Whither Freedom?
Muhammad Ashar Imran
2022-02-0172
It
has now been several decades since the vast majority of states find themselves
in what is called a post-colonial era, yet even today we find ourselves in some
form of colonial hang over. The question then becomes are we really free? In
this particular blog I will focus on the practices that the colonizers ended
and how our thoughts and stances continue to be impacted/dictated by our
history of colonization.
There
is no justifying that acts such as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) or suttee
are horrid acts and women (and the world generally) is a much better place
without such acts. Yet in the last class I attended I could not help but notice
this weird tension in myself whilst making a stance. At one point I’m obviously
glad these things happen no more at the other I have hate and disdain for the
colonizers dictating and abolishing our culture based on what they thought was
okay and what was not. The fact that
even today on a matter that is otherwise so objectively cruel my thoughts on it
are controlled and impacted by the history
in which they were removed begs the question that even after 62 years whither
freedom? Even today our thoughts and the way we look at things comes from a
place where we do not know that without the colonizers would these practices have
died out as they did in Europe.
This
leads me to the second question of who gets to decide what is and what is not
an acceptable part of culture and life. It is certainly not the colonizers who
pick and choose one cruel act to be unacceptable while doing a hundred others.
It is also not Kenyatta who as a man should not be telling us whether
oppression on women was a necessary and celebrated part of life that everyone
was okay with. It is then perhaps women who should be telling us what they
thought of the act but in the unfortunate absence of readily available or
taught texts by women of the era that option more or less does not exist. Are
we guilty of the same crime of ethnocentric views on the life of our predecessors
should we be more culturally relative and consider acts such as FGM acceptable
given the time that they happened in. It is then perhaps best to leave it to the
people whose culture it was a part of and their word alone. This becomes more
relevant when you consider how Europe was allowed to leave out parts of its
culture it believed to be un-modern and uncivilized. Consider most the women of
that era right now. Stuck in a unique position where at one point they would probably
be happy that institutions of oppressions were ceasing to exist and there was
one less avenue where they were miserable now but on the other hand be angry at
foreign dominators come in and take away what is their culture and their life.
These women were stuck in a situation where they had to side with either
patriarchal men in their own society or foreign men oppressing them perhaps not
as women but as the colonized. Would those women have wanted to side with their
own men in fighting and resisting the foreigners’ even if it meant a return to
things like FGM. Would those women have even the freedom in deciding their
stance? If you listen to colonizer rhetoric of gifting freedom to women of the
time then one must notice how women were never asked and consulted or involved in
any of the decisions. Whither freedom for these women then? The fact that most
of these practices especially that of suttee increased when they came under
threat by foreigners means that conditions never really improved. For most of
these women then old patriarchy was just replaces by new patriarchy.
As
students of history for me then the stance I eventually come to is I am
certainly against these oppressive and inhumane acts but at the same time I am
against the colonizers who ended them in the way that they did. The utilitarian
in me is happy at the outcome but the rest of me even today is critical of the
way it ended.
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