— Amir Ali 

(The Indian Express has launched a new series of articles for UPSC aspirants written by seasoned writers and scholars on issues and concepts spanning History, Polity, International Relations, Art, Culture and Heritage, Environment, Geography, Science and Technology, and so on. Read and reflect with subject experts and boost your chance of cracking the much-coveted UPSC CSE. In the following article, political scientist Amir Ali explains the process of decolonisation.)

Decolonisation is the process of ending direct political rule by European colonial powers over the colonised countries of Latin America, Asia and Africa.

In Asia and Africa, most countries experienced the process of decolonisation in the years soon after the end of the Second World War. For instance, India and Indonesia became independent from British and Dutch political rule respectively, within a few years after the end of the Second World War in 1945. 

A notable French colony like Algeria underwent decolonisation in 1962 through the efforts of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN). A British colony like Nigeria achieved independence in 1960, while Zimbabwe emerged as an independent nation from British rule as late as 1980. 

In contrast, Latin American countries experienced decolonisation from Spanish rule much earlier, towards the beginning of the 19th century. Many of these countries were inspired by the charisma of Simon Bolivar (1783-1830), known as the liberator, whose efforts helped countries such as Venezuela, Peru and Bolivia to declare independence from Spanish rule.

However, it’s important to note that the process of decolonisation was very often set in motion with the creation of a national consciousness. This was often the result of a small elite group of educated and enlightened natives who would use the arguments of the colonisers by turning it against them.

This consciousness then took the form of convincing the people of the colonised nation of their inherent strengths that had been subjugated over the course of colonial rule.

The spark for national consciousness was often lit then in the colonial metropolitan centre in Europe, where members of this small elite group would head for higher education. Once these leaders returned to their countries, they would initiate a wider national movement that embodied and carried forward the initial spark of inspiration.

Moreover, sources such as literature and history played a crucial role in fostering national consciousness. 

Literature has very often played an important role in sustaining and carrying forward the flame of national consciousness. Poets have written eloquently about the glories of their land that have been diminished by the humiliation of colonialism and political subjugation. 

Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore is one such notable poet. His poem Jana Gana Mana, originally written in Bengali, has become the national anthem of India. His other poem Amar Shonar Bangla (Oh my golden land of Bengal) has been adopted as the national anthem of Bangladesh. 

Similarly, William Butler Yeats in one of his poems, Easter 1916, wrote about the Irish nationalists and their uprising before Ireland became independent from Britain in December 1921. The legendary Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwesh bewailed the experience of dispossession by poignantly writing the lines, ‘Where should the birds fly after the last sky?’

In addition to literature, another significant source of expanding nationalist consciousness is history. Nationalist historians seek to retell their vanquished version of the history of colonial subjugation that is at variance with the version presented by erstwhile colonisers.  

For instance, many historians of the British Empire have written about its supposed benefits to the countries that it ruled. Nationalist historians would of course counter and contest such a benevolent representation of colonial rule, emphasising the exploitative elements of the same. 

However, the famous British historian Eric Hobsbawm (1917-2012) cautioned that nationalists are often prone to getting their history wrong.

The vehicle of national movements has often been powerful political parties that led the movements for liberation and decolonisation. It is interesting that the word ‘congress’ which means the coming together or assembling of people, provides the name for two political parties. One is the Indian National Congress and the other is the African National Congress (ANC), modelled on the former as a large umbrella organisation. 

The ANC, led by the legendary statesman Nelson Mandela, spearheaded the fight against South Africa’s racist apartheid regime that came to an end with a referendum in 1994.

The high esteem in which political leaders who led decolonisation movements have been held by their people can be seen in the way they have been reverentially referred to. Indians affectionately call Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi ‘Bapu’; Nelson Mandela is called ‘Madiba’, a respectful reference to the clan that he comes from; and Julius Nyerere, the first president of Tanzania would be referred to as ‘Mwalimu’ which in the Swahili language means teacher. 

National movements for decolonisation have proceeded along the boundaries created by colonising powers, showing the persistence of political boundaries even as the transition from colonialism to post-colonial is made. 

The border that divides India and Pakistan is called the Radcliffe line as it was drawn up by the Boundary Commission headed by Cyril Radcliffe. Ironically, Radcliffe had never before visited India and drawn the border on the basis of majority Muslim and Hindu populations. 

The Durand Line was demarcated as the border between British India and Afghanistan in 1893 and with partition in 1947 became the border of the newly created Pakistan with Afghanistan. The McMahon Line was drawn up in British India at the Simla Conference that lasted from October 1913 to July 1914.

It separates Tibet from Assam and was named after the chief British negotiator Sir Henry McMahon. The McMahon Line became the basis of the Sino-India War of October-November 1962.

In 1916, the Sykes-Picot Agreement was clandestinely negotiated between British diplomat Mark Sykes and French diplomat François Georges-Picot. This accord divided the crumbling domains of the Ottoman Empire, drawing what has been referred to as a ‘line in the sand’, and establishing borders that would later form the modern nation-states of the contemporary Middle East in the form of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine/Israel.

With many decades elapsing since the actual events of decolonisation, the mere act of political independence has not translated into true independence and freedom. The persistence of the phenomenon of neo-colonialism acknowledges the reality of formal political independence, but points to the systemic inequalities in the international political and economic order as a result of which the subordination of the erstwhile colonies continues. 

Latin American dependency theorists pointed to the adverse terms of trade for third world countries that exported predominantly primary goods to first world countries, many of whom would have been once colonial powers and imported manufactured goods from these same countries. 

As a result of these iniquities in the international trading set up, many independent countries resorted to a policy of import substitution industrialisation. In doing so, they avoided becoming overly integrated into the world economy and rather sought to build up a large manufacturing base so that manufactured goods would no longer need to be imported. 

Third world debt which especially became a problem from the 1980s onwards is an instance of the imbalance of global power. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, there are 3.3 billion people who live in countries where interest payments on debt exceed expenditure on health care and education.

Decolonisation did bring about the end of the formal political rule of the colonies by colonisers, yet it was felt that other structures of economic and intellectual domination were still in place. The structures of economic domination have been alluded to in the previous section. 

Post-colonial theory arose in the 1980s to talk about the kind of intellectual hegemony that the metropolitan colonial centres still exercised in the form of knowledge production, especially as university departments in the erstwhile colonised countries were under the dominant sway of intellectual trends of the colonisers such as the 18th century European Enlightenment. 

Post-colonial theory was a reaction to this persistence of colonialism despite the fact of decolonisation, often challenging the universality of European political history. A notable instance of this was historian Dipesh Chakrabarty’s book Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (2000). 

Postcolonial theory has found a receptive home, especially in elite Western universities such as Columbia. A more recent academic framework such as decoloniality has arisen to challenge the very epistemic enforcement of colonial frames of knowledge over indigenous knowledge systems. This again reflects a discontent with the process of decolonisation and seems to suggest that there are still many more miles to go before the process comes to completion. 

What is decolonisation? What role did national consciousness play in the process of decolonisation across Latin America, Asia, and Africa?

What role did political parties in India play in mobilising people and creating a collective national identity during the struggle for independence?

In what ways did political parties in India build alliances with other national movements across Asia and Africa during the global wave of decolonisation?

How did the Radcliffe Line, drawn during the partition of India and Pakistan, shape India’s political and social landscape in the aftermath of independence?

How did decolonisation formally end political rule but allow other forms of domination, such as economic and intellectual control, to persist?

(Amir Ali is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi)

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