> 00:40:08.760 India, six months here, or even with the Greek 00:40:08.760 --> 00:40:11.659 statues, they tried that for a while. So there 00:40:11.659 --> 00:40:15.480 are some efforts being taken to kind of give 00:40:15.480 --> 00:40:19.460 back, but not really give back in... in the form 00:40:19.460 --> 00:40:21.619 that they can give back things that were taken 00:40:21.619 --> 00:40:23.880 or acknowledged, at least on the side of the 00:40:23.880 --> 00:40:25.880 government. Fun fact, the British government 00:40:25.880 --> 00:40:29.780 has never apologized for Jallianwala Bagh. They've 00:40:29.780 --> 00:40:33.940 just expressed their sympathies or their empathy 00:40:33.940 --> 00:40:37.360 towards the situation. So I think you can start 00:40:37.360 --> 00:40:41.079 with an apology. I think that would be a great 00:40:41.079 --> 00:40:44.900 way to look at that. But let's shift direction 00:40:44.900 --> 00:40:47.710 a little bit here. So something, and I hope I'm 00:40:47.710 --> 00:40:49.769 not outing you on this, your students may not 00:40:49.769 --> 00:40:52.949 know is that you are also a DJ. Oh, yeah. Okay. 00:40:53.050 --> 00:40:57.829 Yeah, sure. And that you, you're into various 00:40:57.829 --> 00:41:02.510 kinds of music, especially vinyl. And looking 00:41:02.510 --> 00:41:06.170 at your experience as a historian and now along 00:41:06.170 --> 00:41:08.909 with music, let's look at music and the arts 00:41:08.909 --> 00:41:12.869 as a sort of voice either for or against colonialism. 00:41:13.719 --> 00:41:17.119 and how the arts can play a role in a potentially 00:41:17.119 --> 00:41:21.000 decolonized future. Now, I've heard of instances 00:41:21.000 --> 00:41:25.260 of freedom songs in Algeria being sung, or underground 00:41:25.260 --> 00:41:27.940 techno at protest movements. From your knowledge 00:41:27.940 --> 00:41:32.219 of both these fields, where would you say the 00:41:32.219 --> 00:41:34.219 arts have, what role do the arts have to play 00:41:34.219 --> 00:41:36.739 in decolonizing? Yeah, I mean, they have a massive 00:41:36.739 --> 00:41:40.199 role, right? Because this is precisely why colonists, 00:41:40.239 --> 00:41:44.929 modern colonialism, focused on the indigenous 00:41:44.929 --> 00:41:48.949 cultures to try to either suppress them, segregate 00:41:48.949 --> 00:41:51.710 them, certainly make them appear a second tier 00:41:51.710 --> 00:41:55.550 because they understood that cultural identification, 00:41:55.949 --> 00:42:01.309 cultural pride does not make a docile subject. 00:42:01.630 --> 00:42:06.670 Right. So, so, um, you know, I think culture 00:42:06.670 --> 00:42:12.639 is, is supremely important. Um, and it can. have 00:42:12.639 --> 00:42:18.260 an effect, I think, in movements for anti -colonialism. 00:42:19.460 --> 00:42:22.780 In movements of decolonization, such as we're 00:42:22.780 --> 00:42:24.780 talking about it, right? So, you know, we're 00:42:24.780 --> 00:42:27.760 after colonialism, but the colonial mentalities 00:42:27.760 --> 00:42:29.719 and practices are still there. So how do we rid 00:42:29.719 --> 00:42:31.340 ourselves of those? I think that's a different 00:42:31.340 --> 00:42:38.460 thing. So with anti -colonialism, there's a very 00:42:38.460 --> 00:42:42.489 sort of clear distinction between friends and 00:42:42.489 --> 00:42:45.190 enemies right so that we know that this is the 00:42:45.190 --> 00:42:49.650 enemy um and it's reflected in the lyrics and 00:42:49.650 --> 00:42:52.329 stuff like that of the songs that come out with 00:42:52.329 --> 00:42:57.309 decolonization what that would look like would 00:42:57.309 --> 00:43:02.469 that then mean um the french rapper does not 00:43:02.469 --> 00:43:07.730 rap in french but they rap and say arabic but 00:43:07.730 --> 00:43:11.320 they are living in france but they're rapping 00:43:11.320 --> 00:43:13.500 in Arabic and they've just shrunk their audience. 