Colonialism and soft power

False history as a colonial weapon of soft power

C. K. Raju

Indian Institute of Education
G. D. Parikh Centre, J. P. Naik Bhavan
Mumbai University Kalina Campus

Introduction

Primary question

Q. How did a handful of Britishers rule over a vast country like India for so long?
The British (or other Europeans) did NOT come with a huge army.
Until the 18th c. due to bad navigation and disease each trip to India left 30% dead.
Indians had better numbers, better steel technology, better ships, better cannons etc.

Military weakness of the would-be colonizer

For example, the Governor of the British East India Company prostrated himself before Aurangzeb to beg for pardon (for Child's war)
When the pirate Avery attacked Aurangzeb's ship Ganj-i-Sawai he threatened to retaliate against Bombay,
the frightened British parliament declared Avery hostis humanis generis (enemy of humanity)
and paid a fine to persuade Aurangzeb that the British East India Company was not involved.

259 years

It took over 250 years for Europeans to win their first serious military victory
[From Vasco da Gama's arrival (1498) to the "Battle of Plassey" (1757)]
Even that 1757 battle was won by bribing part of the opposing army, NOT superior technology
The weakness persisted: British rule was easily overthrown in the uprising of 1857.

But colonizer had a new weapon

used soft power to make up for weakness in hard power.
The soft power was provided by the church.
Colonial rule involved the state-church partnership: hard power + soft power.

Indians never understood that soft power

Hence, that soft power persists long after political independence.

Clarification: The church is a POLITICAL entity

distinct from the religion Christianity which it claims to represent.
The church ruled for a over a thousand years without weapons,
with the help of myths and superstitions.
The colonised never imagined that myths and superstitions could be spread through math and science.

Many misconceptions about soft power

Most people swallowed the STORY that science is at war with the church (e.g. Galileo).
Also, eating Indian food or practising "yogaaa" does NOT generate soft power for India
Power is about control.
Colonial soft power comes from control of the mind of the colonized.

Colonial soft power

Education system

Control of the mind comes through the education system.
prolonged indoctrination (10-21 years, starting from a young age)
We fell victims to colonial/church propaganda (used e.g. by Macaulay) about "Western origin of science"
and for science allowed the colonizer/church free access to shape the minds of our future generations.

Today, as mental slaves Indians have lost the freedom

to modify the education system, especially in math, as we saw in my earlier talk.
We are gripped by the superstition that the church's axiomatic method of reasoning (as in rational theology) is "superior"
using the crusading myth of "Euclid" as a facade.

Who can change the education system?

Not the students (they are threatened with failure/punishment).
Not the teachers (they are forced to follow the syllabus).
Not the the bureaucracy (NCERT),
Not politicians (too ignorant and afraid to change it e.g. Smrti Irani, Satpal Singh and my open speech),
Not professional mathematicians (in the current system) whose livelihood depends on it.

Ordinary people don't understand

how the mind was captured with invisible bonds,
unlike the shackles of physical slavery or victory in war.
In India, people typically blame Macaulay
for the colonial education system.

Very foolish to blame only Macaulay,

for the SAME education system is found in ALL colonies:
Malaysia, Lebanon (French), South Africa, Suriname (Dutch), Brazil (Portuguese), Argentina (Spanish).
Without a correct understanding of causes, there is no cure.

Colonial education came a CHURCH education

Not only mission schools, but
all major Western universities, such as Paris, Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard were started by the church.
E.g. church steeple is highest point in Harvard square: every European university has one.

False history a stock part of church propaganda

From the time of its first religious war with "pagans" (4th-6th c. CE)
the church got politicised and used secular propaganda (against those who rejected Christian beliefs).

Systematically false history since 5th c.

Orosius (5th c.) wrote a false History Against the Pagans
during the first religious war waged by the church against "pagans".
to argue that the Christian god rewarded Christians also in this very world.

Systematically false history of SCIENCE

This method of using false history for secular propaganda
went viral during the Crusades and Inquisition
when a false history OF SCIENCE was invented
to claim an early Greek origin of all knowledge in Arabic books.

Made translation of these texts theologically correct

Hence, the Arabic books were not burnt but translated
and used as texts in the first European universities.
This false history of science was later carried forward by racist and colonial historians
to assert White/Western superiority.

People fell for (secular) false history

especially of science which seemed plausible.
The colonised learnt to worship false gods of science.

Gullible colonized NEVER cross-checked that false history

Not when education system was changed 2 centuries ago
REFUSE to do so today, 75 years after independence.
NCERT's official stand: WRONG to cross-check Western history! (Questioning the master?)
Says it MUST be accepted WITHOUT primary evidence by Indians (e.g. Euclid in class IX text).

We believe in these false gods of science

Copernicus, Newton etc. because colonial education indoctrinates us with stories.
But no one knows the actual evidence for Euclid or Pythagoras.
Anyone? There is a Rs 2 lakh prize for primary evidence of Euclid!

False history affects teaching

Or the real origin of calculus, needed for technology,
(theft of calculus made it so difficult to understand today).
Children just believe all the false stories told in our school texts
and they are in awe of the West.

HPS taboo

Because false history was a source of power the history and philosophy of science(HPS) is taboo
was never taught to the colonised by the coloniser.
And this did not change after independence: not a single university department for HPS in the country,
because no one understood the trick of using false history for soft power.

Difficult to cross-check today

because various further tricks were used
to preserve this false history.

Trick No. 1: vast secondary literature

A huge amount of secondary literature has been built up over the centuries.
Google and you are taken to Wikipedia which reinforces that false history citing secondary sources.

Trick no. 2: mixing history and philosophy

History of science NOT like history of war.
Philosophical issue are used:
e.g. "Pythagorean theorem" so-called NOT because Pythagoras did it first
but because Pythagoras purportedly did something philosophically "superior" (gave an axiomatic proof).

Trick No. 3: Teaching ignorance

Since church power flows from (propagandist) narratives
to preserve the false narratives, colonial education teaches ignorance.

Thus, colonial education supposedly came for science

but actually made the colonized ignorant of even WHY 1+1=2 (axiomatically)
(my "Cape Town Challenge")
That is called Bantuization
teach only what the colonized "need to know", and they are happy with that!

Ignorance forces people to rely on authority

and colonial education teaches them to trust only Western authority
and distrust all others.
You believe a PhD in math from Cambridge knows math (and will be honest)
Check it. Try my Cape Town challenge (1+1=2) on Pervin Sinclair, former Director of NCERT.

What can be done

Avoid silly counter-propaganda

Obviously false stories like "Vedic math" or ancient Indian spacecraft etc. are pathetic responses
They only make people laugh.
Deep research and study is needed.
Why doesn't the AWC initiate and set up an HPS unit?

New HPS curriculum

E.g. I anchored a 1 week international workshop to
design a decolonised curriculum in HPS
and repeatedly taught an HPS course in Malaysia
(2 min 27 sec video of students' responses).

How false history of science is preserved

After spreading the false belief that science is Western in origin
this is preserved by (1) the taboo against non-Western HPS (2) mixing history and philosophy, (3) teaching ignorance etc.
The only way to break this is public debate (not easy).

Indian tradition of public debate

very useful to expose false "experts".
To change the education system,
we need real experts,
not merely those deemed "experts" on the existing system of education.

Conclusions

A systematically false history of science was used to put the colonized in awe of the colonizer.
The colonized never checked that false history, and refuse to do so today.
Anyway, though colonial education supposedly came for science, the colonized remain ignorant of even why 1+1=2.
Therefore, they judge truth by trusting Western authority (and distrust others).

The sole escape from this trap is public debate (if possible).