Masters of Mimicry

PS: I apologise for misspelling your name.

Dear Ms. Thawer,

I fear that I must disagree with much of what you have written. It has been fashionable for several decades to blame the evil imperialists for every ill in post-colonial societies. One of my favorite lines from one of my favorite works sums things up quite well: ``The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings.`` Oh no! I am quoting a dead white male! Gramscian hegemony reigns! I am so thoroughly assimilated into the repressive neo-liberal world order that I do not even know it! Yadda, yadda, yadda--oops, there I go again.

But seriously, I would like to suggest Monty Python`s ``Life of Brian`` as an antidote to some of the nonsense you seem to have picked up in your journey through academia and intellectualland. I am referring to the scene where a member of the Judean People`s Liberation Front is railing against the Roman rulers of Judea (i.e., Palestine).

``What have the Romans ever done for us? Nothing, I tell you, nothing!``

Some one pipes up,

``They built the roads.``

``All right, they built the roads. But other than that, what have they ever done for us? Nothing, I tell you, nothing!``

Some one else pipes up.

``They built the aqeducts.``

``All right, they built the roads and the aqueducts. But other than that, what have they ever done for us? Nothing, I tell you, nothing!``

Some one else pipes up....

You get the idea.

There is absolutely no doubt that the British in India (and elsewhere) were, to a very considerable extent, racist. However, you must not confuse the lower-middle class snobbery and racism of the many officials in India with official colonial policy. Colonial policy, at least for the last several decades of colonial rule everywhere in the Empire, was designed to promote eventual self-rule. One may argue that the design was imperfect, that the implementation left much to be desired, and so on, but one cannot condemn the British colonialists in the same sneering fashion that one can dispose of the Portugese.

The simple truth of the matter is that the British Indian Empire and its Indian Civil Service gave the average peasant in India the best--honest, efficient, and even perhaps caring--government he has ever had. I am, of course, referring to the post-Mutiny ICS, the so-called Punjab School of administration.

Clive and company were no better or worse than any Mahratta freebooter. There were some good John Company officials and many bad ones. But, how many good Moghul officials were there? How many honest and dedicated civil servants and politicians have we or the Indians had after Partition?

The simple truth of the matter is that educated Indians (and other colonized people) disliked the British because they denied people like you and I the right to rule. We did not want independence because of some high-faluting ideals we wanted to implement. We wanted to be rid of the British so that we could get to the feeding trough.

If colonial rule is so bad, why is Hong Kong so rich? The British colonial policies were far from perfect but, look at post-WWII Britain. The mistakes made there were not made because the government in power wanted to weaken the nation. Those were honest mistakes.

British rule may have been paternal in the extreme, and the paternalism may have been because many of them felt that we darkies were incapable of ruling ourselves, but the mistakes it made were usually honest ones. Even the arch-imperialist Winston Churchill said that India would be ready for self-governing dominion status. And he was right.

I think that this has gone on long enough for now!

Regards.

Solitude#1

`` When I came to the US I started asking for the rights of my sister to go

to a co-ed med school by herself !( *gasp * what immorality) for my

father to give my mother the right to drive ( *gasp * I must be

brainwashed by the westerns) and for my sisters` right to choose their

own religion (any or none), husbands (any or none) and country of ``

residance (US VS. Arabia or land of the pure).

Hurray for solitaire or is it solitude,Hello this is 99 end,Pakistani girls have been in Co ed. Med-School in thousands for longer than there was Pakistan.Thousands of Pakistani women drive in & outside Pakistan, & i thank my god for not having a brother ,LIKE YOU,leading me astray with his immature childish rebelliousness! Little knowledge is a dangerous thing,fools rush in where angels fear to tread,look before you leap! ``I remember my mother was

taking a walk with me one night down a street in Streemwood Illinois

(typical after dinner walks as in Pakistan) and suddenly she started

jumping up and down her face lighted up. I was shocked to see this 40

year old woman turn into a child. She held my hand and started singing

in the streets ``Mera Beta hay Pakistani Magar Us Ka dil hai Inglistani``

(my son is pakistani but his heart is english)``

Lets see ,your mother is 40 there fore you wont be more than 23 or even younger---a bit old to be ``Cookie``,but any one who burst into irratic luny song ,sure sign of flakiness!

If there is ,every colonial inhabitanants after finishing all there is to learn from Oxford,Cambridge to Harvard,MIT, AGREE on that they have been brainwashed into a EURO CENTRIC point of view.There are already in the pipeline & more promised to come ALTRANATIVE views from Africa, Mid-East.Asia & others

Fazilat Thaver:

Welcome to Chowk.

Read with added interest your essay--specially since you are from my old city, were in my present city and are back in the old one.

You say,``thus, here reading and writing becomes more a means to an end rather than the end itself. My question is why no one ever takes this definition of education into account when walking into the classroom.``

Since you admitted this is an essay, I would have expected you to probe and examine in depth this query. I am a tad disappointed.

Also sentences like these coming from an English major are more than a minor strain---`` My instinct after these classes had been to respond bitterly to the suppression of ethnic voice by the colonizer, which is just what post-colonial literature was supposed to be - angry and beaten down accounts of the homeland.`` And, ``It was then I realized that revolutionary was customary and these exciting discussions were only the token discussions that took place in the token ``other`` department in a big university.``

On a broader lever, we may lament the use of education as a tool. What good is it if it does not open new horizons? If it does not arm us with thinking and probing tools? And I suspect these are universal and not local queries.

And now that the niceties are out of the way, please seek out chowk writer in residence Shandana Minhas. She resides in your city, returned from States 4/5 years ago and has been ``corrupting`` the minds of 8th graders in a private school there. You can learn a lot from her.

Good luck. Pls keep writing,

regards

t

[sarcasm ON] Wow, this is original: the root of another and all our problems are those ``westerns`` ``imperialists`` ``colonialists`` ``english`` ``british`` - I say those colonial english men are the spawn of the devil! infact they are the devils. Those colonialists and their christian missionaries burn in hell but we must be original and make our own Bums and make sure they roast in hell in this world also. They are not just the ``Great Satans`` they are ``satan`` ... we must be original and copy arabs and their Islamic missionaries [sarcasm OFF]

When I came to the US I started asking for the rights of my sister to go to a co-ed med school by herself !( *gasp * what immorality) for my father to give my mother the right to drive ( *gasp * I must be brainwashed by the westerns) and for my sisters` right to choose their own religion (any or none), husbands (any or none) and country of residance (US VS. Arabia or land of the pure). I remember my mother was taking a walk with me one night down a street in Streemwood Illinois (typical after dinner walks as in Pakistan) and suddenly she started jumping up and down her face lighted up. I was shocked to see this 40 year old woman turn into a child. She held my hand and started singing in the streets ``Mera Beta hay Pakistani Magar Us Ka dil hai Inglistani`` (my son is pakistani but his heart is english).

It is indeed very original of you to sit in Pakistan and denounce the west, english and british and americans along with the talibans, the jamaat walays, the frothing and foaming rabidly pro-arab/ Islamic ``moderate`` Muslims/ ``madron`` Pakistanis. Maybe you will get a promotion - who knows maybe you will even get a husband (or a better one) or maybe you will be popular. Personally my sisters would rather pick up Tolstoy or Lao Tzu or any other HUMAN being`s writing (not pakistani, not arab not british writer but a human writer) over writers like Ishtiaq Ahmed and Maulvi Flana-Flana who incorporate hate in their stories and ask us to discriminate against our own (Ishtiaq Ahmed`s hate ads demanding persecution of Qadianis or Ahmedis) or some Arabic Holy Book in an attempt to be original like you.