Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby sovereignty over the colony is claimed by the metro pole and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by colonists. The colonial period normally refers to a period of history from the late 15th to the 20th century when European nation states established colonies on other continents. The post colonial era began when the revolts by the people from various countries forced the European nations to quit their countries.
Postcolonial literature (sometimes called New English literature), is a body of literary writings that reacts to the effects of colonization. Post colonial literature often involves writings that deal with issues of de-colonization or the political and cultural independence of people formerly subjugated to colonial rule. It is also a literary criticism to texts that carry racist or colonial ideas. It invokes ideas such as social justice, emancipation and democracy in order to oppose oppressive structures of racism, discrimination and exploitation. Post colonialism seeks to understand how oppression, resistance and adaption occurred during colonial rule. It is like a disciplinary project aimed towards the academic task of revisiting, remembering and most importantly, interrogating the colonial past. In the 1980’s and 1990’s issues of ethnicity, displacement, sexuality and gender were added as categories for analysis. Thus post colonial writings began to focus on how nationalist projects in colonial times and the decolonized nation state encouraged certain fundamental oppressive structures in class, gender and caste (especially in India and Africa). The post colonial theory explores how colonial ideology and racial prejudices are coded into the literary texts. Many writers tried to abolish the various ideas that were set in people’s minds through their writings in this period. They tried to criticize all the systems that encouraged caste discrimination, racism etc. Many writers tried to inculcate modern ideas in the minds of the people through their writings, poetry and drama.
In this period the writers such as Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe tried to explain the following ideas through there writings-
1) Bi-culturalism
2) Nationalism
3) The conflict between European modernization and native tradition
4) The usable past
Duncan Ivison proposed three liberal values in the post colonial era-
1) All individuals are fundamentally equal
2) All people are free
3) Social and political arrangements should be such that they favour the well being of the people.
Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958) made a significant mark in African literature. Ayi Kwei Armah in Two Thousand Seasons tried to establish an African perspective to their own history.
Isabel Allende from Chile contributes to Latin-American literature. The Canadian writer Margaret Atwood is also a post-colonial writer who dealt with themes of identity-seeking through her Southern Ontario Gothic style of writing.
Postcolonial writings have been found among much of Indian literature. Meena Alexander is probably best known for lyrical memoirs that deal sensitively with struggles of women. Sir
Ahmed Salman Rushdie has also contributed to the post-colonial literature (Midnight’s Children (1981)). Indian authors like Chaman Nahal, Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, Anita Desai, Bharati Mukherjee, Rohinton Mistry, Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai have brought the Indian post colonial Literature into the world.
The post colonial era also witnessed some major wars such as India-Pakistan war, India-China war, USA-Iraq war etc. Thus even though the colonial period has ended, there is increasing tension between some of the countries due to territorial problems, terrorist attacks etc. Let us hope that a Post Colonial era in the form of a third world war does not occur!!
The 'other' IITian 