00:43:14.380 --> 00:43:18.380 And so who's listening, right? So this is fundamentally 00:43:18.380 --> 00:43:21.440 the question that anti -colonial writers were 00:43:21.440 --> 00:43:24.099 dealing with in the 40s and 50s, which is that, 00:43:24.139 --> 00:43:27.539 do I want to have the largest platform possible 00:43:27.539 --> 00:43:31.900 in order to get my ideas out? And that usually 00:43:31.900 --> 00:43:35.519 means acknowledging the fact that the native 00:43:35.519 --> 00:43:39.909 languages of my region have been crushed. And 00:43:39.909 --> 00:43:42.030 what's left is English or French or something 00:43:42.030 --> 00:43:45.489 like that. Some people opted for that, right? 00:43:45.550 --> 00:43:51.349 So Chinua Achebe, things fall apart. He had a 00:43:51.349 --> 00:43:54.510 big debate with Thiong'o about this because Thiong'o 00:43:54.510 --> 00:43:56.230 was basically saying, no, no, no, we have to 00:43:56.230 --> 00:43:59.369 step away. Achebe is saying, no, there's not, 00:43:59.409 --> 00:44:02.489 you know, the other aspect of colonialism is 00:44:02.489 --> 00:44:05.690 the miseducation of our people and therefore 00:44:05.690 --> 00:44:09.460 our native languages weren't taught. And the 00:44:09.460 --> 00:44:12.019 schooling was, you know, was not a focus. And 00:44:12.019 --> 00:44:14.920 therefore, I want to be able to speak not only 00:44:14.920 --> 00:44:17.260 to those who are in power in my country, but 00:44:17.260 --> 00:44:19.800 then sort of the global stage. And therefore, 00:44:20.000 --> 00:44:22.380 you know, global English is the language that 00:44:22.380 --> 00:44:24.840 has to be embraced. It's a strategic decision. 00:44:25.000 --> 00:44:28.719 I don't think there's a right or wrong take. 00:44:28.820 --> 00:44:33.019 I mean, there's good moral and political arguments 00:44:33.019 --> 00:44:36.320 on both sides of that, which I find attractive. 00:44:36.920 --> 00:44:46.960 But I think, you know, let's say music. Music 00:44:46.960 --> 00:44:53.920 is tricky because if it's not an obvious colonial 00:44:53.920 --> 00:44:58.679 master, right, you're basically trying to tell 00:44:58.679 --> 00:45:01.840 your listener, first of all, you have to believe 00:45:01.840 --> 00:45:04.960 me that there is this colonial shadow being cast 00:45:04.960 --> 00:45:11.309 on our society. and that my song has lyrics attacking 00:45:11.309 --> 00:45:13.929 it. And by the way, my song's really catchy, 00:45:14.050 --> 00:45:18.489 right? And you like it, right? And so often with 00:45:18.489 --> 00:45:21.170 especially music these days, the last part comes 00:45:21.170 --> 00:45:23.309 first because musicians are just struggling. 00:45:23.550 --> 00:45:28.969 And so the commodification part becomes quite 00:45:28.969 --> 00:45:32.889 important. And if it doesn't, the audience is 00:45:32.889 --> 00:45:36.210 very small. So this is, you know, one of those 00:45:36.210 --> 00:45:39.489 sort of tensions of art and commerce that I think 00:45:39.489 --> 00:45:43.909 could end up defanging, let's call it, decolonizing 00:45:43.909 --> 00:45:47.269 music, right? Or one that self -styles itself 00:45:47.269 --> 00:45:51.809 that way. It's possible, but I don't know. From 00:45:51.809 --> 00:45:56.190 history, I think, you know, there's also a lot 00:45:56.190 --> 00:45:59.349 of projection from the present that, oh, well, 00:45:59.449 --> 00:46:04.289 we look back at, say, like the 60s. And, you 00:46:04.289 --> 00:46:05.849 know, what is the music that they were listening 00:46:05.849 --> 00:46:09.530 to then? It's like The Doors and Creedence Clearwater 00:46:09.530 --> 00:46:12.349 Revival with some anti -war songs and stuff like 00:46:12.349 --> 00:46:17.250 that. Right. OK, sure. Fine. But that was just 