The Colonial Playbook
This August the
people of Pakistan celebrated 78 years of independence from colonial rule. For most of these years the country has
struggled to navigate stormy seas, replacing one captain after another in the
hope of reaching peaceful waters. Is it the captain or the manual itself that
needs to be replaced?
In South Asia, approximately 20,000 British officials and
troops were able to rule over 300 million people by employing local people
encouraged to educate themselves in British legal, administrative, and military
systems. These people took over the administration of the new states formed
after independence, several generations removed from the systems of the Empires
and many kingdoms of South Asia.
While in initial years it was only practical to adopt the
administrative structure of colonial rule, almost eight decades later, colonial
laws remain firmly in place such as The Penal Code of 1860. Some strange
sounding laws such as The Murderous Outrages Regulation of 1867, to address
perceived threats to colonial authority and European individuals was only
repealed in 2018. Sedition under Section 124A of the Pakistan Penal Code, an
1860 law to prosecute those who, by words or actions, brought hatred, contempt,
or disaffection towards the federal or provincial government, was only struck
down in 2023.
Colonial laws, administrative systems, police and military
were designed to protect the interest of the rulers and not benefit the
ordinary people. Is the retention of these laws and institutions an intellectual
laziness, the internalizing of colonialism, or a more conscious strategy by the
new rulers to remain in control?
Author Asaf Hussain, writing in 1979, identified six elite
groups - bureaucratic, military,
religious, landowning, industrialist and professional elites. The first two
were directly trained by colonialists, but soon all became deeply politicized
circulating power within themselves, protecting their own interests and staying
aloof from society, in effect creating a new colonialism. Today we can add
subtler forms of elitism in education, art and even cinema as cineplexes take
away the joy of cinema from the general public.
Tala Kaddoura, a multimedia journalist, lays out a five step
process describing the colonial strategy. Step 1 requires a mission – to spread
religion, civilize an inferior races or gain control over resources. Step 2
Create organized chaos through violence, famine, disease, displacement. Step 3
Develop ways to keep it that way. Ensure the colonized feel subdued and
participate in your mission. Step 4 prevent people from coming together to
overthrow colonisers – divide and conquer, create artificial borders, pit one
community against another. Step 5 Erase the story people tell themselves.
Replace it with another story.
These five steps, which she elaborates with compelling
examples, do not seem only strategies of an inglorious past, but could well
describe something a bit more contemporary.
The main task of the colonial administration was the extraction
of taxes and resources of the country managing finance and creating endless
laws to justify the plunder. The colonial army was essential for suppressing constant
internal revolts and maintaining control since the Indian Mutiny of 1857.
Colonial police forces served the political interests of the ruling colonial
power, acting as the coercive arm of the state to maintain order, gather
intelligence and suppress dissent rather than protect the general population.
It all sounds familiar. The 1848 Doctrine of Lapse becomes the rampant land
grabbing of today from huge swathes of land to the streets of Karachi.
Colonisers were proud of having left the gift of democracy,
a gift that remains unopened, as disguised colonial policies thrive in the
world, happy to let ‘independent’ countries go round in circles. Instead of
physical occupation it wields diplomatic and financial occupation through IMF,
WB, INGOs, and the media - including the “Casual Colonialism” of the
entertainment media, from cinema to computer games, to control the narrative.
As Tala Kaddoura puts it, Instead of ‘Christianising the savage’, we have
‘developing the global south’. Instead of direct rule there is debt diplomacy
and foreign aid. A 2023 Oxfam report
states that “the richest 1 per cent in the Global North were paid $263 billion
by the Global South through the financial system — over $30 million an hour.”
Many, like Pakistan, serve America’s ‘Long War’ policy formulated in 2000 to
protect US interests. Richard David
Hames, Founder of Centre for the Future, says “The colonial playbook is open
again—its pages bloodstained, its logic unchanged…cloaked in the language of
democracy, security, and civilization. It leaves behind a trail of shattered
sovereignties.”
A new generation across the world, from the streets of USA, Europe
and Africa, to the hearts of those who are prevented from public protest, no
longer supports the colonial play book. Will those in power remove their sound
cancelling devices, and pay heed to their calls?
Durriya Kazi
September 7,
2025
Karachi
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