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The British colonized the Indian subcontinent roughly from 1858 to 1947. In this period they made
many socio-cultural, political and economic changes, both positive and negative. These changes
affect postcolonial countries even today and bear grave consequences for many people who
have not been able to decolonize themselves despite worldwide efforts. The proposed research
seeks to understand the cultural effects that retain today in the ideological mindset of a
postcolonial country like Bangladesh and how this hinders cultural progress and keeps the
Bangladeshis mentally colonized. The mindset with which the colonizers had set about when
colonizing the Indian subcontinent now remains engraved in the mindset of the Bangladeshi¶s
(Bangladesh being the focus here). The White mans burden of µcivilizing¶ and modernizing the
Indian subcontinent with the notion that the Indians are primitive and uncivilized remains the
notion of many Bangladeshi¶s even today. As a result many Bangladeshis culturally cringe
against their own country and in the process discriminate upon themselves. They try to
westernize themselves as much as possible in the process forgetting who they are and even
worse, look down upon their fellow Bangladeshis who may not be able to speak English, dress an
eat like a westerner or have preferences for Bengali movies and music. Many a times Bengali
values are shunned as too traditional and Bengali habits and lifestyle are seen as problematic.
Before going any further we need to understand the colonizers mindset with which they
developed India.

 
 

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The British initially started as traders as the East India Company until taken over by the British
Crown. When they first entered India, they found small petty Kings fighting amongst themselves
and took the golden opportunity to benefit from these internal quarrels and helped one king
against another. In this bargain the British gained more power and wealth. Eventually the British
succeeded in capturing very large parts of India. The British introduced modern technology so as
to use Indian raw materials and produce finished goods in their factories which would in turn be
sold in India. The British did of course other than exploit also benefit India. They built railways
throughout India so as to make everything readily accessible. They established Law Courts, civil
services and transport systems. They also established factories, schools and universities to
introduce western ideas and to incorporate the idea of democracy. Missionaries came to India
and spread Christianity. This was all done in the name of Britain¶s economy. History shows the
impact of the West with this industrialisation, conversions from Hinduism to Christianity, and the
organization of political nationalism. They gave the Indians a solid foundation and the discipline
needed, but at the same time the British were harming the Indian culture and this will be
discussed in further detail below. The once small community environment was growing and cities
were emerging. So the British did modernize India but at what costs and what was the purpose
behind these actions.

Two considerations are taken into account to understand the colonizers intention here. First is to
exploit India and its vast richness of resources. Secondly, which is the focus of this research, is to
manipulate India's awareness of it's own history and culture which they tremendously succeeded
in as can be seen even today. There can be two reasons (along with many others) for doing so.
One being that they obviously did believe in the superiority of their own culture and values and
thus openly shunned anything dissimilar lacking cultural relativism and secondly because getting
the Indian people to believe in their own inferiority and their rulers superiority brings better
chances of obedience and compliance with their exploitive methods and policies. Thus domestic
and external views of India were formed by these colonizers whose attitudes towards all things
Indian were engrossed in subconscious prejudice or worse by obvious racism. People like William
Carey (who described Indian music as as Ë

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 Ë), Victorian writer and important art critic of his time, John Ruskin (who described Indian art
as follows : Ë 

         


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.") are
good examples of such prejudice and racism. Others like Charles Grant who had tremendous
influence on the colonizers described Indians in his 1797 book Ë 
Ëas morally
depraved, Ë


     
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asserted Ë# 
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William Jones attempted to portray India as a society that had made no progress in terms of
civilization for several centuries. Thus philosophers like Hegel1 justified the colonizers task
asserting that Ë% &

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as consisting of a backward society where there was no intellectual debate or technological
innovation became especially popular with European scholars and intellectuals of the colonial
era. Priya Joshi (Culture and Consumption: Fiction, the Reading Public, and the British Novel in
Colonial India, 196-220) writes on this cultural phenomenon saying: Ë 
 

  

    

