Colonialism brought with it the destruction of traditional societies, the denigration
of indigenous identities and economic exploitation. In the opinion of Leela Gandhi,
“Colonialism... marks the historical process whereby the ‘West’ attempts
systematically to cancel or negate the cultural difference and value of the ‘non-West’”
(Genetsch, 2007, p. 12).
With the advent of postcolonialism, those formerly oppressed have tried to recover an
idea of their respected histories, languages and traditions. In order to achieve this aim, the crippling images imposed on the native people by the colonizers had to be destroyed first.
The core concern of the theory was to challenge the image of the colonial subject where
they were always represented as the Other. As Said contended in Orientalism, the West
has not only conquered the East politically but also appropriated the Orient’s languages,
history and culture for themselves. Said (1978, p. 204) puts it thus: “My contention is that
Orientalism is fundamentally a political doctrine willed over the Orient because the Orient
was weaker than the West, which elided the Orient’s difference with its weakness.... As
a cultural apparatus Orientalism is all aggression, activity, judgment, will-to-truth and
knowledge.”
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