The Colonial Legacy: It's Not Just History, It's Psychology

Colonialism as an Ongoing Condition

When we study colonialism in school, it's often presented as a completed historical chapter: the British came, they ruled, they left, and now everyone has moved on. This framing is dangerously incomplete.

Colonialism was not just a political and economic system – it was a psychological project. Its goal was not merely to extract resources and labor, but to fundamentally reshape how colonized people understood themselves, their bodies, their worth, and their identities.

For South Asian men, this meant the systematic dismantling of indigenous masculinities and the imposition of an impossible Victorian ideal. The psychological effects of this dismantling persist across generations, shaping contemporary mental health, relationships, and self-understanding.

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Part 1: Mechanisms of Dismantling

How exactly did British colonialism dismantle South Asian masculinities? Let's examine specific mechanisms:

Legal Emasculation: The Arms Act of 1878

The Law: The Indian Arms Act of 1878 required Indians to obtain licenses to possess firearms and restricted which communities could bear arms.

The Symbolism: In many pre-colonial South Asian societies, bearing arms was a marker of masculine honor and citizenship. The Mughal era allowed armed subjects. Many communities had martial traditions.

The Impact:

• Physical disarmament was experienced as symbolic emasculation
• It created a hierarchy: the colonizers remained armed while the colonized were forcibly disarmed
• It sent a clear message about who held legitimate power and who was infantilized
• It disrupted indigenous traditions of masculine honor tied to martial capability

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Quote from a Colonial Administrator (1880s):

"The native must be made to understand that he is fundamentally incapable of the responsibility that comes with arms. This is not cruelty but kindness – we

protect him from his own violent nature."

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The Psychological Effect: South Asian men were positioned as simultaneously too weak to rule themselves and too dangerous to be trusted with weapons – the beginning of a double bind that persists today.

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Cultural Re-education: Macaulay's Minute

The Document: Thomas Babington Macaulay's 1835 "Minute on Education" established English education as official policy in British India.

Key Quote:

"We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect."

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What This Meant:

• Devaluing of Sanskrit, Persian, and vernacular education systems
• Promotion of Victorian ideals of manhood: rational, stoic, self-disciplined, sexually restrained
• Creation of a "mimic man" (in Homi Bhabha's phrase) – brown in appearance but attempting to perform British masculinity
• Displacement of indigenous knowledge systems and models of masculinity

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The Impact on Masculinity:

• South Asian men were taught that their indigenous masculine traditions were inferior
• They were offered a masculine ideal (British gentility) that they could never truly achieve because of their race
• Success meant self-alienation – the more "civilized" you became, the more you internalized the colonizer's contempt for your own people

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Stereotype Creation: "Effeminate Bengalis" vs. "Martial Races"

British colonial administrators didn't just dismantle – they actively constructed new racial-gender categories:

The "Effeminate Bengali":

• Bengali men (and educated men more broadly) were characterized as weak, cowardly, over-educated, impractical
• Physical traits were racialized: smaller builds were read as weakness
• Cultural practices were feminized: poetry, music, emotional expressiveness became markers of insufficient masculinity
• Political resistance was pathologized as "hysteria"

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The "Martial Races":

• Punjabis, Sikhs, Gurkhas, and other communities were designated as "martial races"
• This wasn't a compliment – it positioned these communities as physical but unintelligent, good for fightingbut not for governance
• It created hierarchies among colonized men, preventing unified resistance
• It reduced these communities to their supposed martial utility

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The Double Bind:

• Bengali men could not win: if they were intellectual, they were effeminate; if they were physical, they were savage
• Martial race communities could not win: if they were martial, they were unintelligent brutes; if they were intellectual, they betrayed their "nature"
• All South Asian men existed in reference to an absent British masculine ideal they could never embody

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Part 2: The Colonized Psychic Space

Martinican philosopher Frantz Fanon, writing about French colonialism in the Caribbean and Algeria, developed the concept of the "colonized psychic space." While his specific context differs, his insights apply powerfully to South Asian colonial experience.

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What is the Colonized Psychic Space?

Definition: The colonized psychic space is the psychological condition where the colonized person internalizes the colonizer's degrading image of them. The colonizer's gaze becomes the lens through which they see themselves.

From Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks:

"I begin to suffer from not being a white man to the degree that the white man imposes discrimination on me, makes me a colonized native, robs me of all worth, all individuality, tells me that I am a parasite on the world... Then I will quite simply try to make myself white: that is, I will compel the white man to acknowledge that I am human."

