THE culture of ‘colonial mentality complex’, contradistinguished from ‘colonial mentality’, uncritically affixes blame for a nation’s present-day failings on events of the past, often absolving itself of responsibility, and taking offence at the thought of any value of benign character originating in the West. This attitude is contagious and self-defeating.
In Inglorious Empire, Shashi Tharoor writes: “Company official John Sullivan observed in the 1840s: ‘The little court disappears — trade languishes — the capital decays — the people are impoverished — the Englishman flourishes, and acts like a sponge, drawing up riches from the banks of the Ganges, and squeezing them down upon the banks of the Thames’.” To argue otherwise would be like insisting the earth is flat.
I recently wrote an article quoting Churchill and Roosevelt, in response to which I received many e-mails expressing disappointment for having quoted Western leaders and concepts. The remonstration was that I should have quoted Eastern leaders, and drawn on comparable examples from the East instead. Such sentiments have been fermented by political populists in Pakistan — to call out anyone who speaks of any Western value, no matter how benevolent or benign.
The British did some terrible things in India, just like the French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, Belgian and Japanese did in their colonies between the 17th and 20th centuries. To this, there is no cavil. However, we must not forget that the India of the Mughals, and that which preceded it, was far from the Eden of justice we imagine it was.
India of the Mughals, and earlier, was hardly an Eden of justice.
Hitherto in India, political authority was arbitrary, personal, discretionary and subject to the emperor’s will. There was no concept of trichotomy of power, independence of the judiciary or democracy. There were no institutional limits on power. Property rights and liberty could be stripped readily, and barbaric practices such as sati, slavery, accession through fratricide and human sacrifices were prevalent. It naturally follows that our own history isn’t too glorious either.
Confronted with the vast web of history, each individual should rationally indict generations of the past, rather than having pent-up anger channelled through a national narrative like the one prevalent in Germany following the Treaty of Versailles.
In The Idea of Justice, Amartya Sen writes, “The increasing tendency towards seeing people in terms of one dominant ‘identity’ (‘this is your duty as an American’, ‘you must commit these acts as a Muslim’, or ‘as a Chinese you should give priority to this national engagement’) is not only an imposition of an external and arbitrary priority, but also the denial of an important liberty of a person who can decide on their respective loyalties to different groups (to all of which he or she belongs)”.
Like many others, I come from a school of thought which does not subscribe to the concept of ‘the original sin’. The injustices and selfishness of our colonial masters is undeniable, just like their more benign contribution to abolishing and criminalising practices such as sati and slavery through legislation like the Bengal Sati Regulation, 1829, and the Indian Slavery Act, 1843.
No matter how diminutive the progressive steps of the British in India, let us not replicate the saddest approach which Shakespeare alludes to in Julius Caesar: “The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.”
Our national obsession, to detest or condemn every genuine value from the West, because it is an affront to our perceived sense of our national past reflects only our own ‘colonial mentality complex’, which in essence is a form of ‘inferiority complex’. Sigmund Freud wrote about this ‘defensive pride’ in his books On Narcissism as well as Civilisation and Its Discontents. Alfred Adler expanded upon the theories, particularly in The Practice and Theory of Individual Psychology, where he explains how a sense of ‘superiority complex’ can develop to mask a ‘sense of inferiority complex’. And if not reined in, the complex can lead to boastfulness, inflated pride and contempt for other persons and cultures.
In Rights of Man, Thomas Paine says, “The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion”. True emancipation lies above and beyond national pride, ethnic preferences and racial prejudices.
The very idea that if a noble example is to be tendered, it must have its origin in the Orient, and not in the Occident, is a manifestation of pride, preference and prejudice, therefore the obverse of emancipation and part of the ‘colonial mentality complex’. Pakistan has been free for nearly 80 years, it’s time we started taking greater responsibility for our own national failings.
The writer is a practising barrister.
Published in Dawn, April 1st, 2026
