The liberal view of colonialism asks what rulers believed, and the Marxist view asks who gained. The postcolonial view asks a third question: how did colonial rule shape the way people know, speak and think about themselves and others, and what does that leave behind after the rulers go? It treats colonialism as a matter of knowledge, language, culture and identity as well as of land and trade. Its main claim is that colonial power worked through ideas, such as the picture of the East as backward, and that these ideas continue to shape the world after independence.
This note is written for UG, PG, OPSC, UPSC and UGC NET students. It explains the postcolonial perspective on colonialism, its main thinkers and concepts, its reading of India, and the criticisms made of it. It belongs to Core V, Colonialism and Nationalism in India, and should be read with the notes on the Liberal and Marxist perspectives.
1. Meaning and definitions
Postcolonialism, or post-colonial theory, is the body of ideas which studies the cultural, intellectual and psychological effects of colonialism on both the colonised and the colonisers, and which examines how colonial power produced knowledge and how this knowledge lives on. The word postcolonial does not only mean after independence. It means a way of reading, which looks at the continuing legacy of empire in the present. It draws on literary criticism, history, philosophy and political theory.
Summary table of writers
| Writer | Work | Core idea |
|---|---|---|
| Frantz Fanon | The Wretched of the Earth (1961) | Colonialism damages the mind of the colonised; need for a cultural and political liberation |
| Edward Said | Orientalism (1978) | The West produced the Orient as an inferior other, as a means of rule |
| Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak | Can the Subaltern Speak? (1988) | The voice of the most oppressed is lost in the structures of knowledge |
| Homi Bhabha | The Location of Culture (1994) | Colonial relations produce hybridity, mimicry and ambivalence |
| Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin | The Empire Writes Back (1989) | Post-colonial literatures respond to the imperial centre |
| Partha Chatterjee | Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World (1986) | Anti-colonial nationalism is in part a derivative discourse |
| Dipesh Chakrabarty | Provincializing Europe (2000) | European thought must be treated as local, not universal |
Scholar-wise definitions
Frantz Fanon. Fanon, a psychiatrist from Martinique who joined the Algerian struggle, held that colonialism is a total system of violence, which divides the world into the settler and the native, and which makes the native feel inferior. For him, decolonisation is a complete change of order, in which the colonised recover their dignity and their history.
Edward Said. Said defined Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring and having authority over the Orient. It is a discourse, that is, a body of writing, institutions and images, by which the West represented the East as irrational, backward and unchanging, and thus fit to be ruled.
Gayatri Spivak. Spivak, working with deconstruction, Marxism and feminism, stressed that the colonised groups at the lowest level, the subaltern, such as poor rural women, have no position from which their voice can be heard in either colonial or nationalist records. She called this a form of epistemic violence.
Homi Bhabha. Bhabha held that colonial culture is never pure. The colonial encounter produces hybrid identities, in which the colonised copy the ways of the ruler in a manner which is almost the same but not quite, and this mimicry both flatters and disturbs colonial authority.
Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin. These writers used post-colonial for all cultures affected by the imperial process from the moment of colonisation to the present day, and argued that the literatures of such societies share a response to imperial power.
Partha Chatterjee. Chatterjee argued that nationalism in the colony took its form from European ideas of nation and progress, and that it was therefore a derivative discourse, although it also created its own sphere of culture which the colonial state could not enter.
Dipesh Chakrabarty. Chakrabarty held that European concepts of history, state and citizen were treated as universal, while Indian experience was made a variant of the European case. He proposed to provincialise Europe, that is, to see it as one place among others.
Note to the student
The definitions above are given in substance and not as exact quotations. Do not treat postcolonialism as one theory. Fanon is a theorist of liberation, Said of discourse, Spivak and Bhabha of language and identity, and the Indian historians of knowledge and nationalism. In an answer, name the thinker, the work and the idea in your own words.
What the definitions share
- Colonialism is a cultural and intellectual relation as well as an economic and political one.
- Power and knowledge are linked: those who rule also describe the ruled.
- Colonial ideas, such as the backward East, continue to shape the present after independence.
- Identity in the colony is formed under pressure and is mixed, not pure.
- The voices of the colonised, particularly the lowest groups, must be recovered.
- European ideas claiming to be universal must be questioned.
2. Characteristics of the postcolonial perspective
Focus on culture, knowledge and representation. The perspective looks first at how colonised peoples were described, in travel books, histories, laws, maps and schoolbooks. It holds that rule rested on such images as much as on force. In an examination, this point separates it from the Marxist view, which begins with the economy.
Power and knowledge are linked. Following Michel Foucault, postcolonial writers hold that knowledge is not neutral. The people who study a society also gain power over it. Said’s study of Orientalism is the main example, where scholarship on the East went together with colonial administration.
The idea of the other. Colonial discourse defined the European self as rational, modern and free, and the colonised as irrational, backward and in need of guidance. This process is called othering. It created a fixed hierarchy of peoples, which justified rule and outlasted it.
Critique of Eurocentrism. The perspective questions the habit of treating European history and ideas as the model for all. Chakrabarty argues that concepts such as the nation, the citizen and progress were presented as universal, while the experience of other societies was judged by how far it matched Europe.
Colonialism as a psychological and cultural wound. Fanon and Ashis Nandy stressed that colonial rule damaged the self-image of the colonised, who learned to see themselves through the eyes of the ruler. The effects, such as a sense of inferiority and admiration of the West, may continue long after independence.
Hybridity and the mixing of cultures. Bhabha held that colonial encounters produce mixed identities and cultures, in which neither the ruler’s nor the ruled’s culture remains pure. The idea challenges stories which divide the world into fixed blocks of the colonial and the native.
