Imperialism And Colonialism In India

Colonialism is the form of ascendance of individuals or groups on the states and deportments of people. In Indian sub-continent the colonial rule was not limited to the arms or armaments rather it was the cultural domination of colonizers on the minds of colonized. Colonial knowledge led to spread certain perspectives that marked the distinction between various cultures of the Indian sub-continent. Hence through the process of reification and codification of history British classified the Indian society: compartmentalized the whole into various groups. By applying the same approach British labelled the Pakhtuns of western Frontier as “Pathans” either they were courageous/warriors or they were sinister and corrupt. Mainly, Colonial ethnography …show more content…
This must inevitably lead to a situation of dominance and dependency which will systematically subordinate those governed by it to the imported culture in social, economic and political life. (Nwanosike, 2011). Colonial conquest is not only circumscribed to the arms and armaments but the colonial power fortified and legitimatized themselves by cultural technologies of rule. Colonialism itself was a project of cultural control that abducted the minds of people by classifying them into certain groups and assigning them various characteristics which later became an important feature of their social …show more content…
Edward Said focused on the discipline of Oriental Studies in Europe, including philology, linguistics, ethnography, and the interpretation of culture through the discovery and translation of Oriental texts. Said stressed that they regarded their subjects as inferior to Westerners, and in general backward and in need of European authority and guidance. He repeatedly complained the Orientalists saw the Orient as unchanging and without an internal dynamic; it lacked internal potential for growth, unless it westernized. Edward Said developed the notion of Orientalism and argued that this form of thought tells more about the values and biases of western society than about the Far East. Said is best known for describing and critiquing "Orientalism", which he perceived as a constellation of false assumptions underlying Western attitudes toward the East. In Orientalism, Said claimed a "subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice against Arabo-Islamic peoples and their culture. He argued that a long tradition of false and romanticized images of Asia and the Middle East in Western culture had served as an implicit justification for Europe and the US' colonial and imperial ambitions. (Mart,