(NOOR PART)

DEFINATION
Colonialism is a practice of domination, which involves the subjugation of one people to
another. Like colonialism, imperialism also involves political and economic control over a
dependent territory.
The term colony comes from the Latin word colonus, meaning farmer. This root reminds us that
the practice of colonialism usually involved the transfer of population to a new territory, where
the arrivals lived as permanent settlers while maintaining political allegiance to their country of
origin.
ORIGIN
Between the late fifteenth century and the years after World War II, mostly European empires
colonized the vast majority of the world. The French Empire, for instance, ruled over territory
greater than the size of Europe. But the largest of these domains was the British Empire, which,
at its peak, covered a quarter of the world. The sun was said to never set on the British Empire,
as at least one of its colonies was always in daylight. Britain’s most important colony was the
subcontinent, the borders of which stretched from modern-day Afghanistan to Myanmar.
WHY
I just wanted to shed light on why countries pursued colonies.
Let’s explore a few reasons:
Raw Materials: Colonies provided access to gold, silver, and cash crops such as sugar and
tobacco
Captive Markets.
Religion: Some religious leaders and missionaries saw in colonialism the opportunity to convert
hundreds of millions of people to Christianity. They perceived colonialism in a beneficial light,
believing it could help people whom they viewed as backward, uncivilized, and unsaved from
eternal damnation.
Prestige.
TYPES
Colonialism is generally classified by one of five overlapping types. These are settler colonialism;
exploitation colonialism; plantation colonialism; surrogate colonialism; and internal colonialism.
Settler
The most common form of colonial conquest, settler colonialism describes the migration of
large groups of people from one country to another country to build permanent, self-
supporting settlements. Typically supported by wealthy imperialistic governments, settlements
created by settler colonialism tended to last indefinitely, except in rare cases of total
depopulation caused by famine or disease.
Exploitation
Exploitation colonialism describes the use of force to control another country for purposes of
exploiting its population as labor and its natural resources as raw material.
Plantation
Plantation colonialism was an early method of colonization in which settlers undertake the
mass production of a single crop, such as cotton, tobacco, coffee, or sugar.
Surrogate
In surrogate colonialism, a foreign power encourages and supports, either openly or covertly,
the settlement of a non-native group on territory occupied by an indigenous population. Many
anthropologists consider the Zionist Jewish settlement inside the Islamic Middle Eastern state
of Palestine to be an example of surrogate colonialism because it was established with the
urging and assistance of the ruling British Empire.
Internal
Internal colonialism describes the oppression or exploitation of one racial or ethnic group by
another within the same country.
(ZAIN PART)
THEORIES:
Different theories have been propounded by different European thinkers to legitimize the act of
colonialism. It has been a serious concern for both the moral and political philosophers in the
Western tradition. Today the theory we will be talking about is the Great Partition.
When the British finally left, the subcontinent was partitioned into two independent nation
states: Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. Across the Indian subcontinent,
communities that had coexisted for almost a millennium attacked each other in a terrifying
outbreak of sectarian violence, with Hindus and Sikhs on one side and Muslims on the other—a
mutual genocide as unexpected as it was unprecedented.
After the Second World War, Britain simply no longer had the resources with which to control
its greatest imperial asset, and its exit from sub-continent was messy, hasty, and clumsily
improvised.
Eventually, around a fifth of South Asia’s population came to identify itself as Muslim. The Sufi
mystics associated with the spread of Islam often regarded the Hindu scriptures as divinely
inspired. Some even took on the yogic practices of Hindu sadhus, rubbing their bodies with
ashes, or hanging upside down while praying. In village folk traditions, the practice of the two
faiths came close to blending into one. Hindus would visit the graves of Sufi masters and
Muslims would leave offerings at Hindu shrines. Sufis were especially numerous in Punjab and
Bengal
The cultural mixing took place throughout the subcontinent.
In the nineteenth century, Indo-Pak was still a place where traditions, languages, and cultures
cut across religious groupings, and where people did not define themselves primarily through
their religious faith.
Many writers persuasively blame the British for the gradual erosion of these shared traditions.
Hindus and Muslims had begun to turn on each other during the chaos unleashed by the
Second World War.
Violence on the streets between Hindus and Muslims began to escalate. People moved away
from, or were forced out of, mixed neighborhoods and took refuge in increasingly polarized
ghettos. Tensions were often heightened by local and regional political leaders.
The Bombay-based writer Saadat Hasan Manto saw the creation of Pakistan as both a personal
and a communal disaster. The tragedy of Partition, he wrote, was not that there were now two
countries instead of one but the realization that “human beings in both countries were slaves,
slaves of bigotry . . . slaves of religious passions, slaves of animal instincts and barbarity.”
Today, both India and Pakistan remain crippled by the narratives built around memories of the
crimes of Partition, as politicians (particularly in India) and the military (particularly in Pakistan)
continue to stoke the hatreds of 1947 for their own ends.
THEORIST
Postcolonial theorists and historians have been concerned with investigating the various
trajectories of modernity as understood and experienced from a range of philosophical,
cultural, and historical perspectives. They have been particularly concerned with engaging with
the ambiguous legacy of the Enlightenment—as expressed in social, political, economic,
scientific, legal, and cultural thought. The legacy is ambiguous, according to postcolonial
theorists, because the age of Enlightenment was also an age of empire, and the connection
between those two historical epochs is more than incidental.
Marxist theorists including Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Kautsky, and Nikolai Bukharin also explored
the issue of imperialism. Kautsky’s position is especially important because his analysis
introduced concepts that continue to play a prominent role in contemporary world systems
theory and post-colonial studies. Kautsky challenges the assumption that imperialism would
lead to the development of the areas subjected to economic exploitation.
9/11
For Muslims, the post-September 11 ramifications of Islamophobia continue to be a part of this
world
Muslims continue to be the target of hate, bullying, and discrimination as a result of the
stereotypes that were perpetuated by Islamophobes and the media in the years following the
9/11 attacks
Twenty-one years after the attacks, Muslims continue to face the threat of targeted violence
The unfortunate reality is there are people and organizations that benefit from perpetuating
Islamophobia, bigotry, and war
The numbers related to discrimination against Muslims are alarming and show just how much
Islamophobia has increased over the past 20 years.
The most blatant falsehood to arise from the response to the 9/11 attacks is the idea that
Muslims are somehow more prone to violence than other groups or religions
This dangerous and inaccurate ideology portrays Islam’s more than two billion followers in a
way that ultimately dehumanizes them. Even worse, it has led to government policies and law
enforcement practices that surveil the Muslim community.
Islamophobia does not exist in a vacuum. Muslims are unfortunately not the first, and they
sadly will not be the last, group that faces hate and discrimination even US has a long history of
“dehumanising and marginalising” ethnic and religious groups, including Native Americans,
African Americans, Jews, and Asian Americans.
The only way to combat Islamophobia after 9/11 is to address it head-on, he said.
It is important to hold people who perpetuate racism, bigotry, and xenophobia accountable for
their hateful words and actions in all sectors, whether it’s at the border, at the airport, by law
enforcement, or by a politician
Conclusion:
I would like to conclude our presentation by saying that it is clear that Europe benefited
through their colonies at the expense of the countries in which they maintained power.
Germany took interest in the natural resources and mining opportunities available in Africa and
installed brutal and harsh policies in order to profit as much as possible. France was also
interested in natural resources, and their high demands led to the development of a cruel
slavery system within West Africa. The Portuguese also exploited the Africans in their effort to
amass as much gold, ivory and slaves as possible. Finally, Belgium specifically chose to seek
profit in Africa because the exploitation of Africans would likely go unnoticed.