WHILE growing up in this country, one witnessed a general sense of frustration among the adults, who had to cope with a dysfunctional system of public service. On several occasions, I heard uncles and aunts accurately explain the myriad of challenges that we faced. At the same time, I also heard them glorify the colonial era, adopting the problematic stance that it was better to be ruled by an extractive colonial machinery than our own state. In some ways, this is the same controversial opinion that is often held by colonial apologists, and which is summarised by the catchphrase ‘at least they built some railroads’.

Little did I know back then that this statement represented a wider set of troubling views that encompassed the many different aspects of our lives. Among them was a disturbing sense of cultural inferiority that some of us may have internalised, for instance, the obsession with foreign beauty standards that is evident from the immense popularity of skin fairness creams across our country. This is internalised racism that we have happily unleashed on our fellow citizens.

Sathnam Sanghera’s recent book, Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain provides vivid details about how the remnants of British imperialism are very much all around us, sometimes in ways that are not harmful, but sometimes in dangerous ways. Of course, there are factors beyond our colonial past that explain our internalised views. It is, however, important to remember that our colonial past did play a major role in the way we view ourselves today.

We may be living in a postcolonial era, yet, we are often surrounded by a colonial mindset that we are still struggling to get rid of. In the present age, we live with views that reflect the power dynamics of the past — sometimes even without realising it. That doesn’t mean that we must continue to live with these views.

A complete story of our history is essential for going forward.

A key step in changing these views is to teach a holistic story of colonial extraction, violence and injustice, a story about our explicit and implicit biases, and about how our view of ourselves changed as a result. Conveying a complete narrative from the past can help us check our biases, and eventually enable us to address them.

So how do we communicate a more inclusive and introspective narrative from the past? Fortunately for us, there are many ways to do so.

At the outset, it is important to remember that history is often taught to us in an exclusionary manner that reflects existing power structures to the exclusion of the stories of the oppressed. In Clint Smith’s book How The Word Is Passed, the author poetically describes how the stories of American slavery are often untold in places that have a troubling past tied to it. At the same time, he also shows us that there are dedicated individuals in the US who are trying to provide a holistic view of history by discussing the troubling association of these places with slavery via educational tours. Beyond reimagining the role of such public places in educating younger generations, there have also been several attempts to change the teaching curriculum in schools to be more inclusive by discussing uncomfortable facts about a past intertwined with slavery. The broader point is that there are indeed ways to teach our future generations a complete story of our past.

To some extent, it is inevitable that our history books will reflect power dynamics from the recent past. At the same time, if we acknowledge this, we could constantly ask ourselves what type of stories of our past remain untold and what we could learn from them. We could perhaps tell a holistic story of colonial oppression to our younger generations and then extend it to other forms of oppression in the country. A more complete story of our monuments, public places and historical figures could explain the current structure of economic and social privilege that we take for granted in our daily lives.

Our aim to shift the narrative should not focus only on colonialism and should not stop at 1947. As is often the case in history, one form of oppression can be replaced with another which represents new power dynamics. This makes it crucial for us to continuously question the views we grew up with and where these views originated from. It makes it crucial to learn from the past in ways that may make us uncomfortable. This would be an important first step in trying to build a more inclusive and egalitarian society. For it would only be after we fully understand, digest, and learn from our past, that we can chart a better, brighter path ahead.

The writer has a doctorate from the University of Oxford and is graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government
Twitter: @KhudadadChattha

Published in Dawn, June 16th, 2022