Ideological Colonialism: Ideological Apparatuses, Subjectification and Cultural Hegemony

Friend: “If Nepal had been a colony of Britain, Nepal would have progressed like India” [facebook status of one of my friends]

Me:      “If there had been an option to dislike I would have disliked your status” [my comment on his status]

Friend: “People say that but I would be happy if anyone convinces me” [his response on my comment]

These were the lines I copied from a conversation between my friend and me on a facebook status. The conversation, though very short, has again struck my mind. Even though the statement of my friend is hypothetical it makes more sense when we compared the economic status of India and Nepal. Needless to mention India was under British rule from 1757 to 1947 but Nepal was [is] never ruled by any foreign forces officially. Some people in Nepalese academic diaspora argue that the prosperity [in terms of economic growth] India has gained since last 30 years is because of the infrastructure developed by the British. However, in the case of Nepal, it has gone worst. Nepal and India share a lot in terms of culture, tradition and religion. Rituals are performed in the same manner in both of the countries, especially Hindu rituals. People look similar, behave in a similar manner, watch similar movies, and listen to similar music, and so on. But a question remains, why India is taking unprecedented economic momentum while Nepal has remained too sluggish? Answer of this question may be many and too long, but I would like to explore the only hypothesis that my friend made and I guess some Nepalese share the same feelings. It is open secret from the fact 'why his status written last year still striking my mind' is that sometimes this Nepali diaspora also includes me and I happen to think: 'had Nepal been ruled by British it would have been richer like India today'.

The time I am trying to write on this, my mind is appealing me to analyse the assumption behind this statement in a deeper level. There are at least two pre-assumptions behind the statement above: firstly it assumes that India is a rich country today, and secondly Nepal is poor and has to be like India to be rich. Moreover in the shadow of these two pre-assumptions there is a third assumption hidden but powerful that is ‘becoming rich is gaining economic growth no matter what happens to the common people’. All these three assumptions lead me to think about the statement a bit critically, which engenders another question, a bit more critical and a bit more philosophical one: is the statement as such the product of the ‘colonisation of mind?’ I mean even though Nepal was not colonised officially the thought and perception of the people are colonised and under this colonial mindset the colonised people would think that what colonisers did was the right and the only best thing to do. During the British rule in India Nepalese were also colonised ideologically, moreover, colonialism was spreading in such a speed that the whole world was colonised by European colonisers. They colonised not only lands and forests, languages and cultures but also the very ontology of the people around the world. As a product of such and such colonial practices my friend any many others in Nepal think that what British did in India had a very positive consequences in the present day India. I will discuss a little more lately but now here I would like to explore more on ‘ideological colonialism’ or the ‘colonialism of mind’ in the light of three concepts: Ideological State Apparatus, Subjectification and Cultural Hegemony, each of them introduced by three philosophers Althusser, Foucault and Gramsci.

Louis Althusser and Ideological State Apparatuses

Luis Althusser, a French Marxist philosopher, claims that ruling class or the government of a nation state strengthens the environment for safe ruling through ideology. As a Marxist his argument echoes the division of society into the rulers and the ruled and how the former exploits the latter for its benefit. Marx’s gave an extensive theory of ‘state apparatus’ (which Althusser claims as repressive state apparatuses) in which state or the ruling class controls over the ordinary citizens or the proletariat through government, administration, army, police, the courts and prison known as state apparatuses.  Marx’s argument, according to Althusser, is limited to how oppressors oppress the oppressed through repressive mechanisms with the control of army, police and moreover with the control over resources and capital. Marx thesis lacks the explanation of ideological state apparatuses which Althusser thinks more powerful than anything else. The ideological state apparatuses (ISA) includes religious institutions such as church; the educational institutions such as schools; the family ISA; the legal ISA such as court; the political ISA such as political parties; the trade union ISA; the Communication ISA such as media; and the cultural ISA such as arts and sports. Among these ISAs, Althusser claims that, the education state apparatuses, especially the schools are most powerful ones. He argues:

