By Najaf Zahra for Invisiblites
“They came with their language and called ours savage. They taught us to speak so we’d forget how to think in our own words.” In the entire history of the exploitation of mankind, the century of exploration played a vital role. The white man started to discover new places, navigating through seas and colonizing them from America, Africa, and India to Australia. From settler colonialism in America to the mass execution of Indigenous communities. Through sword, bribery, and language, the exploitation was not just economic; they subjugated the subconscious of the colonies. India, the golden sparrow, serves as an example.
The story of colonization continues as they replaced the native languages and culture with their own because they knew how important it was. Colonial powers deployed linguistic imperialism as a subtle yet insidious apparatus to dismantle native epistemologies and impose hegemonic narratives. The language was used as a soft cover for harsh control, where colonizers made it hard for the colonized people to speak up or stand up for themselves, and they did it so precisely that it took us centuries to realize it.
Ruling through Colonial Language
Language is not just a tool of communication, it is deeply interconnected with culture and identity. Through language, one can figure out the cultural origins of the people. Colonial figures took command and focused on controlling the languages of the societies they colonized. They imposed their languages, replacing the native languages of the colonized areas. Postcolonial thinkers like Gayatri Spivak, Edward Said, and Homi Bhabha explored how language was used as a tool of invisible control, emphasizing how colonial powers could dominate over other nations without needing constant force, i.e., by using their language. “Colonialism weaponized language not merely to communicate, but to dominate.”
As the colonized societies started speaking the colonizer’s language, they began to see the world through the lens of the colonizers. Language helped colonial powers to control the minds of the suppressed. Natives lost their culture, beliefs, values, norms, and mainly their identities because once an individual loses their language, they start to lose their sense of who he is and where they belong. This made it easier for invaders to dominate as they made their language “superior” and declared native languages “inferior”. Through a discursive construction of reality, they constructed a dominant discourse that favored them. As Shashi Tharoor said,
“The sun never sets on the British Empire because even God couldn’t trust the Englishmen in the dark.”
Colonized people were often punished for speaking their native languages and incentivized to leave them. The portrayal of colonial language as a language of superiority resulted in a feeling of shame and awkwardness, which people felt for their native language and culture, thus, they started admiring colonial culture. In Frantz Fanon’s words,
“When a man loses his language, he loses his natural connection with his culture, his people, and his history.”
Colonizers didn’t always ban languages; they spread lies and misconceptions to make native cultures weak and superstitious, and by using different methods, they painted their own culture as strong and wise. The nexus of knowledge and power helped colonists to achieve their political ends. They controlled people’s minds by controlling information and education. All of this civilizational change was based on the concept of the white man’s burden, that it is their responsibility to civilize the lesser world.
As we now live in a post-colonial era, we must think outside the traditional shell of Eurocentrism, and we should seek representation from all the segments, not just the superior ones, but the inferior ones. The voice of the colonized and dominated must be heard now, as it provides a critical perspective in understanding history. We need to reconsider the enduring hierarchical relationship between the colonizers and the colonized ones, seeking intellectual decolonization to reflect diverse, local perspectives.
There should be a space for alternative knowledge and voices that can enable critical rethinking of Eurocentrism, which believes that the West is the center of the world and imposes its will through one-way diffusion to shape others in its image. We should challenge this mindset by advocating for the view that respects and understands the dominant views on their terms. There must be an end to the intellectual dominance of the West and suppression of the rest, to create an equitable environment.
The author, Najaf Zahra, is a student of International Relations at the National Defence University, Islamabad. This article reflects a critical understanding of the intersection between language, identity, and colonial power structures. And how language imposing tactics were used in colonizing other places, and its ultimate impact on global power dynamics.
Photo Credits: Sora