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Ë Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, (Kenya, Decolonising
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Naturally, British-educated Indians absorbed and internalized such portrayals of themselves and
their past. Studying Western theory and philosophies, many felt embarrassed in acknowledging
Indian contributions in the arts and literature. What was important to Western civilization was
deemed universal, but everything Indian was dismissed as either backward and outdated, or at
best tolerated. And despite gaining Independence in 1947, this feeling of inferiority still persists
amongst many even today. Many Bangladeshis strive to learn English, to eat with a knife and
fork, to lead a western lifestyle in any way possible. Many feel ashamed of their own culture and
values. But worse yet, many discriminate their fellow Bangladeshis who are refused many
opportunities or looked down upon because they lack in Western behaviour or simply because
they aren¶t foreigners. Many landlords in Gulshan-Baridhara refuse to rent out their apartments to
Bangladeshis, preferring foreigners who according to them embody better habits of lifestyle and
cleanliness. Speaking English is seen with better eyes leading to a huge disparity between
Bengali medium and English medium children. They face cultural alienation in the way they feed
on everything foreign starting from television and music to placing more value on the Western
nations rather than their own.

Thus, one of the most difficult tasks facing the Indian subcontinent is to free ones own mind from
the racist colonial discourses which deems this subcontinent inferior.



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The specific purpose is to understand the factors which favour the existence of the colonial
mindset in this era of post colonialism and decolonization. The general purpose is to look at the
cultural post colonial effects that still preside in Bangladesh.


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The post colonial theories will be used to understand this cultural cringe that is leading to
biasness that Bangladeshi people feel and face. Various postcolnial and Marxist theories will
help to highlight the ideological aspects inherent in traditional thought and at the same time draw
attention to the class conflict and power struggles behind adopting the western ways of life. A
post colonial position will be taken as a continuation of colonialism, although through different or
new relationships concerning power and the control/production of knowledge. Post colonialism
analyzes the uneven impact of Western colonialism on different places, peoples, and cultures.
This is done by engaging with the variety of ways in which practices and representations of the
past is reproduced or transformed, and studying the connections. Likewise, Edward Said noted
"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" (Orientalism, p. 204). Gramsci¶s hegemony will also be important here
where he suggested that people in power maintained control not just through violence and
political and economic force, but also through ideology or a hegemonic culture in which the
values of the powerful became the ' values of all. Foucault is also very relevant to this study with
his theory on discourse as a system of representation. According to Foucault, 'discourse' is a
way of representing the knowledge about a particular topic at a particular historical moment,
usually by the powerful. It constructs the topic which leads to defining and producing our
knowledge. It also influences how ideas are put into practice and used to regulate the conduct of
others. Therefore the colonial discourse still remains as knowledge and even facts. Gayatri
Spivak¶s criticism of post colonialism as complicit towards imperialism will also bear fruits for this
study in terms of why the decssolonizing process isn¶t working.

This research paper will not take into consideration the Indian effects on culture in Bangladesh
nor will it consider the effects of globalization.


È


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In conducting this research, Edward Said¶s 
 
 will be taken as a focal point for post
colonial theories. Postcolonial theory provides a framework that destabilizes dominant discourses
in the West, challenges given assumptions, and critiques the colonial discourse. Postcolonial
theorist Edward Said¶s 1978 book 
 
 is one of the most famous in this field. There he
says "My whole point about this system is not that it is a misrepresentation of some Oriental
essence ² in which I do not for a moment believe ² but that it operates as representations
usually do, for a purpose, according to a tendency, in a specific historical, intellectual, and even
economic setting" (p. 273).

Also relevant is Albert Memmi in % '
)   '
) (1965) where he explores the
psychological effects of colonialism on both the colonized and the colonizers. By going into the
minds of both the oppressor and the oppressed, it helps to understand various ongoing
phenomenons today in terms of cultural cringing and othering.

Another book which will help to understand the mindset of the Bangladeshi people is Franz
Fanon¶s &
+
,
-  (1952) where he conducted a study using psychoanalysis and
psychoanalytical theory to elucidate the feelings of dependency and inadequacy/inferiority that
Black people experience in a White world. He speaks of the lost cultural originality of the Black
Subject who as a result embraced the culture of the White people. The behaviour, Fanon argues,
is more evident in upper class and educated Black people who can afford to take up the Western
culture. This study can be very useful to understand the feelings of Bangladeshi people.