“It takes children from every class at infant-school age, and then for years, the years in which the child is most ‘vulnerable’, squeezed between the Family State Apparatus and the Educational State Apparatus, it drums into them, whether it uses new or old methods, a certain amount of ‘know-how’ wrapped in the ruling ideology or simply the ruling ideology in its pure state. Somewhere around the age of sixteen, a huge mass of children are ejected ‘into production’: these are the workers or small peasants” (Althusser,1970)

Now the question here is – was the assumption we make that colonisers did something good to their colonies that is why India has made some progresses than Nepal? Perhaps analysis of other newly independent nations’ past and present would yield more convincing results on the colonial legacy and the present status of the formerly colonised nations. Here I am controlling myself to the analysis of the two nations India and Nepal only so that I can make some sense of my issue: Ideological Colonialism.

If we agree with Althusser’s argument then we can deduct something interesting. Let me elaborate on this. The education system of Nepal overlaps with the education system of India. One of the professors, while I was studying Masters of Philosophy in Kathmandu University, had argued that educational reforms in Nepal were a ditto copy of Indian education system. As Indian education system – I mean the policy and practices of school education – was reproduced with the direct intervention of British education system, the educational reform was the re-reproduction of British ideology and the ideology that is of ruling class to continue their rules. He had argued that the slogan of Panchayat system – one nation (i.e. the greater Nepal) and one language (i.e. Nepali) – was borrowed from the British ideology that wanted to kill diversity by the process of homogenisation. Why students started to like Nepali in language not only from the children speaking it as a mother tongue but all whose parents spoke different ethnic language in ‘un-unified’ Nepal? The answer, if we believe in Althusser, is simple. The ideological state apparatus, especially the educational state apparatus shaped the very ontology and epistemology of young minds.

I am not going to re-theorise or reproduce but would like to make a proposal on the thesis of Althusser in the context of colonisation. If we have to see ideological state apparatuses and colonial poison to indoctrinate the young minds, I would propose for a slight change in the terminology: from Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA) to the Ideological Colonial Apparatuses (ICA). A justification for this nomenclatural shift, I argue, is that when colonialism spread at the global level, there was almost no intervention from the state, at least in the case of some Least Developed Countries including Nepal, where still the governments and their policy and practice are influenced by powerful nations and supranational organisations. My argument here is that the government became only the medium to transfer colonial ideologies to Nepalese people. In fact, the state had no ideology, if they had any, had lost somewhere because of their struggle to continue their regime with the support of colonial rulers both at the time of Ranas and Panchayat and the present regime (how present Nepal has been ideological colony is I think an important issue which I will write sometime later).

Taking Althusser’s ISA and my proposal as Ideological Colonial Apparatuses (ICA) into account, let’s go back to the facebook status of my friend. Now the problem seems a little more palpable at least for me. Now I can make a plausible guess that the assumption behind colonial legacy in the positive sense and taking today’s India as a rich country is a fine product of colonisation of mind or ideological colonisation. First, colonisers never intended to make India a rich country, what they wanted was to make it a colony through subjugation and Subjectification (will be discussed in the next section), what they wanted was to continue to outsource raw materials leaving Indian peasants desperate into hunger and famine. If anybody argues British colonisation in India as a good practice that would nothing more than a product of colonised mind set.

Second, it is only a fallacy that today’s India is a rich country. After some countries of Africa (the former European colonies), India holds a largest number of poor people in the world. Yes, India has gained unprecedented economic growth, but it doesn't necessarily mean that India has grown as a rich country. The word 'rich' gives much wider connotation. My appeal is not to limit the meaning of some of the words rich and development into a cunning strategy of modernisation – the economic growth. Perhaps, it is seen on the television screen  that some of the Indian people fashioned like the people of the Western countries, talk in English like Westerners and produced commodities that hold the tag ‘Made in India’. Almost all commodities produced with 'Made in India' tag are the product of multinational corporations which we believe that they were really Indian production  In the neoliberal framework the shareholders of multinational corporations, not necessarily of India origin, are making more money out of the money accumulated through the means that hampered normal peoples' prosperity either directly or indirectly. Not understanding all these activities we are making a false assumption that India is rich and developed country. And now I conclude this section that the assumptions of these types are the product of ideological colonialism which we should understand by understanding the very nature of Subjectification.

