Neo-Colonialism: Rising Threat to Subcontinent

In recent years, I have noticed how the young generation of the subcontinent is slowly forgetting about the past colonial timeline, where atrocities were committed by the good old jolly England for centuries. Sure, we keep reminding ourselves about the Nazi war machine and its atrocities in Europe and how Imperial Japan was a threat to entire subcontinent in the 20th century, where even our ancestors were forcibly enlisted in the British military and deployed in Burma during the Japanese invasion. In the end, the good old empire acted like they did us a favor since they fought the Japanese, yet they didn’t realize the fact that they were mostly helpless and the Americans played a critical role in defeating Japan. Even the British soldiers who were fighting the Japanese in Burma were mostly our ancestors from the subcontinent. Fast forward to 2023, and I am looking at social media influencers from India and Pakistan, especially Pakistan, ridiculing our language, culture, and traditions and comparing our lifestyle with the Europeans.

I mean, sure, you can take inspiration from other cultures, learn from them, and further improve yourself, but completely rejecting your own traditional values and way of life that our ancestors fought and died for simply highlights that many of such liberal individuals hate their existence and prefer being slaves to their white colonial masters. Not too recently, a YouTuber who I personally liked in the past, a Karachi native known for his critical analysis of Pakistani culture, recently made a video about Clifton Beach. Ridiculing the working middle-class citizens who were having what little enjoyment that they could have in this concrete urban jungle by visiting Clifton Beach. His approach to making the video, for me was a direct attack on our culture and way of life. It is necessary to understand the fact that we live in a nation where everyone is not equal.

The brown liberals have played a critical role in degrading our culture and traditions by ridiculing and making fun of the working middle class, and I admit that a few years ago I was a part of that group. Over time, I have come to realize that this extreme liberal mindset eventually promotes the concept of neo-colonialism. Where they criticize our religion and culture for dominating minorities, the same kind of enthusiasm should exist when the west tries to dominate our culture as well. Yes, the ills of our culture should be addressed and minorities should be treated fairly, but the concept of completely abandoning our culture and religion just to be a cheap version of the Europeans is something that makes no sense at all.

The obsession with having that European or classic British lifestyle indicates that our younger generation has forgotten the dark colonial timeline where our ancestors gave up their lives for our future. Having a British Indian PM, a Pakistani First Minister of Scotland, and cities like Bradford and Birmingham as mini-Pakistan doesn’t indicate that we have created some sort of dominance over the white people. In the end, these developments are just to give the illusion of a decline in white dominance, even though, in reality, their influence still exists in our own independent nations where neo-colonialism is rampant. Exploring other cultures and getting inspired by them is beneficial overall and helps our own culture evolve, but completely abandoning our traditional core values and beliefs for the sake of appeasing the Europeans simply highlights how we have forgotten our past and the sacrifices made by our ancestors.