olonialism, wherever it made inroads, ruptured all civilisations. It inundated nearly every aspect of these cultures and civilisations and brought in an alien worldview derived from the Western experience. This process not only resulted in much talked about economic exploitation but also the destruction of indigenous knowledge, civilisational roots, and harmonious social behaviours. It cut off human relationship with the environment and other humans with different socio-religious identities.

The concepts of language, knowledge, economics, literacy, money, migration, religion, development and success were, inter alia, completely colonised, transformed and given new meanings, not in harmony with indigenous worldviews.

It is commonly misunderstood that with the withdrawal of physical empires in the post-WWII period, the newly formed ‘independent,’ and ‘sovereign’ countries are post-colonial realities—in reality, they are not. With the exception of a few, nearly all of these countries are neo-colonial states which are still, in many subtle ways, serving their colonial masters; their independence is but a mirage.

Most of these countries are being governed, not directly from empires abroad, but by the elite trained in colonial established institutions operating in colonial language and laws, colonial forms of knowledge, colonial patterns of economy, and believing in as well as following colonially transformed religions.

The introduction of the English language, for official and non-official use, replaced the local and indigenous orality-based languages or bolis (sound-based, not necessarily text-based languages).

Language is, essentially, an oral practice that is carried out in space and time and is verbally shared with others or transmitted. Some argue that language is simply a via media but this is a mistaken view, in fact. A language carries nuanced sensibilities and epistemologies associated with its worldview. For instance, with the loss of Punjabi, we have lost the whole worldview, systems of knowledge and our civilisational heritage, and its associated ethos/ values.

Resultantly, our English-speaking children are unable to recognise and name the trees and plants of our region: it means they are decontextualised individuals who have been disrupted from their land, environment and context.

The colonial exercise of replacing indigenous knowledge with non-indigenous knowledge/ science has led to the loss of local wisdom, environmental damage, and the creation of endemic conflicts in communities. The locals lost the science and language that their ancestors developed over millennia and hence, were rendered incapable of engagement with their surroundings and environments.

“Damaging eco-linguistic environments bring the same types of destruction to humans as destroying eco-biological environments brings to other creatures: oppression and a loss of connection with the habitat,” argues linguist Ahmar Mahboob in his insightful treatise Writings on Subaltern Practice (2023). Most of our modern education is devoid of local roots and does not train the people in skills needed in their communities.

The colonial exercise of replacing indigenous knowledge with non-indigenous knowledge/science led to the loss of local wisdom, environmental damage, and the creation of endemic conflicts in communities. 

The colonial economy was based on exploitation, loot and plunder. It encouraged consumerism because the factories in mother countries were busy churning out commodities, day and night, which had to be sold in colonies: the colonies were multi-purpose entities, supplying raw materials, workers, soldiers, servants and ready-made consumer markets. This vicious cycle ruined local economies, damaged environments and made people dependent on buying foreign made goods and commodities. The local populations were viewed as targeted captive consumers and customers. For instance, tea was distributed free by the British corporations in many parts of India so that people may turn into addicted consumers of tea, and India could serve as lucrative market of tea producers.

Colonialism rendered literacy as an essential item of its toolkit to co-opt local servants and collaborators of the colonial state. However, with rendering irrelevant Persian, the earlier official language, and regional languages such as Punjabi, the literate were only those who could read and write in English and, in some regions, Urdu and Hindi. For instance, in the Punjab, a whole lot of literate population, who were well-versed in Persian and Punjabi, was turned into illiterate. Making education, governance, law, religion and economy dependent on literacy has served the elite and disadvantaged the resource-less locality-grounded people.

It is not that money or currency was not used in India before the coming of colonialism, its use was limited, and in urban areas, everything was not monetised. The rural areas had self-sufficient local economy which was largely operated through barter system. Most of the locally produced commodities were not monetised and items of day-today-use were granted free to the needy people.

One of the lasting legacies of colonialism is corporations. “Companies and corporations now occupy the time and energy of more Indians than any institution other than the family,” argues William Dalrymple in The Anarchy (2019). With their colonialism backed internationalisation, companies govern the lives of a significant proportion of the human race. Corporations market all sorts of products to ignite further desires and demands, irrespective of its environmental and human cost. To fulfill these desires, one needs to earn more and more money. This shallow process is given the questionable name of economic development.

Colonialism contributed to the decline of oral tradition of certain religions so that their scriptural understanding gained greater prevalence.

Colonialism has not stopped but is continued in nuanced and subtle forms carrying out exploitation of the yet colonised people who think they are free.

They rather take pride in being subjugated by following the colonial language, knowledge, laws, institutions, economics and colonially transformed religion. Hence, we need to colonialise and indigenise to redeem our authentic self and the collective.

The writer heads the History Department at University of Sargodha. He has worked as a research fellow at Royal Holloway College, University of London. He can be reached at abrar.zahoor@hotmail.com His X handle: @AbrarZahoor1