Michel Foucault and Subjectification

When Foucault comes in my mind I make an image of lexemes such as governance, or governmetality, power or power relations, subjugation and so on. Foucault (1926-1984) was one of the influential theorists whose writings emerged as a powerful tool for understanding the social phenomenon, especially through the introduction of some rather abstract concept like power or governmetality. He wrote a lot and spoke a lot. One of his concepts is ‘Subjectification’ which I am going to explore with reference to ‘ideological colonialism’.

The word Subjectification overlaps somehow with the concept of interpellation that was introduced by Althusser. From Althusser's writing, interpellation can be understood as the process by which ideological state apparatuses make people accept the domination from state as rational activities for their benefit. For example, shaping the minds of children according to the interest and objective of the state or the ruling class is interpellation process. In the similar way the concepts of Subjectification as the process of making people perceive what they are as they are. Under the influence of state ideologies ordinary people create their own self by themselves but they don’t know that the very self they construct is the product of dominant ideology.

According to Foucault, “there are two meanings of the word subject: subject to someone else by control and dependence; and subject tied to his own identity by a conscience or self-knowledge” (Foucault, 1982, p. 781). The word Subjectification comes from the second meaning of the word subject. Perhaps, the distinction between these two meaning of the subject makes Subjectification different from interpellation. Influenced by Marx, Althusser claimed that control and dependence are secured by ideological state apparatuses but he didn't tell that such control and dependence are created by the proletariat themselves who are unaware of bourgeoisie ideologies that frame their thought subconsciously through ideological state apparatuses. The new dimension added by Foucault – in earlier version of Marxist State Apparatus and Althusser’s contribution (by differentiating ideological state apparatuses and repressive state apparatuses) – is that oppressed people create their self but do not understand that the very self is an outcome of subjugation from the ruling ideology and submit themselves for the benefit of dominant class and their ideology. 

Going back to my issue – whether the assumption we have been making was an outcome of ideological colonialism – I would like to discuss whether such assumption was an outcome of Subjectification. It leads to a new question: do some of the people, who praise colonialism as a good intervention for the development of, let’s say India in a literal sense, colonised nations, think their assumptions as right ones? The theory of Subjectification allows us to say “yes they do” because the people of colonised nations are unable to break the mental boundary created by colonial ideologies. They are unable to explain the reality as the fishes are unable to define the earth. They construct their epistemology on the ontology created by colonial ideologies. Foucault claims, now the agenda is how to break this boundary for liberating us from such Subjectification so as to create a new subjectivity – the process of de-Subjectification – that goes beyond ideological colonialism and allows all the fishes to define how the mountains and hills look like.

Antonio Gramsci and Cultural Hegemony

Perhaps there are very few people today who have not heard the name of Benito Mussolini – a dictator and the protagonist of notorious political theory - fascism. He ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943. In one of the prisons under his control was a very radical intellectual young man writing most of the times whose writings are now famous in the name of ‘the prison notebooks’. This highly original thinker was Antonio Gramsci. From his thesis a new form of adult education emerged in the name of radical adult education that appeal for the revolutionary role of educators, politicians, and civil society members of modern society. From his immense concepts and ideas, I would like to draw one of the prominent concepts – cultural hegemony – to analyse ‘ideological colonialism’.

In simple dictionary terms, the word hegemony is defined as ‘the dominance or leadership of one social group or nation over others’. But for Gramsci there is something more. He claims that hegemony comprises of “spontaneous consent given by a great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group; this consent is historically caused by prestige which the dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production” (Coben, 1995).