Attention to resistance and agency. The perspective does not treat the colonised only as victims. It studies how they resisted, through writing, mimicry, religious movements and everyday acts. The phrase writing back comes from the idea that colonised peoples answered the empire in its own language.
Recovery of subaltern voices. Influenced by Gramsci, the Subaltern Studies group and Spivak ask whose history has been written. They try to recover the experience of peasants, tribals, workers and women, who are missing from elite records, and examine the limits of that recovery.
Colonialism continues in new forms. The prefix post does not mean that colonialism has ended. Writers such as Nkrumah spoke of neo-colonialism, and others point to economic dependence, cultural influence of the West, and the control of knowledge as continuing forms.
Interdisciplinary method. The perspective draws on literary criticism, psychoanalysis, history, anthropology and philosophy. It reads texts, such as novels and official reports, closely, to find the assumptions about race and civilisation behind them.
Suspicion of grand narratives. Many postcolonial writers distrust single stories of history, such as the liberal story of progress or the Marxist story of stages, and favour attention to local, partial and varied experience. This is part of the link with poststructuralism.
Concern with identity, language and place. The perspective asks about the language of writing, about migration and exile, and about the claims of nation, religion and ethnicity. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s call to write in African languages is an example.
Diversity within the perspective. Postcolonial thought has several strands: the liberationist (Fanon), the discursive (Said, Spivak, Bhabha) and the historical (Subaltern Studies). They differ on violence, on the role of the nation and on the relation with Marxism. A good answer shows these differences.
3. Diagram at a glance
Read the diagram from top to bottom: the highlighted step, colonial knowledge, is the centre of the postcolonial argument.
4. Intellectual roots of the postcolonial perspective
The perspective grew from the writings of anti-colonial thinkers and from European theory after 1960. A student should know the sources of its main ideas.
Aimé Césaire and Négritude. Césaire, a poet from Martinique, wrote Discourse on Colonialism (1950). He argued that colonisation does not civilise but brutalises the coloniser and turns the colonised into a thing. He also argued that the methods of colonial rule were turned on Europe itself in the Nazi period. With Léopold Senghor and others, he developed the idea of Négritude, a pride in black culture against European contempt.
Albert Memmi. Memmi, a Tunisian writer, in The Colonizer and the Colonized (1957), described the relation as a bond which damages both: the coloniser lives with a false claim of superiority, while the colonised is made to appear lazy and backward. His work is an early study of the psychology of colonialism.
Frantz Fanon. Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks (1952) studied how racism produces a divided self in the black person. The Wretched of the Earth (1961) examined the settler and native world, argued that decolonisation involved violence because colonialism itself was violent, and warned that the national bourgeoisie might copy the former rulers after independence. He is the main link between the anti-colonial movement and later theory.
Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci, the Italian Marxist, wrote in prison about hegemony, the rule of a class by consent through culture and ideas as well as force. He also used the word subaltern for groups outside the dominant structure. Said used hegemony for his analysis of culture, and the Subaltern Studies group took the term for their history.
Michel Foucault. Foucault argued that power works through knowledge and discourse, and produces subjects. His idea of discourse supplied Said with the method for Orientalism, though Said also criticised Foucault for neglecting empire.
Jacques Derrida and deconstruction. Derrida’s study of binary oppositions, such as presence and absence, showed that the first term is given value over the second. Spivak and Bhabha applied this to pairs such as West and East, and civilised and savage.
Jacques Lacan and psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic ideas of the self and the other, used by Fanon and later by Bhabha, helped to explain how identity forms under conditions of domination.
Anti-colonial movements and Bandung. The struggles for independence in Asia and Africa, the Bandung Conference of 1955, and the Non-Aligned Movement gave the practical base. Writers such as Gandhi, Tagore, Ambedkar and Nkrumah were part of this wider rejection of colonial claims.
Summary of the roots
| Source | Main idea | Effect on postcolonial thought |
|---|---|---|
| Césaire | Colonisation brutalises both; Négritude | Cultural pride; critique of civilising claims |
| Memmi | Psychology of coloniser and colonised | Study of the bond of domination |
| Fanon | Divided self; violence; pitfalls of national consciousness | Link between struggle and theory |
| Gramsci | Hegemony; subaltern | Culture and consent as rule; history from below |
| Foucault | Power and knowledge; discourse | Method for studying colonial representation |
| Derrida | Binary oppositions; deconstruction | Reading of West and East as a pair |
| Lacan and psychoanalysis | Self and other | Study of colonial identity |
| Bandung and anti-colonial movements | Political rejection of empire | Context and voice for the perspective |
5. The founding figures: Said, Spivak and Bhabha
Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha are often called the holy trinity of postcolonial theory. Each made a different contribution, and a student should be able to state the main book and idea for each.
Edward Said (1935 to 2003). Said, a Palestinian-American literary critic at Columbia University, published Orientalism in 1978. He argued that the Orient is an idea created by the West through a long tradition of scholarship, travel writing, art and administration, beginning at least with Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt in 1798. This Orient was shown as exotic, irrational and passive, in contrast to a rational, active West. The picture justified rule, since the East could not represent itself and had to be represented. In Culture and Imperialism (1993), Said extended the argument to the novel, and showed how works of Austen, Conrad and Kipling carried imperial assumptions. He also stressed the role of resistance in the same book.
Said’s method and its tension. Said drew on Foucault for discourse and on Gramsci for hegemony. Critics note a tension between the two: Foucault suggests that discourse produces everything, while Gramsci allows for human agency and counter-hegemony. Said himself was criticised for the picture of a unified West, and for ignoring differences among Orientalist scholars.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Spivak, an Indian-born critic at Columbia University, published Can the Subaltern Speak? (1988). She argued that in colonial India, as in the case of sati, the voice of the subaltern woman was lost between the colonial state, which claimed to save her, and the native patriarchy, which claimed to speak for her. She summed it up in the remark that the colonial rescue was a case of white men saving brown women from brown men. Her answer to the question is that the subaltern cannot speak, in the sense that no position exists from which she can be heard, so the scholar must be careful about claiming to speak for her. She also proposed strategic essentialism, the temporary use of a group identity for political action. Her book A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (1999) extended these themes.
