Acceptance

Enrolling in a course called Decolonization and Decolonity had me excited to embark on a journey where I wanted to find how ‘westernized’ are we. I was eager to learn about all the ways the West left us devoid of dignity and pride, and all the ways we could cleanse ourselves of everything western. How we could change the hierarchies of cultural domination; how we could overshadow our western thoughts. But what I came to learn and to understand after so many hours of intriguing lectures and readings is so much different than what I had expected to learn. Though my mind has been constantly trying to break the shackles of colonialism throughout the 3 years at LUMS studying humanities, none put me on the right path as studying the black radical tradition did. The black radical tradition though appears to be far and diverse from us, its essence is exactly identical to our struggle with colonialism.

Through I have learned countless versions of decolonization what really stuck with me was understanding the conception of time; of creating a third space, a new present. This for me really tied all other concepts of decolonization together.

As part of the “third world” we always perceive ourselves as backwards because we always see ourselves in relation to the west. The west always occupies the present while we are stuck in the past, in the “waiting room of history” as Dr. Ali Raza put it in one of the lectures. To try to live in the present, the general idea we find ourselves with is to try to engage with western traditions, literature, art, lifestyle etc.  But the truth is that we need to step back and stop viewing ourselves through the blue eyes of the white man. I believe to truly break away from colonialism is to accept out present. The present is us right in this moment. And us in this moment are neither completely western, neither completely the Indians of the Mughal era. We can’t pick and choose what we want out present to be. Our present is what it is. It’s an amalgamation of east and west. So, to live in the present, we need to create a third space; a space where we understand that our generation is the product of colonization.  In order to decolonize ourselves, we need to get past our anger and come at a stage of understanding and acceptance. The solution is to own the ‘western’ parts of ourselves and rid them of the ‘western ideology’. The solution it to mold the west and make it our own, not deny it completely. The key here is to not accept the western influence, but just to accept the western knowledge, ideas while devoiding if of the racist supremacist ideology. Something I understood from Fanon is that the the idea is to not become Europeans but to learn from them and be better.

Trying to catch up with the present, some of us become ‘refugees’ trying to adopt a culture that’s never going to be wholly ours (the west). The rest become ‘strangers’ trying to find meaning in the ‘past’ and forcing it into the ‘present.’ The solution is not to be at the ends of the spectrum of culture. The solution is to find the middle ground. It is to become a third person. And to become the third person, we need that third space to exist. We need a present where there’s no hierarchy between the west and the east. The goal is to cleanse our mind of the ideology that western tradition and culture is somehow superior to ours. The goal as said earlier, is to localize the west; make it out own. And when we do this, when we step enter the third space and when we become third person, only then are we free. This freedom will be our homecoming.

This course put me on the path to finding my homecoming. But more than that it has made me tolerant and empathetic. I know there is a long path ahead and a lot more to learn but I feel like black radical tradition has set me on a path towards realizing who we are as a society. In the process, rather than making me more hateful of society for its colonial mindset, I have become more tolerant and empathetic. I have learned to see through the third lens and to understand that to reach the third space, we all need to take a journey and some may start on it sooner than later but that doesn’t make the late comers “backwards”. They just haven’t been able to break the chains and shackles of colonialism. Rather than blaming and shaming them for who they are conditioned to be, we need to empathetically try to lead them out of the black hole of colonial mindset.