³The Postcolonial Bazaar: Thoughts on Teaching the Market in Postcolonial Objects´ by

Bishnupriya Ghosh will also be part of the study to help in providing solutions to this problem of
cultural cringing and biasness. She says ³In this essay, I attempt to envision an interventionist
postcolonial pedagogy through the advocacy of an international cultural studies, a praxis that
would position classroom knowledge and skills within the demands and constraints of
transnational cultural economies³

"
( 

The aim is to look at how Bangladeshi¶s look down upon themselves based on the notion of
superiority given to us by the West. The West is seen as the epitome of sophistication and what is
considered to be the best which leads to a series of important questions that need to be
addressed. What factors come into play? What are the indicators of superiority? Why is the
decolonizing purpose failing to a certain extent? Therefore what we need to find out is how and
why people in Bangladesh continue to believe in the superiority of the West and look down upon
their fellow non western Bangladeshis in their interaction with the domination of the coloniser.
Therefore this paper will look into the impacts of colonization on the cultural mindset of the people
in Bangladesh and how it is leading to a cultural cringe and biasness against fellow Bangladeshis.
The focus will be upon urban areas of Dhaka, Chittagong and Sylhet.

An obvious impact of colonization will be a preference towards the English language, western
clothes, food, music and movies which will be looked into to understand the impacts as against
Bangladeshi counterparts.




The method is both quantitative and qualitative. The qualitative will be backed by the quantitative.
The focus will be upon urban areas of Dhaka, Chittagong and Sylhet.

Cultural cringing can be described as a sort of inferiority complex that people of a certain culture
face regarding their own culture in relation to other cultures, leading them to neglect and even
dismiss their own culture. To understand this phenomenon and to see to what extent it occurs
amongst Bangladeshis, various studies will be conducted with regards to their cultural preference.
The indicators will include a study on the trend towards English medium schools with a study on
parents and children preference of school who will be divided according to class and status in
society. A market survey on demand for western food restaurants and western clothe shops can
also be done. As for music and movies, a study on DVD sales is also on the agenda. Culturing
cringing will be related to the Othering process where the Bangladeshis are Othering themselves
in the likes of the British will be analysed and studied.. The definition of the Other refers to the
colonized others who are marginalized based on their differentness by the so called Self or the
ethnocentric Occident who deem themselves superior .

Questionnaires and surveys together with FGDs will be specially designed and conducted to
understand the mindset and preferences of people in Bangladesh and what they think of their
culture and lifestyle. Sampling will be done according to class and status in society. A special
focus will be placed on landlords and their preferred tenants to further understand the Othering
process in Bangladesh when they refuse to rent out to Bangladeshis..

All ethical issues will be maintained in the study. Confidentiality will be strictly maintained.





It will be challenge to separate the effects of globalization and media. However globalization
maybe seen as a form of neo-colonization which takes us into a broader sphere.

" 


Joshi, Priya:'  '
./


 0
1

   &

 2

'

, Book History - Volume 1, 1998, pp. 196-220

William Carey: On encouraging the cultivation of Sanskrit among the natives of India, 1822 F.I.
Quarterly 2-131-37

Thomas Babington (1800-1859),shortly to become Baron Macaulay: Speech before the

Edinburgh Philosophical Society in 1846

Edward Said, '  

 (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), p. 168.

Hegel, 3
 1
 , $
 

.0 
$
, trans. H. B.
Nisbet (Cambridge University Press, 1975), p.138.

Max Weber, Ë+)





( )1

 (Stuttgart: Kroner, 1956), p.340.

Dilip K. Chakrabarti (Cambridge University, England): '
 *+




 
(


1 , Munshiram Manoharlal, Delhi, 2000.

Ngugi Wa Thiong'o (Kenya): 4



 -
 

M. Abel, (Former Vice-Chancellor, SKD University, Anantapur): Indianisation of Education:

Problems and Prospects

Bishnupriya Ghosh: The Postcolonial Bazaar: Thoughts on Teaching the Market in Postcolonial
Objects, Postmodern Culture - Volume 9, Number 1, September 1998