Homi K. Bhabha. Bhabha, an Indian-born scholar at Harvard University, published The Location of Culture (1994). He argued that colonial authority is not as certain as it appears. The coloniser both wants the colonised to be like himself and wants to keep them different, so that colonial discourse is full of anxiety. The mimicry of the colonised, in which they copy the ruler’s manners and language, is almost the same, but not quite, and so it mocks authority. He used the term hybridity for the mixed cultures that result, and the third space for the place where new meanings are made.
Fanon as the earlier figure. Fanon is often placed beside the three, because his work on the psychology of racism and on violence in the colonial setting came before theirs and was used by all of them.
Other contributors. Ania Loomba’s Colonialism/Postcolonialism (1998) is a standard introduction. Robert Young’s Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction (2001) tied the field to the anti-colonial movements. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, in Under Western Eyes (1984), criticised Western feminism for portraying third-world women as one victimised group. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, in Decolonising the Mind (1986), argued for writing in African languages.
Summary of the founding figures
| Writer | Work | Central idea | Key term |
|---|---|---|---|
| Said | Orientalism (1978) | West created the Orient as other | Orientalism; discourse |
| Said | Culture and Imperialism (1993) | Imperial assumptions in the novel; resistance | Contrapuntal reading |
| Spivak | Can the Subaltern Speak? (1988) | The lowest groups have no voice in records | Subaltern; epistemic violence; strategic essentialism |
| Bhabha | The Location of Culture (1994) | Colonial authority is unstable | Hybridity; mimicry; ambivalence; third space |
| Fanon | The Wretched of the Earth (1961) | Psychology and politics of decolonisation | Violence; national consciousness |
| Mohanty | Under Western Eyes (1984) | Western feminism homogenises third-world women | Colonial gaze in scholarship |
6. Key concepts of postcolonial theory
Postcolonial writing has a technical vocabulary. In UGC NET and PG papers, short questions are often set on these terms, so each should be learned with its author.
Orientalism. The Western way of writing about and ruling the East, as described by Said. It is a discourse which treats the East as a unified, unchanging other.
Discourse and hegemony. Discourse, from Foucault, is a system of statements and institutions that produce knowledge and shape what can be said. Hegemony, from Gramsci, is leadership through the consent of the ruled, created by culture and ideas. Together they explain how colonial rule was held without constant force.
Othering. The process of defining one’s own group by describing another as different and inferior. In colonial discourse, the native was shown as lazy, emotional or childlike, in contrast to the rational European.
Binary opposition. Pairs such as civilised and savage, reason and emotion, and West and East, in which the first is valued over the second. Deconstruction examines how such pairs rest on each other.
Subaltern. From Gramsci, meaning groups of low rank outside the ruling structure. The Subaltern Studies group used it for peasants, workers and tribals, and Spivak for the most marginal, especially women.
Epistemic violence. Spivak’s term for the harm done when the knowledge of a people is displaced or silenced by the knowledge of a dominant power, so that they can no longer speak in their own terms.
Hybridity, mimicry and ambivalence. Bhabha’s terms. Hybridity is the mixing of cultures in the colonial encounter. Mimicry is the copying of the ruler by the ruled, which is almost the same but not the same. Ambivalence is the mixture of attraction and repulsion in the relation between ruler and ruled. These terms show that colonial authority was never complete.
Strategic essentialism. Spivak’s term for the temporary use of a simple group identity, such as that of women or a nation, to act together politically, while knowing that the identity is a construct.
Eurocentrism and provincialising Europe. Eurocentrism is the habit of treating Europe as the centre and the standard. Chakrabarty’s call to provincialise Europe means to see its thought as one tradition among others, which is necessary but not enough for understanding the world.
Neo-colonialism. A term associated with Kwame Nkrumah, whose book Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism (1965) argued that newly independent states remain controlled through finance, trade and politics.
Writing back and decolonising the mind. Writing back, from The Empire Writes Back, means the response of colonised writers to the imperial centre. Ngũgĩ’s decolonising the mind means freeing thought, language and education from colonial habits.
Summary of the concepts
| Concept | Thinker | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Orientalism | Said | Western discourse on the East as other |
| Discourse | Foucault | Knowledge and power linked in language |
| Hegemony | Gramsci | Rule by consent through culture |
| Subaltern | Gramsci; Guha; Spivak | Groups outside power structures |
| Epistemic violence | Spivak | Silencing or displacing other knowledge |
| Hybridity, mimicry | Bhabha | Mixed identity; almost the same but not quite |
| Strategic essentialism | Spivak | Temporary group identity for politics |
| Provincialising Europe | Chakrabarty | Treating Europe as one tradition among many |
| Neo-colonialism | Nkrumah | Indirect control after independence |
| Decolonising the mind | Ngũgĩ | Freeing thought and language from colonial habits |
7. Postcolonial thought and India
India is the main place where postcolonial ideas have been applied to history and politics. The Indian writers below are likely to be asked about in NET and PG papers.
Early critics of colonial culture. Before the theory existed, Indian thinkers had questioned colonial ideas. Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj (1909) rejected modern Western civilisation. Tagore criticised the narrow nationalism and the imitation of Europe. Ambedkar attacked the social order which the colonial state had also used. They are often seen as precursors of the postcolonial approach.
