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Thoughts V: Mental colonization Mondar
M. M. A. NOVO In 1835, Thomas Macaulay, who
served as President of a Committee on Public Instruction in Bengal,
recommended a thoroughly English educational system which "would create a
class of persons, Indian in blood and colour but English in taste, in morals
and in intellect" and through such a class the British would perpetuate
their rule. It
is my firm belief that if our plan of education is followed up, there would
not be a single idolater in The greatest colonization is the colonization of the
mind. In the initial stages of colonization, the conquered people are enslaved
and controlled with the force of arms. The weakness of this form of
colonization is that the colonized people can rise up in revolution and send
the colonizer packing, permanently. This colonization is transient. However,
the colonizer has other weapons in his arsenal and these are used to colonize
the minds of the conquered people, since colonization of the mind has more
permanency. There are various degrees of this mental
colonization. Specialized education and exposure to carefully controlled media
are used to partially colonize the minds of the people. This is not a thing of
the past and is still done with greater
vigour. The big guns for this colonization are the televisions, radios and
newspapers and other forms of media – often this is called deculturisation
by people labelled as conservative. Entertainment, News, TV, and radio programs are
slanted to allow the people to form the “desired” opinions and the
“desired” prejudices. Primarily, however, it is education that is
controlled. The media adds to the colonization by controlled education. Books and curricula are chosen more or less by the
existing powers (corporate, government, and religious) reflecting their
wishes. Students learn what the “powers” wish them to learn. The choice of
material for the student from which the student learns is pre-selected. The
material which will enable the student to go beyond the classroom are also
controlled either by subtly discouraging the student from going too far from
what is taught in the classroom or it is controlled directly by making certain
types of material more available than others and some simply unavailable. This affects the freedom of thought. Freedom of
thought depends heavily on the diversity of knowledge and the control of
education greatly curtails this freedom. Where the freedom of knowledge is
controlled, freedom of thought is dead and thus freedom of speech becomes
irrelevant. And democracy thus becomes a mere tool of the existing powers. Effects of even this partial colonization can be seen
in much of the world. It has grave
cultural effects such as in Much of *** The ultimate weapon of colonization, a weapon far
superior to any conventional weapon, exists in the arsenal of the colonizer
– it is religion. One can rise above one’s education once one observes
reality to be contrary to the teachings and may even see past the television
and other media. However, it is much harder to reject religious teaching (for
fear of punishment and for greed of reward) as religion suppresses one’s
thinking faculties. Thus, the ultimate colonization of the mind is done by
religion. Once this is done, mental colonization is complete and the people
readily submit themselves to the colonizer. The colonizer may leave the
country and allow nationalism but will still have a colony just as Macaulay
said, “Indian in blood and colour but English in taste, in morals and in
intellect" and through such a class the British would perpetuate their
rule”. The mentally colonized individual even looks for his
heritage in the land of the colonizer. They feel pride in the colonizers’
history and glory. They hero-worship the very aggressors who parasitize their
country like leeches as colonizers or in their most recent form –
neo-colonialists. Still slaves just without chains! A very tiny section of the colonized, usually those
who were affluent before the arrival of the colonialists or those who were
servants of the colonizer deal with the colonialist to achieve
pseudo-independence and gain power, just as Marx said. Through these
“educated” natives, the colonialists practice neo-colonialism, in which
the wealth of the colonized nation still flows to the colonialists. This tiny
group becomes the elite and extremely rich and powerful while the rest of the
people fight each other, intoxicated by the scarcity principle, for the scraps
that fall down the cracks of the system according to Reagan’s highly
insulting “trickle down” theory. Even the culture is gradually modified – and needs
very little outside force. People abandon their own culture and traditions as
they are taught to think that their culture and traditions are primitive and
uncivilized or antireligious. A native
child who grows up in a Christian missionary school very often associates
their parents and/or ancestors as misguided and leftover from an uncivilized
world and embrace westernism freely. Even the language is modified as in East
Bengali Bangla where certain Bangla words (like the word for water) are
replaced with Urdu (Hindi dialect with a heavy dose of Arabic and Persian
words) words, which are considered more Islamic. *** From the very birth, religion controls all the vital
points on one’s life including one’s name, which is just the tip of the
iceberg. When one reaches sexual maturity, one has to take refuge in religion,
since religion controls one’s sexual freedom. One needs to get a licence
from the priest to have sex – marriage. (Today, thankfully, one can avoid
this – but still needs to get permission from the court in many countries.)
