Dharampal's Writings

[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Backwardness like the term "barbarians" is an imagery which one applies to others, to aliens who prove weaker and who do not subscribe to one's own cultural norms. To morally justify the conquest, or subjection, or annihilation of others, recourse is then taken to terms like "backwardness", and when the people so termed, themselves begin mentally to subscribe to such imagery it implies that the process of subjugation of such people has been completed and that they have lost dignity in their own eyes. While there can be some controversy about the prosperity or poverty of the Indian people, or any segments of them during the sixteen, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, the term backwardness does not in any sense apply to them then.

Rather, it was the newly arrived Europeans in India who felt that the Indians applied such an appellation to them (the Europeans) for their manners and greed which were considered barbaric and uncouth, about the color of their skin which was thought to be diseased, or even the system of dowry which is said to have originated in eighteenth century England, but to have been looked askance in eighteenth century India. By the end of the eighteenth century when large parts of India had effectively been conquered and subdued the tide obviously changed and instead the term "backwardness" or images of similar nature began to be deliberately and extensively applied to Indian society.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->