A question comes in my mind from the above definition of hegemony – why great masses of people give consent to dominant group to rule over the former? Is it because of the interpellation as propounded by Althusser or Subjectification propounded by Foucault? The concept overlaps to a great extent however there is something more than what Althusser and Foucault have to say on this regard. The dominant group not only indoctrinate masses towards their ideology, they enjoy certain privilege historically established. Under the guise of this privilege or the prestige the dominant group make the masses work for them and live for them. As they control the means of production, the masses are compelled to give consent to rule over them. For maintaining this hegemony the dominant group exercises active ethical functions through state as the nation state is controlled by the dominant class. The oppressive rules become common sense for the common people who do not examine critically whether those were oppressive rules imposed on them for maintaining hegemony. Gramsci claims that “common sense is the seedbed of the dominant ideology as well as being the battle ground of the new ideology in elaboration” (Coben, 1995). Now there is no doubt for not-consenting the common sense.

Formation of more oppressive rules and acceptance of such rules as common sense becomes a kind of culture (I am using this notion of cultural hegemony in a very literal sense). Acculturated in such culture general masses are unable to differentiate what is right and what is wrong. The people indoctrinated in such system develop a kind of intellectual that accepts the dominant ideology as truths. Such truths are embedded in the mindset of working class people through traditional institutions such as administration, school, police and army.

Having said these from Gramsci, let’s go back to the assumption we have been making – the assumption that colonialism had something positive outcome for the nations who are on the process of establishing sovereignty and gaining economic growth. Now my agenda in question: does ideological colonialism is an outcome of cultural hegemony? Looking through the Gramscian lens, the answer would be “yes”. Because of cultural hegemony we take some of the colonial oppressive rules as common sense. For example British colonisers of India created two classes among the colonised people. The first group of people were local feudal who had the control over resources and because of their inherited cultural capital could put control over peasants and other working class people. Gradually the new generation of colonial victims started to accept feudal lords as high caste/class people and gave consent to rule over them. Through feudal lords British rulers secured cultural hegemony. As a closed neighbour and a kind of colony of decolonised India, Nepalese also take some of the oppressive rules as common sense. The particular facebook status of my friend may be or may not be an example of the product of cultural hegemony, whether he has a different thought now, or whether my analysis of this type gives new thoughts to those who have similar kind of assumption is not a prime concern. Definitely there are examples in Nepalese society where Western ideologies still functioning as common sense. My synthesis here is how ideological colonialism is operational in the present day world, especially in the Global South.

Conclusion

The question whether India is gaining economic progress in comparison to Nepal in the recent decades is a very complex question. There could be both internal and external causes behind the relative progression and regression of certain countries. I took this issue to explore on the issue of ‘ideological colonialism’ rather than answering the question itself. I don’t have the answer and I argue that nobody can give an absolute answer. I am contented to some extent through this writing that some small issue makes great difference when we see them from different theoretical lenses. However, I am sure for one thing – ideological colonialism is not a myth and an issue just for the sake of debate. It’s a historical fact and many people in the world today are the victim of this. Nations got independence. Few people have got the opportunity to be presidents, and prime ministers of those independent nations but for general people nothing has changed. They are oppressed even today; just the form of oppression has changed somehow. A thesis that emerges from this writing is: interpellation and Subjectification of rulers and the ruled through cultural hegemony. It brings two concluding remarks. First, the rulers of so called independent nation states – the subjects of the rule – are acting as though they are the ultimate rulers of the independent nations but they never know how their ruling ideology is framed. And secondly, the ruled – the citizens of independent nations – are trying to gain their lost rights and freedom but while doing so they have never attempted to know what their real rights and freedoms are. That is why there are a lot of tensions in the third world country including ‘never colonised!!!’ nation Nepal.

References

1. Althusser, L. (1994). Ideology and ideological state apparatuses (Notes towards an investigation). In Lenin and philosophy and other essays (B. Brewster, Trans.). Retrieved from http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1970/ideology.htm (Original work published 1970)
2. Foucault, M. (1982). The subject and power. Critical Inquiry, 8(4), 777-795. Retrieved fromhttp://www.jstor.org/stable/1343197
3. Coben, D. (1995). Revisiting Gramsci [Electronic version]. Studies in the Education of Adults,27(1), 36-51