HPAS/Allied Mains 2022 Answer Writing Challenge Day 292: Model Answer

Question: Examine critically the features of Decolonization. (8 marks/120 words)

Answer.

Decolonisation is the process by which colonies become independent of the colonizing country.

There are broadly four types of decolonization:

• Self-government for white settler colonies as it happened in Canada and Australia
• Formal end to empire followed by independent rule as in India
• Formal empire replaced by informal empire or neo-colonialism as in Latin America
• Mere change of imperial masters — in Indo-China when the French reluctant left, the US moved in.

Approaches of Decolonization

• The Nationalist Approach: In the nationalist view indigenous resistance and anti-imperialist struggle led to independence. The primary factor behind the end of empire was anti-imperialist movement.
• International Context Approach: According to the approach highlighting the international context of decolonization, empires could not survive in the new world order after the Second World War. In the Cold War era “colonial empires appeared as quaint survivors of a prewar age, to be quickly dismantled lest they be knocked to pieces in the turbulent wake of the superpowers.”
• Domestic Constraints Approach: The metropolitan or domestic constraints approach focuses on how the colony became too big a burden on the mother country.

Decolonization had posed various challenges to the colonies which are as follows:

State-building:

• After independence, the new states needed to establish or strengthen the institutions of a sovereign state – governments, laws, a military, schools, administrative systems, and so on. The amount of self-rule granted prior to independence, and assistance from the colonial power and/or international organizations after independence, varied greatly between colonial powers, and between individual colonies

Language policy

• From the perspective of language policy (or language politics), “linguistic decolonization” entails the replacement of a colonizing (imperial) power’s language with a given colony’s indigenous language in the function of official language.

Settled populations

• Decolonization is not an easy matter in colonies with large settler populations, particularly if they have been there for several generations. When settlers remain in former colonies after independence, colonialism is ongoing and takes the form of settler colonialism, which is highly resistant to decolonisation. In a few cases, settler populations have been repatriated. For instance, the decolonization of Algeria by France was particularly uneasy due to the large European population

Economic development

• Newly independent states also had to develop independent economic institutions – a national currency, banks, companies, regulation, tax systems, etc. This has taken a toll on the colonies.

Conclusion

Post Decolonization, the independent nation is burdened with a whole new responsibility to serve its people in the right manner.  Decolonization has a much wider impact on the whole system and it takes years to come back to the original rich taste of the society.