00:46:17.250 --> 00:46:20.309 a tiny element of what people were listening 00:46:20.309 --> 00:46:23.170 to then. Yeah. And so the idea that this was 00:46:23.170 --> 00:46:26.349 the soundtrack of the revolution, I think, might 00:46:26.349 --> 00:46:31.519 be a little bit misguided and might be. us wishing 00:46:31.519 --> 00:46:33.599 it was that way where it was not necessarily 00:46:33.599 --> 00:46:38.360 that way there's a whole literature from really 00:46:38.360 --> 00:46:43.920 the 10s onward 1910s through the 1970s which 00:46:43.920 --> 00:46:45.900 i would just describe as sort of anti -colonial 00:46:45.900 --> 00:46:49.840 literature which you know you know it's become 00:46:49.840 --> 00:46:53.619 canonical in various ways but it in also in the 00:46:53.619 --> 00:46:55.440 worst ways that people refer to it but they don't 00:46:55.440 --> 00:47:00.059 read it um you know so i think Everybody from 00:47:00.059 --> 00:47:06.860 Gandhi to Césaire to Fanon to Amílcar Cabral 00:47:06.920 --> 00:47:10.139 There's a number of people who should be read 00:47:10.139 --> 00:47:14.840 deeply, slowly, and carefully because they actually 00:47:14.840 --> 00:47:18.159 have a lot to say about right now, even though 00:47:18.159 --> 00:47:20.139 they've been writing about a century ago at this 00:47:20.139 --> 00:47:29.599 point. What would it be? So I guess one big thing 00:47:29.599 --> 00:47:33.460 is that before you can have something like decolonization, 00:47:33.699 --> 00:47:38.900 we have to look at colonialism in the face and 00:47:38.900 --> 00:47:42.500 fully understand it in order to properly decolonize, 00:47:42.500 --> 00:47:47.380 should that ever happen. And it's definitely 00:47:47.380 --> 00:47:51.780 more than just barbaric acts of breaking statues 00:47:51.780 --> 00:47:57.639 and defacing monuments. burning books and tearing 00:47:57.639 --> 00:48:00.900 up pieces of art, it goes on to a much deeper 00:48:00.900 --> 00:48:05.599 level, I would say. It's something that we can't 00:48:05.599 --> 00:48:08.860 necessarily break away from. We just sometimes 00:48:08.860 --> 00:48:10.860 have to adapt. Some things we can get rid of, 00:48:10.960 --> 00:48:12.500 but some things I think you just have to adapt 00:48:12.500 --> 00:48:14.800 and move on because it happened. Yeah. I mean, 00:48:14.820 --> 00:48:18.599 I think the major point here is that the purpose 00:48:18.599 --> 00:48:22.340 to study this stuff is to think about the social 00:48:22.340 --> 00:48:25.449 relationships and norms that it produced. that 00:48:25.449 --> 00:48:31.050 we often unconsciously reproduce. And then to 00:48:31.050 --> 00:48:32.630 think about that is like, do we want to reproduce 00:48:32.630 --> 00:48:35.349 it? Maybe we do, maybe we don't, but we can only 00:48:35.349 --> 00:48:40.409 have a thoughtful understanding of it once we've 00:48:40.409 --> 00:48:43.710 done the proper analysis of what thing colonialism 00:48:43.710 --> 00:48:46.929 actually was. Yeah. And just to be aware that 00:48:46.929 --> 00:48:49.949 activities in our day -to -day life that may 00:48:49.949 --> 00:48:52.869 not seem to be influenced by colonialism is just 00:48:52.869 --> 00:48:56.079 something that we're doing. might have colonial 00:48:56.079 --> 00:48:59.019 roots. So think about that. Be aware about that. 00:48:59.320 --> 00:49:01.340 And that's some homework for you guys and all 00:49:01.340 --> 00:49:04.739 our listeners to do. Thank you so much for joining 00:49:04.739 --> 00:49:07.019 us. Thanks. That was fun. This was a very interesting 00:49:07.019 --> 00:49:09.320 conversation. And that brings us to the end of 00:49:09.320 --> 00:49:11.239 our episode. Thank you so much for monkeying 00:49:11.239 --> 00:49:13.719 around with us. Stay tuned for the next episode 00:49:13.719 --> 00:49:14.639 of the Monkey Mind Lab.