The Subaltern Studies collective. The Subaltern Studies project began in 1982 under the editorship of Ranajit Guha, with the first volume appearing that year. Its members, such as Shahid Amin, David Arnold, Gautam Bhadra, Partha Chatterjee, Gyanendra Pandey and Dipesh Chakrabarty, wanted to write history from below. They argued that Indian historiography, both colonial and nationalist, was written from an elite point of view, and ignored the peasants and tribals who made the movements.
Ranajit Guha. Guha’s Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (1983) studied peasant revolts as acts with their own logic and consciousness, and not as spontaneous outbursts. In Dominance Without Hegemony (1997), he argued that the colonial state in India ruled by dominance, in which coercion was greater than persuasion, because the Indian bourgeoisie did not become hegemonic in the nationalist movement and the British could not win consent.
Partha Chatterjee. In Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World (1986), Chatterjee argued that Indian nationalism accepted the colonial framework of reason and progress, and so was a derivative discourse. In The Nation and Its Fragments (1993), he refined the argument. He said that nationalists divided life into an outer domain of the material, which was open to Western learning, and an inner domain of the spiritual and cultural, in which they claimed sovereignty. The home and the woman were placed in the inner domain. Through this, nationalism created its own space before political independence.
Dipesh Chakrabarty. In Provincializing Europe (2000), Chakrabarty held that historicism, the idea that every society passes through stages, placed Indians in the waiting room of history, told to wait until ready. He distinguished two kinds of history: one tied to capital and universal categories, and one of belonging and local ways of life. He argued that Indian history cannot be fully written in European categories.
Ashis Nandy. Nandy’s The Intimate Enemy (1983) argued that colonialism worked as a state of mind, and that it caused a loss of self in the colonised, who imitated the ruler. He also noted that the colonisers were changed, since they took up a cult of masculinity and hierarchy. He saw Gandhi as a thinker who found a way out through a different idea of the self and of the West.
Gyan Prakash, Gyanendra Pandey and others. Gyan Prakash’s essay of 1990, Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World, argued for the use of postcolonial thought in history. Gyanendra Pandey’s The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India (1990) argued that colonial records and categories made communal identities more fixed.
Anthropologists and historians of colonial knowledge. Bernard Cohn, in Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge (1996), studied how surveys, censuses, museums and codes were means of rule. Nicholas Dirks, in Castes of Mind (2001), argued that the colonial state turned caste into the main principle of Indian society. Ronald Inden, in Imagining India (1990), criticised the Western way of describing India as a society of caste and religion, unable to act. Gauri Viswanathan, in Masks of Conquest (1989), showed how English literature was used in Indian education as a means of control.
Summary of the Indian writers
| Writer | Work | Main argument |
|---|---|---|
| Ranajit Guha | Elementary Aspects (1983); Dominance Without Hegemony (1997) | Peasant consciousness; dominance without hegemony |
| Partha Chatterjee | Nationalist Thought (1986); The Nation and Its Fragments (1993) | Derivative discourse; inner and outer domains |
| Dipesh Chakrabarty | Provincializing Europe (2000) | Waiting room of history; two histories |
| Ashis Nandy | The Intimate Enemy (1983) | Colonialism as loss of self; Gandhi’s alternative |
| Gyanendra Pandey | Construction of Communalism (1990) | Colonial categories hardened identities |
| Bernard Cohn | Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge (1996) | Surveys and census as rule |
| Nicholas Dirks | Castes of Mind (2001) | Colonial state made caste central |
| Gauri Viswanathan | Masks of Conquest (1989) | English literature as colonial control |
8. Colonial knowledge and its categories
One of the most useful parts of the postcolonial approach for Indian history is the study of colonial knowledge. It asks how the British collected information about India, and how this information shaped both policy and Indian self-understanding.
Surveys, maps and gazetteers. The colonial state could not rule without knowing the land and the people. It carried out revenue surveys, the Great Trigonometrical Survey, the Archaeological Survey (from 1861), the Linguistic Survey and the compilation of district gazetteers. Cohn calls this the investigative modality of the colonial state. The knowledge was gathered for administration, and it turned the variety of India into lists and types.
The census and the counting of identity. The census, held from 1871 and regularly from 1881, asked every person to name a religion and a caste. Scholars such as Cohn, Dirks and Pandey argue that this fixed groups which had earlier been fluid, and led people to organise on these lines. Herbert Risley’s ethnographic work, such as The Tribes and Castes of Bengal (1891) and the census of 1901, ranked castes by social standing and by physical measurement.
Caste as the key to Indian society. Dirks argued in Castes of Mind that caste, which earlier was one among several forms of social ordering, became the main way in which the colonial state understood India, after the revolt of 1857 in particular. Some historians reply that caste was already strong in earlier times, and that colonial rule changed it, but did not invent it. The debate is a major one in NET papers.
The writing of Indian history. James Mill’s division of Indian history into Hindu, Muslim and British periods, which has been discussed in the note on the liberal view, fixed an image of India as divided by religion. The postcolonial view holds that the schoolbook histories, translations and editions of texts produced by the colonial state helped to shape later ideas of community and nation.
Orientalism in India. The study of Sanskrit and Persian by William Jones and the Asiatic Society (1784) is often linked with Said’s argument. Orientalist scholars admired ancient India, but they placed its golden age in the distant past, and judged the present as decay. This allowed the British to present themselves as guardians of a heritage the Indians had lost.
Education and the English language. Viswanathan showed that English literature was introduced in Indian schools in the 1830s partly as a means of moral training and control, before it was taught in England itself in the same way. Macaulay’s Minute of 1835 aimed to form a class of interpreters. The effect was to create an elite with a close link to Western thought, and a gap between the educated and the rest.
Law and personal codes. The colonial courts applied Hindu and Muslim personal law based on texts, as read by British judges and pandits, in preference to local custom. Scholars argue that this turned flexible customs into rigid codes, and gave a larger role to the written word and the Brahmin interpreter. The Anglo-Hindu and Anglo-Muhammadan laws are examples.
