Post Colonialism

Post Colonialism or specifically post colonial literature is also known by other names like Post Modernism, Commonwealth among others. Let's talk about it.

Let's separate the definition and characteristics of Post Coloniality into various points to make our study easier:-

• Commonwealth, first referred to the collective special status of dominions to various nations within the British empire and their allegiance to them. After the Second World War around the mid of twentieth century, the British monarch was reduced to a mere symbolic head of the commonwealth.
• Difference in Post-Colonial and Post Colonial. When we use hyphenated word, we are specifically referring to the switch in historical times, specifically when individual nations became free from colonial rule and attained Independence.Non-Hyphenated Post Colonial however refers to the change in thought process of the masses of earlier colonised nations. It refers to the mental change that occurred in post colonial world. While Post-Colonial is bound by dates and specific events, Post Colonial is a gradual process shifting away from the British thought process though still bound somewhere around the specific timelines.

Following analysis of Post Coloniality comes from Aijaz Ahmad's essay titled 'The Politics of Literary Post Coloniality':

• Aijaz Ahmed problematizes the term 'Post colonialism' and talks about the shift from the use of term in reference to social sciences, political theory in the 1970s to literary criticism in the late 1980s and the early 1990s.
• He recalls how for the term he came across a variety of different meanings and kept inquiring further to unravel the real meaning and origin.
• He finds that the same literature which was earlier termed as 'Third World Literature' is now called 'Post Colonial Literature'.
• The literature is penned down and read not as nationalism but as post modernism which should not be the case. When the third world countries were colonised, people rose up against imperialism and demanded independence. This anti-colonial movement lead to the rise of nationalism among the countries ruled by imperialist forces which lead to the development of nationalist literature. The literature so developed in the third world countries gradually moved away from their original intent of nationalism.
• Aijaz Ahmed while researching further discovers the book 'Colonial Discourse and Post Colonial Theory'. He explains how Post Colonial theory is the late coming twin of the term Colonial Discourse. He then researches the relation between the two terms.

This article is intended to provide you with an introduction to the term 'Post Colonialism' and with this understanding we should be able to begin our journey of criticising the literature developing in third world countries and the impact they bear of their colonial times.