De-evolving into "little brown brothers"

De-evolving into “Little brown brothers”
by Azly Rahman

"... An Umno lawyer is understood to have been instructed by the Barisan Nasional (BN) party to seek advice from a Queen’s Counsel in London in an effort to break the constitutional impasse in Perak. …The lawyer is said to have left for London yesterday to meet with an unnamed QC even as the question over the legitimacy of the current MB Datuk Zambry Abdul Kadir is already before the courts here…. British lawyers are occasionally instructed in courts here but only when the expertise is not available locally. … It is not clear if Umno will want to have a QC represent them in court in the lawsuit filed by Datuk Seri Nizar Jamaluddin, who maintains he remains the Perak mentri besar…. Since the 1980s QCs have rarely been granted approval to appear before Malaysian courts although clients are free to seek their advice. … In 2006, Cherie Blair, the wife of Tony Blair and a prominent QC, was denied her day in Malaysian court when the Federal Court dismissed her application to appear on behalf of Fawziah Holdings in a dispute with Metramac over a tolled highway contract. ..."
-- From Leslie Lau, The Malaysian Insider, March 1 2009

We have sent a Malaysian astro-tourist into space. We have crossed the English Channel. We have sailed solo around the world. We have seen a woman climb Mount Everest. We have designated all our institutions world-class. We declared “British Last” as a policy many decades ago. We took over Sime Darby in that famous dawn raid. We declared “Buying British Last”. We cursed Tony Blair for his role in bombing of Iraq off its sovereign political map.

And now we are becoming “Little Brown Brothers” again?

Colonialism is pervasive and cancerous. It is an ideology that legitimizes colonization, slavery, dependency, and imperialism. Different epochs of colonialism style themselves differently.

Colonialism shapes the mind and consciousness and turns the body into mini-temples of colonialism - turning what the Algerian thinker and psychiatrist Albert Memmi called "the colonized into becoming like the colonizer”, in taste, language and disposition.

The process of turning the colonized into colonizers is a complex yet discernible one. This is how is goes.

First, the Empire must study the resource-rich area to be colonized. Second, use power and knowledge to catalogue all aspects of the lives of the natives. Next, study the local chieftains, sultans, kapitan, rajah or any leader of the natives. Study their strengths and weaknesses by going into their psyche and the system of social dominance they have created to sustain their power. Next, know what these local leaders want and how to create more ‘wants’.

Patrol their waters in a display of military might. If possible, as in the historical account of Kuala Batu (Quala Batoo) in the mid 1700s, use the word "terrorists" to describe the pirates of the Malacca Sultanate, and crush them in order to create more inroads into the area to be colonised.

Use "economic terms" to describe the areas to be colonised. For example, ‘Spice Islands’ (The Nusantara) ‘Cape Horn’ (Africa), Gold Coast (Africa) Ivory Coast (Africa), Silicon Valley (California), Multimedia Super Corridor (Malaysia) and the latest ‘Iskandar Development Region’ (Johor) and perhaps the Johor Disneyland, should it come into being to complement Singapore's casinos.

When these areas are earmarked for conquest, make early contact with warring factions in order to make alliances. Divide and conquer is the strategy - then, now, and forever. Create maps that will define who will own what. In politics it is called gerrymandering. Refine the map as colonies are created. The natives, including the sultan, rajah, kapitan and village chiefs will not understand maps as these artifacts of power are of a different literacy genre. The natives are used to literacy of the Oral tradition. Maps are of Print Literacy.

Even the concept of space and time between the coloniser and the colonised are different. It depends on the concept of ‘the clock’, alien to the natives. Technology of ‘time-telling’ and ‘time-keeping’ varies among nations. ‘Chronos’ is a subjective concept. Whoever controls the more modern concept of ‘chronos’ controls the means of defining which native is the laziest. It all boils down to the mode of production and reproduction. All this must be done with one's mastery of the political philosophy of Machiavelli.

Finally, when the natives are colonised, turn them into images of the coloniser through indoctrination, education and the ideology of consumerism. Write history for them or, in the case of Africa, get Hollywood to create Tarzan movies to be shown to Africans and to tell them why they cannot govern themselves. Let them learn that only the diamond dealer Cecil Rhodes can perform miracles for Africa such as calling a nation ‘Rhodesia’.

In each and every independent nation, we will see the colonized transforming into colonizers.