The martial races theory. After 1857 the army recruited more from groups such as Sikhs, Gurkhas and Punjabi Muslims, which were described as martial races, and others, such as Bengalis, as unwarlike. The theory was set out in official writings and reflected a racial type of knowledge. It also affected the recruitment and the politics of regions.
Summary of colonial knowledge
| Field | Colonial practice | Postcolonial argument |
|---|---|---|
| Survey and map | Revenue survey; gazetteers; archaeology | Knowledge for control; India turned into lists |
| Census | Caste and religion counted from 1871 and 1881 | Identities fixed and politicised |
| Caste | Ethnography of Risley | Caste made central to understanding India |
| History | Hindu, Muslim and British periods | Communal framing of the past |
| Orientalism | Asiatic Society (1784) | Golden past, degraded present |
| Education | English literature; Macaulay’s Minute | Control and the making of an elite |
| Law | Personal law from texts | Custom turned into rigid code |
| Army | Martial races | Racial knowledge shaping recruitment |
9. Nationalism, the postcolonial state and decolonising the mind
The postcolonial view also asks what happened to nationalism and to society after independence. Here its writers raise questions about the nation, the state and the culture of the new countries.
Fanon on national consciousness. In The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon warned that after independence the national bourgeoisie might take the place of the old rulers without changing the system. He called for a national consciousness which would become a social and political consciousness, and for the mass of peasants to take part. His chapter on the pitfalls of national consciousness is often quoted in discussions of postcolonial states.
Nationalism as a derivative discourse. Chatterjee argued that the nationalism of the colonised accepted European ideas of the nation, the state and progress, and so remained within the framework it opposed. He later added that nationalism also built an inner domain of language, family and religion in which it claimed independence. The two arguments together show both dependence and creativity.
Imagined communities. Benedict Anderson, in Imagined Communities (1983), argued that nations are imagined political communities, created by print, newspapers, novels, maps, museums and the census. In the colonial setting, the maps and census of the rulers also gave a shape to the nations that later opposed them. Chatterjee, in a well-known essay, asked, whose imagined community? and pointed out that Anderson’s model gave Asians and Africans only a copy of the European form.
The postcolonial state. Hamza Alavi and others argued that the state in the new countries inherited a strong bureaucratic and military apparatus from the colonial rulers. In India, the Constitution kept much of the Government of India Act of 1935, as well as the civil services and police structure. Postcolonial writers consider whether this continuity limited the change toward democracy, and how far the state is still tied to colonial habits.
Development as a continuing mission. Some writers, such as Arturo Escobar and Ashis Nandy, hold that the idea of development after 1945 repeated the civilising mission, in which the poor world was to be brought up to the level of the rich. They criticise development policies for ignoring local knowledge and for creating dependence on experts and aid.
Neo-colonialism and global inequality. Nkrumah argued that independence was often only on paper, since the economy was controlled from outside. This view links the postcolonial approach to the Marxist and dependency views, and to later study of globalisation, debt and the role of international institutions.
Language and decolonising the mind. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, in Decolonising the Mind (1986), argued that the use of English in African writing and schooling continued colonial control over thought, and he chose to write in Gikuyu. In India, the debate on English, Hindi and the languages of the states has some of the same themes.
Gandhi, Tagore and alternative modernities. Postcolonial writers on India, such as Nandy and Chatterjee, have given attention to Gandhi’s criticism of Western civilisation and to Tagore’s idea of a nation based on culture, and have asked whether such ideas offer an alternative to the Western model. The question of alternative or multiple modernities is a continuing topic.
Summary of the postcolonial state and culture
| Theme | Thinker | Argument |
|---|---|---|
| National consciousness | Fanon | Danger of a bourgeoisie replacing the colonisers |
| Derivative nationalism | Chatterjee | Nationalism borrowed European forms, yet built an inner domain |
| Imagined communities | Anderson | Nations made by print, maps and census |
| Postcolonial state | Alavi and others | Colonial apparatus inherited |
| Development | Escobar; Nandy | Development as a new civilising mission |
| Neo-colonialism | Nkrumah | Indirect control after independence |
| Language | Ngũgĩ | Decolonising the mind through language |
| Alternative modernities | Nandy; Chatterjee | Gandhi and Tagore as other paths |
10. Critiques of the postcolonial perspective
The postcolonial approach has been strongly criticised, from Marxist, liberal and historical positions, and also from within the field. Match each critic with the point made.
The Marxist critique: neglect of material structure. Aijaz Ahmad, in In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (1992), argued that the field had turned attention from capitalism and class to discourse and text, and that it treated the nation as a fiction while the struggle against imperialism was real. He also criticised Said for mixing Foucault and humanism, and challenged the idea of a single third world. Arif Dirlik, in The Postcolonial Aura (1994), said that the perspective grew in elite universities of the West and fitted the needs of global capital.
Vivek Chibber. Chibber, in Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital (2013), argued that Subaltern Studies mistakenly held that capital in the colonies had failed to become universal, and that this view overstated the difference between East and West. He held that capital’s logic is common everywhere, and that the Orient and Occident division repeats the essentialism the theory opposes. The book led to much debate.
The charge of essentialism. Critics argue that the theory, in attacking Western stereotypes of the East, sets up an equally fixed picture of the West as one unified oppressor. Said was accused of overlooking the variety of Western writing on the East, including sympathetic writers, and of ignoring the part played by Orientals in making Orientalism. Said replied in later writings, but the charge remains.
