Sometimes, I reflect on the words “colonialism” and “postcolonialism,” words I became familiar with quite an early age through postcolonial literature. When I was saturated with mainstream English literature after my youth with Bangla literature, this familiarity blew my mind. My heart was thrilled to see the pages of fiction and poems full of people like me and to find them conversing about issues that confront me in everyday life in society, culture, and politics. I felt like, “Wow, at last, this is me, this is us here, on the pages.” A sense of absence which pricked me always while immersing in Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Milton, Wordsworth, or Shelley proved to be fulfilled by Amitav Ghosh, Anita Desai, R K Narayan or Chinua Achebe. The complex family drama, the life in cultural domesticity, and everyday tension in relationships surrounded by overarching colonial and postcolonial politics warmed the cockles of my heart.
I learned to look beyond my life’s geography. I learned that the 200 years of British reign in Bengal had drastically changed its linguistic, social, cultural, economic, and political landscapes. The old Mughal system, which mostly kept the traditional agrarian Bengal life untouched, has been replaced by all-pervading British rules as well as modern and enlightened world concepts. These concepts made the Bengalis conscious of their rights over their land. The outcome of this consciousness was their struggles, fights, and resistance against British power, and eventually, they won independence with the departure of the British from the Indian subcontinent.
Although this is a very simple summary of my very complicated learning process in the field of colonialism and postcolonialism, this is the gist, a bird’s eye view, which I learned and internalised. This internalisation is also accompanied by a rhetoric of dreams of a better life in the independent land, a dream that our forefathers nourished throughout their lifetimes. My forefathers particularly roamed the Indian subcontinent for their jobs, but eventually, they returned home to their agrarian village to live a happy, peaceful life. To them, their calm and quiet village was their ultimate hub. They did not expect much from life but a pretty modest life and a peaceful death in an independent country after having a life of hard work and good earnings.
However, these dreams and expectations, laced with colonialism and independence, seem to me very expensive in 21st-century Bangladesh. This is unreachable for the contemporary Bangladeshi people. The door of the dream the postcolonial world opened in front of our forefathers was closed so long ago, not by the so-called foreign rulers, but by the local elitist, power mongered, and greedy rulers.
The more I look at the history and culture of the current ousted fascist government’s money laundering, the more my so-called questioning of the British colonisers gets softened. “Hey, look at yourself before looking at the others. Hey, turn a mirror to yourself before posting a mirror to the foreigners.” At the same time, the current instability after the July movement, the rhetoric of mercy and softness, the character assassination of the leading figures, and efforts to rehabilitate the fascist supporters prompt me to question: “Do Bangladeshi common people not have rights to dream of a peaceful modest life at their homeland?” “Do Bangladeshi common people not have rights to die a peaceful death on their forefathers’ land?”
All these remind me of the old Bengali proverb, “If you spit over your head, it will fall on you.” So, when I spit, I get spitted. When I get spitted, I remember all unjust actions align with unjust actions irrespective of time, place, and people. And this remembrance is the burden I carry through my colonial, postcolonial, and neo-colonial learning journeys.
Umme Salma
15/11/2024
Salma Seclusion 