Daily Times

The often-quoted words “White men are saving the brown women from the Brown men,” reverberates the civilising claims of the white man for the less developed societies and that it is the women if these are educated, protected, and given equal status to man, the postcolonial societies can move forward to upward mobility. This, on the one hand, helps the white man assume the status of a protector of the brown people and, on the other hand, facilitates his task of colonising, mentally and physically, the non-white nations and to further the implementation of his agenda.

On another level, such an ideology entailed that the progress in the non-white societies could be made only if their women are given progress. This attitude has been the norm since the imperialist colonisation to modern-day neo-colonialism. Be it the colonial times in India, or Africa in the 19th, or 20th century, or post-war-on-terror rehabilitation efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, this philosophy was touted by the oppressive powers This problematises the whole situation because of the inherent seeds of marginalisation in the very concept of colonisation and the socio-cultural clash of women with the men of their societies.

South Asian postcolonial writers are often found to exhibit the same goals and agenda, especially those writing in English. They seem to toe the lines set up by Spivak, who concluded in her essay that women in postcolonial societies are subalterns and, hence, have no voice of themselves. The subalternity of women in south Asia entailed that they are bound to be represented instead of representing themselves. It further complicated the matter when the voice of the subaltern was ignored and hence, subaltern women were not listened to even if they spoke.

Fischer-Tine and Mann (editors) in the book “Colonialism as civilising Mission” believe that the colonial master wished to legitimise his occupation of the weaker nations of the world by convincing them that he was with them to bring the fruits of European progress, knowledge, education and culture, ostensibly to let the colonialised inferior people become at par with the colonial master’s culture. But this mission must never reach the final stages because if it does so, the justification for occupation would vanish. So, the civilising mission has not been decolonised and has existed in continuation even today, be it physical or mental. One of the major tools of this civilising mission was the liberation and emancipation of women of the colonised. This has been one component of the civilising mission of the colonial master because of the most vulnerable status of women as postcolonial subjects in the postcolonial societies. As per the theory of orientalism, the colonial master labelled the colonised men as savages because they would not respect or honour their women. This entails respect for women a general standard of being civilised and the difference between a civilized individual and an uncultured one.

As per the theory of orientalism, the colonial master labelled the colonised men as savages because they would not respect or honour their women.

The same civilising mission also lent a superior edge to the coloniser in the sense of a saviour of oppressed women and hence, posted them at the level of a hero of the oppressed and as a consequence to this, and as a binary opposition, the colonised man was immediately declared as uncultured, savage, uneducated, traditional, fundamentalist, oppressor patriarch who would not give any liberty and power or any rights to his women. This created a legitimacy and justification for the punishment of the brown men at the hands of the white coloniser besides justifying lingering on the rule and intervening into the cultures of the local people to reform them and hence, make them more suitable for the continuity of the British rule.

To implement this agenda, the colonial master utilised many tools but the most effective one proved English literature. One of the masterpieces of fiction in English, Forster’s “A Passage to India,” debates the possibility of the friendship between the orient and the west and declares the impossibility of friendship between the two because of the brutal, uncivilised and uncultured nature of the men of the coloniser’s age and time. The brutality of the brown man is further heightened to its optimal position by putting Adela Quested under a hallucinated situation where she miscalculates that Dr Aziz, an Indian Muslim, has attempted her rape; a sufficient pretext to declare Muslim doctor as the one who is licentious and brute and knows no manners of respecting a woman and who attempted a brutal activity. The white coloniser (Ronny) uses all manners and matters to prove himself the saviour of the women.

The practice of maligning postcolonial males is continuing even today, though with somewhat sophistication and hence, finding a sufficient pretext to exercise physical as well as mental control over the men of the society in an attempt to civilise them through coercive and reductive measures.

The writer is a professor of English at Government Emerson College, Multan. He can be reached at zeadogar@hotmail.com and Tweets at @Profzee