Historians’ critique. Sumit Sarkar, once a member of Subaltern Studies, wrote in The Decline of the Subaltern in Subaltern Studies (1994) that the group had moved from class and peasant politics to a focus on culture and community, and had become hostile to nationalism and to the Enlightenment. Historians such as Rosalind O’Hanlon and David Washbrook also questioned its concepts. Others argued that the idea of colonial invention of caste and communalism ignores older divisions.
The Cambridge and revisionist critique. Historians who stress interests and institutions hold that the theory gives too much importance to discourse, and too little to economic and political conflict. They hold that the colonial state had less coherent control over knowledge than the theory suggests, since it was divided and short of resources.
The charge of obscure language. The writings of Bhabha and Spivak are often described as hard to follow. Critics, including some sympathetic ones, argue that the style limits the audience and reduces the political value of the work for the people it is concerned with.
Feminist critiques. Mohanty criticised Western feminists for treating third-world women as one group, and Indian feminists have argued that postcolonial theory sometimes ignored the specific problems of women in nationalism. Spivak’s work itself is part of this discussion, but others find that gender is not always given enough attention.
Liberal and conservative critics. Some scholars, such as Niall Ferguson, argue that empire also brought gains, such as law, trade and institutions, and that postcolonial writers are one-sided. Other critics say that blaming colonial legacy hides the responsibility of leaders and governments after independence.
The question of the word post. The prefix is disputed. Some say that it suggests colonialism is over, when its effects continue, while others say that the term covers very different histories, such as settler colonies like Canada and Australia, and the colonised societies of Asia and Africa. The use of a hyphen or no hyphen is part of this debate.
Summary of the critiques
| Critic | Position | Main objection |
|---|---|---|
| Ahmad | Marxist | Discourse over material structure; nation dismissed |
| Dirlik | Marxist | Perspective is a product of global capital and the Western university |
| Chibber | Marxist | Mistaken view of capital’s difference in the East |
| Said’s critics | Various | Essentialised West; neglected variety |
| Sarkar | Historian | Shift from class to culture; anti-Enlightenment drift |
| Revisionist historians | Empirical | Colonial state was weaker than discourse suggests |
| Many readers | General | Obscure language |
| Feminist writers | Feminist | Gender neglected or homogenised |
| Ferguson and others | Liberal and conservative | One-sided; ignores gains and later leaders’ role |
11. Importance and limitations of the postcolonial perspective
Importance
It shows that colonialism worked through ideas as well as force. The perspective explains how rule was held by images and beliefs, such as the picture of an inferior East, and not only by the army and the market. This fills a gap left by purely political and economic accounts.
It links knowledge with power. By showing that surveys, censuses, histories and schoolbooks served rule, it teaches students to ask who produced a piece of knowledge and for what purpose. This habit is useful for all work with sources.
It exposes Eurocentrism. The perspective makes the reader notice how European categories were taken as the standard of progress, and encourages the study of other societies on their own terms.
It brings the history of the powerless into view. Through the Subaltern Studies group and Spivak’s questions, it directs attention to peasants, tribals, workers and women, who are missing from official records.
It explains the psychological effects of colonial rule. The work of Fanon and Nandy helps to understand loss of confidence, imitation of the West and the divided self, which statistics of the economy cannot show.
It explains the survival of colonial structures after independence. The study of the inherited state, the language of administration and the continuing prestige of the West shows why independence did not end all colonial influence.
It gives respect to resistance and creativity. Concepts such as hybridity, mimicry and writing back show that the colonised were active agents who changed what they received.
It changed the study of Indian history. The study of caste, the census, communalism and colonial law, by Cohn, Dirks, Pandey and others, has become a main field and affects how textbooks are written.
It links literature, history and politics. By treating novels, reports and laws as texts that carry assumptions, it joins disciplines and gives a useful method to students of political theory.
It raises the question of the voice of the other. Spivak’s question of who speaks for whom is a lasting test for scholars, activists and policymakers who claim to represent others.
Limitations
It tends to prefer discourse to material conditions. Critics say that it puts words and images before land, labour and capital, and so loses sight of exploitation. This is the main Marxist complaint.
It can essentialise the West. In attacking the West’s picture of the East, some writing treats the West as one block with a single will, which ignores the variety within it and the dissent of its own thinkers.
It overstates the power of colonial knowledge. Historians point out that the colonial state was often weak, divided and ill-informed, and that Indian groups used and shaped the knowledge for their own ends.
It can make precolonial society too innocent. The claim that colonial rule created caste or communal division may ignore older divisions and hierarchies in India.
It is often hard to read. The use of dense theory and technical terms reduces the access of students and general readers, and sometimes hides weak evidence.
It has weak links with practical politics. Critics ask what policy follows from the argument, beyond critique, and note that it has not offered a plan for economic change.
It is criticised as a product of Western universities. Dirlik and others note that many of its leading figures work in elite Western institutions and speak for the colonised from afar.
It stretches the idea of the postcolonial too far. By using one term for very different histories, such as settler colonies, India, Africa and the Caribbean, it may hide important differences.
It sometimes neglects gender and class within the colony. Though concerned with the marginal, its own accounts may flatten the differences among the colonised.
It moved away from the anti-colonial movements it studies. Some critics say that the theory has become an academic field detached from the struggles of the people from which it began.