Even at death, one has to pass through the hands of the priest. Ultimately,
the colonization is done in such a way that for all the important things in
life, one has to run to religion and the bosses of religion. The very way a
person leads life is dictated by religion. By controlling the vital points,
virtually a person’s entire being is controlled by the religion – loyalty
of the individual to the bosses of the religion (the colonizer) is achieved.
So undoubtedly, it is the ultimate colonizer. This ultimate colonization of the mind is symbolized
by the conversion of faith AND choice of NAMES for children by parents. The
parents, who stand in awe of the aggressor and search for heritage in the
aggressor’s land, take names for their children from the names of the
colonizers. Arabic and European (Biblical) names are the choice names in the
different colonized nations depending on the faith. The colonizers recognize
this very well. Until recently in some countries, like One might trivialize the use of foreign names.
However, it is a bigger issue than one realizes. It does not only symbolize
the loss of culture and ultimate colonization, it also has many consequences.
A name is one of the most intimate possessions and control of the name has a
lot of significance
and effect on one’s mind. What is the need of names? When we want to learn
about something or one, we need to distinguish and identify, hence comes the
use of a name or in general terms, a label. The name one is given at birth or
individual label controls how one is perceived in many ways and even how one
views oneself. All Daves and all Toms are not the same, however, when the name
indicates a certain type of origin, it immediately triggers prejudices. Arabic
names indicate to us that a person is Muslim and Indian/Bengali names indicate
that the person is probably Hindu. It affects both the person with the name
and those around him. It moulds the world around a person. It encourages
generalization. A person with a Bengali name will be perceived generally as a
Hindu and the circle of friends around him will form partially filtered by
that name. The outlook of the person born in an Islamic family with a Bengali
name will be much different from that of one with an Arabic name. Then there is a much more important issue – the
confusion of name due to the generalization and prejudice has greater
implications -- an extremely long-term effect of mental colonization. If a
person with an Arabic name of Bengali origin does something wonderful and is
noted worldwide, there is a great chance that he will be perceived as an Arab.
This will create ambiguity and confusion... much more in the future than at
present. In a thousand years, one might find the name and achievement of an
individual and get a completely wrong idea about his heritage. Again, this
shows the permanency of this type of colonization. *** Ultimate colonization by conversion/imposition of
religion starts in early childhood. Before the capability to use sense and
logic is developed to discern the fallacies and absurdities of religious
teachings, religion is honed into the mind of a child. A child’s primary
sources of teaching (absolute) in this period are the parents who initiate the
colonization process... infusing the child with a foreign doctrine as if it
were a virus being transmitted. The parents, themselves, were infected by
their parents – the virus of colonization is passed down the generations
from parent to child. This colonization/belief is then strengthened by the
priests, media and even schools as the child grows up. Ultimately the
child’s faculties for thinking and discerning logic from illogic, is
selectively paralyzed. On certain issues – religious issues or
“patriotic” issues, the person will fail to “see” logic and reality.
One is taught unthinking, obsessive and ostentatious practice of beliefs
through sterile rituals -- religion. This colonization also creates a hostility in the
minds of individuals when beliefs run into conflict with reality or own
inherent sense of logic. That is, when the individual is asked or some
situation forces the individual to review a fundamental illogical belief, the
individual feels stress and feels irrationally threatened. This conflict is
often the cause of great religious intolerance. Today the colonization process has its own life and
does not need any fixed colonizers. Colonized individuals feel duty bound to
propagate the colonization process. Religion is the greatest self-propagating
colonizing weapon, which again makes religion the ultimate weapon of
colonization. Its great power facilitates mobilization the masses. The
colonizer or other authority of religion can mobilize the unsuspecting masses
even to go to war upon their bidding even if the war is unjustifiable. Religion with the power of the media creates this zombie like effect where people kill and die for second hand beliefs and for scraps that fall from the table of the masters of the society. Individual minds are so colonized through the slanted media, selective education and the ultimate colonizer, religion that they are trained to be intellectually lazy. One would rather let someone else do their thinking and would just accept that someone else’s opinion as their own belief. In other words: ultimate and long lasting colonization. And so Einstein laments, “It is in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.” When faced with the chasm of unfamiliarity or uncertainty, I would rather
build a bridge of reason than take a leap of faith. -- NOVO
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