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Applied to South Asian Context:

• South Asian men internalize the belief that indigenous masculinities are inferior
• They experience their own bodies, customs, and ways of being as shameful
• They seek validation by approximating British/Western masculinity
• They can never fully succeed, creating perpetual psychological conflict

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The Double Bind Deepens

The colonized psychic space creates an impossible situation:

If a South Asian man embraces indigenous masculinity:

• He risks being seen as backwards, effeminate, or savage
• He may be denied economic and educational opportunities
• He internalizes shame about his own traditions

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If a South Asian man attempts to perform British masculinity:

• He is still marked as racially inferior
• He is mocked as a "mimic man" – not quite authentic
• He experiences self-alienation and cultural disconnect

There is no third option – the colonizer has defined all the available categories.

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Intergenerational Transmission

Here's the crucial insight: this psychological condition doesn't end when direct colonial rule ends. It is transmitted across generations through:

Family Dynamics:

• Parents who have internalized colonial values pass them to children
• Preference for lighter skin becomes embedded
• Shame about cultural practices becomes normalized
• Pressure to succeed in Western terms intensifies

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Institutional Structures:

• Educational systems continue colonial hierarchies of knowledge
• Professional environments reward Western cultural performances
• Media continues to center white masculinity as the ideal

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Emotional Inheritance:

• Trauma responses become ingrained in bodies and nervous systems
• Emotional repression, taught as "strength," becomes a family norm
• Fear of judgment shapes behavior across generations

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Part 3: The Patriarchal Bargain

Faced with emasculation in the public sphere – disarmed, politically powerless, economically exploited – where could South Asian men reclaim a sense of masculine power?

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The Concept

Sociologist Deniz Kandiyoti coined the term "patriarchal bargain" to describe how women negotiate with patriarchal systems. We're adapting it here to describe how colonized men, stripped of public power, often intensified patriarchal control within private domestic spaces.

The Logic:

• If you cannot be a man in the colonizer's world, you can be a patriarch in your home
• If you cannot control your economic fate, you can control your family
• If you cannot command respect in public, you can demand it at home

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Historical Examples

Prohibition of Widow Remarriage:

• As British colonialism intensified, so did orthodox movements that restricted women's mobility and autonomy
• Controlling women's sexuality became a way to assert cultural purity and masculine authority
• The 1856 Widow Remarriage Act (which allowed widow remarriage) was opposed by many Indian men as Western interference

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Heightened Control of Female Sexuality:

• Purdah (female seclusion) became more rigid in many communities during colonial rule
• Family "honor" (izzat) became increasingly tied to women's behavior
• This compensated for the dishonor of colonial subjugation

Important Distinction: This is not suggesting that patriarchy didn't exist pre-colonially – it did. The argument is that colonial emasculation led to an intensification and rigidification of patriarchal practices as a psychological survival strategy.

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Modern Consequences

This colonial-era patriarchal bargain has lasting effects:

• Intergenerational transmission of rigid gender roles
• Resistance to women's independence experienced as loss of masculine authority
• Pressure to control as compensation for external powerlessness
• Difficulty accepting women's professional success
• Anxiety about South Asian women dating outside the community

The Trap: Men who enforce these patriarchal norms are simultaneously victims of colonial trauma and perpetrators of gender-based harm. Both things are true. Understanding the psychological origin doesn't excuse the behavior, but it does help us design better interventions.

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Part 4: Breaking the Cycle

Understanding the colonized psychic space and the patriarchal bargain is not about excusing harmful behavior – it's about creating pathways to healing.

Recognition: The first step is recognizing how colonial trauma lives in our bodies, our families, our self-perception.

Decolonization: We must actively work to decolonize our understanding of masculinity – questioning which values we've internalized and which we choose to keep.

New Models: We need to build masculinities not defined in opposition to the colonizer or through control of women, but grounded in our own values, histories, and aspirations.

Colonized Psychic Space: The psychological condition where colonized people internalize the colonizer's degrading stereotypes about them

Double Bind: A situation with contradictory demands where no response is acceptable

Patriarchal Bargain: The negotiation of power within patriarchal systems; here, the intensification of domestic patriarchy to compensate for public emasculationInternalized Oppression: The acceptance and incorporation of prejudices and stereotypes about one's own group

Intergenerational Trauma: Trauma effects that are transmitted from one generation to the next through psychological, social, and biological mechanisms

Izzat: Honor or reputation in South Asian contexts, often tied to family and gender behavior

Martial Races: British colonial designation of certain communities as naturally suited for military service, used to divide and rule