Illustrations
| Illustration | Period | What it shows |
|---|---|---|
| Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism | 1950 | Colonisation brutalises coloniser and colonised |
| Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth | 1961 | Violence, national consciousness, its pitfalls |
| Bandung Conference | 1955 | Political rejection of colonialism by Asian and African states |
| Said, Orientalism | 1978 | The West created the Orient as other |
| Subaltern Studies begins | 1982 | History from below in India |
| Nandy, The Intimate Enemy | 1983 | Colonialism as a loss of self |
| Spivak, Can the Subaltern Speak? | 1988 | Silence of the lowest groups in records |
| The Empire Writes Back | 1989 | Literatures of the colonised as response to empire |
| Viswanathan, Masks of Conquest | 1989 | English literature as a means of control in India |
| Bhabha, The Location of Culture | 1994 | Hybridity and mimicry |
| Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments | 1993 | Inner and outer domains of nationalism |
| Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe | 2000 | Waiting room of history |
12. Exam use
What examiners expect
| Level | Typical demand | What a good answer includes |
|---|---|---|
| UG (short, 2 to 5 marks) | Define postcolonialism; name two thinkers | A clear definition; Said and Fanon with one line each |
| UG (long, 10 to 15 marks) | Explain the postcolonial perspective on colonialism | Features, main thinkers, key concepts, Indian examples, critique |
| PG | Critically examine the postcolonial approach | Said, Spivak, Bhabha; Subaltern Studies; Marxist and other critics |
| OPSC / UPSC | Colonial knowledge and its effects in India | Census, caste, education, law; the argument and its limits |
| UGC NET | Match thinkers, books and concepts | Titles, years, key terms and exact claims |
Practice questions
- Explain the main features of the postcolonial perspective on colonialism.
- What is Orientalism? Discuss Said’s contribution.
- Explain the concepts of hybridity, mimicry and the subaltern.
- Discuss the contribution of the Subaltern Studies group to Indian historiography.
- How did colonial knowledge, such as the census, shape Indian society?
- Examine Fanon’s views on colonialism and decolonisation.
- Critically evaluate the postcolonial perspective on colonialism.
Structured outline for a long answer
Introduction
- Define postcolonialism and state its question: how colonialism shaped knowledge, identity and culture.
- Note that it is a field with several strands.
Body
- Roots: Fanon, Césaire, Gramsci, Foucault.
- Founding figures: Said, Spivak, Bhabha.
- Concepts: Orientalism, othering, subaltern, hybridity, epistemic violence.
- India: Subaltern Studies, Chatterjee, Chakrabarty, Nandy; colonial knowledge in the census and law.
- Critiques: Marxist, historian, feminist and other critics.
Conclusion
- Weigh the strengths and limits.
- End with a judgement on its value.
Sample answer (about 200 words)
Question: Critically evaluate the postcolonial perspective on colonialism.
Introduction. The postcolonial perspective studies how colonial rule shaped knowledge, culture and identity, and how its effects continue after independence. It differs from liberal and Marxist views by treating colonialism as a system of ideas as well as of power and profit.
Body. It draws on Fanon, Gramsci and Foucault. Said’s Orientalism argued that the West produced the East as an inferior other, which justified rule. Spivak asked whether the subaltern can speak, and Bhabha described hybridity and mimicry, by which colonial authority is made unstable. In India, the Subaltern Studies group wrote history from below, Chatterjee studied nationalism as a derivative discourse with an inner domain of its own, and Cohn and Dirks showed how the census and ethnography shaped caste. Critics such as Aijaz Ahmad argue that the approach neglects material structures and class, others say that it treats the West as one block and overstates the power of colonial knowledge. Sumit Sarkar noted a drift from class to culture.
Conclusion. The perspective has made scholars read sources with care and listen for silenced voices. Yet it needs support from economic and institutional analysis. It is best used alongside the other perspectives.
Quick check
- Who wrote Orientalism? (Edward Said, 1978)
- Which essay asks whether the subaltern can speak? (Gayatri Spivak, 1988)
- Who wrote The Location of Culture? (Homi Bhabha, 1994)
- Who wrote Castes of Mind? (Nicholas Dirks, 2001)
- Who wrote The Wretched of the Earth? (Frantz Fanon, 1961)
Common mistakes
- Treating postcolonialism as only the period after independence, and not as a way of reading.
- Confusing Said, Spivak and Bhabha, or their terms: Orientalism, subaltern, hybridity.
- Mixing the Subaltern Studies group with Marxist writers on the drain.
- Saying that colonial rule invented caste, with no mention of the debate.
- Ignoring the critics, especially Ahmad, Dirlik and Sarkar.
- Ending without a balanced judgement.
13. Critical analysis
The strength of the postcolonial explanation. The perspective fills a gap left by earlier views. The liberal account describes the rulers’ ideas, and the Marxist account describes the economy, but neither fully explains how colonial rule shaped what people believed about themselves and others. The postcolonial view explains this, and it has changed how historians read sources. The study of the census, the schools and the law has made it clear that colonial knowledge was not neutral.
The weakness of the postcolonial explanation. The perspective is less sure about material change. It says little on land revenue, trade, taxes and the economy, which the Marxist view treats in detail. It is also exposed to the charge that it overrates discourse. A colonial state with limited funds and a divided staff may have had less power over minds than the theory suggests, and local groups used colonial categories for their own aims.
Discourse and structure. A useful way to judge the perspective is to ask whether discourse or structure explains more. Said’s critics argue that Orientalism does not explain why some empires took particular forms. Marxists respond that knowledge followed economic interest. A balanced view is that colonial rule needed both: images and categories made rule seem natural, while the army and the market made it effective.
The problem of the subaltern. Spivak’s question has no easy answer. If the subaltern cannot speak, historians have no way to recover her, but if she can, the scholar may be speaking for her. The Subaltern Studies group tried to find their voice through the study of revolts and rumour, and critics such as Sarkar say that they moved from this task to a study of identity. The question is a continuing one, and it is useful to treat it as such.
Colonial invention and older divisions. The claim that colonial rule made caste and communal identity more rigid is among the most debated. The evidence of the census and law is strong that categories hardened, but other historians show that caste and religion were important before 1757. A careful answer states that colonial rule reshaped these identities and did not create them.
Place in the study of colonialism. The three perspectives are best seen as answers to different questions. The liberal view asks what rulers claimed, the Marxist view asks who gained, and the postcolonial view asks how rule shaped knowledge and identity. Each corrects the others. Used together, they give a fuller account of colonialism in India and its legacy.
Model concluding paragraph
To conclude, the postcolonial perspective gives a distinctive and valuable account of colonialism. It shows that empire was also a system of knowledge, in which images of the other justified rule, and that the effects remain in language, education and the categories of the state. It also gave voice to groups which had been left out. But it can neglect material structure, treat the West as a single unit, and overstate the power of colonial knowledge. Its best use is alongside the liberal and Marxist views, for each answers a question that the others leave open.
14. UGC NET: authors and books
| Author | Work | Key point for the exam |
|---|---|---|
| Aimé Césaire | Discourse on Colonialism (1950) | Colonisation brutalises the coloniser; Négritude |
| Frantz Fanon | Black Skin, White Masks (1952) | Racism and the divided self |
| Albert Memmi | The Colonizer and the Colonized (1957) | Psychology of the colonial relation |
| Frantz Fanon | The Wretched of the Earth (1961) | Violence; national consciousness |
| Kwame Nkrumah | Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism (1965) | Control after independence |
| Edward Said | Orientalism (1978) | West created the Orient as other |
| Ranajit Guha (ed.) | Subaltern Studies I (1982) | History from below |
| Ashis Nandy | The Intimate Enemy (1983) | Loss of self; Gandhi |
| Benedict Anderson | Imagined Communities (1983) | Nation as imagined community |
| Ranajit Guha | Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency (1983) | Peasant consciousness |
| Partha Chatterjee | Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World (1986) | Derivative discourse |
| G. C. Spivak | Can the Subaltern Speak? (1988) | Epistemic violence; subaltern |
| Ashcroft, Griffiths, Tiffin | The Empire Writes Back (1989) | Writing back |
| Gauri Viswanathan | Masks of Conquest (1989) | English literature as control |
| Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o | Decolonising the Mind (1986) | Language and colonial control |
| Ronald Inden | Imagining India (1990) | Western description of India |
| Partha Chatterjee | The Nation and Its Fragments (1993) | Inner and outer domains |
| Homi Bhabha | The Location of Culture (1994) | Hybridity; mimicry |
| Ranajit Guha | Dominance Without Hegemony (1997) | Colonial rule by dominance |
| Dipesh Chakrabarty | Provincializing Europe (2000) | Waiting room of history |
| Nicholas Dirks | Castes of Mind (2001) | Colonial state and caste |
| Aijaz Ahmad | In Theory (1992) | Marxist critique |
Revision tip. Remember three groups: the roots (Césaire, Fanon, Memmi, Nkrumah), the founders (Said, Spivak, Bhabha) and the Indian writers (Guha, Chatterjee, Chakrabarty, Nandy, Cohn, Dirks). Pair each name with a book, a year and one key term, and add Ahmad and Sarkar for the criticism.
15. Key takeaways and further reading
Key takeaways
- The postcolonial perspective studies how colonialism shaped knowledge, culture and identity, and how its effects continue after independence.
- Its roots lie in Césaire, Fanon, Memmi, Gramsci, Foucault and Derrida.
- Said, Spivak and Bhabha are its founding figures, with the terms Orientalism, subaltern, hybridity and mimicry.
- In India, the Subaltern Studies group, Chatterjee, Chakrabarty, Nandy, Cohn and Dirks applied it to history, nationalism and colonial knowledge.
- Colonial knowledge, such as the census, ethnography, education and law, shaped Indian categories of caste and community.
- Critics point to its neglect of material structure, essentialism of the West, overstatement of colonial power and obscure language.
- It is best used with the liberal and Marxist perspectives, which answer other questions.
Official sources
- National Archives of India (Abhilekh Patal): colonial records and proceedings.
- Census of India, Office of the Registrar General: census history and reports.
- Indian Culture portal, Ministry of Culture: digitised historical documents.
- Constitution of India, Legislative Department: text of the Constitution.
- NTA UGC NET: syllabus and notices.
- Union Public Service Commission: syllabus and notices.
Twenty books for further reading
- Edward Said, Orientalism (Pantheon, 1978)
- Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (Knopf, 1993)
- Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (1961)
- Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (1952)
- Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism (1950)
- Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized (1957)
- Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (Routledge, 1994)
- Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (Harvard University Press, 1999)
- Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin, The Empire Writes Back (Routledge, 1989)
- Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism (Routledge, 1998)
- Robert Young, Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction (Blackwell, 2001)
- Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments (Princeton University Press, 1993)
- Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe (Princeton University Press, 2000)
- Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy (Oxford University Press, 1983)
- Ranajit Guha, Dominance Without Hegemony (Harvard University Press, 1997)
- Bernard Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge (Princeton University Press, 1996)
- Nicholas Dirks, Castes of Mind (Princeton University Press, 2001)
- Gauri Viswanathan, Masks of Conquest (Columbia University Press, 1989)
- Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (Verso, 1992)
- Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the Mind (James Currey, 1986)
Editorial note
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Frequently asked questions
What is postcolonialism? A field of study which examines how colonialism shaped knowledge, culture and identity, and how its effects continue after independence.
What is Orientalism according to Said? A Western discourse which presented the East as backward and other, and so supported colonial rule.
What is meant by the subaltern? Groups of low rank outside the structures of power, such as peasants, tribals and poor women, whose voices are missing from records.
What are hybridity and mimicry? Bhabha’s terms for the mixed cultures produced by colonial rule and for the copying of the ruler, which is almost the same but not quite.
What is the contribution of Subaltern Studies? A history from below, which studies the role of peasants and other low groups in making history, and challenges elite accounts.
Why is the postcolonial view criticised? For putting discourse before material conditions, for treating the West as one block, and for obscure language.
